The Heart's Pursuit Read online

  Silver stood. “I’ll saddle Cinder as soon as I rinse these dishes.” She hurried to the stream.

  Jared maintained a steady pace throughout the day, resting only when necessary for the horses. If he’d had the money to buy fresh mounts when needed, he wouldn’t have rested even then. He’d learned long ago that he could go without much sleep for several days if the need arose, but the horses had to eat and rest if he didn’t want them to break down.

  He didn’t ask Silver how she fared. He didn’t encourage conversation of any kind. He told her when it was time to stop and when it was time to continue. He expected to hear her voice a complaint, but she never did. Not one word. Not one plea to slow down or request to rest a little longer or wish for better food. And no more fainting spells either. His admiration for her grit continued to grow.

  When they finally stopped for the night, Silver took care of her mare while Jared saw to the two other horses. Once the animals were hobbled and able to graze, Jared started a fire and made a pot of coffee. He couldn’t help noticing how closely Silver watched as he spooned the ground coffee beans into the pot, and he was certain the next time she made the brew, it would be fit to drink.

  Working together, they prepared a simple meal for dinner and settled on their respective bedrolls to eat it. Neither said anything until their tin plates were clean. It was Silver who broke the silence.

  “Tell me about yourself, Mr. Newman.”

  “Not much to tell.” He set his plate aside.

  “I doubt that’s true.”

  He offered a half smile. “Maybe I should’ve said not much of interest to tell.”

  “I don’t believe that either. Tell me about your home. Where are you from?”

  It had been a long time since anyone had asked him that question. Years, in fact. Which suited him fine. The past wasn’t something he cared to share with others.

  “We’re going to be traveling together for many days, Mr. Newman. Perhaps even weeks. It would be nice to know each other a little better. Don’t you think so?”

  He had good reasons not to answer her, but something about the way she looked at him compelled him to speak. “I’m from Kentucky.”

  A smile flickered across her face. “I thought I heard that in your voice.”

  “My family had a horse farm. Fair Acres. One of the largest before the war.”

  His had been a perfect boyhood. Green pastures and whitewashed fences. Mares and foals cantering through belly-high grass. Sunny afternoons spent swinging on ropes from tree limbs with his brothers and friends and splashing naked into the pond. The shadowy barns filled with hay and straw, the pungent odors of dung and sweat in the air. Fresh lemonade served in the shade of the wide veranda, his mother smelling of honeysuckle toilet water.

  “My father and my grandfather before him raised Thoroughbreds.”

  “To race?”

  Jared nodded. “Before the war.”

  “And after?”

  “There weren’t many horses left at Fair Acres after the war. The Confederacy took most of them. The breeding mares and stallions included.”

  “How awful. Is that why you left Kentucky?”

  He thought of his mother, father, and sister as he’d last seen them, lying in their coffins. “No, that isn’t why I left.” He heard the hard edge in his reply and hoped she’d heard it too. Maybe then she wouldn’t continue.

  He wasn’t that lucky.

  “Don’t you miss your family?”

  “I have no family left to miss.” He reached for his dinner plate and stood.

  “No one?” She rose as well. “I’m sorry, Mr. Newman. I can only imagine how hard that must be, to lose the people you love.”

  With a nod, he reached out and took the plate from her hands. “I’ll take care of the dishes. You get ready to turn in. We’ll be on our way at sunrise.”

  He turned and walked to the stream.

  That night Silver dreamed about horses. Hundreds of Thoroughbreds galloping across rolling fields of green. Black horses, sorrel horses, buckskins and palominos and roans. Big stallions and young foals and pregnant mares.

  She ran with them. Right in the midst of the herd. Feet soaring over the ground. Her hair whipped out behind her like a horse’s tail in the wind. She felt wild and free. Laughter blossomed in her heart, although she made no sound. Everything was beautiful in the dream, from the bright yellow sun in a powder-blue sky to the brook running through the pastures. Joy. She felt a joy she’d never felt before. Oh, the freedom!

