Open Country (16 page)

She thought of the suffering Sancho had brought to this family and felt faintly ill. But to burden Penny and Charlie with that knowledge would destroy their innocence. “They’re just children, Hank.”

“Sam was twelve when he died. Maybe if we had warned him, taught him to be less trusting and more cautious . . .” He shrugged, then continued. “The point is, Jessica was prepared. She knew what she had to do and she did it. That’s why she survived.”

Molly sensed his guilt and despair. She didn’t know what she could say to make it go away, so she said nothing.

“I’m just saying the children need to be aware,” he said. “For now, I’ll leave that to you. But if they ask, I’ll tell them the truth. I won’t lie.”

Beside her, the children began to stir, so Molly said no more. And really, what could she say? Hank would never understand that when it came to hard choices, lying might be the best one.

It was early afternoon when he turned from the window with a big grin. “We just crossed the boundary line.”

Molly felt as if someone had knocked the breath from her lungs. “Oh my,” she said when she finally found her wits again. All those lovely teeth.

His grin faded. “What’s wrong?”

“You should do that more often.”

“Do what?”

“Smile.”

He blinked at her. “I smile all the time.”

“No you don’t, Papa-Hank,” Penny chimed in.

Now he looked disconcerted—another new expression. “Well, I mean to.”

“Mean-tos don’t count. Isn’t that so, Aunt Molly?” In her delight to be instructing someone much older and many times larger, Penny drummed her heels against the front of the bench seat—in the exact tempo of the pounding throb that bounced between Molly’s temples. Resting a hand on her niece’s knobby knee, she said quietly, “Would you please stop that, dear?”

“Stop what?”

Charlie leaned forward to glare past Molly at his sister. “Hitting your feet on the seat, you stupid baby.”

“I’m not a baby!”

“Charlie,” Molly began, reaching for his arm.

He jerked it from her grip. “Leave me alone!” Turning toward the window, he sat with his shoulders hunched, his wiry body as far from Molly’s as he could get it.

Humiliated by the rebuff, Molly didn’t pursue it. Instead she gave Hank an apologetic smile. “He’s just tired. We all are.”

Hank didn’t respond. But that hard look was back in his eyes.

The tension within the coach built with every turn of the wheels. Sandwiched between the two children, Molly had no escape from it. Too weary to attempt conversation and too embarrassed by her ineptitude with the children to face Hank, she stared past Penny’s blond head toward the window.

It was a daunting view.

They were descending into a vast, snow-covered valley that stretched for miles in each direction. Winding down the middle was a tree-lined creek. The trees were bare now, their branches bowing under a burden of snow. Tall evergreens bordered the valley, spilling down from deep canyons carved into the steep slopes rising on all sides. Above the timberline, folded slabs of weathered rock, gouged and scored as if giant talons had been dragged through clay, ended in snow-capped peaks that cut a scalloped edge against the cloudless sky. It was savagely beautiful, and Molly easily understood how a man from the flatlands of Missouri might risk everything to own it.

Two hours later they passed under a high wrought iron arch with back-to-back R’s across the top. Suspended below it and waffling in the wind hung a thick wooden plank with the words WILKINS CATTLE AND MINING carved in foot-high letters.

Craning her neck to see as far ahead as she could, Molly noticed a rambling two-and-a-half-story log and stone house at the end of the drive. Rising behind the house was a hill dominated by a single drooping tree. Beside it, half-hidden under a mantle of snow, was a small fenced cemetery, the white-shrouded tombstones silhouetted against the lowering sun.

A sense of isolation, of being thrust into an alien place, assailed her. In another week, a carriage would never make it back through the pass to Redemption. They would be trapped here until spring with people they scarcely knew. What if Hank remembered and called her to accounts for what she’d done? What if he really did have the nasty temper Brady mentioned? And what if he unleashed that temper on her and the children? She wouldn’t be able to escape him or this place until the thaw.

Frowning, she glanced over to find Hank watching her, his face revealing nothing of his thoughts. She forced a nervous smile. “It’s a beautiful place.”

“It is.”

A space opened between them, growing wider with each thudding heartbeat. She told herself to stop being fanciful. Hank had never given her reason to fear him.

But she’d never seen him angry either.

The coach shuddered to a stop. A moment later, footsteps crunched in the snow, then the door opened. Their driver grinned at them. “Still alive, I see.”

“Barely,” Hank muttered. He exited first, holding the doorframe for balance as he stepped onto the icy surface. As he moved aside, the driver reached in for Penny. She hung back until Molly whispered it was all right, then she reluctantly let him scoop her up by the waist. Handling her like a prized vase, he set her carefully on the frozen ground then turned back for Molly.

Hank was there first. Reaching past him, he extended his right hand, palm up. Molly took it. Once she touched ground and found her footing, he let her go. Charlie refused his help, jumping down unaided and almost slipping on the ice before he grabbed the wheel. Molly started to steer the children toward the house when Hank rested his good hand on her nephew’s shoulder.

“I need to say something to Charlie,” he said in a calm tone that belied the hard glint she saw in his eyes. “You go on. We’ll be there directly.”

She hesitated, glancing from Hank’s determined face to Charlie’s scowling one. She sensed a confrontation brewing, perhaps over Charlie’s earlier rudeness. He was her responsibility—she should take care of it, not Hank. But, God forgive her, she didn’t have the strength for it just then.

Hank read her concern. “It’s all right, Molly. We’ll only be a minute.”

Hoping she wasn’t making a mistake, she followed Penny toward the house.

 

 

ONCE MOLLY WAS OUT OF EARSHOT, HANK TURNED CHAR lie to face him and hunkered down so their eyes were almost on the same level. “Don’t do that again,” he said.

