Tried and True (Wild at Heart Book #1) (16 page)

Kylie had seen the two of them react to those men. Her sisters, as much as they liked to pretend otherwise, were women, with women’s interests. For being the baby of the family, it gave Kylie a spark of pride to realize that accepting who she was had renewed her. She felt like she was starting life all over again. And it wasn’t just a renewal of her way of life; it was a renewal of her mind and spirit, too.

There was a Bible verse about being born again, and Kylie knew what that meant.

“Bailey, do you know that I can’t remember ever once in my life seeing you in a skirt?”

Bailey clumped across the room in her mannish boots, her hair short as a boy’s. She sat with her legs splayed, her
every move masculine. Except when she reached for her coffee mug and her hand curled around it. Even with its work-hardened calluses, her hand was purely feminine. She had many of the masculine moves down just because she lived her life in a way that fit such moves, but her hands were graceful and delicate, and belied any attempt at passing herself off as a man.

“I suppose not,” Bailey replied. “Jimmy was just a year older than me, and from my earliest memory I was tagging along with him and Pa outside and wearing britches just like them. I don’t remember much before I was four. Ma was busy with you, and Shannon was already running with me.”

They’d been four in a row: Jimmy, Bailey, Shannon, and Kylie. Four babies born just about as fast as possible. Kylie wasn’t sure why, but Ma was always a quiet woman. For some reason, though the older ones ran outside with Pa, Kylie got to stay inside with Ma. And then Ma had died when Kylie was ten.

“You got to put a skirt on once in a while, Shannon,” Kylie said.

Shannon nodded. “What are you getting at? It seems to me that Bailey and I have been taking a lot of care of you out here. I’m not sure how that means we need to grow up. I think it might be the other way around.”

It didn’t even pinch, because Kylie had figured out that being a grown-up man didn’t make a lot of sense when you were a woman. “It’s time you two figure out you’re women, and what’s more, buried under all the nonsense you’ve been taught by Pa, you
want
to be women. You like good-looking men. It comes naturally to want a man of your very own, to want babies of your own. You scoff
at it, but it’s as natural as breathing to a woman to want these things. And the day I figured that out, I became more of an adult than either of you.”

Bailey snorted and rolled her eyes. Yet Kylie had seen the way she’d watched Gage Coulter. Bailey could snort all she wanted to. She’d liked looking. And Kylie had noticed the same with Shannon, who sipped her coffee with a dismissive smile.

Kylie made no further comment. She’d had her say. Her sisters would have to figure this one out on their own. It’d be fun to watch them fight against it, but there was no doubt in her mind they’d lose. Because like it or not, her take-charge big sisters needed to grow up, and outside Kylie’s cabin right now were two real manly reasons they might get started with that growth spurt.

Matt Tucker was a man who fought shy of people. Aaron had never met him, but he’d heard stories. When the mountain man materialized out of the woods, utterly silent and looking as untamed as the rest of the Rockies, Aaron knew who he was.

There’d been tales in Aspen Ridge about him. Some said he was part Indian, others a legend, still others a ghost. Now here he stood, in the flesh. There was nothing ghostly about him. Wild, though. Mighty wild.

“This is Aaron Masterson, Tucker.” Coulter’s voice, deep as a pounding drum, didn’t waste much time with niceties.

Aaron gave Tucker a nod. “I’ve heard a tale or two about you. Coulter and I thought we’d come and poke around the trail Sunrise found.”

Sunrise stepped up from behind Tucker. She had the same silent way about her, the same ease in the woods as Tucker.

“You left Kylie at the house?” Sunrise asked.

“Her . . .” Aaron caught himself just in time, before he spoke the truth with the word
sisters
. “Her brothers are still there.”

“Brothers.” Sunrise rolled her eyes, then looked between the three men with a faint smile. “I will leave the three of you to handle the tracking. Tucker can show you what we have found. Perhaps you can learn more about the cowards who attacked our girl.”

