Fool for Love (Montana Romance) (39 page)

“Oh,” Amelia said, stuck between delight and shame.  She hadn’t dared to go into town and had failed to reply to a note Charlie had sent to her.  She hadn’t replied to a note Delilah sent either.  The note she really wanted, one from Eric saying that he’d had a change of heart and was sorry, had never come.  Eric hadn’t been home since leaving the day before and she had been too exhausted and dispirited to chase him.

“You should have come with me,” Mabel reflected her thoughts.  “Everyone was asking about you.”

“Everyone?”  She raised an eyebrow as she helped Hannah put away groceries.

She’d cried on Mabel’s shoulders too much in the last twenty-four hours for her friend to miss her meaning.

“I only saw Eric briefly,” she reported.  “He was coming out of the hotel with Christian Avery on one side and Phineas Bell on the other.  If anyone could talk any sense into the man it’s those two friends of his.  And I’m certain Michael West has been on him as well, if the way he asked about you at the general store was any indication.”

Amelia’s heart thumped into her stomach at the report of such friendship.  It did nothing to ease her bone-aching exhaustion and the pain in her back.

“That’s very kind of them,” she said, cradling her stomach.  Her baby had never felt so heavy.

“If you could just talk to Eric,” Mabel huffed, as impatient with the situation as she was.

Amelia knew she was right, but she shook her head regardless.  “I don’t think I could bear another argument.  I know I need to face this, face Eric, but I can’t do it until I can prove with certainty that Curtis is lying for his own ends.  I have to discover what he’s up to.”

She put a hand to her forehead.  It was more than time to end this insanity, but her body didn’t feel up to it.

“Are you sure you’re feeling well?” Mabel asked.

“Fine, fine,” Amelia lied.  She proved it by turning back to the counter to help Hannah.

“Let me just go set these two down and I’ll come back and make some tea,” Mabel said.  “You should really get off your feet.”

Mabel left and Amelia continued putting groceries away, but her energy waned.

She was near to admitting defeat and sitting down to rest her back when Hannah said, “Do you want to know what Mr. Curtis is hiding?”

Amelia blinked at the girl.  “Yes, I do.”

“Because I know his secret,” Hannah said with a smile.

A rush of renewal sped through Amelia.  “You do?”

“Do you want me to show you?”

“Yes, dear!  Absolutely yes!”

Hannah rushed to put the last sack of flour away then turned back to her.  “We have to walk to get there.”

“By all means,” Amelia encouraged her.

Hannah hesitated.  “It’s a long walk.”

“Then we should get started.”

A small voice in the back of Amelia’s mind warned her that she was putting herself in danger, but she didn’t listen to it.  The mission she set out on was too important.  She followed Hannah out the kitchen door and across the yard.

They walked out toward the back of the Twitchel’s farm where a stream ran through a series of small hills.  Hannah walked slowly, but after a few hundred yards Amelia lost patience and sped up.  Purpose invigorated her and the fresh air and sunshine calmed her ruffled soul.

“Mr. Eric is a nice man,” Hannah chattered as they followed the stream along the valley between two hills.

“He is,” Amelia answered, swallowing.  She missed Eric.  She never should have let him leave the ranch without her.  She should have marched after him like she was marching now.

“My friend, Ruby Plimpton, says that he’s going to be the new sheriff,” Hannah went on.

“I don’t think he would, dearest,” Amelia corrected her.  “Mr. Quinlan is very fond of his ranch.”  Whatever he might say to the contrary in a fit of rage, she added to herself.

“No, he’s going to be sheriff,” Hannah insisted.  “Ruby heard her mamma and Mrs. Porter talking about it.  She told me at the store.”

“Oh?”  Amelia’s heart trembled at the thought.  It seemed like the wrong reaction.  She should be happy that Eric was so well liked.

“Ruby also overheard her mamma and Mrs. Porter saying that he is going to sell his ranch to Mr. Curtis.  I don’t like him very much.”

