Empty Promises

Chapters 10-19

by Redwood

Disclaimer: The characters and situations of the TV program "Big Valley" are the creations of Four Star/Republic Pictures and have been used without permission. No copyright infringement is intended by the author. The ideas expressed in this story are copyrighted to the author.

Chapter 10

The wind rattled him, as he staggered down from the saddle, and shaking, his teeth almost chattering, he held onto the horn for a few long seconds, before he turned around, tied both horses loosely, and reached up to help ease the slumped figure above him down to the ground.

“C’mon, . . . Barkley,” he grunted, as he half carried, half dragged the barely conscious man toward the sheltered depression between two huge boulders.

Situated between a small stand of hardwood trees, the area was shielded enough from the road to keep a small fire from being too noticeable. But, because the opening of the depression faced away from the main route, Heath knew its short-coming was that it would be fairly easy for someone to sneak up on them from behind, if they were spotted.

Staggering to his knees, the weight of the heavier, larger man pulling him down, Heath shook his head, fighting for focus. He sucked in a couple of ragged breaths, eased the injured man’s head to the ground, then stood up and shakily returned to the two horses.

“Easy, Girls,” Heath said, as he loosened one cinch, then the other, hefted both saddles, one in each hand, and stumbled back from where he had come. Breathing hard, he dropped them in the dirt of the entrance to the small shelter, and reached up for a moment to hold onto the rock face just above him, resting his aching head against his hand.

Then, shaking his head again as he felt a wave of unexpected dizziness, he returned to the horses, leaned down to grab the canteen he had left on the ground, and nearly toppled over as he stood back up, its strap in his hand.

Catching himself against his mare, he wrapped his fingers in her thick, black mane and hung on, waiting for the dizziness to subside. When he could lift one hand from her withers, he reached behind his head, searching with his fingers for the mounting pain’s source, suddenly aware that it must have one, finally realizing that the headaches and dizziness must have a specific cause.

The way he was feeling, he suddenly knew, was more than the result of the general, overall exhaustion and soreness he had believed it to be.

Still, he was startled to feel the sticky wet warmth of oozing blood, and he stared blankly down at his slick, red fingers, as if they belonged to someone else.

Shaking his head, he tried to remember when he had been cut or hit hard enough to . . .

But, he stopped when his groggy brain finally touched on the image of the rocks and tools being thrown at them as they rode out of Lonesome.

Though he was unsure of what exactly it was that had hit him, he knew something had.

He wiped his hand on his shirt, and turned to lean his shoulder against his mare so he could remain upright. He grabbed the brown material of his shirttail, only half tucked in, and ripped off a long strip. Then, he lowered himself awkwardly to his knees, using Gal’s leg to help him ease down into the grass, and he used both hands to wrap the cloth around his head once, taking care to cover the three-inch long gash he could feel on the left side of the back of his head. He tied it off, letting the ends hang down.

Then, pushing off from the ground, he stood up shakily, opened the canteen, and lifted it to his mouth. Swallowing, he then stepped up to his horse and, holding the canteen against his body with his arm, carefully filled his cupped-together hands to allow her several long pulls of water.

“Sorry, Little Gal,” he said, “That’s all I’ve got for you.”

Stepping over to the dark chestnut, he repeated the process, and checked to make sure both had enough rein to reach the lush grass all around them.

Then, giving the smaller mare one last pat, he turned, headed into the trees to locate some wood for a fire, and returned a few minutes later with one arm laden and pulling a small, downed tree behind him with the other.

“Don’t ya’ let O’Doule sneak up on us, now Gal, ya’ hear?” he said, certain that her sharp ears would hear any horses approaching long before he did.

Returning to the small opening in the rocks with the firewood, his movements slightly unsteady, Heath dropped the wood nearby, lowered himself to all fours beside the dark-headed man, and shook him slightly.

“C’mon, Barkley,” he mumbled, “Ya’ gotta help me here.”

Untying the man’s bedroll from where it lay, still attached to the saddle, he spread it out on the cold ground and prodded him gently. When the injured man did not move, Heath sat back on his heels and decided to try setting the arm he was sure was broken, before the man regained complete consciousness.

“But, you’re gonna need ta be warm afterwards, Barkley,” he said, talking to keep himself alert. “So, we’ve gotta get your sorry hide on top’a this bedroll first.”

It took him several minutes, but he managed to get the injured man on top of his blankets by rolling him first one way, then the other, and maneuvering them beneath him in between.

No longer shivering in the cool air when he was finished, Heath sat down on the ground, grateful for the rocks blocking the stiff breeze. He mopped his sweating face with his shirtsleeve.

“Whew, Barkley,” he said, panting for breath and ignoring the pounding in his temples with a faint smile, “Never realized sippin’ champagne could make a fit man so heavy.”

Then, unbuttoning the already half-undone tan coat, Heath eased the mostly unconscious man’s good arm out of the sleeve first, repeating it with his shirtsleeve. Next, he worked carefully to do the same on the other side, wincing for the hurt he knew he was causing when the dark-headed man’s head began to toss back and forth.

Heath immediately saw the efforts the injured man had made to stop the bleeding from the gash he recognized as a knife wound. Whistling softly, the blond swallowed hard, his begrudging respect for the man rising up in his throat another notch, whether he wanted it to or not.

“Got ya’ a good one, didn’t he?” Heath asked quietly, reaching behind him for the other canteen. He wetted the bandana, noting that it was only partially covered in blood, and dabbed at the wound with it.

Pleased to see no more bleeding, Heath left it alone and moved down to gently inspect the broken forearm. Then, he broke off two sturdy, but not too large, limbs from the downed tree he had drug in, and he used the knife Barkley had returned to him earlier to cut several more strips from the bottom of his brown shirt.

“Gonna have ta find a new tailor after all this,” Heath mumbled, one eye on the semi-unconscious man, and the other on the swollen arm.

Judging from the swelling, it was going to be tough on both of them to set the break, but Heath was relieved to find that only one of the two bones in the man’s arm felt like it was broken.

Sitting down beside the dark-haired man, Heath used his boots to carefully brace against the man’s side, while he grasped the injured arm and wrist. Then, with one sharp pull, followed by a slow careful release, he closed his eyes and felt the edges of the bone move solidly back in place. Holding the arm still, he picked up the two pieces of wood, placed them against the forearm, and wrapped them, making careful circuits of each piece of wood, as well as the arm, as he slowly worked the brown fabric wrapping evenly, but not too tightly, from the wrist to the elbow.

Laying the man’s splinted arm across his steadily rising and falling chest, Heath checked the knife wound again and was pleased to see that the bleeding had completely stopped. Then, ignoring the dizziness that hit him as soon as he stood up, he quickly lay a fire and lit it. Feeding it slowly, he banked it with some of the rocks strewn about, heating them in case he needed to place several next to the man’s upper body later on to keep him warm.

Finally, he removed his tin cup from his saddlebags, a packet of jerky, and proceeded to heat some of the water from the canteen. Pulling his saddle closer to the fire, Heath lowered himself to the ground, leaned against his gear, and allowed himself to relax for the first time in too many hours.

* * * * * * * *

He was startled awake by the repetitive mumbling, the sounds rising and falling like a heated, but barely understood, one-sided, conversation heard through a solid wood door.

“No, no!” the dark-haired man said loudly, tossing his head, and, reaching out, trying to push someone away with his uninjured arm.

Heath rose slowly to his feet, his movements stiff and immediately impaired by the dizziness that threatened to send him back to the ground. Dropping to his hands and knees, he closed the remaining foot or so between them, reaching out to touch the man’s hot forehead and flushed face as soon as he was close enough.

“Dammit,” Heath said, dropping his own head. He had not thought of this possibility when he chose this site, the lack of water to replenish their supply now a glaring error, and one that told him of his own unrealized grogginess following their escape from the camp.

Stretching out, he grasped the braided rawhide loop attached to the canteen and hauled it closer. Then, he tapped the man’s hot face, trying to get him to come around enough to swallow some of the remaining liquid.

“Here, Barkley,” he said, tapping again on the flushed cheek, relieved to see the dark hazel of the man’s eyes crack open slightly. He managed to get two swallows down him, before the man began tossing his head about again.

Suddenly, the rock-hard muscles of the man’s right hand clenched in the material of Heath’s shirt, and the injured man pulled himself up to a sitting position, all but choking the blond beside him. His eyes focused on Heath’s face, he snarled, “No more violence! Let me talk to the men, O’Doule!”

Struggling to release the man’s hand on his shirt, Heath said calmly, despite his continued efforts, “I wish ya’ could’ve, Barkley. . . . I wish he’d’a listened ta you.”

The man slumped slowly back to the blankets, supported gently in the arms of the exhausted blond. Then, Heath sat on his heels, leaning over Nick, his head down and eyes closed, as he repeated the words.

“I wish he’d’a listened ta you. . . . I wish he’d already listened . . . . ta me.” Heath’s voice dropped to little more than a whisper, as he soaked the man’s bandana in some of the remaining water and used the cleanest corner of it to wipe down the man’s face, neck, and upper chest.

He had maintained hope for making everything right again, had held onto it determinedly, right up to the second he had had to choose between letting Barkley fire his gun and bring O’Doule’s Mollies down on them, or throwing the knife into Pat O’Riley’s chest and killing the man himself earlier tonight.

Pat O’Riley, he knew, had no children, but he left behind a brother who had broken a leg in an accident in the mine two weeks ago. Without Pat to help him, how would he. . . . ?

He did not notice that Nick’s eyes were clearer now and watching him, as he stared down at the dark cloth in his hand, his own blue eyes unfocused and lost in thought.

Slowly, thickly, he muttered, “Now, there’s nothin’ left ta do, . . . but try ta keep them from killin’ each other, . . . the men guardin’ the mine, the men hopin’ ta return there, . . . an’ the Chinese I know they’re gonna bring in.”

His voice rough with the fever, but his tone reflecting that he was aware of his surroundings, Nick listened to the blond incredulously for a few moments before he asked quietly, truly puzzled, “Who are you, Boy?”

Heath’s head came up immediately, and Nick saw the stark pain in his eyes, the despair glittering in the reflection from the angry, unshed tears.

“Who do you think I am, Barkley?” he growled, his heart too swollen with grief for things that had already come to pass and things he figured were to come. His was a heart too hardened by pride and self-reliance developed in the face of too many hurts over too many years, to allow this dark-headed man the entry he all but demanded with his very presence.

Nick shook his head, his confusion evident in his eyes, and he lifted his good arm, again grasping the brown shirt of the blond above him, though this time he did it purposefully, knowingly.

“I don’t know,” Nick paused, looking up at him.

Then, he added, “But, I want to know. I need to know, Boy, . . . to know who you are, and why you’re here, why you’re helping me.”

Closing his eyes, trying to fight against the strong pull of the man, not only on the front of his shirt, but on his very soul, Heath shook his head slightly, and reached up to loosen the fingers holding onto him.

Suddenly, the man did let go, but he quickly grabbed Heath’s hand, his fist closing around Heath’s, refusing to release him, even as Heath tried unsuccessfully to gain his feet and back away.

Holding on fiercely, Nick said, “Who are you, Boy? Tell me! Who are you? . . . I wanna hear!”

Fighting with the fierce grip the man had on him, . . . inside and out, Heath felt his own anger erupt, an anger he had kept pushed down deep, covering it over, layering it over with enough hard work, enough movement from one place to another, enough searching for a place to belong and someone to belong to, to fill a lifetime.

As the anger came, with it began the words he’d never intended to say.

Chapter 11

“I’m your. . . . “

But, a lifetime of learning to control his anger, of learning to swallow it and do no more than lift an eyebrow in the face of a threat, of learning to rein himself in and assert his pride without letting the anger rule him, . . . pulled him up short.

It would be in his own time, in his own choosing. . . . not like this.

“No, Barkley!” Heath snarled, struggling again to rise.

But, the dizziness and reawakened pain inside his head thwarted his efforts. Dropping back down on both knees, his breathing labored, Heath lowered his head, and whispered, eyes closed, “No. . . . I’ve told you all I can. . . . Now, . . . just . . . just leave it alone.”

Nick pushed himself up on one elbow, still holding onto the no longer resisting hand gripped fiercely in his. Then, swiftly, he released the hand and reached up, grasping the younger man’s shoulder and hauling himself up to eye level with the blond.

They sat there then, both resting on their boot heels, facing each other, their knees beneath them, legs folded under them in the dirt.