  But then the horses turned in a tight circle and came to a halt. Their heads came up, and they all looked in the same direction at once.

  That’s when she saw him, the man on horseback. He wore a hat that shaded his face from view as his horse loped toward her. She knew him and yet she didn’t know him. He was a stranger to her and yet he seemed somehow familiar. Perhaps it was the way he sat on his horse. Perhaps it was the breadth of his shoulders. In a moment she would know who it was. In a short while she would see his face.

  Her heart beat faster and faster. Faster even than when she’d run with the herd.

  Whoever he was, he was coming for her.

  Yes! I’m ready! Hurry!

  CHAPTER 12

  Jared and Silver were on the trail before the sun rose in the east. It had been only two days since they’d left Central City, but already they’d settled on a morning routine that was both fast and efficient. They rode in a silence that was becoming familiar to Silver. Many times she would think of something she wanted to say to Jared or wished to ask him, but more often than not she swallowed the words and retreated into her own thoughts.

  And those thoughts were usually about the man riding ahead of her. Jared had called her difficult when she refused to return to Twin Springs, but if she was difficult, so was he. Still, he could have refused her request to go with him. Or, worse yet, he could have left her in Central City or abandoned her on the trail during the night. Some men would have done that. But not Jared Newman. His profession might not be highly esteemed and he might hate having her tag along, but he remained a man of his word.

  It had been hard for him to talk about Fair Acres, about the horses being taken during the war, about his family being dead. Whether because he was a private man or because he’d been on his own too long, he didn’t like to talk about himself. She’d seen it in the set of his jaw and the look in his eyes, and she’d been moved with compassion for him.

  What had happened to his family? Had they died in the war or after? Why had he left Kentucky? What made a man with his background become a bounty hunter? Those questions and more swirled in her mind as they rode north, the Rocky Mountains on their left, the plains of eastern Colorado to their right.

  As morning passed, her thoughts drifted on, this time to her previous night’s dream. It had been fresh in her mind when she’d awakened, so fresh she remembered it now as if she’d just dreamed it. How wonderful it had been, running with the horses. Almost as if she’d taken flight. No fear. Only joy and exhilaration and freedom. And that man on the horse. Her heart quickened at the memory, but she tried to squelch the response.

  Hadn’t she learned anything from her experience with Bob? Was she so starved for affection that she would dream up a mystery man to fill the void? Of course not. She didn’t need or want a man in her life. She’d learned her lesson with Bob. She was through with men. She would never marry.

  And besides, dreams were meaningless.

  Jared turned in his saddle to look back at her. “There’s a creek up ahead. We’ll rest the horses and eat.”

  Her breath caught in her throat. She hadn’t remembered it until now, but the man in her dream had been riding a black-and-white pinto. Just like Jared’s. The man had sat on his horse in the same way. Those shoulders. The way he wore his hat.

  Merciful heavens! Jared Newman was the man in her dream.

  He slowed his horse, allowing her to ride up beside him. “Is something wrong, Miss Matlo
ck?”

  “No.” She gave her head a small shake. “But I think a rest is a good idea.”

  Jared wondered what was going on in Silver’s head. Since stopping to rest the horses and eat, she had avoided looking him in the eyes, almost as if she were afraid of him. But why? He hadn’t spoken a harsh word to her all morning, and he hadn’t threatened to send her back to Twin Springs in at least two days. But something was bothering her. She was as skittish as a green-broke colt.

  While the horses grazed, Jared and Silver sat on opposite ends of a log near the stream and ate a lunch of hardtack and beef jerky. Silver sat with her back angled toward Jared. It surprised him to discover how bothered he was by her cool silence.

  Deciding to put an end to it, he cleared his throat. “We ought to reach Laramie by day after tomorrow.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Maybe we’ll be lucky and someone will have seen Mr. Cassidy and Mr. Carlton when they passed through there.”

