Kaki Warner Read online

  “You see her?”

  “No.”

  “Then how do you know she was young? Or even a girl?”

  Daniel couldn’t answer that. Somehow, he just knew. Like he knew about the sadness of the woman with the blue-green eyes. “Sounded like one.”

  “We found only you and Cranston, son.”

  “I heard her,” he insisted, as much to himself as Doc. “She was crying.”

  “You could tell that under six feet of snow?” Doc shook his head. “There are no missing children, Hobart. We checked.”

  “Maybe you didn’t check hard enough.” The high, quavering voice echoed through his mind. You promise, Daniel? You promise you’ll find me? He had heard her. Felt her. And this time, it was real. Sure, there had been times in the past when he’d thought he’d heard a voice, or had felt a presence nearby. But it had never been this strong.

  He struggled to sit up. “I have to go. I have to find her.”

  Doc pushed him back to the mattress. “You’re not going anywhere for a couple of days. Not with that bump on our head.”

  “But I promised—”

  “Settle down, son. No use getting worked up over something you imagined.”

  Imagined? Daniel frowned, trying to make sense of it. He had heard her. Talked to her. It had all felt so real. Lifting a hand to his pounding temple, he wondered if he had damaged his memory. “Maybe she got out on her own.”

  “There was no one but you and Cranston under the rubble.”

  “But—”

  “Injuries to the head can be tricky.”

  Tricky enough to hear things that weren’t there? Panic started again, but for a different reason. He wasn’t crazy. “I talked to her, Doc. She answered. I heard her crying.”

  “You were under six feet of snow. You couldn’t have heard anything.” Reaching out, Halstead rested a hand on Daniel’s shoulder. “There was no child, Hobart. You’ve got my word on that.”

  How could he have imagined it? Her voice? That . . . connection?

  First his obsession with the dollhouse. Now this. Was his mind failing him?

  ***

  Daniel stayed in bed as long as he could, but by morning two days later, he had reached his limit. Even Roscoe was so bored he was chewing on his own foot. Wincing at the sting of his stitches and the strain on his bruised muscles, he pushed back the covers and rose. Once his legs steadied and the spinning slowed, he saw his clean clothes stacked on a side table. Struggling to balance with the hound dancing around his feet, he began to dress.

  He found Doc in his exam room, writing at his desk. “What do I owe you?” he asked from the doorway.

  The older man removed his wire-framed spectacles, set them carefully atop his papers, then swiveled to face him. “And where do you think you’re going?”

  “I have a horse and chickens to feed.”

  “You plan on walking out to your place?”

  “It’s only five miles. I have snowshoes. I’ll go slow.”

  Doc sighed. “You’re going back to the Merc, aren’t you?”

  “I bought a knife,” Daniel hedged. “I need to find it. And my snowshoes and pack.”

  “You’re going back to look for that girl. I heard you muttering about her in your sleep.”

  Hiding his surprise, Daniel didn’t respond. He vaguely remembered some strange, disjointed dreams, but none about the girl.

  “She’s not there, Hobart. They’ve got most of the mess cleared now, and there was no girl. Believe me.”

  “I still need my belongings.”

  The doctor waved a hand. “The knife and whetstone are in your jacket pocket. It’s on the peg beside the back door, with your pack. Your snowshoes are on the porch.”

  “Thanks.” Daniel started to turn away.

  Doc’s voice stopped him. “I didn’t go to all this trouble so you could collapse in a snowbank halfway home.” Shaking his head, the old man pushed himself out of his chair. “I’ll take you out to your place when I make my rounds. But first, you eat. Doctor’s orders. I’ll put it on your tab.”

  Daniel grinned. “Sure.” He never turned down a meal he didn’t have to cook.

  Doc stared at him. “You should do that more often, son,” he said, shooing Daniel and the hound ahead of him into the hall. “You don’t look near as intimidating when you smile. Or when you shave.”

  They left an hour later in Doc’s canvas-topped buggy, which had been rigged with runners so it slid easily over the fresh snow. The horse pulling it was ancient and showed such a profound lack of energy or interest in his task that Daniel figured it would take an hour or more to cover the five miles to his cabin. Not that he wasn’t glad for the ride. He was still pretty sore.

