Joel stepped to the edge of the platform and looked down on the rider. Every nerve was taut. Every sense sharpened.
The man’s expression was not visible through the mask. He shifted in his saddle, and before Joel knew it, he felt the cold wooden handle of his own gun in his palm. But the man hadn’t drawn a gun on him. Instead of bullets flying his way, a bundle of switches skidded across the platform and landed at Joel’s feet.
One glance to see they posed no threat, and then Joel had the rider back in his sights.
The man’s horse pranced as the noise of the other riders faded into the woods.
“A bundle of sticks?” Joel said. “What’s that supposed to mean? Who are you?”
The white painted circle over the masked man’s mouth distorted and stretched with his answer. “I’m the law.”
Turning his horse, the rider spurred it, and they shot off like a cannonball to catch their companions, thundering across the clearing and ducking where the road entered the woods.
Joel’s scalp crawled. Releasing a long breath, he holstered his gun and only then allowed himself to consider what could’ve happened. They’d warned him that the mountains were dangerous. He’d thought the risk better than the fate that faced him at home, but now he wasn’t sure. Whatever he’d expected on his arrival, this wasn’t it.
Nope. This definitely wasn’t Texas.
Chapter 2
While we think your writing shows promise, our readers have no interest in the ineffectual attempts of a mountain sheriff to apprehend criminals in the Ozarks. If you find a topic that would be of more interest to those unfamiliar with your area, please submit again—
Betsy Huckabee folded the letter along its well-established creases. Good news, bad news. She could tell a story, but there wasn’t any story worth telling in Pine Gap, according to the Kansas City paper’s way of thinking. How could they not find the clash between the various gangs and outlaws fascinating? But they claimed their readers couldn’t relate to the incidents. While they might live in the same state, the mountaineers didn’t catch the attention of the city folk. If she wanted to start her career, she’d have to come at it from a different angle.
Stuffing the letter into her skirt pocket for the hundredth time, Betsy took up the wooden spoon and scraped it against the bottom of the iron pot, loosening what had stuck while she was distracted. There was more onion than squirrel in the pot. While the onions filled the cabin with a pleasing aroma, they wouldn’t keep her stomach from rumbling all night. The hams, shoulders, and middlin’ meat of the recently butchered pig were curing in the smokehouse, but they would have to stretch through spring, and evidently Sissy was already worried about running short. Betsy took a stick of walnut, tossed it in the cookstove, and then set to stirring again.
Maybe she could write a sentimental story for the ladies’ page—some fictional piece that would put her name in the paper and some money under her mattress. It wouldn’t hurt to try. She needed to think of something to help her earn a place of her own. The current situation wasn’t conducive to her well-being.
A whistle shrilled from outside. Was that the train? Betsy glanced at the clock on the fireplace mantel. Eight o’clock, and there the whistle went again, probably to alert the town that some poor soul had been abandoned at the depot. She set the kettle on the table and wiped her hands on the checkered dishtowel. She might be hungry, but she couldn’t stir onions when there was a mystery afoot.
“Uncle Fred? Did you hear the train?” Pushing open the door between the newspaper printing office and their living quarters, she found him leaning over the press, arranging a troublesome line of type.
He brushed at his forehead. His stained sleeve protector branded a smudge of ink right above his glasses. “The train? It’s certainly late.”
The outside door flew open, and Betsy’s fifteen-year-old cousin Scott burst in. “That was the train, Pa.” Even thin as he was, the way he wiggled, you’d think there was a whole litter of puppies beneath his shirt. He rushed to his pa, nearly bumping the typesetting tray onto the floor. “Do you reckon the new deputy was on that train?”
Uncle Fred caught the tray by the corner and tugged it to the center of the desk. “Go tell Sissy that we’re coming in for supper. You aren’t going after a train.”
Betsy waited until her cousin, arms dangling and lip protruding, sulked into the cabin. As soon as the door fell closed behind him, she turned to her uncle. “What about me? Am I going after a train?”