Cale threw himself into haying and fence-mending and anything else that kept his mind off Ella Canaday. But nothing worked for more than an hour or two, then he’d be right back where she left him at the top of the stairs, watching her fancy boots carry her down the hall and out of his life.
Satisfied the new patch in the north fence would hold, he shoved the wire cutters in his back pocket, swung into the saddle, and turned for the house. Was Ella still in Cañon City, or had the company pulled up stakes and left? Did she get those pictures developed? Might she consider staying on for a little longer? Like forever?
He barked out a laugh, and Doc flicked an ear his way.
After three days listening to Hugh chew on the same old bone about how she’d run him off his feed and left him high and dry, Cale did better on his own, away from everyone else and the temptation to snap their heads off. He hadn’t started spittin’ yet, but he was giving it serious consideration.
The sun beat down clear and bold, no clouds to leverage the heat. But iron-bellied clouds teased over the mountain peaks boding a summer storm. With plans to stake out a calf at a small lake on Crossett’s spread, he and the other ranchers might get more than a bear for their trouble tonight.
If only that were all that ate at him. His head and gut churned with more than a cattle-killing bear. He’d waited a long time for the right woman. He just hadn’t figured she’d show up with a moving-picture company sporting bobbed hair and city duds.
But Ella Canaday suited him right down to the ground.
Now all he had to do was convince her.
Coming upon the meadow where they’d spent the afternoon, he reined in at the north edge. June-green with sweet grass and wildflowers, it lay like a thick carpet. A family of mule deer fed off at one end, the lead doe’s head high, watching Cale. Two younger does, a yearling, and several spotted fawns grazed nearby, their long ears swiveling, catching every sound, whether squirrel or jay or Doc swishing his tail.
He angled toward the barn, flushing quail from a juniper thicket. Their heavy, startled flapping evidenced why they skittered along the ground most of the time. Still, they stuck together. A family.
Late afternoon, he and Tug set out for Crossett’s. Grady had offered a bucket calf, and the bear-hunt bunch agreed to stake it out where they’d found bear tracks along a watering hole. Hugh said he’d meet up with him there. From the roll of slate-gray clouds tumbling into the valley, they’d all better hurry.
Once over the ridge that bordered the Rafter-H on the southwest, the high park opened up like a mountain prairie, and Doc took easy to the level, grassy land. Cale’s mind opened as well. His thoughts didn’t crowd each other but spread out like grazing cattle with room to roam. And the Lord Himself seemed to ride herd on those thoughts, turning one this way and another that.
A heavy sigh rolled out, and Cale’s gaze ran along the distant line of jagged peaks. “I could sure use some help, Lord.” Doc swiveled his ears at the low prayer. “With Hugh and his hard-edged ways. The cattle and whatever’s gettin’ after them.
“Ella.” Her name slipped out on a whisper with a rope attached and dallied to his heart.
A distinct impression tugged on that rope and left him knowing he had to talk to her. Had to tell her how he felt and find out firsthand if she was willing to share her past with him. Because sharing was what life amounted to out in this high-park country. A man shared his life and his labor, his wins and his losses.
Some tried to go it alone, but they didn’t last long.
He and Hugh and the boys all had each other, but it wasn’t the same. Their ma had often said two were better than one, teasing them as twins, since they usually fought over who got what. But he’d looked that passage up in the family Bible after Hugh lost Jane, and figured it wasn’t talking about twin brothers.
Since Ella Canaday came to town, he was more convinced than ever.
Thunder growled long and low, rolling off a distant range and dragging near-black storm clouds with it.
He heeled Doc into a lope.
~
Crossett and Hugh sat back on the high ground, holding Grady’s reins as he staked the calf. Once the little fella was secure, Grady backed his way off the sandy patch, sweeping a good-sized juniper branch over his tracks, flushing his smell.
Lightning hit across the valley, and the horses flinched. Crossett’s buckskin danced in place, but the old rancher held him short and kept him from bolting.
“Heck of a night to lay wait for a bear.” Grady tossed the branch aside and swung up. “Won’t be sittin’ it out in that aspen thicket.”
The storm front teased into the valley, and Cale turned his collar up, the smell of rain heavy and fresh. “I rode through a hollow that’ll hold us till the storm passes. If you don’t mind gettin’ wet.”
“Better wet than fried.” Hugh spit and turned Shorty in the direction Cale had come. “We can cover in the thicket after the storm blows over.”
Crossett called his hound to follow, and the men spread out along the depression and dismounted, reins in one hand, rifles in the other. Cale untied his slicker, glad of it, and screwed his hat down, praying they’d not get hail.
Lightning hit a hundred yards ahead, just past the watering hole, and the calf bawled. Another spear of hot, blue light, and Cale doubted any bear would be out on a night like this. A fat raindrop hit the back of his gun hand, followed quickly by another. Within two swishes of the calf’s tail, the sky busted open. Doc’s ears splayed side to side and a back leg cocked as he settled in for the downpour. Water ran off the brim of Cale’s hat, a regular waterfall in his line of sight to the calf. Too late he regretted not tarping his saddle. Slicker or no, a wet seat on the ride home would soak him to the bone.
