Winter's Touch Read Free Page B

sister could sometimes seem to read his mind. He wasn’t used to this. The last time he’d spent much time around her had been before the war. She’d been about Megan’s age. Now she was thirteen, a young lady.
    Once again his mind mocked him. What do you know about raising girls? And once again, the answer was, nothing.
    Watching him, Bess tilted her head in the way their mother used to do. She must have inherited the gesture. She’d been less than a day old when their mother had died.
    “Carson?”
    “Sorry.” He smiled at her. “I was just wondering when you grew up on me.”
    “I grew up,” she said softly, “while you and Daddy were off fighting Yankees.”
    Carson forced his smile to stay in place, although God knew there was nothing about that cursed war to smile about. May I never live long enough to take the life of another man, he thought fervently.
    He still carried a rifle. The trusty Maynard that had seen him through the war was in his hotel room with the rest of his belongings. In this wild, unsettled territory a man never knew when, or from whom or what, he would have to protect his own. But Carson would be damned if he would do like so many men in Colorado did and wear a sidearm. Rifles were for hunting, or killing wild animals in defense, and sometimes, when your country called, they were for war.
    Pistols, on the other hand, existed for one thing and one thing only—killing men. There was no other purpose for them. His was wrapped in leather and tucked away in the bottom drawer of his bureau at the ranch, and that was where it would stay. Carson Dulaney had killed his last man. He wanted no more dead or dying eyes following him into his sleep. He had enough, more than enough, already.
    Which was why the talk he was overhearing from the other tables concerned him. Indian trouble, people were saying. Three people had been found dead a half day’s ride south of Pueblo. Cheyenne had done it, they said.
    Carson’s father had told him that the Kiowa and Comanche were gone from the territory, and the Southern Arapaho pretty much kept quiet in the area, but the Cheyenne still liked to cause trouble. But as a rule, none of the tribes roamed up the river to his ranch.
    But getting home from Pueblo might prove to be a challenge if the talk Carson was hearing now was to be believed.
    Damn. What was he supposed to do? He couldn’t put the girls in danger by exposing them to possible attack.
    “You said we would have to go by wagon from here.”
    “That’s right,” he answered Bess, pulling his mind into the present. At least she seemed unaware of the potential danger. He didn’t intend to enlighten her. “I’ll see about that in the morning. A wagon and team. We’ll need supplies, too. It might take a day or two before we’re ready to leave.”
    “And then?”
    “And then we head home. It’ll take us a couple of days to get there.”
    “A couple of days of sleeping out in the open.”
    He didn’t much care for the disapproval in Bess’s voice. “Probably one night.” He started to remind her again that she had promised to give Colorado a chance. To give them a chance, him and Megan and herself, to be a family. But Bess was tired, and so was he, and poor Megan was about to fall asleep in her plate—and then there was the threat of Indians along the way—so he let it go.
    “Come on, let’s go back to the hotel,” he said. There had to be a way to get them safely to the ranch. All he needed to do was find it. “I bet we could arrange for you to have a bath.”
    Bess’s eyes lit. “A real bath? In a tub?”
    “I don’t see why not.”
    “Megan, wake up,” Bess said swiftly. “We’re going now.”
    A decent meal, a bath, and a good night’s sleep did the trick. The next morning both girls were their old cheerful selves again, much to Carson’s relief.
    His relief was short lived, however, when, after breakfast, he took the girls with him to the livery to see about buying a