The Fire in Ember - DiAnn Mills [5]
Bert felt light behind him. A boy this young should have family somewhere, unless he’d been abused, or came from a bad home. Running off at his age either showed guts or stupidity. Sure hope he hadn’t brought home a bad seed. Evan, Aaron, and Mark wouldn’t put up with a foul mouth or sassing ways, but Davis was easily influenced.
John remembered the last time he’d brought home a stray—a mangy, flea-bitten dog. Both Bert and the dog had big brown eyes swallowing up their faces. At the time he had the same feelings about the animal as he had for this boy. Just like the dog, he’d see how the kid looked after he was cleaned up, fed, and doctored. From the looks of his clothes, Mama would be scrounging around for something for him to wear and scissors to cut the greasy hair hanging almost to his shoulders.
One more mouth to feed. One more boy to keep in line, and one more reason to stay awake at night.
CHAPTER 3
Bert clung to John Timmons’s waist while the stallion flew across the field toward his ranch. The sun shone warm and glistened so bright that she squinted to see. She’d lost her hat when Leon pulled her off the mare. If not for the gut-wrenching fear for what lay ahead tearing at her insides, she might have stopped to enjoy the day laced in sparkling beauty. She could have made up a song about nature and fairies and tiny creatures that talked to each other. Those past ways of masking reality wouldn’t work now. Most people were selfish takers, and no one had come along to prove otherwise.
She had a pocketful of secrets riding with her, and one of those was why she’d ridden Oberlander’s mare across his own land. Two years ago, Bert had come across northern Colorado with her brothers. The rising peaks, some in variegated green and others in shades of gray rock, had held her in awe. Their magnificence stole her breath. She’d viewed Oberlander’s grand ranch with her brothers on that trip. And when Simon had come back from a trip six months ago and said he’d been given the mare from the owner of the Wide O, she knew he’d stolen it. And she vowed to return the horse.
All Bert knew when she left home was the owner’s name, a desire to undo Simon’s thievery, and obviously not a lick of sense to go with it. Because Oberlander’s ranch hands believed she’d stolen the mare. They’d tell others and the word would spread among decent folk, people she’d never be like until the past was buried.
Her plan had been to return the mare to the rightful owner, then continue the rest of the journey away from her family on foot. For certain her brothers were on her trail by now, which meant anyone who came in contact with her could be in danger. She needed to put distance between herself and what lay behind with Pa and her brothers.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t tell anyone that truth.
Right now, the debt she owed John settled on her like sleeping on the hard ground in the middle of winter. Unlike her brothers, she believed in honesty. But her ideals had been sadly misplaced.
John’s stallion was a handful, but his owner held a firm rein. Bert wrapped her hands around him even tighter and hoped she didn’t get thrown off. She had far too many worries about how to get out of the current patch of thorns, and being tossed from a horse hadn’t yet made the list.
“Where’s your ranch?”
“Not too far from here.”
“How large is it?”
John chuckled, a deep throaty laugh that in normal circumstances she’d have appreciated. “Oh, about twelve hundred acres, give or take a few.”
She’d never dreamed a man could own that much land. “Do you have lots of livestock?”
“A few.”
“How many? I mean, do you have hundreds of cattle and horses?”
John must have found her questions amusing, for his laughter rang out around them. “Is this the boy who wouldn’t answer a single question? You can count them while you’re working off the money you owe.”
Then she remembered what she’d learned