  “If they passed through there. And we don’t know for certain they’re traveling together. Isn’t that what you told me?”

  “If Bob Cassidy is headed for Nevada—and I have reason to believe that’s the destination—he’ll have passed through Laramie.” He was lying to her again. But what else could he do?

  She twisted on the log, meeting his gaze at last. “Even if they’re together, they might have taken a southern route.”

  “It’s possible, but not likely.”

  “We may have lost any trace of Bob and his friend already.”

  “True enough.”

  Her cheeks paled. “Do you really believe so?”

  He could have told her that he’d been searching for one fugitive from justice for six years, that he’d lost and found that particular man’s trail numerous times over the course of those years. At least she knew what Bob Cassidy looked like. Jared had only the vaguest of physical descriptions of the man he sought. Except for the scar . . . and what he did to his victims.

  “Is it hopeless, then?” Silver asked softly.

  Maybe he’d be rid of her if he answered in the affirmative. Maybe she would give up and go home to Twin Springs. But oddly enough, he didn’t seem to want that. “No, Miss Matlock. I don’t believe it’s hopeless.” The words were true, as far as they went. Jared would ask about the two men traveling together, even though finding them was no longer his first priority.

  Silver sighed as she raised her eyes toward the sky. “How I wish I’d never met Bob Cassidy.”

  Jared found himself wishing the same thing. “Can’t any of us undo our past.” He remembered all too well the thoughts that had haunted him after he’d discovered his murdered parents and dying sister. Perhaps if he’d been at home, he could have stopped the killer. Or perhaps he would have been the fourth victim. More than once he’d wished he had been. He’d even begged God to strike him dead rather than let him live with the pain, rage, and loneliness.

  The Almighty hadn’t answered that prayer, and as far as he could recall, that had been the last time he’d asked God for anything.

  He stood. “We’d best be on our way again, Miss Matlock. The sooner we reach Laramie, the sooner we might have answers.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Laramie had appeared on the Wyoming prairie in the 1860s, a tent city near the Overland Stage route. By the time the first Union Pacific train arrived there in 1868—close to a year before the transcontinental railroad was completed at Promontory, Utah—more permanent buildings had begun to appear. But even five years later, with a school and churches, homes and stores, Laramie retained its reputation for lawlessness.

  It was late in the afternoon when Silver and Jared guided their horses across the railroad tracks beneath the shadow of the towering windmill and water tank. Silver looked at every building, wondering if Bob might be inside one of them. Could she be lucky enough to find him this soon? Even if she found him, would she recover what he’d taken from her father? And would recovering what Bob stole be enough to redeem herself in her parents’ eyes? If people in Twin Springs learned she hadn’t been with her sister in Denver but instead had been alone on the trail with a bounty hunter—

  Well, that didn’t bear thinking about. And besides, she didn’t care what they thought. Nothing inappropriate had happened. Nothing inappropriate would happen. How could it? Jared Newman hardly seemed to know she was alive, let alone that she was a woman. Which was fine with her.

  As they rode past a hotel, her thoughts changed abruptly. What she wouldn’t give for a hot bath and a night between real sheets on a soft mattress. It felt like a year rather than days since they’d stayed at the Colorado Hotel in Central City.

  Jared stopped his pinto in front of Mabel’s Restaurant in the center of town. “You go in and order us some dinner. I’ll ride over to the train station and see what I can find out.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “No. I prefer to do this alone.”

  Too tired to argue with him, she stepped down from the saddle. “What do you want to eat?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Whatever you decide you want, I’ll have the same.”

  She wrapped the mare’s reins around the hitching rail, then reached for the packhorse’s lead rope and did the same. Jared nudged his gelding toward the depot and rode away without another word.

  Silver was on the boardwalk, about to enter the restaurant, when she heard a woman’s voice exclaim, “Jared Newman! As I live and breathe!”

