She Was Thrown Away By Her Bloodline — A Mountain Cowboy Gave Her A Home

Chapter 7

She woke to the sound of Caleb moving around the cabin in the thin gray light of early morning.

The storm had finished. The silence outside was the specific kind that comes after, heavier and cleaner, like the mountain had washed itself. She lay still for a moment and let herself take inventory of what was true.

She was alive. She was in a stranger’s cabin in the Bitterroot Range. Her father was dying in a house where the people around him wanted her dead. She had no documents, no money, no allies, and no plan beyond the next hour.

She sat up.

Caleb was at the fire, working something in a cast iron pan with the focused economy of a man who had fed himself alone for a long time. “Morning,” he said without turning.

“Morning.”

“Eat first. Then we talk.”

She ate. The food was plain and hot, and she was hungry enough that plain and hot was better than anything she could have ordered in the Harper Estate dining room. Scout sat beside her chair and watched her with patient amber eyes until she gave him a piece of biscuit, which he accepted with considerable dignity.

“He likes you,” Caleb said.

“He liked my biscuit.”

“With Scout, those are the same thing.”

She set her fork down. “You said in the morning we figure out what comes next. I’ve been thinking about it. The men who brought me up here work for Richard. Which means Richard knows I was left on this mountain. When the storm clears and he gets word that nobody was found, he’ll know I survived. He’ll assume I’m trying to reach Boseman. He’ll have men watching the road.”

“So I can’t go by road.”

“No.”

She leaned forward. “You said you know every trail in forty miles.”

Caleb put down his own fork and looked at her directly. “I know what you’re building up to.”

“Then you know I’m going to ask you to help me reach Boseman without using the main road.”

“It’s three days through the back range. Four if weather turns.”

“I know.”

“You’re not dressed for it. You don’t have gear. You’ve never traveled mountain terrain.”

“I know that too.” She held his gaze. “I’m asking anyway.”

He was quiet for a moment. Outside, Scout lifted his head and turned toward the door. A small alert movement, and then settled again.

“Why Boseman?”

“Hoskins, my father’s attorney. If the original deed document still exists and Hoskins hasn’t been bought, I can file an injunction against the transfer. Freeze the estate. Give myself time to get to my father before it’s too late for him to speak for himself.”

Caleb’s jaw tightened slightly. “You think they’re moving fast?”

“Richard is not a patient man. Every day I’m not in Boseman is a day he has to consolidate what he’s already done.” She leaned forward. “Mr. Mercer, I understand that this is not your problem. I am asking you to help me anyway. Because I don’t have anyone else to ask. And because I think you are a man who doesn’t leave a situation wrong when you have the ability to help make it right.”

The fire cracked between them.

Caleb stood. He walked to the far wall, lifted his hat from the peg, and turned it once in his hands.

“Three days. You do what I tell you on the trail without argument.”

“Agreed.”

“If the weather turns bad, we stop. No heroics.”

“Agreed.”

“And you’ll need different boots.” He looked at her feet. “Those won’t last a mile.”

“I’ll manage.”

He crossed to a trunk in the corner and pulled out a pair of worn but solid trail boots. “They’ll be too big. We’ll bind the ankles. Better too big than what you’ve got.”

She took the boots without comment.

They left within the hour.

The first day was the hardest thing she had ever done in her life. She had known intellectually that it would be hard. But knowing and experiencing were two entirely different countries with no shared border. The terrain Caleb moved through with loose-limbed ease required her complete concentration. Every step was a negotiation with ground that had its own opinions about where feet were allowed to go.

She fell twice before mid-morning. She got up both times without waiting for help, which she could tell Caleb noticed, though he said nothing.

He set a pace that was demanding but not punishing. He told her what she needed to know. Where to put her hands. Where the ground was soft. Where to step, and where not to step. In short, direct sentences that contained no condescension. Information, not instruction.

They didn’t talk much on the trail. Talking took breath, and breath was needed for the climb. But when they stopped at midday in the shelter of a rock outcrop, something in the enforced silence became less awkward and more natural. The particular ease of two people who had already told each other the important things and didn’t need to fill the space between.

“How long have you been on this mountain?” she asked.

“Four years. Army frontier scouting before that.”

“What made you leave?”

He was quiet for a moment. “Got tired of watching things get decided by men who were nowhere near the consequences.”

She thought about that. “I understand that feeling.”

“I reckon you might.”