Chapter 15

The next few days found them traveling through the mountains to make visits on people who had no interest in seeing them. Wyatt expected Elmer to pull these shenanigans, but even Miranda seemed to be hankering after something specific. Although she did her part at the auction, she seemed to have something else on her mind.

“Who exactly are you trying to meet this time?” Betsy asked.

Try as he might, Wyatt couldn’t keep his attention from straying when Miranda was in the back of his wagon, but between the crooked mountain road and Elmer’s ramblings, he needed to focus if he didn’t want to dump the lot of them into a gully.

Betsy continued, “If you’re looking for ladies your age to visit, most of them are married. We do have a few bachelors about, though. We could start with old Widower Robbins and work down to Cross-Eyed Carl.”

Funny that she didn’t mention him in her list of bachelors. Wyatt’s back straightened. Did Betsy think him less interesting than Carl?

“Is that your uncle?” Miranda asked.

“You’ve met my uncle,” Betsy said. “He ain’t cross-eyed, but he is a widower. Of course, that would make you my aunt. . . .”

“No—riding toward us. Is that your uncle?”

Wyatt turned to look behind them, and sure enough, there was Fred Murphy. He pulled the mules to a stop as Betsy hopped up in the wagon bed and waved him over. “I thought you were staying home with the boys today.”

“I’m going to see your pa. It’s been eight years since those bushwhackers jumped him. Just wanted to report on how things were on his side of the mountain. Do you want to go with me?”

Betsy twisted her mouth around. “I did want to visit Miss Laurel and Doctor Hopkins. That’s where we’re headed.”

“It’s on the way.” He tipped his hat to Wyatt and Miranda, while pretending to miss Elmer. Was there bad blood between them already? “Lead on. I’ll follow.”

They didn’t have far to go. Before they knew it, they were being entertained just outside of the charmingly shabby cabin of Laurel Hopkins.

With one bare foot propped against the pile of firewood, Laurel carefully skimmed her knife across the surface of a green apple. The peel softly thudded in the dirt. Two more days of making visits with the Wimplegates, and Wyatt wasn’t sure who was the looniest—Elmer for buying their junk, or himself for toting them hither and yon. The only treasure they’d found today was a good place to sit in the shade and sip sassafras tea while waiting for the afternoon sun to weaken. Betsy drowsed against the tree, her golden head nodding slightly, while he played peekaboo with the Hopkinses’ oldest girl peering around the corner of the house at him.

“There you go.” Laurel held up the peeled product for inspection. “That’s how I make the face. Now I’ll let it soak in some watered-down lemon juice to keep it from wrinkling too soon.”

She tossed the apple and it landed in the bucket with a splash. Laurel wiped her hands on her apron. “Phoebe is playing with the final product. Come here, sweetie. Let them see.”

Wyatt couldn’t help but marvel at the rosy-cheeked girl with the pint-sized prairie bonnet. Although the child’s dark hair resembled her mother’s, he could easily imagine a child of Miranda’s with similar coloring. He caught Miranda watching him and suddenly felt like stretching his legs. Excusing himself, he stood and moved beside the woodpile where he could stand a bit while still keeping an eye on the goings-on.

Phoebe brought her doll to Elmer and presented it proudly. The clothes were simple calico, matching what all the women around there wore. Elmer turned it over in his hands, inspecting it as carefully as he would a precious gem. His head twitched in surprise, then he laughed.

“Look at the face, Miranda. Remind you of anyone?”

Miranda shifted on the tree stump stool to get a better look. The doll’s darkened, flesh-colored face had wrinkled into an exact replica of geriatric skin. Even the hands curled into gnarled paws that were surprisingly lifelike. The sunken mouth beneath the hooked nose curved in comic disapproval.

Miranda smiled fondly. “It’s the Great Dame, Mrs. Winthrop.”

Nothing about the doll looked that great to him, but what did he know?

“Precisely,” Elmer said as he took the doll from Miranda. “She’s enchanting, Mrs. Hopkins. How much would you sell her for?”

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s just a doll, but Phoebe is partial to her.”

“Then keep that doll, but would you be interested in making more? Perhaps hundreds more? I think our customers in Boston would find them charming bits of artisan handiwork. Would you make them for two dollars each?”

Laurel’s eyes bugged and Wyatt felt giddy himself. Two dollars? They couldn’t sell a wrinkled apple doll for two dollars, could they? This was even worse than Elmer’s offer for the homemade soap they’d seen yesterday. He didn’t know how much money these city people had, but they surely didn’t treat it as something very precious.

But maybe he wasn’t the only one to think that. “It’s time to go.” Miranda nudged Betsy awake. Betsy yawned and rubbed her eyes.

“Let’s say good-bye to Doc Hopkins first,” she said. With a hand on her knee, she pushed up into standing position—he swore that girl got taller every time he saw her—and led Miranda to the backyard.

They were getting nowhere. Those apple dolls might amuse little Ralphie and the younger newsies, but no one was going to buy one. As far as the search for the painting, Widow Sanders had promised that Laurel Hopkins possessed artistic skills of note but hadn’t mentioned that her medium was withered apples.

