Strong and Stubborn (5 page)

Lacey was a force of nature, going where she wanted and getting there in whatever manner she pleased. One could either go along with her or be swept to the side, and Naomi would always choose to stay with her cousin.
For all the good it seemed to do either of us
.

“Oh good.” Evie sounded relieved. “She's not alone then.”

“We have bigger concerns than that.” Cora glowered at Braden.

Naomi believed she understood the larger issue. “She's without a chaperone.” The attraction between Lacey and the hunter rapidly grew too obvious for things to continue this way. “This isn't the first time she's gallivanted off alone with Dunstan. I know we asked him to keep an eye on her, but it shouldn't be so blatant!”

Evie looked troubled. “Perhaps we need to ask our new hunter to stop taking Lacey on his expeditions. Our reputation as ladies is one of our safeguards out here. If the men begin thinking we're less than paragons of virtue, we'll have a situation on our hands.”

Guilt fisted at the back of her throat, cutting off Naomi's ability to agree.
Paragons of virtue
. A laughable thought.

Braden snorted. “As though they believe that anyway, after the stunts you four pulled. The lumbermen are playing along in hopes of striking it rich, but deep down all of them see the four of you as the strange hussies who set out to hire their own husbands.”

“Three,” Naomi hissed at her cousin, a part of her longing to brain him with the bedpan. “Three of us set out to hire our husbands. One of us gave up everything to be at her fiancé's side.”

“And who asked
any
of you to come here, hauling enough luggage to sink an ocean liner and attracting enough trouble to keep a dozen writers' pens scratching? There can be no peace with you here.”

“Peace is what you had before, Braden?” Cora's tone went silky. “I would call it shame and the waste of a town.”

Naomi gaped for a moment, struck by Cora's uncharacteristic attack. Evie, she couldn't help but notice, failed to hide a grin. Perhaps it was time for Cora to stop standing by Braden's ill humors and begin challenging them instead. Braden himself looked flabbergasted by the change—and well he should be. For the past seven weeks since their arrival in Hope Falls, his fiancée crossed him only in her refusal to dissolve their engagement.

Grin out in full force, Evie apparently decided to leave the estranged lovebirds to sort things out.

“Well, since Lacey's accounted for, I believe I'll go back to making supper. I wouldn't want to disappoint the men. And who knows? Maybe Jake will come back this afternoon.” With that, Evie slipped from the room. They heard her footsteps speed to a near run as she made her way down the hall and through the doctor's front door.

“But Lacey needs—” Cora spoke too late to reach her sister.

“Granger won't be back yet,” Braden predicted then muttered, “I wish he was. Then he could go help Dunstan in the mines and send Lacey back to keep company with the rest of you women. You're less in the way when the four of you stay huddled together somewhere.”

As used to as she'd become to ignoring Braden's mutters, it took Naomi a moment to sift through his sulk and pinpoint what made her so uneasy. Surely no one was wandering around the collapsed mines?

“Dunstan isn't out hunting?” A lump blocked her throat.

“Oh, he's hunting all right.” Grim satisfaction showed in Braden's first smile in months. “But this time, it's for proof.”

“Where?” Naomi was desperate for answers. “Proof of
what
?”

From the way Cora eyed the pitcher beside Braden's bed, she was barely managing to restrain herself from dumping its contents atop her self-involved fiancé. “They went to the mines.”

Naomi knew a vague pride that her knees didn't buckle. All of a sudden she understood Cora's newfound hostility. She felt a large dose of it herself and felt only marginally better as Cora ceded to temptation and upended the pitcher atop Braden's head.

“You let Lacey go into the mines?” Naomi seethed. “Your sister, who can't so much as go for a brief stroll without some disaster?”

“Yes.” Braden raked a hand through his sopping hair, flinging drops of water around the room. “My sister, who
you
couldn't stop from selling our family home and planting herself in the middle of the wilderness without protection and no plan of how to handle things.”

