CHAPTER
13

“You were on your own at a very young age,” Trace commented. “Just like me.”

Deb looked at their entwined hands. Trace waited for her to pull away. He had no business holding her hand.

And then she tightened her grip on him, and the relief of it washed over him like a spring rain.

“What do you mean, ‘just like me’?” she asked.

She’d tried to get him to talk on their walk home, and he hadn’t said much. Now he found the words rushing out. “My pa died in a wagon train massacre just like the one you were in. I was away from the wagons, hunting. I came back and it was all over. I was alone in the wilderness with an old plow horse and my rifle with not that many bullets and winter coming on.”

On a little gasp, Deb said, “Even worse than me. I wasn’t alone. Oh, Trace, I’m so sorry. How old were you?”

“Maybe not worse. You had children to protect and no horse, and honestly it was a terrible situation, I know that. But . . . well, there’s nothing like being completely alone.” Trace shook his head, looking back into the past. “That trail you were on wasn’t nearly as well traveled back then. A better trail heads for Sacramento, but the one you were on veers almost straight south and you still had some rugged country to cross. My pa and I were with a split-off group from a bigger wagon train that went its own way.”

“That’s exactly what we did. We’d only been with the smaller group for a few days.”

Trace held on tight, so tight he was afraid he’d hurt her. But she didn’t protest, so he didn’t let go. “When we took it, well, especially back then, it was a poor trail. When I found everyone dead, I wasn’t even sure where to go. I headed on south since that was Pa’s plan, but the trail as good as disappeared in spots. I’ve found out since then I went the wrong way and twisted around in the mountains. I ended up in a thick forest that was endless. On cloudy days, I couldn’t even see where the sun rose. I was all right in the woods—Pa had taught me a lot—but I just got so turned around.” He shook his head.

“I finally stopped moving just because I had no idea which direction to go next. West, right? It should’ve been simple. But there were cliffs and streams and trails that just ended or curved so slightly I’d be way off course and not realize it for hours. Before I could figure out where I was headed, the snow started falling. Snow like I’d never seen before. Feet of snow would fall overnight. I had to find shelter.”

“How long ago?”

“I’ve been out here nearly ten years now. I was alone for four or maybe five winters—I lost count—before Adam hired on. By then I was past the worst of it. My old horse didn’t survive the first winter, and it was so harsh and food so scarce, I reckon dying was a mercy for him.”

Trace didn’t say it, but he’d suffered, too. He hadn’t known where to find food on a mountaintop. “Old Rex was my only—” Trace realized he was embarrassing himself, so he finished with a shrug—“my only friend.”

Deb’s free hand touched his arm. The touch was so nice, Trace felt a little addled, and it helped him pass through the strange confession of his animal being his friend. It was true, of course, but saying it out loud sounded foolish.

“I’d been here for a stretch when I found Black and Wolf. Both real young, and we were sort of a . . . family.”

He shut up again. Good grief. A family.

He decided to talk about something less foolish. “By spring I couldn’t figure out why I should go on west. There was nothing there for me. Pa talked of homesteading. It wasn’t legal yet, but he said it was coming, and he’d be right there to grab up some land. But I was so lost I couldn’t even find my way back to the trail the wagon trains traveled on. And if I had gotten to a town, I wasn’t old enough to file a claim.”

He had found the wagon train trail eventually. He’d come upon it because of the smell of burning flesh from a new massacre. Not a single person left alive. And he could’ve found his way out then, but instead the sight of those murdered people had awakened a rage within him, a hunger for revenge. Instead of seeking out a town and people, he’d stayed. And he’d guarded that trail.

It was his ugliest sin, and he didn’t want Deb to know what festered in his heart.

“I found broad meadows and rich grassland and decided to stay. I found a water hole in a box canyon where some wild longhorns came to drink. I put up a fence across the mouth of the canyon, left the gate wide open, waited until the cows walked in for a drink, then swung the gate shut and called them mine. They got used to me and had some calves, and my little herd grew. I’d find a few more cows that wanted in the canyon, probably for the water. The herd grew more until I found a place to sell them. I even had some cash money because Pa split what little we had. I had it in my saddlebags the day everyone died. And there sure as certain wasn’t anywhere to spend it. Besides that, I found a few stashes in the wagons, and a few other supplies, including another gun and a mold to make bullets. That’s where most of those books came from, too. I survived the first winter through pure stubbornness. Reading the days away. That case full of books, by now I might’ve read each of them ten times, the Bible twenty times. All by firelight in a dark cave.”

“You were all alone out here through the winter?”

“With my stack of books, so not all alone.” He’d been so alone it had nearly broken him. He didn’t admit it, but the ache of that loneliness had carved itself into Trace’s soul. He wondered if he’d have survived the weight of it if not for those precious books. He wondered if he’d been a little bit crazed and that had prompted him to be guardian of that trail and keep himself secret even when he saved a wagon train. He could have gone down. He could have ridden on with the survivors.

