Prologue Read online

  Ned removed the peppermint stick from his mouth, bit off a chaw of tobacco, and replaced the candy. "Reckon McGuire's going to file a claim?"

  "Now that's the funny part," Albert replied, pleased to be able to provide new information. "He says he's already got a claim. You s'pose he bought Frank's parcel from Chloe?"

  Tar made a strangled noise. "By Jasper! That stranger is goin' prospectin' around me. Frank's claim is only half a mile from mine!"

  * * *

  Chloe stood in the doorway separating her bedroom from the nursery. The last of the day's sun brightened the rooms with low golden light, as though the thunderstorm last night had never taken place.

  She had dragged through the long day with a tight knot in her stomach that made her feel sick and guilty. Why should she feel guilty? she demanded of herself. She hadn't left Travis, he'd left her. Finally, she'd forced herself to eat a little dinner and then wandered up here.

  She went into the nursery and sat on the rocker, holding her rag doll on her lap. Gently rocking, her eyes closed and she remembered sitting here before, while Travis was sick. It was easier to think of him as angry and hostile, the way he'd been when she met him. But her mind was not going to allow her an easy way out and instead showed her pictures of him achingly handsome without his beard, smiling at her, kissing her, loving her. . . .

  Her eyes snapped open and she impatiently rose from the rocker and went back to her own room. She'd banish him to a little-used corner of her memory, she told herself. It would just take some time. She flopped on the bed, burying her face in the pillow, and the unmistakable scent of him rose from the linens.

  Oh, God, she mourned, her guilt rising to assail her again. How would she ever forget? How could she forget the way he looked when she screamed that word at him this morning? He stiffened like she'd shot him in the back, but he kept walking. And now added to her sense of loss was the miserable certainty that Travis McGuire would hate her for the rest of his life.

  * * *

  Early the next morning Chloe put on her good skirt and blouse, then paced in the kitchen for an hour until it was time for the bank to open.

  Her sleep had been fitful. Sometimes she'd been awakened from her half-consciousness by the ringing anvil, only to realize it was the tinny chimes of the parlor clock striking every hour. Just before dawn, she had flung back the sheet and got up. Her hand mirror had shown her eyes with faint purple smudges under them and two frown lines on her forehead that looked like an angry quotation mark. At least one good thing had come of this heartache and it had been her original goal: the mortgage would be paid.

  Now, finally at the bank, she lifted the leather-bound box from her lap and placed it on Grady Hewitt's desk. "I think we have a little business to conduct," she said with a smile. She'd actually worn a hat for her walk down here, feeling the occasion warranted the formality.

  The bank was one of Misfortune's more august structures. Built thirty years earlier to transact hundreds of thousands of dollars in gold, it still maintained an air of faded dignity even though only Grady and an ancient clerk still worked there.

  Grady leaned forward in his chair, looking even more relieved than she was. "I can't tell you how glad I am to see you here today, Chloe, and two weeks early at that," he said with obvious sincerity "I'd hate like the very devil to foreclose on you, but it's not up to me. You know if it was, I'd tear up that mortgage right now."

  "I know, and I appreciate that," she replied, smiling again. She pushed the box across the desk to him. "I believe you'll find it's all here. But I had some sleepless nights, I can tell you."

  Chloe was surprised to hear herself admit that. It wasn't like her to be so open.

  She watched as he counted the gold and silver coins, counting with him in her head. When he handed her the receipt, she looked at the paper that gave her the right to live in her home for one more year and carefully placed it in the box. A year was a long time and she'd find a way to make the payment again.

  "What became of your shop? I hear your blacksmith left," Grady said while walking her to the door.

  She saw the apprehensive look on his face, as though he realized he may have asked a question she felt was nosy. She tipped her head, hoping her wistfulness didn't show.

  "We agreed that he would stay long enough to help me make this payment. There were reasons other things that—he had to move on." Her words trailed off into silence, then she roused herself and put out her hand. “Well, Mr. Hewitt, I'll be back next year."

