Winter's Camp (7 page)

“I come for work. Heard a big outfit come to this place. Do I talk now to Mr. Kirkland?”

“You are,” James said as he stopped his mount five feet away. “Who are you? And what do you know about that dead calf?”

“Name is Wagner.” He pronounced it
Vahgner.
“I carpenter by trade. The wolves kill calf. I kill them with ax, then think I have to come tell you even if it means no job.”

“You alone?” James didn’t trust a man who waited until dark to show up.

“
Nein
. I have wife and children with me. We travel from Fredericksburg to Fort Worth. Ranger named Drew Price told us to find you. He said if I say his name you give me job.”

James lowered his rifle and dismounted. “Why didn’t you ride into headquarters?”

“I plan to tomorrow.
Die
wife, she want to wash clothes first. Tonight I walk to the peak and try to see your camp.”

James waved the other men in. Any man who could kill two wolves with an ax would be good to have around.

He offered his hand to Wagner. “Welcome to the ranch, Wagner. We’ll talk about your job in the morning, but if Drew Price sent you I’m guessing I’ll be lucky to have you.”

James called out to the cowhands as they neared, “Help Mr. Wagner and his family get back to headquarters. Make sure they have supper and get bedded down in the barn.”

The big man smiled. “I try to shoot wolves before they kill cow, but I not a good shot so I run to them with my ax.”

“Can you make rocking chairs?” James thought of the man’s first project.

Wagner’s chest swelled even bigger. “Best in state.”

“How many children you got?” James liked the idea of children running around.

“Seven,” Wagner whispered. “All girls, maybe boy for next time.”

A few of the men laughed and then stepped forward to shake hands.

James climbed back on his horse and nodded once at Wagner before he turned back to find Millie.

He wanted to be the first to tell her that everything was all right. Tonight he would try to put into words how much she meant to him.

She filled his thoughts as he rode home, but when he got to the house, not a single lamp burned. He searched the campsite thinking she might have thought she’d be safer somewhere else like the barn where men stood guard, or the smokehouse buried halfway in the ground.

When he didn’t find her there, James checked the barn.

The boy was gone, too. When he asked about her, no one, not even the men who’d been on guard, had seen Millie or her brother.

Storming through the house, he searched every room. All was neat, every towel folded, every dish clean. It was as if no one lived there. As if the house had been readied but not lived in.

Slowly he circled one last time. Fear set in as the thought that someone might have taken her settled over his panic.

Finally he remembered what wasn’t in the house that should have been. Her trunk that she’d used to pack her few dresses and the seeds for her garden. The roll—top box with a sewing machine inside. The quilt she and Mrs. Harris had made those last few days they were in Fort Worth.

Anger and heartache ripped through his chest. She’d left him.

He had said he would let her go, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t live without her. She was his. He had paid her ransom. She was his. And he loved her.

James stood on the porch where he imagined they would grow old together and realized one fact. She wasn’t his.

He was hers.

CHAPTER TEN

J
AMES CIRCLED THE
headquarters looking for any sign of Millie or her brother. Nothing made sense. How could they have disappeared?

As the men settled in around the campfire, James grabbed a lantern and continued to search. The Wagner family were all tucked in the hayloft. As he walked through the barn, he heard Wagner’s wife singing the baby to sleep and two of the girls giggling.

James forced himself to concentrate. He passed the two Gypsy wagons. There, he heard the soft sounds of couples whispering and the memory of how he’d held Millie at the winter camp drifted in his mind. They had cuddled beneath their blanket and watched for shooting stars.

He glanced up thinking that if she had truly left him, he’d never study the night sky again. How could she have become such a big part of his life and him not know it? When he thought a raid was coming, all that mattered was Millie. Not the ranch or the cows, just Millie.

He walked around to the back of the corral where extra mounts shifted in the shadows.

The lantern swung at his knee. For the hundredth time he glared down at the dirt, but this time he saw something that made no sense. Horse tracks scarred the ground leading away from the fence. It looked as if three of the extra mounts had simply walked through the fence where no gate had been cut.

Setting the lantern down, he knelt. It took him a minute, but he solved the puzzle. The three fence boards had been shaved where they went into the posts. No nails held the fence railing up at this spot, just notches cut into the cedar pillars. Someone had taken the time to make it where they could slide the slats, let the horses out and then replace them without a sound. He, or she, wouldn’t leave a trail unless one of the men walked around the back of the corral, and no cowhand was likely to do that. This far point almost bordered a jagged cliff where an arm of the canyon dropped down.