  Roscoe loped ahead of them, cutting zigzags through the snow, chasing down the tracks of deer, elk, rabbit, and whatever else had passed this way. Now and then a drooping branch bounced as snow slid off in a cascade of white, while overhead, gray and black and white nutcrackers flitted from cone to cone. Sunlight slanting through the branches made the snow glitter like sugar crystals.

  It was a beautiful day, and Daniel was glad to be alive to enjoy it.

  “I should have thanked whoever pulled me out,” he said after a long silence. “It couldn’t have been easy digging through all that.”

  “Your hound insisted. And Cranston told us you were still buried.”

  “Still. It was kindly of them to keep looking.”

  Doc looked at him, his white brows raised in surprise. “You expected them to leave you under there?”

  Daniel shrugged. “Folks don’t easily warm to me. I think this,” he made an offhand motion toward the damaged side of his face, “puts them off.”

  “It’s not the scars, son. It’s those eyes. Never seen that color of pale gray.”

  “I can’t change the color of my eyes.”

  “Don’t expect you can. But you can change the way you use them on people.”

  Daniel looked at him.

  “Like that. What you’re doing right now. Like you’re drilling a hole into a person’s skull. It’s unsettling, that kind of scrutiny.” The old man’s smile took some of the sting out of the words.

  “I can’t fix that, either. I don’t hear well, and when people speak to me, it helps to watch them form the words.” He didn’t realize he had lifted a hand to his scarred cheek again, until he saw Doc’s eyes follow the movement. Dropping his hand back to his lap, he looked away.

  “I’m guessing you’re deaf in that ear,” Doc said. “War injury?”

  “After. Black powder explosion.”

  “That explains the speckling in the scar.”

  Which, now that Doc had shaved him, was even more visible. Not that a beard covered it up. Daniel hardly noticed it anymore, but he hated being stared at.

  “Mining?” Doc asked as they rounded the last curve and Daniel’s cabin came into view.

  “Railroad. Blasting tunnels.”

  “Dangerous work.”

  “It paid well.”

  Doc snorted. “A sane man doesn’t risk life and limb just for money. He does it for the risk, or to test his courage, or because he doesn’t care what happens to him.”

  “Or for the money.”

  Faded brown eyes studied him. “I doubt money is that important to you.”

  Uninterested in discussing it further, Daniel nodded toward a big bay gelding trotting toward them out of a stand of white-trunked aspen. “Looks like Merlin broke out again. Damn horse has a magical way about him where gates are concerned.”

  “An apt name for him then.”

  Roscoe ran to meet the horse, barking and lunging in feigned attacks. Merlin retaliated with a toss of his head and a sideways kick into the air, then chased the hound up the road toward Daniel’s cabin. Dimwits, both.

  Minutes later, Doc reined in before the porch. Daniel offered to set a pot of coffee to boil, but the old man shook his head. “Got three more stops this afternoon, and it looks l
ike snow again. Come into town next week and I’ll take out those stitches. If they stay in too long, they’re liable to get infected.”

  “I’ll take care of them. And if you wouldn’t mind, pass along my thanks to those who dug me out. And to your wife, for her hospitality.”

  Doc gave a snorting laugh that turned into a cough. “I know you’re new to the canyon, Hobart, but you should get to town more. I haven’t had a wife in near twenty years.”

  “Oh. Well.” Grabbing the roof strut for balance, Daniel swung gingerly down, then pulled his pack and snowshoes from behind the seat.

  “And anyway,” the doctor went on with that speculative look, “It’s you who needs a wife, not me. Big, strapping fellow like yourself could breed up fine, strong sons. Do you good to bring new life to this lonely cabin.”

  “I had a wife and son.” As soon as the words left his mouth, Daniel wanted them back. He never talked about the family buried back in Savannah, or the terrible, empty ache that never seemed to go away. But having opened the subject, he couldn’t let it drop. Not with Doc looking at him the way he was. “Died seven years ago this Christmas.” He smiled bitterly. “December in Georgia might not be as hard as here, but with scant shelter and little food, it can still kill you. Ask those that Sherman burned out on his way to the sea.”

