Mary Connealy (47 page)

“That’s
perpetrated
, idiot.” Abe shoved John into Mark. “It’s like Methodist and Baptist and Perpetyrians.”

“What’s an innocent maiden?” Luke asked.

Daniel jerked his thumb at Grace, in a gesture Grace found shockingly rude. “It’s her.”

The parson narrowed his blazing eyes. “Until last night.”

“I been around her long enough to know she’s not innocent at all,” Mark said. “Why, she’s a cranky old—”

“Answer me right now, Daniel!” The parson glowered.

Daniel looked at her again.

Grace looked back.

Mrs. Roscoe cleared her throat. “There is no decision to be made here. Begin the service at once, Irving.”

“Do you, Daniel, take this woman—”

“Now just hang on a minute there, Parson.” Daniel talked over the top of the parson, holding up both hands, his palms flat in front of him as if trying to calm a nervous horse.

Grace quit listening to the parson as she considered what seemed to be going on in this cave this morning. Forget nervous horse: Try runaway train. This situation was definitely out of control, and Daniel’s flat hands didn’t have a chance of stopping anything.

She leaned forward to stare at the boys. “You’re confusing
perpetrated
with
Presbyterian
, Abe.” Grace believed in teaching, and none of the boys had been more stiff-necked about learning than Abe. If she taught this boy one word, she’d call her entire life a success, because he seemed stubbornly averse to learning of any kind. “
Perpetrated
means—”

“Daniel Reeves, speak!”

Grace pulled her attention away from Abe. Daniel was staring at her, his eyes so wide Grace would swear the man had seen a ghost.

Daniel shook his head.

The parson started yelling again. He seemed prepared to call down lightning on all of them if Daniel didn’t speak, and now.

“I don’t even know how I got here.” Grace flung her arms wide, narrowly missing backhanding Daniel in the face.

“I do.” Daniel grabbed her hand to protect himself. “It’s like this. I needed supplies….”

Grace almost smiled. Finally, she’d hear the whole story.

“About time.” The parson turned his fire-and-brimstone eyes on Grace and scared her into paying attention.

“No, I didn’t mean—” Daniel dropped her hand as if it had sprouted cactus bristles.

“Silence, Daniel.”

Grace ran that tone of voice quickly through her head. She had to practice. How she’d love to be the proud owner of a tone of voice that could silence Daniel Reeves.

“Do you, Grace, take Daniel—”

Mark shoved between his father and the parson. “We told you we aren’t keepin’ her for our ma.” Mark appeared to be the only one in the room with no fear of Parson Roscoe’s close ties with the heavenly Father. He turned on Grace. “You want out of here as bad as we want you out of here, don’t you?”

Grace nodded frantically. “I do.”

“Hallelujah!” The parson raised his hands to heaven, reciting a blessing that Grace couldn’t quite understand because she was too afraid to take her eyes off of Mark.

“I now pronounce you…”

Mrs. Roscoe threw herself, weeping, into Grace’s arms, whispering something. Grace could only make out “Congratulations.”

“What?” Grace turned back to the parson.

But what was there in this mess to be congratulated for?

The parson finished with a prayer that nearly shook the solid rock cave; then he tipped his hat. “I’ll expect you all to be sitting in church together when I announce your good news.”

Grace thought immediately of Parrish. He would hang around Mosqueros, trying to pick up her trail. “No—”

“Yes,” the parson retorted. “You will be there. You’ll accept everyone’s congratulations and put this episode behind you decently and in order.”

“Congratulations for what?” Grace then realized the parson and his wife could give her a ride back to town. Then she thought of Parrish.

Mrs. Roscoe clutched Grace’s hand. “I’ve always had a feeling about you two. That’s why, when you were missing, I insisted Irving and I be the ones to come out here and check.”

“You’ve had a feeling about Mr. Reeves and me?” Grace had a feeling, too, every time she’d spoken to the man. Quite a few feelings, honestly: contempt, fury, disgust.

The parson, who Grace had always liked, and his wife, who seemed like such a sweet-natured woman in the normal course of things, swept out of the cave home. The door slammed shut on the seven of them.

“But I need a ride back to town,” Grace called after them.

“You’re not getting a ride back to town, woman. You’re married!” Daniel might as well have been a cougar trapped in this cave with her. She’d have felt no safer.

“I’m what?” Deafening silence followed her question. She thought of what had just happened. She’d heard no such talk of marriage. Had she?

“She’s what?” Abe and Ike asked together.

Mark shoved himself to the front of the pack of boys. “To who?”

Grace looked at Daniel, and it hit her like that imaginary runaway train Daniel had tried to stop. She was the mother of five—including two ten-year-olds. And she was only seventeen.

She’d be in all the medical textbooks if word got out.

“I can run after the parson and catch him,” John offered with frantic eagerness.

“There’s no need, boys.” Daniel’s shoulders slumped as if all five boys had just jumped on his back.

“Why didn’t the parson give her a ride back to town, Pa?” Luke asked.

All the boys turned to their father with curious expressions.

In a voice so tired Grace would have felt sorry for him if she hadn’t had her hands full feeling sorry for herself, Daniel said, “Because I brung her home to be your ma.”

Grace sank onto the floor and pulled all six blankets over her head.

“Irving, I’m ashamed of you.” Isabelle Roscoe folded her hands over her ample middle and tried to look severe.

Her husband started laughing. “You played right along, Belle. Now don’t try and deny it.”

