“Well, if you start doing a cattle drive every year to Sacramento, there are lots of women there, so you’ll get some practice talking to them over time.”
“I reckon.”
“So how’d you end up out here from Tennessee?”
“Grandpappy died the year I was ten. It was a hardscrabble life on a piece of poor dirt that stood more on its side than laid flat.” He paused and looked around as if maybe he realized he hadn’t changed things much because these mountains didn’t have much flat about them.
“Pa thought we could do better and we headed west.” He quit talking as if that were the whole story.
Deb was struck again by the quietness of the man. Her father never had a quiet moment in his life. The quiet was comfortable, and yet at the same time she wanted to know more. “So you came out here when you were ten?”
“Nope, just to Missouri.”
More silence. “When did you come out here?”
“The Missouri land was in the Ozarks and no better’n what we’d left. I think Pa stopped there because one of our horses came up lame and the huntin’ and fishin’ was good, so he stayed. I liked it and figured I could live there happy enough forever, and Pa was mighty good in the woods and taught me everything he knew.”
He was actually talking now. Deb didn’t say a word that might make him notice what he was doing.
“But Pa wanted farmland, and it was true enough that he spent all his time trying to carve himself out a few acres, cutting down trees, grubbing out trunks and roots, picking up rocks, and fighting the woods that wanted to swallow up the little land he could tear open. So after a few years there, we headed farther west and caught up with a wagon train that’d come out of Saint Louis.” He fell silent again, only this time it was as if he was exhausted from that long spate of words.
Deb didn’t push. She figured she’d hounded the poor man enough for now.
He surprised her by taking up his story again. “We weren’t really with the wagon train. We were on horseback, and we caught up to it. Pa signed on as a scout, and he did a lot of hunting to keep fresh meat around for all the travelers and checked the trail ahead for trouble. I stuck by his side and helped out plenty. Learned even more about life in the wilderness on that trip. Good thing I did.”
Trace fell silent once more, though it had a different quality to it now. She had to work up the nerve to breach it, but before she could, a sharp yip from Wolf cut the air.
Trace whipped out a gun so fast it shocked her. He shoved the reins in her hand.
“Get off the trail.” He jabbed a finger to his right at a pile of boulders that would easily hide riders on horseback. “Take everyone behind that jumble of rocks over there. Stay quiet. Keep watch.” He took off running after his dog.
Head spinning at the suddenness of the change in Trace and the possible danger, Deb didn’t think of disobeying. She turned off the trail toward the rocks.
“What’s happening, Deb?” Gwen asked.
“Shh! Keep the little ones quiet if you can.” Deb led them behind the boulders, then peeked out. Trace had sprinted away, vanished.
If it weren’t for the horse, it would have been easy to believe he’d never been here. A ghost she’d made up in her fear at being stranded in the mountains. She saw both children were asleep again. How long had they been walking since the last break—several hours possibly?
It was her turn to ride, but she wasn’t the least bit tired and wanted to talk more with Trace.
“I’ll stay up here until he comes back so as not to wake the little ones,” Gwen whispered.
Deb was impressed with her sister for not asking questions. Of course, there were no answers Deb could provide, and maybe that was what held Gwen back.
Deb tied the tall black mustang to a stout limb that somehow grew right out of the middle of the pile of boulders. She pulled her gun out of the pack she’d been carrying since they left the wagon train this morning and checked to make sure it was loaded.
“I’m going to see if I can tell what’s going on.”
“Be careful,” Gwen whispered. “And don’t shoot Trace by accident.”
Nodding at the excellent advice, Deb cocked the gun, aimed it at the sky, and edged forward to peer out from the rocks. She’d taken very little with her west. The Scotts’ wagon was already full to bursting when Deb and Gwen got included. But this gun had come along and plenty of bullets. She was heading into a wild place, and there’d be no sheriff to summon for help.
She studied the trail Trace had run down.
Nothing. No one. Where had he gone?
What if he never came back?
The thought was as wrenching as how she’d felt this morning when she realized the wagon train was destroyed and all those with it were dead. Once again she was with her sister and the little ones, in the wilderness, completely and utterly alone.
Trace was completely alone.
Alone not counting his dog. And the dog counted for a lot. He trusted Wolf more than he trusted himself, and it was the critter that’d warned him there was something, or someone, out here. Trace would put that dog up against any tracker or mountain man or Indian scout he’d ever met, and he’d met a few.
Wolf wheeled and darted into the underbrush along the trail, silent as a ghost.
Sprinting to the spot Wolf had entered the woods, Trace slipped in. He knew how to be quiet himself. It wasn’t a