  Sadness brought a droop to Doc’s long face. “I’m sorry, son.”

  “Me, too.”

  Some people weren’t meant to face life’s adversities alone. Maryellen had been one of those gentle souls. He should have been there to help her instead of chasing a lost cause miles away. Daniel shifted the pack on his shoulder and silently berated himself for saying anything. No good ever came of dredging up a painful past, and the War of the Rebellion was as painful as it got. “Well . . . ” Stepping clear, he waved Doc on. “My thanks for the ride, and for tending me. I’ll come by in a week or so to settle up.”

  “No rush.” The old man slapped the reins to get his horse going. “You mind those stitches, you hear?”

  Daniel watched the buggy cut a wide circle, then disappear back down the road, following the tracks laid by the runners on the way in. Merlin and Roscoe trotted along for a ways, then figured out there was no food in the buggy and slanted off toward the barn.

  Silence settled around Daniel as he stood in the snow outside his cabin. Doc was right. This was a lonely place. Normally, he liked the solitude of these tall dark woods, being away from curious eyes and whispered words, and not having to answer to anyone but himself. But this evening, with the taste of snow in the air, a cold hearth awaiting him, and a vast stillness so intense it felt like a caught breath, it felt emptier than it ever had.

  ***

  As soon as Daniel stepped inside, a sense of urgency came over him. But he pushed it to the back of his mind and tended to his chores. After starting a fire in the hearth and another in the small cookstove, he set a pot of coffee on to boil, then went outside to feed Merlin and the few chickens roosting in the small barn. The light was fading and clouds seemed to hang just above the treetops. Working quickly, he replaced the ropes on the gate Merlin had broken through, scolded him soundly, then collected four eggs and a venison steak from the cold box in the loft. As he crossed to the cabin, the first fat flakes began to fall.

  Soon he had onions, beaten eggs, and venison chunks frying. He added a side dish of grits and topped supper off with a stale biscuit coated with honey. A fine meal even if he did fix it himself. After he cleaned his dishes and set them back on the shelf beside the stove, he went out to the privy behind the cabin.

  Already, snow had covered over the tracks he’d made earlier, and flurries were coming down fast. On his way back to the house, he stopped by the woodshed. Mindful of his stitches, he gathered an armful of firewood, dumped it on the porch, and went back for three more loads.

  It was dark when he stomped the snow off his boots and went inside.

  The cabin was warm now. Roscoe rushed to his spot by the hearth, adding a wet-dog aroma to the lingering scents of coffee and onions and fried meat. Firelight shadows danced along the log walls, and the only sounds Daniel could hear were the hound’s soft snore, the crackle and pop of the fire, and the rhythmic tick of the cooling stove.

  He was weary. His side hurt like a son of a bitch, and his head throbbed. He just wanted to sleep.

  But across the room, its balusters aligned in a frozen smile and the darkened upstairs windows watching like reproachful eyes, the dollhouse waited.

  He worked through the night, unaware of the passing of time until he opened the door to let Roscoe out and saw dawn breaking over the white-topped ridges in the east. He blinked in surprise at a world transformed under a blanket of fresh snow, and Merlin standing on the porch.

  “Damn it, Merlin. How’d you get out?”

  The horse answered with a snort that fogged in the air and stomped his front hoof. Daniel would have sworn he was laughing.

  “I ought to shoot you.”

  With a flip of his tail, the horse leaped over the steps and trotted toward the barn.

  Ducking back inside, Daniel slammed the door, loosening a slide of snow that sounded like an exhaling locomotive as it came off the roof. The fire was out, and inside the cabin it was almost as cold as it was outside. Shivering, he quickly lit kindling and set water to heat. Then he straightened and studied the dollhouse through gritty eyes.

  He hadn’t worked from a set plan, but had followed a vague image in his mind. Now that it was almost finished, he realized he had copied one of Savannah’s most beautiful homes, although the last time he’d seen Harvest House it had been a charred skeleton.

