Ruth (9 page)

Ruth’s eyes flew open. She lifted an arm to shield her gaze against bright sunshine.

Bolting upright in her bedroll, she blinked to clear the sleep away. Why, it must be nine—ten o’clock—by the sun’s position. The fog had lifted. She lunged for the gun, searching, fumbling. Ripping the blanket aside, she crawled down into the roll, clear to the bottom, searching for the Colt. Instead of finding the expected steel, her fingers encountered a piece of paper that she ripped out and read in the sunlight.

Her heart sank as she deciphered Dylan’s hastily scribbled message:
Miss Priggish. Never underestimate a man who has been royally suckered.

She crushed the maddening note in her hand, then threw it down and stepped on it. She couldn’t think of a name bad enough for that lout.

“Well, at least he left my horse.” Her eyes reassuringly located the mare and her saddle. “And my cheese and bread.”

Relief flooded Ruth, followed quickly by irritation for falling so soundly asleep. She had no idea where she was—Dylan hadn’t seen fit to share that information. She had no notion of how far they’d come or how far it was to the nearest settlement. The hard ground provided no tracks to follow, so Ruth had no idea which direction he had gone. Oh, she had a horse, bread, and cheese, but that was all . . . and the food wouldn’t last forever.

Conscious of her vulnerability, she chewed on her bottom lip. She had no idea what to do now that she was truly alone. She buried her face in her hands. Now what? No matter what direction she looked there was only empty space broken by an occasional aspen grove. The purple snowcapped mountains in the distance were pretty to look at but offered no help for traveling, at least not for Ruth.

She’d never felt so alone, so hopeless. She had looked on the bright side at the orphanage, even on the trail to Denver City. But at those times there had been people around, friends who cared about her, depended on her. And on the trail, there had been Jackson, who knew where he was going.

Ruth blinked back tears and sat down. She stared at the mare. “Well, the marshall has left us in a fix,” she muttered, still hoping to convince herself she was better off without him. Ruth felt a longing inside for Dylan—in spite of his orneriness—which she didn’t care to identify. She straightened her shoulders. “You’re a fool, Ruth.” The man had refused to help her not once but twice. She didn’t need to be clobbered over the head with a brick to know that he wanted no part of her.

Well, maybe she
did
need that brick. If she’d had any sense at all, she wouldn’t be in this predicament.

She stared across the landscape. Now that the fog had lifted she could see how desolate the area was—wherever it was. A cloud of depression settled heavily over her. She sat with both hands covering her mouth, her eyes scanning the horizon on all sides. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Just trees, rocks, and lonely mountain passes. Not even a rabbit whisker—let alone a human being—broke the empty expanse. Only the sound of the cold wind rattling dried grasses broke the silence.

The hard, cold truth seeped into her consciousness. She could die out here. Alone. No matter what direction she might go, chances were she wouldn’t find a settlement. Hadn’t someone said that was the reason outlaws went north, to avoid people and the law? The observation made sense now.

“We’ll stay here,” Ruth told the horse. She flicked an ear. “Maybe someone will come along. After all, Dylan was traveling this way. Surely it’s a known path to somewhere.” She wasn’t sure that was a logical thought, but she wanted to believe it.

The mare was staked where Dylan had left her, foraging for what grass she could find. They had plenty of water—they wouldn’t die of dehydration.

Ruth sat waiting, hoping, until her stomach reminded her she hadn’t eaten since last night. The bread was dry and the cheese virtually tasteless, but she managed to force down the bland fare.

In late fall the evening grows dark early and quickly. At dusk a deer came out to forage and stopped to stare at her from a thicket. Ruth was grateful for that small acknowledgment of life besides herself. The animal eventually wandered off and she was alone again.

She ate the last of her bread, then drew one of the blankets about her shoulders to ward off chill. No one had come today. No one would come tomorrow. She was a fool to even hope so. If anyone had business that would bring him in this direction, he wouldn’t travel this late in the year. Not unless he had to, and even an emergency would give the average man pause. The whimsical notion that another soul might pass this way held no merit.

