His eyes landed on Eleanor.
“Well.”
She stared back.
“You know me?”
“No, Miss Ashford.”
The doctor removed his gloves.
“But I knew your father.”
Caleb stepped closer.
“Why are you here?”
“Because men are saying Eleanor Ashford murdered Adrian Blackwood.”
Eleanor gasped.
“What?”
Mercer nodded grimly.
“Blackwood was found shot in his hotel room two nights ago.”
“That’s impossible. I was here.”
“Which means somebody needs you blamed before you reach a judge.”
Caleb’s face hardened.
“Convenient.”
“There’s more.”
Mercer looked toward Eleanor.
“The governor issued a warrant.”
“Blackwood owned the governor,” Eleanor said.
“He also owned the territorial marshal currently riding with twenty deputies.”
Caleb looked toward the mountains.
Running would buy days.
Maybe weeks.
Not freedom.
Then Eleanor spoke.
“The copies.”
Caleb turned.
“What?”
“The ledger pages.”
“You said you hid them.”
“I did.”
“Where?”
She swallowed.
“In Sable Hollow.”
Caleb stared.
“You nearly froze to death leaving the place where you hid the evidence?”
“I was thrown from my horse before I reached the pass.”
“Where exactly?”
“In the old Ashford survey office.”
Caleb’s expression changed.
“There hasn’t been a survey office in Sable Hollow for eighteen years.”
“There has.”
She paused.
“It’s underground.”
They left before noon.
Mercer rode east to spread a false trail.
Caleb and Eleanor headed west.
For two days they crossed country few men willingly entered in winter.
They slept beneath rock shelves.
Ate dried venison.
Shared coffee strong enough to dissolve regret.
Eleanor’s useless city boots were replaced by Caleb’s spare moccasins.
Her velvet cloak vanished beneath his oversized coat.
By the second afternoon she looked less like an heiress and more like a very angry trapper’s apprentice.
Caleb told her so.
“I look ridiculous.”
“You look warm.”
“I suppose mountain men have no appreciation for elegance.”
“We appreciate it fine. Just usually not while trying to survive.”
That evening they camped beneath fir trees.
Eleanor watched Caleb repair a saddle strap.
“Why did you never leave?”
“Leave what?”
“The mountains.”
“Where would I go?”
“Anywhere.”
Caleb considered.
“Anywhere tends to become somewhere once you get there.”
She smiled.
“You deliberately answer questions in the most irritating way possible.”
“Saves conversation.”
“Is that why you never married?”
The leather strip stopped in his hands.
Eleanor immediately regretted asking.
“You don’t have to answer.”
Caleb resumed working.
“Asked someone once.”
Her surprise showed.
“What happened?”
“She said yes.”
That surprised her more.
“And?”
“She died before the wedding.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Typhoid.”
He stared into the fire.
“She was nineteen. I was twenty-two. After that, I stopped planning much.”
Eleanor watched the flames.
“Adrian told me love was simply a childish name for dependency.”
Caleb’s mouth tightened.
“What did you tell him?”
“That he would know.”
He glanced at her.
She smiled faintly.
“I thought it was one of my better insults.”
“It was decent.”
“Decent?”
“I’ve heard better.”
She threw a pinecone at him.
Caleb caught it.
For a moment they laughed.
Then came the quiet afterward.
The kind of quiet that becomes awareness.
Eleanor looked at his hands.