  An image flashed through his mind. Spring, two years before Sherman marched through, Maryellen standing before the house, talking to the babe in her arms. “Someday we’ll have a home like that. Your daddy will build it for us.”

  Regret settled over him like a heavy cloak. Desperate to outrun the cloying guilt that lingered even after the faces of his wife and son had faded from his mind, he grabbed his jacket off the hook and left the cabin.

  He spent the next few hours in the paddock, repairing the rails Merlin had kicked loose and tending to routine chores that wore out his body and dulled his mind. When he returned to the cabin, morning had bled into afternoon, and he was staggering with weariness from a sleepless night. Too numb to think . . . or remember . . . he collapsed onto the bed without even removing his boots, and sank into an exhausted sleep.

  ***

  “Where are you?”

  Daniel jerked awake, disoriented and confused. “What?”

  No one answered.

  Lurching up onto one elbow, he looked groggily around the cabin, darker now with the approach of dusk. “Who’s there?”

  Silence, except for a faint hiss from the last of the logs glowing in the hearth. No voice called out. No figure lurked in the corner. His mind was playing tricks again. He slumped back, his head aching, his mouth dry as dust. He hadn’t meant to sleep so long. Now he would probably be up most of the night again.

  A dark shadow moved past the window beside the bed, startling him. A moment later, heavy thuds sounded on the porch. Merlin. Damn that horse. Serve him right if he fell through the planks and stayed there until he rotted.

  With a sigh, Daniel pushed himself upright, vaguely surprised to see he was fully dressed and still wearing his boots.

  The water in the pot hanging over the coals was cold, but it woke him up well enough when he poured it over his head at the kitchen sink. After toweling his face and hair dry, he refilled the pot and restarted the fire. Then he picked up his jacket where he’d dropped it on the floor, slipped on his snowshoes, and went to see what damage Merlin had done while he’d slept the afternoon away.

  By the time he’d fed the animals, replaced the ropes Merlin had chewed through with a length of rusty chain, and retrieved stew makings from the cold box, the light was fading fast. He slid the bolt on the barn doors and looked around, wonde
ring where Roscoe was, then caught sight of him by the woodshed. Just sitting there, looking into the woods.

  Daniel whistled.

  The dog looked back at him, barked once, then turned again to study the shadows at the edge of the small clearing that circled the cabin.

  Odd, that. Usually if the hound caught a scent, he was running it down or barking to chase off whatever had caught his attention. But now he just sat there—showing no hackles, not barking, and not even lifting his nose to sniff the air.

  Bemused, Daniel continued to the cabin, dumped his groceries on the table, then went back outside to stock up on wood for the night.

  Roscoe hadn’t moved.

  To the west, sunset had faded to a faint pale wash, while to the east, the soft glow of an early moon backlit the jagged peaks of the mountains. Not a single cloud shadowed the darkening sky. No snow tonight, but it promised to be a cold one. “What are you doing out here?” he asked the hound as he approached the woodshed.

  The dog acknowledged him with a wag, rose, and trotted a few feet toward the woods, then sat again.

  Daniel looked into the trees but saw nothing.

  “You’ll freeze your balls off sitting in the snow like that.” Trying not to pull his stitches, he stacked firewood in the crook of his arm. “Not that you have much use for them, living out here like you do.” Me, either, he thought wryly. Maybe Doc was right. Maybe he should take another wife. One that could cook and sew and do all those household chores he wasn’t so good at. At least then he would have something better to do at night than build a damn dollhouse.

  “You said you’d come.”

  Startled, Daniel whirled, firewood falling from his arms. Over the pounding of his heart, he heard Roscoe whine. Snatching up a length of wood, he stepped from beneath the shed overhang and scanned the shadows. “Who’s there?”

  Silence.

  The voice had sounded young. He couldn’t tell if it was male or female. Probably a youngster from town. Maybe hiding in the brush, trying to scare the town recluse on a dare. Or maybe one who had strayed too far and now couldn’t find the way home.

  Whoever it was hadn’t alarmed Roscoe. The hound continued to sit staring at the trees, head cocked as if he was listening, his tail thumping up little puffs of snow.