Now and Forever (5 page)

Nodding, Shannon stepped back. He appreciated that she let him do it rather than fuss. She seemed like a sensible kind of woman.

It wasn’t as easy as he made it sound, yet he made it to his feet without once stomping on his broken leg.

Shannon, meanwhile, started loading his pack—what was left of it—rigging it to strap on her back, then wrapping a pad of leather around the cup of fire.

She ignored him completely, just left him to it.

“Can you carry this?” She handed him the cup, as if she knew he’d want to help somehow.

Shannon slipped an arm around his waist, and he looped his left arm across her shoulders. She looked sideways at him, drew in a long breath, and said, “Are you ready?”

Dizzy, sick to his stomach, every inch of his body in some kind of pain, he dug around and found enough stubborn pride to keep him from giving up.

Nodding, he said, “Let’s go.”

Too bad pride didn’t keep him from feeling like a family of rabid wolverines was chawin’ on his ankle while a pack of wolves had their teeth sunk into his neck. His back hurt. He must have pulled every muscle in his belly, because his front hurt. It was worst where that grizz had knocked him off the trail with her paw, but it mixed in with all the other pain until it barely earned his notice. His good leg didn’t feel all that good, and his . . . oh, why list it all? He hurt all over.

“All your supplies are going to save us, Tucker.”

He was glad Shannon was impressed.

“I always carry a canteen of water.” Honestly he’d forgotten he had it in the haversack. Shannon had found it, which was embarrassing.

“And I always have matches packed to stay dry. But carrying coal in what’s left of my pack and using my tin cup as a little bucket to hold a bit of fire . . . well, that was good thinking.”

“And,” Shannon said, smiling, and this time there were dimples—causing all sorts of unruly problems for Tucker, “we don’t need to tote much coal if this whole place has it. We’ll just pick up more as we run low.”

And if Tucker noticed the black stripes ending in the
walls, going back to regular rock, he’d fill his pockets with pieces of coal. But he wasn’t going to start carrying the extra weight until he had to.

“I can’t believe you had matches wrapped to stay dry.” Shannon really was pretty. And the way she was smiling at him right now, as if he had just settled the West and wrestled a moose and hog-tied a Rocky Mountain avalanche all at once, well, it put heart into a man. And now he had to wrap his arm around her slender shoulders and lean on her to walk, and he liked that so much he probably should be ashamed of himself.

But he wasn’t, not one little bit.

“A man learns to wrap things in oilcloth to keep them dry. I don’t fall in a river every day, but I sure enough wade across one or get caught in the rain from time to time. So I was ready for trouble. I think too that as we walk, the burning coal will leave behind a strong enough smell we could follow the scent back to the cave entrance if need be.”

The coal was solving all their problems.

“Let’s go then.” Shannon was all the crutch he needed. With her to help him stay balanced, he could hop along well enough.

She slid her right arm around his waist. Tucker held the leather-wrapped cup out front. He’d heard a saying once about a journey of a thousand miles beginning with a single step and he’d always liked that notion. He was a man who liked heading out on long journeys into the mountains and loved taking that first step. He loved the journey as much as getting to where he was going.

This step felt a little like that. The pain about knocked
him to his knees, but he’d hurt before and if he lived through this—and he fully intended to—he’d no doubt hurt again.

A beginning. And it was a beginning that had as much to do with his arm around Shannon Wilde’s shoulders as it did with getting out of this cave. He wondered how long it’d take her to figure that out.

A
hunting party.” Sunrise didn’t let up.

That surprised Bailey. Sunrise was a cautious woman, and an Indian besides. It was unexpected that she’d approach the gathering of white men without more care.

But she rode straight for the group, tents sent up, fire blazing. They had the look of being settled in for a while. Grass around the campsite was well-grazed, the fire big, and the ground around it tamped down from a lot of feet over many days.

Sunrise headed straight for a man sitting at the fire, sprawled back, smoking a curved pipe. A full gray beard and white hair hanging past his shoulders, he watched her ride in with black eyes that lit with pleasure when he saw her. He jumped to his feet and rushed to catch her reins.

“Sunrise, it’s good to see you.”

“Have you been here long, Caleb?”

The pleasure faded at Sunrise’s urgent tone.

“The boys and I rendezvoused here a week ago. We’re
still waiting for a few more to show up before we head farther north. What’s wrong?”

Sunrise jerked her head at the river. “Tucker went over the cliff far north. I’ve come for his body.”

Caleb straightened, his face solemn. “Not Tucker. No.”

Sunrise didn’t respond.

A man wearing a parson’s collar stood near the fire and came up beside Caleb. “Tucker fell in the Slaughter?” The grim expression and weathered face said the man was a part of this mountain life, and he knew exactly what Sunrise’s words meant.

