Page 10 of Heart on the Line

Emma didn’t seem to notice her husband’s intense regard. She was too busy puzzling through what Grace had said. Her forehead crinkled. “I don’t understand. You didn’t give me documents to hold. You gave me books. Worn copies of Guy Mannering by Sir Walter Scott and Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. I thought they were rare items you were holding onto for investment purposes.”

Grace shook her head. “My father said the books themselves are of no particular value. That’s why he didn’t think they’d be missed until after he had a chance to meet with the Pinkerton agent hired by Tremont Haversham to find the daughter he had believed dead for twenty-five years. The documents are secreted inside.”

“Then let’s retrieve them,” Malachi announced, bracing his hands against his knees as if preparing to rise. “I can deliver them to the Pinkertons. Haversham can hash out his inheritance mess in the courts. Getting rid of the documents gets rid of the threat. Problem solved.”

“I’m afraid it’s not quite that easy.” Grace looked from Emma to Malachi, then dropped her gaze to her lap. “I’ve been through those books a hundred times, and I can’t find evidence of any documents. Just a handful of scribbled notes in a few margins. I trust my father’s word. I know he found something—something he died to protect. I just don’t know what or where it is.”

4

I should have brought my bicycle,” Amos muttered under his breath as his mule veered off the road for the seventeenth time to munch on some scruffy-looking vegetation that must be the mule equivalent of catnip.

The livery nearest the depot in Seymour had been woefully picked over. He’d had a choice between a green-broke mustang with demon eyes and a mule the proprietor had dubbed Will. The name had sounded friendly enough until Amos mounted and discovered it was actually short for Willful. The beast refused to take direction or instruction, and while Amos was not the best of horsemen, even he knew that when he tugged the reins to the right and nudged with his heels, the animal beneath him was supposed to move right. But not Willful. The contrary beast simply ignored his commands and moved from one scraggly snack to the next with no respect for the urgency of his rider’s mission.

Amos had kicked the animal’s well-rounded girth, tugged the reins, and tried every encouraging sound from tongue clicks, to friendly get ups, to authoritative commands. He’d even gone so far as to whistle and make embarrassing kissing noises while rocking uncomfortably forward in the saddle. Nothing worked. The mule would only move when he was good and ready, and he was never ready until he’d eaten all the roughage within three feet of the road.

“For pity’s sake,” Amos muttered. “I can walk faster than this.” He leaned his weight into the left stirrup and rose up to dismount.

At the same moment that Amos pulled his foot from the right stirrup, Will raised his head from his snacking and set off at a bone-jarring trot. Amos nearly tumbled to the ground. Thankfully, his years of cycling had honed his balance. It wasn’t pretty—a death grip on the saddle horn, an awkward forward lurch resulting in a mouthful of hairy mane, and a series of lopsided shifting as he felt around for the stirrup—but he succeeded in staying aboard.

“Nice try, Willful. But you can’t defeat me that easily.”

As if rising to the challenge, the maniacal beast increased his pace just as they crested a hill. A large hill with a rather steep descent.

“Whoa, now.” Amos tugged on the reins, knowing it was pointless but having to try anyway. “Slow down, boy. No need to rush . . .” His words hit a crescendo and transitioned into a cry of alarm as the mule plunged down the hill, ears back, neck stretched.

Amos pressed into the stirrups and leaned backward in the saddle, holding onto his hat with one hand as he tried to keep from toppling straight over Will’s head.

Just when he thought he might survive with his bones intact if not his dignity, the mule zagged to the left, turning the gently curving corner at the bottom of the hill into an angle so sharp, Euclid could have used it to demonstrate the principle of perpendicularity. Unfortunately, Amos’s trajectory followed a different path, one more likely to demonstrate Newton’s laws than Euclid’s.

Newton’s second law of motion had him continuing along the linear path dictated by the hill instead of the corner. Then the law of universal gravitation kicked in and slammed his airborne personage to the ground with a force that returned Amos to the law of motion. Or non-motion. His resting body definitely wanted to stay at rest. It hurt too much to move.

But his aches and pains didn’t matter. A young woman was in need of his aid somewhere around that bend. He’d not let a few bruises and a bit of dirt keep him from his course.

Amos planted his palms against the hard-packed earth and lifted himself from the ground, wincing at the ache in the shoulder that had taken the brunt of the impact. Once he staggered to his feet, he made a hasty inspection—a difficult task when one’s spectacles dangled from one’s right ear. Thankfully, the lenses had been spared. After a quick reshaping of the wire frames and a rub from his handkerchief, the eyeglasses were back in place and the world around him returned to focus.

He brushed off the worst of the dirt and took a moment to straighten his collar and retrieve his hat. Then he marched around the bend and promptly stepped in a still-warm pile of mule manure.

He couldn’t look. All he could do was smell. Amos tipped his face toward the heavens and flung his arms up in protest.

“Are you trying to tell me something, Lord?” He pulled his hat from his head and glared at the cheerfully blue sky. “If so, could you just make the mule speak like you did with Balaam and save us both the aggravation?” A snuffling sound brought Amos’s gaze down to Will. The horrid beast was munching on more of those leafy weeds. “I always considered Balaam a brute for beating his donkey,” Amos said as he pointed a finger at Will, “but I’m beginning to understand how one might be driven to such action.”

Although . . . Balaam’s donkey had tried to warn his master away from the path he had chosen. Was Willful doing the same? Warning Amos away from Harper’s Station?

Lord, are you telling me to turn back, or did I just get stuck with the most cantankerous mule known to mankind by happenstance?

“And how am I to know the difference?” he muttered as he trod to the edge of the road and scraped the worst of the manure from his boot sole onto a rock. Needing something softer to clean the leather sides with, Amos spied Willful nosing around a new clump of his favorite snack. He smiled.

Walking straight for the bush, Amos nudged Willful out of the way and wiped the rest of the droppings off onto the cluster of tasty vegetation. He looked up at his nemesis and raised an eyebrow. “It’s not so funny when the things you care about get contaminated, is it?”

Will stopped chewing and stared at Amos. Then he turned and headed down the road as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

Well, he hadn’t. He was a mule.

A mule carrying all of Amos’s belongings.

“Whoa, now,” Amos called, slapping his hat back on his head and hurrying after the departing beast. “You’re missing a passenger.”

The Lord must not have been trying to warn Amos away from Harper’s Station, for a true miracle occurred at that moment. Willful came to a halt in the middle of the road and stood as still as an oak tree on a windless morning while Amos mounted. And as a further answer to prayer, when Amos tapped his heels to the animal’s flanks and clicked his tongue, Willful actually moved. In the right direction.