So far their leads had brought them no luck. Maybe they should be checking businesses instead of residences. Although she hadn’t seen anything that vaguely resembled the shops of Boston, she knew that somewhere in this town they had proper clothing for sale. At least good enough for Mr. Wyatt to cut an impressive figure. For whatever his education lacked, the man did know how to fill out a suit. The fitted lines of his coat followed his powerful build and the proud tilt of his head. . . . Well, she supposed he’d been born with that. And even today in his working clothes he had that easy energy that was so attractively male.

Still drowsy, Betsy dragged her feet through the clover as they rounded the house. Clucking ahead alerted Miranda to the presence of the chicken coop before she made out what the wire cage was. She recognized Dr. Hopkins from the sale barn, but he remained bent over a thick tree stump inside the flimsy wire pen.

“Let’s go in,” Betsy said, now fully awake.

The thin wire dug into her hand as she lifted it over the post and swung open the light gate. “I hope I’m not interrupting.” The soggy ground sponged beneath her boots as she stepped forward.

“Shut the gate,” the doctor called. From his hand dangled a bouquet of feathers. Squirming feathers. Was that a chicken?

Miranda stretched the wire over the post to secure the coop. The thud of a hatchet on wood drummed against her ears. She spun. A flash of metal and then the ball of feathers came alive.

It couldn’t be a chicken because it had no head. Only a bloody stump of a neck remained. And then Dr. Hopkins released it. With hurricane force, it bounced, flopped, and whirled directly at Miranda. She fell back into the chicken wire, but her feet were as heavy as granite. She couldn’t move. The maniacal beast was doing all the moving for both of them. It knew neither up nor down. With flapping wings it hurled itself into the air and into her face.

Shrieking, Miranda covered her head with her arms. “Get it away!” she yelled and got a mouthful of feathers. She fell backward. The thin chicken wire gave way, and she crashed through the frame of the gate. Lying on her back and swatting at the spinning bundle of bloody feathers, she repelled it again and again, terrified of the unworldly beast. Then as suddenly as it’d begun its attack, the monster succumbed to exhaustion and dropped next to her. Miranda rolled away from the horrid twitching lump. On hands and knees, she scrambled over the fallen chicken wire to get some distance between her and the monster before collapsing on her backside.

Miranda swiped the hair off her face, only then noticing how dirty her gloves were. Her hat covered one eye. A strand of hair had lashed across her mouth and tasted nothing like her shampoo. She shoved her hat into its rightful territory as the world beyond the flurry of feathers came again into focus.

Betsy stood frozen in place. Her blue eyes bulged. Her hand covered her mouth. The doctor’s face was pulled into a tight grimace that would admit no grins, nevermind that his eyes were streaming with tears and his shoulders shook with barely suppressed mirth.

Miranda dusted off her hands and tried to rip her skirt free from the chicken wire. “I think it’s dead now.”

Suddenly Betsy took off at a run toward the front of the house. “Wyatt! Wyatt! We need your help.”

Miranda tottered to her feet. “Shh, Betsy. I don’t need help.” The chicken wire stubbornly refused to release her skirt. She yanked at it again. Wyatt jogged into sight just as she dropped the fencing and got her first look at the clumps of wet straw clinging to her gown.

Finally the doctor remembered his vocation. “Are you injured?” He took her arm and disentangled her from the frame and wire bunched about her knees.

How she wished she could faint and remain insensible until she arrived back in Boston!

Wyatt and the doctor continued to untangle the wire as Grandfather and Uncle Fred came around the back of the house. Uncle Fred pulled out a small tablet and began to scribble furiously. Betsy stood next to him on her tiptoes. She craned her nose over the tablet. “I witnessed the whole thing, if you need a source.”

Miranda halted her repairs. “Did I break a law?”

Uncle Fred licked his pencil. “You performed wonderfully. This will sell more papers than Caesar Parrow’s two-headed calf.”

Now Dr. Hopkins smiled. “You mean my chicken coop will be in the journal? Why, the whole county will read of it. Isn’t that something?”

“Why would you write about a chicken coop? Nothing important happened.” Miranda’s heart sank as he continued to jot his pencil across the paper. How many days would it take before the paper ran and could she be on the train by then?

Wyatt pulled the mangled gate aside. “Hopkins, you might want to get your birds in the henhouse until you have a chance to repair this fence.”

“I don’t know when I’ll have time to fix it. Tomorrow I’m checking on patients. . . .”

“Property owner worried that damage will not be repaired. . . .” Fred mumbled as his pencil moved.

“Grandfather will have it fixed,” Miranda said.

“I’m not responsible,” Grandfather said.

“This just gets better and better,” Fred cheered and his pencil moved again. “Interloping business tycoon wreaks havoc on local residents. . . .”

Betsy clapped her hands. “Be sure and mention that she was attacked by a headless chicken. That’ll sell like hotcakes.”

His head raised as he noticed the dead bird for the first time. He winked at Betsy and continued writing.

