Sounded simple enough. If the cows had been let in on the plan, maybe it would have actually worked. Instead, as I took one side and Luke took the other, the cattle bellowed and moved of their own accord, and straight in the direction of Murphy’s land.
“Aw piss,” I said as I kicked Rosy. I ran wide and tried to cut them off with Luke on the other side mirroring. After what had to have been half an hour of coercing the beasts, most of them got going in the direction we wanted with just a handful of stragglers escaping the herd to frolic onto Murphy’s side of the line. Great.
“I’ll get them,” Luke said easily. “You keep the rest of them moving as best you can and I’ll catch up.” He pointed toward the steadily rising sun. “Take them that way, in as straight a line as you can manage.”
With him out of sight, I could use the filthy vocabulary I’d picked up from my whoring days. “Come on you lily livered nugget lickers!” I waved my arms and yelled and threatened and it seemed to work for the most part if one ignored the small trios of cattle that tended to wander away from the rest before I could get to them. Luke would have a time rounding all of them up, but he was a capable cowboy who rode his horse like it was an extension of himself. I doubted there was much he couldn’t do if he put his mind to it.
Luke rode up some while later with an older gentlemen whom I could only guess was Old Man Murphy himself. All the cursing tipped me off.
“Mr. Murphy, my wife,” Luke said formally.
Mr. Murphy spat on the ground and looked none too impressed with the likes of me.
“Nice to meet you,” I said cheerily.
“If I find a single one of my cows in your herd, I’ll shoot you my danged self,” the man said in a frail but firm voice.
“You’re welcome to look like I said, but we ain’t cattle thieves, sir. In fact, we already have as much as we can handle. We don’t need any more than we’ve already got.”
Murphy grumbled in a manner that said he didn’t believe a word Luke said and kicked his mount hard. Scattering the cows in all directions, he searched them with a critical beady eye.
“What’s he doing?” I asked.
Luke rubbed his hand over his face and leaned on the saddle horn. “Making more work for us.”
“But why?”
“Cause that’s what crazy people do. He lost three cows and he’s convinced they’re in here somewhere. Except his herd is on the other side of his property and I can’t see three cows wandering all the way over here just to make some new friends.”
Murphy skidded to a stop so close to Rosy, she reared up before she skittered to the side. “I don’t know what you done with my cows, Dawson, but somethin’ ain’t right around here and I know it! I can feel it in my bones. I never lost a cow to nothin’ but natural causes and predators but since you Dawson’s moved in here, fourteen of my cattle have just vanished into thin air.” He snapped his gnarled fingers. “Just poof! I’m callin’ on the sheriff next time I’m in town. You can bet your boots I will.” In a flash, the old man rode for his own property.
Luke’s eyes churned as he watched him leave and with a grumble that sounded suspiciously like ‘Jeremiah,’ he turned and rode after the scattered cattle to the east.
He was preoccupied with the goings on in his mind for the rest of the day. I worked without complaint for fear of burdening him further, but likely he’d forgotten I wasn’t used to such backbreaking labor. By the time we had the cattle moved near a watering hole out back, the chickens fed and chased from the coop, the cows milked, the horses fed and watered, the stalls mucked, the garden tended, slops chopped for the pigs, and the eggs, milk, and water hauled in, I was drenched, exhausted, and had more blisters than fingers to count them.
If I wasn’t a country woman yet, Luke was whooping me right into shape for it.
I made biscuits and gravy the way Trudy told me and it only turned out half burnt and a little salty. Venison jerky was the only side dish.
“Luke?” I asked warily as he finished off his plate without a word. He hadn’t spoken other than to direct me in hours. “We’re almost out of meat in the smokehouse.”
He leaned back into his groaning chair with an explosive sigh. “What do we need?”
“Beef, deer, catfish. It don’t make no matter. So long as its meat, I’m sure I can figure out a way to cook it.”
He stood and took the dishes to the sink. “I’ll go hunting first thing in the morning.” With a soft brush of his lips against my forehead, he said his goodnight and disappeared down the hall.