Her tone said very clearly that she doubted the three of them together were better than she was alone. Aaron didn’t even let it bother him, because she was probably right.

Sunrise left as silently as she’d come.

“Matt.” Aaron held out his right hand to Tucker. It reminded him of where shaking hands had come from—a sign of peace, two men offering the hand they used to wield a weapon.

“Call me Tucker.” The mountain man reached out and shook Aaron’s hand in a good-natured way, as if he’d never seen a weapon in his life. A pretty good trick considering he had a Winchester rifle hanging down his back from a strap over one shoulder, a pistol holstered on his hip, a bowie knife in a scabbard that crisscrossed his chest, a whip looped and hanging from his belt, and Aaron glimpsed another, smaller knife poking out from under the man’s sleeve.

Matt Tucker appeared to be a man who was ready for trouble.

“Sunrise talked me through the tracks she found last night,” Aaron said. “I’d like to see them, especially where
the horses were tethered. I’m going to look for tracks in town too, so it’ll help to lay my eyes on them.”

“This way.” Tucker held up an arrow. “We found this.”

“Sunrise missed that?”

Smiling, Tucker flashed white teeth. “Yes, and I found it. Made Ma mighty humble.”

“Ma?”

Tucker nodded. “My own ma died when I was three—birthing a second child, I was told. I don’t remember none of it. Pa was living in the high-up hills, wilder than a mountain goat but a good man in his way. He had no idea what to do with me, so he took me to his trapping friend’s house. Sunrise’s husband, Pierre Gaston. She raised me when Pa was gone, which was most of the time. Pierre was gone mostly, too. They had them a passel of kids, and I fell into calling her Ma, still think of her that way, and her young’uns became my brothers and sisters. We had us a time.”

His story reminded Aaron of the fun he’d once had with Nev and Lenny. Running the hills, fearless, their whole lives stretched out ahead of them, too young to worry over the future. Then, before he knew it, he was heading west and running for his life.

“The arrow was in that tree right there.” Tucker pointed to a spot maybe ten feet overhead.

Aaron furrowed his brow. “But they were shooting from right here.” He indicated the place, which was right below where the arrow had stuck.

Coulter joined them, crouching beside some torn-up ground. “They set up here, only a few feet back of that tree. The trees you cut for the chicken coop were thick enough that they had to get this close or they’d have never
gotten an arrow away.” Coulter stood, keeping his eyes on the spot. “Even so, that arrow went almost straight up.”

Tucker nodded as he stroked his thick beard. “Cutting the young trees makes this safer, but the trees still stand on two sides. Ma thinks she’s invincible, but I don’t like her being here. She’s still one woman against three.” Tucker looked over at Coulter. “Three outlaws who may think they’re doing your bidding, Gage.”

“Well, if that’s true, I’ll make ’em sorry they thought such a thing. I’ve already spread the word. I promise you, I’ll get a noose on this mess.” Coulter drew his six-gun, a Colt Army 1860, the same gun Aaron carried. With a harsh metallic click he checked the load, then re-holstered it with a smooth, practiced move. He looked up to where Tucker said he’d found the arrow.

Aaron figured himself for a tough man. He’d faced down a lot of trouble in the war, but he was glad Coulter was on his side in chasing whoever was harassing Kylie. He wouldn’t want to be the focus of Coulter’s talent with a gun.

“Whoever it was, he let the arrow go with little skill. Ma found several others gone wild, but she missed this one.” Tucker grinned. “I found it.”

“So, one among them was good with a bow.” Aaron studied the tracks near Coulter. He could see where someone had knelt. He recognized the boot prints Sunrise said were a woman’s. He saw the worn-down heels on the men’s boot prints. So far he agreed with everything she’d said.

Tucker pointed to a clump of aspen a few paces deeper in the woods. “Here’s where they tied their horses. They weren’t here long.”