Lightning danced across the valley, blown by a strong westerly wind, and as suddenly as it had started, the rain stopped. Silence settled over the men and horses, save for the trickle of a quick stream.
No one made to move from their cover. Cale glanced at Grady, his trail-covering a wasted effort. No scent remained after a gully-washer like that, and if there was a grizzly out there, it could lumber up on them without knowing they were there. The back of his neck crawled.
The calf bawled—a hopeless sound on a rain-washed night. Cale could just make out its form in the dusk, thanks to the fast-moving storm. With its back to the water, it stretched to the end of its tether, lonesome and abandoned, a sacrifice for every other bovine in the area.
But for good reason.
Time stood still. Stringy clouds scuttled across the sky, pulling stars in their wake, and Cale rolled his shoulders and stretched his neck. A slivered moon peeked over the eastern ridge that marked the Rafter-H, and the scent of wet grass filled his nostrils. Coyotes yipped in the distance. The calf bawled.
What felt like hours later, Crossett’s hound whined, and he hushed it. Tug sat up and cocked his ears, and Cale lamented not leaving him behind. The calf bolted in a half-arc, away from the aspen thicket like the secondhand on a watch.
A breeze still trailed the storm, which left them downwind.
Brush crackled.
A hulking shadow lumbered across the open space between thicket and water hole, puffing and snorting. Rifle chambers loaded. He aimed.
The night split open with gun fire, and the calf took off across the meadow, its rope shot through, but not the bear. It loped over a small rise to live another day.
Hugh spit. A couple men swore, but no one offered to chase a mad and possibly wounded bear in the dark of night.
Gunpowder tainted the air, masking the clean smell of rain-washed earth. Cale gathered Doc and swung up to a wet saddle.
“At least we know it’s not a phantom.” Brady sheathed his rifle and mounted. “I’ll come back at daylight for the calf.”
“If he wanders our way, we’ll gather him for you,” Hugh offered.
“Much obliged.”
“I’ll take the dogs out in the next couple of days,” Crossett said. “See if we can find a trail. We can’t give up now.”
Cale resituated his hat, in complete agreement. They’d have to finish what they started, and they needed to do it before fall. That meant they had a couple months before cold hit the high country.
He joined Hugh for the ride home, Tug trotting along behind.
The whole situation felt like Old Mose all over again.
~
Ella clutched the bedding beneath her chin, eyes squeezed tight against the blinding light. Every muscle clenched. Another hit.
“One thousand,” she mouthed, not reaching the second number before thunder rattled the windows of her hotel room.
Unbidden, the scenery changed, dragged from the stage of her sleep-deprived mind as rain lashed Charles’s automobile, washing like a river across the windshield.
“I can’t see a blasted thing! Oh God, help us. I can’t see the road!” His hands gripped the steering wheel, his face ghost-white in the lightning’s flash.
The car slid. Charles turned the wheel, but it was no use. A horse screamed, illuminated by blinding blue, up on its back legs and pawing the air.
It crashed through the windshield into Charles. Both car and horse slid off the road and rolled. Fire shot through Ella’s leg as it snapped. And then everything stopped—the engine, Charles’s frantic prayers. The horse’s screams. Everything but the rain.
She bolted upright, gasping for breath, her lungs seared. Knives cut through her thigh, and she gripped it with her right hand, shocked to find it in one piece and dry. Blinking she looked around the room, dimly lit by the streetlamps below. Thunder rolled in the distance. She threw the covers back and sat for a moment on the edge of the bed, mentally groping for her bearings.
With a hand on her nightstand, she stood, and the teardrop beads of the lamp’s shade betrayed her trembling. Two halting steps took her to the dressing table, where she bypassed the small drinking glass and tipped the carafe to her mouth. Water escaped to run down her neck and beneath her gown, cooling her feverish skin.
Still shaking, she set down the carafe, pushed it back from the edge, and stumbled to the bed. Curling onto her left side, she hugged her knees. Tears ran across her face and onto the bed linen, but sleep fled with the storm.
It was the first time since coming to Colorado—the first sleepless night, the first return of the nightmare. The first storm. Like the one that took Charles’s life and her strength—an early and unexpectedly harsh spring storm.
But this was June, and she was a thousand miles away in Colorado. Cale had warned her about the sudden summer squalls, how they rolled into the high country and could catch a person unaware. She shivered and reached for the blanket.
Aching and tight, she watched the east window of her room until the black square dimmed to gray. Against the will of every muscle in her weary body, she pulled the coverlet around her shoulders and made her way to the window. Buildings blocked the sunrise but for a line of blood-red across the open roadway, seeping beneath low clouds. Time slowed, and crimson crept into the cloudbank, firing it from within.