“We had a plan,” she snapped back, stung by the bald accusation that she'd failed in her responsibility to watch over Lacey. Besides, Lacey
had
thought up a way to join her gravely injured brother and reenergize the town that almost stole his life. And although the idea proved incredibly foolish, quite probably dangerous, and definitely impractical, there had been a plan.

Which didn't make Naomi feel one whit better about having gone along with it. Nor did it alleviate her worries about Lacey now. Nothing would make her breathe easy until she saw her cousin safe and sound—and far away from collapsed mine tunnels.

“Which entrance did they take?” She began rolling up her sleeves—as though that might save the soft gray serge of her day dress from the dirt of the mines. “Eastern or southern facing?”

“How should I know?” He made an abrupt gesture drawing notice to his leg. “I'm stuck in here while they go search for proof that Dunstan's hunch is right. If I could be with him, Lacey wouldn't.”

Naomi paused in the act of tightening the new Common Sense bootlaces she'd ordered from Montgomery Ward. Now that she'd had a moment to catch her breath and think about it, she couldn't deny how strange it was for Lacey to go into the bowels of a mountain.

Yes, her cousin dearly loved adventure. Yes, Lacey seemed to find particular delight in discomfiting Chase Dunstan, the new Hope Falls hunter. But at Lacey's core was a creature born of sunlight and sparkle who vigorously guarded the beautiful things with which she surrounded herself. Lacey wouldn't sacrifice one of her gorgeous gowns to dankness and dust without good reason.

“What hunch?” Naomi finished with her laces and leveled her stare at her still-soaked cousin. “Why would either of them go?”

“I hired Dunstan as our territory guide when I first came to set up the mine. After the collapse, he thought I was dead. Since my partner sold his shares so swiftly, the sudden news that I lived after all roused his suspicions.” Braden shifted, betraying an uncharacteristic eagerness. “When he caught wind of my sister's featherbrained ad, he assumed it was either code or a scam and decided to look into the real reason behind the mine's collapse.”

Naomi blinked, sorting through Braden's answer and finding more surprises than she liked. Questions sprang up where before there had been blind acceptance—the sort of blind acceptance she thought she'd left behind on the day of her sister's wedding. Her head pounded.

“It seems Jake Granger wasn't the only man to come to Hope Falls hiding his identity.” Cora brought up one of the more troubling points. The women had forgiven Granger's deception—though just barely—because the man had been hunting a murderer. Though even that good reason might not have been enough, had Evie not fallen in love with the rugged lumberman and supported him after.

“Nah.” Obviously seeing that the women were taking exception to these circumstances, Braden rushed to defend Dunstan. “Chase Dunstan really is his name. He's one of the most capable men I've ever met, and possibly the only one I think could hold his own against my sister. Since he's the best guide and hunter in these mountains, he's the best choice to keep an eye on Lacey—even if you couldn't have known that when you hired him. Just because you didn't look into the man's background doesn't mean he hid who he is.”

“He hid his connection to Hope Falls,” Cora contested. “Dunstan deliberately left out his reason for coming back then went out of his way to avoid you because you knew his connection to the mines.”

“You deliberately chose to keep me in the dark—don't blame Dunstan for your duplicity. What were you thinking, hiring on another man—particularly one as potentially dangerous as a hunter/tracker—behind my back? You're lucky it was Dunstan!”

“Granger vouched for him.” Naomi decided to cut off the brewing argument. They could snipe at each other after she fetched Lacey from the mines and wrested her cousin's promise never to go back. “You can quibble all you like—it doesn't change the fact he misled us. And while he's proven his ability to look after himself and Lacey in the forest, a mine that's already collapsed once is drastically different! Its construction is compromised.”

“No! The problem wasn't in the construction.” Braden punched the mattress with his fist. “If the mine was sabotaged, the design and supports of the tunnels were just as safe as I intended.”

“Originally.” Cora rubbed her temples. “But you know that your original design was ruined—even though they cleared debris and shored up the main tunnels to get you out, it left the entire network weakened, strewn with shifting rubble. Who knows what Lacey might disturb, bringing the whole thing down again?”

