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Breaking the news to the boys hadn’t been easy. She did her best to reassure them everything would be fine, but after they had turned in for the night, her numbness gave way, making room for fear to creep in. Curling up on the empty cot in the kitchen where Robert had preferred to sleep, she rocked back and forth with her head buried in her knees. The tears came of their own volition, angering her.
She had cried enough tears during the beginning of their marriage, back when she still believed she could make it work if she tried hard enough. But nothing she did had made a difference.
Robert wasn’t interested in her.
He’d had ambitions for her land, but his ambitions for their marriage became a well of empty promises.
Once again, it fell to her to pick up the pieces. But this time, there would be no reprieve. This time, Robert wasn’t coming back with yet another scheme for riches or promises of recouping all they had lost.
Rachel shook off her memories of last night and glanced behind her at Ethan and Brody. Both were dressed in their Sunday best, though it was only Tuesday. Brody, at nearly fifteen, had taken another growth spurt. The hem and cuffs of his suit betrayed the evidence that she had let them out as far as they could go. She’d have to get him a new one, but their credit at the haberdashery was overextended as it was.
“Maybe you could wear one of Robert’s,” she’d suggested. But the idea had been met with stony silence. In the past year, her brother had turned sullen and moody. The sudden distance between them pained her, but nothing she tried had bridged it.
“You warm enough, Ethan?” The little boy’s small body was pressed against Brody’s, seeking either warmth or comfort, maybe both.
“Yes, ma’am,” he whispered.
Freedom pulled back on the reins and cast a glance in Rachel’s direction. “It’ll be jus’ fine, Miss Rachel. Ain’t nothin’ you can’t handle. You jus’ remember, those boys—” she jerked her head back toward Brody and Ethan “—they be countin’ on you.”
Rachel nodded. “I’m fine, Free. Just get us into town.” She would have driven them herself, but Freedom had insisted. She didn’t have the energy to argue with the woman, who had been with her since Rachel was Brody’s age, coming to help out when Rachel’s mother fell ill.
She’d been a godsend, then and now.
“Hunter says the reverend is making all the arrangements,” Rachel said, peering out over the jagged landscape. In the distance, the rising sun hit the mountains, turning their peaks a golden pink. The early April air still held the bitter nip of winter here in the small valley. Pockets of snowfall had yet to melt away in some spots, but the promise of spring filled the air with the rich scent of wet earth.
“Yes, I ’spect everyone in town has heard the word.” Nothing stayed secret in Salvation Falls for long. No doubt by the time Hunter had reached her doorstep with the news, most of the townspeople already knew.
“When we get there, take the boys directly to the church,” Rachel continued. “Reverend Pearce will be waiting for them. I’ll walk to Doc Merrick’s from there.”
The rushed burial couldn’t be helped. Three days had passed since Robert was killed. They had to get him in the ground without delay. Rachel understood. She welcomed it. It would keep her busy, keep her focused. Wouldn’t allow her time to stop and think and worry and fret.
If she kept moving, she’d be fine.
* * *
A strange sense that she was living someone else’s life crawled over Rachel as she walked down the pathway away from the white clapboard church. The structure shone like a beacon in the morning sun, but she turned her back on it once Freedom had taken the boys inside. Rachel had stopped at the bottom of the steps, refusing to go in. She wasn’t on good terms with God today.
The cool spring air cut through her thin shawl. She was used to wearing her heavy coat lined with buffalo hide, but it didn’t seem appropriate attire for burying one’s husband.
Not that Robert had proven to be much of a husband.
She stopped midstride and took a deep breath. That wasn’t fair. No, it was fair. It just wasn’t right. The man was dead. Best let the bad memories and disappointment die with him. It wasn’t going to do her any good hanging on to them.
Hunter had had little information to give her about how Robert had managed to get himself killed buying cattle in Laramie, but Rachel had her suspicions. And she suspected that, when she spoke to the man who had brought her husband’s body home, they would be confirmed.
