The Reluctant Warrior, page 1
© 2018 by Mary Connealy
Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
www.bethanyhouse.com
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan
www.bakerpublishinggroup.com
Ebook edition created 2018
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4934-1611-0
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover design by Studio Gearbox
Cover photography by Steve Gardner, PixelWorks Studios, Inc.
Author is represented by Natasha Kern Literary Agency.
I’m dedicating The Reluctant Warrior to my husband. He’s my very own romantic cowboy hero.
It’s hard to know how someone will act in high-pressure situations. Now I know. You really came through for me when I needed you most. Thank you!
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
About the Author
Books by Mary Connealy
Back Ads
Back Cover
C
HAPTER
1
SIERRA NEVADA MOUNTAINS
APRIL 1868
It was the silence that woke him.
Cameron Scott took in his surroundings before moving, before opening his eyes. He’d been a warrior for too much of his life, and some rules a man didn’t forget. One of them was to find out all you could before they knew you were awake. The silence pounded in his ears. Then came the smell.
He snapped his eyes open. He was in his room in the bunkhouse at the Riley ranch south of Lake Tahoe. He’d been here, nearly a prisoner thanks to the weather, for the entire winter.
He awoke in this same room every morning. And never, morning or night, had the darkness or the silence felt so profound as right now.
Nothing moved. No subdued moonlight slipping in through the tight shuttered window in his room. No wind. No blizzard. That was what he’d fallen asleep to. The blizzards hit now and then, but the wind was a ceaseless moaning that made him long to move to another climate.
But it wasn’t the silence or the darkness that’d made him react as a warrior. It was the smell.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat up. A wave of sickness struck that threatened to empty the contents of his belly.
His thoughts were sluggish. Danger was nothing new, yet he always trusted his lightning-fast reactions honed by war.
Right now, he felt like a doddering old man who couldn’t clear his thoughts. Then he remembered he wasn’t alone.
“Utah! Adam, get up. On your feet, men.” Cam stood, and his knees buckled, taking him low to the ground. He knew instantly that the unfamiliar weakness had saved his life.
He shouted again, louder this time, and realized how accustomed he was to being obeyed, only now all he got was silence. He roared, “The bunkhouse is full of smoke!”
The darkness he couldn’t explain, but the fire oughta shove it back. He crawled out of his room, looking all around. A few glowing embers in the fireplace were the only light.
“Utah, get up! Get out here!” Utah Smith was in the small room right next to Cam’s in the newly built bunkhouse. And Utah reacted to everything fast. His room, door open, remained silent. They all slept with their doors open to let the heat in from the fireplace, the only warmth in the house.
If the smoke had overcome both cowpokes, Cam had his work cut out saving them. Wake up the men? Clear the smoke—if he could figure out how? Get the extra hands to work—unless they were unconscious and he wasted precious seconds?
Cam was a major in the cavalry and made life-and-death decisions in a snap.
The smoke first. He rushed to the tightly shuttered window between the fireplace and Utah’s room. He flung the shutters open, swinging them inward.
Nothing.
No outdoors. Confused, addled by the smoke and the pitch-black, Cam reached his hand toward this solid wall where a window should be and touched cold. He crunched his hand into the cold and realized it was snow. A solid wall of snow higher than the window. He punched into the snow hoping it wasn’t deep and he could break through.
He only drove his fist deeper into snow.
It all clicked into place in his foggy brain. The cabin was buried. Probably the smokestack of the chimney, too. The smoke from the dying fireplace was filling the cabin. Looking around, it was no trouble finding the snow shovels. Scooping snow seemed to be the main job they did these days. Still crawling, Cam grabbed the shovel, reached the fireplace, and scooped up a glowing log. He didn’t know how he was going to dig out, but these hot logs oughta be able to handle the snow.
He stood, rushed to the wall of snow, and tossed the log right at it. It sunk out of sight. That opened a hole straight down to the ground around the bunkhouse. He stabbed the snow shovel deep, and it didn’t reach air.
How deeply were they buried?
He carried a scoop of snow to the hearth and tossed it on the logs. They hissed and spat. Cam didn’t wait for them to go out. He dropped low to breathe and found the steam coming off the fire was fresher than the air in the room. He sucked the air in, got plenty of smoke too, then grabbed more kindling, rushed to the open shutter and tossed the logs out. They melted their way out of sight.
Another scoop of snow dumped on the fireplace. Another scoop of kindling out the window.
He inhaled deeply. His head cleared as he rushed back and forth, snow in, logs out, back and forth.
“Utah! Adam!” He hoped the air was clearing some and they might wake up.
Neither of the men responded.
