Angel Creek Read Online Free Page A

by then had been big enough to protect itself, but the wagon trains and outlying ranches had to defend themselves as best they could. The Double C was an armed camp, but then it had to be to survive. Alice Cochran hadn’t survived, but not because of the Indians; a cold had turned into pneumonia during the winter of ’63, and within a week of first taking sick she was put in her grave. The second mainstay of Lucas’s life was gone.
    The Indian wars were even worse in 1864. In November of that year Colonel John Chivington led his Third Colorado troops against a group of Indians at Sand Creek and massacred hundreds of women and children, causing an explosion of violence that spread from Canada to Mexico, uniting the Plains tribes in the fury of revenge. Troops began returning after the end of the Civil War in ’65, but the Territory was already locked in its own war.
    Even with all the danger, settlers had poured west. Prosper had quickly become a busy little town, even hiring a schoolteacher, which was a sure sign of civilization. A community had to have a school as a means of attracting new settlers. Boulder had built the first schoolhouse in ’60, but the people of Prosper were proud of the fact that it only took them five more years to get one, too. Lucas and Matt had been taught at home by their mother, but Jonah’s schooling had been cut short by her death. For the first time in his life Jonah began attending a school at the age of fifteen, riding into Prosper every day.
    Jonah never said much; he just watched. As Lucas had grown older he had regretted the lack of closeness between himself and his remaining brother, but Jonahdidn’t seem to want that kind of relationship. The boy lived within himself, keeping his dreams and thoughts private. Sometimes Lucas wondered what went on behind the boy’s somber blue eyes, so like his own in color. He never found out.
    Jonah’s horse brought him home from school one afternoon. The boy clung to the saddle, an arrow all the way through his chest. Lucas had been the first to reach him, and a look of acute embarrassment had crossed Jonah’s white face as he had fallen off the saddle into his brother’s arms. He had looked up at Lucas, and for the first time his blue eyes weren’t somber, but lit with a kind of fierce love, a joy. “I wish . . .” he had said, but what he wished had gone unsaid because he died on the next breath.
    Lucas had knelt on the ground, rocking his brother in his arms. What had he wished, this young boy who hadn’t had time to live much? Had his wish been something simple, a wish that it would stop hurting? Or had he wished for a girl’s kiss, for his own future, for the pleasures that he hadn’t yet been able to taste? Lucas didn’t know; he only knew that in the last instant before death Jonah’s eyes had held more life than ever before.
    The Double C had soaked up Cochran blood as well as Indian blood. Cochrans lay buried in its soil. And now Lucas was the only Cochran left.
    His dreams centered around the Double C, just as they always had. That was what had led to the rift with his father. Maybe if Jonah hadn’t died Lucas wouldn’t have felt so raw, so violent, but that was a big maybe, and he’d never let himself fret about it. The simple fact was that a ranch could have only one boss, and thetwo remaining Cochrans had butted heads time and again. Ellery had been content with what he had, while Lucas had wanted to enlarge.
    The Double C had, after all, belonged to Ellery, so Lucas had been the one to go. Father and son had made their peace, but both knew two stallions just couldn’t live in the same pasture. They regretted the break but accepted that, for both of them, it was better that Lucas lead his own life away from the Double C. They had written and even visited a couple of times in Denver, but Lucas hadn’t returned to the ranch until Ellery’s