Kaki Warner Read online

  Daniel stopped beside the wagon. Relaying several planks up to the storekeeper, he asked if there was a family in town named Ellis.

  “Ellis?” Cranston paused to scratch his whiskered chin. “Only one by that name around here. Widow.” He hooked a thumb in the direction Daniel was headed. “Last house on the right. Lives there with her brothers ever since—”

  But Daniel didn’t want to chat, so with a terse “Thanks” and a backward wave, he called Roscoe and continued down the street.

  He had worked himself into a fine temper—both at the girl and her family—for causing him this worry, for forcing him to make this trek when he had better things to do, but mostly for making him doubt his own sanity.

  He didn’t like feeling responsible for the girl. Feeling responsible for anybody. That’s why he lived in such a remote place. He just wanted to be left the hell alone. Was that too much to ask?

  The last dwelling was set fifty yards from its nearest neighbor, and unlike other houses he’d passed, there were no spruce garlands, or wreaths, or bright calico bows to mark the Christmas season. Place looked as forlorn as the dollhouse sitting in his cabin.

  Not intending to stay long or go inside, he didn’t unlace his snowshoes, but stopped a few yards from the porch. Cupping a hand to his mouth, he called loudly, “Hello, the house!” then waited.

  Roscoe plopped beside his leg, panting from the long run. Shadows moved behind the drooping lace curtains, then the front door opened. A big dark-haired man stepped out—the same one Daniel had seen with the blonde woman who always stared at him in that sad, puzzled way whenever they crossed paths. Was she the widow—Hannah’s mother? That realization rattled him, and for a moment he thought about turning and walking away. Then he remembered the lost child, standing in the snow. “You Ellis?” he called.

  “Tom Jackson.”

  “Anyone living here named Ellis?”

  “My sister. Why?”

  “She have a daughter named Hannah?”

  A change came over the man’s square-jawed face. Moving to the top of the porch steps, he crossed his arms over his wide chest and glared down at Daniel. “Why you asking?”

  Before Daniel could answer, the door opened again and a smaller, fair-haired man came out. Daniel recognized him as the other fellow he had sometimes seen with the woman, and assumed he was another brother. As the newcomer moved forward, a third figure appeared in the doorway behind him.

  It was her. The woman he didn’t know but couldn’t stop thinking about. The resemblance to Hannah was uncanny. Both blonde. Both carrying that same wounded, bewildered expression in blue-green eyes.

  For a moment, he couldn’t draw in air. His mouth went dry, his heart drummed, and all the words he had so carefully rehearsed on the way into town flew right out of his head.

  She awakened within him a feeling he thought long dead. And he wasn’t sure he liked that.

  “Why you asking about Hannah?” the dark-haired brother demanded again.

  Allowing confusion to reignite his anger, Daniel let accusation creep into his voice. “Because you ought not let her run loose, that’s why. These woods are no place for a child to wander around in. Bad things can happen.”

  As he spoke, a thunderous expression came over the brother’s face. “What are you saying? You blaming us for Hannah? That what you’re saying?” Hands balling into fists at his sides, he stomped down the steps, his jaw jutting, his smaller brother close on his heels.

  Daniel didn’t budge. “I’m saying a responsible parent would keep a better eye on her. She shouldn’t be allowed to just wander off and—”

  A big fist slammed into his jaw, knocking him off balance and sending the rifle flying from his grip. Before he could untangle his snowshoes, another blow drove him to the ground. Then both brothers were on him, and they were all rolling in the snow, fists and boots flying while Roscoe hopped around them, barking and snarling.

  “Stop this!” A man shouted. “Stop now! Tom, get off him!”

  But the blows kept coming, and every time Daniel tried to get to his feet, the snowshoes tripped him up. He fought gamely, giving back what he could, while at the same time trying to shove Roscoe clear so he wouldn’t get hurt. Then a gunshot exploded over their heads, and everything came to an abrupt halt.

  “Damn it, I told you to stop!”

  Daniel spit blood into the snow and looked groggily up to see Doc Halstead waving an old Army Colt like a flag. “Back away, Tom,” he ordered the dark-haired brother. “You too, Harvey. Now!”

