When Jill topped the steep ridge, she saw the original homestead cabin lying sheltered in a small valley, built right on top of the spring that had attracted her Breck ancestors in the 1840s. When Jill and her mother had moved from-fled, actually-Utah, they had lived with Modesty in the “new” ranch house just long enough to fix up the homestead cabin.
As a young girl, Jill had loved climbing the red cliffs and spires that were the rear wall of the cabin. As an adult, she hadn’t been back in six years.
The closer Jill drove to the cabin, the more relieved she felt.
At least I won’t have to waste money on a motel while I take care of whatever needs to be done with Modesty’s estate.
Some of the chinking had fallen out between the weathered logs and a shutter hung drunkenly over half of the kitchen window, but the rest looked just as she remembered-old, small, oddly comforting. A piece of history that had survived past its time.
All Modesty’s lawyer had told Jill over the phone was that her great-aunt had died in the fire that burned the ranch house and outbuildings down to their rock foundations. Jill had stayed with her job on the river until she found a replacement guide. It had taken three weeks. The lawyer had assured her there was no reason to rush back. Modesty’s remains had been cremated and scattered according to her will, and the stock didn’t need tending because every last animal had been sold for back taxes. The lawyer had already filed for an exemption on further taxes due to the ranch house and barn burning down.
Taxes. God.
How much could an all-but-abandoned ranch be worth?
Jill parked in the overgrown yard, climbed out, and stretched before she went to wrestle with the old padlock that secured the front door. Not that there was much to steal-worn cowhide chairs, an old plank kitchen table, and bunk beds whose “springs” consisted of rope strung between two-by-fours.
Despite its rust-pitted appearance, the padlock opened easily to her key. Modesty must have oiled the lock recently. Or maybe she’d rented the cabin out to someone for a time. Cash was always welcome on a bare-bones Western ranch.
Inside, the cabin was surprisingly clean. Jill wouldn’t have to camp out in the yard while she put the place in order. There was even a covered bucket of water near the ancient long-handled pump in the kitchen. She lifted the bucket to prime the pump, then stopped when she saw the neat rectangle of folded paper that had been tucked beneath.
Her name was written across the paper in Modesty’s elegant, archaic handwriting.
Jill set the bucket aside and unfolded the paper. An odd sensation prickled over her arms.
She was reading a note from the dead.
GO TO YOUR OLD HIDING PLACE.
LIFE ISN’T AS SAFE AS IT SEEMS TO THE YOUNG.
“Well, that’s weird,” she said. “Wonder if the old bat was senile? God knows her sister was no model of sanity.”
But Grandmother Justine was a long-dead family legend, and Great-aunt Modesty had always had a death grip on reality.
Jill tucked the paper into the hip pocket of her jeans, primed the pump, and smiled as clean water gushed into the old iron sink. With the supplies she had picked up in Page, she was set for several weeks. After that…well she’d worry about what came next when she knew how long she’d have to stay at the ranch. She didn’t have any idea of what went into settling someone’s estate.
With a sigh, she opened the cranky shutters on the east side of the two-room cabin, letting in the late-afternoon air while she unloaded the Honda and made coffee on the camp stove she’d brought. She took a mug of coffee into the front yard to enjoy the sound of the wind moving through the huge old cottonwood. The tree was one of the things she had truly missed after leaving the Arizona Strip.
The massive cottonwood had taken root near the spring long before any Brecks ever arrived in Arizona Territory. As a child, she had used the tree for a living ladder to climb partway up the cliff. The rest of the cliff she had climbed the hard way, when she was older.
“I suppose you’ll die someday, too, old friend,” Jill said, tracing one of the deep ridges in the cottonwood’s bark with her fingertip. “I won’t be alive to see it. You’ve got a few hundred more years in you than I do.”
Modesty’s note echoed back like a ghostly agreement.
Life isn’t as safe as it seems to the young.
“Oh, all right,” she said, annoyed by the cryptic message. “I’ll do it.”
Irritating people was something Modesty had raised to an art. Jill should be too old to have her buttons pushed so easily.
But she wasn’t.
Muttering under her breath, she grabbed a flashlight from her backpack and looked around the cabin. There was an obvious root cellar outside. In the days before electricity came to the rural West, root cellars and springhouses had been as close to refrigeration as it got. Sometimes she had hidden in the root cellar.
But her favorite hideaway was inside the cabin, at the back of the pantry, where a handmade cupboard pulled away to reveal a rough opening. Behind the cupboard was a six-foot-square room. The space had been hammered from the sandstone cliff that was the back wall of the cabin. In the days before banks and police, when Indians and outlaws roamed the land freely, the hidey-hole had kept safe everything of value to the Brecks-including their own lives when raiders came.
She ran her fingers behind the third shelf, slid aside a concealed wooden bolt, and tugged on the edge of the cupboard. The tin-backed cupboard creaked and protested when the concealed door swung open. As a girl, Jill had always felt a delicious shiver of secrecy when she crawled into the small space and hid among the burlap bags of rice and beans and sugar.
She switched on the flashlight and looked inside. Instead of supplies, she found Grandmother Justine’s ancient, battered steamer trunk. It was big enough to put a small pony inside. Once it had held her grandmother’s art supplies.
Curious as to what the trunk held now, Jill tugged the lid open. The leather hinges were so old they were almost frayed through. She propped the lid against the rock wall and shined the light inside.
No crusted brushes or hardened oils or color-splotched palettes. Instead, there were six rectangular parcels, standing on their sides like giant filing cards. Each parcel was wrapped in oilcloth.
Jill felt a surprising sense of relief that everything hadn’t turned to fire and ashes. Something remained of Modesty’s heritage.
And her own.
I hope these packages are what I think they are. Even if they got me in some of the worst trouble of my life.
Modesty really smacked me when she found me looking at them. How old was I? Ten? Eleven?
Whatever, she was spitting mad.
Now Modesty was dead and the paintings were Jill’s. She could look at them all she wanted. No more sneaking peeks at the forbidden fruit while Modesty and her mother were working cattle, mending fence, or opening and closing irrigation ditches for the little orchard, the big garden, and the pastures growing winter hay.
Carefully Jill took the packages out and leaned them against the stone wall. Only then did she notice the leather portfolio. She knew from the time before her mother died that the portfolio was filled with old photos and papers-the homestead filing, proof of water rights, wedding invitations, birth and death announcements. All the things that people collected on the way through life.
“Good. That should take care of any questions the lawyer might have.”
Ignoring the portfolio, she eagerly took the large parcels inside the cabin. When she unwrapped the first, she found it was indeed two paintings. They were vivid, wild yet disciplined, intensely realized. Grinning, she unwrapped all the packages with the greed of a child at Christmas.