Cora, having heard grandpa’s cough from Elizabeth’s room where she stayed with the girl until she fell asleep, hurried into the parlor.
“You should be in bed,” Cora insisted. “I’m going to make you a cup of tea that the doctor suggested for that cough. You’ll not get sick again if I can help it. Clay, help him to bed, and I’ll be in with the tea shortly.” She spun on her heel and left the room headed for the kitchen.
Clay took his grandpa’s arm and helped him to his bedroom. Once he was settled in bed and drank the foul-tasting tea Cora forced on him, grandpa drifted off to sleep, and Cora and Clay left the room.
“He’ll sleep for the night,” Cora said. “Get some rest, Clay. You’ll need it tomorrow to look for Grace.”
“I will, but I’m going to wait up for Wade.”
“You’d be better off getting some sleep. He’ll come home drunk and mean. You won’t learn anything from him,” Cora said.
“Remember when he tied me by the ankles and hung me upside down from that old oak when we were kids and threatened to leave me there all night? I could return the favor and leave him in the barn until he tells me where Grace is,” Clay said while pacing the room.
“You wouldn’t.”
Clay blew out a frustrated breath, “No, I wouldn’t, but Wade doesn’t have to know that. I’m bigger and stronger than he is, and he’ll be drunk. Scaring him might be enough.”
Cora shook her head before leaving the room to head for bed blaming herself for not helping to raise Wade well enough. Where did she go wrong or was Wade just troubled and needed more than she could give him?
Clay sat back down in the parlor and drifted off to sleep waiting for Wade to arrive home. Wade’s loud stumbling entrance into the kitchen woke Clay a little before three o’clock. Wade shuffled toward the parlor, and as he rounded the corner into the room, his face met with Clay’s fist, and Wade hit the floor.
Clay grabbed the front of Wade’s shirt and spoke in a quiet, menacing tone. “Where is my wife?”
Wade didn’t answer. Between the alcohol and punch to the jaw, he was out cold. Clay left him lying on the parlor floor and headed to bed. He needed rest to find his wife in the morning.
Chapter Eighteen
Clay woke before the sun ready to continue his search for Grace. He stepped over Wade’s prone body still unmoving on the parlor floor. Loud snoring let Clay know that Wade would be out for a few hours and that would give Clay time to search without his brother’s interference.
If Wade’s threats were real, then Grace was in danger, and he needed to find her before his brother acted rashly. The lawyer never arrived as Wade said and the family wasn’t sure if Wade was blowing smoke or changed his mind. Perhaps something more sinister entered his plans. He doubted that Lucinda changed Wade’s mind, but if she thought she’d be the lady of the ranch, who knows what she might have suggested. Time was not on Clay’s side.
Clay ate leftover biscuits and two cups of coffee for breakfast before heading out. Grandpa said Wade mentioned that Grace wouldn’t last long in the backcountry. He’d head south. Surely, Wade had a slip of the tongue, and he’d hidden her somewhere in the vast forested area on the southern edge of the property.
Grace was just waking on the opposite side of the ranch that Clay planned to search. The night hadn’t been too cold, but she still shivered when she slipped off the cot and placed her feet on the floor. She quickly pulled her feet back onto the cot and wrapped them in the wool blanket. As her feet warmed, she had an idea.
Slipping back out of the blanket, she ignored the cold earthen floor and found the knife she saw yesterday. Grace spread the blanket on the cot and cut out a large square. Laying the piece of blanket on the floor, she stepped on it with her right foot and found she had more than enough room to make a bootie out of the fabric. She pulled the clothes she packed in her travel bag and dropped them on the cot. Using the knife, she cut several pieces of her petticoat into squares that she folded just a bit larger than her foot and ripped several long strips into what she’d use as straps. Layering the squares of petticoat on top of the wool, she stepped onto the square and pulled it up around her foot. She used the strips of cloth to tie the makeshift bootie just above her ankle.
Grace walked around the shack for a bit and noticed her foot in the bootie was warm and comfortable. She quickly made a second one and cut enough squares and strips for spares in case she needed them. For the final test, she walked outside and stepped onto the rocky terrain. It wasn’t comfortable, but not painful, and she was sure she could walk out of the valley.
Grace returned to the shack and ate another apple and more bread. She stuffed the remaining food and spare cloth pieces into a bag and tied it shut. She didn’t have a canteen, so she walked to the stream and drank more water than she needed but didn’t want to take the chance of dehydration. She’d searched the shack and didn’t find any type of bottle or jar. She was sure if she tried to carry a pan of water, she’d spill it before she walked to the top
