Free Wanderlust Creek and Other Stories by Elisabeth Grace Foley Page A

There’s not many who’d
have had that kind of nerve. That’s why I’d hate to see you go that
way. You want a man you can believe in—no other kind would suit you
for keeps.”
    She had risen again and was looking down at
him, listening to what he said, though she looked as if she half
wanted to shrink from it. He had to force the words and they came
bluntly. “Suppose he does notice you one of these days. Say he asks
you to marry him. Could you say yes, and go over to his little
ranch and live with him, not knowing if your husband’s a thief and
a killer—”
    “Oh, stop!” cried Callie, turning her back
to him. Jim saw her put her hands to her face, and felt a momentary
stab of guilt.
    He thought rather uneasily of what would
happen on his return to Sorrel Creek. What Callie would have to go
through, knowing a trap was being laid for the rustlers, waiting to
hear who was caught. It was too bad—she oughtn’t to have to bear
that, especially for the sake of a man who didn’t even know she
cared about him and had even chances of being innocent or guilty.
If only she could know now—a clean break, before all the mess of
the public disgrace and trial. Maybe it would be easier on her that
way.
    And then it occurred to him—there was one
way to find out. An easy test. It was a risk, but what had risks
ever been to him? It was worth trying for the girl’s sake.
    He spoke his thoughts aloud: “Why not find
out? Now?”
    Callie dropped her hands and turned to look
at him, her face showing pale in the dimness. Her lower lip
twitched between nervously biting teeth again. “What do you
mean?”
    “I mean there’s an easy way to find out
whether Nolan’s guilty or not,” said Jim. “If he’s the one who shot
at me, and he were to find out I’m still alive, he wouldn’t want me
to get back to Sorrel Creek. He’d try and make sure I
wouldn’t.”
    “No!” said Callie, taking a half-step toward
him.
    Jim managed to hitch himself up a little on
both elbows, stirred to forgetfulness of pain by the plan he was
rapidly conceiving. “You go and find him, and tell him just what
happened—you found a man hurt in the woods and you need help. Don’t
tell him who I am. Bring him here, and what he says and does when
he sees me will tell you all you need to know.”
    “Oh, no,” said Callie. “I can’t! Don’t you
see that’s what I was trying to stop—part of why I helped you.
Whatever else had happened, I—I didn’t want him to be guilty of
murder.”
    “If a man wants to go wrong, Callie,
you can’t stop him—no matter how much you care about him.”
    “But you don’t have to put the chance right
in his hands!”
    “Listen, I’m no more eager to get killed
than the next man,” said Jim. “I’m not taking any chances. You give
me my gun, and I’ll put it under the blanket here and be covering
him quietly the whole time. There won’t be any trouble.”
    He leaned forward a little, his eyes holding
hers insistently. “The truth can’t hurt an innocent man, Callie. If
he’s innocent, you’ve got to know for sure. You know you’ve got to
have the truth…”
    She stood still, staring not at the rock
wall of the mine, but away into some unfathomable distance. Jim let
himself back down on the blankets, feeling suddenly weak and
overstrained. Callie’s clear-featured young face was white and
still, and something in her dark eyes made him look uncomfortably
away and study the texture of the wool blanket pulled over him.
    “It’s up to you,” he said after a minute or
two, not looking at her. “You know there’s only one other way,
besides that.”
    “I know,” said Callie.
    She looked down at him, and for a minute he
saw her again as the girl she had been when she first came to his
aid—the girl of clear thought and unhesitating action. “All right,”
she said in a low voice, but steady. “I’ll bring him.”
    Jim nodded, unable to say anything that he
felt was appropriate, but hoping