“Neither do I,” Amelia said.  She held a hand to her heart.  It was beating far faster than a light walk would warrant.  The ache in her back was beginning to spread.

“I don’t think Mr. Curtis really cares about the ranch anyhow,” Hannah said, pulling up a plant by the roots.

Amelia’s skin prickled.  “What makes you say that?”

Hannah shrugged.  “He spends more time digging in his mine than tending to the cows.”

Amelia stopped and stared at Hannah.  “His mine?”

“Mmm-hmm,” Hannah hummed as though it were obvious.

“What mine?” Amelia asked, words and hands trembling.

“The one that’s over on the other side of the hill, behind the woods,” Hannah answered.  “That’s where we’re going.  That’s Mr. Curtis’s secret.”

“I didn’t know anything about a mine.”

“It’s way, way back,” Hannah explained.  “I don’t know why Mr. Curtis would want to own the ranch anyhow,” she chattered on, ignorant of what she said.  “My papa is a farmer and he spends all his time farming.  Mr. Eric is a rancher and he spends, or used to spend, all his time out with his cows.  Ruby’s father is a miner and he spends all his time working in the mine.  So since Mr. Curtis is always spending time out at his mine where all the other workers are, I can’t see how he wants to be a rancher.  He should just go work in a mine like anyone else.”

“I don’t believe Mr. Curtis would see it that way,” Amelia panted as she walked.

If there was a mine on Eric’s property, then everything Curtis had done, every manipulative play he had made for as long as Amelia had known him and longer, made sense.

They walked on along the stream and up over a hill.  The going was rougher so far from the smoothly planted fields of the Twitchel farm.  Amelia wasn’t sure when they had passed over from the land owned by Ike Twitchel to Eric’s land, but she knew they must have.  She and Hannah crested a hill and she could just make out the roof of Eric’s house on the other side of a lower hill.

They cut through a small forest, walking further from the house.  The land was rough and rocky, unsuitable for pasture.  She had a hard time pushing on and Hannah had to double back for her a few times.  If cattle couldn’t make it this far back in the property Amelia wondered if Eric had seen this section of his own land recently.

When they passed through the patch of forest she had
her answer, an undeniable no.

From the cover of the trees she and Hannah saw a camp, complete with tents, a pair of campfires, and a wooden structure built into the side of a hill.  Men that she was sure she recognized as the Irishmen who had caused trouble at the ice cream social moved in and out of the cave wi
th wheelbarrows full of rocks.

Curtis stood at the mouth of the cave, looking over a large stone one of the Irishmen had handed him.  Amelia was too far away to hear what they were saying, but judging by the wide smile on Curtis’s face, the rock was something special.

Without anything to go on other than her innate sense of who Eric was and who Curtis was, Amelia was certain that Eric knew nothing about the mine.  She was equally as certain that she had just discovered the answer to every question she had asked for weeks.

“If Eric gives up the ranch, he’ll be giving this up to Curtis as well,” she whispered.

“Huh?” Hannah said.

Amelia held a finger to her lips to silence the girl.  Curtis broke away from the man he was talking to and headed from the cave entrance to a post where several horses were hitched.  It brought him nearer, within her earshot.

“Pack up another box of ore,” he ordered one of the Irishmen.  “We’ll ship it out tonight.”

“It’s a bloody waste of time,” the Irishman complained.

“Don’t I know it,” Curtis replied.  “But it’ll all be over soon.  We’ll be able to expand the facility to speed up production by next week.”

“He agree to sell?”

“Of course.”

“How’d you manage that?”

“I simply explained the benefits of divesting himself of his losses this morning when I was in town.”  The smile Curtis wore turned Amelia’s blood cold.  “He was eager to get rid of the sight of so much heartbreak.”

The Irishman laughed.  “Poor soft fool.”

Amelia saw red at the insult.  Eric was no fool.  He was a kind and generous man who thought the best of people.  She knew that from the start.  From the start she had intended to repay him for his kindness toward her, to see to it that his ranch and all that he loved was kept safe.  She wasn’t about to stop that now.

“Come on,” she whispered to Hannah.

