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Immersed in a freezing fog of snow that stung his ears and fingers, Jonathan strained to make out the indistinct trail ahead. The world was a colorless white, a silent blanket muffling the sound of his horse's hooves. The absence of sound accentuated the horse's labored breathing as she struggled through knee-deep drifts. His own ragged breath struggled to keep pace with his pounding heart. He was racing time itself, a cruel enemy that nipped at his horse's heels like a wolf in winter. Each step seemed to take an agonizing lifetime, a precious lifetime, her precious lifetime. Pulling at his horse's hooves, time conspired against them.
Cold grabbed at his fingers, sending needles of pain up into his arm. Although every extremity was numb, stung by the frigid winds, sweat ran in rivulets down his chest.
The world changed again, no longer white, but red. Crimson like the sun setting behind a prairie fire, scorching the sky and land. Heat, not cold, spread flames across his chest and down his arms. His flesh seemed to melt with its intensity, the fabric of his shirt sticking to his skin. He cast his eyes down to his arm, where sweat stained his shirt crimson, like blood. As if his heart were demanding its freedom from the constraints of his chest, his pulse beat wildly in his ears, loud and insistent.
Blond mane flew up into his face, acting like a fan, relieving the burning of his skin. But Jessie is a bay. Yes, a bay with black mane and tail. The blond mane brushed silky soft against his face, smelling faintly of lavender. How odd.
The girl's head lolled to the side and fell heavily against his shoulder. He glanced down at the white bodice of her dress, stained red. His hand, holding her tight to his body, keeping her from falling, was crimson as well. Red streaks slid down his horse's leg and drops stained the snow.
In the next moment the body of the girl had slipped from his arms crumpling to the ground, enfolded by a quilt of snow. She looked as though asleep, her hair arrayed about her head like a golden halo, her skin pale as winter's moon. She was a star that had fallen, confused for a delicate flake of snow cast down to the earth.
And then he was kneeling in the snow at her side, lifting her head ever so gently so as not to disturb her slumber. Cradling her head in the crook of his arm, he brushed the fine strands of pale hair from her ashen cheek, feather soft, her icy skin biting his fingertips. With his hand lightly resting on the cords of her neck, he could feel her pulse accelerate for one moment before it ceased. Three slow beats tapped against his finger until at last the bird within broke free of its fleshly prison.
Once more the colors merged and transformed. Silky soft against his arm, her hair appeared no longer as pale strands of blond, but brown. Chestnut colored curls framed her face. As he reached to touch them, they fell away from her face and her lifeless eyes looked up unseeing, not blue but brown.
The fog that was the dream lifted like a curtain. With a sickening awareness, he saw that the girl in his arms was not the girl who had haunted his dreams this past year, but was instead, Kat Meriwether. Those steaming pools of blood swelled and grew, fed by her gaping wound.
He yelled out, "No!" The dream clung to him as he slogged back to reality, refusing to be shaken off.
"Jonathan, wake up." The voice came as though from a body buried deep within the snow. "Jonathan. It's all right." The voice was more insistent this time. The dream fought to keep him, but the voice would not be silenced.
"Jonathan, it's all right."
But it wasn't all right. She was dead. He had failed to save her. Nothing was all right. He was not all right.
With a suddenness that made his head swim, Jonathan sat up. His hands flew to his face. Pushing his fingertips into a steeple, his thumbs pressing the bridge of his nose, he rocked forward, eyes straining to focus. This was real, the rough wood planks beneath his feet, the musty smell of his blanket, daylight streaming through the dirty window. This was reality, not the dream.
"Jonathan?" The voice attached itself to a face. Timothy sat at the foot of the bunk, his face pinched in concern. Adam stood in the doorway, his eyes wide with fear.
Jonathan ran trembling fingers through his hair. His attempt to smile came as little more than a pained thin line. "It was just a bad dream."
"Adam, go bring us a cup of coffee." Timothy shot Adam a stern look when the boy hesitated in the doorway.
The boy ran, his feet hammering a worried rhythm back to the main house.
Jonathan stood up and shuffled to the wash stand where he picked up the pitcher, pouring cold water into the bowl. After splashing a handful on his face and the back of his neck, he grabbed a towel, holding it over his face for long moments until his pulse slowed.
Timothy watched him, his hands rubbing the knees of his pants in long slow strokes. "The boy came to see what was keeping you from coming to breakfast this morning." The big man stood and shoved his hands into his pockets, as though hiding his hands might help to hide his discomfort. "You were...talking in your sleep. He was scared when he couldn't wake you, so he came to get me." His explanation seemed an attempt to excuse his intrusion on Jonathan's private agony.
"Sorry to have given him a scare," Jonathan said flatly. He reached for the razor and saw his hand shaking. Turning back to face Timothy, he managed a wry smile. "It was just a nightmare, probably something I ate. No offense to your cooking."
"I know it's not my place to meddle in a man's affairs, but it isn't just a bad dream is it? When we were driving those cattle north, the boy and I heard you cry out in your sleep many times. What happened back in Texas?"
