LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter One

      Near Seattle, Washington Territory

      December 1874

      Someone was watching her.

      Callie Murphy kept her fingers moving as she pinned another diaper to the clothesline stretching from the cabin to the closest fir tree. She felt as if a gaze was fixed on her back, pressing against the buckskin coat that covered her cotton shirt and trousers. She had to be mistaken.

      Her brother Adam had filed for a homestead a good five miles south of Seattle. He’d wanted space and quiet, claiming he was tired of the crowded gold rush camps in which they’d been raised. Mr. Kingerly and his wife lived a mile away, and the kindly older man would walk up to Callie if he wanted her help with something. The last stranger had passed this way months ago.

      Still, she couldn’t help glancing around. The one-room cabin stood in the center of the clearing her brother had widened in the forest, but the forest was trying to reclaim it. Already ferns poked up heads along the edges, and blackberry vines, withering with the coming winter, snaked across the dirt. As for the forest beyond, the most movement was a bird flitting from branch to branch.

      In the wash basket at her feet, Adam’s daughter blew bubbles, her round face a wreath of smiles. With shiny black curls and big blue eyes, six-month-old Mica reminded Callie of the porcelain-headed baby dolls on display in a Seattle mercantile window, especially around Christmas. The little girl looked far more like her late mother, Anna, than anyone on her father’s side of the family. Every Murphy, including Callie and her little brothers Frisco and Sutter, had hair the color of amber and eyes like slate.

      “Hush, little baby, don’t say a word,” Callie sang softly, feeling that itch between her shoulder blades that said her watcher was still there. “Mama’s gonna buy you a mockingbird.”

      Mica gurgled her delight, rocking from side to side to the tune.

      “And if that mockingbird don’t sing,” Callie continued. “Mama’s gonna buy you a diamond ring.”

      Mica laughed.

      Callie shook her head. Who was she to promise diamond rings? That was almost as bad as Pa’s promises, saying he’d strike it rich. Always one more hill to climb, one more creek to pan. Always little to show for months of labor. That was the way of the men she’d met. They either dreamed dreams too big to realize or thought only of themselves.

      “If you’re looking to rob us,” she called into the forest, “it’s only fair to tell you we got nothing of worth.”

      The forest was still, as if everything was waiting. In defiance, she bent and picked up another diaper, hanging it alongside the others. It didn’t matter who was watching or why. She had one goal: to keep her, Frisco, Sutter and Mica safe until Adam returned. She’d protected her family most of her life, starting with her younger twin brothers after her mother had died of influenza, now with them and Mica. She knew what she was doing.

      Still, this feeling was too much like the last time she’d lived on the gold fields, five years ago at the Vital Creek strike in the British Territories. At fifteen then, she’d just started getting her womanly curves. Most of the miners had noticed.

      “You don’t strike it rich, Murphy,” one had told her father, “you let me know. I’ll buy your daughter off you.”

      Pa had thrown himself at the fellow, and Adam had jumped in right after. That was when she’d started wearing loose clothing, washing and combing her hair less often, keeping her head down and her rifle close.

      She almost shuddered at the memory, but she refused to give her watcher the satisfaction of knowing she was nervous, and for good reason. She’d grown complacent in their little hideaway. Her rifle was hanging on its hook over the hearth.

      As if she felt the same concern, Mica frowned.

      Callie made herself brighten at the baby braced in the wash basket as she retrieved one of the boys’ shirts. “Isn’t it a nice day to hang the clothes, Mica?”

      A twig snapped in the woods. Ice raced up her spine. Callie stepped closer to Mica, bent as if to choose another piece of clothing and closed her hand on the stick she used to stir the wash.

      “Excuse me.”

      Callie whirled, stick raised like a club with Mica behind her. The fellow standing there held up his hands as if in surrender.

      “Sorry I startled you. I’m looking for the Murphy family.”

      Callie eyed him. He looked about Adam’s age, with curly hair a shade darker than hers and eyes so deep a blue they were nearly black. Something about those eyes seemed sad, weary, as if he’d come a long distance and still had a ways to go. He didn’t look particularly dangerous.

      She held the stick high anyway.

      “What do you want with the Murphys?” she asked.

      “I have news about their brother Adam,” he explained. “Are you California?”

      This time she did shudder. Why had Pa picked such silly names for his children? Adam had the only name that sounded normal, and only because Pa had thought the first boy in the family should be called after the first man in the Bible. When Callie had asked her mother, God rest her soul, about why she hadn’t protested, Ma had smiled.

      “You know your pa,” she’d said. “When he gets an idea in his head, there’s no arguing with him.”

      That was why they’d followed him from San Francisco in the south to the British Territories in the north.

      Still, only family knew Callie’s real name, which meant this

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