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He’d promised himself to put them out of his head, but the rest of his body kept bringing up the subject. If he could just get the two younger ones alone, preferably the taller one, Susannah… He closed his eyes and pictured them, standing there in the dusty street. Her eyes had been the color of his mother’s prize china. Cornflower blue, it was called.
“I ain’t about to fish you outta there if you fall asleep, sonny.”
Parker jumped at the strident voice. He sat up with a slosh. A large woman had come in at the far end of the room carrying a load of towels. She was as tall as Parker and twice as wide. Parker looked down at the water in consternation. The last of the bubbles had gone over the side of the tub when he sat up, leaving him fully exposed to view.
“Don’t worry,” the woman said, following the direction of his gaze. “You ain’t got nothing in there I ain’t seen before.” She lowered the towels and craned her neck to peer at the water. “Though it don’t look too bad for a pilgrim like you.”
Parker felt his skin grow hotter than the temperature of the water. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure, ma’am,” he said, masking his discomfiture.
“Maxine McClanahan,” she said, her voice booming. “Most folks just call me Max. I thought you’d need a towel.”
“Much obliged.” His embarrassment faded at the woman’s brisk manner. He met her steady gaze. Her hair was shot through with gray, but she was definitely not the grandmotherly type. She had a nononsense air about her. Max. It suited her.
He sat back and allowed her to finish her unabashed perusal of him. “Do you work here?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Own the place.”
Parker lifted his eyebrows in surprise, eliciting a chuckle from Max.
“So what, pilgrim? You don’t think a woman can own a respectable business? I thought you’d be a mite smarter than the usual drifters we get through here. The only time they feel comfortable givin’ money to a woman is when she’s lying on her back.” She gave a little huff and deposited the towels on the room’s only chair.
Parker grinned. “I’ll be happy to give you my money, ma’am. What was it you called me? A pilgrim?”
“Yup. A pilgrim. A tenderfoot,” she clarified.
“How’d you know I was a tenderfoot?”
She glanced at the jumbled heap of Parker’s things. “The clothes, for one. Ain’t a gent in Canyon City who’d wear a silk vest like that one. ‘Cept maybe Harvey Overstreet. And that’s ‘cause he’s been expectin’ to die for the past ten years and wants to look pretty in his coffin.”
“Back in Deadwood there were lots of men with vests like mine,” Parker protested.
“Deadwood’s a boomtown—gamblers and scalawags and fancy dreamers.” Her grimace left no doubt as to Max’s opinion of the quality of Deadwood menfolk. “Out here’s the real West. Honest-togoodness cowpokes who wouldn’t know a silk shirt from a burlap bag.”
“And who don’t like women in business,” Parker added.
Max put her hands on her ample hips. “That’s for darn sure. They’ve near run poor Molly Hanks out of the territory.”
“Molly Hanks?” Parker pushed himself farther out of the water and felt the sudden chill on his skin.
Max nodded. “After her pappy died, none of these pea-brained cowhands would work for her. They say a woman’s got no business running a ranch.”
“That particular woman looks like she could run just about anything,” Parker said under his breath.
“Molly’s a tough one,” Max agreed with another rumbling chuckle. “But if she don’t get some of them to change their minds by spring roundup, I’m afraid she ain’t got a sinner’s chance in heaven of making a go of it.”
Parker shivered. He looked over at the stack of towels, just out of reach. “Ah… would you like to hand me one of those?” he asked.
Max leaned her back against the wall and let a broad smile cross her face. “Come on, pilgrim. At my age there just ain’t that many pleasures left in this life, so I take ‘em where I can get ‘em. And from what I’ve seen so far, a nice long look at you would be pure pleasure.”
Trying not to feel self-conscious, Parker stood, letting the dirty water sluice down his lean body. His eyes met Max’s. She watched him with a brief flicker of a nearly forgotten hunger, then it was replaced by her sardonic humor. “Pure pleasure is right,” she said with a wink as he grabbed a towel and began to dry himself. She looked him up and down without selfconsciousness. “You can bathe here any time you want, pilgrim. Half price.”
