Seth hauled back on the reins so hard, Abigale lurched forward but caught herself on the buckboard before she tumbled onto Tess.
The look on his face made her want to jump down and walk home. It wasn’t all that far, though the trek would ruin her shoes. But she needed the supplies in the wagon, and didn’t put it past him to drive off with them.
Gathering the last vestiges of her pride, she adjusted her seating and tugged on her suit jacket. “I wouldn’t kill him, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Seth took his hat off with a groan and rubbed his forehead before slapping the hat back on. She’d never seen him quite so pale, and it made his stubbly beard even darker. The man was entirely too handsome for her own good. Heavens, if the girls at Wolfe Hall saw him now, they’d be setting their caps and flirting up a storm.
The revelation did not settle well. He was her Seth. Her friend. She glanced at the mountain again, amazed once more at how fast a squall could gather in this high country.
The memory of their fireside evening came flooding back. The comfort of his presence. The camaraderie they’d shared, so like their days growing up together. Of course they’d squabbled as children too, but it seemed more intense now. Why was he so set against her establishing herself as a viable landowner in this valley? Why couldn’t he support her rather than oppose her every move?
She resigned herself to a tirade. The sooner he blew off steam, the sooner they could get home and unload the supplies.
“Go ahead, get it over with. Tell me all the reasons you think my idea is foolish and why you have a better one, and then turn around so we can make it to the ranch before the storm hits.”
A sudden gust whipped past them, snagging the remains of her updo and lashing it across her face. She gathered her hair in one hand and twisted it over her shoulder.
Seth clucked Tess back around the way they had come, and by the time they made the trail, the sun was buried in a growing cloud bank. Abigale shivered.
With one arm, he drew her close against him, quickening the mare’s pace with his other hand. Still, he hadn’t said a word.
All Abigale could read from his stoic profile was determination to reach shelter. But the strength of his arm around her and the warmth of his body added a dimension she’d not appreciated earlier. Never, in fact. She’d not been aware of him carrying her inside the house, and as a young girl, she’d always taken for granted—and resented—the fact that he was physically stronger.
But now, in a race against nature, she was grateful for their differences. And grateful he was with her.
The sky dropped, belching snow in fits and spurts. Seth reined up in front of the house and climbed over the back of the seat to the wagon bed.
Abigale hurried to the porch where she propped the front door open in spite of the rising wind. He brought the flour in first, setting both sacks against the kitchen wall, and returned moments later with the crate. She cleared the table of cloth, sugar bowl, and preserves in time for him to set the crate there. Then he was out the door, closing it hard behind him.
Through the window she watched him pull his hat down and drive the wagon inside the barn. He did it all without being asked, as if it were his place to do so, unprotected though he was without his slicker or canvas coat.
Why such sacrifice on his part? Did he consider it his Christian duty, or was this his version of support?
He certainly wasn’t opposing her now.
She hung her jacket over a chair back and unpacked the crate, stacking canned goods in the cupboards, setting the lard and butter in covered crockery, Arbuckles’ near the grinder. After stoking the cookstove, she put on a pot of coffee, then went to the fireplace, where she poked around in the ashes for signs of life.
One coal winked up at her hungrily, and she fed it broken bits of kindling, adding larger pieces until a small but steady flame maintained itself between the andirons. Finally, she added several split logs—thanks to Seth’s efforts with the axe, though she could have done the same. She’d split firewood countless times and expected to do so indefinitely. After all, she would be living alone.
Sobered by the reality of her predicament, she glanced at Pop’s shotgun and Henry rifle above the mantel. Her idea of taking potshots at the timber thieves didn’t seem quite so clever now with snow swirling around the house. What had she been thinking?
A log caught flame and snapped into her musing. Seth would be hungry and so was she. A canned-peach pie seemed a good match for coffee. And with the side pork and potatoes she’d brought in from the cellar, she’d have a solid meal cooking in no time.
She’d not prepared supper in ages, not since she’d been home last summer, helping Pop with the haying. Since she couldn’t heft a fifty-pound bag of flour into the storage bin by herself, she scooped out what she’d need for two pies, cut lard into the bowl, and added salt and water. In no time, rolled-out dough draped two pie plates with strips left over for the top. She poured in two tins of peaches, topped them with a mix of sugar, cinnamon, and a little flour, and crossed strips across each pie like lattice work. After trimming and crimping off the edges, both pans went in the oven.
With a heady sense of accomplishment, she caught her reflection in the darkened window—untidy, windblown, and flour-dusted.
Boots stomped on the porch, and she fled up the stairs. She couldn’t let Seth see her looking so—so wild!
~
Coffee and cinnamon hit Seth in the face as soon as he opened the door. He hadn’t eaten much in town with Hoot Spicer, and it merely primed the pump. He pulled his boots off and pegged his hat, then socked over to the stove and lifted the lid on a large skillet. Potatoes, side pork, onions.
He’d died and gone to heaven after all.
Another scent tickled his innards, and he peeked inside the oven. Peach pie. Lord, have mercy.
