Elizabeth Lane - Wyoming Widow

Placing the candle where its light would fall on the open page, she finished making the tea. Then, cradling the chipped white cup between her hands, she sank onto a wooden box and began to read.

The room was a blanket of darkness around her, the tea warm and comforting in her belly. By the time she reached the second column of the news article the print had begun to blur. Cassandra’s eyelids drooped lower and lower. She had been up since dawn looking for work, and she was tired. So very tired…

Startled, she jerked awake. The candle had guttered to half its original length. She had dozed off, Cassandra realized groggily. What time was it? What had awakened her?

As she leaned forward to blow out the candle, plunging the room into full darkness, she heard the low metallic click of a key sliding into a lock.

Instantly wide-awake, she sprang to brace the door. It crashed open, knocking her to one side as Seamus Hawkins lurched across the threshold.

“Awright, girlie.” His voice was slurred, and his body stank of cheap whiskey. “I’m back t’ finish what we started. No need t’ fight me, now. You’ll start likin’ it once I git it ’twixt them sweet little legs o’ yours.”

Cassandra had been thrown back against the wall. As he stumbled toward her, she groped for a weapon, anything she could use to defend herself.

Her hand closed on an iron bootjack with a weighted base—a silly extravagance, she’d called it when Jake had brought it home, as if a man couldn’t pull off his boots with his own two hands. It was heavy and solid, but not long enough to keep Seamus at a distance. Her best chance lay in keeping away from him until she could reach the door and flee into the night.

Hoping to confuse him, she picked up a tin cup from the counter and tossed it across the room. It clattered in the darkness, bouncing against a table leg and onto the floor. Distracted, Seamus swung toward the sound, allowing Cassandra a split second to change her position. Not that it made any difference. He still stood between her and the door.

She shrank into a shadowed corner of the tiny cabin. The mica panes on the door of the stove glowed like little red eyes, giving the darkness a hellish cast. And it would be hell if he caught her. Being raped was unspeakable enough, but if he should hurt her baby, her darling…

Cassandra’s grip tightened on the bootjack. She could hear the rasp of breath in her throat—the breath of a hunted, desperate animal.

Seamus must have heard it, too, for he suddenly turned, blocking the light of the stove as he lumbered straight toward her. “I got you cornered now, you little hellcat!” he wheezed. “Now, I won’t mind if you put up a fuss. A good rasslin’ match gits me as hard as a—”

Cassandra flung the bootjack at his head with all her strength. It glanced off his forehead, doing only superficial damage, but the blow was enough to throw him off balance. As he reeled backward, out of control, one foot landed on the tin cup that had rolled to the middle of the floor. For a split second his legs splayed wildly. His arms flailed like berserk windmills. With a shriek, he pitched backward.

Cassandra heard the awful crunch of bone as the back of his head struck a corner of the iron stove. Then Seamus Hawkins crashed to the floor and lay still.

Morgan Tolliver stood on the porch of the sprawling log-and-stone ranch house. His raven eyes, a legacy from his Shoshone mother, narrowed as they studied the afternoon sky.

Virga. That’s what they called the phantom rain that hung below the clouds, vaporizing in the heat before the drops could reach the ground. His eyes could see rain, his nostrils could even smell it. But he knew this ghost rain would do nothing for the sun-parched land. There would be no relief today from the searing drought that had turned the rich Wyoming grass to straw and the water holes to dust wallows.

Even the reservoir, which, two months ago had been filled with runoff from the spring snow melt, was getting perilously low. Once the water was gone, there’d be no way to irrigate the new hayfields he’d planted to keep the cattle fed over the next winter.

Everything, it seemed, had gone bad since the news of Ryan’s disappearance. Morgan’s long brown hands tightened on the porch rail as he thought of his spirited young half brother—laughing, reckless Ryan, the darling of the ranch and the apple of their aging father’s eye. During his growing-up years, the boy had dogged Morgan’s footsteps like an adoring puppy. It was Morgan who had taught him to swim and wrestle, Morgan who had put him on his first pony and helped him rope his first calf. Now Ryan had vanished, and it was as if his loss had sucked the life out of the earth itself.

Why in God’s name did it have to be Ryan? Morgan asked himself for perhaps the hundredth time. Why not me instead?

He was turning to go back inside when a faint plume of dust on the far horizon caught his eye. Someone—or something—was moving along the road, toiling its way toward the house.

Morgan’s heart contracted as he watched the dust materialize into a dark shape that looked more like a wagon than a single rider. Could it be someone with news about Ryan—or Ryan himself? Or would it turn out to be nothing more than a wandering stranger in need of a meal and a bed?

“Who is it? Can you tell?” His father had come out onto the porch, his chair rolling across the planks on silent wheels. Jacob Tolliver had aged in the three weeks since word of Ryan’s disappearance had reached the ranch. His face was drawn, his hands and voice unsteady. He spent his days seated at the tall parlor windows, watching the empty road with his field glass, which he now thrust into Morgan’s hand. “Your eyes are sharper than mine. Take a look. Tell me what you see.”

Morgan raised the glass to his eye and trained the lens on the road. He could make it out now—a weather-beaten buckboard that lurched through the ruts on its wobbling wheels, looking as if every yard gained might be its last. A single spavined mule staggered along in the traces, favoring a lame right fore-foot. The whole sad conveyance was so thickly coated with dust that it looked like a ghost apparition emerging through shimmering waves of heat.

The lone driver was hunched over the reins, a small figure in a slouchy felt hat who looked to be either a boy or a shriveled old man. Morgan sharpened the focus of the glass in an effort to see more. Then, giving up, he shifted his attention to what might be inside the wagon.

In this, too, he was left unsatisfied. The rim of a barrel, probably for water, showed above the warped planking along the sides. Any other cargo on the wagon bed was hidden from view.

What could such a decrepit rig be bringing to the ranch?

A coffin?

With Ryan’s body in it?

“Who is it?” Jacob Tolliver’s voice crackled with impatience. “Can you tell? Is it your brother?”

“No.” Morgan shook his head as he lowered the field glass. “It’s someone else. A stranger.”

Handing the glass back to his father, he strode down the steps and across the dusty yard toward the corral. If Ryan’s body was in the back of that wagon, he needed to find out now, so he could do his best to cushion the blow for the old man.

The buckskin mare pricked her ears at his whistle and trotted over to the open gate. Morgan slipped the bridle over her head and buckled the throat latch. Without taking time for the saddle, he sprang Indian fashion onto her back and galloped out to meet the wagon.

The driver of the tottering buckboard straightened on the seat as Morgan approached but made no effort to wave or shout. Probably didn’t have any strength left, Morgan groused. Who would send such a helpless little runt out here alone in a rig that looked like it was about to collapse? It was a wonder the mule and driver hadn’t been picked off by coyotes along the way.