“And then more years?”

Trace nodded. “I reckon I’d turned half wild by the time Adam came along. My clothes were rags. I’d trapped some furs and brought down deer for food and the hides, built that ramshackle cabin and the barn and made some furniture. With no horse at first, and then I got Black when he was a youngster. I took to running the hills to check snares I’d set, and while I did I learned the land.”

“Running the hills?” She made it sound like maybe he was an animal. And maybe he was. Living in a cave, dressed in fur. The books separated him from being pure beast, he hoped.

“Yep. Found some likely places. No one else knew about them, and after I’d staked my homestead, I ended up owning a lot of high valleys.”

“That’s how you could run almost all day, leading us on your horse?”

“I still do a lot of running. I like the land and—strange, I reckon, but I like the feel of my feet pounding on it. That first winter, in a cave, well, I’d lived in the wilderness all my life, in Tennessee, then Missouri, now here. So I knew how to start a fire.” That fire had in some ways been his friend, too. He worked hard to keep it alive. He’d talked to it. He didn’t admit any of that; he’d said enough about his strange loneliness and what he claimed for friends and family.

“Before the worst of the snow slammed down, I found some roots and dried berries, pine nuts. I had to fight a bear that tried to use my cave for a winter den—it was probably his cave. It was a fight I won just by, honestly, the miraculous hand of God. I skinned him out and had a bearskin blanket, and the bear meat kept me going when the snow was so deep I had to dig a tunnel to get out of the cave. And when I did dig out, I found nothing I wanted to see. The whole world was eyeball-deep in snow. The cave was big enough for me and not much else. I stored the bear meat in the snowdrift clogging the cave entrance and concentrated on not freezing to death. I lived like that until spring.”

Deb made a little sound of distress.

Trace quit fussing about his lonely years to reassure her he’d been fine, though at the time he was about the furthest thing from fine a man could be. He considered telling her about his guardian duties and how he planned to ride out and hunt the men who’d hit her wagon train. But then he hesitated when his gaze caught on hers. Foolish though it was, he believed that if he looked deep enough, long enough, he’d see something that would answer a lot of questions he’d never thought to ask. Questions that, when answered, would explain his whole life.

“After all that, here you are. With land and a home and a ranch. Good friends. And with the heart of a true hero.”

She was going to thank him again. She’d done it so many times it was making him squirm. He’d helped her, sure. But any decent man would’ve done the same. Any one of his hired men. In fact, the ones who would not have helped her were few and far between and the lowest type of scum. Which perfectly described the men who’d attacked her wagon train.

He was tired of being thanked. He couldn’t stand it anymore. He wanted almost desperately to stop words he didn’t deserve. And that was the only reason he could imagine when he leaned down, then stopped, realizing he was about to kiss her.

He barely even knew what a kiss was. There’d been mention of it in the books he read, but he’d almost never spoken to a woman or been around one. Still, the whole notion of it came real natural to him.

She pulled back, then stared at him while he braced himself to get slapped. Then she brought both hands up to his face and laid them gently on his cheeks, possibly the nicest, sweetest moment of his life.

The moment stretched and grew and filled his head with all sorts of notions, then as suddenly as it had started, it ended. Deb stumbled back from him so fast he rushed forward and kept her from falling, then let go before she could run straight out the door.

“What were you doing?” She pressed both hands to her mouth, which only drew his attention to what they’d almost done . . . well, as if he could forget, so it didn’t matter.

“I—I don’t know. I just . . . I was . . . I don’t . . . know.” Dismay swamped him. He’d just ruined his chance to be friends with the nicest woman he’d ever known.

Pretty much the only woman he’d ever known, but that was beside the point.

“I have to leave, Trace. I . . . well, I don’t want to give you the idea I’m going to stay.”

He hadn’t asked her to stay, but when a man went holding a woman and almost kissing her that might be asking her to do something, and he was pretty sure staying was part of that something.

Nodding, because words were beyond him, he stood there silent.

“All my life I was . . . was . . .” Deb shrugged and seemed to rush through the next words. “I was little better than a servant to my pa. After Ma died, I did everything to take care of his business while Gwen ran our home.” She pursed her lips as if she wanted them to stop moving. Then she forced herself to go on, or it looked that way from where Trace was standing. “And now here I am, right back to serving someone else.”

Did that mean she didn’t want to help? He’d said it before, but he rushed to say it again. “We really appreciate all you do, Deb.”

“You’ve said so and thanked me.”

“And I appreciate all the times you’ve said thank you,” Trace went on. “But I probably haven’t said so because thanking you for thanking me seems stupid.”