“You're right.” From a man who'd spent the past two months telling them they were wrong about anything and everything, the admission offered little comfort. “We'll need to shore up the supports and send in a team for safety's sake. I shouldn't have let them go. Lacey was being stubborn and Dunstan goes his own way, but I encouraged them.” He looked as though he was about to be sick.

Cora looked as though she might want to reassure her newly humbled fiancé, but Naomi yanked her friend out the door. When Cora would have run straight back to Evie's kitchen, Naomi veered them toward Lacey's mercantile. In a matter of minutes, she and Cora looped lengths of oiled rope over their shoulders and around their waists and grabbed rucksacks and shovels. If they had to brave the tunnels to fetch Lacey, they'd go in prepared. They headed for the door, only to freeze in place as the earth let loose a booming roar.

T
he train had already begun slowing for the upcoming stop, so for a moment Michael thought something had gone horribly wrong with the engine. A muted boom sounded before the train car shuddered, nearly tilting off the tracks as it came to a whining, skidding halt.

As it stood, Michael had a hard time distinguishing when the train itself stopped moving—because the earth itself hadn't stopped. The ground beneath the tracks shook; a mountain in the distance roiled enough to look like a mythical dragon sprung to life, stone suddenly struggling to draw breath. Rumbling, roaring, the quake sent dust swirling into the air and obscuring parts of the horizon.

Before the sound and motion ceased, one of the few passengers in the train car bolted to his feet, sprang through the door, and burst from the vehicle in an impressive leap. The man hit the ground running and kept going, headed for the nearest building.

Slinging his rucksack over one shoulder and grabbing his tool case, Michael disembarked. His first real glance of Hope Falls showed a bewildering contradiction. Chaos reigned supreme—the mountain he'd glimpsed before seemed to be sagging in on itself. The dust started settling but still caked several buildings with a tangible coating of catastrophe. But where were all the people? For such a sizeable outpost, there was hardly a soul to be seen.

Michael absorbed the details, sifting through possibilities and explanations.
I thought the mine already collapsed?
Which would account for the almost-abandoned air of Hope Falls.
Maybe the tunnels remained unstable, and the same mines caved in farther?

That seemed the only way to explain the booming rumble that shook the mountainside. As far as where he could find the townsfolk, Mike could only pray that they hadn't been so foolish as to be poking around the old mine site and set off the earlier ruckus.

For now he headed in the direction mapped out by the other fellow. If he found no one and nothing else, at least he wouldn't be the sole inhabitant of the town. And for a town supposedly raising a sawmill, there definitely weren't enough people to get the job done.
Perhaps Hope Falls abandoned the sawmill idea?

Acid clawed at the back of his throat at the very thought. Surely the Lord wouldn't have brought him all this way for nothing? Mike shook his head and kept walking, now hearing excited voices.

“It's all going to be fine.” Deep tones rumbled reassurance.

“Lacey and Dunstan went to explore the mines!” came a sob in return.

“We're going after them.” The beguiling, husky tone sent a shiver down Mike's spine.

He paused, now understanding the true nature of the crisis. The mine had, indeed, suffered another cave-in. Worse, it sounded as though this woman's friends might well have been caught in it.

“I'll send Lawson to get word to the men to come help.” The unknown man, still trying to assure the women, began making plans. “The sooner we get through, the sooner we'll find them.”

Lawson?
Mike didn't have to check the well-worn copy of his friend's telegram to know that this was the name of the engineer. In spite of the tragedy he'd walked into, Mike acknowledged a surge of relief.
If the engineer is here, and there are ‘men' to fetch, it looks as though the Hope Falls sawmill does exist after all
.

He set down his carpenter's chest and rounded the corner of the building, determined to give whatever assistance he could. In that moment he got his first glance at the occupants of Hope Falls.

Three women clustered around a doorway—and the man from the train. Little wonder the fellow leaped from the car as though fearing for his life. By the way the plump, pretty gal in his arms stared up at him, the man had an awful lot to lose. Beside them hovered a wisp of a girl whose face bore some resemblance to the other. But the third woman caught Mike's attention and held it.