The Rancher's Daughter (Daughter of the Wildings #3) Read online

  “Oferdon is a hunter who tracks down renegade mages for the bounty on them,” Silas went on. “It so happens that, in Granadaia, I’m considered a renegade. Oferdon was in Bentwood Gulch hoping to come across a renegade mage.” He deliberately didn’t tell her it was Coltor he’d been watching. If Coltor wanted Miss Tennir to know he was a mage, he would tell her himself. “When he witnessed the contract, he realized who I am and decided to come after me for the eight hundred gildings on my head. He caught up with me, and I made a deal with him to split Coltor’s fee if he helped me find Shayla, but he turned on me. Shot me in the back and ran off into the mountains.”

  He hesitated, then made himself go on, speaking more gently to take away the harshness of what he was going to say next. “I don’t think he’ll make it out. He’s addicted to a drug called demonsalts, and the cravings can be fatal. Even if he does make it out of the mountains, I doubt he’ll be coming back here. He has a wife in Granadaia.”

  “Oh.” Miss Tennir sat unmoving, a lost, empty look on her face. A tear began trickling down her cheek. “I thought – he seemed like the nicest man, and I really thought –”

  “I’m sorry,” Lainie said. “Really, I am. But we thought you should know, so you aren’t left waiting for him and never knowing what happened. And so when someone who really loves you and deserves you comes along, you’ll know you’re free to be with him.”

  Miss Tennir nodded, and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. It didn’t help; the tears came even faster. “Yes, I understand. Thank you.”

  With that duty discharged, there was nothing else Silas and Lainie could do for her. They said goodbye and let themselves out.

  * * *

  AFTER A FEW more days at the hotel, Lainie and Silas agreed it was time to head out. On their way out of town, they left another round of offerings and prayers at the shrine, then stopped by the mail depot. It was too soon for a reply to have come from Lainie’s Pa to her letter; she wrote another one to let him know that they were leaving Bentwood Gulch, she wasn’t sure when they would be back that way, and she didn’t know where they were going next. She told him they were tired of traveling and wanted to find a place to lay low for a while, though she didn’t mention how they’d both almost died and were still somewhat worse for the wear, and promised that when they were settled somewhere she would write to him again.

  She sealed and addressed the letter, then paid the postage and the extra fee for a rider to take it out to the ranch. Then she put ten gildings down on the counter. “If a letter ever comes from Burrett Banfrey, at the Double B Ranch in Bitterbush Springs, keep it until I come back. Even if it takes years. Make sure no one throws it out or sends it back.”

  The bespectacled postmaster raised his eyebrows at the size of the payment. “Yes, ma’am. Burrett Banfrey, Double B, Bitterbush Springs.” He made a note on a list of mail depot instructions, then dropped the coins in the till.

  “And here’s another one for your trouble.” Lainie handed him another gilding piece, and he pocketed it, grinning around his tobacco plug.

  They left the depot and mounted up, Silas still having to manage as best he could with his broken arm. When they were out of town and away from listening ears, Lainie asked, “Where now?”

  “West. There’s fewer people out that way. Maybe… I was thinking maybe even as far west as Amber Bay. I don’t know of any other mages who’ve made it out that far. It’ll take them years to find us out there. If they ever do.”

  Amber Bay. Lainie’s heart seemed to drop. So far away… This was the first time Silas had ever mentioned wanting to go all the way out there. How long had he been thinking about it? “But – It’s so far. Three thousand leagues or more, and we’d have to cross the P’wagimet lands.” The warlike, nomadic P’wagimet who claimed the vast western plains as their territory were particular about who they let travel through their lands. Mostly, as Lainie understood it, wagon caravans bringing canned food from the canneries on the west coast and other items made with foreign science – guns and ammunition, hour clocks, eyeglasses, and so forth – to sell to the settlers in the Wildings. “I’ve heard the trip is real expensive and dangerous. And if we go all the way out there, I might not ever be able to see my Pa again. I guess letters can go by the trade wagons, but I’d lay money that’s expensive too.” They would also never be able to go to the Mage Council to have Silas’s fertility block removed, but she didn’t say so out loud.

  “I know,” Silas answered. “But when the Mage Council finds out what you did with Oferdon’s power, every mage hunter in the Wildings will be after you.”

  “I don’t think he’s even still alive. You saw what I went through; I don’t see how he could survive by himself up in those mountains.”

  “But we don’t know that he’s dead. And even if he is dead, he might have found a way before he died to tell someone about what you did.”

  “But he didn’t have his message box.”

  “He might have been found by another clan of A’ayimat. Or made it to another town somewhere. We can’t take the chance. And it isn’t just Oferdon. It’s what you did with Fazar’s power, too. We know he was able to get a message off before he died.”

  “We don’t know what was in that message. When Oferdon came after you, did he say anything about a bounty on me?”

  “No, but –”

  “So you’re the one with a bounty on your head, not me. You’re the one in danger. If it was just you, would you be thinking about Amber Bay?”

  “I’m not worried about myself, Lainie.”

