“I’ll be here.” She practically skipped out the door.
He was an idiot, probably the biggest idiot in the Big Bend. He’d just agreed to weeks of Charlotte Westin talking to him, smiling at him, acting as though she was attracted to him. It didn’t matter if she was only pretending, not when one genuine smile from her made his heart thunder like a herd of stampeding cattle.
The trouble was, if he couldn’t talk her out of her foolhardy plan and she ended up engaged to this Mortimer fellow, his heart would look like an actual stampede had gone through it, leaving nothing in its wake but a desolate stretch of trampled, dusty desert.
5
“I’m not taking no for an answer.” Charlotte spoke in Spanish as she extended the burro’s reins toward the Mexican woman in front of her.
“No. It’s too much.” Rosa shifted the baby swathed in her rebozo higher on her hip and shook her head. Beyond her, two young boys who looked to be twins raced between the cacti, and a girl barely old enough to walk squatted on the ground, where she was jabbing a stick into the dirt.
Charlotte glanced at the young burro who’d taken to nibbling on a yucca plant while she and Rosa argued. Giving away the burro and the small cart hitched to its back was hardly too much. She could replace them both in an afternoon. But they just might make the difference between death and survival for the Mexican woman whose husband had died last week.
The shop door opened, and Anna Mae and Aimes, the ranch hand who had accompanied them into Mexico, stepped outside.
Anna Mae stopped, her eyes moving from Charlotte to Rosa to the cart and back again. Her shoulders slumped.
Charlotte turned away and focused back on Rosa. “Take the cart. I insist.”
Rather than reach for the reins, the woman crossed her arms over her chest.
“Don’t suppose you could come back and give her the cart tomorrow.” Anna Mae leaned against the side of the adobe building. She probably hoped the building would give her a bit of shade from the brutal sun above, but at this time of the afternoon, it was hard to find any type of shade.
“And leave her to walk back to her farm?” Charlotte glared at her friend. “She’s taking the cart. Today.”
“I knew you were going to say that,” Aimes muttered.
“Quit whining. We can rent a horse and wagon as soon as we reach Twin Rivers.” But Rosa had a three mile walk to the small farm her husband had worked until his death a week ago.
The five of them stood in front of the large adobe building known as the weaving shop, though it was more of a factory than a shop these days.
It hadn’t always been so large, or in such good condition, but that was the nice thing about adobe. One could add on to it with nothing more than desert dirt, dried grass, and water.
When Charlotte had been ten, Wes and Consuela had talked Pa into purchasing the old, falling-apart building on the Mexican side of the river. Pa had grumbled, but Wes promised that if they also bought two looms, it would be a good business opportunity for their family.
Consuela had known of several women in Ojinaga who needed work, her widowed cousin being one of them, and owning a weaving shop seemed like a way to help.
Eleven years later, the weaving shop hadn’t made much money. Most of the profits Wes earned from taking the blankets, saddle blankets, bedrolls, and rugs created at the shop to the city during cattle drives and business trips had gone right back into the shop. There were always more looms that could be purchased, which then meant there was more work to be had, and the shop never had any trouble finding more women for the new looms. In fact, several of the women currently working at the shop had moved from deeper inside Mexico. What had started as a way to provide a living for one widow with young children had somehow grown into a way to meet the needs of numerous women.
And it was about to meet the needs of one more—if she would just agree to accept the burro and cart.
“Por favor.” Charlotte reached out and gripped the woman’s wrist, then planted the reins squarely into her palm. “This way you can come to work every day and return home without exhausting yourself.”
The woman looked from Charlotte to the burro and back again, then hugged her baby closer. “I’ll pay.”
“No.”
But the woman dug around in the folds of her dress, then held out a coin. “This now, more later, after I work.”
“I’ll tell the manager to keep back a portion of your wages each month to pay for the burro and cart.” A very small portion that wouldn’t even cover a tenth of the cost, but the woman standing in front of her didn’t need to know that.
Charlotte forced a smile, though nothing about Rosa’s situation was worth smiling over. The thread-bare condition of her dress and the too-short trousers on her sons told her that even before her husband’s death, Rosa and her family had struggled.
Without a man to help work the land or some way to earn money, Rosa might well end up putting her children in an orphanage.
The woman finally agreed to take the cart, and within a few minutes, Charlotte, Anna Mae, and Aimes had gone back inside the shop, filled their arms with the rugs and other wares they could carry, and made plans to return next week for the rest. The goods wouldn’t go to San Antonio until the cattle drive this fall, but the shop didn’t have much space to store the things, so Charlotte and Anna Mae came to collect them every month. If the ranch wasn’t so busy right now, maybe they could leave all the rugs here and return tomorrow, but she didn’t want to take Aimes away from the A Bar W two days in a row.
They said goodbye to Consuela’s cousin, who now managed the shop, and started along the path that followed the river to the ferry. The sun overhead told them that the lunch hour had come and gone while they’d been at the shop.
“Don’t look at me that way,” Charlotte told Anna Mae. Her arms already ached with the weight of the rugs and blankets they held. The sun beat down on her head and back, and the wide brimmed hat she wore offered precious little shade.
“Next time can you please wait until after we bring the blankets back to the ranch before you give away the burrow and cart?” Anna Mae whined.
“I agree.” Sweat trailed down the side of Aimes’s face.
“Stop complaining. We’re all healthy enough to carry blankets.” This certainly wouldn’t be the first time they’d done so. But she didn’t remember the rugs being quite so heavy last time around.