  “This is none of your business, Doc,” argued the bigger man—Tom.

  “Nobody accuses us of neglecting Hannah,” his brother, Harvey, seconded.

  “He doesn’t understand,” Doc said. “Now move away.”

  Reluctantly, the men stepped back. “Ought to shoot the son of a bitch,” Tom Jackson muttered. “Him and his dog. Ripped a hole right through my jacket.”

  Grabbing the hound by the loose skin of his neck, Daniel held onto him as he regained his feet. The wooden strut of one snowshoe was broken, the laces on the other ripped loose. Angrily, he pulled them off his boots, retrieved the rifle, then straightened, pretending the new bruises and cuts on his battered body were of little consequence. He was gratified to see the other two men were at least as bloody as he was. “You touch my dog,” he warned, more confident now that he didn’t have the handicap of snowshoes to contend with, “and it’ll cost you. Bad.”

  Jackson started to respond when a sound drew his attention to the woman on the porch. “It’s all right, Sis. Go inside.”

  Ignoring him, she continued to stare at Daniel. Except now she looked more distressed than sad. He was sorry she had witnessed this, but it wasn’t him who started it.

  Still bristling, the smaller brother leaned in, teeth bared. “You had no right saying what you did, mister. If you ever come here again—”

  “Give it up, Harvey.” Doc put a staying had on the sandy-haired man’s chest. “He’s confused. He doesn’t know.”

  “I’m not confused.”

  “Hell you are. Crazy as a loon.” Tom Jackson swiped a hand across his split lip. “Ought to give him a pill or something, Doc.”

  “He doesn’t know,” the doctor said. “He thinks he heard her—”

  “I did hear her. She was at my place just this morning.”

  Tom Jackson’s face went slack with astonishment. “She was? For true?”

  “Where is she?” Harvey looked around, eyes alight with excitement. “Is she here? Did you bring her with you?”

  “She disappeared before I could.”

  “Disappeared? What do you mean, disappeared?” Excitement gave way to fury. “What have you done with her?” Both Jacksons started forward.

  Daniel braced himself, but Doc shoved between them. “Stop it, you two! I’ll handle this!” Doc turned to Daniel. “You couldn’t have heard her, Hobart. And she wasn’t at your place.”

  “Yeah, she was, right there by the—”

  “Hannah’s dead, son.”

  Daniel froze, fists still up. “She’s what?”

  “She died December last year.”

  Daniel’s arms went limp. He took a step back. Hannah? Dead? He looked from one face to the other but saw the same certainty in each. Then he looked at the woman on the porch, and a terrible realization sent his mind into chaos.

  She stared back at him with a look of pure horror, both hands clasped over her mouth. Tears ran down her cheeks. And suddenly it all fell into place—why she was so sad, why he had felt that odd connection.

  He knew that anguish. He knew that pain. He had felt it himself when he’d stood over his son’s grave.

  “No,” he said, his voice muffled by the roaring in his head. “She’s alive.” He had seen Hannah. Talked to her. “Hannah’s not dead. I swear it.”

  With a cry, she whirled and stumbled into the house.

  “Wait.” Desperate to explain, Daniel started toward her, wanting to te
ll her Hannah was alive and waiting for them to come get her.

  Tom Jackson stepped forward to bar his way. “Get out of here, Hobart. You’ve done enough damage.”

  Over Jackson’s shoulder, Daniel watched the door slam shut. Panic gripped him. “Please, ma’am,” he yelled. “If you’ll just hear me out.”

  Doc nudged his arm. “Come on, son. Let’s go.”

  “But she’s real, Doc,” he insisted, as much to himself as to the people staring at him. “I saw her.” He had to believe that was true. Otherwise, he would have to accept that he was as crazy as Tom Jackson said he was.

  Harvey shoved the broken snowshoes into Daniel’s hands. “Take your dog and don’t come back.”

  He wasn’t sure how he got to Doc’s place. But as the fog of confusion began to clear, he found himself sitting in the kitchen at the back of the clinic, a mug of coffee clutched in his bruised hands.