Doc Merrick met her at the door to his office. Merrick wasn’t a real doctor, at least, not the kind who fixed broken bones and ailing stomachs. Dr. Bolger managed that end of things. Merrick yanked teeth and helped prepare bodies for burial. He might have been a regular doc at one point, but if he was, it was well before Rachel could remember. Either way, she was glad for him. It meant one less thing for her to do. And she’d seen enough death in her life, so she was happy for Merrick’s abilities.
“Got Bobby all set, Rachel,” he said, taking a deep draw on his corncob pipe. The sweet, pungent smoke wafted around them. “Can’t tell you how sorry I am ’bout this. Sad day to be burying a man this young.”
Rachel nodded, following Merrick inside to the cramped little room. Small glass bottles lined the shelves against the wall, and oddly shaped instruments, whose purpose she didn’t want to think about, hung on hooks near the table. A lump rose in her throat and grew to the size of one of the crab apples growing on the tree next to the barn.
“Sheriff Donovan brought over a suit for ’im.” Merrick nodded at the closed pine box coffin sitting atop the sturdy table. The pale wood stood out in the dim confines of the office. Light struggled in through the dirt-encrusted window, adding a weak glow to the room.
“I’ll be sure to thank him,” she said. No doubt Hunter had given Doc the one suit he possessed straight out of his own closet. She shouldn’t be surprised. Hunter and Robert had been friends since they were young boys. They may have had a falling-out years before, but Hunter wasn’t the kind of man to hold a grudge past death.
Rachel touched the edge of the pine, letting her fingers trail over the smooth surface. The estrangement had been her fault. Both men had paid court and she’d chosen Robert. She wondered how different her life would have been had she made a different choice all those years ago. Funny how she had known both men most of her life, yet the man she buried today was more of a stranger to her now than on the day they’d married.
Maybe she had never really known him at all. It was a sad thought.
“Can you open it?”
Merrick started. “Open—oh, Rachel, you don’t want to do that. It’s been three days, and...well...” He shook his head, the bushy white hair bobbing with the movement.
“I know,” she said. She knew what happened to a body after death. “But I need to see.”
Merrick hesitated but Rachel fixed him with a hard stare until he relented.
“Here.” He handed her a stark white handkerchief.
Rachel took a deep breath, the scent of formaldehyde and whatever else the Merrick kept in those bottles, stung her nostrils. She placed the handkerchief over her mouth and nose, and gave him a nod.
It took Merrick a minute or two to pry loose the nails and slide the top toward him, revealing the body within from the chest up. Rachel took a step forward and peered down into Robert’s face.
Except it wasn’t Robert’s face.
At least, not the one she remembered. Robert had had a sense of animation to him, whether he had been angry or excited or somewhere in between. This man, this face, was still and gray, the eyes and cheeks already sinking into the hollows in the bone. Even his pale blond hair appeared stiff and lifeless, darker even, as though the sun’s reflection had slipped beneath a cloud leaving it cast in shadow. The body in the box was not Robert. It was an empty shell he’d once filled.
“The sheriff said he was shot.” There was no evidence of a bullet wound.
“One to the chest. Straight through the heart. Probably died instantly. Guessin’ it would have taken a man handy with a gun to manage such a thing.”
Rachel bit down, forcing the lump in her throat back. At least he hadn’t been shot in the gut. Whatever their differences, she would have hated to know Robert had suffered. She closed her eyes and nodded once again, waiting until Merrick hammered the lid back into place before reopening her eyes.
“I’ll bring him up to the church,” Merrick said. “Reverend said the service would start at ten. I’ll have him there before people start arrivin’.”
“Thank you,” Rachel whispered. Something hollow filled her chest. Sorrow? Regret?
She let out a long breath and straightened her shoulders. She had no time for either.
“The boys and I will be staying at the Pagget tonight. You can send the bill over there.” She turned and left the undertaker’s office. She’d figure out how she’d pay it tomorrow.