  He shook hands with her. With the leather-bound box tucked under her arm, she turned for the home she'd saved. When she got to the backyard she paused at the shop's side door, her hand on the knob, debating whether to go in. Resolutely, she turned it and stepped inside.

  It was dark, with the big door closed, and it seemed crowded with the spirits of the men who'd worked there. Slowly she walked to the forge and felt the low heat radiating from it. Travis had banked the fire before he left, probably out of habit. That it was still warm after two days was evidence of his skill.

  Tears threatened her again and she pushed them back. She hadn't cried since he left and she wasn't going to break down now. She'd get over him, she told herself yet again. It would just take a little time. She turned swiftly and crossed the dry yard to change her clothes to begin work.

  That evening, she fixed a special dinner to celebrate her victory. From her place at the table, where she sat alone, she glanced around the room remembering how frightened she'd been that night she was forced to hire Travis. She'd worried that all her belongings and furniture would be sold out from under her if she couldn't raise the money she needed.

  She'd succeeded, with his help. But while relieved beyond measure that she still had her home, somehow the triumph wasn't as thrilling as she'd imaged it would be.

  She looked at the chair opposite her that he'd occupied for a short while, then lifted her coffee cup a kind of toast.

  "Congratulations to me."

  * * *

  Swayback Blevins interrupted his singing to jovially curse the mule team he drove. "Heyup there, sorry bastards, keep a-movin'. We gotta get this of bacon and sugar to them fellers at the Lady Belle Mine and the day is about gone." He really didn’t intend for the animals to increase their speed. He just swore at them now and then for good measure.

  The big wagon they pulled rocked down a narrow road in the shadow of the Blue Mountains. Lazy and shallow under the late summer sky, the Burnt River drifted alongside. To the clatter of hooves and jingling bit and harness, Swayback resumed his off-key bawling.

  Presently, he rounded a curve in the road and spotted a youngster at the river's edge watering his horse. While the horse drank, Swayback saw the youth wiping the dust from a long rifle with a square of cloth, then check the rounds in his revolver.

  Alerted by the noisy wagon, the boy glanced up as he holstered his pistol. His eyes shaded by his broad-brimmed hat, he never looked away from Swayback's hands where they held the reins. He gripped the rifle, the barrel leaning back against his shoulder, his finger on the trigger.

  Swayback pulled on the lines and the team came to a halt some yards distant. It was odd to see a boy that young with so much ammunition. Still, this could be rough country at times and it wasn't impossible to have a scrape with a rowdy miner or an insulted Indian. A body ought to be prepared, he supposed.

  "Howdy" Swayback called. "You got trouble?" He leaned over and aimed a hefty stream of tobacco juice at the dirt.

  "Not yet," the youth replied. His voice was low and resonant, like an adult's. "Unless you're bringing some."

  "No, no, not me. I'm Swayback Blevins," he offered. "Swayback on account of a mule what fell on me when I was 'bout your age. Now I just drive 'em, I don't try to ride 'em. I have the route from here to La Grande. What's your name, son?"

  “Jace Rankin."

  Swayback repeated the name in his mind, wondering why it sounded familiar. Then it came to him. "The bounty hunter
?" he asked, incredulous. He nearly swallowed his chaw trying not to laugh at the swaggering pup. In his travels around the state, Swayback had heard of Rankin. Ice-cold, hard, fearless, he could make a man wet his drawers just by looking at him, that's what they said about the bounty hunter. In a pig's eye, this boy was Jace Rankin. It was on the tip of his tongue to say, "Run along now, son. Your mama must be looking for you."

  At that moment the stranger left his horse and approached the wagon, leaning the rifle against his leg.

  He pulled a silver dollar from the watch pocket in his jeans and sent it spinning into the air. When he tipped his head up to look at Swayback, the old teamster felt a sudden disadvantage in having the low sun in his eyes. And in that instant he knew the critical blunder he'd almost made.

  "You say you run this road often?" Rankin asked. The coin flashed as it spun. He caught it on the back of his hand and looked at the side facing up. Swayback nodded, still trying to grasp the contrast of what he'd supposed Rankin looked like compared to what he saw before him.

