Free Comanche Heart by Catherine Anderson Page B

“My heart held only good things, but what I have done is very bad. The safety has become her cage, and she is trapped inside, afraid to leave.”
    With an index finger, Swift traced the Maltese cross imprinted on his folder of cigarette papers. “Do you realize that I have nothing? A horse, some gold pieces, and a pack of trouble riding my heels. That’s it.”
    Hunter mused on that for a moment and, as always, offered no solution.
    “It’d be a hell of a lot easier on both of us if I just rode out,” Swift argued.
    “Yes.”
    That single word held an unspoken challenge. “Doesn’t it matter at all to you that I’m a gunslinger? That I rode with comancheros? If I met myself on the street, I’d say, ‘Now there’s a no-good bastard, if ever I saw one.’ ”
    “I only know what I can see in your eyes.”
    “What if I turn her world upside down and my past catches up with me?” Swift tossed his smoke into the fire. “Tomorrow, next week, a year from now. It could happen, Hunter.”
    “Then you must turn and face your past. Just as Amy must turn and face hers.” Hunter pushed to his feet, his shadow looming behind him on the leather wall. “Stay here in my lodge for a while, and listen to your heart. If, after you listen, you still ride out tomorrow, I will know it is the best thing and accept it. But find yourself first. Not the boy you were, not the man that boy became, but who you are tonight. Your path will then be marked for you. I leave you with one great truth. A man whose yesterdays rest on his horizon travels forward into his past. The result is that he goes a very long way to nowhere.”

Chapter 4
    VOICES FILLED THE WOLF HOME, BOUNCING cheerfully off the planked walls, drowning out the sound of silver chinking against china. Swift was full of questions about Hunter’s mine, seemingly fascinated that his old friend had been so successful at unearthing gold. With his usual patience, Hunter explained the difference between placer and lode gold, describing the equipment and techniques used to mine each, and that his operation employed both. Loretta and the children inserted amusing anecdotes now and again, telling stories about the panned-out claims around Jacksonville and the more recent finds around Wolf’s Landing.
    “These hills are full of gold, no doubt about that,” Indigo said excitedly. “Over in the Jacksonville jail, an inmate panned the dirt in the floor of his cell. It proved so profitable that he wasn’t any too anxious to be turned loose. Then, right before his sentence was up, he hit bedrock and insisted he was staking a claim. The sheriff had to force him out of there at gunpoint.”
    Loretta winked at Swift. “The way this girl goes on, you’d think she teethed on a nugget. The Jacksonville jail has a double-layer log floor. Far as I know, it’s the only jail there ever was.”
    In a warm voice Hunter said, “Indigo hopes to take over my mining operation when I grow old.”
    Chase snorted, clearly disgusted at the thought. Indigo’s blue eyes flashed. “At least I know the difference between the real thing and fool’s gold!” she cried.
    “Bet you can’t judge the height of a tree by the shadow it casts,” Chase retorted.
    “Who cares?”
    Amy listened in silence, head bent over her plate, fingers clenched around the handle of her fork. With her assistance, Loretta had prepared a lovely dinner to celebrate Swift’s arrival, but to Amy the food tasted like sawdust. Even the cottage cheese, more commonly known as “rag on the fence,” had no taste. Amy rolled the curds across her tongue, feeling as if she were swallowing gravel.
    When the children ran low on gibes, the conversation turned from mining to Swift’s experiences since leaving the reservation. Bombarded with queries about Texas, Swift did most of the talking, and just the sound of his voice tied Amy’s stomach into knots. When she actually looked at him, her nerves frayed like jaggedly cut burlap. A