But, Heath’s head was still down, and Nick could not see his eyes.

Shaking him, Nick growled when he received no response, “Look at me, Boy! Look at me!”

Slowly, the blond head came up, and for the first time, Nick noticed the rough bandage wrapped around Heath’s forehead. The pale blue eyes, visible in the light of the fire, were unfocused and far away, despite the additional shake Nick gave him, his hand having now moved to grasp the back of the younger man’s neck.

“Heath! Heath!” Nick called, using the name for the first time, the sharp pain of worry for the blond replacing some of the pain from his steadily throbbing arm. “Are you alright? What happened?”

As the blond suddenly slumped forward, falling toward Nick’s chest, the larger man caught him with his good arm and eased the shivering form down sideways, next to the warmth of the fire. Leaning over him, Nick saw the blue eyes, still open slightly.

He reached down to tap the side of the younger man’s face, and he said, trying to catch his own breath, “Just rest, Boy. . . . You’ve been watching over me for two days, . . . and now, it’s my turn . . . to return the favor.”

“Is that a . . . a promise, Barkley?” Heath mumbled, before his eyes slid closed, and he drifted into darkness.

Reaching over to gently tousle the blond hair above the strip of brown material encircling it, Nick nodded, his eyes suddenly full of unbidden moisture.

“You can bet the ranch on it, Boy,” he whispered. “You can bet the ranch.”

* * * * * * * *

Checking over the unconscious blond was not difficult, even for the one-armed, feverish Nick.

Heath wore no coat, nor long underwear to move aside.

Pushing himself back up on his knees, he leaned over Heath’s chest and unbuttoned the thin, cotton shirt, pushing it open. At the sight of the ugly bruise along Heath’s side, the bruise he knew he had put there, Nick exhaled loudly.

However, he was relieved to feel very little swelling or heat in it.

Finding no other injuries, but shaking his head at the now visible, too gaunt frame, he didn’t waste time fumbling with re-buttoning the thin material. Instead, he reached over and gathered the corners of the two dark-colored blankets from beside him, where the blond had apparently been lying earlier, and pulled them over the unconscious young man.

“Fool Boy,” he muttered, as he turned his attention to the cloth-encircled blond head. It didn’t take him long, even working with only one good hand, to find the swollen, still oozing gash, and, grabbing the canteen, he wet the bandana lying beside him and held it to the swelling for long moments.

Then, laying his hand against Heath’s face, he felt the cold that still held the young man in its grip. Glancing over at the low-burning fire, he used his good arm to help him edge toward the stack of wood the blond must have placed there earlier, and he first prodded the coals, then piled on more kindling until he had it going a little brighter. Then, reaching over the unconscious young man, he touched one of the rocks half buried in the coals. Smiling, at the radiating heat, he then used a piece of wood, painstakingly, to work three of them out of the glowing ashes and pull them toward the blanketed blond, leaving them on the outside of the blankets to warm him.

Satisfied, Nick decided the only other measure he could take would be to get something hot inside Heath as soon as possible. He leaned over and looked inside the tin cup sitting half covered in the glowing coals. The water Heath must have placed there some time ago was smoking and obviously still warm. Though much of it had probably boiled away, there would hopefully still be enough remaining to use when the blond came around.

He added a little from the half-full canteen.

Then, leaning back tiredly against his saddle, Nick ran a sooty glove through his hair and promptly chuckled at himself when he figured he had just left black streaks across his temples.

“Brother Jarrod’d sure have a good laugh at that!” Nick said aloud. “Probably’d have something to say about my barn manners.”

He glanced down at his splinted arm, flexed his fingers carefully, and, smiling at the results of the blond’s handiwork, reached inside his shirt to check the knife wound. Satisfied that he was no longer bleeding, even after all of the moving around, he lay back down and looked out of the opening between the rocks, at the stars winking through the trees above them.

For some reason, thoughts of his father trickled through his head when he returned his gaze to the still figure nearby.

As he closed his eyes, giving in to the hot exhaustion creeping back up on him, Nick remembered the way the blond had seemed to be grieving a little while ago, worrying over people and events he could not be responsible for.

It was something he had seen his father do countless times.

It was what had gotten him killed in the end.

Shaking his head, Nick admitted to himself, that when the two of them finally got to Stockton, when they got out of this mess and made it to the ranch, he hoped he could find a way to convince the young miner that he could have a different future in front of him if he wanted it.

Nick reached over and patted the blanket-covered chest once, before he lay back down, and he mumbled aloud into the dark, “Wonder how you are with cattle and horses, Boy?”

* * * * * * * *

Victoria Barkley paused in mid stride as she walked past Jarrod’s closed bedroom door.

Puzzled, she thought she heard the intermittent sounds of faint snoring. Easing the door open, she gaped at the sight of her eldest’s sleeping form, his face turned toward the doorway where she stood.

Then, smiling happily, she carefully closed the door and headed down the hall, her steps light as she glided down the grand staircase and headed toward the back of the house to find Silas and help him with breakfast.

Sure that Jarrod would not stir much before noon if he had arrived only a few hours ago, she was already planning a welcoming lunch for him inside her head.

Nodding, as she turned the corner into the dining room, she thought that, if only Nick would come home later in the day, she would be a completely, contented mother, with all three of her children gathered around her for dinner tonight.

“Oh, Tom,” she sighed, “I just wish you could drop in to join us. Then, My Love, it would be perfect.”

* * * * * * * *

It took almost a whole minute of his horse’s long strides before Nick looked up from his reverie and realized that the other horse, the little black mare, was no longer walking beside him. Grumbling about having to halt their progress when they were so close to their destination, Nick hauled on Coco’s reins and turned to look over his shoulder at the horse and rider back behind him.

Then, turning his mare around, Nick sat for a moment, watching the pair, not sure which of the two of them, the horse or the blond astride her, had made the decision to stop.

Despite the constantly throbbing arm, and the heavy stiffness in his chest, Nick urged his horse into a jog, and he headed her back beneath the sign arching over the road, proclaiming the boundary of the Barkley Ranch. When he pulled her up abruptly beside the black mare, he reached out to grasp the shoulder of the young man opposite him.

Unresponsive, Heath had his head down, and he appeared to be either unawake or unaware.

“Can you make it, Boy?” Nick asked, the concern he’d felt for both of them for the last, long hours, apparent in his voice. “It’s not much further, now.” Shaking the shoulder again, he wondered how he was going to get his horse turned around and beside the blond without letting go of him, now that he felt like the only thing holding the young man up was his hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t you let me down, now, Boy! I feel a nice soft bed calling my name!”

Nick felt a shudder go through the younger man, could feel the chill, despite the blanket draped around him and held in place in the front with a strip of rawhide cording.

Slowly, the bandage-wrapped head came up, and the blue of the eyes seemed to look right through Nick, as Heath stared off into the distance beyond him, focused on something only he could see.

“Heath!” Nick called. “Let’s go, Boy!”

The low voice started somewhere deep inside the blond, with only part of the mumbled words emerging as they worked their way past his heavy heart and the sudden swelling in his throat.

“’Never thought ta. . . . never planned ta. . . ta get this close. ...”

“What’re you muttering about, Boy? We’re both too stubborn by half to quit! . . . And,” Nick continued, the words tumbling out in spite of the exhaustion plaguing him. “Now that we’ve gotten this far, we’re going to get even closer. We’re going to make it the last five miles before we stop again. Now, let’s go!”

Heath closed his eyes for a few long seconds, sucked in a ragged breath through his nose, then blinked his eyes open.

He turned his face toward Nick and met his gaze.

Impatient, Nick squeezed the shoulder he had continued to hold onto, then released him and turned his fidgeting horse. He gave Heath a huge smile, and not noticing that it was never returned, he relaxed the reins.

His chocolate-colored horse, her ears pricked forward toward the barn she knew was out there, needed no further urging, as she rose quickly into a lope as soon as she was released. Glancing over his shoulder, Nick saw the blond cast a long look at the sign overhead as he walked his horse forward and passed beneath it, before he set his mare into a faster gait on the ranch side of the entry.

Then, turning his thoughts toward home, Nick gritted his teeth against the nearly constant throbbing of his arm, and he began to watch for the first sight of the large white house, eager to see it beckoning to him in the weak afternoon sun.

Chapter 12

“Nick! What happened?”

The hollered question startled them both, as the deep voice of the foreman coming around the side of the house at a run, cut across the exhaustion and pain that threatened to pull them both from their horses before either animal reached a complete stop.

“I’m fine, Duke,” Nick said, as he struggled to climb down from the saddle with only one useful arm.

“C’mon, Nick. Let me help get you inside.”

As he reached out to support Nick, who just waved him off, Duke glanced over at the stranger who accompanied his boss. The young man was already loosening the cinch from his tired-looking pony’s saddle, though the older man could tell the blanket-draped, dirt-covered blond probably shouldn’t be doing anything more than lying stretched out in a blanket-covered bed.

Nick was three strides toward the front door before he realized the blond had, again, not followed him. Turning, he drew himself up to the most imposing stance his injured body could muster at the moment and demanded, “Boy, you get up these steps and inside this door. And, I don’t want any of your too loud reasons about why you shouldn’t come in, you hear me? This is my house and my family, and I want you here!”

Having lifted his head to look steadily out at the low foothills beyond the imposing white house at the man’s first few, insistent words, Heath abruptly turned his head to gaze at Nick steadily at the last several.

Watching them both, Duke saw the slightly defiant stare and wondered about it, while he reached out, took the reins from the almost oblivious young man, and watched the blond mount the low steps, his exhaustion from a moment before, hidden now by the instant poker face that slid in place as he climbed.

Shaking his head, puzzled at noticing something slightly familiar about the boy, Duke watched the two of them disappear inside the house together, and sudden thoughts of fire and ice, flint and steel, thunder and lightning, crossed his mind.

He realized that, whoever that boy was, he was a powder keg waiting to detonate, and the boss, always ready for a good brawl, could be just the one unlucky enough to touch the spark to the smoldering fuse that would set him off.

* * * * * * * *

“All things considered, Hummel’s made us a pretty fair offer. We could get out of Barkley-Sierra without losing any skin,” Jarrod explained, replacing the papers on top of the desk, one thumb tucked inside his vest pocket and one side of his open suit coat held back by his arm. He held a half-smoked cigar in the other.

Victoria glanced up from her tea, the almost untouched beverage cold now, despite the way she continued to stir it as if she still planned to drink it.

“You mean we’ll get all our money back,” Audra stated, causing Jarrod to look at her and nod, wondering at the tone of her voice, the inflection that told him she must have changed her mind from before, because she was apparently no longer in favor of selling out.

“Yes. If we accept.”

“And if we don’t accept?” Victoria asked.

“Well, then, we’re in for a very expensive fight for control of the company.”

“Alright, Jarrod, what are our chances?” she pressed, continuing to stir her cold tea, her back to her son, who now leaned down over her slightly, from behind where she sat on the red settee before the fire.

“Hummel now controls sixty percent of the outstanding shares.”

“Then, we’re lost before we start,” Audra said, watching them both from a nearby chair.

“Not necessarily. We might be able to win over some of the proxies he now holds.”

“Or, we could sell out.”

“Mother?” Jarrod asked, looking down at her worriedly, hearing her quiet, contemplative, voice and waiting for her eyes to rise from the delicate, china teacup.

Then, her thoughts returning to her husband as they had earlier in the day, she gazed up at the picture of her beloved Tom staring down at them all, and she asked rhetorically, “I wonder what he would say.”

Startled, all eyes turned abruptly toward the double oak doors as they heard a raised, unfamiliar voice say, “I’ll tell you what he’d say.”

They watched in surprise, as Nick, looking like he’d been through the gates of Hell and had returned on the back of a lathered horse, stepped through the doorway and into the room. He was accompanied by a younger man dressed completely in brown, a grey wool blanket folded and draped over one arm, and a rifle held loosely, but not menacingly, in the other.

Pulling his eyes away from the icy, level stare of the younger man who had spoken so intrusively, Jarrod exclaimed, “Nick! What’re you doing back so soon?”

“I wasn’t expecting to be back so soon. I was chased out!” Nick explained loudly, his words startling them all.

Though his exhaustion lifted some at the sight of his family gathered together in the study, the warmth of the fire crackling in the grate beneath the mantel behind them, Nick’s anger at what had happened was reawakened by the words.

He added, “By men carrying ropes and shovels.”

“Chased out?” Jarrod asked, incredulous.