Together then snuck quietly back through the forest and along the hill to the stream that led to the Twitchel’s farm.  It was slower going than the journey out to the site of the mine had been.  All the while Amelia held her belly, telling her child that things would be all right, but by the time they made it back to the Twitchel house she was aching through and through.

“There you are!  I was worried silly.”  Mabel
met them at the kitchen door.

Charlie was with her, bouncing baby Eloise in her arms.  “Dear me, Amelia, are you all right?” she said, dripping with alarm, as Amelia and Hannah stepped into the kitchen.  “You look a fright!”

“Hannah, what did you put Miss Amelia through out there?” Mabel scolded

“We wa
lked to the mine,” Hannah said.

Charlie handed Eloise to Hannah and he
lped Amelia to a kitchen chair.

“What mine?” Charlie asked.

Mabel brought Amelia a glass of water, looking equally as shocked at her daughter’s announcement.

“Mr. Curtis’s mine,” Hannah told them.

“Curtis has a mine at the back of Eric’s property,” Amelia filled in the details, breathless and lightheaded.  “That’s why he’s been so eager to have Eric sign over the ranch to him.”

“Stuff and nonsense,” Mabel dismissed the notion.  “A mine is an investment.  You can’t just start digging in a cave and expect to get rich.”

“I thought that’s what-”  Amelia gasped.  The pieces suddenly fit into place.  “That’s why he sent Eric away!  He couldn’t have built a mine without Eric noticing, so he sent him to England!”

“Dear lord, I think you’re right!” Charlie said.

“And he must have sold the cattle back in December to finance the operation.”

“He sold the what now?” Mabel asked.

Amelia shook her head.  “Eric’s cattle didn’t freeze, Curtis sold them.  You told me so yourself.”

“I did?”

“Yes, you said you could have sworn you heard someone taking cattle away in the middle of the night during the winter.”

“I did!”

“It was Curtis!  The man he sold them to showed up in town recently, eager to do business again.  Curtis admitted to selling the cattle.”

“That jackal!” Mabel gasped.

“He must have chased Eric’s ranch hands off to keep them from finding out,” Charlie fit the last piece in place.

Mable dropped her shoulders.  “How on earth could that man have a whole mine right under all of our noses without any of us knowing?”

“The same way he could sell a hundred head of cattle in December without anyone seeing,” Amelia answered.  “He’s the best liar I’ve ever met.”

Mabel blanched.  “Good Lord, you’re right.”

“Someone has to ride into Cold Springs to find Eric and ask him to come out to see for himself,” Amelia said.  Eric needed to see with his own eyes that Curtis was a liar and a cheat.  Face-to-face with the mine, there would be no way Curtis could manipulate his way out.  If only she wasn’t half-dead with exhaustion.  “I think I need to lie down.”

“Now there’s an idea I could get behind,” Mabel agreed.

“No, you can’t!” Charlie said, eyes round and color high.

“Clearly Amelia needs to rest,” Mabel argued.

“Not now,” Charlie rushed to Amelia’s side and took her hand.  “That’s why I drove out here to find you.  Christian was in the store earlier.  Eric plans to sign the new deed giving Curtis the ranch this afternoon.”

Amelia gasped and jumped to her feet.  “That’s where he was going!”  She looked to Hannah.  She had seen Curtis mounting a horse as well.  “We have to go to town now!”

“Land sake’s, sweetie, I hardly think you’re in any condition-”

“We have to go
now
!” Amelia repeated, interrupting Mabel.  “It might already be too late.”

“We can take my wagon,” Charlie said, jumping into action.  She scooped her baby out of Hannah’s arms, eyes alight with excitement.

“This is madness!” Mabel chased after them as they cut through the house.  “Amelia, you’re not well.”

“I don’t have time not to be well,” she replied.

As they shot down the hall Amelia darted to the small side room that she had been sharing with Hannah for the last few days.  The deed to Eric’s ranch sat on top of the bureau.  She snatched it up and followed Charlie out the front door to her wagon.