I leaned my chin on the table and frowned at the darkened hallway. My fingers traced the patterns in the wood grain while my mind reeled like a leaf caught in the currents of a whirlpool.
He was a confounding man to be sure but there had to be something big I was missing. Maybe he was unhappy with me for not catching on fast enough to his way of life, or maybe he was second guessing a marriage to me. My throat went dry. Where was that damned circuit preacher? Waiting was a risk in a situation such as ours. I’d sworn never to let anyone break me, but if Luke Dawson ran me off, I didn’t know if I could hold that kind of hurt and not be affected.
And with as hot and cold as the man had been as of late, I really didn’t know where I stood.
Chapter Thirteen
Luke
If Jeremiah took that many cattle on his wild streak out of the territory, Murphy wasn’t the only rancher around here he hit. I kicked my horse into a trot and scoured the woods in the early morning light. Trouble was he would’ve left behind some evidence. Wolves didn’t eat bones after all, but where’d he hide the damn carcasses?
The sickly sweet scent of rot hit the sensitive lining of my nose and dread slammed against me like a storm wind. I kicked my horse again and shortly came to a clearing. The dead animals were covered in swarms of flies and two of them hadn’t even been eaten. They’d been killed just for the violence of it.
I cursed and pulled a red handkerchief over my nose. Jeremiah was off the rails. What a fool I’d been to think he should let the wolf take over. Anna had been tortured, and of course Kristina’s treatment would trigger a break. And the wolf was the one who couldn’t let go of his mate.
The men who’d killed Anna got away with it. We’d never been able to track them down, and it created some deep darkness inside of Jeremiah I hadn’t any idea how to tame. For as levelheaded as Jeremiah the man was, his wolf was an uncontrolled monster. The day Anna died was the day we stopped changing together. He didn’t feel it was safe for me anymore. I’d bet my hat that was why he was searching so hard for a new wife. He was trying to give his broken wolf someone new to love.
For the millionth time I wished our oldest brother, Gable, was here. He always seemed to know more about the wolf than even the wolf itself. He was the only werewolf I’d ever met, who reveled completely in the power that came with being one. He loved everything about it, and somehow, someway, he’d even managed to embrace the pain. That trick he hadn’t shared before he became patriotic and left for the War Between the States. If anyone could yank Jeremiah from the roiling darkness his wolf had plunged into the day Anna died, it was Gable.
I squinted at the half devoured cattle. I’d have to bury the bodies or burn them and neither could be done this close to Murphy’s property line. Had the danged fool even know he’d chased them onto our property? Maybe he’d done it on purpose, but I was at a loss as to why Jeremiah would do such a thing.
I had rope to drag them, but not nearly enough. I rode a good mount that’d never balked at what I asked him, except if it was to drag a dead animal too close to his back end. I’d need more length.
“Hup,” I said, as I flecked the reins against the shoulder of my horse and the loyal beast obeyed with a flash of speed.
The tension eased as the house came into view. I didn’t like being away from Kristina for too long. Not after what happened to her, knowing the danger was still very real and in no way over for us.
A flash
of annoyance washed over me at what that woman had done in such a short amount of time. From the day she arrived I’d become tethered somehow, like a rope hung from me to her, and the farther I got away, the more it hung me. The relief at seeing her feeding the chickens was so thick I could almost touch it, and just like that, my annoyance was gone.
It wasn’t her fault I felt so strongly. If she wouldn’t have come in here all mysterious, and knowledgeable about the world, intelligent, and funny, why I’d have never fallen like a sack of flour for her. She couldn’t help her alluring nature. She couldn’t help how danged pretty she was. I knew that because the way she lit up like a sunrise every time I gave her the barest compliment said she didn’t even know she was beautiful.
Jeremiah was an idiot for passing her up.
She looked up warily as I approached and her hesitation stung. What had I done? Sure I hadn’t felt like talking much last night, but I had more pressing matters filling up my head, like a slow boiling rage at my brother and a rampaging werewolf attack I was going to have to somehow cover up.