  “She’s not dead,” he said for what must have been the tenth time. “I saw her. I talked to her.”

  “Son.”

  Daniel gave him a fierce look. “If what you say is true, then something happened to me under the snow. Something that makes no sense.”

  “Head wounds are—”

  “Tricky. I know. But Doc, my head is healed.” He shoved back the snow-dampened hair from his temple to show that the lump had gone down. “I don’t even have headaches anymore.” He let his hair fall back. “At least I didn’t until they pounded me. Everything is the same as it was before the slide.”

  “Except for your insistence that Hannah Ellis is alive.”

  Daniel pressed his lips tight and stared down into his mug. He knew himself better than Doc did. Surely, he would sense if something was wrong in his head.

  “So tell me why you’re so sure she’s alive,” the old man prodded gently.

  Reluctantly, Daniel told him all that had happened since he had first heard Hannah’s voice beneath the snow.

  Doc listened without interruption, or even a show of surprise, which was disturbing. Was he that convinced his mind was impaired?

  Yet, as Daniel put all that doubt and uncertainty into words and heard how strange it sounded, he had to admit that things had occurred that were beyond his understanding. “I don’t know what else to tell you, Doc. It happened exactly the way I’m telling you.” He gave a weak smile. “If she’s not real, then Hannah must be a ghost come to haunt me.”

  Doc didn’t smile back. “Stranger things have happened.” Rising, he went to stir a pot of chili simmering on the stove.

  Puzzled by that cryptic remark, Daniel leaned back in his chair, his mind retracing again all that had happened since the avalanche swept him under.

  Hearing her voice under the snow—was that even possible?—especially with his bad ear? Then hearing her again by the woodshed and, later, inside the cabin. Her voice had been as distinct as if she had been standing right beside him. Yet there had been no one there.

  Then seeing her by the woodshed. She had looked almost ghostly, standing there in the swirling snow—yet real, too, from her teary eyes all the way down to the scuffed, overlarge boots. How could he have made all that up?

  He had spoken to her. She had answered. And even though they had been yards apart and her mouth had been covered by a scarf, he had heard her as plainly as if she had been only a foot away. Not since the explosion had he heard a voice that clearly.

  And what about Roscoe? The hound seemed to know whenever she was around. How could he do that if she wasn’t even there?

  But there were odd things he couldn’t ignore, inconsistencies that kept circling in his mind. Roscoe might have stayed by her side, but he never saw them touch. And when she disappeared, she didn’t leave behind a single track in the snow. There was no rational explanation for that.

  Either Hannah was a ghost. Or an angel. Or a demon. Or he was insane.

  He didn’t like any of those options. Determined to get to the bottom of it, he waited for Doc to refill their cups and then return the blackened coffeepot to the stove. “How did she die?” he asked, as the old man settled into the chair across from his.

  “They’re not sure.” Seeing Daniel’s confusion, he explained. “They were traveling up from Santa Fe. Lacy and Hannah and her uncles—”

  “Lacy?”

  “Hannah’s mother. Her father, Pete, died just after they moved here two years ago. Cut his arm on a rusty nail. Week or so later, his jaw locked up, and two weeks after that, he was dead of severe muscle spasms. Nasty way to go. Hannah was probably four at the time and took it really hard. Like it was somehow her fault.” The old man must have realized he was wandering, and pulled himself back on track. “Anyway, last December, Lacy and Hannah and her uncles were coming back from Santa Fe when one of their wagon wheels lost a rim. Luckily, they made it to the trading post at Volker’s Crossing that night and were able to buy a new wheel the next morning. While her brothers put it on, Lacy and Hannah went into the store to pick up supplies. Hannah was right beside Lacy one minute, then gone the next.”

  Daniel remembered the girl had mentioned a man. “Her mother didn’t notice anything? Anybody hanging around who might have taken her?”

  Doc shook his head. “Probably just wandered off. Hannah was like that.”

  Which Daniel knew too well. “So what’d they do?”