Jonathan turned to the window, eyes focused on the paddock where he could see Jessie pacing, tossing her head, impatient for breakfast. This was something that needed to stay buried, and if it came out at night to haunt his dreams then that's where it must stay. He'd have to live with it just like he lived with his failure as one sworn to protect the innocent.
Jonathan sighed heavily. And yet, maybe he did need to trust someone. Timothy deserved some explanation. Without turning, he said softly, "I made a mistake, an error in judgment, and my mistake cost a young girl her life."
"Is that why you quit the Rangers?"
"Yes." Jonathan propped the hand mirror on the window sill. He picked up the razor again and studied his reflection. Behind him, he could see Timothy staring at his back, his face awash with questions and pity, neither of which Jonathan wanted.
Timothy stood, walking slowly to the door. He turned at the doorframe. Jonathan still held the razor tenuously against his chin.
"It's a heavy burden you're carrying on only two shoulders. I think of you as a friend, Jonathan. I'd like to help if I can." He turned without waiting for Jonathan to reply and walked from the cabin.
Jonathan stared at his reflection for a moment, putting down his razor again. Leaning on the table, he peered into the water, calm within the basin. The dream was bad enough, to come night after night. But why had it changed? Why had her face become Kat Meriwether's face? He didn't want to think about the possible explanations. He didn't want to think about any of it! He wasn't a superstitious man, one given to premonitions or signs. But his confidence in his abilities as a lawman had been shaken because he'd underestimated the capacity of evil in one man. He hadn't seen the signs then. He didn't want to miss them now. So, if there were signs, even in his dreams, he needed to understand them.
Taking on textures and scents, the metallic smell of blood, the dream seemed even more real this time. His fingers held the memory of the soft hair at the nape of her neck, and the smell of lavender seemed even now to fill the room. The chestnut curls were those of the attractive young doctor. He closed his eyes, but the memory and the fragrance of her would not leave him.
"But Father, we've not stayed this long in one place before. Doesn't it make sense to pull up stakes now, before someone figures out what we're up to?" Ethan couldn't sit still any longer listening to his father discuss their next job with outrageous calm. He paced to the window and back again.
"Ethan, it's all under control." Hall sat back in his chair and pulled at the cigar clenched in his teeth. "You're worrying about a gnat. Doc Meriwether hasn't said anything and I doubt he will. And as far as that girl of his, well, all I need for you to do is apply a bit of that school-boy charm."
"But this isn't our style. We've always hit the fields where the strikes are new and the mines haven't been taken over by the big businesses. We've been in and out before they've organized. We're taking too many chances now. I've heard that the miners have hired more guards for the wagon runs." Ethan sensed he was talking to a wall, that his father had turned a deaf ear. This was different as well. Before coming here, he'd always managed to cajole his father into his way of thinking.
He glanced over to where a man sat in the shadowed corner of the room, the new man his father had bragged to Kat Meriwether would bring an end to the robberies. Ethan had experienced a growing sense of uneasiness from the first moment of their meeting, this man known only to him as Cahill.
He tried again. "Look, there's a new strike north, off the Snake River. I've heard they're pulling out a lot of color. The news is spreading and that means more mines and more ore to be packed out. Let's light out and get ourselves set up early."
Gilford Hall shook his head slowly, blowing a lazy curl of smoke from his fat lips. "That all sounds fine, but the fact is, I'm comfortable here." He squeezed his eyes shut and sucked his teeth before saying, "We've got a real sweet thing going here. I've earned some respect. I've got a fine house. I'd be a fool to give this up."
"You can do the same thing over towards Silver City. Let me take some of the men over to the new strike on the east side of the Sawtooth Range. We'll hit now before they can get organized, just like we've always done." Ethan despised himself for the pleading tone in his voice. But he couldn't shake the growing sense that their long string of luck was about to run out. It was time to fold. As surely as he knew it, he knew his father would not be persuaded to see the wisdom of moving on.
The man in the corner chuckled. "Seems your boy's backbone is turning to mush."
Ethan whirled on him, shooting him a narrowed-eyed challenge. "I've got plenty of grit, Cahill! What are you bringing to this?"
The man bored a hole through Ethan with dangerous eyes, his voice, deep and menacing. He patted the gleaming Colt strapped to his hip. "I got this."
Ethan felt his hackles rise. This was just the kind of powder keg of a man that would get them all hanged. He knew it as sure as he knew his father would not be persuaded to leave Snowberry. His father seemed deaf and dumb to the town rumblings growing against him. Either his arrogance or his ignorance had blinded him to the danger Ethan saw daily building around them.
Someone would connect the dots soon enough. When they did, he wanted to be long gone, as far from Snowberry as he could get, maybe even out of the territory. The irony was that the petite and beguiling Dr. Meriwether might be the one to fit those pieces together first. He didn't want to be around when she did. More to the point of it, he didn't want to be the one to stop her. But his father didn't need him for that anymore. He had Cahill.
Chapter 15