  “I saw a fork back there a couple of miles. One sign pointed toward Baker City. The other pointed to a place called Misfortune." He glanced back toward that fork, then up at Swayback "If you wanted to hide, which town would you go to?"

  Swayback leaned forward eagerly, his fear set aside. "You lookin' for someone? A bank robber? Or maybe a killer."

  Rankin smiled slightly. "Heads, Baker City. Tails, Misfortune. Which would you choose?"

  The driver waved his hand. "Hell, there ain't nothin' in Misfortune. It's almost a ghost town and it’s easier to hide in a bigger place with more people. Being an outsider is too hard, 'specially for a sociable man like myself. I'd go to Baker City."

  Rankin flipped the coin once more and caught it on the back of his hand. When he lifted his palm, he studied it and nodded, as if to himself. Then he tossed the dollar into Swayback's hand.

  "Thanks," Rankin said. He picked up his rifle and walked back to his horse.

  * * *

  Travis looked down on Misfortune from his vantage point in the hills. Another long day was nearly over. On the western horizon the sun had dropped behind clouds that wouldn't come close enough to bring more rain.

  He sat cross-legged on a boulder, absently tying knots in a dry stalk of grass. He opened his hands and looked at the blisters formed on them from swinging the pick into soil as hard as granite. He'd started in as soon as he found Chloe's claim. She was right. This was backbreaking work, monotonous work. In the week he'd been here, and with water he got from the El Diablo ditch that ran behind the claim, he felt like he'd panned all the dirt in the hillside. But among the sticks, grass, bugs, clay, and mud, all he'd found were a few flakes.

  Then that old coot had hobbled over from the other side of the mountain with his mule, asking all kinds of nosy questions and acting as though Travis were trespassing. He smelled so gamy, Travis struggled to stay upwind of him.

  He looked down at his jeans that were caked with mud up to his knees. Huh, he might not smell much better himself when he ran out of that chunk of Chloe's soap that he'd brought with him.

  He tried to keep his gaze from straying to the blacksmith shop on the west end of town, but time and again he caught himself staring at it. He'd searched out Chloe's roof his first day up here. Her last word to him still rang in his head. When she'd yelled "jailbird" at him, it had been like hearing it again for the first time, compounded a hundredfold.

  What did she want from him, anyway? He'd gone to work for her when she couldn't find anyone else, he'd helped her make that payment, and he'd taken nothing.

  He'd held her in his arms and taken something she could give only once.

  His conscience stirred.

  When he'd left Chloe's house, Travis had every intention of going to the Silver Creek Ranch. It would have been best if he left this town and never saw her again. But these hills were a good hiding place. Their height gave him a view of anyone approaching and he could stay up here.

  These hills were also close to her.

  What the hell, he pondered, he might get lucky and strike it rich. If he did, he'd share with her any gold he found. Maybe giving her a little financial security would get her out of his heart and off his conscience. Then he remembered Evan Peterson. If Peterson was so wonderful, he could take care of her, although he doubted the fool could wipe his own nose without help.

  But the thought of her sharing with Peterson what she'd given to him was almost unbearable. And worse than that was the vague sense of worry that plagued him whenever he imagined Chloe legally chained to that man in a loveless, maybe even risky, marriage.

  He shouldn't care and wished that he didn't, but he seemed to have lost his ability to shut off painful thoughts. Disgusted, he tossed away the grass stem.

  He got to his feet and took one last look at the house on the edge of town.

  "If I can sleep tonight, I guess I'll be dreaming about you again."

  * * *

  The evening was unusually warm, the tail end of a blistering hot day. Nothing moved—not the air, not the birds, not the temperature. Chloe sat on the porch swing with her dinner plate on her lap, her blouse and camisole unbuttoned halfway down her bodice. She'd taken off her shoes and stockings and pulled her skirt up to her knees. With one foot tucked under her she kept the other on the floorboards to nudge the swing.

