Untethered (5 page)

“Well, I don’t care,” the
Cranford
girl said. “I want
Hudson
and Marie married in a month. And once I’ve got Marie all tucked in with
Hudson
, I’ll go to work on Ann and Mr. Keel. And once that’s taken care of…I’ll work on you, Vilma Stanley!” The
Cranford
girl laughed and splashed water at the preacher’s daughter.

The
Cranford
girl. Heath considered her for a moment. Fact was, he’d considered her before. There was something about her—a strength and determination he admired, but from afar. She was a pretty thing too. He grinned thinking how opposite her manner of walking was from the preacher’s daughter. While Vilma Stanley walked stiff and straight like she was tied to a post, the
Cranford
girl had a rather enticing little swing to her walk. The other two girls in the swimming hole were the Burroughs girl and the King girl—both pretty girls and both with little waggles when they walked. But it was the
Cranford
girl who had always captured Heath’s attention whenever she passed him in town. She was dangerously attractive in some way and put him in mind of…

He’d lingered too long—allowed his thoughts to drift to absurd venues. And besides, he figured if he had come up so easily and unseen on the Pike’s Creek girls, so could someone else—someone with far more malicious intentions than he could ever imagine. The girls needed a warning—needed to know they should be more careful and wary. The world wasn’t all sugar and cinnamon anymore. Not that it ever had been, but Heath knew firsthand just how ugly it could be—especially for pretty young girls with innocent minds and bodies.

“You girls enjoyin’ that swim?”

Though Cricket only gasped with surprise as a man stepped from the brush and into view, Ann and Vilma squealed at having been so startled.

“Oh my stars and garters!” Vilma exclaimed under her breath. “It’s Heathro Thibodaux!”

And indeed it was Heathro Thibodaux. Cricket’s mouth gaped as she stared at the only half-dressed man standing on the bank of the swimming hole, studying them unabashedly.

“I heard there were a couple of drownin’s awhile back out here,” he said, still studying them.

“That’s right,” Marie answered—the mama bear in her character showing up quick as a whip. “What of it?”

Cricket glanced to Marie, as astonished as ever at her brazen courage.

Heathro shrugged the broadest, bronzest shoulders Cricket had ever seen and said, “I’m just wonderin’ if it’s a wise thing…you girls bein’ out here all alone like this.”

“Well, it looks like you were plannin’ on swimmin’, Mr. Thibodaux,” Marie challenged. “Why is it unwise for us but all right for you?”

“Because no one would mourn me if I drowned, Miss King,” he answered. Aiming an index finger at Cricket, however, he added, “But Pike’s Creek would be mighty brought down if one of you pretty little fillies was lost.”

Cricket held her breath as the extraordinarily handsome man seemed to study her for a moment. She took a step backward, ensuring that the deeper water covered her to at least her shoulders. He was unfairly attractive—simply sinfully good-looking! His piercing blue eyes seemed threatening as he stared at her—menacing but hypnotically intriguing at the same time. Cricket had never seen him without a hat before, and she marveled at how his dark brown hair was nearly the same color as her own. The strong set of his squared jaw was only further emphasized by his two or three days’ whisker growth, and if his superbly handsome face wasn’t enough make a girl blush, his long legs, broad shoulders, and bronzed muscular chest and stomach were. Vilma was right: every woman in the county was sweet on Heathro Thibodaux, and for well-substantiated reasons.

“The fact is it just ain’t safe for you girls to be out here swimmin’ in the nude the way you are,” he added.

“Nude?” all four girls exclaimed in unison.

“We are not swimmin’ nude, Mr. Thibodaux!” Cricket vehemently defended.

But Heathro quirked a disbelieving eyebrow. “Then you all just come on out and prove it,” he dared. “I mean, looks to me that by the pile of clothes over there on those fallen logs…you girls are swimmin’ in the nude.”

“We have plenty of clothin’ on,” Vilma assured him.

