It was the middle of the night when Catherine woke, disoriented. What had startled her?
“The Johnny Rebs, they’re sneaking up on us.”
Pop’s growl sent fear skittering through her even as she fought the sense of disorientation to try to come fully awake.
“Pop?” She reached for the stove door, opening it to provide some light. “It’s just us—me and Matty.”
The orange light illuminated the cowboy, hair tousled and struggling his way upright.
He grunted. In pain? “I heard something. Outside.”
There was an audible thump from outdoors. Her heartbeat thrummed in her ears.
The cowboy’s feet hit the floor just inches from her hand propping her up.
“Where’s my gun?” he asked, and there was no mistaking the menacing tone of his voice.
“Not here.”
He grumbled something below his breath as he pushed to his feet. “Can you light a lamp?”
She scrambled to her knees. “You’re not going out there—”
But he was already on his feet, pushing open the door.
She used a twig from the basket beneath the table and lit the end of it in the glowing coals from the stove, then lit the lamp.
The cowboy took it from her grasp before she could protest and ducked out the door.
“Pop, stay inside,” she said.
She tromped out after Matty, receiving a glare over his shoulder. This was her home. She could defend it.
The darkness was close, encompassing. The moon had waned in the sky, leaving only the stars overhead for illumination.
Matty held the lamp out in front of him, lighting the ground as he approached the barn. She followed a few steps behind.
Until he stopped, holding one arm out to the side to prevent her from passing by.
“Somebody’s been out here.”
At his words, fear rose in her throat, blocking her from breathing for a protracted moment. Someone had been here, on her property?
“I’d piled everything closer to the barn... It looks like they tripped on some of this junk in the dark.”
“It’s not junk.” She barely breathed the words, terror crashing through her and muting her voice.
At her words, he threw a look over his shoulder and stepped into the doorway, flashing the lantern into the mule’s stall and where the chickens roosted.
“Whoever it was, they’re gone now. Animals are riled up, though.”
It was a small comfort. Someone had been here, sneaking around. In her place.
She didn’t feel safe, not at all. She had Pop’s old hunting rifle and was a decent shot, but had to keep it put up because of his sudden spells of memory loss and aggression. She had a hatchet and a hunting knife, but with her small stature, how could she hope to overpower someone larger than her?
“I’m going to make a pass through the woods by the creek—it’s the most logical place someone would hide if they were sneaking up. You all right?”
The cowboy turned his attention from where he knelt among the pieces of broken tools to her.
She clasped her elbows with both hands, folding her arms across her midsection. He stood up and took a step toward her. She took a step back.
“I’m fine. Just...just angry.” Yes, that was one emotion she could grasp, that she could share.
“You okay if I make a pass through the woods?”
“Of course.” She jerked her chin up, as if the force of that movement would make her words more true.
He held her gaze for a long moment, the lamplight softening his features. He opened his mouth as if to speak, then hesitated. Finally, he said, “I’d like to have my pistol returned.”
She nodded jerkily. Maybe he was right. Now that he knew what a danger Pop could be, he could take precautions with the weapon.
She didn’t like feeling unprotected, hated the feeling of violation that someone had been in her barn, spying on her belongings. Or worse, trying to steal something.
Matty disappeared into the darkness, taking the lantern with him. She let her eyes adjust to the low light before she slipped into the shed, where it was even darker.
“It’s all right, girl. It’s just me.” She ran her hand over the mule’s flank, felt the swish of its tail and the shifting of its feet.
The chickens clucked softly, a sign of their agitation when they would normally be sleeping.
The familiar barn smells were small comfort as the sense of violation sent continued shivers through her.
Catherine passed the mule completely and used her hands to feel her way to the inside wall of the stall. Her secret hiding place. The wood-paneled wall was made to look as if it backed up to the soil beneath the hill, but it was a false wall.
It was so dark in the barn that all she could use was the sensation of touch to move the top panel away. She ran her fingers along the flour sacks piled inside, exhaling a sigh of relief.
Whoever had been snooping in here hadn’t found the seed wheat.
By touch, she found the cowboy’s gun belt that she’d wound into a spiral, and the tin star and his pistol. She carried them pressed against her stomach with one arm while she used the other hand to replace the panel. She ran her hands over the smooth wood, making sure it was firmly in place and that no one would be able to notice a difference even if they looked closely.
It was all she could do.
And after tonight, it didn’t feel like enough.
* * *
Matty made his way through the woods toward the stream—the same direction he’d come across Catherine and Ralph yesterday morning—on a hunch.
An owl hooted, but other than that, all he heard was the crunch of his boots against a twig on the ground and his own breathing.
He reached up to swat a low-hanging branch out of his way and his collarbone pulled, making him hiss.
He didn’t like carrying the lantern—the flickering light it cast made him a target. But he figured someone who didn’t have the guts to make a known threat, someone who would sneak around, wouldn’t shoot him outright. He hoped.
Catherine’s white-faced fear remained front and center in his mind as he trekked through the dark.
She’d been shaking, as if the stiff night breeze might carry her away, but she’d clasped her elbows tightly to herself and he’d quashed any idea of reaching out to offer her comfort.
Didn’t mean he hadn’t wanted to.
That she battled her emotions with the same intensity as she faced replanting the fields and taking care of her Pop made him admire her. He couldn’t help it.
Who would be snooping around? The neighbor was the obvious culprit after he’d confronted Catherine yesterday, but Sheriff Dunlop had taught Matty not to make assumptions.