But, before Nick could answer, before the woman watching the stranger so intently, or anyone else, could ask about him, Heath slowly eased the blanket and the rifle down on the floor by the massive oak desk, his eyes never leaving the picture of the man above the fireplace.

He didn’t step any further into the room, but he again spoke out, “They call themselves the Mollie Maguires. ‘Ever hear’a the Mollie Maguires? Any of ya’?”

All eyes, not just Victoria Barkley’s, turned back toward him.

The raw pain on the face of the blond was unmistakable, and his clenched jaw left no mistake that he was angry, almost beyond words, . . . but not quite. The light blue of his eyes ignored them, as, instead, they continued to bore into the lifeless eyes of the man in the picture.

The look was one of raw, burning hatred.

Reaching out for Nick’s hand with one of hers, Victoria unconsciously lifted the other and clutched at the locket her husband had given her years ago.

She asked, softly, “Nick? What happened up there?”

Then, unable to tear her eyes away from the stranger standing just inside the door, his eyes still fastened on the framed picture of her husband over the fireplace, she added, while shaking her head slightly, as if trying to place him, “And, who is your guest?”

“Mother, Jarrod, Audra, this is Heath. He, . . . ah, . . . he got me out of Lonesome, away from the men that would’ve strung me up, or beaten me to death, if they could have.”

Her skirts swirling around her, Victoria turned abruptly and looked into her son’s face. Then, she glanced down at his roughly-set broken arm, and back up at his bruised, exhausted face. His serious hazel eyes, she saw immediately, were not on her, but on the young man across the room, who was now moving slowly past them, headed toward the picture that held his gaze.

“Heath?” Nick asked, his voice low, carrying a hint of respect and concern that none of his family missed. Then, after a pause in which he did not receive an answer, Nick glanced at his brother and added, “Jarrod, we could both use a drink.”

Victoria, her hand still holding Nick’s, turned back and watched the blond-headed stranger.

He had reached the fireplace, though his movements seemed to be heavy and sluggish somehow. He lifted one hand and, suddenly, slammed it forcefully into the wooden mantel.

Nearby, Audra jumped.

Then, she moved a quiet step closer to Nick, both graceful hands gripping the back of the red settee.

Jarrod paused on his way toward the crystal decanters on the other side of the wide doorway.

“Heath?” Nick asked again.

This time, the blond responded aloud.

“Those miners have reached the limit’a their endurance,” he said, his voice low and shifting from insistent, to full of irony. “The Mollie Maguires are one’a their secret societies, a violent one. . . . They have the strange notion that it’s better to die fightin’, than wait like sheep. . ...”

He paused, thinking again of the man he’d been forced to kill. Then, he finished, “A very strange an’ unrealistic people. . . I don’t think you’d like them.”

Jarrod stepped forward, handing Nick one of the glasses. Then, placing the other on the corner of the desk, he stepped close to Audra, as if to protect her. . . protect her from this young man whose words were creating an imposing barrier between them, a barrier that Jarrod was sure no subsequent introductions could ever remove.

He glanced toward his mother, who was silently watching the blond, watching him as intently as she was listening to his words.

When the young man turned his eyes away from the picture and started walking back toward them, Jarrod physically crossed in front of Audra, prepared to block any sudden movement he might make toward her.

But, at the blond’s next words, he froze, his eyes widening.

“Funny thing is, they don’t hate the company management, nearly as much as they hate the Barkleys.”

Nick, his growing irritation with the blond’s rudeness suddenly spiking to a blood-boiling level, stood stock still. He was unable to reconcile the quiet individual he’d tried unsuccessfully to pry words out of for hours on end, with this verbally scathing young man.

He demanded loudly, “Get to the point, Heath!”

The young man stopped, looked at Nick for a long moment, his eyes unreadable, and he turned back, headed away from them, once again glaring at the man in the picture.

Undaunted by Nick’s command, Heath continued levelly, not removing his eyes from the picture, as he spoke and inclined his head toward it, “Well, now, I was gonna tell ya’ what he’d do.”

Still standing in the middle of the floor with his family, as Heath returned to the fireplace, Nick stared at him in perplexed amazement. He knew no one had ever dared, at least not in his memory, to enter their home, their inner sanctuary, intruding on the calm and serenity of his father’s study in this manner before.

How was it that this boy, a dirt-poor miner from nowhere, had the gall to come in here and defy them like this? True, Nick had invited him, insisted that he come with him, but Nick had not known the boy would act this way.

Who was he?

Holding her breath, thoughts similar to Nick’s crashing around in her head, Victoria nodded slightly, grey eyes never wavering from the young man’s face.

She said, “Go on.”

The impassioned words immediately blazed up and scorched them all with their heat, as he hit his hand against the mantel with each new assertion, “He’d say sell out! He’d say wipe your hands of the whole dirty mess. He’d say take your money and run!”

Jarrod, his slow-to-burn anger beginning to simmer deep inside, attempted to ignore Heath and regain control of the situation. Turning his eyes to his brother, he asked, “Nick, what happened?”

But, both question and answer were cut off, as the blond started speaking again, as if he had never stopped, his fury at the man above him beginning to bleed over to those standing before him, as he asked, his voice rising the longer he spoke, “You think those men up at Lonesome Camp are strikin’ against Hummel’s management, his wage cuts, workin’ conditions in the mine? Oh, you are so wrong!”

He had turned to face them at Jarrod’s words of moments before, but now, he whirled back around, and despite the instant dizziness that plowed into him, he slammed his hand on the wood above him one last time, emphasizing his next words, “They’re strikin’ against him!”

Nick’s anger helping to cut through the pain and bone-tiredness that gripped him, he said dangerously, “Heath, I think you’d better explain that.”

Turning swiftly back around, his blue eyes blazing into the dark-haired rancher’s hard hazel, Heath stalked away from the fireplace, brushed past Nick, and headed for the door. Suddenly, he stopped, reached out to grasp the wooden doorframe in a white-knuckled grip, and said evenly, with his back to all four of them, “Then, you explain ta me his promises that were never kept. . . . Good housing. Safe workin’ conditions. Decent wages. . . . Schools for the children. Security for the old an’ the injured. An’, a company store sellin’ at cost.”

Each statement, though said in a relatively quiet, much calmer voice, resounded like another nail being pounded into a coffin, . . . a coffin in which rested Thomas Barkley, patriarch of the family and early on, the sole proprietor of the Lonesome Camp mine.

Each was also a nail through a surviving Barkley’s heart, condemning the man they revered above all others.

He continued, his face only turned partially back toward them, only enough for them to see that his eyes were now lost in unbidden remembrances of things he must have seen, experienced firsthand, somewhere along the way, as his no longer angry voice washed over them.

“What did they get? Leakin’ roofs, rotten timberin’ in the mine, dirty children playin’ in the streets an’ beggin’ pennies. An’, a company store that charges four prices for everything.”

Then, struggling to right himself as he turned around to face them, struggling to make them understand with mere words the things that they never could, simply because of their circumstances, he asked, “Do ya’ know what they eat up there? Potatoes. Potatoes. Three meals a day, seven days a week. An’ praise the Lord when a miracle puts a bite’a meat on their plate, once in a blue moon. An’, as for the old an’ the crippled. . . ,” he paused, looking straight at the tiny, silver-haired woman.

She was obviously the mother of the beautiful young woman standing nearby, and as she watched him with granite grey eyes, he could feel her aura of strength. He appealed to the countenance of compassion he could also see in her face, implored her to understand the way only a mother could, as she listened to his words, “Oh, they’ve got it fine an’ easy. . . if they have a daughter that. . . that works in a saloon ta keep the company roof over their heads an’ enough food on their plates ta keep them alive.”

He faltered a moment as he said the last, his eyes closing briefly as his headache flared and Brydie’s green eyes flashed across his memory, the hurt in them evident as her father refused to speak to her because of her self-less actions on his behalf.

He didn’t see Nick step forward, worry for him getting the better of the dark-headed rancher’s teeth-gritting anger.

When he opened his eyes, Heath focused on the picture again, and, oblivious to Nick’s concern, headed back toward the fireplace, reaching up, grasping the mantel above him.

The words stormed out of him.

“What he promised them was hope! An’ . . . ,” he turned, meeting the eyes of the four people standing so still across the room, watching him as he added, “What they got was a kick in the teeth.”

Caused both by his reluctant compassion for them and the exhaustion at his draining efforts to explain to them, his voice softened slightly as he finished, “That is why they hate him.”

Stepping around Jarrod, Victoria walked gracefully, determinedly, toward the fireplace.

The young man’s words, never mind his rude intrusion, forced on her family in anger, had left her alternately fuming in indignation at their open attack on the husband she loved, and shaking in sorrow at the pictures they painted, pictures she longed to burn to a crisp and wipe out of her mind, like she would brush crumbled ashes from her fingers.

As she approached him, she shook her head and said, “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it!”

When she stood before him, she reached out, taking him by the arm.

“You’re very young, and the young are very intolerant. You couldn’t understand a man like my husband, you couldn’t understand how a man might make promises in good faith and then be unable to keep them.”

Drawing breath, realizing his blue eyes had not left hers, she shook him just a little, imploring him, “You only heard one side of the story. Don’t pass judgment on a man you never knew until you’ve heard both sides.”

When he gave her no response, she turned away from him, looking at her three children standing, as if made of stone, several paces away. She lifted her chin and said, as much for them, as to them, “I’ve always had faith in my husband, and I still do, but if he was at fault in this instance, then we are all at fault. Your father left us a heritage of wealth and power and land. And, he also left us his obligations.”

No one spoke into the pause that followed, though Nick could see the widening of Heath’s eyes behind her. He was so intent on trying to understand the sudden, crystal clear, ice blue of the returning anger he saw burning there, he almost missed the rest of what she said.

“Jarrod.”

“Yes, Mother?”

Her strong voice cracking slightly with the force of the emotions behind it, she commanded, “Fight Sam Hummel with everything we’ve got!”

Turning his eyes back to his mother’s determined face, Nick felt his pride in her rise up, pushing back the weariness. But, at the sudden movement from behind her, he felt as if that broken board from the alley had slammed into him once more.

Heath, his face stormy, stepped around her and stalked across the room, ignoring Nick, ignoring all of them. He leaned over and grabbed up the items he had left on the floor, and, though he seemed to almost stumble as he stood up again, his determined stride carried him quickly from the room.

Watching him go, Nick called out, “Heath!” to the retreating back. Then, he turned angry, confused eyes to meet his mother’s face.

It was what Heath had wanted, wasn’t it? . . . To have the Barkleys realize they owed something to the people of Lonesome Camp. . . . To have them join the fight, . . . to do the right thing by the miners.

But, if that was true, why was he leaving?

And, why had he stormed out all of a sudden, just when Nick thought he was calming down some from his tirade?

More importantly, who was he? And, why had he protected Nick from the miners, then defended them to his family the way he had?

Chapter 13

Nick stepped over to his mother, and grasped her gently by the upper arm with his good hand.

“Mother,” he said, barely controlled frustration mounting, compounding the returning weariness into a full-force weight that slammed into him like a fifty pound sack of feed dropped from the barn loft, “I’m proud of you, the way you listened to that boy, the way you put up with his rudeness in order to hear the words underneath. Heath is right about what we need to do for those people up there, and he saved my life, . . . but that gives him no excuse to act the way he did, here in our home, with all of you! I’m sorry.”

As Nick turned to go after the blond, Victoria placed her hand on his chest.

“Wait, Nick,” she soothed, her own voice rough with the unshed tears he could see building behind her eyes. She turned to her eldest and said, “We have two injured young men here, Jarrod, and I think we need to ask Doctor Merar to come out to check on them. Will you ask Silas to have Duke send someone?”

Turning back to Nick, after Jarrod’s reassuring nod and quick exit from the room, she led him toward the door.

She said, her voice strained, but her thoughts clear, “Go get him, Nick. Please don’t let him leave. . . . I don’t know where he was going, but I want him back in here, cleaned up and resting in a guest room, waiting on that doctor until he arrives. . . . It’s obvious he’s not planning to stay, but he certainly doesn’t need to be going anywhere in his condition.”

Then, squeezing his arm, she emphasized, “And, neither, Nicholas, do you. So, don’t let me find out that you got back on your horse to look for him. Send some of the men after him if necessary. . . . Do I make myself clear?”

Nick, grinning broadly at her, caught her up in a loving, one-armed embrace, and planted a kiss on top of her hair. Though he knew he would not ignore her warning, he saw right through her sternness, to the love shining through it from beneath.