Today, she had a husband to bury.
Chapter Two (#ulink_e3344b9d-962d-5fc4-a999-3c1e6bd815b6)
Caleb stood against the side wall of the church, closer to the front than he wanted to be. It gave him too clear a view of Rachel Sutter. The new widow sat flanked on either side by two boys. One he guessed was around fifteen, too old to be her son. The other he doubted was more than six or seven. Neither bore any resemblance to her or Robert Sutter.
The church was packed to capacity. It seemed everyone in town had come to pay their respects despite the short notice. Several men lined the walls with him. A few cast glances his way, though none addressed him directly. Just as well. He didn’t plan on staying longer than necessary, and the fewer people who remembered his face, the better.
The reverend stood at the front of the church, the pine box to his right. He cleared his throat, signaling he was ready to start the service.
It was easier to think of it as a pine box. Nothing special. Not something containing a body or a man or a life that used to be.
But try as he might, Caleb couldn’t erase the image of Sutter’s face when the bullet slammed into his chest. There had been an instant, a split second when the shock registered on Sutter’s face and he knew he was going to die. Caleb had seen that look on a man’s face before, but it still sent a chill straight to his core.
Sutter was dead before his body hit the filth encrusted floor of the Broken Deuce Saloon.
Caleb wished he’d never sat down at the card table. Never witnessed the man’s death. Never ridden into Laramie at all.
The reverend’s voice droned on. “Thou hast also given me the shield of thy salvation, and thy gentleness hath made me great...”
Caleb recognized the passage. It was from the book of Samuel. His grandfather had spent many nights twisting its words to suit his ends. Caleb gave his head a gentle shake. How many years would need to pass before he could bury those memories?
He closed his eyes and tried to control his breathing, letting the wall take most of his weight. He wasn’t sure why he’d come here today. He hadn’t been inside a church for so long it was a wonder he hadn’t burst into flames the moment he passed through its double oak doors. He didn’t know Sutter outside the brief hours before he’d died and hadn’t particularly liked what he had known. He didn’t know the man’s family or the people in this town. He could have ridden in, handed over the body and disappeared into the sunset.
Except he still had business to attend to. And some things a man couldn’t walk away from, no matter how much he wanted to.
His attention drifted away from the reverend and rested on the widow. Dressed in black, she wore a small matching hat perched forward on the top of her head. Her hair, a deep mahogany, was twisted into a simple knot at the nape of her neck, but whatever held it in place seemed destined to give in to its weight. Strands had worked their way free and curled down her narrow back.
She stared straight ahead at some point over the reverend’s shoulder, away from the pine box containing her husband. Her stoic expression never altered. Caleb tilted his head to one side and studied her, surprised to find her beautiful, though certainly not delicate. Bold, graceful lines and dark, almond-shaped eyes shaded by the short veil of her hat held a man’s gaze captive, but it was the wealth of inner strength that radiated from her strict posture and the way she hugged the young boy to her that he thought would endure in the mind long after.
To hear Sutter tell it, his wife didn’t possess a single redeeming quality to make a man look twice. Given what a pompous loudmouth the man had been, Caleb should have known his opinion wasn’t worth a lick.
She turned, as if sensing his attention. Caleb froze, unprepared for the potency of her dark eyes catching his. For several seconds, he forgot to breathe. Forgot not to stare. Forgot his reasons for being here.
Then, as quickly as her gaze had found him, it slid away. The effect of it, however, lingered like a shadow and he couldn’t shake the sense that she hadn’t looked at him, but into him. As if in those few brief seconds she had plunged inside the darkest recesses of his heart and taken a good look around.
A shiver crept up his spine and nestled at the base of his neck, making the hair prickle and stand on end.
That’s destiny tapping you on the shoulder, his mother used to say.
Caleb shrugged. He was not interested in destiny today. He wanted to take care of business and be on his way. More so now than ever.
