“Don’t know if Samuel ever is,” Ditch answered. “He has powerful strong feelings against this place. Can’t say I blame him. But I’ll be back someday, you can count on it. I just don’t know when.”

“You promise you’ll be coming back?”

“Sure,” Ditch said. “Atherton is my home. My pa is here, and so’s our ranch. Sooner or later, I’ll be back.”

“I’ll wait for you,” Idelle said.

“You don’t have to,” Ditch said, oblivious to her intent. The gap in their ages notwithstanding, he’d known her since she was born and always thought of her as a little sister.

“I know I don’t,” she said. “But I will.”

“Suit yourself,” he said. “Good-bye, Idelle.”

Idelle sighed, rubbed her forehead where Ditch kissed her, and wistfully watched him make his way silently back into the woods.

Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Idelle Pritchard strolled past the Sidewinder, across the street from the Atherton Arms Hotel, swinging her basket nonchalantly. She wore a bonnet and blended in with the many other pedestrians walking on either side of Atherton’s main thoroughfare.

Idelle bided her time until late afternoon, after school let out, knowing that was when the downtown streets would fill with folks buying sundries, children just released from class, and townsmen finishing their workday and heading over to the Sidewinder for a whiskey or beer. For what she had planned, Idelle wanted the streets crowded.

Idelle knew where she could get the whiskey, food, and bedsheets Ditch wanted all in one place, and it wasn’t from Shipley’s Mercantile and General Store. While the store carried each of those items, she had no money, and stealing them was out of the question. The shopkeeper, Mr. Manning, had the eyes of a prairie hawk.

The place Idelle planned to obtain the items Ditch and her brother so desperately needed was the Atherton Arms Hotel. To get them, however, she needed to create a distraction.

Idelle pilfered several matches from the tobacco drawer in Rodney Nettleses’s rolltop desk. As she sidled past the Sidewinder and the array of horses, buckboards, and freight wagons parked in front, she discreetly lit a match and tossed it into one of the larger cargo rigs.

The wagon she chose was loaded with grain, wood, hay bales, and groceries. Idelle didn’t stick around to see the blaze start, instead choosing to head purposefully across the street to the hotel. She went inside, selected a chair in a corner of the lobby, sat down, and pretended to examine her fingernails.