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He examined it, then glanced at her face.

“She miss you?”

“Dreadfully. She also told me not to run home the first time something went wrong.”

Jesse regarded her for a moment. “Bet that took something.”

“It did.”

“I’d like to meet her.”

The words came without teasing. Eden’s hand stopped on the ribbon.

“She’d ask you a hundred questions.”

“Reckon I could answer fifty.”

“And judge the other fifty?”

“Probably.”

She laughed. Jesse’s gaze lingered on her, and the next question she had meant to ask vanished.

The sound of a knock came from the outer room.

Nate opened the door. “Whit is here. He has news.”

The easy moment ended. Jesse’s hand withdrew to the blanket.

“Bring him in,” he said.

Whit kept his visit brief. The sheriff had spoken with two men who had worked the old Chapman road, and both remembered strangers asking how to reach the south crossing without passing the ranch house. One had heard the name Sam Pike. Neither could say whether Pike had been in Flat River the night Jesse was attacked.

“Sam Pike,” Jesse repeated.

“Does it mean anything?” Whit asked.

Jesse closed his good eye. After a moment, he shook his head.

“Don’t force it,” Eden said.

He opened his eye and gave her an irritated stare, but he didn’t argue.

Whit removed a small notebook from his coat. “There’s another matter. One of the men described the stranger he saw with Rusk. Polished boots. A silver tooth. Smelled of peppermint when he talked.”

Eden’s fingers tightened around the arm of her chair.

Peppermint.

For an instant she was back in her father’s office, waiting while a visitor spoke to him about the old mill road outside Willow Bend. She had carried in tea and caught the clean, sweet smell when he thanked her. She remembered the shine of his boots more clearly than his face.

Two weeks later, Josiah’s wagon had overturned on that road.

The room grew quiet.

“Eden?” Jesse asked.

She had not realized she’d stopped breathing until she drew a breath.