With that worry put to rest for the moment, he felt lighter in his soul. Home was only days away with its crisp air and polished blue sky.
The three years he had spent working for Hershal Moreland had been some of the best he had known.
Moreland Ranch was a bit of heaven on earth. Its southern border lay along the Yellowstone River and its northern border stretched to the mountains. The house had a view of both the Beartooth Range and the Crazy Mountains.
He’d spent more than a few quiet hours fishing Big Timber Creek where it cut through the ranch.
The land had given him a place to heal, but it was Hershal Moreland who had found a broken soul and brought him home, given him sanctuary and shown him a new way of life.
There had been a time when he’d believed that the only life he could be happy with was that of a medical doctor.
With what Boone had done, he believed he owed something to...well, he didn’t know to whom, but he’d felt that dedicating his life to healing in some way made up for his brother’s crime.
Life had certainly set him straight on making anything up to anybody. The fever that had swept through his town like a putrid wind claimed the old, the young, sweet mothers and their little babies.
Hadn’t touched him, though. The ones who depended upon him, upon his skill as a healer, died all about him, but he remained standing with his stethoscope dangling about his stooped shoulders and his confidence buried along with most of his fiancée’s family.
He’d never blamed Eloise for calling things off, not even when she’d accused him of incompetence, taken off her engagement ring and flung it out the window of the schoolhouse-turned-hospital. How could he say, with her loved ones lying dead, that she was wrong? That the bitterness in her gaze was undeserved?
Hell, he’d turned bitter against himself. He’d only really begun to live again when Hershal showed him another way. Over the past few years the old man had become more than kin.
Truly, the only person he’d been closer to in his life was Boone.
But his brother was lost to him. One thoughtless act, an accident really, had made Boone an outlaw. It had also made Lantree who he was...or had been.
“Hell, Boone,” he mumbled. “Why’d you have to draw your gun?”
* * *
Rebecca had been prepared for Montana being an untamed land. During the two months she had spent aboard the River Queen, she’d heard stories of bears, cougars and violent storms that washed folks right away.
What she had not been prepared for was Montana’s natural, shout-out-loud beauty.
Over the past week, she would barely catch her breath over one wonder before another would appear.
She’d watched from the balustrade while the River Queen drifted past grassy meadows surrounded by great trees. She’d heard the wind sighing and moaning through them at night while she slept on deck, gazing up at a sky so sparkling that it seemed to be in constant, glittering movement.
It was the sight of the distant mountains, though, still capped with snow, that brought her to her knees.
Literally.
Getting off the boat a few moments ago, she had been so engrossed by their grandeur that she had tripped over a small piece of baggage that someone had carelessly left near the gangplank. She had hit her knees and stayed that way, staring at what she had been told were the Beartooth Mountains. If at that moment she had been swallowed by a bear or shredded by a cougar, Aunt Eunice would be proven right, but Rebecca would die satisfied.
Although, she realized, still on her knees and gazing at the town, the real danger might come from that direction rather than God’s stunning mountain range.
Was she mistaken that even at this hour of the day the scent of alcohol wafted on the air...and tobacco? Surely her nose was oversensitive, she didn’t really smell sweat and stale cologne?
Even if her nose was conjuring smells, her ears heard things quite accurately. The jarring sound of an out-of-tune piano drifted out of a saloon nearby, along with a woman’s laugher, a man’s cussing...and a gunshot.
By George, she had not imagined the gunshot or the one that answered it.
“Miss Lane?”
Rebecca looked up from where she knelt in the dirt to see Tom, a young, fresh-faced deckhand, looking down at her. He had her trunk slung across his shoulders.
She stood up, dusted off her skirt and tweaked her hat.
“Where would you like for me to deliver your trunk?” he asked.
Sunshine illuminated a smattering of freckles across his nose. He stared with a frown at Screech, who sat on the perch in his travel cage. The bird eyed Tom with a pivot of his yellow-and-blue head.
“Yummy,” Screech said. “Here.”
The bird had not made many friends on the trip, very likely due to his tendency to nip...and screech, which he did with regularity at sunrise.
The safekeeping of her trunk was a problem. She could not have it delivered anyplace in town since she had no intention of getting closer to it than the dock.
“Where are Mrs. Henson and her daughters staying?” Perhaps she could accompany them until she figured things out. She had met the women briefly on the boat when they had come to the lower deck to check on their goods.
Tom blushed. “Those weren’t her daughters, Miss Lane. They were more like...well...I reckon you’d call them recruits. They’ve probably taken up business at the Sullied Gully by now.”
Oh, dear... They had looked like normal women. Aunt Eunice would be stricken if she discovered that the niece she had taken such pains to raise to be a lady had spoken with prostitutes. No doubt her aunt would compare them to Rebecca’s mother.
Tom was beginning to show the strain of holding her trunk.
“Just leave it here beside the dock.”
“But where do you aim to go?” It made her uncomfortable to see his eyes widen in alarm.
“My grandfather’s ranch near Big Timber.”
“That’s near eighty miles, you’ll need someone to get you there.”
“I’ve been told that men who are out of work often act as guides.”
“You sit tight here. Coulson’s not the place for a lady like you. I’ll pass the word around.”
“Thank you, Tom.” She handed him a quarter. “I appreciate your help.”
“Don’t wander off, now,” he said with a doff of his cap. “I’ll send someone down shortly.”
She watched him saunter away. The afternoon sunshine gave him a long, fluid shadow. Tom entered the first saloon he came to.
“I hope he sends someone out soon,” she said to Screech. His pupils flashed, a certain sign of his intelligence. “Because I’m not leaving our goods unattended.”
To be honest, she didn’t have the kind of goods that a thief might be interested in. Still, they were hers and she needed them. And there was the one item of great value, the one she didn’t even dare display so close to town.
Her grandmother’s violin, wrapped carefully in her spare petticoats and centered in the trunk, was more than polished wood. It was a link to the grandmother she had never known.
No matter how long it took, she would sit on top of the trunk like a bird on her nest, keeping her precious cargo safe.
She only hoped that Tom