  “Started looking. Even offered a reward. Lot of folks passing through that day, trying to get over the mountains before the big snows hit, and several pitched in to help. Checked the woods, the creek, all the outbuildings. Nothing. Tom even hired two Cheyenne trackers, but they came back empty-handed, too. After a week, the weather turned bad, so they gave up and came home. Lacy was a mess.”

  And still is, Daniel thought, remembering the look on her face. Some wounds never healed. Even now, he couldn’t hold a child in his arms without feeling an urge to weep. “What do you think happened to her?”

  Doc shrugged. “Maybe she stumbled on a late-hibernating griz. Or wolves. Or fell down a ravine, or into a creek. This is hard country. And it was turning cold that day. She wouldn’t have lasted more than a few hours dressed the way she was. At least, I hope not.” Doc drained his mug and set it aside. “It’s taken her poor mother a year to get color back in her cheeks. Wouldn’t leave her house for months. And now . . . ”

  He didn’t need to finish the sentence: And now Daniel had reopened that festering wound again. Hell. One more guilt weighting him down.

  Doc checked Daniel’s new bruises and put that stinking salve on the worst of his scrapes and cuts, then offered him a cot in the sickroom for the night.

  Daniel declined. He wanted to get home, even though leaving this late in the day meant he’d be traveling part of the way in the dark . . . or as dark as it got with a near-full moon reflecting off a snowy landscape.

  Besides, Merlin had probably broken out again and was even now stomping all over the porch and kicking at the door. However, not to appear inhospitable, he did stay long enough to enjoy a bowl of chili and accept the loan of snowshoes since his were too busted to use. Before he left, he asked the older man one last question, something he had been puzzling over while he ate but hadn’t mentioned because it sounded so . . . crazy.

  “Do you believe in ghosts, Doc?”

  The old man gave it some thought. “I’ve never seen one, but I can’t discount it.”

  “Not much of an answer.”

  Doc shrugged. “I’ve seen a lot of strange things over the years, son. Wondrous, sometimes frightening, often unfathomable things. And although I’ve got no proof of it, I do believe if the body is able and the heart wants something bad enough, it’ll convince itself it can happen.” He gave Daniel a speculative look. “Like you wanting to believe Hannah is still alive.”

  “Or Hannah being alive and wanting me to come find her.” Which made even less sense. If she wasn’t there, how had he seen her? Or talked to her? How could people communicate with only their thoughts?

  “M
aybe so.” Doc smiled and patted his shoulder. “Some might call such a thing a miracle. This would certainly be the season for one, don’t you think?”

  ***

  “No good will come of this,” Tom said as he maneuvered their borrowed sleigh around a fallen branch that had broken under the weight of snow.

  Lacy looked over at him, saw the belligerent thrust of his chin and the worry in his dark brown eyes. This argument had run continuously from the moment she had announced that morning that she was going to Daniel Hobart’s place to find out why he was so insistent that Hannah was still alive. No doubt Tom was right. The man was probably insane. But she needed to be sure. She needed to stop wishing and praying for the impossible, before it consumed her, leaving behind a broken shell that would take her months to put back together.

  It had happened so many times over the last year. A thought, the mention of a blonde child who was about Hannah’s age, a stranger’s half-remembered recollection of a girl he had seen somewhere. Each time, she had been so sure she was finally close to finding her Hannah. And each time, the disappointment had ripped her open and left her bleeding in its wake.

  Tom snapped the reins. “The man’s confused. Doc said so himself.”

  “I know.” But there was something about Mr. Hobart. Something that seemed so sincere and honest. What if he truly did have news of Hannah?

  “You can’t keep doing this to yourself, Lacy. As hard as it is for you—for all of us—you have to let Hannah go.”

  “I know.” Poor Tom. He had been almost as devastated as she when Hannah went missing, and Harvey could still hardly speak his niece’s name without tearing up. “This will be the last time,” she assured her brother. “I promise.” She needed to look into Daniel Hobart’s eyes and ask him why he was so convinced her daughter was still alive. There had always been an odd connection there, ever since the man had come to the canyon right after Hannah had disappeared. Maybe he did know something. Or had seen something. She had no choice but to hear what he had to say.