Everything was on me to keep this pack safe, and Kristina was included in it now. It put a disconcerting fear in me I hadn’t known before. I knew my brothers and I would be burning or hanging on our way out. That was something we accepted young in this life. No one was perfect all the time, and one misstep from any three of us, and we’d die for it. But Kristina was an innocent, and her fate clung to mine now.
She stood with her apron full of chicken feed. The sunlight lit up her hair and from where I sat above, it looked like pure spun gold. Her lips were full and pink and her little nose flared with questions she seemed too afraid to ask. Probably best.
“You were gone when I woke up,” she said. “I didn’t know where you’d run off to but I made breakfast. It’s still warming on the stove if you want it.”
My stomach lurched at the thought of what I was about to have to do. “No time just now. I have a problem I have to take care of quickly. I’ll be back in for lunch though.” I turned for the barn but spun back around. “Stay close to the house while I’m gone. You find trouble, use the pistols by the door.”
She clutched the apron tighter to her stomach like a shield and nodded. The chickens clucked and pecked around her feet like our entire world wasn’t in danger, as I rode my horse straight into the open barn. The rope I needed was hanging over the railing of an empty stall. I pulled my work gloves on and slung it over the saddle bags. Before I even let myself see the disappointment in Kristina’s face, I raced for the dead cattle’s resting place.
“Whoa,” I said quietly as my senses picked up something the man in me couldn’t understand. I searched the woods but all had gone quiet except the soft sigh of something I couldn’t put a finger on. My skin tingled and my horse skittered to the side in reaction to my discomfort. The danger wasn’t close enough to draw a pistol, so I slid quietly out of the saddle and tied my horse to a sapling. Inching forward as quietly as a man could, I stopped in another fifty yards and listened. This time the sound was plain as day—men’s voices. One of them was Murphy and the other two I didn’t recognize.
Crouching down, I got as close as I dared. The gun wasn’t necessary as they weren’t on my land to trespass or poach. They’d found the dead cattle. My blood went cold as a snake’s in winter. I hadn’t been nearly fast enough. Damn Murphy, that relentless old coot. He’d made good on his promise to call on the law.
The sapling my horse was tied to bent under his restlessness but I wasn’t gone long enough for him to break it just yet. I slid into the saddle and kicked him in a rush.
Kristina’s head snapped up at the sound of a horse running full out. She was in the process of gathering a wire bucket of eggs out of the coop while the chickens were busy with their breakfast.
Before my mount even stopped, I jumped off my horse and ran for her as fast as I could pull him. “There’re going to be men here any minute. Don’t say anything unless they talk to you and don’t tell them I’ve been out. If they ask, I’ve been here all morning, okay?”
She stood frozen with wide eyes as blue as the pools at Clear Creek.
“Okay?” I asked a little louder.
At her nod, I ran my horse into the barn. As quick as I could, I pulled his saddle and blanket off as one and pushed him into the last stall. The gate to it clicked closed just as the sound of faint hoof beats headed our way.
****
Kristina
Three men on horseback rode up the dirt road to our homestead. I hadn’t done anything constructive since Luke successfully confused the daylights out of me a minute ago. I glanced behind me but he was still in the barn. What was I supposed to do? He said not to talk to them but then he left me directly in their path. Ridiculous man.
“What can I do for you?” I asked as they slowed down in front of me.
One of the men was Mr. Murphy but I didn’t know the other two. One was tall in the saddle with an impressive mustache that curled on the ends. Big feathered eyebrows covered expressive brown eyes. A gold star on his pocket told me he was the law in these parts. “Who’re you?” he asked.
Mr. Murphy sniffed. “Ain’t you heard, Sheriff? Luke Dawson’s gone and found himself a bonafied whore to marry.”
“Mr. Murphy!” I couldn’t even control the anger that clenched my hands at my side. “I ain’t a whore anymore so you can bite your tongue! Right off and it would please me.”
“Eeeeewey!” The other stranger said with a grin. “This one here’s a spitfire.”