“I followed his tracks. He went over, and a young woman I know fell at the same time. Her sister.” Sunrise glanced at Bailey, then back at the parson.

Caleb looked hard at Bailey and Nev beside her. Though the look was only for a moment, Bailey got the feeling the old man had seen every detail about them, including no doubt that she was a woman. She doubted Caleb had survived in these mountains by being stupid. Then he turned and shouted that Tucker had fallen. There were five men in the camp. They all gathered and listened while Sunrise told them what had happened.

These were wild men, mountain men. And though they lived mostly alone, they knew each other, and in their solitary way they cared.

“No one saw a body come down that river, Sunrise.” Caleb looked at Bailey again.

She couldn’t stand for them to only speak of Tucker, although she knew if someone other than Tucker had swept past they’d know of it. “Shannon Wilde, my—” Bailey
had to trip over it, but the time for lying was past—“my sister, did they see her?”

Caleb’s eyes narrowed. A murmur went through the group of men, ages from young to old. A woman—that affected them. They cared for Tucker, their feelings were involved, but their instincts were to protect a woman. They were riled and upset and wanted to somehow help.

Turning to Sunrise, Caleb said, “If nobody came through, there must be a way out.”

“No way I have heard of.”

“If it had only been one, I’d say a body snagged.”

Bailey’s stomach twisted at the word
snagged
. Her sister reduced to a body, snagged on some piece of wood somewhere. She wasn’t one to cry, so she made a fist and wondered what she could punch.

“But both of them?” Caleb shook his head. “And it’s been too long. If they haven’t come through by now, they’re not coming. In a fast-moving river like this one? No. One might get stopped but not two. They found a way out.”

Caleb and Sunrise stared at each other. Bailey felt her own hope rising. She’d refused to give up even in the face of Sunrise’s acceptance of her son’s death. Now here was a man who looked like he wasn’t one to bother much with false hope. And he was sure as he could be that somehow, somewhere, Tucker and Shannon were alive.

But where?

Sunrise turned to the mouth of the river. From where they stood, Bailey saw the last falls and the ugly rocks it spilled down on, as good as spikes planted at the bottom of a trap to spear anything living that fell over the falls.

She knew Sunrise to be telling the truth when she said no one could survive this river.

But someone did. Her sister had proved it.

“Where do we look?” Bailey thought of the wilderness they’d ridden through, mostly in the dark. All she’d done was follow Sunrise. She hadn’t even thought of checking over the edge of that jagged rim lining the river for the sight of her sister. Shannon might be clinging to some ledge, maybe using the last ounce of her strength even now, praying for her big sister to come.

“Let’s go.” Bailey reined her horse. She wasn’t standing around for another minute. She kicked her mustang back the way they’d come. Since Sunrise didn’t know a person could get out, then she didn’t know one more thing about where to look than Bailey—none of the mountain men did, either. So Bailey wasn’t waiting, not even for the most knowledgeable men in the entire area.

She noticed no one told her to stop. In fact, Nev was right on her heels. A glance back told her Sunrise was gaining on her, the same intent expression on Sunrise’s face that Bailey was sure was on her own, and beyond Sunrise, men raced to saddle up. All of them coming to search for a favorite son.

Parson Ruskins’s head was bowed, but even that was only for a few seconds before he rushed for his horse, too.

Bailey’s heart pounded as she faced forward and hunted for a way to get close to the edge of this poisonous rattlesnake of a river.

They hobbled along, and it was mighty slow going.

Tucker tried not to put all his weight on Shannon. Once they’d left the light of the cave entrance behind, the cup of fire and the touch of each other was all they had in the world except endless dark.

“Do you think we’re heading uphill?” Shannon liked to have talking going all the time. Tucker didn’t really blame her. He felt like the mountain was pressing down on his head and shoulders, and he didn’t mind thinking about something else.

“I just can’t tell. I do think the air is clean.” Tucker looked at the fire again. “I don’t feel any breeze, and the fire doesn’t lean or wobble like it would if it was drawn to air, which would mean an opening close by. But it’s fresh air—I think there must be a way to the outside.”

“How long do you think we’ve been walking?”

She’d asked the question with such regularity that Tucker began to think he might have an answer if only he’d known what time he woke up. Because she’d asked it every ten minutes since they’d set out walking. He could have set a watch by it.

“About two hours.” And his leg, bent back at the knee, between him and Shannon, seemed to be finding new ways to make him wish his ma had just smothered him in the cradle.

“Do you think we’ll have to spend another night down here?”

That was a new one. All Tucker could think of to say was, “No. How would we know when it got to be night anyway? We’ll just keep going until we get out, no mat
ter how long that is. If we get tired, we’ll stop and rest.” Except he was afraid that if he stopped, he might never get going again.

