A Man with a Past by Mary Connealy

Author:Mary Connealy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical Fiction;FIC042110;FIC042030;FIC027100
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2021-05-28T00:00:00+00:00

TWENTY

Another horseback ride.

Without rememberin’ another blasted thing about himself, Falcon looked at the wild hills they were riding through and wanted to get away from everyone.

He was bringing up the rear. So he watched his family . . . strange notion to have family. It didn’t seem right to him, and yet there they all were. And riding ahead and leading the pack was Cheyenne.

He imagined vanishing into those hills, and taking her with him.

He even thought maybe she’d come along. Then he thought of Patsy and knew she’d’ve never come, and he’d’ve never asked her to.

Shoving that aside, he rode along to visit his new sister-in-law’s pa. He was havin’ some trouble keeping track of who all his family was, and he didn’t think that had a thing to do with takin’ a knock on the head.

At least, little as he cared about all of this, the ride they were taking led to somewhere that might be interesting. Falcon had yet to meet Oliver Hawkins, and what he knew sounded like the man was no one to admire.

Trying to ignore the call of those mountains as he rode, he thought about sleeping in a crowd instead of out under the stars. It hadn’t suited him. He’d slept in the bunkhouse, shared a set of beds stacked one on top of the other with Andy on the top bunk.

He’d never heard tell of such a thing. Of course maybe he had, but he doubted it. Beds stacked up to crowd lots of men under one roof. Strange arrangement.

Tonight there’d be a stack three high if you counted the dog. Andy had figured out a way for the dog and pups to slip under the bed, making a dark cave for the little family. Every one of the cowpokes seemed to have adopted the dogs.

When Falcon went to the bunkhouse after they ate to stock up on bullets, Andy told him that Rubin had put some salve on the dog’s cut. She’d just licked it off. One of the men had fashioned a bandage by wrapping it tight, but not too tight, around her. She’d chewed it off.

In the end, they’d let her be.

Falcon’s bed was decent. The cabin wasn’t overly warm with the windows open. The cowpokes were friendly, and none too inclined to ask nosy questions.

Falcon liked it in there, but at the same time, he’d considered borrowing an ax, right there in the dark of night, and heading into the woods to build himself a cabin.

And now, because he’d shoved the lunatic inclination to build a cabin aside, he rode with his family to Win’s pa’s house.

It was strange how Win had to be coaxed and almost bullied afore she’d come along. Turned out she hadn’t told her pa she was married, and her pa had never come storming over to complain about it.

They’d all figured the sheriff would tell him the day he went over to talk to Hawkins about Tuttle, and they expected Hawkins to come right over demanding to be told what was going on.

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