Whispers on the Wind (2 page)

Her breath came in short
pants. And her head was killing her. She reached up to touch her
forehead, and that’s when she realized she had something tightly
clutched in her right hand.

It was a knife ... a bloody
bowie knife.

She glanced at her hands as
if they didn’t belong to her. They were covered in blood. But
whose blood? Hers?

“Jim!” Mary
screamed.

She threw the knife away
from her as if it were a poisonous snake. Glancing down, she saw
blood on her clothes and all over the sheets. She checked herself
and found a small cut on her arm, but other than that she seemed to
be all right She had to be alive because the pounding in her head
wouldn’t hurt so bad if she were dead.

The blood was sticky, and
the
smell...
oh
God, the smell. She was going to be sick.

She ran for the slop jar
and emptied the contents of her stomach, then rested back on her
heels. Feeling that she’d been plunged into a black, cold hole and
was having trouble reaching the top, she grabbed her middle and
forced herself to take deep breaths.

What was wrong?

Where was Jim? And why
hadn’t he come when she called?

Slowly she turned toward
the door. There was still a light flickering in the main room, so
the fire hadn’t gone completely out She tiptoed across the floor,
the wood feeling cold on her bare feet ‘Jim?” she called again to
her partner.

They had worked the Lazy
Dollar Mine for two years and had hit their third strike
yesterday—a rich vein of gold. She could remember that part of
yesterday, but after returning to the cabin she couldn’t recall
anything else. It was as if someone had erased her
memory.

“Jim?” Mary whispered as
she entered the main room. There lying in front of the fireplace
was Big Jim. Maybe he was just sleeping. “Jim.” He didn’t
respond.

She ran to him and knelt
down. “Wake up, Jim. Tell me what happened,” Mary pleaded, but she
didn’t receive a response. Jim normally didn’t drink, and the one
time he had gotten rip-roaring drunk, he hadn’t been pleasant That
had been a year ago, and he’d sworn he would never get drunk
again.

However, he reeked of
alcohol. She rolled him over.

His eyes were wide open in
a death stare and his throat had been cut—in a nasty bloody
hole.

Mary started screaming and
crying all at the same time as she jerked her hands back. Her heart
slammed against her chest Finally, she lost her voice as she rocked
back and forth, staring at the man she’d come to love as a father.
“Who did this?” she sobbed, “and why didn’t they kill me,
too?”

She stood up, but her legs
were so wobbly, she fell back down. Now wasn’t the time to fell
apart She must pull herself together. So with as much determination
as she could muster, she rose again. This time her knees held, but
she was still s
hakin
g all over as she made her way to the bedroom to get a
sheet.

She jerked a sheet off the
bed and covered Jim.
What happened last
night
? Her mind screamed the question
over and over. She couldn’t remember anything from the minute she
walked through the cabin door.

Glancing out the window,
she realized it would be daylight in a few hours, and then she
could go for the marshal.

Mary turned from the window
and glanced at her clothes. No. She couldn’t go to the marshal.
Look at her, she was covered in blood, and she’d had the knife in
her hand. In the eyes of the law, she’d look guilty as
sin.

“Hell,” she swore, having
picked up some colorful language from the miners. With the evidence
all around her, even she would think she’d killed Jim. But
something deep within Mary told her that she hadn’t He’d even
helped her hide her identity. She’d been careful to conceal the
fact that she was a woman. One woman in a mining camp with thirty
men would cause a distraction.

So if she didn’t kill Jim,
then somebody else did and wanted her to take the blame. Or maybe
they were waiting to come after her again. She must do something.
But what?

As soon as daybreak
arrived, somebody would come by to check on Jim, and see if he was
ready to head to the mine.

She began to pace. A sob
escaped her throat

“Think, Mary! Now is no
time to fall apart,” she said to herself. She looked back at Jim.
She didn’t want to leave him like this. She wanted to see to a
proper funeral. Jim deserved that. But the authorities probably
wouldn’t listen to her. Not when they found out she’d been lying
about her identity.

And the law would be
coming. Soon.

Run, Mary.

Mary jerked around. Had Jim
said something? No, that was impossible. But that was the answer.
It was the only thing she could do. She ran to the sink and started
washing the blood from her arms. Her stomach lurched, but she
managed not to get sick again. However, she couldn’t seem to stop
trembling, whether from fear or cold she wasn’t sure. The only
thing she knew she was that she had to keep moving or she’d keel
over.

Stripping off her jeans and
letting her clothes fell where they landed, she stumbled to her
bedroom.

Keep moving, Mary. You 're
in danger.

Why did she feel as if Jim
was here with her, warning her? And what danger? She got down on
her knees and reached under the bed, her fingertips brushing the
old travel bag which held the only two dresses she’d brought with
her. She had almost forgotten that she was a woman after posing as
a boy for so long. Everyone in the camp knew her as Mark, the boy
who worked with Big Jim. She’d always kept her hair tucked under a
hat and in the summer she’d actually cut it short like a man, but
it had grown out again this past winter.

She stepped into the dull
gray wool dress and realized that her teeth were chattering. The
soft material felt good on her skin. Hopefully, it would provide
some warmth and she could stop this god-awful shaking. She’d never
felt so
cold...
and empty.

Grabbing the valise, she
stuffed everything that was feminine in the bag. At least the
marshal would be looking for a boy, and it would give her a little
time to get away. Her true identity was the only good thing she had
going for her tonight Just before she closed the bag, she
remembered the gold, and she reached tinder her mattress and took
the two small bags she’d kept for emergencies. She and Jim had
become wealthy over the last year, and they could have stopped
mining, but every time they even considered it, they would strike a
new vein.