  She picked at her food, telling herself she had no appetite because of the heat. She'd pushed herself hard today, standing over the washtub this morning, ironing this afternoon, certain that she'd be so exhausted she'd get a decent night's sleep.

  Travis had been gone six days and by strength of will Chloe was finally able to think about him without getting that squeezing catch in her chest every single time. Even when Albert had given her a detailed account of everything Travis had bought, she'd expressed only mild interest and then steered the shopkeeper off to another topic. The comfort of knowing he'd gone to the claim was mixed. He was close, about ten miles from town, but with the way they'd parted, he might as well be on the moon.

  She glanced at the plate on her lap and gave up the idea of finishing it. A cool bath held far more appeal. She was just about to get up when Evan appeared at the fence.

  She was so surprised to see him, she gaped.

  He wore the same black suit he'd always worn hen he came to call on her, and his horseshoe of hair was slicked down with Macassar oil. He held a bouquet of drooping wildflowers and stared back at her, his eyes glittering oddly.

  When she realized what he was looking at, she hastily pulled her skirt down and buttoned her blouse. There was nothing she could do about her feet. She'd left her shoes in the house.

  “Hello, Chloe," he said. She was quick to note he'd dropped the more formal "miss" he'd always used.

  “Hello, Evan."

  He opened the gate and came up the walk, then at the bottom of the stairs. "Well, are you going to invite me to sit down?"

  She was immediately aware of a difference in him she wasn't sure it was for the better.

  “Yes, Evan, please do." She scooted over on the wing to make room for him.

  He held the flowers out to her and she took them, feeling uneasy. Chloe hadn't seen him since that day month earlier at the Tollivers's, and she herself was forever changed from the woman who'd gone to visit him that afternoon. Travis, and the rapture and the pain he'd brought her, had given her insight that would keep her from looking at things the same way again. But when Evan sat next to her, with his faintly musty smell, the same old urge to pull away was stronger than ever.

  "I would have been here sooner," he began, "but I've been helping at the farm with the harvest. I just found out this afternoon that McGuire is gone at last."

  The wound was still too new for Chloe to hear this without feeling a sharp twinge. She only nodded.

  "I'm glad you finally came to your senses and realized how much you risked by keeping him here. Now we can be married with no misunderstandings
between us. Just name the day."

  Chloe stared at him. Did he really believe that things would simply continue from where they'd left off? And he still seemed to have no grasp of the main reason Travis had worked there.

  "Evan, I needed Travis's help to make the mortgage payment. You know that."

  "Hmm, yes, well, and I assume you have, so that's behind us now. We'll carry on as though McGuire never existed," he asserted and let his arm rest along the top of the seat.

  She could marry him, she supposed. She had no future with Travis. It wouldn't be a very satisfying life but she'd have the companionship she had thought she wanted.

  Chloe immediately abandoned the idea. Even if she'd never met Travis McGuire, being alone for the rest of her days would be preferable to living with Evan. After what she'd shared with Travis that rainy night last week, the idea of Evan and—and she—oh, God, it was too horrible to even think about.

  Travis had been right. Being married to Evan would be a living hell.

  She retreated to the corner of the swing, trying to remove herself both from him and his arm, which threatened to drop across her shoulders any moment.

  "Evan, when you first proposed to me two months ago, I never gave you my answer." She looked into his pale face and continued gently. "It would be a mistake for us to marry. We don't love each other and we don't have enough in common to overcome that. Our lives would be . . . " She paused, searching for a way to describe what she meant. "Our lives would be lonely."

  His lashless eyes assessed her with an appraising harshness she'd not seen in them before now. "Did McGuire tell you that?" he demanded. "You are far too practical to have come up with such a notion on your own."

  “I beg your pardon," she returned icily.

  “You can't live in this house by yourself forever. Women who live alone get talked about."

  "Oh? And who's doing most of the talking, Evan?" she inquired. "You?"

  He had the grace to look uncomfortable for a moment. "Even though that drifter ruined your reputation, and probably more, I am still willing to make you my wife."