  She understood his fears for her and his urge to protect her. She felt the same way about him; how could she not? Someone, maybe not the Mage Council, but someone powerful in Granadaia, wanted him dead. He was the one with an assassination order out on him; he was the one with an eight hundred gilding bounty on his head. Even if he wasn’t killed by an assassin, he could still be captured and taken back to Granadaia and imprisoned or Stripped or even executed. But if they ran away, if they broke faith with their ideals and turned their backs on protecting the people of the Wildings from mages who wanted to destroy their peace and freedom, the time would come when they would lose all respect for themselves and for each other. She didn’t know how to say this, though, without sounding like she was criticizing him.

  “I’m worried about you,” she said. “But even if we go to Amber Bay, sooner or later they’re bound to catch up to us. If we can make it out there, so can they. If they aren’t there already, and you don’t know that they aren’t. I think we’d do better to just lay low somewhere in the Wildings until things change. Different people might come onto the Mage Council, or the people on it now might start to think differently about things. The rules might change and we won’t be renegades any more. And anyhow,” she went on before he could argue back, “what about Adelin Horden? We have to go see her; we can’t just tell her about Mr. Horden in a letter. Imagine getting a letter with news like that from a complete stranger.”

  Silas was silent for a long time, his argument with himself showing in the tense lines of his face and body. Finally, he let out a heavy sigh. “You’re right about Mrs. Horden, at least. First thing we’ll do is find a place to hole up and get you better, and then we’ll figure out the rest.”

  He didn’t say he was dropping the idea of going to Amber Bay, but Lainie was sure that, once they had put some time and distance between themselves and the dangers they had been through, he would stop worrying about her so much. She reached over and patted his leg. “We’ll be fine,” she said. “As long as we never give up, we’ll be fine.”

  He let go of the reins, and took her hand and kissed it. “As long as I’ve got you safe with me, that’s all I want.”

  THE END

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  The Rancher’s Daughter

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  Read on for a preview of To the Gap

  Book 4 of Daughter of the Wildings

  The drive was gathering northeast of town, on the far side of the valley from where Lainie and Silas had been living. On the way out there, they stopped to call on the rancher who had sold them the cabin. His wife said he was already at the muster; they said they would try to find him and talk to him but they wanted her to know they were going on the drive and Daisybell and the chickens would need to come back to the ranch house to be looked after. “We’re not sure if we’re going to come back here after the drive,” Silas added. “If we aren’t back by mid-winter, you folks can have possession of the cabin again.”

  “I’ll tell my husband that when he comes back later, but it’d be best if you found him and told him too,” the wife said. “If you can find him. It’s always a mob at the mustering.”

  “We’ll do that, ma’am,” Silas said. He tipped his hat and they left, having discharged their duty to their livestock.

  Lainie could hear and smell the cattle and see the dust in the air while they were still half a league out from the muster grounds. A pang of homesickness struck her; it reminded her of the round-up at the ranch every year, before the cattle to be driven to The Gap were separated out and driven to join the local co-op herd. All the activity and the prospect of the long trip ahead had always seemed so exciting to her, but no matter how she begged, her Pa would never let her go. It was no place for a woman, he had always said, though she knew that sometimes women did go, as cooks or even as hands. These women generally weren’t young and unmarried, though. She had contented herself with helping with the roundup on her Pa’s ranch, and a few times he even let her help drive the herd to the muster for the Bitterbush Springs co-op.

  But now, here she was, finally about to go on the big drive. She didn’t even care about the money. Just the thought of being on the trail for four or five months with thousands of head of cattle, heading for the legendary roundup at The Gap, made her whole body buzz with excitement.

  At the muster grounds, loudly bawling cattle, already branded with the individual ranch brands, were being herded through a large corral to be branded with the local co-op brand. The smell of cow dung and burning hair hung in the air along with the dust and fragments of dead plants stirred up by the constant wind that gave the valley its name. A short way from the branding corral, a tent had been set up, with a big painted canvas sign flying from it saying “Windy Valley Cattlemen’s Cooperative.” Cowhands and other drive workers were going in and out of the tent. A second corral, filled with horses, stood to the other side of the tent. A sign in front of the corral said “Remounts – check horses here.” Through it all, cattle dogs ran around, barking in excitement.

  Silas and Lainie rode over to the remount corral and dismounted. A young man carrying a thin board with a sheet of paper stuck to it with a nail took down their names and a description of their horses. They unsaddled the horses and took their bags and gear with them to the tent while the horse wrangler led Abenar and Mala to the corral.

  Inside the tent, a broad, sturdy, balding man sat at a table, doing battle with stacks of paper and ledgers. The engraved nameplate on the table gave his name as Argus Landstrom. Three men were in line ahead of them; Lainie and Silas waited while Mr. Landstrom checked the men’s names off against a list he had. With two of them, he took some coins out of a money box to one side as an advance against their pay so they could buy whatever supplies they needed, and wrote the amounts down.