  She turned in time to see Jared stop his pinto, then quickly dismount. A moment later he embraced the petite woman. Silver couldn’t see her face, but she wore a pale brown dress, and her strawberry blonde hair peeked from beneath a straw hat. Jared’s expression as he released his hold said that he was more than a little glad to see her.

  Something twisted in Silver’s belly.

  The woman took hold of Jared’s hand and led him toward the nearby saloon, pausing only long enough to let him tie up his horse.

  Silver’s mouth dropped open. Hadn’t he been in a hurry to go to the train depot to ask questions? And why so quick to go with that woman into the saloon? Did a pretty face make him forget his hunger and his mission? Obviously so. Well, Silver hadn’t forgotten what needed done. It didn’t take a genius to inquire if someone had seen Bob. She could do it herself.

  She set off in the direction of the train station.

  It had been better than four years since Jared had seen Whitney Hanover and her husband, Tom. They’d lived in Kansas at the time. The Hanovers were two of the few people Jared could call real friends and not just acquaintances.

  “What are you doing in Laramie?” he asked Whitney as she drew him through the swinging doors of the saloon.

  “We live here now.” She motioned with her hand. “We own the Red Dog Saloon.”

  Jared swept the room with his gaze. “Where’s Tom?”

  “Over at the bank. He’ll be back soon. Please, sit down and wait for him. He wouldn’t forgive me if I let you get away before he could see you.”

  Jared obliged, taking a chair beside a green felt–covered card table. He looked around the room a second time. Since it was empty of customers, it appeared the Red Dog was not a popular establishment. “How long have you been here?”

  “About three years now. Nothing was the same in Topeka, even after you helped clear Tom’s name. So we decided to pack up and start over again farther west. Tom worked for the railroad for a while. That’s how we came to be in Laramie. When we had the chance to buy this saloon, we decided to stay for good.”

  “A lot different from owning a millinery shop, isn’t it?”

  She laughed. “Very. But more profitable. A woman can always find a reason to put off buying a new hat, but men seem to like their liquor no matter what.”

  Jared glanced toward the bar. How could it be profitable without customers?

  Whitney must have read his mind. “We’re closed today because of a funeral in town. We’ll open up at seven to
night.”

  He looked at her again. She wore a simple and prim brown dress, and her face still had the innocent, well-scrubbed appearance that he remembered. “I can’t quite picture you working in a saloon, Whitney.”

  “I don’t work in it. I keep the accounts upstairs while Tom tends to business in the saloon. We’re happy here. It suits us.”

  “I’m glad to find you so content. It’s obvious that leaving Kansas was a good decision. Your smile tells me that.” He grinned. “And Tom’s a wise man. If you were my wife, I’d keep you out of sight too. Much too pretty for your own good.”

  She blushed a pretty pink. “The saloon isn’t why I’m so happy. It’s motherhood that’s done that. Tom and I have a son. Thomas Jr. We call him TJ. He’s two and keeps me running all the time.”

  A son. Jared grinned at the news.

  Four years ago Tom Hanover’s life had been a total shambles. Accused of murder, he’d depended on Jared discovering and bringing in the real killer and clearing his name. Whitney had sold her hat shop and their home to pay for her husband’s legal defense and Jared’s services. But the tide of public opinion had turned against Tom the same way some so-called friends had turned away. Many of those same people, after Tom was cleared of the crime, were too embarrassed by their behavior to act like friends again.

  But from Whitney’s look, they’d put that dark time behind them. They’d started over, with new hopes and new dreams and even a new family.

  He was surprised to realize he envied the Hanovers.

  The railroad station clerk behind the counter peered at Silver over the rim of his glasses. “Who’d you say you was lookin’ for?”

  She swallowed a sigh. “Their names are Mr. Cassidy and Mr. Carlton. But it’s possible they aren’t traveling together. If they are, they may have purchased their tickets here in Laramie to someplace farther west. We think it could be to Nevada.”