Unending Devotion (Michigan Brides #1)(87)

Lily sucked in a breath. What was Daisy saying?

“I can take care of myself just fine.”

“How can you say that? Especially after the way Tierney just accosted you—”

“He didn’t accost me.” Daisy lifted her chin and turned to look at Lily. “I like him.”

Lily shook her head. “He took advantage of you. He knew you’d be weak and vulnerable.”

“I don’t care.” Daisy’s eyes flashed with sudden defiance. “When I’m with him, he makes me feel special and pretty.”

“He’s using you.”

“He cares about me.”

Lily wanted to cross the room and shake sense into Daisy, but she held herself back. “All he cares about is your body and how he can satisfy his own lust.”

Daisy pulled herself up and tossed her hair over her shoulder. “And I care about him too.”

“His wife and baby live across the street.”

She shrugged and the blanket fell from her other shoulder. Her bodice had slipped down and her hair tumbled about her shoulders in wild abandon, providing a thin veil. But Daisy didn’t seem to notice or mind her indecency.

Desperation rose inside Lily. This was her sweet baby sister. What had happened to her?

Lily had the urge to cry out and stomp her feet and demand that Daisy stop acting so foolishly.

Instead, she took a deep breath. Daisy’s emotions were as fragile as a thin coating of ice on a pond. She had to remember it was going to take time for Daisy to heal and move past all that had happened.

And apparently it was going to take more time and effort than she’d realized.

As hard as it would be to leave the McCormicks, she knew she couldn’t put it off any longer. They needed to find a place of their own, a place where Tierney wouldn’t be able to find Daisy.

A place where they could finally be a family together.





Chapter

26



Connell brushed the wet snow off the four-inch-thick round slab of pine. Clear as a summer day, the McCormick log mark, a smaller M inside a large C, was stamped onto the sawed-off end.

“Where did you find them?” Connell’s fingers traced the grooves of the company sign, anger settling into the crevices of his heart.

Charlie looked around at the group of men at the dock who’d stopped their work and gathered near. They brushed the sweat from their foreheads and donned the coats they’d tossed off earlier.

“I was checking one of my traps and found them shoved underneath a stand of cedar near Camp 1. Not too far from the narrow-gauge tracks.”

A miserable mixture of rain and snow had been spitting at them all afternoon, but nobody was paying attention to the cold, wet weather anymore. The moment Charlie had ridden up to the loading ground at the Pere Marquette, Connell had known the young man wasn’t bringing good news. So did all the others. Any time a shanty boy had a need to ride into town in the middle of the day, the tidings were bad.

“There’s more than just McCormick Lumber that’s been robbed.” Charlie tipped a large grain sack upside down and a dozen round slabs fell to the muddy ground.

Several other camp bosses stepped toward the pile and kicked the ends, examining them for their company marks.

“From the looks of it,” Charlie added, “whoever’s been stealing has been doing it a little bit at a time all winter.”

All the logs were stamped with a specific mark that belonged to each lumber company in order for them to keep track of their logs among the flow of all the others. Even so, log piracy was a common problem.

That was one of the reasons each camp hired watchmen to protect their logs during transport, especially as the logs were transferred down the Pere Marquette to Averill to await the spring river drive.

“Looks like we’ve got a thief in the midst of us,” Connell said, searching the faces of the other bosses.

The anger slanting across their features reflected the frustration that had made a home inside him. They grumbled and began speculating who was to blame.

Connell gave a weary sigh. At least now he knew why his numbers hadn’t been adding up. The foremen at each of his camps had been giving him the correct totals of logs leaving their camps. But somewhere between leaving the camps and arriving in Harrison, someone had been tampering with the logs, sawing off company marks, and likely remarking the logs with their own stamp.

It appeared that the thieves hadn’t just been targeting McCormick, but had been sawing the marked ends from a variety of the camps. The strategy made sense. Taking a little bit from each of the camps would make the theft harder to discover.

The unbalanced ledgers had caused him plenty of headaches. But they were the least of his concerns now.

In the week since he’d returned to Harrison, he’d had forty shanty boys demand their paychecks and defect to other area camps or mills.

A few had come back when they’d learned of the extra bonus he was offering. But those who remained were getting threats from Carr’s men whenever they went into town, and he had the feeling it wouldn’t be long before more of them left.

He’d decided Carr didn’t deserve the payoff money Dad had given him. If anything, Carr ought to be the one paying him for all the losses he was causing McCormick Lumber.

“What do you want me to do with the slabs, Boss?” Charlie finally asked.