Page 28 of Inventions of the Heart

Having a cavalry division arrive wouldn’t have made her feel any better.

The man must have realized he was badly outnumbered. He whirled away to run for the open window.

Jilly was on her feet again, and she went in low, hit him on the back of his knees, and took the man’s legs out from under him.

“Zane. Get him.” Michelle realized as she spoke that Zane didn’t need any orders.

Grabbing at the wrestling pair on the ground, Zane came up with Jilly and tossed her toward Michelle. Then he swung a fist, made hard as iron by a lifetime of wrestling thousand-pound steers and breaking wild horses.

The man went down in a heap.

A second later, a light came on. Beth Ellen had joined the fray, carrying a lantern.

Zane lifted the man off the floor. No one Michelle had ever seen before. Zane slammed a fist into the man’s jaw, and he groaned, all the fight gone out of him.

Annie arrived then, looked at what had happened, and rushed away.

Michelle had seen the determination in Annie’s eyes and knew the woman, who’d mostly ignored being shot twice not that long ago, wasn’t running.

She was back in a trice with rope.

Zane bound the man so fast Michelle was a little dizzy. Then he flipped the man onto his back. “Bring that lantern up here.”

Beth Ellen came close but not too close. Wise woman. For all her city ways, she’d been raised a rancher’s daughter and had a lot of common sense.

“Who is he? Anyone know?” Zane’s question was met with utter silence.

At last, Jilly, breathing hard, said, “I’ve never seen him before.”

Coming from Jilly with her memory, that was saying something.

“Do you think our dear stepfather sent him?” Michelle asked.

Jilly’s head snapped around. “You think he came for us?”

There was a long stretch of silence as Michelle considered it all.

The kitchen door banged open. Shad shouted, “What’s going on in here?”

He came straight to the housekeeper’s rooms. Apparently,he’d heard enough from the bunkhouse to be sure of where the trouble was coming from.

Zane turned to his foreman. “This man broke into the house and attacked Michelle and Jilly. Lock him in the root cellar. Post a double guard. When he comes around, I want to talk to him. Then we’ll escort him to the sheriff.”

Shad grabbed the man. Two more cowhands were pressing into the room, eager to assist. Michelle thought she heard a crowd behind them.

The cowhands dragged the man to his feet and out of the room.

“Are you all right, Michelle?” Annie asked.

“Yes, he didn’t hurt me. Knocked me down is all. Jilly got him off me.”

“You’re both going to be sore in the morning,” Zane said. He looked closer at the book Michelle held. “You were pounding on him with...” He read the title. “War and Peace? I’m guessing you picked war.”

“I got it from your library.”

“A passing trader gave it to us to get the weight off his wagon. I only kept it because it’s too big to have much hope of getting it to burn.” He scratched his head. “The trader told me it was in Russian.”

“Russian and some French.” Michelle looked at the book and set it aside. Time to disarm herself. “There are quite a few Russians and Frenchmen in San Francisco, including among the lumberjacks we employed. Mama and Papa thought it wise to learn their languages.”

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