Charlie shot him a sullen glare. “Do what?”

“What you’re doing now. Being a rude little sonofabitch.”

Hank saw the word shocked the boy, which was why he’d used it. Having gained the kid’s attention, he continued. “When I married Molly, you became part of my family whether you like it or not. And the men in my family don’t treat women the way you treated your Aunt Molly. It’s unworthy and cowardly.”

The boy stared at the ground, a flush inching up his neck until the tips of his ears were as red as beets. “I’m not a coward.”

Hank didn’t agree or disagree. He just looked at the boy, waiting to see if he had anything else to say. When he didn’t, Hank continued, keeping his tone conversational but determined. “I know you’re angry. If you want to tell me why, I’ll be glad to listen. But right now that doesn’t matter. What matters is not taking that anger out on people weaker than you, like your sister and Molly.”

Charlie gave him a look of disbelief. “Aunt Molly’s much bigger than me.”

“But she’s a girl. They’re not as strong as us. Which is why we have to protect them and be gentle with them even when they make us mad.” He allowed a tight smile. “Especially when they make us mad.”

Charlie studied his feet, but Hank noted his ears had faded to more of a peach color. “So find a better way,” he told the boy.

“Like what?”

“Chew jerky. Kick rocks. Cuss up a streak when they’re not around to hear you. Just don’t take it out on them.”

“I’m not allowed to cuss.”

“Me neither. That’s why I wait until I’m past the corrals before I start.”

The kid’s stony face almost cracked into a smile.

Satisfied, Hank rose. He looked down at the bent head, and for one stark moment saw Sam in the dark auburn curls and the square set of the skinny shoulders. The image brought such a tightness to his chest he couldn’t draw a full breath.

Or maybe that was the bindings around his ribs. Soon as he got inside, he was cutting them off, no matter what Nurse Molly said.

“We understand each other?” he asked.

Charlie continued to stare at the ground.

“No? Yes?”

Still, nothing.

Hank sighed. “I need an answer, Charlie, before I freeze my balls off.”

“Okay.”

“Okay, what?”

“Okay, I understand.”

“Then let’s go get something to eat.”

 

 

FROM THE PORCH, MOLLY WATCHED THEM COME TOWARD THE house, trying to gauge their moods by their expressions. Neither seemed angry, although Charlie carefully avoided looking at her as he came up the steps. Hank had the satisfied look of a man pleased with his own competence. Molly refrained from snorting at the notion.

After Charlie went inside, Hank looked back at her. “You coming?”

For some perverse reason she hesitated, sensing that once she crossed over that threshold, she would be moving away from everything she knew toward something unknown and unexpected. “In a minute,” she answered, needing a bit more time before she took that irrevocable step.

Hank went inside.

As the door closed behind him, she turned to look down the valley. Stark, unrelieved white. Not a single cloud softened the icy blue of the sky. Not a single sound interrupted the stillness. The vista was immense. The silence deafening. The emptiness as stifling as a hand at her throat.

With a shiver, she stepped inside.

IT WAS AN IMPRESSIVE HOUSE, EQUAL TO SOME OF THE PLAN

tation homes that had risen out of the cotton fields throughout the South before they were destroyed by war. However, this dwelling was no reflection of graceful Georgian architecture, but more in keeping with the raw landscape of towering mountains and up-thrust ridges and piney canyons that surrounded it. This home was a reflection of the family that built it. Massive. Sturdy. Commanding.

The structure was laid out in a rectangular design, the center having three stories, with two-story wings jutting out on either side. A broad porch stretched across the front of the house, shaded by the overhanging second and third stories. As Molly stepped into the entry, she saw a log-banistered, U-shaped staircase rising along the entry wall on the left, and on the right, rows of hooks and shelves, now filled with jackets, hats, tall boots, and snowshoes. Beside the staircase, a long, open hallway ran past a dining area and through an archway that Molly assumed led into the kitchen. To the right of the entry, the hall stretched past a reading area and through another archway into the east wing. But the heart of the house was the huge open room across from the double entry doors.

After removing her coat and hanging it on a peg, Molly crossed toward it, stepping down onto slate floors over which lay woven Indian rugs in striking geometric designs. Half of the room was covered by a second-story mezzanine. The other half extended twenty or more feet up through two levels of exposed beam work that supported both the mezzanine and the third story. On the back wall stood a massive rock fireplace, flanked by banks of mullioned windows and French doors that framed a breathtaking view of snow-capped mountains. The mantle was an eight-foot-long, two-foot-wide slab of timber supported by two carved bighorn rams’ heads. Before the fireplace stood several oversized chairs, a rocker, couches, and assorted tables, arranged for comfort rather than symmetry. Footed oil lamps lit the room, as well as a huge, ornate chandelier made of antlers and entwined ironwork. It would have looked absurd in any room but this, Molly thought. But here, with the combination of stone and log, it fit perfectly.

The reading area at the east end of the room boasted bookcases and a smaller rock fireplace on the interior wall, and overhead, a smaller version of the antler and iron chandelier. In addition to a long reading table and a pair of wingback chairs, there was a low table with children-sized chairs beside a small bookcase overflowing with primers and children’s books. In the western end of the room, the dining area also had its own fireplace and antler chandelier, as well as a table that would easily seat twenty and two glass-fronted china hutches on the interior wall. All along the back of the giant room and interspersed between huge log support posts, the French doors opened onto the back porch, which was uncovered, except where cantilevered balconies jutted out from the second-story bedrooms.

The scent of pine permeated the air, giving the sense that the house was a living, breathing thing. Oddly, despite its daunting proportions, this huge open room had a welcoming feel to it, and judging by the clutter of tables and shelves throughout, it was less a showcase room than a well-used family gathering place.