Matty squatted on the stream bank, finding tracks. Big boots. Man-size tracks. Pop wore leather moccasins, like Catherine, so they couldn’t have been his.
Matty followed the tracks for a bit until he lost them in some underbrush. He’d come out again tomorrow and make a more thorough investigation.
He circled back to the shed, the lamp illuminating Catherine’s silhouette as he closed the distance between them.
She had his gun belt and weapon in hand, and he took it from her, trading for the lamp so he could wrap the belt around his waist.
“Thank you, Catherine.”
He threw open the cylinder and checked the chambers. Empty. He thumbed out enough bullets from the belt to load up and started sliding them into their spots.
“There were tracks down by the stream, crossing a little farther than where I met up with you this morning.”
A visible tremor went through her.
And he couldn’t resist his impulse. He holstered his gun and reached for her. He only clasped the bend of her elbow, barely breathing in hopes she would receive the comfort he offered her.
She looked up at him, eyes luminous and shadowed.
“It’s going to be all right,” he said. “I’m going to stay out here tonight. Keep watch.”
He waited for her to push him away, to reject the kindness he offered, as she had earlier, but her eyes closed and her head tilted down. And she didn’t move away.
He exhaled the tension he didn’t know he was holding on to.
“Do you think it was Ralph?” she asked softly.
“I don’t know. If it wasn’t, someone wanted it to look like it was him, making tracks from down where we met at the stream.”
He looked up at the stars overhead. “You want to tell me what Ralph might’ve been looking for?”
She shrugged slightly, finally dislodging his hand from beneath her elbow. She still didn’t trust him enough to let him in on the secret.
Her distrust weighted the silence between them, dissolving the camaraderie he’d felt building moments ago.
Finally, she reached out and pressed the tin star into his palm. “You’ll want this, too.”
He rubbed his thumb over the face of the star, the metal cool against his skin. This. This was how he could prove to her that she could believe in him.
“You might not be able to trust in me as a friend. But you can trust in this.” He pressed it back into her hands. “I’m honor-bound to do my job. And that includes protecting the people of Converse County. If you can’t trust in my friendship, you can trust in that.”
He left her with the star and the lantern and went back to the dugout. Inside, the stove door remained open, gilding the room with warm orange light from the coals inside. Pop had curled back into his blanket and was snoring once again. At least the older man hadn’t followed them outside. Likely he would’ve chased the intruders out into the night, and then Matty would’ve spent hours chasing him.
He picked up the small stool and the quilt off the cot and met Catherine just outside the door.
“What are you doing?” she whispered, glancing over his shoulder inside the soddy.
“I’ll stay out here tonight. Keep an eye on things in case whoever was here gets any ideas about coming back.”
“But you won’t get any rest.”
He couldn’t help the half smile that lifted the side of his mouth. She almost sounded as if she cared—as a friend, of course.
“I’ll be fine. I may not be able to help you with replanting your garden, but I can do this.”
She acquiesced with a single nod and he set up the stool around the natural curve in the sod house, several feet from the door but with a good line of sight on the shed.
Maybe it was a blessing that Catherine had asked him to fix some of the broken tools. If he hadn’t spread all the Pooles’ junk out in the yard, they may never have heard someone sneaking around.
Catherine didn’t seem to want to trust him enough to let him know what the trespasser might have been looking for. But tonight... He couldn’t shake the feeling that for once, he’d done the right thing. Started to build her trust, even if she couldn’t open up and tell him what the intruder had been after.
He only hoped it lasted until the morning.
He settled in for a long night of keeping watch.
* * *
Catherine lay on the cot—with the cowboy outside there was no reason to sleep on the floor—and stared unseeing into the darkness.
Had Ralph snuck into her barn?
Ralph and Floyd were a lot like her—they rarely went into town, kept to themselves. They’d been homesteading nearby for years.
But over the past year, Ralph’s attention had become more pointed. His marriage proposals and seeming desire for their land were a constant worry niggling at the back of her mind.
Had something happened on their homestead to make them desperate?
Was their desperation a danger to her and Pop?
If Pop found one of them sneaking around the property during one of his rambles, he was likely to get violent. Only, they were big enough and young enough to overpower her grandfather. No one except Matty knew about Pop’s difficulties with fading into the past. If that happened, could Pop be hurt or, worse, killed for attacking one of their neighbors?
Matty had said she didn’t trust him, but the truth was he knew more about her life than anyone else. He was closer, saw more than anyone who wasn’t family. And maybe that was what frightened her.
She had no room for childhood dreams. She’d given them up when she’d witnessed her mama being ostracized by the good citizens in town.
She’d been safe here on the homestead with Pop ever since, until now. Now Pop’s delusions were a threat, and so was whoever had come onto her property tonight.
She’d never been so grateful as she was to have Matty here to protect her, just for the night.
And that was dangerous thinking. If she got used to his assistance, then what happened after he left?
And he would leave. She knew he must be counting down the days until he was healed enough to walk away from here.
The fact that he could’ve asked Ralph to get a message to his folks and hadn’t confused her. Since his injury, he’d asked every day for her to help him return home.
Until today.
There was a part of her, a very small part, that wondered what it would be like to open up to him. To confide her fears. To find a shoulder to lean on.
She couldn’t. She didn’t dare. He had such a strong sense of right and wrong...if she told him about her parentage, there was a good chance he’d shun her like everyone else.