Releasing her, he caught one more look at her distraught face, the single tear now tracking its way down the fine features, and, wondering about it, he headed toward the kitchen side door.

* * * * * * * *

“Well, now,” Nick said, one hand on his hip, and standing in the doorway of the barn, meeting the eyes of the blond and blocking his path. “And, here I thought you had guts, Boy.”

Heath met the steady gaze of the hazel-eyed man, his blue eyes squinted against the glare coming in from the doorway, from the setting sun beyond it, and against the fiercely sharp headache stabbing into him.

“It won’t work, Barkley,” Heath said, evenly, with steely determination underneath the softly spoken words.

“What’s that?”

“Baitin’ me,” Heath responded, his slightly lop-sided smile forming. “An’, unless you’ve got a whole army’a men standin’ out there, out’a sight somewhere, you aren’t stoppin’ me, either.”

“Like I said, I thought you had guts. Now, I find that you’re no different from most. You turn tail and run when the situation gets a little tough for you. . . . ‘Course, I know my mother can be kind of intimidating, even to the best of men, . . . Boy.”

Heath’s eyes never changed, but he started walking, leading his horse out of the barn, using her forward motion to force Nick to take a step back to avoid jostling his broken arm.

As the horse moved between them, separating them from each other, Nick changed his tactics and said over her back, his voice becoming lower, quieter, as he allowed some of his concerned confusion to leach into it, “You’re hurt, Heath. And, you’re as exhausted as I am. Stay and let the Doc take a look at that thick skull of yours.”

Not hearing any answer, and no longer able to see Heath’s eyes as he moved past him, Nick followed him out of the barn. Stepping over to the blond, who methodically replaced his rifle in the scabbard on one side of the saddle, tied the re-rolled, grey blanket, and stepped around the mare, his back to Nick, to tighten the cinch, Nick reached out to place one hand on the younger man’s shoulder.

“Why? Why are you leaving now, Heath, when you heard what my mother said in there, how she agreed to what you wanted, agreed to fight for the men and families in that camp? . . . .Besides, she sent me out here to tell you to come back in. And, she wasn’t asking.”

Heath turned his head to meet Nick’s eyes, and, as Nick squeezed his shoulder, his hazel eyes still asking the questions from a moment before, Heath responded with a slight thawing of his eyes, a single nod of his head, and that infuriating smile.

Then, before Nick could stop him, either by word or action, the blond was in the saddle, having vaulted from the ground in one, smooth, graceful action.

Stepping back slightly, Nick nearly held his breath as the sun’s long, slanted rays blinded him and silhouetted the figure above him, astride the little black mare.

For an instant, he felt as if that broken board from the alley was coming down on him again, making him choose between a broken arm and a broken skull. He reached out for the white fence beside him, placing his good hand on top of it, steadying himself.

Heath turned his horse around, crossing in front of Nick and facing toward the gate. Then, he stopped, looked back over his shoulder, and held Nick’s eyes for a long moment.

As Nick watched him, no longer willing to do any more than that, no longer sure he wanted to obey his mother and stop the young man from leaving, even if he could have, Heath said quietly, “Tell your mother. . . . ,” Heath faltered on the word.

Then, taking a deep breath, he started again, “Tell your mother, I said, ‘Thank you, kindly,’ . . . but, that’s exactly why I won’t stay. ...”

As the horse stepped forward, Nick found himself moving toward her quickly, and he grabbed the right rein, forcing her head around. Looking up into the no longer angry blue eyes, at Heath’s expression caught somewhere between hurt, wistful longing and fierce, determined independence, Nick asked again, not understanding either himself or the blond above him, “Why?”

Heath closed his eyes, fighting the returning dizziness, the renewed headache, but also the strong pull of the man on his very soul.

He sucked in air through his nose and stiffened his back, setting his jaw into a hard line. Then, blinking his eyes open, he looked back down into Nick’s face and said, with no emotion, the tone and the words matter-of-fact, “I won’t become another of your family’s obligations.”

Pushing his horse to step sideways toward Nick, he turned her head away as the man on the ground was forced to release her and move back to avoid being stepped on.

Then, before Nick could say anything in response, before he could ask any of the hundreds of questions that welled up from inside at Heath’s words, the blond on the black mare galloped out of the gate and was gone.

Chapter 14

It was not until hours later, as he paced in front of the fire in his room, that he allowed himself to fully contemplate the words and actions of the young man that had rescued him from Lonesome Camp, the young man that had silently accompanied him to ensure he was able to make it home, the young man that had so shocked his family with his impassioned words downstairs, the young man that had left again so determinedly.

The doctor had been gone for hours, having shaken his grey-haired head and pronounced the setting of the bone to be as neatly done as he could have managed himself.

Nick had met his mother’s eyes over the doctor’s head, as he had re-splinted it, again shaking his head at the rough, but efficient job Heath had done with the two slender tree branches out on the trail. Nick had seen the pain in her face, the unreadable emotions that seemed to only slip out around her grey eyes once or twice, as the doctor completed his task.

Though Nick had slept through the early evening after the doctor had left, Jarrod had come in later to see him. Of their mother, he had only told Nick before he had left again, that she had been quiet all evening, retiring to her room for a solitary supper, and only coming back downstairs to sit silently by the fire while he worked at his desk, looking over the last few quarterly reports from Barkley-Sierra. She had hardly spoken two words, never volunteering anything, and only answering a question or two he had asked her. She had, according to his brother, returned to her room shortly afterwards.

Something was bothering her, and Nick was beginning to suspect it was more than the boy’s tirade about her husband’s unfulfilled promises to the people at Lonesome Camp. If he knew anything about his mother, it was that the iron-willed, deeply compassionate woman had made her decision about what was to be done to right the situation, and that she would not still be brooding about it now.

No, he was sure, if his mother was still upset, it was either about the fact that Tom Barkley may have made a mistake years ago that had cost the miners so much, or. . . it was something else.

As Nick paced, he chaffed at the sling rubbing the back of his neck, and at the promise his mother had exacted from him, the promise that he would give himself some recovery time before he got back on a horse again, the promise that had only partially been responsible for his failure to stop Heath from leaving.

Unable to use both hands as he paced back and forth, ignoring the flames dancing in the hearth and the sparkle of the star-filled sky outside the window, he slapped his good hand against his leg as he walked.

The words from this afternoon, spoken in the study downstairs, drifted back through his mind.

“Then, you explain ta me his promises that were never kept. . . . Good housin’. Safe workin’ conditions. Decent wages. . . . Schools for the children. Security for the old an’ the injured. An’, a company store sellin’ at cost. . ...”

“What did they get? Leakin’ roofs, rotten timberin’ in the mine, dirty children playin’ in the streets an’ beggin’ pennies. An’, a company store that charges four prices for everything. . ...”

“Do you know what they eat up there? Potatoes. Potatoes. Three meals a day, seven days a week. An’ praise the Lord when a miracle puts a bite’a meat on their plate, once in a blue moon. An’, as for the old an’ the crippled. . . . Oh, they’ve got it fine an’ easy. . . if they have a daughter that. . . that works in a saloon ta keep the company roof over their heads an’ enough food on their plates ta keep them alive. . ...”

“What he promised them was hope! An’ . . . What they got was a kick in the teeth!”

“That is why they hate him.”

Suddenly, Nick knew that “they” were not the only ones that hated his father.

It was plain to him that Heath did, as well.

But, why?

The way he had spoken about the people in Lonesome Camp, the way he had described their plight, . . . .

Nick whirled around, then stalked over to the fireplace and placed his good hand against the mantel. He stared down into the flames, his mind grasping backwards, listening again, trying to latch onto and figure out what had suddenly caught his attention about the words. . . .

Then, closing his eyes, seeing the angry blond again inside his head, hearing the caustic words once more, he knew.

Heath had not once said “we.”

In fact, he had referred to the people there as “they,” as if he were an outsider, someone loosely participating on the fringes, watching and joining in to some degree, but not an integral part of the camp and the lives of its inhabitants.

Immediately, Nick began searching for other information, reviewing in his mind what he did and did not know about the young man he had spent the last two days with.

A soft knock at his bedroom door, however, brought an abrupt stop to his mental search, and he said, “Come in,” sure that it would be his brother.

He smiled widely as Jarrod entered, carrying two steaming cups of coffee in his hands and a liquor bottle under his arm.

“I thought you could use a little pain medicine, brother-to-brother,” Jarrod said, his smooth, deep voice always a soothing sound, especially when it carried a hint of humor in it, like it did now.

Taking the offered cup of coffee, Nick held it out while Jarrod poured generously from the whiskey bottle, the amber liquid immediately lost in the less potent, but darker brown-black of the rich, fragrant brew.

As they settled into the two leather armchairs pulled up by the fire, both stretched their feet out to the single ottoman, sharing it and enjoying the warmth of the blaze on their sock feet.

After a few moments, Jarrod asked quietly, “Nick, tell me about Heath.”

Looking down into his coffee, Nick responded, “I was just thinking about him, Jarrod. You know, . . . all along, . . . from the moment I saw him in that camp on Tuesday night, I just assumed he was one of the miners.”

Immediately perplexed, Jarrod asked, “He’s not?”

Nick said, nodding, “Yes, I think he’s been working in the mines with them recently, but that’s not what I meant. I assumed he was part of that place, had been there a long time, maybe had grown up there, that he was part of what was going on there. But, now. . . I’m not so sure.”

“What do you mean?”

“Think about it Jarrod. He risked his life to get me out of there last night. In fact . . . ,” Nick moved his eyes from Jarrod’s face to stare into the fire, thinking hard. Then, he started again, “In fact, he had already interrupted a heated situation that first night when I was meeting with the man called O’Doule, the man that claims to be the leader and spokesman of the miners.”

“When you did what?” Jarrod nearly choked on his coffee, trying to imagine such a potentially volatile conversation between his sometimes hot-headed brother and a man who could be responsible for the murder of one of Murdoch’s men.

“No wonder you nearly got yourself killed, Nick!”

Shaking his head, Nick said bluntly, “No, I think it was my name that nearly got me killed, Jarrod.”

Then, as their eyes met, blue on hazel, they each thought of what Heath had said earlier in the afternoon about how the men in the camp hated Tom Barkley.

After a moment, Nick spoke up again. “Anyway, that’s what I was trying to tell you. Heath and this girl barged into my room. He was acting for the world like a drunken sot looking for a good time with a saloon girl, just in time to distract this O’Doule from his anger at me, . . . and mine for him. O’Doule left, and Heath stayed, . . . keeping watch at the window, almost all night.”

Again, he trailed off, before picking up the tale, “Now, I know what he was concerned would happen, that he was watching for the Mollies to come and try to drag me from my room, because that’s exactly what almost happened the second night. ‘Would’ve happened if Heath hadn’t come for me first.”

Placing his empty cup on a small, nearby table, Nick stood up and resumed his pacing, passing back and forth between the square ottoman and the fireplace. “That’s what I just can’t figure out, Jarrod. He was there, working with those men, working in our mine! And, it’s pretty obvious to me, from what I saw in his face and heard in his voice downstairs, that he hates Father like he says they do.”

He shook his head and continued, “But, if that’s true, why did he stick his neck out for me? Why did he stand watch one night, then come wake me up on the second, in time to get out before they came in and killed me? He. . . . ,”

Nick paused, again staring down into the flames, the coppery glow enhancing the seriousness of his eyes, his handsome face troubled as he remembered.

“He killed one of them, Jarrod.”

Swallowing hard at seeing the action occur again inside his head, he continued slowly, though not as quietly, “We went out a back alley, and the rest of the mob was out front of the saloon. We had to fight off three of them. One had already hit me with a board,” he gestured to his arm, lowering himself into the chair again, “And, he was about to do so again. I pulled my gun, knowing full well that the sound of the shot would make it almost impossible for us to escape when all the men out front heard it. But, when the moment came, I didn’t have to. . . . Heath threw his knife instead. The man was dead before he hit the ground.”

After a pause, in which Jarrod gave a low whistle, Nick said, “You know, I doubted him, still do, if forced to admit it, just because I can’t understand why he did what he did. But, I can’t deny what he did for me, . . . can’t deny that apparently all he was trying to do was get me out of there and make sure I made it home. And,” dropping his voice into a soft, barely-above-a-whisper mumble, he added, “And, I can’t deny there’s something about him that . . . that . . . .“

Jumping up, and stalking over to the fireplace, he held onto the mantel, looked down into the flames, and finished, “That makes me feel connected to him somehow.”

