Kaki Warner (13 page)

She wanted him.

“I miss Pete, and always will, Tom. But I don’t want to be alone for the rest of my life. I want to be happy again, and for this hollow ache inside me to go away. When I’m with Daniel, it does.”

“You hardly know him, Sis.”

“I know he’s an honorable man. I know he cares about me. And I know he’s struggling against his own loss and needs me almost as much as I need him.” Fighting tears, she watched an eagle float by and wished she could fly away with it to a place beyond this heartache. Maybe with Daniel. “It was a mistake to send him away. I see that now.” Daniel might not have been able to save Hannah, but perhaps he could save her. And then maybe she could save him.

“So what are you going to do?”

She shrugged. “Wait. Hope he comes back.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

She grinned. “Then I’ll send my big brother to track him down.”

“Like hell.” Yet his smile told her that he would do it if she asked.

***

After tying Roscoe and Merlin to a tree, Daniel pulled the rag doll from his saddlebag and tromped through the snow to the cabin.

His legs shook. His pulse roared in his head, and with every step his apprehension grew. If it wasn’t Hannah in there, he didn’t know what he would do.

Stopping several yards from the sagging porch, he drew in a deep breath and yelled, “Hello, the house!”

He didn’t have long to wait before the door creaked open. A gray-haired woman looked out. The wife? Mother?

“
Ja? Wer bist du? Was willst du?
”

“Is this the Reinhardt place?”

The door opened wider and a man stepped out. Short and stocky, light brown beard. He also had a rifle in his hand. “I am Steffen Reinhardt. Vhat ist you vant?” he called in a heavy accent.

“I’m looking for a lost girl. Blonde. Six years old. Went missing from Volker’s Crossing a year ago.”

A change came over the man’s face. Not belligerence, or even fear. Resignation.

“The trapper, McMillan, said she was here,” Daniel went on when Reinhardt didn’t speak. “I’ve come to take her back to her mother.”

Before Reinhardt could respond, a woman rushed out onto the porch. Younger than the other woman. “
Sie ist nicht hier! Gehen sie weg!
”

“Marta!” Reinhardt grabbed her as she flew toward the steps, shouting and waving a fist at Daniel. “
Gehen sie ins haus!
” They struggled for a moment, then Reinhardt pointed her toward the door where the older woman watched, her eyes round with alarm in her wrinkled face. “Go, Marta!
Gehen!
”

Instead, before Reinhardt could stop her, the woman yanked the rifle from his grip, whirled, and fired.

Daniel lurched back, arm up.

Pandemonium broke out. Shouts. Screams. Reinhardt wrestled the rifle away from the shrieking woman and shoved her ahead of him into the house. The door slammed behind him.

Stunned by what had just happened, Daniel stared at the closed door. Then fury engulfed him. “Reinhardt! Bring the girl out now! Or I’m coming in!”

Inside the cabin, pandemonium continued. Cries, shouts. A child weeping.

Daniel charged forward.

The door flew open.

“
Nien. Ist gut,
” Reinhardt shouted, waving Daniel back. “
Ich bringe ihr aus.
I bring her now. Stay back.”

Daniel watched him pull a child onto the porch, then quickly slam the door shut against the wails and sobbing that came from inside. “Here Anke is.”

A girl. Small. Blonde. The same blue-green eyes as her mother.

Hannah.

Daniel felt like he’d been kicked in the chest.

“You take her away,” Reinhardt called, bending to pull a brown coat over the girl’s shivering form. “Do not come back.”

“Hannah?” With a shaking hand, Daniel pulled the doll from his pocket and held it out. “Look, Hannah,” he said in a strained voice. “See what your mother sent? Do you know what it is?”

The child looked solemnly at the doll, then at Daniel, then up at the man fumbling with the buttons on her coat.

“
Ist gut,
” Reinhardt said, finally straightening. He smiled down at the girl, then gave her a gentle nudge toward Daniel. “Go home, little Anke. Go home to your
mutter
.”

Hesitantly, the child started down the steps.

Daniel watched her slog through the snow, her thin, stockinged legs taking exaggerated steps. He tried to see in her face the same child who had spoken to him outside his woodshed just over a week ago. But without the scarf covering her face or the hat shading her eyes, it was hard to tell.