But the ex-Texas Ranger shrugged. “Well, then…I suppose you girls don’t mind if I go ahead and join you…bein’ that you’ve got plenty of clothin’ on and all.”

Four simultaneous female gasps ensued as Mr. Thibodaux unbuckled his gun belt, dropped it to the grassy bank, and then began to unbutton his britches.

“No! N-no, no, no!” Cricket stammered. “We…we were just finishin’ up our swim, Mr. Thibodaux. I-I’m sure you’d like some peace and quiet…so we’ll just be on our way, if it’s all the same to you.”

Heathro grinned, folded his muscular arms across his muscular chest, and said, “All right. I’ll just wait for you girls to come on out then.”

Cricket felt herself blushing—the heat on her cheeks emanating from within her body feeling much hotter than what the bright sun was providing on the outside.

She glanced to Marie. Her face was as red as a radish as well, as were the faces of Ann and Vilma.

“You got us into this, Magnolia Cranford!” Vilma scolded in a perturbed whisper. “Now you can just think of a way to get us out!”

“What’s the matter?” Heathro asked from the bank. “I thought you girls had plenty of clothin’ on. What’s the harm in gettin’ outta the swimmin’ hole with me watchin’ then?”

Cricket looked to Ann and Marie for support, but they were as caught in the trap as she was. Frantically she tried to think of something—anything that would get them out of the swimming hole without Heathro Thibodaux seeing them in nothing but their soaking wet (and no doubt nearly transparent) underthings.

“Um…we, um…” Cricket stammered.

Oh, Heath was loving it! It was all he could do to keep from laughing. He’d caught them all right—caught these young innocents of Pike’s Creek without any kind of retreat.

“Well?” he urged, almost losing his determination not to laugh. “Are you gonna get out or what? It’s hotter than hell out here, and I’m goin’ for a swim…alone or with company.”

Again he began to unbutton his britches, unable to keep a low chuckle from escaping his throat when the preacher’s daughter closed her eyes and began reciting the Lord’s Prayer in a whisper.

“Wait!” the
Cranford
girl called out. “Will you give us your back for just a moment, Mr. Thibodaux? Please?”

Heath grinned. “Why, of course, ladies. Of course. My mama would be ashamed if I weren’t gentleman enough to allow you young ladies the chance to—”

“Thank you!” the four girls exclaimed in unison as Heath turned around.

He smiled as he heard the wild splashing behind him as the girls made for the bank—the sound of the preacher’s daughter calling the other girls to repentance as they scrambled out of the water and to their clothes.

“You girls have a nice afternoon now, you hear?” he called as he heard them retreating faster than a tomcat with a firebrand tied to its tail.

Chuckling to himself, Heath stripped off his britches, wadded them up, and tossed them aside. He began to strip off his underwear too but figured he’d better play it safe—just in case the mischievous young ladies of Pike’s Creek decided not to retreat all the way back to town.

Heath didn’t waste any time. Diving into the swimming hole, he bobbed up, leaned back, and began floating. The sensation was refreshing—cool and soothing. He closed his eyes and just floated, letting the sun warm his face while the water cooled the rest of his body.

He sighed, thinking that old Conq would surely be the death of him. He couldn’t believe how stubborn the creature was—not to mention strong. He’d have to do something to reinforce the corral fence, that was for certain.

But suddenly, Heath’s musings over Conqueror scattered as a vision of the four young women he’d found at the swimming hole leapt into his mind. He frowned as that vision led to another—a far less pleasant and a deeply haunting vision—a vision of a group of other young women that were not so unlike the girls of Pike’s Creek. Only the images of the faces of the girls lingering in his mind now were gruesome—images of what they’d looked like lying dead on the canyon floor, their bodies broken and bleeding—their eyes fixed on the blue sky and blazing sun overhead—their dead, open eyes.

Heath grimaced as the memory of the blood still trickling from one of the girl’s cracked skull lingered. The visualization of the trail of blood trickling over the rocks of the canyon floor like a crimson stream would haunt him his entire life long. Heath knew it would—and he was glad. He deserved to be haunted—deserved to have an ever-present reminder of his weakness and failing eating at his mind for eternity.

