She glanced at the advertisement again. She was a young woman, cheerful when the worry didn’t seem to eat her alive, and, she supposed, sturdy enough. After all she laundered other people’s linens each day along with caring for her own home. She was honest—-or at least she was right now. And she tried to be of a Christian nature.
She fit the fellow’s description perfectly. Except, of course, for the simple fact that she was the daughter of an outlaw he had chased and cornered.
Lina stood abruptly, feeling the need to move as she thought. She paced across the small area, quiet enough so as not to awaken Matthew. If she were to write to this man, and if he were to find her acceptable, then she would have an opportunity to discover the one thing she had wondered all these months.
Where was her father’s treasure?
He’d written to her and Matthew of it in that last letter he sent. And he had promised to find a way to get it to them in order for Matthew to receive the medical treatment he so badly needed and to relieve some of the burden of merely existing from Lina‘s shoulders.
However, he had died before getting it to them. She could not imagine him facing death, only to take that secret to the grave. He loved them far too much to do such a thing. He must have told someone, even a stranger. Even the sheriff who intended to see his surrender.
Lina rested her hands against the table as the plan formed in her mind. She would write to this man. The words in the newspaper indicated he was not responsible for Papa’s death—that would be something Lina didn’t think she could abide. She would travel west to meet him. And then, with any luck, she would find out where her father had left the money that would save Matthew’s life.
Because she would do anything for her brother, even marry a man she didn’t know.
Chapter Two
PERSEVERANCE, COLORADOTerritory—August 1872
The stagecoach should have arrived an hour ago.
Costilla County Sheriff Henry “Hawk” Rodgers scowled at his pocketwatch before shoving it back into the pocket of his trousers. Trust the usually prompt conveyance to be delayed on the day he was expecting it to deliver something of great importance. It was as if God knew he was too eager and wanted to give him a lesson in patience.
The minutes ticked by slowly as Hawk shuffled papers on his desk in a pretense of accomplishing work. Approximately the sixth time he stood to glance out the window—and just as he was deciding how much time would need to pass before he went out looking for the missing coach—Rafe Garland, his regular deputy, burst through the office door.
“Hawk!” he yelled before noticing Hawk was standing right there at the window. “Some prospector came down from the mountains and said the stage was felled up at the Pass.”
“Felled?” Hawk repeated, picturing the coach lying wheels up like a tree chopped down for timber.
“On its side,” Garland confirmed. “The fellow also said there might’ve been a gang of men that helped get it that way, but he didn’t know for certain and he wasn’t getting close enough to find out.”
Hawk had already reached for his hat. “Round up the men. Let’s get on up there.”
Garland nodded and disappeared out the door.
In less than twenty minutes, they were leaving Perseverance, quiet in the daylight hours with hardworking folks going about their business, and heading up into the Sangre de Cristo Mountains that rose above the town to the east. Horsethief Pass was a solid two hours’ ride up into the mountains. The road, just barely wide enough for a stagecoach to pass, started with a gentle incline before switching to a steeper set of switchbacks. Prospectors’ tents dotted the landscape behind aspens and pines, clinging to the edge of mountain along Navarro Creek. Gold fever had hit the area hard a few years ago, flooding the area with men of all sorts. Thanks to a few noted finds, it hadn’t let up yet, but, Hawk was proud to say, Perseverance was a much safer place to lay one’s head at night than it was when he was sworn in as county sheriff two years ago.