He poured himself a cup of coffee and looked around for Abigale, but she must have gone upstairs. A log shifted in the fireplace, sending sparks up the chimney, and the big chair invited him to rest a while. He eased into it and stretched his feet out on the hearth stones.
If this was what it felt like to have a home and a wife of his own, then sign him up. ’Cept Pop Millerton’s place wasn’t his and neither was Pop’s stubborn, independent-minded granddaughter.
Why couldn’t Abigale be one of those easygoing, domesticated gals who only cooked up meals, not wild-hare schemes for lying wait on snakes who had no qualms about stealing from a woman?
Whoever the varmint was, he’d picked the wrong woman. And if Abigale Millerton was some namby-pamby gal, Seth wouldn’t be sitting in her house itching to follow-through with her harebrained plan and wishing she were his wife.
“Comfortable?”
He jerked his feet back and spilled hot coffee on his leg.
She came around the end of the sofa, where she settled and tucked her feet under a simpler dress than what she’d worn to town. Her braid hung over her shoulder. Prettier than a picture, she was. He rubbed a hand along his whiskered jaw and clamped his elbows close to his sides in case he was getting ripe.
What he wouldn’t give for a shave and a bath.
“You haven’t told me what you thought of my plan.”
The sofa was still facing the hearth, but he angled his chair back some so he could see her without being so obvious about it.
She picked up the pillow he’d propped her head on last night and traced the fancy needlework.
He had a hard time picturing her sitting still long enough to make something like that. “How’s your head?”
She slid him a look. “I asked first.”
There was no sneaking up on Abigale Millerton, a fact for sure. Technically, she hadn’t asked him a question, but he let it slide. “I’ve given it some thought.”
Hopefulness showed up again. “Really?”
“Tell me more about it. Other than how you don’t intend to shoot Blackwell—or whoever—out of his saddle.”
She tucked her chin back with a sassy smile, still tracing the stitches on the pillow. “Well, I’d like to rope and hog-tie him, haul him home to his wife like a side of beef, and tell him the next time I found him cutting timber on my land, I was gonna tie him to a tree and leave him for the cougars.”
Seth whistled through his teeth. “I hope I never get on your bad side. They teach you things like that at your fancy girls’ school in Denver?”
She laughed. The trickling-creek laugh. “You know very well they did not. And you also know I’ve been roping since I was ten.”
That he did.
All of a sudden, she jerked her head around, then jumped off the sofa and hurried to the stove. He hadn’t noticed, but now he caught the aroma of fresh-baked peach pie. Good thing she’d made two, because he planned to eat one all by himself.
“Wash up.” She looked over her shoulder with a smile. “Time to eat.”
No, it wasn’t. It was time to take a good hard look at his life and figure out how to get Abigale Millerton to share it with him.
~
Seth had been hungrier than he thought. After half a pie and two helpings of fried potatoes and pork that Abigale called Pop’s hash, he leaned back from the table mostly a satisfied man. “That beat my cooking six ways from Sunday.”
“That’s tomorrow, you know.”
“What is?”
“Sunday.”
Shoot. His folks were probably wondering where he was. He’d ridden in to mail a couple of letters for his ma, then followed his gut to Millertons’. Hopefully she knew he was all right. She always claimed the Lord told her which way the wind was blowing.
Abigale set their plates in the sink and refilled his coffee.
He took his cup to the window at the front of the house, where he saw absolutely nothing except himself in the glass. The night was dark as the inside of one of Abigale’s peach tins with the lid still on, but an inch of snow edged the windowsill and pane moldings.
He set his coffee on the hearth, tugged on his slicker, and grabbed the lantern. “I’m going for more wood.”
Pop Millerton had built a stout home, for Seth hadn’t felt the steady gusts that were drifting the snow onto what had drifted the night before and sweeping the ground bare. He and Coop could make it home if they skirted the drifts, but it’d be a long, hard haul. And he didn’t want to leave Abigale alone.
He made two trips, bringing in all the split wood and some smaller logs, then split a few from a bigger pile out behind the house. He’d tackle more tomorrow and stack it under the eaves. As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t stay forever, but another night would ease his worry for her some.
Another night on the floor in front of the fire, dreaming about how to win her heart. Right now he figured it had a whole lot to do with helping her win what she wanted, which was freedom from poachers, if you could call ’em that. How did you prove someone’s stealing your trees when the whole country grew the same kind?
’Cept those lodgepoles. They grew thick and stout on Millerton land, not in spindly doghair patches. Blackwell had a few acres that skirted around to the west, but not near the timber Abigale did.
Seth had cut his share of trees with his pa. Hard work it was, felling them, limbing them where they lay, then dragging them out on horseback with heavy chains, one at a time. If Blackwell was cutting timber, there’d be signs.
With winter rolling in, most of the mills had slowed to a stop, according to Hoot. But his Windsor was still running lodgepoles, he’d said.
Greed could twist a man into a fool, and there was a chance that a few clear days in a row might draw out Abigale’s timber thief for one final run.
An itch started in the back of Seth’s mind and settled into a warm spot right next to Abigale’s scheme.