Yet he knew. He knew like he knew the beat of his own heart. Like he knew the truth of his own mind. He had found Lacy’s daughter.

Thank you, Lord.

“Hannah,” he said when she stopped before him. “Do you know who I am?”

She looked at him, then at the doll in his hand.

He held it toward her. “Do you remember your doll?”

She studied it for a moment, then smiled. “Miss Peep,” she said in a voice so soft he wasn’t sure if he’d heard it or only imagined it. Unaware of his astonishment, she took the doll from his grip and tucked it under her arm. “What took you so long, Daniel?”

Jesus.
“You’re talking,” he blurted out, wondering if he was hearing her thoughts or her words.

“Can we go home now?”

Daniel stared, his mind reeling. He tried to speak, couldn’t, cleared his throat and tried again. “Sure. All right.” He reached out an unsteady hand.

But instead of taking it, she pointed at his stomach. “Why are you red?”

Confused, Daniel looked down, saw the blood on his jacket, and only then realized he’d been shot.

***

It was twilight when Lacy and Tom rode into New Hope. In the week they’d been gone, more repairs had been completed on the Mercantile, and most of the shops had bright bows over their doors, garlands of holly and fir in the windows, and candles on the sills.

Turning to her brother, Lacy asked what day it was.

“The nineteenth, I think.”

Hannah had disappeared last year on the seventeenth. How had she let that anniversary slip by unnoticed?

When they stopped in front of her house, she studied it with a critical eye. The faded black ribbon above the front door proclaimed it a home still in mourning. The dead plants in the window box and the pine needles piled in the corners of the porch, along with the lack of yuletide decorations, screamed a message of despair:
Go away, leave me alone, I don’t care.

This, then, was her legacy to Hannah? To a child that had brought such joy into her life?

No. She had to do better. She had to find a way out of this hole she’d been hiding in for the last year and face life again. And she would start by finding a proper way to honor her daughter’s memory.

“What’s the matter?” Tom asked when he saw her still sitting on her mare.

She swung out of the saddle. “We need to spruce the place up.”

He gave her a look. “I’m a little tired right now . . . ”

Ignoring his sarcasm, she fell into step beside him as they led the horses to the barn and paddocks in back of the house. “I’ll make some bows. You and Harvey can cut boughs for a garland. And find a tree. We need a tree.”

“Next you’ll want a Christmas goose.”

She poked his shoulder. “There’s your Christmas goose. But a turkey would be nice. Or several grouse. We should invite Doctor Halstead, don’t you think? Try to make a celebration of it.”

Celebrate the happiness that Hannah had brought them. Not the pain.

He put his hand on the paddock gate, hesitated, then turned toward her, a speculative look on his face. “You think Hobart might show up?”

“It’s Christmas, Tom. And I don’t want every Christmas for the rest of my life to be about the worst day of my life.” She smiled. “But if Daniel showed up, that would be fine, too.”

“You told him not to come around anymore, to stay away from New Hope and out of your life. Remember?”

She did. And heartily regretted it. “Maybe he’ll come anyway. It wouldn’t be the first time a man disregarded a woman’s wishes.”

***

Unwilling to risk another bullet by checking his injury so close to the cabin, Daniel took Hannah back through the trees to where he’d tied Merlin and Roscoe. Now that he knew he’d been shot, his side started burning like a son of a bitch. But it didn’t seem to be bleeding much, and judging by the hole in his jacket, it was low on his side and well away from anything important. Or so he hoped. While Roscoe and Hannah traded kisses, he untied the sack of dry goods he’d purchased in Volker’s Crossing. He pulled out the wool poncho, both blankets, the wool mittens and scarf, then held up Hannah’s new coat.

Luckily, it was several sizes too big and fit easily over the old brown coat she was wearing. He’d forgotten how squirmy children were but managed to get her buttoned and mittened, then pulled the poncho over her head, which covered her legs and dragged on the ground. Next, he wound her new wool scarf around her head several times, and finally wrapped her in one of the blankets.

“How’s that?’ he asked, stepping back to study his efforts.

“I’m hot.”

He removed the blanket. Then, ignoring the burst of pain in his side, he lifted her into the saddle. After instructing her to hang on to the saddle horn, he turned his back and examined the wound.

