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footsteps. Nothing but some clattering of dishes from the kitchen. He pushed the door gently with the toe of his boot. Regardless of it squeaking, he took one step in before his conscience stopped him short. He just couldn’t do it this way. It felt wrong for so many reasons. He turned to leave.
     
    “Sam?”
    Joey was standing in the hall. The trust shining in the boy’s eyes filled him with remorse.
    “What are you doing in there?”
    Sam hunkered down to his level. A moment passed. “Thought I heard something coming from inside this room. After I took a look I realized it was yours.” He shrugged. “Must have been the cat.”
    As soon as the words were out Sam regretted them. Lying straight to Joey’s face reminded him all too much of the times his own father had done the same to him and his younger brother Seth. And even worse, to his mother before her death. The memory made his stomach burn bitterly. Trying to retrieve the claim was one thing, but lying like this was another. His father’s deceit had ripped his family apart. It had heaped mounds of shame on his mother as she tried to scratch out a living for her and her little sons. Brewster Ridgeway was now paying the price for those lies, and his other nefarious deeds, rotting away in prison.
    “Ashes is sleeping on your bed. Didn’t you see her when you put your saddlebag away?”
    He reached out and put his hand on the boy’s tiny shoulders. “Why, come to think of it now, I suppose I did,” he mumbled, thinking how one lie always led to another. He ruffled the fuzzy golden head before him and then stood, shouldering the heavy burden of guilt. “The pie cooled off yet?”
    Joey preceded him out the door and up the hallway. “Almost.”
    He entered the kitchen right behind Joey and ambled over to his seat. Nonchalantly leaning his palms on the back of his chair, he watched Cassie as she dried the last blue dinner plate and put it in the cupboard.
    He glanced at Joey, fearful the boy might mention his nosing around their room. If Cassie’s suspicions were raised now he might never see the deed to his claim. He decided to ask Joey a question to distract him. “Son, do you know anything about Split Ear, the horse I just bought?”
     
    Cassie was in the process of wiping the drain board with a dishtowel. What an odd question for him to ask Josephine. A child wouldn’t know anything about a horse she didn’t own.
    “All I know is he’s ugly as mud,” her sister replied, screwing up her face in a grimace.
    Turning, Cassie folded the dampened dishtowel and set it aside, all the while avoiding looking at the man who was too handsome for his own good. “Joey doesn’t know anything about the horse, but I do.” She took three small plates from the cupboard and placed them on the table.
    Sam brought the pie over. “Go on.”
    “Miss Hawthorn bought him six months past from a traveling salesmen who arrived in Broken Branch. She needed a horse to pull her buggy because she’d taken to making noonday meals and delivering them to the miners at the Lucky North.”
    Cassie cut the pie and gave generous slices to all. Sam took a bite. He closed his eyes as he chewed. “I understand now why you want to open a bake shop.”
    Josephine wolfed down her pie in a matter of minutes and hopped up from her chair. “I’m getting Ashes. She’s asleep on Sam’s bed.” She turned to Cassie with a matter-of-fact look on her face and pointed to Sam. “He’s staying in the garden room.”
    Josephine was almost out the door when she stopped and turned around. “Cassie…deem,” she began, making Cassie doubt she’d ever get the name right. “Sam heard something in our room. A noise. He tried to see what it was, but couldn’t find nothing. What do you think it was?”

 
     
    Chapter Eight
     
     
    D ang! Unless the last vestiges of evening light were playing tricks on him, he was certain the unusual emerald shade of Cassie’s eyes, a hue he’d never seen