Two days after the scuffle with Pop, and Matty felt the distance Catherine had put between them keenly. Did she hate him seeing her vulnerable that much? He’d tried to draw her out with games of dominoes in the evenings, but she’d pled exhaustion.
She and that mule had spent long days finishing clearing the wheat field and he didn’t doubt it.
The fist-sized bruise on the side of her face made his gut twist every time he saw it. How could he help her if she wouldn’t open up?
And he was running out of time. His brothers would come for him in another two days. He wanted to see his family and he couldn’t leave the sheriff without a deputy for any longer.
Pop had spent the past two days wandering the homestead looking frail and lost. Matty’d split his time between watching for an intruder and watching the old man, half afraid he was going to get lost in his memories again and hurt Catherine.
Why couldn’t she see that it was dangerous to stay out here alone with him? Why was she so determined to make the homestead work when it was backbreaking labor with such little reward?
Tonight, she’d put the mule up for the evening and washed up with a bit of time before the sun went down. Clouds littered the horizon. Maybe a storm moving in.
She’d given him a brief wave where he’d been near the barn still working with the tools she’d asked him to repair. He wasn’t any good at it, not as his brother Ricky was, and had spent most of the day frustrated.
Now he ran a hand over the whiskers itching across his jaw and neck and stood, stalking toward the soddy.
He pushed open the door and found Catherine and Pop in murmured conversation. They looked up when he entered.
“Can you give me another shave, Catherine? I’m starting to itch.”
She said something in a low voice to Pop, who waved her on.
She followed him silently to the stump where she’d shaved him once before. Lightning flashed, far away on the horizon. Here, the stillness before the storm weighed heavily in the air.
“Thanks,” he said as she knelt at the bank to work up a lather.
Her fingers were cold when she displaced the lather onto his cheeks.
She didn’t meet his gaze. Up close, he could see the tired circles beneath her eyes.
“Storm rolling in tonight,” he said when he really wanted to ask her if she’d thought more about what he’d said days before.
“Hmm.”
“If I was up to no good, storm might be a good cover.”
Now her eyes flicked to his face and he saw surprise and trepidation in their depths. “You still think Ralph is watching the place?”
He would’ve shrugged, but she had the blade at his neck and he didn’t want to get cut.
“I’ve been watching and listening and I couldn’t guarantee it, but yes. He hasn’t got what he wants yet.”
Whether it was just the land or Catherine herself had yet to be seen.
“Don’t suppose you want to tell me what you’ve got hidden in the barn?”
He felt the faint tremor of the blade against his cheek, though her expression betrayed nothing. “What do you mean?”
“Behind the false wall.”
Her emotionless mien remained for the barest instant, and then her shoulders slumped. Thankfully, she’d moved the blade to wipe it on the towel over his shoulder.
“How did you discover it?”
“Spent a lot of time in there these past few days and nights.”
She looked defeated and resigned, and stupidly, he still wanted to comfort her, even if she didn’t want his comfort.
“I found it accidentally,” he said. “I don’t think the structure is real sound, at least not after the recent bad weather. I was walking around, tapping on things, and noticed that wall was hollow.”
Her eyes remained shadowed.
“I didn’t open it up,” he said. “But I’d think by now I’ve earned enough of your trust to know what you’re protecting.”
“Grain.”
So he’d guessed right.
“If I guessed it, the Chestertons might’ve, as well.”
She wiped the rest of the soap free with the corner of the towel.
“We’ve built the stockpile over several years, and it’ll save us from starving this winter,” she said. “Once it’s planted, there isn’t much they can do.”
Not in the manner of thieving, but if they had a mind to dispose of Pop and Catherine and take their crop, that was enough to frighten Matty. Catherine and Pop had no friends. No one to take up for them. Would anyone even notice if they’d suddenly disappeared? Not likely if they never showed their faces in town.
And they were too far away from town for Matty to be any help as a deputy. How would he hear about it if Ralph assaulted her?
“So you think someone will try to come after it tonight?” she asked, her back to him as she faced the stream.
“If they expect me to be in the soddy because of the weather, they’ll get a surprise,” Matty responded.
“You’re going to sleep out in the elements?”
He quirked a smile. “Probably won’t do much sleeping, but I’ll stay out in the barn. I hope it’ll come to naught, but...”
Maybe that wasn’t entirely true. If he caught Ralph or his younger brother on the Pooles’ property, he could likely get the sheriff to prosecute them. And that way, at least, Catherine would be out of danger from those men.
But the issues with Pop remained.
* * *
Catherine woke in the middle of the night. This time, instead of Pop stirring in his bed—as it had been the past several nights—it was a loud crack of thunder that startled her.
She tried to even out her breath, tried to sink back into the bliss of sleep.
But her mind had begun whirring like a whole field full of cicadas.
Was there a chance Pop might think the thunder was enemy cannons? Would he get lost in his memories? Attack her again?
“Pop, you awake?” she asked over the drumming rain. She hated how shaky her voice emerged.
But even more, she hated the fear that pushed her to disturb him. Shouldn’t she be able to feel secure in her own home?
