Now and Forever (16 page)

Her voice broke then, like it had for Ramual. This time she didn’t control it. She dropped the rag back into the basin and buried her face in her hands. A sob tore from her throat, and her shoulders shook as she wept.

“I’m fine, honey. These scratches didn’t even cut through the skin deep enough to bleed. And it looks like they’re the only marks on me. It’s a pure miracle—God was watching over us tonight.” Tucker drew her into his arms until they lay together on the bed.

Hot tears soaked his bare chest. He let her go on for a
long time. Hearing her weep like this almost made him want to cry. He rocked her and whispered the sweetest words an idiot mountain man could come up with, about how beautiful she was and how he didn’t deserve her and how he knew nothing of how to treat a woman or speak to a woman but that he was the luckiest man alive.

He rubbed her shoulders and kissed her pretty, dark curls and whispered gentle comfort into her ears.

Finally the sobbing eased. When at last she lifted her head, her tear-soaked eyes shone blue in the lantern light.

He took her face in both hands and whispered, “How did I end up married to such a beautiful woman? How has God seen fit to bless me so richly?”

He kissed her, trying to put it all into his kiss, the things he felt that he was too clumsy and thickheaded to say.

Shannon kissed him back. “I want to forget about wolves, husband.” She wrapped her arms tight around his neck and pressed him down on the bed. “Please, for a little while, can you make me forget about everything but you?”

He could use a little forgetfulness himself, so he did his best to help both of them think of something really good.

T
ucker woke to a crack of thunder. He threw off the blanket in the gray light of predawn with as much urgency as he’d done when the bleating sheep had awakened him.

“I’ve got to get a look at those tracks before it rains.”

Shannon got out of his way as he dressed. Soon he was out the door on the one crutch, with her right behind him.

“I heard the horse running down the trail that way.” Tucker pointed at the main trail to town. “But it sounded like it came from the woods. I think he had it hidden.”

Thunder rolled across the sky again.

It was so overcast, even when the sun did finally get above the horizon, Tucker wasn’t going to be able to see much. “So if he hid his horse there”—he gestured to a likely spot just west of the barn—“it stands to reason he came out of the woods.”

He headed for that area then, this side of the river near the rocks Coulter had dragged in to make a ford, and
found . . . nothing. Shannon was tagging after him. He looked over his shoulder. “Stay back until I find his tracks. He may have covered them up, wiped them out somehow. I don’t want any other footprints than mine over here.”

Nodding, Shannon said, “I’m going to check on the sheep and make sure your horse is all right.”

Tucker turned his attention back on the ground. His crutch didn’t bother him because his search was slow and mighty careful. He’d come over here expecting to pick up a trail immediately but there was nothing. He walked the length of the woods. The grass was sparse here, and if the man walked out of these woods, Tucker should be able to tell. Finally, not knowing what else to do, Tucker went farther into the woods, hunting for the spot their attacker had hidden his horse. Tucker found it, though he was a long time doing it. Whoever had attacked them was good at covering his tracks, going to a lot of trouble to conceal his identity. The only good thing was it convinced Tucker that this was a man they knew. No other reason to be so careful.

The thunder grew louder. Lightning brightened the densely wooded place where Tucker searched.

Once Tucker found the right spot, he laid the crutch aside and got down on his knees, studying every inch. A horse had to leave tracks. There was a heavy carpet of pine needles under the tree. Brushing them aside carefully, Tucker couldn’t find a single cut from a hoof. There was a bent branch with some missing bark that must be where the horse had been tied. And Tucker found a tuft of dark brown horsehair scraped off on the trunk of a tree. That described about half the horses in the country.

How could a man leave his horse standing for what had to be the better part of an hour without it leaving any sign? Tucker knew if he got a good look at a horse’s prints, there was a good chance he’d recognize that horse if he ever saw it again.

And the horse had to stand a long time. It was a fifteen-minute walk from here to the barn, and just as long back. And the man needed time for his mischief. How could the horse not leave a print?

It didn’t seem as though the man had brushed them away. The pine needles and other naturally scattered debris on the forest floor didn’t look as if they’d been sprinkled over the ground to cover anything up.

The first sprinkle of rain hit Tucker’s neck, and he knew he couldn’t spend more time going over this spot. Knowing any trace of evidence the man had left would soon be washed clean away, he thought of the direction of the running horse, grabbed his crutch, and walked the path the horse most likely took. Again he found no prints. Whoever this intruder was, Tucker’s respect for him went up a notch, along with his worries.

