Love's Rescue by Tammy Barley

of backing down. At the same time, Jess instinctively knew that none of them would harm her. She began to walk around them, but they moved in order to bar her way.
    “I can’t let you go, Jess.” Jake’s voice was apologetic but final.
    Jess neither refused nor agreed to stay. She shot the men a glare, then marched back the way she had come. She went straight past the house, heading toward the creek and the scattered cottonwoods in the distance.
    The men returned to work. A few whacked Jake on the back in good-humored sympathy, and Jake thanked them for their help in staying Jess. Every one of them looked relieved, almost eager, for the changes in their relatively static existence that Jess’s presence would surely bring.
    When the other men had gone, Lone Wolf silently came up beside him. Jake scanned the foothills that stretched out to the west. The day was young, and the men could see to what little work there was.
    “I’m going to see her, Lone Wolf. For a little while, at least. I’ve been away too long.”
    “You have made this journey for more than a year, my friend,” Lone Wolf said quietly. “A journey that will not change how things are.” When Jake did not respond, Lone Wolf let the matter be. “I will look after the girl until you return.”
    Jake gave him a nod of thanks, then walked to the rear of the stable. With a small knife, he took two cuttings from the spindly bush that stood there. Not long after, he was riding toward the mountains, two cuttings in his hand.

Chapter Four
    Jess had watched Jake saddle his horse, but she had stubbornly kept her back to him when he passed her.
    A small cluster of trees near the bank of the creek gave her a measure of the privacy she sought. She was shaking from cold but was too frustrated to care.
    In Carson City, she had worked in a dark, cramped corner of her father’s store. She hadn’t liked it, but it had been her choice. Being brought here had not been her choice, and she had no intention of staying. She knew she wouldn’t have much of a house left in Carson City, but the town provided a means of income, and she desperately needed to be near her family, even if they were…deceased. But more than anything, she wanted the men who had murdered her family to be found and hanged. The sheriff and Captain Rawlins had only Jake’s description of the men who attacked her on the street. If the killers remained in Carson City and she returned, she would know them the instant she sighted them, and they could be swiftly captured. Moreover, her presence in Carson City would ensure that the sheriff pursued his investigation—and the hanging—with diligence. She would see to that.
    Jess’s throat ached with the need to vent her anger at Jake for keeping her at his ranch, especially after everything else he’d done to her. Instead, she set her shoulders. She was her own woman now. Nobody was going to tell her where to live. She would leave the first chance she had.
    At that thought, Jess finally surveyed her surroundings. The Sierras towered behind her to the south, as she had discovered by glancing through Jake’s bedroom window. Honey Lake, she knew, lay in the broad plain to the west. Beyond the purling creek, an immense grassy valley stretched away to the north, and to the east of the valley huddled distant groups of mountains. All around the ranch, the sage plains lay open and flat, uninterrupted except for the creek and the cottonwoods. Leaving wouldn’t be easy. There wouldn’t be many places to conceal her while she rode away. Waiting for the right moment would take time and patience. She had neither. Her family’s killers might have already left the territory. If she were to have any hope of finding them, she would first need to get free.
    In the ranch compound east of her, a hammer banged on a rooftop, and she saw a tall ladder braced against the barn. The building looked like a toy miniature from where she stood, and two men were working on the