“We could have taken that poor girl home and no one would have been the wiser.”

“Something needed to be done.” Irving chirruped to the horses, unable to feel any remorse. “Miss Calhoun had nowhere to go, and the good Lord knows Daniel Reeves needed a mother for those poor children.”

“Yes, something did need to be done. But I’m not sure forcing them to get married, right there on the spot, was for the best. That sweet girl could have lived with us for a while until she found another job.”

“Yes, she could have. But why, when this solution is so obvious? Anyway, it was necessary. They’d been together for a full night. Nothing else would have suited the situation.”

“Alone with five boys? Nothing sinful happened in that awful cave, or everyone would have known it. Those two don’t get along, Irving.” Isabelle shook her head; then a grin escaped.

Irving chuckled. “You’re the one who said you’d always had a feeling about those two. Where’d you come up with that?”

“Well, I did have a feeling she’d left town with him. I just figured things had finally come to a shoot-out and we’d find Daniel’s body somewhere along the trail.”

When they stopped laughing, Irving clucked to his horses. “They’re not going to have an easy time of it.”

She waved away his worry. “What newlyweds ever have an easy time of it?”

Irving nodded. “Well said, Belle.” They eased through the gap, out of the canyon, their team already wading through knee-deep snow. “This trail is going to fill. They’ll be stuck in there together awhile. That’ll help them sort things out. What do you suppose possessed Daniel to build in here anyway?”

Isabelle shrugged. “I’ve heard talk in town that no one knew this canyon existed until Daniel turned up living in it. Look at this narrow entrance. Why, I wouldn’t be surprised if this canyon closes up so tight they’ll be locked in here solid until spring.”

“They’ll be settled in by then. Maybe we’ll have a baby to baptize before they get snowed in next winter. It’ll all work out fine.” The two exchanged a fond, if conspiratorial, look as the horses plodded toward home through the narrow gap, snow drifting heavily down on their heads.

A
dam staggered against the wind howling through the mouth of Sawyer Canyon. He clung to his Stetson, his belly protesting his hunger. He’d been out all night and most of the day searching for Grace Calhoun. The sun had long since dipped behind the rugged hills, although a dusky light made it so he could still see. The cold wind blew all day, but only in the bottleneck of this canyon had it grown teeth.

Remembering Judd Mason and the standoff at this canyon that had almost gotten Sophie killed, he prayed again for forgiveness of his sinful heart, knowing God had saved him from hate during that dark time.

He caught the reins of his horse and turned his roan toward home, knowing he had to go in and get some rest before he collapsed.

Where is she, God? Where did the schoolmarm get to?

Crackling brush had him wheeling his horse toward the rugged incline that guarded the canyon, his eyes narrowing on an area strewn with rock and scrub mesquite.

He pulled his Winchester and jacked in a shell. With a cluck of his tongue, he urged his roan forward. He saw nothing, but he wasn’t a man to dismiss an out-of-place sound. Could the schoolmarm be hiding from him? Why would she do such a thing?

He considered firing a shot to summon Clay, but the hands had fanned out wide, and it’d be a distance for Clay to travel. Anyway, as a black man who’d lived free all his life, and now ran his own Texas ranch, he’d learned to saddle his own broncs. If he really needed help, there most likely wasn’t time for it to get here.

“Miss Calhoun, you in there? I’m here to help. No harm will come to you.”

He heard a tiny squeak of fear that was human for sure. If she really was out here with no coat or shoes, she might be beyond responding. He swung down off his horse and inched forward in the gathering dusk. The bushes rustled just enough for him to know he was on the right track.

He reached for the winter-killed branches of the waist-high scrub and pushed it aside. He looked into a woman’s wide brown eyes so awash with terror they made his heart clutch. Then she screamed and leaped for his throat.

Daniel wondered if he hadn’t ought to drag Grace out of there.

He’d fed the boys breakfast. They had beefsteak and eggs and potatoes and biscuits and milk. They’d gone out and fed the horses, milked the cows, gathered the eggs, and checked the herd. Grace had stayed under the blanket.

He’d made dinner, beefsteak and eggs and potatoes and biscuits and milk. And Grace stayed under the blanket.

He would have asked her to join them, except he couldn’t get his throat to work. Not when it came to the woman huddled in the corner of his house.

They went back to work in the blowing snow, dragging windfall trees closer to the house to cut up for firewood. They took an ax to the ice that had backed up behind his spreader dam and threatened to overflow. They tracked down a cow that had calved out of season and took the pair into the barn, hoping the little one would survive the winter weather.

Daniel’s boys toiled alongside him, doing good work the way he’d trained them. And getting tired for bedtime, he hoped.

A heavy snow became blinding by midafternoon. The wind picked up, and as night came, the snow fell more heavily, and Daniel thought they might be looking at a blizzard. This far south?

The gap they drove through to get to these highlands might close them in tight, but surely these harsh conditions wouldn’t last. He’d heard Texas winters just weren’t that cold. At any rate, Daniel had supplies. He didn’t need to go running to town every time he turned around.

He set the beefsteak and eggs and potatoes and biscuits and milk on the table for supper. And Grace stayed under the blanket.

“Well, so far she ain’t no trouble.” Ike held on his lap the cat he’d brought home from school. Daniel knew Ike wouldn’t sneak the cat so much as a bite of steak. A cat needed to catch his own supper.

“Nope.” Mark looked at the pile of blankets. “No help, but no trouble.”