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“He was my best friend,” Henry said as if to himself. He stared at Evelyn, his eyes unfocused. “He was my best friend, and he murdered . . . Ma and Pa in cold blood.” His voice cracked. Evelyn moved quickly across the space that separated her from her brother. She placed a comforting hand on his arm, the tears falling freely down her cheeks.
“I held Pa in my arms while he gasped his last breath, Evie.” The horrible memory was clearly written on Henry’s face. “If Charlie hadn’t come along when he did, and shot at the damn bastard while he ran like a coward, Alex might have killed me, too.”
“I know,” Evelyn whispered, and wrapped her arms around her brother’s waist. He held her tightly, a shudder passing through his body. Right now, she couldn’t be mad at him for what he had done. Right now, her brother needed consoling. The death of their parents a month ago had shaken him badly, as it had her. Evelyn was still not completely clear on the events that had transpired that fateful day.
At her mother’s request, Evelyn had stayed the week with an elderly friend of the family whose husband had taken ill. While the woman tended to her husband, Evelyn cooked for her, and took care of basic chores around the house. Charlie had sent a boy with a message for her to come home straight away; that something horrible had happened. She’d found her parents dead, her mother’s throat slashed with a knife, and her brother hovering like a little child over their dead father.
Apparently, Henry had already gone to the fields with the team of mules while his father finished some work in the barn. No one had seen nor heard from Alexander Walker in nearly six years.
At about the same time, Charlie had come to pick up a piece of harness that Evelyn’s father helped him repair. According to Charlie, Alex came charging out of the house and headed straight for him. Luckily, he carried his hunting rifle with him. Raising the rifle, he had shot Alex in the chest, but the shot must not have killed him, for he ran off into the woods, and once again disappeared. The sound of gunshot had alerted Henry, who came back from the fields in time to hear his father’s final gasp for air.
Evelyn eased her hold around her brother’s waist. “Without the farm, what are you going to do?” she asked again.
Henry took a step back. He gripped her upper arms. Staring intently into her eyes, his facial muscles hard, he said, “I’m going after the bastard who killed our folks.”
A quiet gasp escaped Evelyn’s throat. Her eyes grew wide with disbelief. “You can’t go after him, Henry. He’ll kill you. You know nothing about the wilderness.”
“He has to be brought to justice, Evie,” Henry said, his fingers biting almost painfully into her skin. “I’m going to make him pay for what he did.”
“I can’t lose you, too,” Evelyn pleaded. “Don’t do this, Henry. How will you even find him?”
“I’ve hired some men to take me up the Missouri into what’s known as the Yellowstone country. These men know the wilderness. They’ll help me find him.”
“When?” Evelyn asked, her voice uncharacteristically shaky.
“I leave at first light.”
A sudden feeling of the world spinning and turning upside down came over her. In a matter of a few short minutes, her life was no longer her own, and she had lost everything she still held dear to her heart.
Chapter 2
Evelyn pulled the hat she wore further down onto her head and tucked some loose strands of hair under the cap. She wrapped Henry’s old wool coat tighter around herself, a slight shiver passing down her spine. Inhaling a deep breath, she hoped the fierce pounding of her heart would ease up, even as her apprehension grew. Her breath swirled in front of her as the early morning sun rose higher in the eastern horizon. She glanced at the many boats anchored along the banks of the Missouri River. The docks were already teaming with dozens of men loading and unloading cargo.
Her eyes traveled along the line of flatboats, barges, and longer keelboats until she spotted Henry standing with a rough-looking group of men near the plank of a keelboat. He looked out of place in his wool trousers and jacket, while the others were dressed mostly in buckskins and furs, many of them wearing fur hats. Each one of them appeared to be well armed with rifles and an assortment of weaponry hanging off their belts. Where had Henry found such an objectionable bunch of men to take him into the wilderness? Evelyn absently rubbed her fingers against the palms of her suddenly sweaty hands. She glanced over her shoulder at the path she had just come from. There was still time to turn around.
Squaring her shoulders, Evelyn raised her chin. She was not about to turn back. She had already made up her mind last night about what she was going to do. Having lost her appetite after Henry’s announcement that he planned to pursue Alex, and that he had given her away in marriage to someone she barely tolerated, she’d retired to her room. Tears of despair had rolled freely down her cheeks, followed quickly by tears of anger. A plan had slowly formed in her mind. She would not be left behind. Even if she remained at the farm that had always been her home, it would no longer be her home.