More tracks, the ground disturbed and the grass trampled
but not eaten. Sunrise said they’d left their horses so they couldn’t graze.

“They came, unleashed their arrows, and then rode away. They came to scare her, not kill her.” Tucker looked at Aaron. “The fact that you were there hastened their departure. Most likely they’d have stayed long enough to burn down the cabin if you hadn’t been there shooting back.” He pointed to a black smear Aaron would have missed. “Blood. You hit one of them. It has to have happened back there where they were set up to shoot, but I couldn’t find any drops there. If it’s hidden by clothes, we may not be able to tell he’s wounded, not unless he shows his pain or favors the wound somehow.”

“Sunrise told me all this last night. Stay back from the horses. I don’t want their hoofprints messed up.”

Tucker’s eyes showed amused irritation. Good. Aaron figured the man might as well know he wasn’t the only one who could read sign.

Dropped to his haunches, Aaron studied the tracks again. Three horses, all of them shod, two mares and a gelding. He saw the long black strand from a mane still hanging from a branch in more than one place. This one horse had been eating from the aspen branches. “The black-mane horse is a small one.”

“And based on where the lady’s boots are, I’d say she was the one riding it.” Coulter came closer, his eyes roving, shrewd enough to look underfoot, overhead, and all around.

“Seems likely,” Tucker said.

They were silent for a while, with Aaron still staring at the tracks. Nothing unusual about them. Shod horses was
even more evidence this wasn’t Indians, although an Indian may ride a horse with shoes if he’d stolen it or traded for it and the shoes came along.

The hooves weren’t all that distinctive, but he hoped he’d recognize them if he saw them again. “I’m not seeing much that makes these prints different from any other horse of medium height and weight. Am I missing something?” Aaron straightened and took satisfaction in towering over the other two.

“I believe I’d recognize them if I saw them,” Tucker said. He didn’t sound all that sure.

Coulter shook his head, not adding anything.

“So I look for a woman rider and two medium-sized men, one of them wounded in a way that probably doesn’t show.” Aaron dragged his hat off his head and slapped it against his leg. “And they’re probably from Aspen Ridge.”

The clues were weak. It’d be pure luck if he could track these varmints down based on what they’d learned here.

“Don’t let the direction they rode blind you,” Tucker said. “There are lots of homesteaders around.”

“Way too many homesteaders,” Coulter muttered.

Tucker gave a humorless laugh. “Too many, and more coming all the time—scaring the game, tearing up ground that ain’t fit for farming.”

“Some with wives and grown-up daughters.” Aaron had a list back at the land office.

“Homesteaders are usually hardworking types,” Tucker said. “Not a lot of time for scheming when you’re trying to wrest a living out here.”

“Do you . . . ?” Aaron paused, wondering if he was going to get a fist in the face, but he had to ask. “Do you consort
with the women in town, Coulter? Could there be one who thinks to win your favor by doing such a thing as this?”

Coulter scowled. “There’s no one.”

“That you know of,” Aaron added.

“I can’t rightly say about things I don’t know about.” Coulter’s fist clenched, but he didn’t seem inclined to plant it. “But there is no woman in that town I’ve given attention. I’m too busy, and the women are too ugly.”

There was a moment of stunned silence.

Tucker cracked first. Aaron felt a ripple of laughter and tried to fight it. When Tucker near bent in half laughing, Coulter gave him a shove that almost knocked him on his backside, but that only left Tucker laughing harder. Aaron lost his fight and stepped back, out of shoving range, until he could lean against an aspen and howl. Coulter gave them both an icy look before his control slipped and he laughed, too.

The three of them, laughing like fools, found a strange bond. Different men with different ideas of how to go about living but united in Coulter’s assessment of the slim pickings among the women of Aspen Ridge.

The other two might’ve been laughing because of Coulter’s rude comment, and that was part of Aaron’s amusement, but there was more. Aaron laughed because he knew neither of these two had seen the rest of the Wilde family.