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“Miss, my name is Brian Burke. People around here call me Burke. I work for Mr. Shaw.”
“Your eyes,” she whispered as fear trilled up her spine. She couldn’t blame a trick of the sunlight in here.
“It’s best if you don’t make observations like that out loud anymore, ma’am,” he said in a voice that sounded gravelly.
She didn’t understand. “Is there…is there something wrong with all of you?” she asked in a small voice.
Burke was a thin man with chestnut brown hair and a short, darker beard. He sat in a chair in the corner of the room, his black hat hanging from his knee. His gold eyes cooled as he put his hat on, pulled the brim low over his eyes and stretched his leg out.
“Did Mr. Shaw find Roy?”
“I can’t say, miss—”
“Eliza,” she introduced herself. “You can call me Eliza.”
“Eliza. They ain’t back yet. I’d say that means they found him, though.” His thin lips ticked into a small smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “If you need anything…well…just don’t need anything. I’ll be out front loading the wagon.” Burke stood and left the room, leaving her to wallow in her fears.
The room was small and housed a washbasin under a wood-framed mirror. A straight razor lay waiting by a pitcher, and the walls were unadorned. To her left was a small writing table with an oil lantern ready to battle the dark. A simple wooden chair sat in the corner and served as a stand for a black, knee-length duster jacket. Even the window lacked the color of curtains. The décor of the room was manly, clean, and simple. It lacked the touch of a woman. Did that mean Garret was unmarried? Stop it, Elizabeth, she thought angrily, punishing herself with her given name.
A vision came of Roy’s open stomach, and she balked against the memory.
She was confident in Garret. When Roy had been hurt, she had pointed Buck in Garret’s direction because she’d known he would be cognizant of what needed to be done. She looked down at her hands. They shook badly despite her determination not to fall to pieces. “Keep busy until I know more, then,” she said aloud, just to hear her own voice.
The reflection in the mirror extracted a shocked gasp. Her hair hung in loose curls, not a one remaining in its pins, and her face was pale and blotchy. Her dress was covered in a mixture of dirt, what smelled and looked like a streak of horse manure across the back, and blood from where she had wiped her hands after holding the rag over Roy’s wound. Ripped tendrils of petticoat hung from the bottom hem. Clearly, the light gray dress—her most appropriate for this life—was ruined.
“Cockchafer,” she whispered, turning again to scrutinize the smelly brown streak across her posterior.
Garret would save him. He would save Roy.
Ugh. She was horrifyingly filthy. Washing up would be her first order of business while she waited for news of Roy. She would have to find water, though, because the washbasin was empty. She emerged from the bedroom and ambled slowly into the living area, where she pulled up short. The bones of the cabin were the same, to be sure, but that was where the similarities to the house she remembered stopped. He had changed almost everything, and it gave her an odd sense of dizzying discomfiture to stand in a place so similar yet so different from her vivid memory of his old home.
Mrs. Shaw and Mother, who’d been dear and fast friends, spent a great deal of their spare time together in this cabin. While they’d visited, mostly complaining about the dust and heat and inconveniences of the wilderness, she’d been free to spend hours playing with Garret. Hide and seek. Rustlers stealing cattle. Jumping into the piles of soft, fragrant hay in the barn. Swirling around on a rope swing and climbing trees. Always climbing trees.
The Lazy S Ranch accommodated much more acreage, and subsequently, more head of cattle than Roy’s smaller homestead. The main house was also bigger than Roy’s, though she had forgotten just how much. Garret’s cabin boasted three fair-sized bedrooms, a small upstairs loft, a kitchen, and dining room big enough to fit a large dining table along with eight chairs of seating. Most of the furniture was unfamiliar, and that which she recognized had been rearranged, giving the home an altogether new and unexpected feel. She liked it. Everything was pristine and in its place. She hadn’t expected tidiness from an unattached man such as Garret, but perhaps he was attached. Perhaps his wife just had a simple decorating style.
Desperate to avoid Burke’s gaze falling on her manure-stained rump, she headed through the kitchen and out the back door. The pump was on the side of the house, but she could just as easily get to it from the back of the house as from the front. She filled a bucket and returned to Garret’s bedroom with it, closing the door firmly behind her. After she made the bed, she carefully removed her dress and scrubbed at the stains with a rag and water. At last, the dust and stain across the back were mostly gone, but the bloodied handprints were a permanent fixture as they’d had plenty of time to dry and set.
With a sigh, she set to washing herself as best she could without the convenience of an actual bathtub. She saved her long, auburn hair for last, and felt around in it for pins to refasten it. Only two remained. The rest presumably lay somewhere in the pasture between Roy’s place and Garret’s from her wild ride.
“Fine. Down it is.” She used the two pins to fasten the front of her hair to the sides, and rechecked it in the mirror. It was not her finest look. Oh, if only Mother could see her now.
Her appearance hadn’t improved much after all of her efforts, but she didn’t care as much as a lady probably ought. Mostly she was just trying to stay busy. Once dressed, she went into the den and waited in a large, comfortable chair by the cold hearth.
Hours later, according to the relentless ticking of the clock, she was joined by Burke. He’d brought over a dinner of beef stew and hard, yet edible, cornbread he’d made in the field hands’ cabin. Though she wasn’t hungry, Eliza set to the task of eating as if it were a chore. She would need her strength if she were going to tend to Roy like he would need.
She and Burke sat quietly in the den that night. Neither said much as they listened for any noise outside that would announce Garret’s return.
Garret and the other ranch hands had not returned by the time her eyelids grew too heavy to keep open, and she drifted off in the chair.
She awakened in the deep of night to the howl of a wolf. And then another joined in, and another.
Burke had nodded off in the corner of the den, but he’d perked up at the sound and was staring at the front door with an unfathomable expression in his unsettling eyes.
“I don’t remember there being wolves here before,” she uttered softly as chills rose along her forearms. “Only coyotes.”
Burke didn’t answer. Instead, he rose from the chair he’d been sitting in, pushed the front window curtains to the side, and started outside into the dark. “You should go to bed,” he said in a deep, rough voice that conjured even more chills up her skin.
“I can sleep in here just—”
