He frowned at her.“You ain’t gonna run away?”
She scoffed and gestured toward the river and the trees surrounding them.“I was raised in New York City.I’m an unarmed woman in a place I’ve never seen before.How long would I survive out here if I ran away?”
“That shows good sense.”
He pulled a small knife from his boot and cut the rope on her wrists.The blade sliced through the cord like butter.Wendell tossed the rope into the creek, and it disappeared downstream.
“Thank you.”
She flexed her elbows and fingers and rubbed the welts where the rope had dug into her skin.Slipping her hands into the arms of the duster draped around her, she took a couple of tentative steps, feeling the blood flow back into her lower extremities.
He led the horses toward the pool of water above the shallows.“Git.We ain’t about to be lollygagging around here all day.”
“I’m going,” she told him, directing her steps toward the brush closer to the river.
“Only to them aspens,” he called out.“Don’t go no farther.”
“All right.All right.”Sheila walked, hurried a couple of steps and then walked again to where he was pointing.
She crouched behind the brush in a leaf-lined depression that appeared to be a branch of the creek that only filled during times of flooding.It ran straight down to the river, dropping off near the end.
She pulled up the duster and her skirts.As she relieved herself, she could see the top of a great snarl of fallen timber that the current had piled up at the river’s edge.Raising herself slightly, she spied Wendell with the horses by the creek, filling his water flask.The horses were both standing in the pool, drinking.
The earthy smells of evergreen needles and last year’s decaying leaves filled her senses.The sound of the waterfall blended with the rush of the river.Her eye was drawn upward to the expanse of blue skies above the bare, tangled branches of the aspens and the silver tips of the spruces.
The world around her seemed to be so finely drawn, so exquisitely sharp in every detail and scent.She chuckled to herself that she should feel this now, at a time when her life was in jeopardy.Perhaps, she thought, it was precisely because of the danger she was facing.
For the first time, she felt the incredible beauty and the allure of this country.It was all so wild and untouched by man, so different from the crowds and the filth of the city.
And for one impossible moment, she understood why a man like Caleb Marlowe might look at these mountains and choose loneliness over drawing rooms, danger over comfort, open sky over every safe...and suffocating...thing she had left behind.
When she left New York, spring had only begun to touch the neighborhoods of Manhattan.The daffodils were beginning to bloom, yellow and lovely, in the churchyard of the Presbyterian Church across Fifth Avenue from her grandparents’ brownstone mansion at the corner of Twelfth Street.But so many of the city’s smoke-filled streets were still knee-deep with the muck of a late snow and the endless rain that had followed.
The city was a place filled with self-inflicted problems and dangers.From the Broadway rum palaces to the gin mills of the Bowery to the bucket shops of the Five Points, Manhattan was reeling with drunkenness and crime.Poverty had no place in her family’s neighborhood, but a person could see it everywhere if they opened their eyes.The immigrants hawking their wares on the streets.The streetwalkers who would appear at dusk by the wrought iron gates of the parks.The filthy little boys jammed into the chimneys for the monthly cleaning.And the footpads roaming the shadows at night, looking for nobs and swells to prey on, didn’t choose that life because they had summer mansions to pay for on Long Island or in Newport.
From what Sheila had seen, Elkhorn and Colorado had its share of lawlessness, to be sure.But at moments like this, with the clean air filling her lungs, with green vistas and shimmering water everywhere, she understood why her father and so many others came here and stayed.
The sound of a horse being reined in near the creek jarred her from her moment of reverie.She shook her head, wondering how she could be so whimsical about things when she was in the clutches of hard, desperate men.She didn’t know if she’d survive the day, and here she was ready to paint a picture of it.
“Where is she?”Dodger’s voice was brusque and demanding.
“Water your horse.She’ll be back in a dang minute.”
Sheila raised herself enough to straighten her skirts.She had no desire to spend any more time with Dodger than she needed to.
“Which direction did she go?”There was a hard note in the rogue’s tone that made Sheila’s blood run cold.
If Wendell answered, she didn’t hear it.She peered over the top of the hollow at the two outlaws.
Dodger swung to the ground, and his mount clopped to the creek to drink with the other horses.
Wendell was still crouched by the pool, splashing water on his face.Dodger stood behind him, his eyes scanning the terrain around them.He was obviously searching for her.
“Hear that?”the older man asked, standing up.He was looking back the way they’d come.
“I don’t hear nothing.”
As Wendell moved past his partner, Sheila saw the gleam of the blade in Dodger’s hand.There was no time to shout a warning.There was no time for anything.
