Page 35 of Mail-Order Lady

He shot a look back along the route they had come—the same glance he had been making every quarter mile since they had cleared the river. No sign of another traveler.

The trail snaked down out of sight around a shoulder of pine. Anywhere past that, a rider could be sitting on his horse and watching them climb, and from this angle there would be no way of knowing it.

He turned forward again.

The sun had moved three hands above the western ridge by the time he began to search for camp in earnest. He needed a place with sight lines. Cover at his back, water close, and grass for the team. And, ideally, a slope steep enough that a man couldn’t come down on them from above without making noise.

He found a good spot where a smaller creek joined the larger one, just above the base of a low cliff that ran for thirty yards along the south side of the trail. The cliff would put rock at his back. The creek would give them water without leaving them in the open. From the campsite, fifty strides would be visible in every direction that mattered.

He pulled the team off the trail and into the open area.

“We’ll stop here.”

Clara climbed down on her own side and he helped Mrs. Wang from the back.

After unhitching the team, he led them to the creek, then picketed them on a line between two cottonwoods where the grass was thickest. By the time he returned to camp, Mrs. Wang had a small fire going and Clara was setting out the tin plates.

He ate without tasting much of it.

The fire had burned down to a useful bed of coals by the time Mrs. Wang collected the plates.

He would watch for a few hours while the women slept. The mountains had gone dark above them in stages—first the peaks, then the high ridges, then the pine slopes—until the only light left was the fire and the stars.

Mrs. Wang shuffled to the wagon first. Clara followed, pausing at the rear long enough to look at him across the fire. He couldn’t see her expression in the dark. If only it could be the same longing that pulled so sharp in his chest.

“Goodnight,” she said.

“Goodnight.”

After she climbed in and settled in her bedding beside Mrs. Wang, he took up his rifle, slipped the shot bag over his neck, then sat with his back against the cliff.

The night sounds came in layers. The creek. Wind moving through the high pines. An owl calling somewhere up the slope.

An hour passed. Then another.

A wolf called, far off to the south. A long lonesome note that rose, then trailed off into the darkness. A second wolf answered, farther still.

The country settled back into its small noises.

Somewhere past midnight, one of the geldings snorted.

The horse had been standing easy a moment ago, head low, dozing on three legs. Now its head was up. Its ears forward. The other gelding’s head jerked in the same direction.

Both animals shifted, and the near gelding snorted again as the whites of its eyes flashed.

Robert stood and raised his Springfield, then cocked the hammer as he kept his back to the cliff.

Nothing moved in the darkness, but with the way the horses had started to dance on their lines, something had to be out there.

A bear? He’d have smelled it by now, surely. And heard movement through the trees. Bears never moved without sound.

Maybe the wolves were coming closer? But they couldn’t keep silent either. Hungry wolves howled, every man raised in these mountains knew that.

The near gelding screamed and lurched sideways. A figure leaped through the air toward the animal. A wildcat?

He pulled the trigger.

The blast tore through the dark as powder clouded around him.