Petra Read online

  Chapter 3

  Pike strode to the barn, account books packed in their leather satchel tossed over his shoulder with thoughts only of a one day task already two days old with another yet needed interrupted by Petra and ghosts from a past best forgotten. Mindful of numerous well tended flower beds surrounding their home first planted after his marriage as a project the couple shared to great pleasure, he felt none of his usual happiness seeing them bending without bloom needful of long absent sun to reignite spring and return them to beauty.

  He shook his head. Most years, early autumn overcast brought a day or two of murky attitudes accompanied by difficulty completing even simple chores but this year for no reason he could corral was more a strain than others. That cool overcast days were lasting longer than most years accounted for a part, Colorado not having the weeks or months of winter gloomies he’d grown to know back home, but there was more to his discontent than mere seasons. Choosing to focus on what was needful doing, having learned from childhood that taking action would raise low spirits or, if not, allow at least modest progress on tasks despite them, Adam again ran his thinking across each of their family enterprises but found no relief as all were in capable hands selected by him personally.

  Except Petra. No other could handle the outlaw’s son, a fact Pike understood easily without regret or thought of asking any to. As a young Marshal, it was his decision to chase Demitri Petra after the man’s third robbery ended in killing of an innocent man, that needless death drawing a line between the first two and last which commanded Adam’s attention. Throughout his time as a lawman, thefts and holdups were so common in towns and on roads between to cause little noise allowing every Marshal in the West choice which to address but murder demanded the sort of quick, decisive engagement which promptly earned Adam a name for making.

  Much of that reputation remained a decade later the way dust clung to air behind a cattle drive, thinning but never quite settling. A hard man, folks would say or think with no sight into what eighteen months battling outlaws to establish a ranch and place for his kin does to a man not yet twenty grown in a loving home among others respectful of law and order. Few new arrivals to Morale saw the incessant violence of that time answerable only in kind or, of greater meaning, the endless months Pike spent in this territory without a friend to chat up or share a meal with.

  Riding to Sis’s, he eyed the small saddle dipping in the middle of the east ridge of the Checkmark range, vivid images jumping to mind of six men having murderous intent laying there in ambush with what earthly remains left of them still scattered among firs and pines caring none for concerns of men.* A slight turn in the trail let him see the cave on the west arm where he laid with his dog Causin’ scratching the pups ears watching thirty of Roy Hawkins band edging up the hillside knowing only that many or most would die before they killed him while harboring no doubt of that end.