Her smile cut through some of the thick tension between them. “My goal, and Gwen’s, is to reach California. After years and years of working for someone else, letting someone else take all the credit—and mostly all the money—for our hard work, we plan to work for ourselves. We aren’t going to tend men anymore like we did for our father. And here we are caring for you and your men. And we are willing, even eager, to do it because that’s fair. You’re working as hard, no . . . even harder than we are. Of course we want to help and will work just as hard as we need to. While we’re here, we are happy to do our part. But we aren’t going to do it forever. In the end we’ll find Maddie Sue’s father, leave the children in his care, and head on west. And . . . and well, I can’t be kissing a man. That’s a good way to get tangled up in . . . in forever.”

Which must mean, Trace decided, that when a man kissed a woman, it was the next thing to a marriage proposal. And he sure didn’t think that was what he’d meant when he leaned toward her.

Of course, he hadn’t been thinking at all. Or yep, he’d been thinking, but his head was all over in a wrong and confusing and fascinating place and stuck there solid as ice . . . only not cold at all.

“This is probably why it’s a good thing I’ve never been around women. I don’t know what I’m doing.” He threw his arms wide. “I don’t know how to act right, how to treat a woman right. Prob’ly won’t never figure it out, neither. I remember my pa saying females could be notional, but I never really understood what that meant.”

Deb shrugged. “I don’t know what it means, either. But men and women not understanding each other is a mighty common thing, I’d say.”

“It’s a wonder they don’t do a better job of avoiding each other.” Trace would do his best to avoid Deb from now on, or at least avoid being alone with her. Because being so close to her, having her touch him the way she’d done, was one of the sweetest things he’d ever been part of, and if he had his say, he’d probably want to fetch himself that kiss he’d just been denied.

And despite her words, he had a sneaking feeling she might just cooperate. In fact, it was all he could do not to test out that idea right here and now.

“Time to go back,” he said too loud and fast. “We can see if Gwen is ready for a tour of the house.” Trace turned to the door, and Deb grabbed his wrist and sunk her nails in.

“Ouch, let go.” Trace pulled against her grip, but she hung on and glared at him.

“What’s the matter?” Trace rubbed at the little grooves where her fingernails were decorating his wrist.

“I just, well, you won’t . . . won’t take . . . that is . . . Gwen is young. She’s mighty young.”

Trace wondered if Deb had taken leave of her senses. “She’s not all that young.”

Deb’s hand shot out again, but Trace dodged her this time. She might draw blood if he wasn’t careful.

“She’s only eighteen.”

“Well, that seems grown up to me. I was on my own in the wilderness at fifteen. Talk about ‘a voice crying in the wilderness.’”

Deb’s expression changed then. He wasn’t sure what it had been before, something mighty strange. She’d seemed upset, angry, maybe her feelings hurt. That all made no sense. Now her eyes went wide and she reached for his wrist again. He didn’t jump back, just because her expression had become so kind. She caught his arm much more gently.

“Did you cry out, Trace?” Her eyes got wider, and her bottom lip trembled. “Or did you just cry?”

“Men don’t cry!” Trace was horrified. How had she known? “It means like hollering. The voice of one hollering in the wilderness. I’d rewrite that part of the Bible if I could. I think of that because once in a while I’d do some yelling, wishing someone would hear me.”

Nodding, Deb said quietly, “I can’t imagine how lonely you must’ve been.”

Her eyes fell shut as if the weight of the lids was beyond her. “I know I was always around people, Trace. I’m sure I can’t compare it, but running the newspaper, with no respect or thanks from my father, a woman doing a man’s job while the man got all the credit for it, I had days I felt so lonely I could’ve cried in the wilderness, too. Only I’d cry real tears.”

Trace stood listening to her, the pain of that loneliness etching lines in her forehead. “I can see you’re a real smart woman, Deb, educated and a writer. So I may not understand words to mean just what you’re saying, but I don’t exactly think those are the same. My loneliness out here and yours in a city full of people. Maybe both things feel bad, though they seem mighty different to me.”

Nodding silently for a time, finally Deb opened her eyes and lifted her chin. “Of course it’s different. Let’s go on in now. And my very much younger little sister, Gwen, a girl still, not a woman yet, can come out here and see the house with you. So long as you remember how young she is.”

“You mentioned she’s eighteen. How old are you? Nineteen?” Trace decided maybe she had taken leave of her senses, so it’d be best to get her back to the house before she said something else crazy.

“I’m twenty.” She said it with her spine straight and a glint in her eyes.

“When is Gwen nineteen?”

“Not for . . . for a few weeks yet.”

Trace rolled his eyes, and they walked back. He was careful not to get too close—he didn’t want to set her off again.

Or maybe he was just afraid that if he touched her right now, he just might haul her into his arms and kiss her.