“Heard he told her some cockamamie story about goin’ to Laramie to buy cattle.”
Caleb’s ears perked up. The man next to him stood half a head taller than his own six feet but couldn’t have weighed enough to matter soaking wet. He’d addressed the man beside him, who stood out of Caleb’s sight.
“Geez, Styles. Ain’t no way he could afford to be buyin’ more cattle in Laramie or anywhere else. ’Course, with Kirkpatrick breathin’ down his neck, guess you can’t blame the man for trying. Wouldn’t have done no good. Kirkpatrick’s bought up all of Bobby’s gambling debts. Jus’ a matter of time before he stops waitin’ on gettin’ paid back.”
Styles shrugged his bony shoulders. “Probably jus’ as well he got ’imself shot, then. Save Rachel the trouble when she finds out jus’ how much he owes.”
Caleb furrowed his brow. It sounded like Sutter had dug a deep hole and was about to drag his whole family down into it with him.
“Ain’t that the truth,” the other man said. “Still, cain’t say I’m surprised much. Bobby always was a gambler. Like my pappy always said, a man is what his past was.”
A woman in the pew next to them turned around and shushed the men. Both straightened and mumbled their apologies, but their words resonated through Caleb.
A man is what his past was.
The thought filled him with a deep sense of desolation. If that were true, there was no hope for him.
* * *
Rachel sat through the service focusing on what needed to be done rather than the words spoken by Reverend Pearce. If she listened, she would fall apart. Reality would settle in, take root and grow like a weed until it choked out everything else. She had to keep her mind on the future, not on the past or what might have been or all the things she’d done wrong. It couldn’t be changed now.
She had to think of the boys. They needed stability, a place to call home, a future to look forward to. Someday, a part of the ranch would be their legacy. Maybe all of it, given that she had no children of her own.
A prickling sensation tickled the hairs at the back of her neck, pulling her away from her ruminations. She turned to her left and scanned the faces of the congregation who had come to pay their respects. Her gaze swept the line of men standing along the wall and settled onto the stranger next to Jeremiah Styles.
He leaned against the wall, and though his manner appeared casual, Rachel sensed a predatory air about him, as if his posture was nothing more than a ruse. His sharp gaze spoke of a man well aware of his surroundings and any threats it might present. Lean and broad shouldered, he maintained an air of readiness, like a mountain cat about to strike. A frisson of unease tangled itself around her.
His gaze bored into hers, steady and unwavering. There was something in those eyes. Something hungry. Desperate. Haunted. It was like looking in a mirror.
Rachel’s breath caught and she turned back to face the front. Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath and forced her heart to slow.
She knew who he was. Strangers were easy to pick out in a town where so few passed through. He was the man who’d brought Robert’s body back from Laramie.
He was the one who would tell her the truth about what had happened.
After the ceremony, they convened to the graveyard and lowered Robert’s casket into the newly thawed earth. Rachel took a handful of dirt and dropped it into the gaping hole. It fell with a heavy thud onto the coffin. She didn’t think she’d ever heard a more lonely sound.
“In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, we commend to the Almighty God our brother Robert Charles Sutter, and we commit his body to the ground. Earth to earth...”
Next to her, Ethan gripped her hand and squeezed, pressing his face into her arm.
“...ashes to ashes...”
Rachel’s stomach twisted. How had it come to this?
“...dust to dust...”
Eight years ago she had been full of hope. She pulled in her lip and took a deep breath, blinking back tears she refused to let fall. She would not break down. She would not give in.
“...the Lord bless him and keep him, the Lord make his face to shine upon him...”
This was it. It was over.
“...and be gracious unto him and give him peace. Amen.”
It was done.
“Amen,” the congregation chanted back in subdued tones.
Robert was gone.
And all he’d left behind was questions.
Rachel searched the crowd for the stranger. She needed to understand, needed answers, and he was the only man who could give them to her.