Thou makest the outgoings of the morning and evening to rejoice. The phrase always came to mind at a glorious sunrise or sunset. And she’d always marveled that such a phrase was found in the poetry of the Psalms. Who but one who had seen the splendor could write such things?
Her chest released its frantic grip, her fingers their stingy hold of the coverlet. A new day rose before her. Never before used and carrying promise.
~
Clara was not to be fooled. Hands on hips and brows pulled as low as dawn’s reddening cloud line, she tsked Ella into the kitchen’s single chair. “Did our thundersome rain-maker scare you last night, or you been pining for that dirty ol’ cowboy?”
In spite of herself, Ella lost her hold on a smile and picked up the coffee waiting on the table next to a plate of gravy-covered biscuits. Her stomach moaned with anticipation. “I did think about him, but not in that way.”
“Humph.” Clara turned back to her stove as if she weren’t interested.
The tact worked.
“When I was at the Rafter-H, Cale told me about the sudden storms here, how they could roll across a mountain valley with little to no warning and drench a person caught unawares.”
“That’s true enough.” A glance flew over her shoulder. “You afraid of lightning?”
With puffy eyelids and dark moons circling her eyes, Ella knew denial would be taken as a bald-faced lie. “Not exactly.”
Another glance invited her to expound.
The spicy-sausage aroma demanded attention and she cut into a gravy-topped biscuit. “It brings back bad memories.” Sensing that Clara was as generous a soul as Helen, she pushed against the second layer of rock wall encasing her heart. “I was in a motorcar accident a year ago last March. During an unseasonably fierce rainstorm in Chicago.”
Clara’s salt-and-pepper head nodded in rhythm with her stirring spoon.
“I lost the two things most important to me in life: my fiancé, Charles, and the ability to ride.” She shoved in a bite, bidding for silence and time.
“And that’s why you come all the way out here with them moving-picture folks. Runnin’ from your past.”
A second forkful stopped halfway to her mouth. Such a remark was not the compassion and understanding she’d expected. How dare Clara tell her she was running away. She laid her fork on the plate and pressed the napkin to her lips, intent on leaving as quickly—but politely—as possible.
Clara had other plans.
She moved to the counter, rolling her hands in her apron as if rubbing off the aroma of her talents. Sadder, truer eyes had never gained a hold on Ella, so full of pain and wisdom and caution all rolled into an unearthly mix.
“We all lose something precious to us some time or other, but it’s how we handle it that makes us who we are.” She picked up her large coffee pot and filled Ella’s cup. Then her voice dropped to a soft timbre, like a mother soothing a wounded child. “You can’t undo the past, girl, so there’s no use wastin’ away for it. It’ll cripple you for sure if you spend your heart wishin’ for what you can’t have. Best leave it in the Lord’s hands. They mighty big.”
Ella blinked back tears and picked up her hot cup, closing her eyes against the steam that washed her swollen cheeks the way Clara’s tender words washed her soul.
“But this old woman could be wrong.”
The clear contradiction jerked her eyes open.
“Could be the good Lord brought you all the way out here His own self.” With that, Clara ambled back to her stove, set the pot down with a firm hand, and raised a wooden spoon. “You best be gettin’ on. Can’t have those fancy folks wondering what become of their seamstress.”
Clara’s words played over and over in Ella’s mind as she walked to the studio. Like a one-reel moving picture, they rewound and flooded light into her clouded emotions, opening possibilities beyond what she dared wish for. She had no idea what those possibilities might be, but the very idea that they existed spawned hope where none had lived for fifteen dark and lonely months.
“Just in time.”
Thorson’s commanding voice broke into her reverie, and she pulled the studio door closed behind her.
“We’re filming at the river again. The footage we got earlier was ruined in development. We’ll need extra costumes for Jed and Mabel, just in case something goes wrong. We leave in a half hour.”
That meant they’d leave as soon as possible. Ella gathered riding skirts, boots, hats, and the shirts Jed preferred. Reaching for extra scarves, she dislodged a wig that tumbled to the floor with a thump.
Wigs didn’t thump.
Stooping, she picked up the hair piece, and out tumbled her Nana’s sewing kit. A gasp caught in her throat and she clutched the kit to her waist, looking over her shoulder for anyone who might be watching from the wings. Finding no one, at least no one she could see, she tucked the kit in her satchel and continued gathering costumes.
But something else Thorson had said stuck in her mind like a splinter—development. She’d completely forgotten to ask at the newspaper office if they could develop her film. Not that it couldn’t wait until she returned to Chicago, but Cale wanted to see her photographs of the two arguing cowboys.
A memory spun through her of his gentleness the evening he carried her up the stairs. If only . . .
An automobile backfired, destroying the mood. It was just as well. She had no time for pointless reminiscing, nor time for checking with the newspaper. Her film would simply have to wait until another day—if she had another day plus the time it took to develop her pictures. Mr. Thorson had not yet announced when the company was leaving.