Chapter 6 - Gold Beneath the Water
The story sounded impossible.
Gold.
Not in the hills.
Not buried beneath some abandoned mine.
Beneath Calder's creek.
Eli explained that Silas Crowe had secretly hired a surveyor months earlier.
Traces of gold had been discovered upstream.
The richest deposit appeared to run directly beneath Hale land.
Crowe needed the ranch.
Debt had been the easiest weapon.
When that failed, intimidation followed.
Then sabotage.
Then bullets.
“Why tell us?” Calder asked.
Eli looked ashamed.
“Because he tried to kill me.”
“That doesn't make you innocent.”
“I know.”
Ingrid knelt beside him.
“Who else knows?”
“Crowe. Banker. Surveyor.”
“And Beatrice?”
Eli hesitated.
“I don't know.”
Calder and Ingrid exchanged a look.
Eli recovered in the bunkhouse under Tom's watch.
For the next week, tension hung over the ranch.
Calder slept with a rifle beside his bed.
Ingrid found herself listening to every sound.
But danger did something unexpected.
It brought them closer.
They worked together.
Ate together.
Argued.
Laughed occasionally.
Calder began asking Ingrid's opinion before making decisions.
Ingrid began forgetting to make herself smaller.
One evening she caught her dress on a fence.
The fabric tore.
She cursed.
Calder laughed.
She glared.
“You think this is amusing?”
“A little.”
“Then you can repair it.”
His smile disappeared.
“I don't sew.”
“Then stop laughing.”
He tried to suppress another smile.
Failed.
Ingrid started laughing too.
Soon both were laughing so hard that Tom emerged from the barn to see whether something was wrong.
Nothing was wrong.
For once.
That night Calder walked Ingrid to the porch.
Neither wanted to say goodnight.
“Ingrid.”
“Yes?”
“I nearly kissed you the other day.”
“I noticed.”
“I'd like to finish.”
Her cheeks warmed.
“That's a remarkably unromantic way of asking.”
“I've been alone a long time.”
“I noticed that too.”
He smiled.
Then became serious.
“May I?”
Ingrid looked into his eyes.
“Yes.”
Calder kissed her.
Slowly.
No urgency.
No demand.
His hand rested against her cheek.
Ingrid had spent years believing tenderness belonged to other women.
Smaller women.
Beautiful women.
Women who entered rooms without hearing laughter.
Yet Calder kissed her as if no other woman existed.
When they separated, Ingrid was breathless.
Calder rested his forehead against hers.
“You're trembling.”
“So are you.”
“I am not.”
“You are.”
He laughed quietly.
Then gunfire erupted from the pasture.
They ran.
Flames rose near the fence.
Men on horseback drove Calder's cattle toward the open gate.
“Rustlers!” Tom shouted.
Calder mounted immediately.
Ingrid grabbed his arm.
“Come back.”
He looked at her.
Two words.
Simple.
Terrified.
He understood what she meant.
Calder placed his hand over hers.
“I will.”
Then he rode into the darkness.
Hours passed.
One ranch hand returned wounded.
Then another.
Tom came back.
Calder did not.
At sunrise Ingrid stood at the gate staring toward the hills.
A rider appeared.
Not Calder.
The man approached slowly.
He carried Calder's hat.
Ingrid's knees nearly failed.
The stranger stopped.
“Mrs. Hale?”
“We aren't married.”
He looked uncomfortable.
“Crowe has your man.”
Ingrid stared at the hat.
“What does he want?”
The rider handed her a note.
She opened it.
One sentence.
Sign over the ranch by sundown, or Calder Hale dies.
Ingrid folded the paper.
Tom reached for his rifle.
But Ingrid looked toward the distant hills with an expression nobody on the ranch had ever seen before.
Silas Crowe believed he had kidnapped the person who protected her.
May you like
He was about to discover that Calder Hale had chosen a woman capable of protecting him too.
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