Thunder now sounded almost continually. As Tucker reached the trail, the wind gusted, and dirt and leaves and needles scudded along on the ground, making any hope of detecting someone who had passed this way even harder.

Especially a careful man, and this varmint had been mighty careful. Just as he began to feel it was hopeless, Tucker found the spot where the horse had come out of the woods.

He saw it only because he knew somehow it had to be
here. If he hadn’t been looking, he’d never have recognized the misshapen dents in the trail as hoofprints. Crouching beside them, Tucker thought it over. “You’ve got the horse’s hooves covered up in rags,” he whispered.

Tucker had seen that before. He’d known Indians to do it. This was no Indian, though. He knew the Indians in the area too well. They didn’t live like this. They didn’t do mischief for some twisted reason, to steal a homestead or some nonsense like that.

That didn’t mean one of the Native folks might not occasionally steal a horse or butcher a cow if he was hungry. That wouldn’t shock Tucker. And Indians were mighty good at ghosting around in the woods. But they didn’t do sneaky things like let a pen of sheep out just to hope they’d be eaten by wolves.

And besides that, they knew Tucker and were his friends, almost his family. Sunrise had left her village to marry a white man. But though she didn’t live with them, she’d gotten along with the Shoshone and her children, which included Tucker, and had dealt well with the tribe.

No Indian would do this to him.

So who had? He paced along, barely able to see the strangely shaped tracks. The sprinkle turned into a light rain.

Tucker turned back. He could have followed that trail, he was almost sure. But by the time he got his horse and came back out here, there’d be nothing left to follow.

Frustrated, he hobbled back to the cabin in time to see Shannon emerging from the woods with a little white ball of fur in her arms, kicking for all it was worth. Beaming as
if she weren’t soaked to the skin, she waved at him, almost dropped the struggling little critter, then started running to the barn through the now-pouring rain. Tucker decided he’d join the fracas in the barn, see how his mustang had fared, and welcome home one more runaway.

Several still gone. There was a Bible story about Jesus searching for lost sheep. Tucker reckoned he oughta go hiking and see if he could find them.

He entered the barn. A small building. The sheep were mostly lying down, pressed together, lazy on the stormy day.

“You found another one?”

“I heard him.” Shannon still held the lamb in her arms. “I wanted to go have a look at the wolves, and I heard this little fellow. He’d gotten twisted up in some scrub pine. So trapped he couldn’t do a thing but call for help.”

Tucker smiled at the little guy and rested a hand on his head. He was so cute, Tucker almost understood why Shannon couldn’t stand to eat them. Tucker couldn’t see extending that to every kind of meat, though.

“Let’s go search for the others.”

Shaking her head, Shannon hugged her sheep tight. “I found them. They didn’t make it. One of my ewes and two more lambs.” Then her blue eyes flashed with anger. “I know it’s a hard world. I understand I can’t save every one of my critters. I had a couple of babies die this spring and I had a ewe die in a blizzard last winter. I accept that. But that doesn’t mean someone has any business doing what that man did last night. Did you find tracks?”

Tucker nodded. “But the rain is washing them away
right now. I can’t follow them. And he’d tied rags around his horse’s hooves. They were hard to find. I couldn’t read a thing about the tracks. I suspect he did the same with his own shoes, which explains why I couldn’t find where he walked around your barn.”

Shannon looked around. “We might have lost the horse’s prints and our chance at tracking him, but I’ll bet he came in here. He did more than just unlatch that door. He probably came in and herded the sheep out. He’d want to make sure they all ran off. Maybe we can find his tracks inside.”

Tucker smiled. Then he kissed her, right over top of that wiggling lamb. “There is no end of good that comes from being married to a smart woman.”

She kissed him back.

And her good thinking and her toughness last night reminded him of something she’d never really told him, and considering how much time they’d spent together, that suddenly struck him as odd. “You really fought in the war?”

“I did. Three years I fought in that dreadful war.”

“Disguised as a man?” Tucker couldn’t keep the disbelief out of his voice.

“Are you calling me a liar?” Shannon sounded offended.

Tucker smiled. “Nope. I’m calling every man who didn’t see you for a beautiful woman an idiot. But then that whole war was madness, so why wouldn’t the people fighting it be idiots?”