James circled back to the barn and saddled the nearest horse as he pieced it all together. Andy had made the invisible gate just in case he ever needed it. He had taken Millie. The third mount must be carrying the trunk, the sewing machine and probably enough supplies to last them a few weeks. They both knew the way to Fort Worth, though he doubted that was their destination.

Part of him wanted to believe that Andy had taken Millie against her will, but he knew that wasn’t true.

Maybe they’d thought he wouldn’t let them go. That would explain why they’d picked a time to slip away when no one would be watching.

James fought the urge to yell for all his men. They could spread out and find a kid and a woman within an hour, but this was something he had to do by himself. The men might hurt the kid when he protected his sister or Andy might hurt one of them.

He rode to the edge of the canyon. The land was flat until the sudden drop. It looked as if a man could see the curve of the earth in all directions, but the canyon ran for more than a hundred miles, wide as a mile in places, almost small enough to jump across in others. The canyon branched out like fingers of a huge root, barely scarring the ground in places and dropping a thousand feet in others.

He looked down at the shadows below where rocky ground left no tracks. They had picked their way before dark. Now, if he started into the canyon at night, he’d be risking his life. Dark rocks and holes looked the same and shadows hid any path.

Without hesitation he started into the canyon.

He might never find them. Not tonight or after a month of searching. They could turn left or right a dozen times and if he missed one turn they would be miles away before he could backtrack.

James felt his world shattering. He would give up everything he owned, all he had saved and planned for all his life, to have Millie back at the winter camp where they had one blanket to share.

Only, he had lost her. In all the talking he had done since they met he’d forgotten to tell her how much she mattered to him.

A shooting star flashed across the sky as if reminding him of a wasted future without Millie.

James swore. He should have told her how he felt. He should have married her when she’d wanted him to. He should have stormed the house and slept with her so she wouldn’t have looked so lonely.

Another star arced across the sky, adding a flash of light for him to see the path. The light dimmed as it peaked and fell, winking out before it hit the ground.

James looked up at the night. Shooting stars don’t arc.

Another tiny light shot up out of the canyon.

James turned toward the light. It took two more flashes before James realized what he was seeing. Arrows. Flaming in the almost moonless night sky. Flaming arrows showing him the way.

Ten minutes and a dozen arrows later, he saw Millie and Andy on the canyon floor. Andy stood still holding his bow in front of a tiny fire. The strips of a shirt James had bought him lay scattered by the fire. Millie was wrapped in her beautiful quilt.

James dropped the reins of his horse and ran toward them. When he was ten feet away, he saw that Millie wasn’t moving. Her eyes were closed, as though she were sleeping.

“What happened?” he demanded as he knelt beside Millie and brushed her beautiful hair away from her face.

“She fell. I should have moved slower.” Andy stared at the fire, not meeting his eyes. “I knew you would come. I only had to show you the way.”

James glanced at Andy, who looked terrified. “It wasn’t your fault, Andy. It was an accident. Your arrows may save her.”

As gently as he could, James moved his hands over her, trying to find where she was hurt. He felt blood in her hair and found a knot and a small cut near her forehead.

“Why’d you bring her out here?” James didn’t bother to look at Andy as he worked. He found no cuts or broken bones on her arms or shoulders. She was warm, still breathing, but he wouldn’t move her until he knew where she was injured.

“She said we had to go.” Andy’s words were cold, full of hate.

“Why?” James asked as his hands moved down her sides.

Andy pulled the last arrow from his quiver. “Because a man who does not want a woman will not want the child she carries.”

The boy’s words struck James just as his hand spread over her rounded middle.

If Andy had pulled his bow and shot an arrow through James’s chest it could not have hurt more. She was carrying his child and she feared him. Afraid he didn’t want her.

“We have to get her back,” James said, his hands shaking as he tied his bandanna around her head wound. Looking up, he saw Andy standing there, arrow at the ready.

There was no time to tell the boy how wrong he and Millie had been. All that mattered was trying to save her and the child. “I’m taking her home, Andy.” James gently lifted her. “She’s my life, whether you believe it or not. If she dies, let that arrow fly and bury me beside her.”

Andy glared at him. “I will do that,” he said calmly, as if it were a promise.

They didn’t say another word. James held her close as he rode and Andy led them out of the canyon.

The kid pulled open the corral then followed James to the shadows of the barn where he raised his arms to lift Millie down.

James lowered Millie off the horse, then climbed down and took her gently from Andy. “If you’ll close the corral, I’ll get her to the house.”

