Renegade's Pride

The logs had weathered from the sun and snow and thunderstorms that passed over. Vegetation had grown up around it in his absence. From a distance, a person would think it was abandoned.

Ely spent little time here and even less in the ranch house down the road, where he’d lived with their mother and helped raise the six of them. I’m done ranching, he’d announced after their mother had died. You all can have the ranch. I want that hill overlooking this valley. That’s where I plan to die.

That had been almost twenty years ago. Lillie’s older brothers Cyrus and Hawk had taken over the ranch. She and her twin, Darby, had wanted nothing to do with it. Tuck, the oldest of her brothers, had struck out on his own at eighteen, not to be heard from again.

Tuck was the smart one to get out of here, Darby had said recently after mentioning that he should probably sell his share of the Stagecoach Saloon and take off to find his fortune.

Lillie hoped he was just talking. She couldn’t run the bar and café alone and she didn’t want to sell out or take on another partner. It wasn’t just a business. It was her home. She loved the old stagecoach stop, could feel its history in the stone walls and marred wooden floorboards, and she was determined to preserve it. Making money was the least of the reasons she had bought the building. The bar and café had been a way of hanging on to it—and put a roof over her head.

“Thank you, Lillie Girl,” her father said as she pulled up in front of his cabin. “No need to see me in. The pack rats probably carried off most everythin’ and left a mess ta boot.”

She shuddered to think what the inside of the cabin looked like as she watched him lift his pack and the bag of groceries she’d insisted on. “How long will you be staying out of the mountains?”

He looked up toward the Judiths, still snowcapped. “As long as I can stand it.” Lewis and Clark had discovered the mountains on their expedition to find the Northwest Passage. Clark named them after his soon-to-be wife, Judith.

“You’ll let me know before you leave.” What if Flint was right about their father? What might happen to him up there alone, let alone in the mountains?

Ely met her gaze. “Don’t worry about me,” he said as if reading her mind. “Your brother doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

She didn’t need to ask which brother. Flint was the second oldest and the one who went into law enforcement after generations of Cahills who had teetered on the edge of the law. He was also the one who seemed to think it was his job to run the family with Tuck gone. She hated how reasonable he always was when just once she’d love to see him lose his cool like the rest of them. The only stupid thing her brother had ever done was marry Celeste York.

“You sure Flint wasn’t adopted?” she joked. “Or maybe you found him on your doorstep, where someone dumped him when he was a baby?”

“He’s well-meaning,” Ely said, surprising her.

“He arrested you.”

“He did that.” Her father laughed good-heartedly. “But I wasn’t myself last night. I understand why he had to.”

Lillie shook her head. “Always by the letter of the law.”

“Yep, that’s our Flint. He’d arrest his own grandmother if she was alive.” Ely laughed at the family joke. “But that’s only if the fool woman broke the law. It’s his job. Don’t forget that, Lillie.” He turned those gray eyes on her. “He takes bein’ sheriff seriously, no matter the cost to hisself.”

Her father was trying to warn her, as if he needed to remind her, what would happen if Flint found out Trask was back in town. She tried to swallow the lump in her throat, touched by her father’s attempt to protect her. It filled her with fear of what the future held.

Trask was back, and when Flint found out, he’d have every resource available out looking for him. This time, Trask wouldn’t get away.

Hopefully, the cowboy had come to his senses and left town again. She preferred that over seeing him behind bars. But the thought that she wouldn’t see him again for another nine years or possibly ever was like a clenched fist around her heart.

“Take care, Lillie Girl,” her father said as he slung his pack over his shoulder and started to close the pickup door.

She nodded, her thoughts on Trask, a dangerous place for even her thoughts to be.

CHAPTER FOUR (#u843652d6-2263-5fce-a29a-dbc9b4e7698b)

TRASK BEAUMONT WAS no fool. Not anymore at least. He knew how dangerous coming back there was—let alone going near Lillie. If one of her brothers had seen him—

As it was, her father had. Ely Cahill wouldn’t tell, though. Trask had always liked the old man and thought Ely liked him, as well. It was Lillie’s brothers he had to worry about—especially Flint, the sheriff.

He knew he was taking one devil of a chance by being back in the state, not to mention what he planned to do now that he was.

As he drove the back roads he knew so well—even after nine long years of being away—he felt happy just to be home again. He’d missed all of this, but nothing like he’d missed Lillie. She was more beautiful than she’d been nine years ago, as if that was possible. She’d grown into the amazing woman he’d always known she would become. He couldn’t have been more proud of her for what she’d accomplished with the old stagecoach stop.

Leaving Lillie had been the hardest thing he’d ever done. Now he feared he’d come back too late. If he’d lost Lillie, then all his plans would have been for nothing.

He reached the turnoff that would take him up in the mountains and drove through thick pines as the narrow dirt road snaked upward. The day was incredible from the blue of Montana’s big sky to the white puffy clouds riding on the breeze to the jewel green of the pines against the snowcapped mountaintops. He’d forgotten how breathtaking it could be.

Or how much he would miss it. But he’d had no choice but to leave all those years ago. He was facing a murder rap for a crime he hadn’t committed. The law was looking for him, and Lillie... Just the thought of her made his heart ache. He should have stayed and tried to find out the truth. But he’d been young. And scared.

He’d left here a young arrogant rodeo cowboy with a chip on his shoulder and a temper. Now he’d come back a changed man determined to set things right—not just with the law, but with Lillie.

Trask worried that the latter would be the hardest one to right.

The road turned into a Jeep trail. He shifted into four-wheel drive and drove a little farther up the mountainside before pulling over in the pines and walking the rest of the way.

This spot on the mountain had been a favorite of his when he was a boy. He used to come here when life got too tough even for him. The view alone buoyed his spirit. As a boy, he’d pretended that all of this would be his one day, as far as the eye could see.

He’d definitely been a fool in so many ways, he thought now as he reached his campsite. Back in his youth, he hadn’t known what the real cost would be and not just in money.

Now, though, he knew. He’d come home determined to fix the mess he’d made—or die trying.

* * *

ANVIL HOLLOWAY LOOKED shocked that the sheriff would suggest he had beaten his wife, let alone killed her. He looked guiltily at his bruised and bloodied knuckles. “That’s not from hitting my wife. I...I... After she left...” He pointed to the hallway.

Flint got up to inspect a spot where the Sheetrock had been smashed repeatedly. There was still bloodstains where it had soaked into the ruined Sheetrock, although it was clear Anvil had also tried to clean it up as well as the rest of the kitchen.

When he turned back to the man, it was with growing dread. “That wall shows a lot of anger, Anvil.”

The farmer nodded and hung his head.

“It must have been some argument.”

Anvil said nothing.

“You need to tell me. If there is any hope of my finding Jenna...”

Slowly, the farmer lifted his head. “She told me she...had met someone else.”

Flint had expected the complaints most wives of farmers and ranchers who lived out of town often aired. Too much work, no comforts, too far from town and other people, a hard existence with little thanks, let alone money.

But Jenna had never seemed like the complaining type. A plain, big-boned, solemn, conservative woman, she’d appeared to be the perfect wife for Anvil despite their decade difference in age. Jenna was only forty-seven.

“She met someone?” Flint repeated. “You mean she had an affair?”

Anvil buried his face in his hands and began to cry in huge body-shuddering sobs.

He waited until the farmer got control of himself again. “Do you know who?” Flint asked, thinking that was probably where Jenna had gone. That is, if Anvil was telling the truth and she’d actually left under her own power last night.