She should have stayed in Denver City and put up with the humiliation of Oscar’s public proposal and his following her around like a moon-eyed calf. The truth was a bitter pill to swallow. Marrying Oscar Fleming would have been better than this. Compromise would have been better than death, and right now death seemed likely, since she had no idea of how to get back to Denver City.

She sniffed. “Horse? Why did Dylan McCall have to be the first man I was attracted to and the man who obviously couldn’t care less what happened to me?”

Ruth decided it was time to face the truth. This was just another incident in a long string of misfortunes. She kept hoping things would change, but they never did. Even if she could have located Milford, there was no guarantee he’d have helped her.

She lay back, staring at the sky—one she hadn’t seen in days. “I was only four when my parents died of cholera, horse. For some reason God spared my life. Mrs. Galeen, the orphanage mother, told me God had spared me for a reason, that he had a plan for my life.”

Ruth glanced at the mare, who appeared to be listening. She smiled and continued. “I tried my best to believe that, but sometimes, particularly right now, the kindly woman’s words are hard to accept. Still, God did spare me when the circumstances seemed hopeless. Mrs. Galeen told me that two Sioux braves found me crying in the wagon, my parents and two brothers dead of cholera. Instead of killing me, they took me to the orphanage. Mrs. Galeen saw them early one morning when she had risen to take care of Mary. One of the braves got off his horse, carefully cradling a wide-eyed, dirty-faced toddler, and set me, big as you please, on the orphanage steps. Then he pounded on the door and waited for Mrs. Galeen to recover from her initial fright and summon enough nerve to see what they wanted.

“Anyway, with limited vocabulary and using sign language, the young man informed Mrs. Galeen of the deaths of my whole family. Then he quickly mounted his horse and the two braves disappeared before Mrs. Galeen could ask any questions.

“Mrs. Galeen named me Ruth—” Ruth peered at the mare. “Did you know that?” She lay back. Of course the horse couldn’t have known that. Mrs. Galeen had named her after her favorite Bible character. Ruth had been adopted by Edgar and Beatrice Norris, a schoolteacher and his wife. She lived with them for several years, and they taught her to read, write, and figure her sums. But when Mrs. Norris died in childbirth, the grieving and distraught husband had returned ten-year-old Ruth to the orphanage.

Mrs. Galeen had been sympathetic to Edgar Norris’s grief, but she disapproved of his choice not to keep Ruth with him when he returned East to his family. Edgar explained that he was unable to cope with a child, not even one whom he’d called his own for more than six years.

“It took me weeks to get past grieving myself,” Ruth told the mare. “It was so hard to get over the death of the only real mother I’d ever known and what I then perceived in my childish mind as the betrayal by the only father I had. Mrs. Galeen, bless her kind soul, did everything possible to help me adjust. But I sought escape in books.”

Ruth drew a deep sigh. “The orphanage was the fortunate recipient of any books abandoned by travelers, which afforded the shelter quite a good library of fiction, history, and the classics. I read everything and soon began reading to the younger children at bedtime, which allowed Mrs. Galeen extra time with the older ones.”

Finally Ruth grew to accept that she’d lost not only one set of parents but two. “Mrs. Galeen refused to let me blame God or anyone else for my misfortune. The time came when I accepted the Lord as my Savior and friend, not as someone who caused evil but allowed it for his own purposes.

“God allows events in our lives to take place in order to make us stronger in our faith—that’s what Mrs. Galeen contends. In which case I ought to be really strong. One time I told her so. But Esther Galeen had only said, ‘One day you’ll need to be strong, and you’ll have his strength to comfort you.’”