Nodding, Andy stepped back. “I will go back for the other horses when I know she is safe.”

“Good.” James knew the kid would not leave her now.

The night guard spotted them as he walked out of the barn carrying Millie. By the time James reached the porch, people were coming from every direction.

Mrs. Sands ran toward him as fast as her legs would carry her. In her white nightgown and night cap she looked more ghost than woman.

“My wife is hurt,” he said. “I’ll need your help. She’s had a bad fall.”

The chubby woman starting giving orders like she was second in command. “I’ll need water and bandages and one of the Gypsy wives to help.”

He didn’t know the names of the farrier’s or blacksmith’s wives, but he saw both of them hurrying toward the house.

When he laid Millie on the bed, Mrs. Sands told him and Andy to get out.

“I’m not leaving her.” James stood his ground.

“I will not go,” Andy echoed.

James had a feeling that if Millie died, he’d feel the arrow through his chest before one tear could fall.

“Then stay out of my way, the both of you,” Mrs. Sands announced.

Wagner, a little girl on each arm, poked his head in to say his wife wanted to help. “No English, but she know about babies.”

Mrs. Sands nodded once. “Tell her to come in then you stand outside the door and yell back in English anything she says. It’s not time for the baby to come, but the fall may have hurt her.”

The newly hired carpenter disappeared and his wife waddled into the room obviously near time to deliver that boy Wagner had been waiting for.

Mrs. Sands held the quilt while the German lady examined Millie. James turned his head fearing Mrs. Wagner’s hand would appear covered in blood.

The exam took several minutes before she said something in German. Her husband yelled back the translation. “
Das
baby to be all right. No blood. Three more months to carry.”

A cheer went up from the other side of the bedroom door and James let out a breath he’d been holding. He looked at Andy. The kid finally set aside the bow he’d had in his hand.

“Does everyone on the ranch know Millie is with child?”

“Yep,” Mrs. Sands said as she cleaned the blood out of Millie’s hair. “We just didn’t know you two were married. Neither one of you said anything about it, but a blind person could tell you loved each other. She listened for you each night and you watched the house.”

“We’ve never said the words but—”

Mrs. Sands shook her head. “Ain’t no buts. You either are or you’re not. If you haven’t said the words, you’re not.”

“I’d say the vows right now if we had a preacher.” James didn’t want there to be any doubt that he loved Millie.

“Wait till she comes to, Captain. A woman usually likes to be conscious at her own wedding.”

He sat by the bed until Millie finally opened her eyes, then they talked softly late into the night. He never touched more than her hand, but the knowledge of how near he came to losing her rocked him to his core.

The next morning James put on his only clean shirt and waited on the porch for Millie to appear. She’d agreed to marry him, but Mrs. Sands suggested Millie sleep on it first. Her exact words were, “A man too dumb to admit his love is probably too dumb to come in out of the rain.”

James had glared at her, but the old lady had just smiled, letting James know she planned to pester him until one of them died.

Andy swung over the railing and stood at the door as if still on guard. He frowned at James with death-threat eyes as usual.

“I see you found a shirt and trousers. You giving up being an Apache?” James didn’t add that he’d done the worst job of cutting his hair that James had ever seen except for when Millie had cut hers.

“No. I must stay. I be uncle soon. I should look like the rest of the cowboys if I stay.” Andy glared at him.

“You giving up hating me, kid?”

“No. Your blood will mix with mine when the child is born. I will not kill the husband of my sister unless he deserves it.”

“Fair enough. Nice to have you in the family, Andy.” Darn if the kid wasn’t growing on him. “If you stay and work this land, I’ll cut you off a piece of it when you’re eighteen.”

Andy shook his head. “You pay me for work and I buy my land.” He pointed across the canyon.

Grinning, James realized Andy’s land would be out of arrow range.

Millie, her bandaged head wrapped in a beautiful scarf, came out of the house on the arm of Mr. Sands.

The old guy might not be much of a cook and no better as a carpenter, but by the time the wedding was over James had no doubt that he was fully married and the old man could preach.

* * *

T
HAT NIGHT WHEN
they held each other tightly in bed, James told Millie just how much he loved her. When he was out of words, he looked over and noticed she’d fallen asleep while he’d talked.

He lay awake thinking he was the happiest man alive. He had a wife, a baby on the way, land to pass down to the next generation and a brother-in-law who’d gladly kill him if he didn’t get it right.

An hour later Millie poked him.

“What do you want, wife?” he asked as if he’d been asleep.

“You,” she answered.

James Kirkland did what he knew he’d always do.

He surrendered.