Chapter One
The Woman in the Wagon
People think a journey begins when the wheels turn.
It doesn't.
It begins long before that. In the moment you understand staying will cost you more than leaving ever could.
My family crossed half a continent because my father wanted land. Others came west for gold. For cattle. For the promise of something they could call their own.
And some came because they believed enough miles could make them someone new.
But distance cannot change a person.
It only puts enough emptiness around you that there is nowhere left to hide from who you already are.
The West was full of people running toward something.
And just as many running away.
Most never knew the difference.
---
Yellowstone Ranch, Montana
October 1925
By the fourth time her father told her not to make trouble, Josephine Adelheart had begun to suspect he was trying to summon it.
She kept her eyes on the road.
"I heard you."
Her father rode alongside the wagon on a flea-bitten gray that looked nearly as weary of him as Josephine felt.
"That isn't the same as listening."
The wagon wheel dropped into a rut.
Josephine braced one boot against the floorboard and brought the team through it without losing pace. The road had grown rougher since they left Livingston behind, two hardened tracks running through yellow grass and sage beneath a sky so painfully blue it seemed scrubbed clean.
"Then perhaps you ought to say something new."
Mr. Adelheart shifted in the saddle.
His hat shadowed most of his face, though not enough to hide the tightening around his mouth. Days on the road had left gray dust in his beard and deepened every line beside his eyes. Josephine could remember when those lines had come mostly from laughter.
She could not remember exactly when that stopped.
"I've told you what Dutton expects."
"You told me he hired you."
"He did."
"And neglected to mention me."
His reins creaked.
"I didn't know you were coming when I wrote."
Josephine looked over.
"You knew before we left Wyoming."
"By then we were packed."
"You were packed."
The correction landed.
Her father turned his attention to the country ahead.
Behind the wagon, Honey snorted.
Josephine glanced back at the palomino tied to the rear rail. Honey's cream-colored mane had gone nearly dun with road dust, and one ear angled toward Josephine while the other flattened briefly in her father's direction.
YOU ARE READING
Spring After Winter
FanfictionSPRING AFTER WINTER A 1923 Fanfiction Two years after Alexandra's death, Spencer Dutton has learned how to survive without her. Living is another matter. Back at Yellowstone, he has reduced his world to the things he knows how to protect: his family...