Parker laughed. Canyon City was definitely proving to be much more enjoyable than he had suspected. “Is there work hereabouts?” he asked.
Max cocked her head. “Not this time of year, I wouldn’t think. Except out at the Lucky Stars, of course.”
“The Lucky Stars?”
“Hanks’s place. Ol’ man Hanks named it after his three girls. He always called them his lucky stars.”
“They didn’t have any brothers?”
“Nope. Just the three fillies. Sarah Hanks died on the last one and Charlie Hanks never got over it. Not ‘til the day he died.”
“So the three girls are running the ranch now?”
“Molly is. Can’t say as the other two are much help.”
Parker tied the towel around his waist. “Where might I find their outfit?”
Max pushed away from the wall and started to walk toward the door, a secret smile on her face. “You plannin’ to sign on out there?”
“I might give it a try.”
Max shook her head. “Head straight north out of town. You can’t miss it.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Parker said with a smile and a nod. “And thanks for the, ah…company.”
Max started out the door, her broad shoulders shaking with silent laughter. “Lord almighty,” he heard her say as she disappeared into the front room, “that’s all Miss Molly needs… a gol-danged pilgrim with the body of a prize stallion.”
He’d found the canyon. It wasn’t much of a canyon, but it sliced deep enough so that the horse he’d exchanged for Diamond tossed her head and looked reluctant to start down.
Parker dismounted and walked to the edge, looking for a path. A pilgrim, Max had called him. At the moment he was ready to add some epithets of his own to the description. When he left Canyon City he could have sworn he was heading due north, but he’d been riding a good portion of the afternoon and hadn’t seen the Lucky Stars ranch. Nor had he seen anything of the Hanks sisters. To make matters worse, the wind that had been brisk when he left town was now downright nasty. He hunched into his sheepskin jacket. Max hadn’t said anything about having to cross a canyon. Maybe he should turn back to town. If, indeed, he knew which way was back.
“What do you think?” he asked the swaybacked sorrel. The animal had been a sorry trade for Diamond, but the liveryman had insisted that Diamond might never heal up, in which case any trade was a good one. Parker didn’t know enough about horses to argue.
The animal looked at him reproachfully, as if to remind him that finding the right road was the rider’s responsibility, not the horse’s. He took another look into the canyon. The riverbed at the bottom was dry. There’d be no problem crossing. And the slope up the far side looked more gentle than the one he was standing on. If he could make it down, he should be all right.
“Ah, hell,” he said aloud. He grasped the horse’s reins firmly in one hand and started down the slippery side of the cliff, pulling the balky animal after him. Now that he was on his way, it didn’t look so formidable. And the wind cut a little less once he was within the shelter of the rocks. A few ominous white flakes whipped by him, but he ignored them and concentrated on his footing.
“Just one foot after the other,” he said under his breath. One tenderfoot after another, he silently corrected, remembering his encounter with Max. He grinned in spite of himself.
Chapter Two (#ulink_d303fc0a-73fb-5ff2-9bf6-5d6f0750535a)
“Papa must be a-rollin’ in his grave to see me like this,” Susannah said with disgust, tearing off the oversize gloves and looking at her chapped hands. “My skin’s going to be as tough as shoe leather.”
“People don’t roll in their graves,” Molly replied. “Once they’re dead, they’re dead.”
“Can’t we go back now, Molly? I’m half-froze.”
Molly pulled off her own gloves and huffed on her numb fingers. The storm was getting worse, and if they hadn’t found the blamed mule by now, they probably weren’t going to. They could only hope that the poor nag had found a place to take shelter. Beatrice was too old to weather a storm like the one kicking up just to the west of them. Too old to be of much use around the ranch, either. She’d been their father’s favorite—the only animal he could afford when he’d first come West back in ‘50. He’d been on his way to join the California Gold Rush, but had fallen in love with the wide open skies of Wyoming and had never left. Molly still felt the pain like a piece of glass in her throat every time she thought about him. She reckoned she owed it to Papa not to let Beatrice freeze to death alone in a snowstorm.
“We’ll look along the canyon,” she told her sister. “If we can’t see any sign of her there, we’ll have to head back.”