“I want to go home.” Miranda pushed her bonnet back. Since the crash, it’d formed its own opinion of where it belonged and kept creeping over one eye. Now out of the way, she had a full view of the handsome man who was rising from the destruction she’d caused—the man who had the nerve to stare pointedly at her hat. His eyes traveled down to her shoulders, over her every curve—curves now adorned by clumps of chicken-coop confetti.

Wyatt stretched his arms before him and pretended to flick a spot of dust off his spotless elbow. “I understand now why your grandfather insists on keeping up appearances. Really, I’m shocked at your. . . . slovenliness?”

She humphed. “Bet you’ve never used that word before.”

“Because it never fit the situation half so well.” A shy smile teased at his lips. Miranda hoped that she’d remember how charming it looked at a time when she could appreciate it more.

“Let’s go inside,” Dr. Hopkins said. “Laurel will want to get this chicken ready for supper, and it’s getting hot out here.”

Still bending the newsman’s ear, Grandfather followed the doctor and Betsy inside, leaving Miranda alone in Wyatt’s company.

“Fred Murphy? Is he really the newspaper man? And will people really hear about this?” she asked.

“You’re already big news around here. This story will guarantee people will talk about you for weeks.”

“I don’t seek attention. Of that you may be sure.”

“No. You prefer to keep much hidden, don’t you?”

She was still trying to remove the sundry articles clinging to her skirt, and now this? Not a safe topic, especially with the journalist just inside. “This mess is driving me to distraction,” she said. “I’d love to discuss my personal attributes, but the dismal state of my wardrobe has me occupied at the moment.”

Wyatt stepped in front of her. Her stomach tightened. Whatever she was trying to accomplish, this wasn’t it. Slowly he took her chin in his hand and lifted her face to his. Standing there as he was, brown flecking in his green eyes, broad shoulders and perfect posture, he could’ve modeled for one of those risqué art classes the rich ladies so loved—if he’d only lose the beard. He tilted her head this way and that. At some point she’d stopped breathing, probably the moment the rough texture of his hands registered on her skin. Then with deliberation he wet his thumb on his tongue and applied it to her neck. With firm strokes he rubbed a path to her collarbone. The lack of oxygen was becoming a problem, especially as fast as her heart was beating.

“You had some blood splattered,” he said.

She opened her eyes. When had they closed? She took a half-step to the side to reacquaint herself with the earth’s tilt. He grasped her arm.

“Taking care of Grandfather,” she said. “That’s why I’m here. Not to stand around . . . with you.”

Something ornery flashed in his green eyes. “Why else are you here, Miranda Wimplegate? Maybe I can help, if you’ll come clean.”

Coming clean was a big concern. Should she be feeling this way while her skirt was still adorned with dubious substances from the bottom of a chicken coop? But she couldn’t tell him about the painting. Not without Grandfather’s permission—even if it meant that she had to continue these fruitless searches. Even if she had to go out alone on dark nights to places much worse than the underside of the arena seating. Even then, she couldn’t tell anyone what they were looking for. She’d take the secret to her grave.

Wyatt took her chin again. This time his eyes traveled down to her lips. “The answer is right there.” His gaze softened. “Right there on your lips just begging you to share this burden—”

“A painting,” Miranda blurted. “We’re looking for a lost painting.” So much for taking her secret to the grave. But she couldn’t pull herself away, not until he’d stopped searching her soul with those green eyes. “It’s very important to us. You wouldn’t understand.”

“Are you kidding? Isaac’s always telling me I’m too sentimental about things. I can’t seem to throw away anything that belonged to my parents—even Ma’s broken churn. I think I understand perfectly.”

It wasn’t exactly the same, but this painting did mean a lot to her family.

Finally his hand fell to his side and he scanned the horizon. “I haven’t seen a painting. That I can promise you.”

A breeze cooled her skin as though she’d shrugged off a heavy coat. Miranda’s shoulders drooped. “Please don’t tell Grandfather. I wasn’t supposed to say anything.”

He brought his gaze back to hers. “Are you sure you’re looking in the right place? What makes you think it’s here?”

“I don’t have time . . .” The door to the cabin opened.

Laurel waved. “Don’t worry about your clothes,” she called. “I put a towel on the sofa and I can sweep up after you leave.”

Miranda swiped again at her ruined gown.

“You aren’t going to find any fancy painting in there,” Wyatt said. “But I’ll be thinking on it. Anything I can do to help.”

Guilt. After all the trouble they’d caused him, and he was still offering his best. “But why? We messed up your plans, so why are you helping us?”

Wyatt’s throat jogged as he studied her. “I see how you care about your family. You must be a good person to love Elmer so much, and he must have been quite a man to earn it. Seeing you two just makes me want to help.”

Miranda balanced on shaky knees. She’d held a grudge against him ever since she’d arrived, and she’d been horribly mistaken.

She smoothed her skirt, the fabric crinkling beneath her hands. “I haven’t given you credit for all the help you’ve been to him . . . to me. Thank you.”

Now he held her gaze—his face frank and unguarded. Her skin warmed. He really shouldn’t stare like that. She might get the wrong impression.

“Just for this moment, for those words—it’s all been worth it.”