Bride's Flight from Virginia City, Montana Read Free Page B

the morning I had, an afternoon in town is going to prove most uneventful.”
    She was on her way in ten minutes, the black stepping smartly along the road into Iron Springs, the dark buggy rolling smoothly through the puddles and mud behind it. Charlotte was wearing a bonnet and leaning back, comfortably holding the traces in her hands. She thought about her work at the library, some sewing items and fabric she meant to purchase at the general store, and whether today was a good time to discuss some issues with her attorney, Mr. King.
    A bird burst across her path and startled her. For some reason, a face popped into her head immediately afterwards. A man she had been interested in once. Zephaniah Parker. A kind man. A strong man. A young man about her age, who had his own small ranch and ran it well. A man who honored God. She bit her lower lip and thought about him for a few minutes. Then she shook her head in annoyance and flicked the reins. She had hardly seen him more than once or twice over the past year, and for all she knew, he didn’t even live in the region anymore. She might never see him again and that was that.
    “God’s will be done,” she murmured to herself and turned her mind back to the sorts of fabrics she needed to pick out at the store and which sorts of buttons would go best with what colors.

Chapter 2
    Z eph eased his horse over the ridge and down the slope. Cricket was making a lot of noise and grumbling into her bit. She didn’t like the slush, and she liked the ice even less.
    “I know it,” Zeph said to her as she blew loudly through her nostrils. “But I’m keeping us off the trail because it’s even worse. We’ll be into some open grass in a bit.”
    The sky was so blue and so bright it hurt Zeph’s eyes. It was February and ought to have been colder, but a thaw had come in with the west wind and melted all the snow back. Zeph liked the break from below zero, and so did his cattle, but when it cooled off at night you wound up with too many patches of ice—bad for horses, bad for the cows.
    Cricket snapped her head back.
    “Whoa!” called Zeph. “What was that for? You got grass under your hooves now.”
    She reared. Zeph stared all around, trying to find out what was spooking her. All he saw was a thin line of smoke off to the left, coming from behind a clump of gray cottonwoods with their bare branches all tangled. That’s where some of the new homesteaders from out east had settled in back before Christmas. That wouldn’t be it. He looked down—there weren’t any snakes out in February, even during a thaw. What was going on with his mare?
    She balked, didn’t want to go any farther. Zeph swung down and held her reins while he inspected the ground in front of them. Just dead winter grasses, brown as dust. Wet some from snowmelt, but that was about it. He got down on one knee—and saw the bloody footprint.
    Not large. No boot. High arch. The wound seemed to be in the back by the heel. He squinted ahead. There were more of them, crossing over the grass and soft snow. Cricket protested, but he tugged her forward as he followed the prints.
    “Two of ‘em,” he said out loud.
    The two sets of tracks were obvious in the snow. The blood was pretty fresh. He kept walking, pulling Cricket along. The prints went into a gully. Cricket snorted. She had seen the two heads first.
    “Hello!” Zeph called. “You all right?”
    The heads ducked out of sight.
    Zeph tilted his brown Stetson back and scratched at his head.
    “One of you looks to have a cut. I have some bandage in my saddlebag. Good clean cloth.”
    Still no answer. He rubbed his jaw and thought for a moment.
    “I’m Zephaniah Parker. I own the Bar Zee, just a few miles west of here in the Two Back Valley. I’m out looking for strays. Been living by the mountains for five or six years. My brother’s the preacher at the church in town. And my other brother’s the federal marshal. You can come out. I’m not gonna