Susannah wheeled her horse toward the west. She was actually the best rider of the three sisters, but she played down her skill, not wanting Molly to assign her more tasks around the place. “Hurry up with it, then. That’s a blizzard coming,” she called back to her sister. “I don’t see what’s so all-fired important about an old mule. She won’t even let any of us ride her.”
“She misses Papa, just like the rest of us. One of these days she’ll calm down.”
Susannah frowned and let Molly pull up alongside her. “You talk about her as if she were a member of the family.”
“Don’t be stupid. You and Mary Beth and I are the family. The only family we have left.”
They’d been riding toward the edge of Copper Canyon, an unexpected gap that opened up in the middle of the prairie like a crack in a smooth pan of cake. It was named not for any particular mineral content but for its burnished red color when the sun hit it right. Susannah reached the edge first and pulled up, holding her hat down on her head as the wind tore into her. “She’s not going to be down here, Molly,” she hollered. “Papa never took Beatrice into the canyon.”
Molly squinted to keep the snow from her eyes. The big flakes were coming down harder, and it was becoming difficult to see. She flipped her horse’s reins over its head and handed them to her sister. “Hold on to Midnight. I’m going to take a look.”
“I don’t think…”
Before Susannah could finish her protest, Molly had jumped from her horse and was walking toward the edge of the cliff. As she reached the rim, her heart gave a little jump. Through the snow she could make out the distinct shape of an animal, just a few yards down into the canyon. “She’s here!” she yelled to Susannah as she scrambled over the side.
“Be careful. The ground’s slippery,” her sister warned.
In fact, the footing was more treacherous than Molly had anticipated. The snow had formed an icy coating over the rocks. She turned around and began to climb down backward, holding to the side as she went. From beneath her came a gentle whinny. She straightened up in surprise and looked over her shoulder. She knew the mule’s throaty sound. The animal below her was not Beatrice.
Her body sagged a moment with disappointment, then she straightened her back. It was someone’s animal, and it didn’t belong stuck here on the side of a canyon. She faced the rocks once again and continued down until she reached the horse. Close up, it didn’t look as if it was worth saving, but there was a fancy tooled saddle on its back and bulging saddlebags.
She looked around. Where in blazes was the rider? The gale tore at her, threatening to blow her off the side of the cliff. She clutched at the horse for support. “What are you doing here, you old nag? Where’s your owner?” The animal tossed its head and gave another whinny of complaint.
Molly twisted around to survey the surrounding area, but the canyon was fast turning into a sheet of white. She could barely see the ground right next to her own feet. She started to feel an ominous cold from the inside out. If the owner of this horse was lying hurt or wounded somewhere near here, they might not find him until after the storm, and by then it would surely be too late.
“Susannah, come help me!” she shouted.
She could barely hear her sister’s reply over the wind’s howl, and she could no longer see to the top of the cliff. She grabbed the horse’s reins. The leather was frozen stiff. “Halloo! Is anyone there?” she called out.
The snow blew into her mouth and stung her eyes. Leading the horse, she started to climb down into the canyon. She sensed that someone was in trouble out here, and helping people out of trouble was her specialty. But for once she was plumb out of ideas as to what to do.
Her boots slipped on the glassy rocks and she slid several feet, landing with her back against the sharp edge of a cracked boulder. The horse skidded along behind her. “Sorry,” she said to the animal as she scrambled back to her feet, ignoring the pain where the jagged rock had bruised her ribs. She took another look around. The world was utterly white. In just a few short minutes the snow blanket under her feet had become over an inch thick. Soon it would be blowing into immense drifts up on the plains.
She leaned back against the rocks. Her fists tightened in frustration as she tried to decide what to do. After all, she didn’t know for sure that the animal’s owner was in the canyon. The horse may have run away and left its rider miles from here. And with the progress of the storm, she and Susannah would be lucky to find their own way back to the ranch. To stay out here any longer would risk both their lives. Reluctantly she turned around once again and started up the cliff.
She almost fell on top of him. The horse pulled her to the left and she stumbled down a crevice, catching herself just before she slid right into him. Molly’s first thought was that he was dead. His body was twisted in an unnatural heap and his skin was totally white.