The bleeding had already slowed. But there was no exit hole in his back, which meant the bullet was still lodged inside. That would cause a problem. He figured it would be all right until he got Hannah out of the canyon and away from the Reinhardt’s. Even fifty yards from the cabin, he could still hear Mrs. Reinhardt wailing and calling for Anke. He didn’t want Hannah to be in the area if she broke out and started shooting again.

He pulled a shirt from his saddlebag, tore off a section, and laid it over the hole, then tore more strips and tied them around his waist to keep it in place. That was the best he could do for now. Teeth gritted against the pain, he swung up onto Merlin. After wadding up the blanket to make a seat for Hannah in front of him, he made sure the poncho covered her legs and the scarf was secure. “All set?” he asked once she’d finished squirming around.

She nodded. And with Miss Peep tucked under her arm and her wool-wrapped head bouncing against his chest, they started down out of the canyon.

Because of the tracks he’d laid down earlier, it was easier going out than coming in, and they made it back to the Frio River while it was still light. Knowing he couldn’t ride the additional fifteen miles to New Hope that night, he rode on until he reached the same spot where he and Lacy and Jackson had camped that first night out of New Hope a week ago.

He slid stiffly to the ground. “Gather some firewood while I set up camp.”

She blinked at him, eyes round.

“It’ll be all right. Roscoe will go with you.”

By the time he’d tied the canvas between the trees and gotten a fire going with the sticks she’d gathered, he was shaky with fatigue and loss of blood.

“You hungry?” he asked, setting beans and jerky on to warm.

She nodded and sat down beside him—so close he had to watch his elbows—and began to twist Miss Peep’s yarn hair into rough braids.

A strange kid
, he thought, studying the child who had haunted his dreams for weeks. Beautiful like her mother. Same blonde hair, same blue-green eyes, and a smile that reached into a man’s chest and wrapped around his heart.

He still couldn’t believe he’d found her. Or that she was talking. And although there was still no rational explanation for either, at least now he knew he wasn’t crazy. “Your ma told me you didn’t talk.”

She continued braiding. “I can’t talk to
her.
”

“But it’s okay to talk to me?”

She nodded.

“Why?”

“You won’t go away if I say something mean.”

“And you think she will?”

“Daddy did. I like your dog.”

Guessing that was all he was going to get on that subject, he tried another. “Your ma misses you real bad.”

This time she looked up. “She does?”

“Sure.”

“She’s not mad at me?”

“Why would she be mad at you?”

She shrugged and resumed braiding. Miss Peep’s hair looked like a tangled bird’s nest and was getting worse by the minute. “She gave me to the lady.”

It was a moment before Daniel could speak, and when he did, it was hard to keep his voice even. “No, she didn’t. She would never do that. Ever.”

“But the lady said—”

“The lady was lying,” he cut in, too angry to watch his words. “Your mother never stopped looking for you. Or missing you.” His hands curled into fists, and he wished he had the Reinhardt woman’s throat in his grip.

She stopped twisting the yarn. “Then why didn’t she come get me?”

Seeing the tears in her eyes brought a sting to his. To hide it, he put his arm around her and pulled her against his uninjured side. “She tried, sweetheart.” He pressed his lips against her silky blonde hair. “She just didn’t know where you were.”

“Oh,” She leaned against him for a moment more, then pulled away to peer into the pot on the fire. “Can we eat yet? I’m hungry.”

***

Daniel had a bad night and awoke shivering in bitter cold, his side wet with blood. Earlier, after Hannah had fallen asleep curled against Roscoe, he had cleaned the wound as best he could, then packed it with a strip of boiled cloth and covered it with a fresh bandage. But somehow during the night, the plug had come out and now the hole was bleeding again.

He was in trouble.

Knowing he had to get Hannah home while he could still ride, he didn’t bother breaking down camp, but saddled as quickly as he could. After a quick breakfast of canned peaches, jerky, and rock candy, they left for New Hope under a leaden sky that smelled like snow.

Within an hour, the first flakes began to fall.

By noon, he was riding blind into driving snow.

***

Lacy was perched on a crate, hanging one of her mother’s imported glass ornaments on the Christmas tree, when she heard scratching on the door. At first she thought it was just the wind rattling the windowpanes. A storm had come through early that morning, and wind and icy pellets had been buffeting the house all day. But this sounded different.