“Yes?” August said, not looking up from the papers in his hands.
“I’m sorry for striking you,” she told him. “And for making you not be able to breath, and for ignoring you when you were unable to breath so that I could talk to Elliot.”
He shook his head, hands moving again. “No, you’re not.”
“But I am, I swear it.”
“Even if I wasn’t mooning over your new beau?”
“He isn’t my beau! He’s just-just—”
He looked up at her then. “Just what, honey?” The word rolled effortlessly off of August’s tongue, as if it had always been there between them, even if they both looked shocked to hear it. The room around them seemed to grow smaller, the common surroundings of the everyday, of the shelves of booking ledgers and bond releases, all took on a slightly different light, they were all rosier, softer, even the hard lines of the mahogany desks took on a far more elegant element.
All from one word. Honey. It made everything...tender and soft.
Seylah was left feeling out of her element, no more in command of herself than a fish with legs.
“It’s only a Sunday picnic,” she whispered.
He hummed and dropped his gaze back to the desk in front of him. “So it is, but don’t forget one important thing.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a picnic that I’ll be in attendance of, so that man had better treat you like a lady or he’ll have me to answer to.”
And just like that, the spell that the word honey cast over them was broken and Seylah felt the familiar sense of familial frustration rise up in her. The office came back into sharp focus. and she wondered if she had not been suffering from some sort of shock from her near collision with the runaway coach.
“I’m off to check the mail,” she informed him, though the endeavor resulted in her sticking her hand into the mailbox at the side of the building. But, even so, August hummed in acknowledgement, and just like that everything was back to normal, and at least that, Seylah found comforting.
Chapter 3
It was Monday afternoon, and Seylah hadn’t yet managed to recover from the early chaos the start of a new week had seen fit to bless the good people of Gold Sky with, which directly involved the sheriff's office, and by proxy, Seylah. She ran a hand over her face and blinked against the weariness that was finally settling into her bones. From sunrise that morning, things had been in disarray, and it had all begun with the homesteaders.
Seylah understood the allure of land, the security and stability offered to beleaguered people set upon by low wages and pitiful living situations. She knew why the homesteaders had come west, why they were drawn to the open spaces of Montana. Life on the frontier promised more, it asked for hard work, but most importantly patience.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was a well-ordered and profitable homestead. Most newcomers understood that, planned for the rough months and even years of starting over, but not everyone understood the slow and steady approach. There were those desperate homesteaders who expected instant success. These impatient few had set their sights on claims much larger than the 320 acres afforded to them by the government.
That much land was the start of a manageable farm or working ranch. It was enough that a family and a hand or two could easily tend it, but not the stuff of an empire. Too bad it seemed the homesteaders wanted empires, and they wanted them now.
Unauthorized fence lines had begun popping up with the latest migration to the area. Angry cowboys at the head of a cattle drive south had been tangled up in haphazard fences that spanned miles and miles of territory. The result had created an early morning shootout between angry homesteaders and cattle drivers fed up with being detained at every hillcrest and valley.
Normally a small scuffle, even one with guns, was resolved by the deputies in town, of which there were three capable men, including August, but this one had called even her fathers in via a before-sunrise visit from August.
It had been years since her fathers had dashed out before dawn, the last one Seylah could remember had happened when she was thirteen, and a group of outlaws had taken to hijacking incoming trains. Then she’d had to stay at home with her anxious mother and sisters, but this time she’d run out the door right after them. It had been