With the logs gone, Cam still had no tunnel out to fresh air, and with no more fire to melt snow or cast its red glow, he realized how smoky the room still was. He looked around, thinking, and saw a broom. He snagged it, rushed to the fireplace, and stepped inside. The rock floor of the chimney was cooled by the snow. He crouched to avoid the mantel and could nearly stand up straight in the narrowing chimney.
He poked the broom handle up and hit something solid. No snow fell. He didn’t feel the chimney draw. Bracing his feet on either side of the fireplace, he climbed up as high as he could get before the chimney narrowed. He poked again and again, each jab harder, each more frantic. His thoughts became cloudy. His chest burned.
Something caught on the end of the broomstick. He yanked down, and a black clump of something came down with it. And the smoke rushed past him—heat rising had found a way out. He coughed as he dropped to the floor and crawled out of the chimney. The smoke thinned enough that he thought it would clear out completely now. They were still buried, but not smothering anymore.
He ran to Utah’s room. Utah slept like the dead.
And that wasn’t a word Cam liked. He checked for a pulse in Utah’s neck. It was there, but light and too slow.
Cam rushed to the window which, despite the melted spots, was still completely blocked, grabbed a handful of snow, took it, and rubbed it on Utah’s face.
He yelped.
Cam dragged him by the leg off the bed to get him lower, to cleaner air. Utah growled as he hit the floor. Even with the smoke hopefully thinning, Utah needed every advantage he could get.
The cranky growl gave Cam hope.
“Wake up! The bunkhouse is full of smoke.” Figuring Utah would make it, he ran for Adam’s room, stopping to grab more snow.
“Get up, Adam, move!” he shouted. “We’re trapped. The room’s full of smoke, and the bunkhouse is buried in snow. We need to get out of here. On your feet!”
Adam rolled out of bed as Cam entered his room. By the time Cam was sure he was going to wake up, Utah came out crawling.
Utah’s brain must’ve kicked in. “Dig in the window on the far side of the fireplace, the side near Adam’s room. Last night, the snowdrifts were lowest on that side. Let’s scoop out that way.”
Cam grabbed his shovel. “The front door wasn’t blocked last night. Why not go that way?”
“The wind was blowing in from that direction, and we’d scooped out a mighty thin path. It probably filled in deep.”
Utah was still crawling. Adam moved faster, so he and Cam set to digging, throwing snow into the bunkhouse with no ca
“Cam, good thing you woke up, it saved us,” Utah said as he grabbed another shovel and staggered to his feet.
“I got mighty lucky. It hit me about as hard as it hit you.” He and Adam timed their digging to stay out of each other’s way. And Utah got himself timed so he was scooping as fast as they were.
They all worked as hard as their aching chests and blurred vision would allow. The room began to clear some.
“The chimney was clogged—that’s what made the room fill with smoke.” Cam kept digging.
They dug on for long minutes, then Utah said, “The chimney on the cabin ain’t any taller than the one we have.”
The cabin . . .
Panic hit like a bolt of lightning. “My daughter and nephew are in that cabin!”
They all knew it. Cam’s sister, Penny, was in there, too. And their boss, Trace; his wife, Deb; and her sister, Gwen.
Trace wasn’t Cam’s boss. Cam was here to get his daughter and nephew and take them home. That’d been his plan before he got trapped here in the first really big snowfall.
And before he’d found out his daughter and nephew hated him.
The hurt from that was like a wolf gnawing at his guts. And he was sure that pretty Gwen Harkness was doing things to the children so they’d keep hating him. Because she wanted those children for herself. The little kidnapper.
His digging went from hasty to frantic, and now it was salted with anger. Then the fear swept back over him. It didn’t matter what he felt so long as it made him dig faster.
“They should be out there digging toward us if they’re all right.” Adam pushed his shovel deep into the wall of snow.
“Maybe not. We don’t have one single idea what time it is.”
Adam went out into the hole they’d dug and slashed at the huge drift. Suddenly he shouted, “I’m through!”
He dove forward and vanished through a hole in the snow. Light came in. It was past sunup, and the folks in the cabin should all be awake. If they were and could get out, they’d have seen the bunkhouse buried and come to help.
Cam’s shovel went flying out next. Then he dove.
Adam was moving fast, and Cam figured Utah was only seconds behind him. He grabbed the shovel and got out of the way. Adam was wading through waist-deep snow. It was all powder-dry up here, blast it, and a man couldn’t stay on top of it. But thanks to Utah, they’d found a spot the wind hadn’t filled in quite so deep.
Cam rushed toward the cabin, only to see a massive drift that covered it over. From this angle he could just make out the tip of the chimney. It seemed clear and it should’ve been okay, but there was no smoke coming out.
Utah charged past him and attacked the snow in a spot he must’ve picked out deliberately.
Cam followed and waded right in. “Why this spot?”