Well,
Ruth thought as she drew the blanket snugly around her shoulders,
this must be that day.
She found no comfort in the prophecy. She was lost and alone . . . and it was Dylan McCall’s fault. If he hadn’t just gone off and left her—

Annoyance bloomed anew. What kind of man would just go off and leave a woman alone on an empty mountainside with no help? No one but a rotten, black-hearted, just plain mean kind of man. A man with
no
heart.

“And I wanted to be strong for that man,” Ruth contended. “I wanted to be the shining light in his life, to prove—in spite of an occasional bout of temper and bullheadedness—that I walk in faith not in darkness. The marshall seemed to be struggling with a limited amount of trust in the Almighty. Mare, you notice that?”

But anger couldn’t drive out her fear. The silence and the darkness began to close in, and tears slid from the corners of Ruth’s eyes. She laid her head on the saddle and drew the second blanket close.

“Please help me, God,” she murmured. “I know I’m foolish and do things and act when I should be asking your guidance. I’m sorry. Truly, truly sorry. But in your mercy, in your forgiveness, please send someone to get me out of this.”

She must have fallen asleep, for when she next opened her eyes, a hazy dawn surrounded her. Ruth slowly unwound from her blankets, groaning as her stiff muscles complained.

Distant thunder convinced her that she’d best take shelter from the approaching storm. Struggling with the weight of the saddle, Ruth managed to get the heavy leather over the horse that peered over her haunch with a pained expression, as if to ask what Ruth thought she was doing.

“I don’t know,” she muttered, tightening the cinch. “But I can’t sit here and wallow in self-pity a moment longer.”

By the time the mare was saddled, Ruth was trembling with exertion. She would have to find substantial food soon or she’d be too faint to ride. Urging the horse toward an outcropping of rocks, Ruth sought cover in a small cave. She squeezed the mare through the tight opening and thanked God for safety as the skies opened up in a torrential cloudburst.

She spotted the skunk the same instant it spotted her. Lifting its tail, it sprayed the area before Ruth could flee. She turned the mare, but it was too late. Throat choking, eyes burning, she clung to the saddle, barely able to hang on to the skittish horse.

“Oh!” she managed, gagging and blinking through tearing eyes.

The horse snorted repeatedly, trying to clear her nose of the suffocating stink. Ruth clung to the bridle and tried to breathe. Wind drove the falling rain back into the cave.

Easing the horse into the rain, Ruth galloped to an aspen, dismounted, unsaddled the mare, and looped the tether rope around a rock. Then she ran under an overhanging ledge. She sank to the ground and stared at the worsening downpour. She was tired, so weary her bones ached. She stank; her clothes reeked of varmint. Her stomach ached for hot food. She wanted a real bed, not blankets on the cold ground. She wanted someone to find her, to rescue her.

She stared at the falling rain, but she didn’t cry. She was long past mere tears.

Her life couldn’t possibly get any worse.

Chapter Five

Ruth clung miserably to the rock all night. When daylight broke harshly over the mountain range, she grudgingly opened her eyes to face a new day. Her bones felt frozen beneath the soggy ledge. The rain had stopped, but the air was damp and a chilly wind whistled through the gorge.

A noise caught her attention, and she glanced at the ridge below her. Eyes darting back and forth, she scanned the shelf. Undoubtedly there were all sorts of wildlife in these parts. She’d ridden by deer, elk . . . skunk. Her nostrils still stung from the unpleasant encounter. Late last night she’d moved farther away from the original experience and changed clothes, but the odor still lingered in the crisp mountain air.

She heard it again: a soft rustle—down below. She knew there were bears in Colorado—and mountain lions. Glory had skinned an elk once to save her and Jackson’s lives when they were lost in an early blizzard.

Ruth waited, holding her breath, nervous now.
Imagination, Ruth. It’s only your imagination. Out here you can imagine that you hear anything.

She rolled to her feet and rubbed circulation into her arms. Fumbling with the knapsack, she removed the last of the cheese. Only enough rations to last the day. Then what? She didn’t know what.