Jarrod’s eyes widened, as he used the long moments of silence that followed, to sift through, both what he had seen and heard Nick say, what he had noticed downstairs in the study earlier, and what he remembered from years ago.

Those memories were rusty and dust-encrusted, very difficult to focus on, even now while he was trying to examine them as a grown man, in the quiet clarity of the flickering firelight.

They were memories he normally preferred not to think about.

Shaking his head after a little while, Nick added, his back still to Jarrod, “I just don’t understand why he did it. What did he get out of it, except almost getting himself killed? And, what has me equally puzzled, is that I don’t know why someone who obviously has nothing but the clothes on his back and the gear in his saddlebags, cares so much about those miners, especially if he isn’t one of them.”

Nick stopped again, hearing his own words, reviewing his comment from a second ago about the clothes on Heath’s back. With a sinking, sickening feeling in his gut, he suddenly remembered what Heath had been wearing when he had ridden out. Turning, he stalked toward one of his windows without an explanation to his brother, and reaching it, he put his hand against the glass.

It wasn’t quite frosty, but it was plenty cold. . . .

Peering out into the dark, broken only by the half-moon, visible above the trees between here and the barn, Nick saw the branches moving back and forth, a silent testimony to the cold, intermittent wind kicking up out there. For a moment, he leaned his forehead against the dark glass, and he closed his eyes, picturing the blond, lying sick or unconscious, shivering on the ground, somewhere between here and Lonesome Camp.

For, it was suddenly apparent to him, that what he had said to Heath out in the barn about running away had not been the truth as he knew it, not out there then, and not here now. For, despite his words, he had known that Heath had not been running away from them, from Nick’s family.

He had been running back to that camp and the people he was most concerned about.

“Fool boy,” he muttered. “Gonna go back there and get yourself killed. Don’t you know they don’t want your help. They don’t want help from. ...”

Nick raised his head, and stared out into the night, as the sudden thought, the words almost spoken, slammed into him like an unexpected, unanticipated, punch to the gut.

But, summoning his courage, prodded by his innate honesty, he whispered the words aloud into the night, unable to think about what it all meant, just knowing that it was so.

“They don’t want help from company management. They don’t want help from . . . a . . . a son of Tom Barkley.”

Chapter 15

Quietly, he turned around to face Jarrod, his hazel eyes were more worried than confused, like they had been before.

“Now that I think about it, Jarrod, it’s obvious to me that he’s not part of them.”

In his mind, he added silently, “He’s part of us.”

Seeing Jarrod’s raised eyebrow at his determined tone, Nick took a deep breath and continued, willing to try to explain to his brother, wanting to make him understand, while at the same time, needing to hear Jarrod offer some other, more logical conclusion for what Nick already knew in his heart.

“He told us all that about the camp, Jarrod. But, did he ever include himself in any of it? Did you ever once hear him refer to ‘we’ instead of ‘them’ when he was talking?”

Nick watched Jarrod’s face as his brother’s thoughts turned back several hours and reviewed the words of the blond, as if he were examining a witness’ testimony in an important trial. Then, seeing the shake of Jarrod’s head, Nick knew he had reached the same conclusion.

“No, by heaven, Brother Nick,” Jarrod said, “I think you’re right. He told us the story as if it were very familiar to him, something he had experienced or seen firsthand, but he didn’t tell it as if he were part of it. . . . I wonder how long he’d been there?”

“And,” Nick added, “I wonder why he stayed there to start with if the conditions were so bad. He told me that few of the men there had a horse, so he really didn’t think they would follow us. But, he had a horse, and, come to think of it, he had that rifle, something else I didn’t see much of while I was there.”

Returning slowly to his chair, Nick leaned back into the dark brown, comfortable leather and said wearily, “I don’t think he usually makes his living in a mine. ...”

With pride in his voice that he wasn’t aware of, but Jarrod suddenly was as he watched his brother carefully, Nick added, “You should see the way he vaulted into the saddle before he left, Jarrod. One minute he was on the ground, just standing beside the horse. The next, he was in the saddle! . . . Of course, that little mare of his isn’t very big to start with. ...”

Closing his eyes, Nick could see again the way the blond had looked as he sat his horse with the sun behind him, before he had pulled out this afternoon. Then, he felt again, the undeniable recognition, and the emotions, that had all crashed into him at that moment, making him fight to keep himself upright as he had stood by the fence.

“Jarrod,” he asked softly, “Downstairs today, did you get the feeling that Heath shared the same hate that he said the miners have for Father?”

Immediately, Jarrod nodded, and he said, “Yes, Nick. That’s what is puzzling me now. You’ve pointed out, and I think you’re right, that he’s not involved with that place as much as the men are that have been there for years. But, if that’s true, then why did his anger at Tom Barkley seem to be such a personal thing? The way he glared at Father’s picture. . . the way he said Father’s name, our name. ...”

“There’s more, Jarrod,” Nick added, deliberately keeping his voice down, “When I went out to the barn before Heath left, when I tried to talk him into staying…"

Nick trailed off, remembering again.

Then, he spoke, “There have been a couple of times over the last few days, when thoughts of Father would suddenly jump into my head, like a surprise visit by an old friend I hadn’t seen in years. ...”

At Jarrod’s lifted eyebrow, Nick continued, struggling to put into words what had been hard for him to handle at the time, and still was, “I remembered listening to Father talking to a scared filly one day down at the corral, just by hearing Heath talking to that girl in the saloon to calm her down ... And, there were a couple of other times. ...”

Nick’s tired eyes glazed over for a moment, remembering two of those other times, as Jarrod waited, watching him.

The seething anger, rising up as it had, out of the depths of the blue eyes, had suddenly pushed Nick years into the past.

Again, he heard a voice, as if spoken from beside him, and he closed his eyes for a moment, seeing the bright sunshine pushing through the dappled leaves of the grove, seeing the two strangers, messengers from the Coastal and Western, sitting their horses across from the two Barkleys.

In his mind, he heard the echo of the angry, verbal retort, saw the narrowed blue eyes of the one person he longed to have beside him again, more than any other in the world. . .

. . . . He lay back down and looked out of the opening between the rocks at the stars winking through the trees above them.

For some reason, thoughts of his father trickled through his head as he returned his gaze to the still figure to his left, the firelight reflecting off of Heath’s features. As he closed his eyes, giving in to the hot exhaustion creeping back up on him, Nick thought of the way the blond had seemed to be grieving a little while ago, worrying over people and events he could not be responsible for.

It was something he had seen his father do countless times.

It was what had gotten him killed in the end.

He glanced at Jarrod, grateful that his brother was sitting quietly by, just listening and not saying anything. Then, he returned his eyes to the fire as he spoke, “Thinking about how Heath took on the battle of getting me out of there, . . . even without being asked, . . . well, it reminded me again of Father. And, down there, earlier today by the barn, when he was sitting above me on that little horse, . . . with the sun behind him and nearly blinding me. ...”

Again, he trailed off, but softly added a moment later, “I swear, Jarrod, if I didn’t know better. ...”

But, unable to put the thoughts into words, unwilling to keep thinking them, let alone allow them leave his lips again, as if they were somehow composed of a truth he didn’t want to contemplate, he returned his eyes from the fire to Jarrod’s dark blue.

“Do you know what he said to me before he left?”

Jarrod said, “No,” his voice level, his eyes never wavering from Nick’s.

“I asked him why he was so bent on leaving, reminded him he was hurt, told him that Mother sent me out there to bring him back inside, . . . and he told me that was exactly why he wouldn’t stay.”

Seeing Jarrod’s puzzled expression and slight shake of his head, Nick continued, “Yeah, I know. I didn’t understand it either. When I let him know I didn’t, he just had one more thing to say.”

After a pause, in which Nick’s eyes returned to the fire, the loud popping of crackling, burning sap the only sound in the room for a moment, Jarrod prompted, “What did he say, Nick?”

“He said, ‘I won’t become . . . ,” he swallowed hard, pausing before he continued, “I won’t become another one of your family’s obligations.’ . . . Why would he. . . .?”

At the sharp gasp from behind them, Nick stopped speaking and both dark-headed men turned around and stared into the pain-filled eyes of the tiny, silver-haired woman standing just inside the doorway.

Stepping toward her quickly, Nick said worriedly, “Mother! I didn’t know you were there!”

She looked up at her sons, who were both now nearly in front of her, as tears filled her eyes and she choked out, “I knocked, Nick, but when you didn’t answer, I came in to check on you. I didn’t mean to. . . . to. ...”

But, she stopped and dropped her head, allowing Jarrod to pull her into his strong, comforting chest with both arms. Meeting Nick’s worried eyes in alarm over her bowed head, Jarrod felt and heard her shuddering, single sob.

Leading her toward the closest chair, Jarrod got her settled and knelt down by her knee.

Nick quickly closed the door behind her, crossed over to the nearby table, and poured a single shot of the remaining whiskey into his empty glass. Handing it to Jarrod, he watched as she slowly took it from him, downed it, and returned it to Jarrod’s waiting hand.

Then, lowering himself back into his chair, Nick wisely kept silent as he saw her gather herself to speak to them.

* * * * * * * *

Only one thought drove him, as he held the black mare into a steady, climbing pace.

Though he was not sure how much of a difference he could make, especially now that the men would know he had helped Nick Barkley escape, he knew he had to try.

Shaking his head to clear it of the slight dizziness that kept cropping back up, like water that kept returning to plague men working deep in a mine----despite their best efforts to keep it pumped out, he forced his eyes to focus on the trail through the increasingly dense trees ahead.

Light from the half-moon reflected off of the harder, lighter surface of the dirt track, offering enough visibility for him to feel fairly comfortable with the pace he had set. While it never crossed his mind that someone from the ranch would bother to come after him, he was worried about what he would find when he rode back into Lonesome and wanted to get there as soon as he could.

A faint, lop-sided smile flitted across his face, as he thought about how he had even surprised himself back there at that big house long hours ago. He knew he would have been able to tangle with the two men if necessary, telling them in no uncertain terms what he thought, but he had to admit to himself, that saying those words, those words of anger and condemnation in front of HER, would never have been possible for him if the raw emotions coursing through him had been only for himself.

Shaking his head again, he smiled at himself, feeling slightly embarrassed at how he must have appeared to her.

“Boy Howdy, Heath,” he said aloud, causing the mare’s right ear to immediately swivel backwards toward his voice, as he reached up and rubbed at his unshaven face, “Sure never thought you’d ever meet her, . . . let alone quite like that.”

Then, staring out into the near dark ahead, he allowed his understanding compassion for the tiny, silver-haired woman rush back into his heart, displacing the anger he had felt at first. She was as much a victim in all of this as his own mother had been, as the majority of those men in Lonesome Camp, men like Pat O’Riley, had been.

“Never should’a handled it like that, Gal,” he said, speaking his thoughts aloud again, his blue eyes sad and full of regret now, as he reached forward and scratched the fit little mare’s sleek neck. “She needed to know about Lonesome, they all did, but I never should’a thrown it in her face, like it was her fault.”

A few minutes later, looking up at the stars sparkling above him in the inky blackness of the late night sky, he began to feel the bone deep weariness creeping back up on him. He sighed, shaking his head slightly again at the rising wave of dizziness, knowing he would be unable to go much further tonight.

Trying to concentrate, he kept his eyes on the narrowing, slightly winding trail, and kept talking out loud.

“There’s no one alive any more ta carry the blame’a those empty promises,” Heath mumbled quietly, “Not the ones that were made ta the miners in Lonesome, . . . not the ones that must’a been made ta my Mama.”

After another mile or so, in which the pounding headache radiating out from the back of his head seemed to grow more and more pronounced with each fall of Gal’s hooves on the hard-packed earth, Heath found himself fighting to stay in the saddle.

As he slowed the little mare’s uphill climb, he set his eyes on the darkest outline of thick trees against the sky in front of him, hoping for a suitable campsite and some shelter out of the ever-stiffening wind pushing against him on this unprotected section of slope. He reached up with one hand and grasped the back of his head between his cold fingers, rubbing the area beneath the long-clotted gash.

Twenty minutes later, he shared half of his canteen with the mare, and he dropped to the ground, practically beneath her hooves. His blankets and her saddle, situated beside him to further block the wind, were his only comfort, beyond the slight depression in the earth he had led her into a little while before. As the wind kicked up, scattering a light covering of fallen leaves over him, he was grateful for the noticeable difference made by the gentle rise and the saddle to his right.

