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“TITUS WOULD YOU MIND helping me fetch the eggs,” Sarah Jane asked the next morning as Titus stepped into the kitchen.
He’d been awake since before sun rise and was anxious to see her. She made him think deeply about his situation, and he wanted her insights.
“Be happy to,” he said, taking the basket from her hands and waiting for her to don her cloak.
“Did you sleep well?” Sarah Jane asked as they slipped out into the frosty morning.
“Not so much, no,” Titus admitted. “You gave me a lot to think about last night.”
“Like what?” her brown eyes were soft.
Titus didn’t know what to say. He looked at Sarah Jane and saw something, felt something, but he couldn’t place it.
“I think I need to figure out who I am,” he said, “and I don’t know if I can.”
“What do you know already?” Sarah Jane asked.
“I know that I’m a fortunate man. By all rights I should probably be dead, but here I am fetching eggs and trying to figure out what’s locked away in my head.”
“Anything else?”
“I own a mule. If I’d been a cowboy or something like that, why would I have a mule? I don’t see many cow hands riding mules.”
“And what does that tell you?”
“I was probably a farmer.”
Sarah Jane smiled, she’d told him she suspected as much two days ago, but she could see that he needed to work through this on his own.
“So what does that indicate to you?”
Titus ran a hand over his jaw as they approached the chicken coop.
“Jed found me in Nevada,” he began, pulling the coop door open and letting Sarah Jane step inside. “I know there are a few farms in that part of Nevada, but for the most part it’s too dry for farming.”
“So you’re saying you don’t think you’re from Nevada then.”
“Right where Jed found me there were signs of cattle activity but no herds in the immediate area. Maybe, I’d taken a job as scout for an outfit or something like that.”
Sarah Jane moved down the line of chicken boxes reaching under a few of the hens and pulling out eggs which she handed to Titus to put in the basket.
“That could be a possibility. I’m sure there are young men everywhere that dream of being a cowboy.”
Titus smiled. “If that’s the case then finding the outfit that passed through that area might tell me where I came from.”
Sarah Jane placed more eggs into the basket then turned to look at Titus.
“If you’d joined up with a cow outfit why were you riding that mule, and how did you get shot?”
Titus shifted the basket and scratched his ear.
“I haven’t figured that out yet,” he admitted. “You would think that if I was wranglin’ cows, I’d be on a cuttin’ horse, but maybe I was scouting ahead and then they’d want me to use the mule.”
“That makes sense,” Sarah Jane agreed, collecting the last of the eggs and turning for the door. “Now about being shot,” her dark eyes raked him as the question bounced around his head.
“I’ll have to keep working on that one.”
Sarah Jane led the way along the path toward the mission’s kitchen, her brows furrowed in thought.
“You could have been ambushed,” she finally said. “There are thieves and robbers everywhere.”
“Then why’d they leave the mule and all of my gear?”
Sarah Jane nodded tapping her lips with a delicate finger that made Titus realize just how soft and pink her lips were.
“Rustlers!” Sarah Jane exclaimed turning and grasping his arm. “You were attacked by rustlers.”
Titus smiled at the light in the young woman’s eyes. The idea had merit. The thought had no sooner entered his head than the smile disappeared.
“What’s wrong?” Sarah Jane asked, her warm hand still resting on his sleeve.
“What if it’s the other way around?” Titus asked, gently removing her hand from his arm. “What if I was the rustler?” He’d thought of that when Jed had first found him.
Sarah Jane looked up at the handsome young man before her seeing the doubt and turmoil in his eyes. “I can’t believe that of you,” she said with a shake of her head. “Who you are now speaks of your character.”
Titus heard her words, and wanted to believe them, but who was he? Who had he been? There were too many questions to take anything for granted.
“I hope your right,” he said softly, opening the door and stepping into the cool air and heading for the church kitchen.