“Enough,” the sheriff said. “Where’s your husband?”
I blasted my fists onto my hips and glared. I should definitely stall. If Luke wasn’t out here already, it was for a reason. “Now sir, I don’t claim to be lady of the manor right yet as I’m not married. We’re waiting on the circuit preacher, you see. Now as to the whereabouts of my betrothed, I’m sure you understand the needs of a working ranch and with only the two of us to man it at the moment, he could be doing a number of chores.”
“Where’s Jeremiah?” Sheriff asked.
“How the devil should I know the business of that man? He could be at the saloon in town, but from what I gather, he’s an honest and decent man. From my experience, not too many of his breed show up in those kinds of establishments.”
The sheriff closed his eyes and sighed deeply like my guesses were boring, but I kept right on.
“But if I had to guess, I’d say he’s in Denver on business as he’s been gone the broad side of a week.”
“What kind of business could he possibly have in Denver?” Mr. Murphy asked in a tone that dripped with condescension.
“That I couldn’t venture a guess at, Mr. Murphy.” I leveled a glare at him. “On account of me being just a whore.”
“What’s going on here?” Luke asked from behind. He balanced a sloshing bucket of milk and stood as if he were completely shocked at their being there. He could have rivaled the actors I saw in a traveling theater once in the city.
“Three of Murphy’s cattle were found dead on your property, Mr. Dawson,” the sheriff drawled.
“Oh.” Luke cocked his head to the side. “You know I can’t control where your cattle wander off to die, don’t you Mr. Murphy?”
“They didn’t wander off to die!” he yelled shrilly. “Somebody’s gone and killed them.”
“Why would I shoot a cow? Unless it was snake bit, that seems like a pretty big waste.”
I stood clutching my basket of eggs as Luke came to stand beside me. He rubbed the small of my back lightly with a finger and heat ran up my spine at his touch.
“Now, if you’ll excuse us, gentlemen, I can’t help you with your cow problem. I don’t know anything about them.”
“Where’s Jeremiah?” the sheriff asked again.
“Probably up in Denver. I can’t be for certain because I’m not my brother’s keeper and he wanders from time to time.”
Huh. I’d apparently been right in my guess.
<
br /> The smaller man, a young deputy of some sort, said, “Mr. Murphy’s cows weren’t shot, Mr. Dawson. They were torn apart by something and on your land. You seen any predators that could take out three cows?”
Mr. Murphy snarled, “Seen any? He’s the damned predator. Whole town knows it; they’re just afraid to say it out loud.”
I was shocked into action by his accusation. “Excuse me. What are you saying? That Luke went running around in the night and killed your cows with his bare teeth? That’s absurd! My fiancé is here with me every night! And if he did have a hankering for beef, why on God’s green earth wouldn’t he just go harvest one out of our own substantial herd? You gentlemen are welcome to go hunt down the actual animals that chased your cattle onto our land, which is something I assure you we cannot control, and do with them what you think is necessary.”
“See, that’s the thing, ma’am,” the sheriff said. “I can’t name any predators capable of killing three cattle right next to each other, and then only eating on one like the others were just for fun. And there’s wolf prints all around the kills but the problem is, while wolves used to cover this area before we showed up to settle it, there are only a few hundred left and we’ve pushed them farther into the wilderness. Haven’t seen any of them in years.”
A cold stone just thawing from winter settled in my gut. I’d almost been ravaged by a wolf so I’d seen the animal to blame for the killings. Dryly, I said, “That sounds just like what you did to the Indians. It seems you’ve missed one.”
I turned for the house but there was a warning in the sheriff’s voice. “Oh, we didn’t miss him. He’s just become very cunning at hiding.” He stared levelly at Luke before he turned and led the men back down the road.
A chill started in my arms and worked its way up my neck. What was he saying? I knew it had to mean something, some secret they were hinting at, but all I saw was a man holding a pail of milk. He couldn’t kill cows like a wolf. The sheriff would do best to organize a hunt and find the real culprit.