Too tired and too groggy to force himself to look for firewood, he let his eyes drift shut.

His last thoughts were of the family he had so shocked with his angry words earlier in the afternoon.

Pulling the blanket closer, he mumbled, “’Was wrong about them. . . . ‘Don’t think they’re callin’ the shots. . . . If they are, it’s not out’a greed. . . . Ignorance, maybe, but not . . . not greed. . . . . . . . Maybe, it’s time ta find out who is. . ...”

Chapter 16

“Jarrod, Nick,” she started saying softly, moving her grey eyes to touch each of their faces as she said their names. “Your father and I, . . . both of us, . . . . we made a terrible mistake years ago.”

“Mother,” Jarrod said, stopping her, trying to warm her suddenly freezing hands between both of his, “You don’t have to do this. Whatever it is, you don’t owe us any explanation.”

Her eyes returned to his face, and he saw that tears were filling them.

“That’s true, Jarrod. But, we do owe him one, . . . we owe him so much, . . . . and now. . . . now, he’s gone, and I don’t know how. . . . I don’t know how to begin to make it up to him.”

“Mother?” Nick began, then stopped.

He wanted to know, but, at the same time, he didn’t. Closing his eyes, he saw Heath astride his horse out by the barn some hours ago, and suddenly, he realized, there were no good answers to any of this.

There was only the truth.

He took a deep breath and opened his hazel eyes again, reaching out with his good hand to wipe away the tear that had begun trickling down her face.

“Whatever it is, Mother,” he said, “Jarrod and I will help you. Just tell us. Don’t worry about how it sounds. We need to know the truth, and then we’ll help you do whatever you need us to.”

Jarrod glanced up at Nick’s face, seeing the compassion and understanding behind his brother’s eyes.

Nick already knew. That much was clear.

And, at that moment, he was more proud of his younger brother than he ever remembered being before.

Nick, the rancher that had followed, step-by-solitary-step in his father’s boot tracks, the man that revered his father’s memory more, perhaps, than any of them, was proving he was also Victoria Barkley’s son, and he knew that Nick would stand with her in this, no matter what.

Jarrod stood, placed one of his mother’s hands in Nick’s, and he crossed over to the large, imposing bed in the middle of the room. Picking up a thick, navy, wool blanket, he returned with it to the chairs. Covering his mother in it, he then picked up her other hand, the one she had moved to grip the arm of the chair with in his absence, and, holding onto it, he sat down on the low ottoman.

Then, he spoke into the quiet room, hoping to make it easier for her, easier for them all.

“Nick, when I was about seven or eight, I remember that Father was gone for a long time. It seemed to me then, that he would never be coming home again. Mother and Silas tried their best to keep things around here as cheerful and normal as possible, but there was a worry and a fear in all of us.”

He took a deep breath, and watching them both as they watched him, continued, “I can remember going out riding, taking the black and white pony he’d given me, though I was probably too large for her by then, and sitting for hours on the rocks just below the north road. I’d sit there, watching for him, waiting for him, and, when he didn’t come, I’d return home angry and hurt. Then, the next day, or whenever I could, I’d go through it all over again.”

“Jarrod,” she said quietly, as she looked at her eldest with liquid love leaking out of her shining grey eyes.

“I never told you, Mother, but I always suspected that you knew where I went. You handled my anger, my anger at him, even my irrational anger at you, by heaping on more love, and, though I still remember it, I’ve never said to you how much that meant to me.”

He leaned forward and kissed her forehead, wiping away a tear with his thumb. “Thank you for being my mother, the one person that I could come home to, . . . even when he couldn’t.”

Nick said into the silence that followed, “I don’t remember those days, but I think I do remember that he brought me a puppy, a little brown ball of fur he had stuffed down in his shirt, when he did come home.”

Victoria laughed lightly, and she said, another tear coursing down her cheek, “You named him Trusty, and Jarrod teased you unmercifully about naming him after a prisoner just out of jail. You didn’t understand what he meant and would just cross your arms and stomp your feet, yelling back at him whenever he said it . ...”

Jarrod interjected with a low mutter, “Most of the time that hard little boot would stomp down on my unprotected toe! Thank goodness there were no spurs yet. ...”

Nick elbowed him in the side at the comment, and Victoria smiled at them as she continued, “But, I always suspected you called the dog that because you heard me, probably talking too heatedly within range of your innocent ears, throwing the word ‘trust’ around too frequently, tossing it right back in your father’s face for so long after that.”

Jarrod squeezed her hand, and he continued, “Nick, he was gone for almost two months, and when he did return, he was so glad to be here that he was more attentive to the two of us, and more attentive probably to you, too, Mother, than he had been before he left. I know he spent more time with me, going riding, taking me fishing and hunting, letting me go with him to town, than he ever had before.”

Looking at his mother again, he asked, “Am I remembering that right? Or was it just the way it seemed to me at the time because I’d missed him so much?”

With a sigh, she said, “No, you’re right, Jarrod. He was always a good father to both of you before. . . before that time, but. . . . You’re right, he became a wonderful father after that. . . . Something did change for him. Maybe, as I look back on it now, I suppose that he realized how much we meant to him while he was gone. So, in that, I guess whatever happened had a positive result for all of us.”

“But?” Nick asked quietly, seeing her faraway look and wanting to pull her back into the room with them as soon as she was ready.

“But? . . . . But, Nick?”

She smiled through her tears, lifting the hand he had wrapped in his, to use both hers and his, together, to wipe at her tears, and then, she lay the side of her face against his hand lovingly, before she started speaking again.

“It took almost a year for me to really forgive him. . . . He told me he had been attacked by some men in Strawberry shortly after he went to check on the mine he had just bought, . . . our first one. . . . . Anyway, he said he’d been found and cared for by a young woman there. Her name was. . . . ”

Interrupting herself, she suddenly gripped Nick’s hand tighter, sitting up straighter, and she demanded, “Nick! What is Heath’s whole name? I didn’t think to ask you, . . . or him!”

Shaking his head, Nick said, remembering, “I don’t know, Mother. Every time I asked him who he was, he just turned it around to ask me who I thought he was. I only heard him referred to by the one name, . . . Heath.”

Nodding again, taking in a deep breath, trying again to compose herself, she said, “Your father told me her name was Leah Thomson and that she saved his life. His recovery was very slow, and for much of the time, he was more dead than alive. But, he was very honest with me and told me he had loved her, loved her for what she had done for him, and for the kind, angelic woman she was. . . . And, how could I fight that? Seventy miles away, not knowing he was so badly hurt, and, even in hearing about it later, knowing that I, on the other hand,” she smiled softly through her tears, “Could never make such a claim to those gentle qualities.”

“No, Mother,” Nick spoke up hoarsely, his heart aching for her at the same moment he felt it hardening toward his father, “You, on the other hand, are a woman to be reckoned with! A strong, decent, loving woman, a wonderful mother, who did not deserve the breaking of his vows and the empty promises that he left you with!”

Loosening her hands from those of both sons, she reached out to take Nick’s face between them. Looking into his angry eyes, she said softly, “Nicholas, I want you to understand something. What I said downstairs this afternoon about your father, about still having faith in him despite what may have happened in Lonesome, I said with full knowledge of what had happened between my husband and Leah Thomson years ago. I said it, with the growing belief that the young man standing in that room with us, prepared to do battle to protect the people in Lonesome Camp, could very well be, . . . has to be, your father’s son.”

Closing her eyes and pulling in a deep breath through her nose, she opened them again and looked into Nick’s eyes. Then, keeping one hand on Nick’s face, she reached back out to take Jarrod’s hand in hers.

“Do you understand, Nick? Jarrod? I forgave your father for giving into his feelings for her a long time ago. He came home to us a much stronger, much more loving husband and father, and the knowledge that he made the choice to return to me, to us, eventually went a long way toward helping my heart to heal.”

She squeezed Jarrod’s hand and patted Nick’s face, then she continued, “What I cannot forgive, however, is the idea that neither your father nor I ever thought about the possibility that he and Leah Thomson could have had a child!”

Her voice rising, she closed her eyes again, and shaking her silver head, said, “I never thought to make him check, and in truth, I suppose I never wanted him to go back there to find out. Shortly after his return, he handed over the management of the mine to a foreman, selling out completely about six or seven years later. By mutual, unspoken agreement between us, he never went back to Strawberry.”

Her voice breaking, she dropped her head and her hand, and said, as Nick covered her fingers with his again, “All this time, . . . I have to believe Tom didn’t know, but I’ll never forgive myself, or him, for not making sure.”

Watching her, Jarrod said, “But, Mother, Heath didn’t say anything to us, not even to Nick, about who he is. How can you be sure now? How can any of us be sure he is Father’s son? You don’t know, and neither do we.” He paused, watching her face, before saying, “Maybe it’s all a big mistake. Maybe he isn’t related to Father at all, or maybe he is, but he doesn’t know either, . . . . or maybe he thinks he’s Father’s son, but he can’t be sure any more than we. ...”

“No, Jarrod!”

Her head had come up, and all of the iron-will that her sons knew so well had returned to her voice, to her suddenly ramrod straight spine.

“No! Even if he does not know, even if he knows but wants nothing from us, that boy IS part of us. He is part of my husband, of your father, of Tom Barkley, . . . a lost, missing part, perhaps, but let there be no mistake. That boy is your father’s son. I knew it as soon as I saw him, saw his eyes, his movements, his gestures, heard his voice, AND his passionate, compassionate, heartbreakingly angry words. . . . And, I knew then that I wanted him here, . . . here in this house, here on this ranch, and here in this family, . . . with us. I wanted that before he ever walked out of that door. The mistake I made was in not stopping him, not confronting him, . . . in not approaching him about it then and there. That, . . . other than the fact that we did not think to check on Leah Thomson years ago, is the ONLY mistake that has been made!”

Her voice softening, she stared beyond her two dark-haired sons and into the fire, before she spoke again, “The trouble is now, I’m not sure either of those mistakes can be rectified. It sounds like any attempts we make with Heath will be taken as if we’re just trying to fulfill some accursed obligation of your Father’s.”

“He certainly has Father’s pride, that’s for sure,” Nick mumbled, leaning back in the chair and rubbing his throbbing arm above the splint. Then, looking straight into her sad, grey eyes, he added, “I knew there was something special about him from the first moment we locked eyes in that saloon in Lonesome.”

Gathering himself, Nick sat up, and reached his good arm out to wrap it around her, pulling her toward him by his grasp on her shoulder. Looking up at Jarrod, he said, watching his brother’s eyes over her head for his agreement, “We’ll just have to go after him, and if necessary, we’ll have to drag him back here to give you a chance to convince him of what it is you want.”

Seeing Jarrod’s nod, then the grateful look in her eyes as he glanced down at his mother, he knew that whatever he felt inside, whatever anger he now harbored for his father at what he had put this woman through years ago, was still putting her through now, his response had been exactly right.

And, whatever else he was, Nick knew he was also Victoria Barkley’s son, and he promised her silently, inside his heart, that no matter what he had to do, he would bring Leah Thomson’s son home to at least talk to her.

Chapter 17

He lay still, watching the movement of the few remaining, dark colored leaves still on the branches above him, as they rustled in the breeze. The brightness of the sky seemed to work its way through the leaves and find his half open eyes, sending sharp needles of pain through his head.

It took several minutes for him to keep his eyes focused enough to realize that some of the leaves were drifting down from the canopy above him, falling softly, noiselessly, to the ground, to lie beside him in the shallow depression.

With a groan, he reached up to shield his eyes, and he gripped his temples between thumb and fingers, trying to squeeze back the throbbing headache. Blinking rapidly, he struggled to one elbow, groaning again with the movement.

Forcing his body up, into a sitting position, he reached down to rub at his side, recoiling at how sore it was to the touch of his hand through his shirt.

He shook his head, trying to clear it, and looked around, as if through a thick fog.

Finally, blinking again, he struggled to haul himself to his feet, pushing off on the saddle lying to his right. Shivering, he knew he had to get moving to break the grip of the chill on his body.

Not far away, Gal’s head came up from grazing as he staggered toward her. She snorted, rolling her eyes, and tossed her head at his unfamiliarly stilted movements, but as soon as he spoke to her, she held steady for him.

“Mornin’, Little Gal,” he said thickly, reaching out to grasp her halter, resting his throbbing head against her warm neck. He scratched under her mane absently with the other hand.

