The Heart's Pursuit Read Online Free PDF Page A

him the way she did her stepmother. He didn’t expect her to conform. He’d never pressured her to find a husband or to dress a certain way or to speak differently. He simply loved her.
    Silver drew back and kissed her father on the cheek. “I’d better get over to the store.”
    “Go ahead. Your mother and I will be there soon.”
    The morning air was cool, causing Silver to draw her shawl closer around her shoulders as she hurried to the mercantile. She let herself in the back door and from the pocket of her dress pulled the slip of paper on which Jared Newman had scrawled a list of supplies. Flour. Salted beef. Dried fruit. Cornmeal. Coffee. Sugar. Soda. Salt. Lard. Beans. Oats. Barley. Rice. And more. Foodstuffs meant to keep a body alive rather than to satisfy a discriminating palate. Two weeks’ worth, he’d told her.
    Could the bounty hunter find Bob in that amount of time? He had to. He must. Her erstwhile fiancé had left Twin Springs eleven days earlier. Would he still have the money and jewels he’d stolen? It might already be too late. Bob could have spent it or lost it in less time than that.
    Panic washed over her. Jared Newman had to find Bob, and Bob had to have their money. There was so little time to rescue her family.
    I should go with Mr. Newman.
    The idea quickened her pulse. It would be so much better than sitting here waiting, doing nothing, feeling helpless, listening to her stepmother’s complaints. She knew Bob. Maybe not as well as she’d thought she did, but certainly better than Jared Newman. All the bounty hunter would have was a crinkled photograph and whatever Silver told him. But if she went with Mr. Newman, she could increase the chances Bob would be found.
    No, she couldn’t do it. An unmarried woman of twenty-one years traveling unescorted with a man would set every gossip’s tongue wagging from Twin Springs all the way to Denver. It didn’t matter that she could ride as well as any man or that she could fire a pistol and hit a target with some accuracy. It didn’t matter that she’d often slept under the stars as a child when she and her father had gone fishing. None of it mattered. It would still be considered scandalous. Whatever good reputation she had left would be destroyed. She couldn’t go. Her father would never allow it. Her stepmother already thought her unredeemable.
    Papa and Mother don’t have to know. I don’t have to tell them.
    But she couldn’t. She really couldn’t do it. No matter how much she wished she could.
        
    Unlike the last time Jared was through Twin Springs, the town didn’t look deserted this morning. Three men stood deep in conversation outside the bank. Up ahead two women carrying baskets entered the mercantile. A wagon pulled by a team of horses stood outside the feed store, where several customers were visible through the large front window. Piano music drifted through the swinging doors of the Mountain Rose Saloon.
    Jared reined in at the Matlock Mercantile. The store had the same false-front facade as the other buildings on the town’s main street, but this one was freshly whitewashed, the store’s name painted in wide black letters above the awning. He dismounted, spurs jingling. With a quick flip of his wrist, he wrapped the reins around the hitching rail, then stepped onto the boardwalk. Pausing, he perused his surroundings one more time before entering the store.
    The interior of Matlock Mercantile was similar to stores in every town Jared had been in from Kentucky to Texas to Wyoming. Every spare inch was designed to hold merchandise. Display tables held fabric, cooking utensils, lamps, and other sundry items. Glass cases revealed sharp knives and a few pieces of jewelry. Dry goods and foodstuffs filled the shelves lining the walls from floor to ceiling.
    The two women who’d entered the mercantile a few minutes before Jared were looking at bolts of cloth on atable nearest the door. They glanced in his direction, then