  When Lainie and Silas’s turn came, the man looked up, then shook Silas’s hand. “Vinson, right? No –” He glanced down at his papers again. “Vendine. Glad to have you with us. And Mrs. Vendine,” he said to Lainie. “I know your Pa. Banfrey sure turned out a fine daughter. Mr. and Mrs. Bington will be glad to have you.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Landstrom,” Lainie said. Going by what Silas had said, she guessed Mr. Landstrom had some strange ideas about mages. She wondered how easy it would be to win him over to the idea that not all wizards were bad.

  The talk turned to the supplies they would need. Leather leggings, a necessity since straying cattle tended to want to find the prickliest, thorniest patches of brush to hide in, and ropes were the main things they didn’t already have. They still had a good amount of the ammunition they had bought in Ripgap, but Lainie judged it best if they replenished their supplies. Silas declined to take an advance against their pay, and they headed off to the temporary booths that sellers of the various supplies had set up to cater to the gathering drive hands and other workers.

  “Bullets?” Silas asked as they walked. “You can’t sell the cattle for much if you’ve shot them, can you?”

  Lainie grinned. After being his student in magic for so long, it was kind of a nice turn of the tables to be the one teaching him. “You don’t shoot the cows. You shoot people who are trying to steal them, or, if there’s a stampede or the lead cattle don’t want to go where they’re supposed to, or strays that won’t go back, you fire into the ground right in front of them, and that’ll scare them back where they’re supposed to be.” A big, brown cattlehound came up to them and sniffed them enthusiastically, tongue lolling out of its grinning mouth. Lainie rubbed the dog’s head, and felt an ache of missing her own dogs, Bunky and Snoozer, and Rat, the fat, one-eared orange tabby tom. “The dogs help too,” she told Silas, “but cattle can be stupid and stubborn, and sometimes you have to get firm with them.”

  As they walked through the mustering grounds and bought their supplies, they caught bits and pieces of the talk around them. Stories from previous drives, gossip and news, and, flying thick as biter-bugs after a thunderstorm, rumors of possible rustling attempts. Theft of cattle on a drive was always a worry, but this year, with speculation that the cattle would bring record-high prices, there were sure to be more and bolder attempts. A thought occurred to Lainie, but she didn’t want to say anything to Silas about it within hearing of anyone else.

  Arms laden with their newly-acquired supplies, Lainie and Silas walked over to where three covered wagons stood in a row with a long table in front of them. Between the wagons and the table burned a huge cookfire with a pot and a griddle over it. A stout middle-aged woman tended the cooking while an equally stout middle-aged man was serving up food to the men lined up and filing past the table. “That must be the Bingtons,” Lainie said. “I’ll introduce myself.” Mr. Bington doubled as the wagonmaster, and they had also been told to check their belongings with him, to be stowed in one of the wagons. Since drive hands changed horses at least once or twice a day, carrying your belongings on horseback wasn’t practical.

  Lainie approached the woman. “Mrs. Bington? I’m Lainie Vendine.” As Silas had told her to do, she put a name-slip charm on her name.

  The cook looked up. Her gray-and-brown hair was flying wildly despite the kerchief tied around it, and she was sweaty and red-faced even though the early spring day was cool. “Mrs. Vendine? That’s right, you’re our assistant. I’m glad to see you. Feeding this mob is too much work for just Mr. Bington and me.”

  Mr. Bington, who had thinning dark hair combed over his bald pate and a thick dark mustache, added, “You and the mister can stow your things in the middle wagon, then come on and get started.”

  Silas and Lainie put their belongings in the back of the biggest covered wagon, which was divided into two sections. The front half held food and cooking equipment, the back half carried drive hands’ gear. Lainie took advantage of the moment of privacy to whisper to Silas, “You don’t suppose any rogue mages might try to rustle some cattle, do you?”

  Silas was silent a moment as he arranged his belongings in the wagon bed. “Could be. It’d take at least two or three working together, though, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yeah. Rustling isn’t a one-man job.
”

  “I’ve never seen more than two rogues working together, and those two were near to killing each other.”

  “Taking control of a herd of cattle might be worth it, though. They could sell some, split the money, keep the rest for breeding stock, and start their own little holdings. There’s always buyers at the market who don’t look at the brandings as closely as they should.”

  “There might be something to that,” Silas said. “A really ambitious mage might also just be interested in disrupting Wildings society enough that he can muscle his way in, even without going to the trouble of getting into the cattle ranching business.”

  “So you think it’s worth keeping in mind?”

  “I’d say so. But if it comes down to actually taking on any mages, darlin’, I want you to stay out of the way.”

  She had figured he would say that. “It’s you there’s a bounty out on, not me.”

  “We don’t know that there isn’t one on you. If the Mage Council gets any word of what you can do, there’ll be sure to be a bounty on you that’ll put mine to shame.”

  “We don’t know that they know.”

  “We don’t know that they don’t.”

  She let out an exasperated breath, blowing loose hairs from around her face. “We’re a team. We’re partners. We work together.”

  To the Gap

  Daughter of the Wildings Book 4

  Coming Soon!

  The World of Daughter of the Wildings

  Money and Measurements:

  copper bits = 3 per penny

  pennies = 3 bits

  drinas = 10 pennies