“Boy Howdy, Gal,” he mumbled, “Couldn’t feel worse if I’d had a whole bottle’a Newton’s rotgut ta drink last night.”

He led her obediently back the few steps to the saddle, and though it took longer than usual, he soon had her tacked up and, with the completion of the physical tasks, he felt warmer and more ready to continue on.

As he climbed stiffly into the saddle and turned the mare toward the mining camp, he thought again of the faces of the people he’d walked out on late yesterday afternoon, and he wondered if they were really serious about trying to help the miners.

As her face, framed by soft, silver compassion and grey-eyed fierceness, drifted through his thoughts, he remembered her words and the vehemence with which they had been spoken.

“Jarrod. . . . Fight Sam Hummel with everything we’ve got!”

“She sure was something, Gal,” he muttered, pushing the small, hearty animal up into a steady lope.

Maybe there was hope for Lonesome after all, and, somehow, knowing the Barkleys may be the ones to offer it, gave him a flicker of pride, deep inside his heart.

* * * * * * * *

Having left his horse sheltered among some trees behind a few empty buildings on the end of the street furthest from the mine, Heath used the near darkness to his advantage. He skirted the tree line, then crouched low and moved silently through the cold drizzle toward the back of the third, ramshackle dwelling from the end of the row of company-owned houses.

He dropped to one knee just to the side of the back stoop, edged close to the partially boarded-over window beside it, and he watched through the cracks for movement, and listened for sound. The walls were thin, and, from within, he could hear the solid, metallic clatter of pots and pans, plus the low murmur of a deep voice, singing a soft, forlorn ballad.

After a few minutes, Heath was reasonably sure that there were no other men within the tiny house, having heard only the single voice of the now silent singer. Easing up the low, rickety steps toward the door, he reached out and turned the knob, fairly sure it would be unlocked. Opening it quietly, he gave one more look around outside into the dripping dark, assuring himself that he would not be bringing the attention of prying eyes and subsequent trouble to those inside by his very presence.

Once inside, he stepped through the rear sleeping quarters, careful to move quietly, and he flattened himself against the interior wall that, along with a once-red curtain covering the doorway, hid him from the main living area of the house. He reached up and carefully removed the soaked, blanket poncho he’d been wearing, laying it quietly over the back of a wooden chair. Then, he edged close to the wall and moved the curtain aside a fraction of an inch, just enough to see into the fire lit room.

The silence was now being filled with the mournful sound of uilleann pipes. The instrument’s baleful whine rose and fell in the small space, making Heath’s heart ache for the plight of the people whose heritage had created such sad, soul-wrenching music.

Relieved to see them both and no one else, Heath moved aside the curtain and stepped into the room, the warmth from the fire and the sound of the sad serenade drawing him in to join them.

Startled by the movement, Brydie lifted her eyes from watching her father’s accomplished manipulation of the bellows attached to his elbow and his fingers playing the melody on the chanter.

“Heath,” she breathed.

Standing quickly, she crossed the wooden floor to reach out, take him by the arm, and pull him closer to the warming blaze.

“Brydie, Tim,” Heath responded quietly, nodding at the man’s worried eyes searching his.

Though he continued to play until the melody rose for the final time and trailed off to leave its almost eerie echo behind, Tim did not take his piercing blue eyes off of the young man standing before his fire, rain dripping from his hair.

When he spoke, the man’s words were as melodic as his music, his deep bass inflections leaving no one in doubt as to his roots, “And it’s the death of pneumonia ye’ll be catching, Heath me boy, if ye doon’t get dry soon. Tell me daughter to bring ye a dry blanket from the back.”

Brydie squeezed his arm and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, before she disappeared into the sleeping area. She returned with a much-darned quilt in various shades of brown. Opening it out, she held it, waiting for him to take the seat across from her father, on the other side of the hearth, before leaning over and wrapping him in its warmth.

Turning to her, Heath lay his hand on top of one of hers, and said, “Thank you, Brydie. I’m much obliged.”

Reaching out to touch his damp hair with one hand, she smiled at him, and picked up one corner of the trailing blanket. “Ye best be using this to dry your hair, while I pour you a wee bit of hot stew.”

Suddenly, however, she stopped, noting the now wet darkness on one side of his head. With a little gasp, she pushed his head forward and carefully probed the swollen, clotted gash with her fingers.

“Heath! What ‘tis it that happened to ye? You’re hurt!”

“It’s alright, Brydie. I’m fine.” Reaching up with one hand, he caught one of hers and held onto it until she stopped. “Don’t fuss, Brydie, please.”

“Fuss? Do ye call this fussing? If it’s fussing ye think you’re seeing, I’ll show you fuss, Heath Thomson!”

She started to whirl around and head off to retrieve some supplies from the back room, but he held on and pulled her around to face him, over the back of the chair. “Brydie, I need to talk to your father. Please, just leave it alone for a few more minutes.”

His blue eyes, asking as clearly as his words and voice, stilled her as much as his hand on hers. Then, he added, “I wouldn’t fight ya’ if you’d fix me some’a that good-smelling stew, though.”

With an exaggerated huff, she held out the corner of the blanket again, and flashed green fire at him with her eyes.

Nodding, he gave her a small, lopsided smile, took the cloth corner from her, and did as she had said, scrubbing at his wet hair with it. His eyes watched her as she moved off toward the tiny kitchen area on the far wall, and he winked when, half-way across the room, she glanced over her shoulder to look at him.

She immediately gave him an endearing smile, and he nodded back at her.

Then, he turned his eyes to meet the twinkling blue of Tim Hanrahan’s, and he chuckled slightly at being caught.

“Heath, me boy?” the none-too subtle man asked, “Did I ever tell ye’ the story of how me daughter’s dear mother, rest her soul, bewitched me and trapped me into marrying her?”

Chuckling again, Heath said, “No, Tim. I don’t think I ever heard ya’ speak of her, though I feel I must know her a little ‘cause’a her fine daughter, an’ the songs I’ve heard ya’ sing.”

Open-mouthed, Tim gaped at Heath for several seconds, before he slowly answered, “And it’s a silver-tongued rogue ye are, me boy. . . . “

Then, after a few seconds of contemplation, he added, “Thomson, . . . I never thought that to be an Irish name. . . . . Are ye sure yer father was not from the green fields and grey stone walls of the beautiful land of me birth?”

Heath’s smile slowly faded, and he narrowed his eyes for a moment at Tim. Then, swallowing hard, he turned his face toward the fire. His voice was low and tight when he spoke, “No, Tim. I’m sure he wasn’t. As I’ve said before, I wouldn’t want ta claim the honor’a bein’ Irish.”

Suddenly concerned, Tim leaned forward, placed the pipes, with their deflated bag, on the floor beside his chair, and he reached out one strong hand to touch the arm of the tense young man across from him.

“I’m sorry, me boy. Please forgive an old man fer his heartless prattle.”

Without turning his head, Heath said, a forced smile flashing across his lips that never neared his eyes, “Nothing ta forgive, Tim. It’s just what is.”

Nodding, Tim Hanrahan glanced up as Brydie returned to stand behind the young man, a bowl of steaming stew in her hands.

“Heath,” she said, her lilting voice reaching him through the tired haze that had descended on him.

Slowly, he lifted his eyes from the dancing flames, and he took the bowl and spoon she offered him. “Thanks, Brydie. . . . It smells wonderful.”

“The thanks is to you, Heath, fer the money ye gave to me the other night,” she replied, glancing quickly at her father, who had turned his face away from her. “I’ve some mending to do, so ‘tis in the other room I’ll be, should ye need anything.”

Then, from behind him, her back to him as she walked toward the curtain, she said, “I’ll be bringing me tincture of iodine when ye’ve polished off that bowl all nice and proper. . . . And, I assure ye, it’ll be no fuss!”

Watching her go, Heath shook his head slightly, not giving her a response. Then, as he heard the man speak, he turned his eyes back to Tim.

“Best to just accept it, me boy. For it’ll be the first word, that she’ll always have . . . and the last.”

Smiling again, Heath ate a spoonful from his bowl, enjoying the warmth it gave him as much as the thick, savory taste of the perfectly seasoned stew.

After a moment, he looked back at the older man, whose legs, once whole, no longer worked as well as they had, and asked quietly, “Tim, if ya’ had a chance ta help put a stop ta this strike an’ its violence, while gettin’ some’a what ya’ want from the bosses, would ya’ take it?”

Chapter 18

The two figures astride the one animal seemed to merge into a single, large shadow, its edges blurred by near darkness, as the dripping clouds blocked out much of the light of the less-than-half-full moon.

Tim and Heath had been riding for nearly one, harrowing hour by the time they neared the entrance to the mine, using a little known back route in through the rough country extending into the mountains behind it.

It had been a difficult journey, with Heath having to lead the mare down two slippery slopes, the faint trail nearly blocked by boulders and made even more treacherous by loose shale underfoot. Though he had come this way two days ago, assuring himself that it could be done, now in the dark and wet, Heath had been holding his breath, watching every steady hoof fall of his mare, while Hanrahan clung to her back shakily.

The man’s eyes were clenched closed, his almost ineffective legs, injured years ago in the mine, trembling with the effort of holding on, and his lips moved constantly as he spewed forth quiet, colorful curses into the brisk, chilling wind.

With a sigh of mutual relief, they reached the firmer, less vertical ground on the other side of the mine entrance, and both hoped fervently that they would not be forced to return the same way they had come, at least not in the dark and rain, with others in pursuit.

“Saints preserve us, Heath,” the older man breathed when the younger finally halted the mare, allowing them all to catch their breath over the next few moments. “And, might I ask, why in the devil did ye not warn me of this particular excitement before ye talked me into joining ye on this joyful journey of yours?”

With a slight smile cast over his shoulder, Heath responded, scratching the mare along her soggy neck from where he sat in front of the other man, “I didn’t think you’d come.”

“Ye didn’t think I’d. . . ,” Hanrahan spluttered, repeating the words. “Me boy, I may never make it back, . . . but, if I do, I assure ye that it’s twice I’ll be thinking before I allow ye to sit down at the likes of my hearth again, . . . . you with yer innocent questions and choir boy blue eyes!”

Grinning now, Heath glanced back at Tim and chuckled. He saw the man’s own sparkling blue eyes in the dim light, before he turned back, urging the mare forward.

The significance of the action was not lost on the man behind him, however, when Heath silently worked his rifle out of its scabbard, just before they crossed in front of the dark, silent hole carved into the side of the hill.

Normally alive with activity at all hours of the day or night, the entrance to the Barkley-Sierra mine called Lonesome, was now as dead and as dark as a country cemetery on a moonless night, the only sound that of the wind kicking up among the tarp-covered, discarded equipment and empty, abandoned ore cars.

“Wait here,” Heath said, slipping down and handing Tim the reins. “I’ll be right back.”

Before Tim could ask where he was going, why he was leaving him there, Heath was gone, sliding into the shadows near the entrance. The clouds completely covered the moon, their darkness coming and going twice before he returned, carrying something wrapped up in a cloth. Without a word, he slipped the small bundle into the saddlebags on the near side of the mare, glanced up long enough to meet Tim’s knowing eyes, and climbed back up into the saddle, throwing his right leg over the mare’s neck since Tim sat behind him on her rump.

“Ye said that it was no violence ye wanted, me boy,” Tim Hanrahan uttered quietly into Heath’s ear as soon as they began moving again.

The only response he received, however, was a resolute nod of the blond’s head.

Silently, they crossed the barren area just beyond the mine, and headed beside the curving road toward the gate they knew lay below them, less than a half mile away in the dark. Moving just as cautiously now as they had on the treacherous slopes behind them, but for a different reason, they picked their way, keeping their heads just below the edge of the road above them, to prevent any chance of being spotted from the more populated area below.

Quietly, after a few more minutes, Heath halted his mare, and he turned to Hanrahan, motioning him to remain silent. Then, he slipped to the ground and handed the reins to Tim again, this time helping him slide forward to sit on the saddle as he had on the steep slopes, and led her forward, stopping only when she was standing in the shadow of the small building sitting just over fifty yards on their side of the closed and guarded gate.

Leaving them again, Heath slipped silently to the back door, having noticed the light burning inside. Trying the door and finding it locked, he returned quickly to Tim, helped him down, and supported him while he made his hobbling way the few remaining feet to the back steps. Seating him carefully, Heath handed him Gal’s reins, set the rifle across the man’s legs, and slipped off into the dark, headed around the side of the building.