“Let’s see if we can find those tracks.” Shannon turned.

He’d brought up her war service before, and she’d al
ways distracted him. Well, not this time. “Shannon, while we hunt, tell me about it.”

Shannon carefully set the little lamb on the barn floor. It wasn’t necessary to be so careful. He’d have been fine with jumping out of her arms. But she was trying hard not to look at Tucker, trying to think of a way out of talking about that blasted war.

His strong, warm hand settled on her arm and turned her around. If he’d been rough at all, she might have gotten angry, might have used that as an excuse to start a fight or refuse to talk, go off to the cabin in a huff.

“Tell me, Shannon. Is this why your hair is short? Is this why you and Bailey both wear britches? Did Bailey go too? Were you at least together?”

Shaking her head, she found she could answer a direct question. “We all went at different times.”

“All? Kylie too?”

Shannon understood the disbelief. Kylie—pretty, girlish Kylie. With her dresses and long curls. It was impossible to imagine she had ever attempted a manly disguise.

“Yes. Bailey went first. I know she did it for Kylie and me, hoping if she went, Pa would be satisfied. We couldn’t get Pa to stop talking about wanting to avenge Jimmy’s death.”

“Jimmy, this brother your pa wants to build a big old ranch to honor?”

Shannon nodded. “My big brother. He went to war and died almost right away. He’d only marched off to war a
couple of months before we got notice he died. Pa was devastated. He always wanted sons. We lived a long way out, and he’d always treated us more like boys than girls. He even named us manly names. I didn’t really mind. I liked wearing britches.” She looked down at how she was dressed. It was so comfortable. She didn’t even own a skirt. “When we got word Jimmy had died, we were all heartbroken, but Pa was half mad with grief. And he started goading us to go in Jimmy’s name. To dress as we always did, to use our real names. To fight in Jimmy’s place.”

“So Bailey went, but sacrificing one daughter wasn’t enough.” Tucker sounded cold.

Shannon flinched and looked at him. “No, it wasn’t. He calmed down for a while, and I managed to last at home for most of another year, but he started in again. If we loved Jimmy, we’d want revenge. If we wanted to honor his memory, we’d fight.”

Shannon swallowed hard. “I don’t want to act like he completely shoved me into that war.”

“Even though he did,” Tucker said flatly.

Shrugging, Shannon went on, “Every time we’d hear of some new battle, we’d talk about all the men killed by Confederate soldiers. It fed my hate. I did want revenge. Finally the day came that I decided no Reb was going to kill my brother and get away with it. I ran off and enlisted in the fight. I know Pa pushed me into that, but it didn’t feel like it at the time. I thought it was my idea. Before I left, I made Kylie swear she’d never go to war, and she said she wouldn’t. She was always wily when it came to handling Pa. But in the end she gave in, too.”

Tucker dropped his crutch and pulled her into his arms.

Shannon shivered and clung to him as she realized how cold she’d gotten. They were both soaking wet. “This rain can’t have done your cast any good.”

“I hope it falls right off my leg.”

She laughed against his strong, broad shoulder. “Being married to you is turning out to be a really wonderful thing.”

Tucker kissed her neck, and she shivered for another reason. “After last night I couldn’t agree more.”

Shannon knew he wasn’t talking about the wolf attack, but rather the time they’d spent together as man and wife.

They held each other tight and listened to the rain pound down and the quiet rustling of the sheep.

“You told me how you got into the war, but that isn’t the half of it, Shannon. Did you have to fight? Did you have to kill anyone? Did you ever get wounded? You had to be in close quarters with hundreds of men. How did you manage that and not get found out? Didn’t you say you learned doctoring in the war? Those nightmares you have, when was—?”

She kissed him.

When the kiss ended, Tucker lifted his head and frowned, though there wasn’t much serious about it. “Don’t try and distract me.”

She kissed him again, harder, deeper.

“If you do this every time I try and ask you about the war”—Tucker kissed her so hard he bent her back over his arm—“then you are going to find yourself questioned about it many times a day.” He laughed. “Now let’s go
back to the house, wife. We need to get out of these wet clothes.”

Shannon heard exactly what she suspected Tucker meant her to hear in those words. She handed him the crutch. They closed and fastened the barn door carefully. They didn’t make a run for it, for despite his poor cast they really couldn’t get any wetter.