“Molly, are you hurt?” Susannah was climbing down toward her. She sounded terrified.
“I’m fine. But there’s someone here. He’s hurt…or worse.”
The storm seemed to abate for just a minute as the two sisters stared down at the frozen man.
“It’s that stranger—the one we saw in town yesterday. The gentleman,” Susannah said.
Molly gave a snort of disgust. “Maybe he is a gentleman if he’s blamed fool enough to try to cross Copper Canyon in this kind of weather.”
“What are we going to do?” Susannah asked, her eyes wide.
“We’ve got to get him up on his horse so we can take him back to the ranch.”
“We can’t lift a big man like that,” Susannah protested.
“It’s either that or he dies. Do you want that on your conscience?”
Susannah was silent, but she bent to help as Molly tugged at the man’s boots, trying to straighten out his body.
“You take the legs and I’ll take the shoulders—they’re heavier,” Molly ordered. Susannah was taller than Molly, but there was no question about who had the greater strength. They maneuvered the horse so that it was slightly below them on the cliff, leaving less distance for them to lift their burden. “On the count of three. Use all your strength, now,” Molly urged. “You can do it, Susie girl. One, two, three!”
They half lifted, half rolled the inert form over onto the saddle. Thankfully, the horse seemed too cold to protest and stood stock-still.
“We did it!” Susannah cried in triumph.
“Good job, sis,” Molly said, her entire chest filling with relief. Now all they had to do was find their way back home through a blinding snowstorm. “You lead the horse up and I’ll hold him on the back. We’ll tie him down when we get back on top.”
They struggled, pushing and pulling the reluctant mount up the rocks and onto level ground. Both girls were wheezing with the effort by the time they were at the top, and they threw their arms around each other in a victory embrace. “We made it,” Susannah gasped.
Molly was more reserved. “We can’t rest now. We’ve got to get started home.” She pulled a rope from her own horse and began to tie it around the inert man. There was no movement from him.
“You don’t suppose he’s dead, do you?” Susannah asked warily.
Molly brushed the snow from her face so that she could see the knots she was tying. “After all this trouble,” she said grimly, “he wouldn’t dare be dead.”
For several hours after they arrived home it looked as if the stranger they had rescued might indeed dare to die. His skin was completely cold to the touch, and his breathing was so shallow that at times it seemed to disappear altogether.
An anxious Mary Beth had greeted them at the big oak door of the ranch house, exclaiming over their tardiness in arriving through the storm. When they told her of the man, still tied to his horse out front, she ran to the kitchen to get Smokey. The bewhiskered old man was a roundup cook who had stayed on one spring years ago and had become a fixture at Lucky Stars.
“Where will we put him, Miss Molly?” Smokey asked as he helped her drag the stranger into the house.
“We’ll take him up to Papa’s room,” she answered after the briefest pause.
Susannah and Mary Beth exchanged a look. Since their father’s death the previous winter, his room had been unoccupied. When Susannah had once suggested that she would like to move there from her tiny corner room, Molly had answered her with a withering look and had gone upstairs to lock the door. It hadn’t been opened since.
Together the four of them carried the half-frozen man up the curving stairs and across the hall, then waited while Molly opened the door to the spacious bedroom. It was just as it had been when their father lived—his stand of pipes on the dresser, his old felt hat hanging from one corner of the clothes tree. But a groan from the unconscious man kept them from dwelling on the past.
“I’ve never seen skin so white,” Mary Beth said in a hushed voice as they laid him out on top of the high poster bed.
“Bring some coal oil, Smokey,” Molly directed. “We’ll have to rub it on him.”
Susannah and Mary Beth stared at her. “All over him?” Susannah asked.
“You girls ain’t rubbing no ‘all over’ on any shiftless cowboy,” Smokey said indignantly. “If he needs rubbing, I guess I’ll be the one to do it.”
Molly paused and looked up and down the stranger’s lean body. “I guess we could leave that part to you,” she told the old man. “But mind you’re gentle about it, or you’ll rub that frozen skin right off him.”