Mary was getting ready to
close the bag when she spotted an odd piece of green plaid material
that had evidently been tom from something or somebody. She jerked
involuntarily and wondered why.

Could somebody have been in
the cabin? But if they had been, she would have remembered.
Wouldn’t she?

Snatching up the scrap, she
stuffed it into the pocket of her dress, hoping that one day she’d
remember everything. Something terrible had happened tonight, and
she was the only one who could figure it out

Looking around the cabin
one last time, Mary slipped on her heavy wool coat This cabin had
been home for the last two years, but as always, Mary had never had
a home for long. Something always happened. The mine had been her
one hope of being able to support herself, and now that she was
successful she had to leave. Glancing around, she realized her
dreams had come to an end.

She might be a wealthy mine
owner but little good it would do her with murder hanging over her
head.

“But I’m not guilty, Jim,”
she whispered to her silent friend. “I swear I’ll remember and find
out who killed you.”

The snow had started
falling harder as the gray morning light replaced the inky black of
the night before. Mary didn’t have the slightest idea where she was
going. She just knew she had to get off the mountain and put some
distance between herself and Gregory Gulch.

She kept her head down to
keep the snow out of her eyes as she rode, lost in her thoughts.
She couldn’t go home to her sister’s even though she had planned a
trip next week. If whoever had killed Jim figured out who she was,
Brandy’s would be the first place they would look. She didn’t want
that kind of trouble for Brandy and her family. When she’d left
home, Mary had said she was big enough to take care of herself and
she was, even though right now she could use someone to lean on,
like her brother Billy. But she hadn’t seen him in two years, and
the last letter she’d received from Brandy a couple of months ago
had said that Billy and Claire were expecting their first baby.
Mary couldn’t run to Billy for help. His wife needed
him.

How in the world was she
going to prove herself innocent? She knew running wasn’t going to
help the situation, but she had to have time to remember what had
happened. And still the big question hung over her head. Why? That
was the one thing that puzzled her. She had no reason to kill
anyone. Certainly not Jim. He’d been like the father that she’d
never known.

There was no telling who
her real father was. Since her mother had worked in a whorehouse,
she probably had no idea who Mary’s father was, either. Mary hadn’t
grown up like normal children. She had always had to be quiet when
the men visited the house, so she’d learned to keep to herself and
play with the one doll she had.

Sometimes her mother would
sit down and play with her. Mary smiled. That was her fondest
memory of her mother.

When the ladies of
Independence, Missouri, took Mary away from her mother, her mother
really didn’t make much of a fuss. At first Mary thought it was
because her mother didn’t love her, but as she’d grown older she’d
wondered if it was because her mother wanted Mary to have a better
life. But going to the orphanage wasn’t something that Mary had
wanted to do. She had to admit that she had been a wee bit
rebellious—all right, perhaps she’d been
very
rebellious, but she hadn’t
known how to fit in with the other children. It had taken a long
time before all the misfits had become their own family. But they
had survived and even made a home for themselves in Denver. And
then one day a letter arrived for Mary.

The one good thing Mary’s
mother had done for her was to give her the deed to a gold mine,
and that’s where Jim had come in. He had been different.

She loved how he had
treated her like a daughter, but also as an equal, particularly
after she’d proven she could hold her own doing the hard mining
work.

The wind whipped around
Mary, dusting her with fresh snow. She shivered uncontrollably as
she snuggled deeper into her wool coat. She had never had nice
clothes like other women, so she had always made do. But she was
fast realizing that her coat wasn’t heavy enough for this kind of
weather. The fluffy white flakes seemed to be clinging to the
material until she looked like a snowman.

Again Mary thought of her
adopted family. How she longed to go and beg them to get her out of
this mess. But she was too proud for that Plus she couldn’t take
the chance of putting them in danger. She’d just have to figure a
way out of this mess on her own.

Unwanted tears sprang to
her eyes, blinding her as she thought of Big Jim. He didn’t deserve
to die like that, and her tears wouldn’t help him. The only thing
that would help was for her to remember. Reaching up, she brushed
the tears from her cheeks with fingers she realized were
numb.

Mary sighed. Her breath
rose into the cold air and looked like steam escaping a boiling
pot. She could never remember being so cold, but she couldn’t stop
now; she had to keep going.

She replayed yesterday in
her mind. It had been a good day at the mine. They had hit another
vein of gold, and she’d promised herself that after this vein had
been mined out she would take her money and let other people work
the claim. It was time for her to have a life and learn how to be a
woman again.

She and Jim had been in
good moods as they’d returned to the cabin at the end of the day.
Jim had mentioned that they would be having a guest for dinner, so
she should keep her hat on, but after that everything else was a
blur. She could see herself cooking supper and then
nothing.

“Oh, why can’t I
remember?” Mary yelled. She grabbed her head as if she could
squeeze the memory back into her mind.

That was her big mistake.
When she let the reins slip, the horse stepped into a hole,
stumbling and pitching her forward. Mary screamed as she sailed off
her horse. Her arms flailed in the air as a bank of snow loomed in
front of her. The next thing she knew she was barreling headfirst
into the snowdrift

And the black hole once
again swallowed her.

Carter Monroe was damn sick
and tired of snow.

He felt like an animal with
his bearskin coat, and he was just as grumpy. The fur was much too
bulky, but it was necessary this time of year in the Rockies. He
removed his Stetson as he rode and slapped it on his leg to rid it
of snow, then settled it back on his head. He grunted and realized
he was also beginning to sound like an animal.