As he eased under the railing and stepped up onto the small porch, Heath took a deep breath, his eyes constantly checking the darkness to make sure he had not been spotted. Then, he stood just to the side of the front of the door, placed his hand on the knob, and turned it.

* * * * * * * *

Collin Murdoch had not noticed that he had neither eaten, nor risen from his chair behind the desk, for the last three hours. He sat staring out into the dimly lit darkness of the room, his thoughts turned inward.

Not a selfish man by nature, he knew he had allowed the events of the last week to shroud his judgment in dark, uncharacteristic anger. He shook his head and shifted his sling a bit, trying to relieve the sore stiffness of the week-old injury.

Ever since the visit Nick Barkley had paid him two days ago, he had been mulling over the man’s words. He couldn’t deny that the insistent concern and irritated sincerity with which they had been spoken had gotten to him.

Casting his thoughts backward again, he recalled the end of their conversation and the dark-haired man’s admonishment that attempts to break the strike by bringing in Chinese laborers would result in disaster.

Staring at him, Nick demanded in billowing disbelief, “You’re bringing in Chinese? Do you know what can happen? Do you?”

At the man’s blank look, Nick grabbed up his hat from the nearby counter and stepped over toward him. Standing within a few inches of the man’s face, Nick snarled in a low, menacing voice, “Murdoch, if you do that, you’ll pull the cork on more trouble than you or Sam Hummel can handle.”

Turning on his heel, Nick stalked toward the door, nearly yanked it from its hinges as he opened it, and slammed it on his way out.

Murdoch leaned back in his creaking, wooden chair and rolled a sharpened pencil back and forth across the surface of the desk absently with his good hand.

Was Barkley right?

Was there more to be gained, not just for his own profit margin, but for everyone involved, by talking to the men about the issues?

Shouldn’t he at least try that option?

But, did he really have an obligation to the men and families here, despite what they had done to him?

Then, sitting up straight, his eyes staring at nothing, he remembered his own words at the start of that conversation with Nick Barkley.

“The work of a few vicious malcontents.”

If he were to believe his own words from that discussion, he knew he had to admit that the fault really lay in a few men, not with all of them.

Thinking back, silently reviewing the last few months, he realized that the changes had started not too long ago, no more than. . . yes, it had all started about four months back, if he were really honest with himself about it. . . . .

Suddenly, Collin Murdoch looked up from his reverie, startled at seeing someone standing there, silently watching him, from the other side of the counter.

Rising slowly, his eyes fastened on the light blue eyes of the unfamiliar, soaked and scraggly blond staring at him, waiting calmly for him to notice that he was there, Murdoch swallowed hard, wondering what violence now awaited him.

“How. . . how’d you get in here?” he demanded, his voice catching part-way through the sentence, and his fear undeniable.

“No need ta be worried about me hurtin’ ya’, Mr. Murdoch,” Heath drawled, “’Just came ta have a little talk with you, is all.”

Narrowing his eyes, but breathing in a lungful of hope and remembering his own thoughts of a few moments ago about talking to the men, Murdoch asked, “Talk? What do you mean, talk?”

“I’ve brought you a guest that wants ta speak ta you, an’. . . ,” Heath nodded with his head to the back of the building, “I reckon he don’t need cookies or tea, but if ya’ had a bottle’a something stronger, that’d put him a bit more at ease.”

Then, eyeing the man, who looked ready to bolt, warning him with his narrowed eyes, Heath added, “He’s right out back, an’ we’re gonna step through here,” he again indicated the back room with a nod of his head, “Together, . . . ta go invite him in, outta the cold.”

When the man glanced toward the back and returned his eyes to meet Heath’s, without otherwise moving, the blond stepped toward him.

“Please, Mr. Murdoch. . . . I’m askin’ ya’ ta do this. For your sake, an’ for the sake of all the families in Lonesome dependin’ on this mine, . . . an’ on you, . . . for their livelihoods.”

At the word “please,” followed by the quiet request that seemed to echo his own thoughts of just a little while before, Collin Murdoch tilted his head slightly and looked at the blond more closely.

But, all he saw was a young man in his early twenties, almost deathly pale beneath the rough blond beard and the sweat or rain-streaked dirt, his thoroughly-brown, thoroughly wet clothes filthy and torn. The only things distinguishing him from all the other miners he’d seen trudging in and out of the mine in the years he’d been superintendent were the slightly lop-sided smile that had quirked up the corner of one side of his mouth while he had been speaking and the strip of once-white material encircling his forehead.

Then, as he returned his eyes to meet those of the young man, he saw something that nearly took his breath away.

The pale blue eyes, the color of a hot, afternoon sky in mid summer, had an intense, unyielding light that burned from deep within them. They burned with the same sincerity, the same concern, that he had recently seen emanating from the darker hazel eyes of the man whose words he’d just been remembering, only moments before.

Then, shaking his head, much of the tension and fear leaving his voice, he asked quietly, “Do I know you, Son?”

“I’m not your son, nor anyone else’s, Mr. Murdoch,” Heath responded quickly, matter-of-factly, “But, ta answer your question, I was workin’ in this mine’a yours ‘til the strike started. . . . ‘Came here ‘bout two months ago. But, this isn’t about me. It’s about him,” Heath moved toward the doorway, gesturing with his hand, “An’ he’s waitin’ outside.”

He pushed open the door and motioned the older man to precede him.

After another long look at the blond holding it open, Collin Murdoch shook his head in disbelief at the confusing combination of gentle politeness and fierce intensity emanating from the young man, and he stepped through the doorway to the back room and the outside door beyond it.

Chapter 19

The heavy silence hung in the room like an early morning fog lying in a small vale, protected from the drying heat of the sun and the brisk scattering of the breeze, by a stand of stoic trees.

Murdoch sat with his head down, chin tucked into his chest, and his throbbing arm was supported his other hand, both elbows on his knees.

The words of the embittered Irishman sitting across from him still echoed in the superintendent’s ears, a scathing, pride-filled testimony to the tribulations endured for years by the families residing in Lonesome Camp, their dreams of finding a better way of life broken, . . . shattered by the empty promises made years ago and exacerbated recently by the current policies of management.

Looking up at the two men, one glaring at him menacingly from his chair, and the other leaning heavily against the wall behind him, Collin Murdoch realized both were obviously as tired and worn by recent events, as he was by the recent revelations.

Murdoch shook his head. “I don’t know what to say. I just don’t know.”

Narrowing his eyes, Heath watched from where he stood, as Tim Hanrahan leaned forward and snarled, “Ye don’t know what to say? . . . Well, that’s just fine, but I wouldn’t care one wee bit for anything ye have to say anyway! You may be a Scottish Lowlander, and I, from the green of Ireland, but, ye’ve forgotten that ‘tis from the same Celts that we both draw our blood and our breath. . . . Ah, but, I’m wasting MY breath! . . . .‘Tis sure I am, that we’ve all had enough of words.”

Then, slamming his fist down on the arm of the chair in which he sat, he spat out, “Can ye not see that, Man?”

“Yes, yes I can see that,” Murdoch nodded, appealing to the silent blond with his eyes, as he broke eye contact with Hanrahan for an instant.

“It’s actions we want now, not more of ye’re. . . . “

Stepping forward and laying a calming hand on Hanrahan’s shoulder, Heath said quietly, though his teeth were almost clenched from the recurring headache, “Mr. Murdoch, what would it take ta wrestle control’a the company away from Sam Hummel?”

Removing his eyes from the frail and crippled, but highly caustic Irishman, Murdoch looked, with shock showing in every line in his face, at the young blond. His mouth open, the man made several attempts to get words out in reply, but he finally just shook his head.

“As superintendent, ya’ have some say in company decisions, do ya’ not?” Heath pressed.

Finally, nodding, Collin Murdoch said slowly, “Yes, I have some say, and I have some stock in the company, as well. But, I signed my votes over to Mr. Hummel three weeks ago. Besides, . . . how do you know about. . . . ?”

The man trailed off, seeing the irate, narrowing blue ice of the blond’s eyes at this expression of Murdoch’s obvious disbelief.

Heath clenched his jaw tighter, and fought with himself to remain calm.

They were close.

He could feel it, . . . and he wouldn’t let his own feelings get in the way of any improvements that could be achieved for the families here, . . . for Tim and for Brydie.

Forcing himself to ignore his rising ire, irritated as much by his exhaustion and the pounding in his head as by the man’s assumptions, he smiled lop-sidedly at the man and said, “I may’ve just arrived in Lonesome a couple’a months ago, Mr. Murdoch, but, I assure you, I’ve crossed a few hills b’fore comin’ here.”

Then, Heath continued, “If you’re willin’ ta do something ta help, ya’ have ta decide now. It’ll be too late when those wagons full’a Chinese pull inta the streets’a Lonesome.”

He stopped, looking down at Tim Hanrahan, who had gasped as if he had drawn his last breath. Heath squeezed the man’s shoulder gently, understanding how word of the Chinese being brought in had affected him, and continued, “Now, I suggest ya’ help us, or you’ll find yourself tryin’, too late, ta stop a deadly war, one that you had a hand in startin’.”

Nodding, his head again hanging down, he closed his eyes at the blond’s words, an echo of those spoken by Nick Barkley in this very room. It took very little imagination for Murdoch to visualize overturned wagons, people screaming, and men and women dying, all right outside the front gates of Barkley-Sierra.

Then, lifting his eyes, his voice small and defeated, he said, asking for help from an unlikely source, “But, what can I do?. . . It’s already too late. The decisions are out of my hands now.”

Closing his eyes and taking a relieved breath in through his nose, Heath blinked them open and let it out again.

It was a start.

Then, holding out his right hand and stepping forward, he reached out to the man in the chair facing Tim.

He said, “It’s not too late ‘til they’re here, Mr. Murdoch.”

Taking the offered hand, Murdoch pulled himself up to his feet, and, not letting go, the two men shook hands, their eyes locked on each other.

Then, Heath asked, “When’re ya’ expectin’ them?”

“Tomorrow afternoon or the next morning.”

Heath nodded this time, thinking through the possibilities briefly. Then, speaking again, he said, “I know ya’ have a telegraph here. . . Do ya’ know how ta get a telegram ta Jarrod Barkley?”

“The lawyer?” Murdoch asked, his voice and eyebrows rising, his amazement at this young man’s knowledge doubling again. “Yes, . . . I think so. I can send one to Stockton and to San Francisco, . . . unless, along with everything else, you already know exactly where he is right now?”

Smiling lop-sidedly, Heath shook his head, and said, “No, Mr. Murdoch, I wouldn’t presume ta know that much. . . . Just send one ta both places.”

Nodding again, Murdoch asked sincerely, “And, what is it that you think I should say in this telegram?”

Without missing a beat, giving Collin Murdoch the distinct impression that this was exactly what the young man had planned before he had ever crossed the office threshold, Heath responded, “I want you ta assure him that if he’ll get you a bindin’ contract, you’ll sign over proxy of all your shares ta him. I hope your promise’ll give the Barkleys the leverage they need ta stop Sam Hummel from bringin’ down death on all of us, . . . an’ profitin’ from it in the bargain.”

“Sign over proxy?” he said, his voice and both eyebrows rising with his incredulity, “But, how do you know about. . . . ? And, how do you know the Barkleys will even want. . . ?”

Seeing Heath’s look, he nodded again and said, “Alright, S----,” but, he barely stopped himself from calling the young man ‘Son,’ and he stammered out, “Uh, sorry. . . . Alright. I’ll do as you suggest. ...”

Then, seeing the young man starting to turn away, reaching down to place one hand under Tim Hanrahan’s elbow, he added, “But, wait! I don’t even know your name!”

“Name’s Heath, Mr. Murdoch.”

Then, seeing the immediate question to follow, the blond added, forestalling the man, “Just Heath.”

Nodding again, Collin Murdoch reached out, shook Heath’s hand and Tim’s, who was now on his feet with the young man’s help. Then, he said, “Alright, Heath. First thing tomorrow, I’ll send those telegrams, but I’m afraid any efforts at making things right are going to prove too little, too late.”

His tired eyes lighting up slightly, Heath turned Tim toward the back door, and he said, “You just send the telegrams, Mr. Murdoch. Then, when one’a the Barkleys comes with that contract, ya’ just make sure ya’ live up ta what ya’ said ya’d do. . . . The people of Lonesome deserve more than somebody else’s empty promises.”

To be continued…