So he wasn’t going to stop until he saw the sky.

And then he saw something in the meager light cast by their makeshift lantern that wasn’t the sky, but it was the next best thing. “A rat’s nest, Shannon. Look!”

She stopped. “Where? I hate rats.”

Tucker laughed. “I didn’t tell you that so you’d run. And I doubt there’s a rat, anyway. It looks old.” He gestured with the cup at a little gouge in the narrow tunnel. “Let’s go closer.”

As they moved on, her walking, him hopping, the tunnel opened into a cavern. Much bigger than the one they’d woken up in. Still no sky, but Tucker pulled in a deep breath for the first time in a while and looked around. The rat’s nest had been built right at the entrance to the cave.

The little blue flame only lit it up enough to give Tucker a feeling of space. The walls were no longer within touching distance. Tucker wondered just how lost they could get in here.

“I think we need to sit awhile.” He sure did. “We have to figure out what this room leads to. If there’s more than one tunnel off it, we’re going to have to decide which one to take. And maybe you can do some of that while I rest my leg.”

Tucker saw a rock about knee-high, almost flat on top right ahead of him. He pointed at it, hopped forward, and sank onto it. Shannon let him go, but then didn’t scurry off to explore. She sat right down beside him. He liked thinking he had almost as much strength as she had.

Of course, she’d half carried him this whole time, but that was beside the point.

He set the little cup of blue fire on the rock. “How are we ever going to see in this cave?”

Shannon said, “Maybe we could build a bigger fire?”

Tucker sat up straighter. “You know, I don’t think there’s as much black anymore. I think we’ve walked out of that vein of coal.”

He was more tired than he’d thought. He’d meant to really load himself down with coal if he saw that it was running out.

“There’s still some around, though.” Shannon pointed to a crumbled black heap where they’d just emerged from the tunnel. “Let’s start a fire here.”

“Can you do it, Shannon? I’ll help, but I need a few minutes—”

“No, you sit. I’ll use that rat’s nest as tinder, and a bit of fire from your cup, to get a start, then add a stack of coal. We’ll see how big we can build it and maybe light up this whole room. I could stand to take some of the chill off this cave.”

Tucker smiled at his spunky little friend. “I thought you said you hated rats.”

She flashed her dimples. “Well, you said they’re gone, and believe me I’ve had my eye on the nest. It will give me great pleasure to burn it up.” She made it sound purely wicked.

Tucker laughed. She went about doing an excellent job of starting a roaring fire.

The coal kicked off an oily black smoke, yet it rose
straight up and the cavern didn’t fill with smoke. Tucker pondered for a moment why that should mean something, but he was so battered that he just couldn’t think right now.

The light and heat drew him and seemed to take the worst ache out of his throbbing leg—so long as he didn’t move. It was all he could do not to hunker down by it and take himself a nap. He wondered if he was getting old. Maybe any day now, his hair would grow in white and he’d start to look like his friend Caleb, one of the mountain men who’d already seemed ancient when Tucker was a boy.

Bailey found a grassy spot and staked her horse out to graze. “I’m going up to the edge on foot.”

Sunrise nodded. “I’ll go forward a mile and do the same. I’ll mark where I start. We’ll look for sign they came out or are stranded below.”

“I’ll go on ahead of Sunrise and do the same.” Nev walked off without another word. Bailey wanted to tell him no. She didn’t want to trust her sister’s life to a man who, less than a month ago, nearly killed Kylie.

Nev had come back to himself a bit since he’d come west hunting Aaron, wanting revenge.

Aaron said he
could
track, but
would
he? What if the man’s grudge against Aaron, his old childhood friend, was still alive and well?

Aaron and Nev had grown up together, neighbors who lived right along the line where the North and South divided. Aaron fought for the Union, Nev for the Confederacy. When they’d come home to the Shenandoah
Valley, their homes had been razed, their families and their livestock were dead, their land barren. Everything gone at the hands of both armies, who waged so much of their war right on top of that land.

The war was over, but the hatred remained, and in his crazed grief Nev had tried to kill Aaron. To keep from having to shoot his friend, Aaron had left Shenandoah to start a new life. Nev, starved to a skeleton, half mad with hatred and grief, twisted from time spent in a brutal Union prison camp, had followed Aaron west bent on killing the man who was still his enemy.

Nev had found Aaron and Kylie and nearly killed them both before he’d been stopped, and in the struggle Shannon had been shot.

Now, with Aaron’s help and Kylie supporting her husband, Nev seemed to be healing in both mind and body.

But Bailey couldn’t forget the sight of Nev holding a gun to Kylie’s head, or the sight of Shannon, bleeding from a head wound. Bailey still watched Nev close whenever she was near him.