Opening his eyes, Heath held his breath and dove beneath the water’s surface once more. When he bobbed up again, he wiped the water from his eyes and surveyed the landscape around him. He wondered how everything could still look so green and fresh and lovely. How could the world still hold such beauty when such evil and ugliness existed in it as well?

It was a question he couldn’t answer in that moment. And anyway, his head hurt from thinking on the past. With a heavy sigh he swam to the bank and pulled himself from the water to stretch out on the cool green grass.

He heard Archie whinny, and he grinned. Archie was a good horse. And even though Conqueror was a pain in Heath’s rear end, his shenanigans made life a whole lot more interesting.

The sky was a beautiful blue above, and a meadowlark was whistling somewhere nearby. The soft summer breeze in the cottonwoods stimulated the cicadas in their branches, and Heath closed his eyes, letting the soothing music of one of God’s most interesting insects lull him to reprieve.

He grinned as he lay in the grass, listening to the cicada chorus. The Pike’s Creek girls had looked like they’d been caught robbing a bank when he’d stepped out of the bushes. And as he continued to think on the incident, he began to remember the conversation he’d overheard.

“So the King girl fancies Hudson Oliver, does she?” he whispered aloud to himself. “And did I hear it right, or am I imaginin’ they said that Burroughs girl is sweet on Cooper Keel?”

Heath chuckled then sighed. “Well, at least they got good judgment in character. Maybe that’ll make up a bit for the bad judgment in swimmin’ in their underwear.” Raising his voice a bit, he called, “Ain’t that right, Archie?”

The horse whinnied its affirmation, and Heath continued to bask in the sun on the bank of the swimming hole—trying not to be disturbed by the fact that he kept wondering whom the
Cranford
girl was sweet on.

❦

“Good night, Daddy,” Cricket said, pressing an affectionate kiss on her father’s cheek.

“Good night, sugar,” Zeke Cranford said. “You sleep tight now, you hear?”

“I will,” Cricket assured him. “Good night,
Ada
,” Cricket said, placing a quick kiss to her
stepmother’s cheek.

“Good night, Cricket,”
Ada
said, smiling. It was obvious she was pleased with Cricket’s gesture.

As Cricket smiled at
Ada
a moment before heading down the hall to her bedroom, she reminded herself of how hard it must be for
Ada
—being a mother to a daughter who was only six years younger than herself.

The truth was Cricket had been fairly mortified when her father had announced to her months before that he planned on marrying the new schoolteacher, Ada Hatley.
Ada
was only twenty-five years old, but the entire town of Pike’s Creek had considered her an old maid when she’d first come to town. Yet the moment handsome Zeke Cranford (the most sought-after widower of Pike’s Creek at the time) had announced that he planned to marry the old maid schoolteacher, everyone began noticing how young
Ada
was.

In fact, Cricket herself had been very unwilling to see
Ada
as anything much more than a peer when her father first began courting her. For pity’s sake,
Ada
could more easily have passed as her sister than her stepmother.

Still, Cricket wanted nothing more than to see her father happy again. It seemed he hadn’t been truly happy since her mother’s death several years before. And if Ada Hatley could put the hop back in her daddy’s step, then Cricket would learn to accept it.

Accepting
Ada
as her stepmother had proved to be more difficult than Cricket had assumed, however. Add to it the fact that Cricket was used to having all her father’s attention before
Ada
, and had to learn to give up most of that attention after
Ada
, and things had been somewhat uncomfortable around the
Cranford
house for the first couple of months.

But everything was becoming more and more comfortable between
Ada
and Cricket—even if Cricket considered
Ada
’s never-ending chore lists a bit too extreme at times. Besides, Cricket secretly enjoyed the fact that all the other men in Pike’s Creek silently envied Zeke’s having scooped up
Ada
for his own.