Read Kaki Warner for Free Online

stepped off the porch and into the yard. “Hannah?”
    No answer.
    He strode toward the shed, his irritation building. Now he’d have to waste valuable time hunting for her. “Damn it, Roscoe!” He glared down at the dog trotting happily at his side. “You were supposed to stay with her.”
    The hound grinned up at him like he had good sense.
    She wasn’t in the woodshed, and the snow was too churned up to show him which way she had gone when she left. In fact, he saw no small tracks that might have belonged to a child, either coming or going.
    “Hannah?” he called again.
    Silence.
    Slogging through the snow, he circled the cabin, then the barn, then went into the woods and checked for signs of her there. He called until his voice grew hoarse.
    Nothing. Somehow she had disappeared without leaving a single trace.
    Alarmed now, he returned to the porch. Quickly, he laced on his snowshoes, then grabbed his rifle and pack. Calling Roscoe, he started down the road at a rolling jog, snowshoes slipping on the wet, slushy snow, anger building as blood pumped through his laboring body.
    He would find Hannah’s parents and give them hell for letting her run loose in this weather. Then he would get Doc, and anybody else he could round up, and start combing these woods.
    He’d already lost one child because he hadn’t been there to help.
    He wouldn’t lose another.
    ***
    It was midafternoon when he reached New Hope. Doc Halstead wasn’t in his office, so Daniel continued on into the town’s business district.
    There wasn’t much to it, especially now that half of the right side of the main street had been damaged by the snowslide. In front of what remained of the Mercantile, Homer Cranston was loading lumber out of a buckboard and sliding it through one of the shattered front windows of his store.
    Daniel stopped beside the wagon. Relaying several planks up to the storekeeper, he asked if there was a family in town named Ellis.
    “Ellis?” Cranston paused to scratch his whiskered chin. “Only one by that name around here. Widow.” He hooked a thumb in the direction Daniel was headed. “Last house on the right. Lives there with her brothers ever since—”
    But Daniel didn’t want to chat, so with a terse “Thanks” and a backward wave, he called Roscoe and continued down the street.
    He had worked himself into a fine temper—both at the girl and her family—for causing him this worry, for forcing him to make this trek when he had better things to do, but mostly for making him doubt his own sanity.
    He didn’t like feeling responsible for the girl. Feeling responsible for anybody. That’s why he lived in such a remote place. He just wanted to be left the hell alone. Was that too much to ask?
    The last dwelling was set fifty yards from its nearest neighbor, and unlike other houses he’d passed, there were no spruce garlands, or wreaths, or bright calico bows to mark the Christmas season. Place looked as forlorn as the dollhouse sitting in his cabin.
    Not intending to stay long or go inside, he didn’t unlace his snowshoes, but stopped a few yards from the porch. Cupping a hand to his mouth, he called loudly, “Hello, the house!” then waited.
    Roscoe plopped beside his leg, panting from the long run. Shadows moved behind the drooping lace curtains, then the front door opened. A big dark-haired man stepped out—the same one Daniel had seen with the blonde woman who always stared at him in that sad, puzzled way whenever they crossed paths. Was she the widow—Hannah’s mother? That realization rattled him, and for a moment he thought about turning and walking away. Then he remembered the lost child, standing in the snow. “You Ellis?” he called.
    “Tom Jackson.”
    “Anyone living here named Ellis?”
    “My sister. Why?”
    “She have a daughter named Hannah?”
    A change came over the man’s square-jawed face. Moving to the top of the porch steps, he crossed his arms over his wide chest and glared