“That chimney should be belching smoke. No reason it’s not. I think it’s plugged. I’m digging to the corner. I can scamper up those crisscrossed logs to the roof and open the chimney.”
“There was something in ours, and it wasn’t snow. A bird died in there or something. I opened it up to clear smoke before I went to work getting you out of bed.”
“Two birds?” Utah looked at Cam with fire in his eyes. “Two dead birds in two different chimneys on the same night?”
Cam scowled. “Not likely.”
All three men worked on the corner. Utah hit it first.
“I don’t need anyone else up on the roof.” Utah was gone upward while Cam and Adam went for the back door.
“Let’s get this door uncovered and opened!” Cam shouted the order, but Adam was already at it. Bad habit, being an officer.
A shout from overhead froze them worse than the bitter cold. A shout of fear and pain.
CHAPTER
2
Cam rushed to the side of the cabin to see Utah falling, blazing like a torch. He landed in deep snow.
Cam fought his way to Utah. He got there and saw the fire had been doused by the snow. His coat was black, his beard singed.
“I seen him, Cam. I seen him!” Utah raved rather than talked. The breath had been knocked out of him, the explosion stunning. He struggled to get to his feet, but he was too confused to do anything.
“You saw who?” Cam grabbed him by one arm of his heavy buffalo coat and dragged him away from the cabin.
Utah shouted, “There’s a fire in the cabin!”
You saw who?
Fire!
Cam tore back to the digging. Fire—he heard the crackle as flames ate their way through the small building.
What had Utah meant?
They dug toward the back door. If they could get to it, the door opened to a short hallway with the bedrooms on either side, and the hallway led to the main room where the fireplace was. If the fire started there, they still had a chance to save everyone.
The crackling grew to taunting laughter. A swirl of black smoke swept down from the roof. Cam prayed it was from the chimney and not a sign the roof had collapsed.
In the overcrowded cabin, his sister Penny slept on a bedroll in the front room. A sickening twist of his gut told him she’d die first. He dug all the faster. His shovel hit wood. “We’re through! Clear the snow enough to get the door open.”
Snow flew like fury from their shovels. They cleared the door enough to grip the latch. Trace had a sturdy one, front door and back.
Cam lifted it and it came free. Trace hadn’t locked the door last night, and Cam counted that as a miracle because Trace was mindful of such things.
Cam shoved the door open and ran in. The black, choking smoke rushing for the newly opened door made seeing impossible. Every instinct in his soul told him to get his children first. But it had to be Penny. She was in the worst danger. He sprinted down the short hall, walls crawling with flames. They rolled over the wood like tiny orange waves.
He stepped out of the hallway into an inferno. The chimney and the floor around it were fully on fire. The flames were alive. Hungry, starving, eating their way along the walls, ceiling, and floor.
Cam took a few seconds to judge the room and saw a strange black object out on the burning floor in front of the fireplace, and the blackest wood seemed to be right on the floor as if that’d been on fire the longest. Maybe a log had rolled out of the fireplace, though by this hour of the morning that fire should’ve been down to embers.
“I seen him, Cam. I seen him.”
Cam shook off the memory and turned to search for Penny in the dark room full of smoke.
Penny slept to the right side of the hallway, and the fireplace was to the left. Cam dropped to his knees and clawed his way to where Penny should be and found her still form. He gulped in the viciously hot air, better down low but still bad. He didn’t try to wake her, although he longed for her to open those brown eyes so dark, like his own, and smile at him. He wanted her to say something grouchy, her usual tone. But there was no time for that.
He scooped Penny up, leapt to his feet, and charged for the back of the cabin. He sprinted down the hall, its walls now a column of fire, thinking of his children left behind. Then he burst outside, slipped on snow that was melting under the heat of the fire and turning to ice. He plunged toward the ground, twisting his body so he bore the brunt of the fall. Stunned, he forced himself to get up, keep moving. He placed Penny near Utah, both of them stretched out on a thin sheet of frigid water as the heat of the fire melted snow all around them. He shouldn’t leave them in such a spot. The brutal cold would be deadly if they were soaked in the freezing wind. He’d seen plenty of men die from this kind of murderous cold.
He hoped Penny and Utah were far enough back in case the cabin collapsed, but he had no time to find someplace better. He had to get to Maddie Sue, still in the burning cabin.
Maddie Sue, his daughter! And his nephew, little Ronnie! He headed for the house and nearly slammed into Trace, who was running out with both children in his arms. Trace and the children were coughing. The little ones were crying too, panic-stricken. Trace was hacking something awful and staggering.
Yet all three were alive.
Cam plucked the children away from Trace and took them to where Penny lay. He set them down, sick about leaving them in the bitter cold and icy water, but he had to get everyone else out. The four of them out here were soaked, him too. Cold with wet clothes on was as deadly as fire, though a slower way to die.