“Yes,” he answered. His voice sounded lucid, but she couldn’t be sure. She couldn’t see much in the inky darkness—lightning lit up the sky outside the window at short intervals, but her eyes had trouble adjusting to the darkness in between.
“All right. I was just checking on you.”
He didn’t respond.
A question had been plaguing her since the conversation with the cowboy down at the creek. What would Mama have done if they’d been in this same situation with Pop? Mama had stayed on the homestead to avoid rumors and mistreatment, for Catherine’s sake. She’d bartered with neighbors when necessary.
Catherine tossed and turned through the storms that abated just before dawn. She must’ve dozed off at some point, because Pop wasn’t snoring beneath his blanket. His absence worried her, and she rushed outside.
Though the rain had stopped, the sky remained gray with clouds swirling overhead. The creek rolled and frothed, high but not yet threatening to overflow its banks. She prayed it didn’t. Her eyes flicked to the barn, already damaged from before. Worrisome.
Her moccasins slipped and slid across the muddy yard. The rain still fell in sheets. She almost ran into the cowboy as he emerged from the structure, his hat slightly askew and his face softened from sleep.
“Everything quiet?” she asked, reaching out for the door frame to keep herself upright.
He stretched his arms over his head, giving her a glimpse of his sidearm and flat stomach as his shirt tightened against it. “Discounting the thunder that blasted my eardrums all night? Yes.”
“Did Pop come out to milk Elsie?” She glanced over his shoulder, but in the low outdoor light and the shadowed interior, she couldn’t see her grandfather.
“No. He’s not inside with you?”
She shook her head. The niggle of worry she felt grew. “I...spoke to him, or woke him up maybe, in the night. He seemed fine then, but now he’s gone.” Was she attempting to reassure the cowboy, or herself?
“He likes to wander,” Matty reminded her.
“Yes, but not in the rain. And it’s barely light out. And what if the storms aren’t over?”
And what about Ralph Chesterton?
Perhaps the lack of sleep these past few nights was to blame for loosening her tongue, but the cowboy only touched her elbow. He didn’t laugh at her unease. His eyes met hers with that steady gaze that had become so familiar as he said, “If he’s not back by lunchtime, then we’ll start to worry.”
She swallowed back her unease. He was right. Of course he was right. She was overreacting, jumping to conclusions.
But after the scuffle with Pop and his silence since, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.
* * *
Pop wasn’t back by lunchtime, but the rain had continued.
Matty stood in the open dugout doorway. Rain pattered on the ground above his head and on his hat.
“We don’t both need to get soaked. It’s likely a fool’s errand anyway.”
Catherine threw a glare over her shoulder from where she was bent over a small rucksack, packing provisions.
Maybe he shouldn’t have said it so bluntly, but it was the truth. Pop had pulled this same disappearing act several times in the nearly two weeks since he’d been with the Pooles.
“If it were someone you loved, would you be content to stay behind?”
For some reason, today, Catherine was spooked. He was willing to go out in the weather to track down the older man, but he didn’t see why they both had to go.
Catherine shoved provisions wrapped in a towel into her rucksack and tied the drawstrings.
“How far do you think he could’ve gone?”
She shrugged. “I didn’t think he would’ve gone out in this weather at all. Something could have happened to him.”
Or he could have happened to someone. Catherine still hadn’t told him about the Chestertons. If he’d come upon one of them out there, might he have attacked them?
Catherine straightened, slinging the rucksack over her shoulder. She mashed a floppy old hat over her curls.
He sighed as she moved toward him. There would be no changing her mind.
She snapped the door closed behind them, and he trailed her across the yard and into the woods. Water dripped from the trees in a different cadence than the rain on the grass.
“If the rain keeps up, it will obliterate any tracks he might’ve made.” He didn’t bother sugarcoating it for her. She needed to know that this was pointless. Pop would come back when he was ready, just like always.
His brothers would probably laugh at him if they saw him trailing the diminutive woman like a lovesick pup.
How had he gotten here? He’d changed his view of Catherine since the beginning, that was for sure. He’d come to realize that it took a smart, independent woman to run a homestead and care for her ailing grandfather.
He ducked under a low branch and received a stream of water down the back of his neck for his trouble.
“Careful,” he said when her footing slipped and she lost her balance. Grabbing a nearby sapling for support, she straightened.
What could he say to make her see that she couldn’t continue on like this? Ignoring his growing affections, just trying to think of her as a friend, he couldn’t see her isolation on the homestead ending well. He’d told her he was sorry for what had happened between them in their school days, but he hadn’t opened up to her about those dark days after his parents had died.
Maybe if he did, she would understand how she could lean on others, depend on her neighbors—and him—to help as this difficult time only got worse.
But that meant opening up about the one thing he hated talking about. Jonas knew the most, but he’d shared the bare minimum with the rest of his siblings. He just couldn’t talk about losing the two people who meant the most to him—and those few days when he thought he would die alone, too.
Being so reliant on the Pooles those first days after his injury had brought all that old grief back. It felt too close to share.
But if he didn’t, would Catherine continue her stubborn thinking that everything was fine just the way it was right now?