“I need a break.” Anna Mae heaved in a breath, her cheeks red beneath the hat that kept the sun off her face.
“It’s just a little farther. I can almost see the dock.” Charlotte ignored the bead of sweat trickling between her shoulder blades. Truly, she hadn’t realized how heavy the rugs and blankets would be.
“I have to stop,” Anna Mae said. “Besides, the dock is at least two bends ahead. We’re not as close as you think.”
Charlotte closed her eyes, her throat dry for the water canteen that hung at her side. But if she stopped to take a drink, she’d have to put the rugs down, and if she did that, she’d never convince her protesting arms to pick them back up again. “We can rest once we get to the—”
“Charlotte, Anna Mae, is that you?”
Charlotte searched the river in the direction that the voice had come from.
“It’s Hernandez.” Relief filled Anna Mae’s words.
Sure enough, the young Mexican man was paddling his wooden raft down the center of the Rio Grande. Charlotte headed toward the water’s edge. She’d never been so glad to see the small ferry that ran between Twin Rivers and Ojinaga before in her life, though its dock and the main crossing point was a quarter mile or better down the river.
The raft bumped against the shore.
“I’m so glad you came.” Anna Mae trudged aboard, then dropped her armload into a giant heap and plopped down beside it.
Charlotte wasn’t much better as she set her own burden down. Her arms ached too much to act dignified.
Aimes walked onto the raft a
fter them and set his load down easily, as though he wasn’t at all burdened by carrying heavy things in the July heat. And to think he’d been complaining right along with Anna Mae.
“How did you know to come looking for us?” Anna Mae asked.
Hernandez tipped his head far enough back to glimpse the sun from beneath the brim of his sombrero. “I ferried you across the river three hours ago. When you still hadn’t shown up at the dock, I figured you were either in trouble or you gave away your burro and cart again.”
“See…” Anna Mae nudged her with her foot. “You have a reputation for this kind of thing.”
Charlotte leaned back against her pile of rugs and blankets, which made a nice sort of cushion, then unscrewed the lid to her canteen. “I’m still not going to apologize for giving Rosa the burro and cart.”
“She never does.” Hernandez dipped his oar into the water and turned the raft upstream, the muscles beneath his shirt bunching as he battled the current.
Charlotte let her gaze drift down the river toward the weaving shop that was now hidden behind several bends.
What would become of the shop if she married Andrew and moved to San Antonio? Wes would still keep it, of course, but he rarely had time to visit anymore. Requests for more looms, additions to the building, and anything else always came from her. Somewhere along the line, she’d even become the person who went over the business reports with Consuela’s cousin.
Charlotte took another swig of water and sighed. She might not see the women across the river on a daily basis, but for some reason, leaving them and their shop would be almost as hard as leaving the friends in Twin Rivers she’d known her entire life.
What, exactly, do you think when you look at me, Daniel Harding?
Daniel scanned the desert for any sign for cattle tracks. Or rather, that’s what he was supposed to be doing. But he couldn’t put his conversation with Charlotte that morning out of his mind. The vulnerability in her eyes that had changed to hope when he once again agreed to help her, the worry that flickered across her face when she’d asked if he thought her a trollop.
He shifted atop his saddle, but the movement didn’t stop the harsh sun from beating down on him. He may have grown up on the desert, but every year he seemed to forget how hot it could get until July rolled around.
After Charlotte had left his office, he’d spent his time following the tracks of what looked to be a hundred cattle or better that had started about a quarter mile from Mattherson’s ranch. The tracks certainly hadn’t been fresh, but it was the most promising thing he’d come across…
Until the hoofprints had reached a flat expanse of rock that wouldn’t hold any tracks.
He’d searched the side of the mountain for over an hour and still hadn’t found where the tracks started back up. Now Blaze was in need of water—and he was in need of a dunk in the river. He scanned the rocky slope dotted with yucca, candelilla, and ocotillo a final time. Maybe he’d come back tomorrow and search longer, but he really needed to get back to town, or at least start that direction. He was close enough to Fort Ashton that he could water Blaze there, especially since he didn’t know of any creeks out this way.
Besides, it never hurt to show himself at the trading post and remind Bartholomew Rutherford which one of them had a sheriff’s badge.
Blaze picked his way down the mountain, past the boulders and shrubs, then slowly trotted toward the large, walled fort that functioned as a trading post and hotel.
The gates to the massive adobe structure stood open, and just as he expected, a cacophony of noises rose out of the corral.
But a Mexican woman with three small children sat outside the gate, cooking something over a small fire.
Odd. Travelers normally clambered for one of the coveted hotel rooms inside the trading post. If all the rooms were taken, traders might be forced to camp outside, but usually not in the heat of the day, and usually not right next to the entrance to the fort.
“Good day, ma’am.” Daniel tipped his hat to her and smiled.
The woman looked up, but her gaze latched on the tin star pinned to his chest. She clasped her youngest two children by the wrists and shrank back against the wall of the fort.
Daniel narrowed his eyes. Just what had Old Man Rutherford done to cause such a reaction from one of the trader’s wives?
He slid off Blaze. “Señora, ¿qué pasa?”
“Nada, we didn’t do it,” she answered in Spanish rather than English, which indicated she’d come from somewhere deeper inside Mexico and didn’t live near the border where she would have grown up knowing at least a little English. “We’re innocent, I promise.”
“Innocent of what?”
But she didn’t respond, just kept her head down, her hands fisted so tightly around two of her children’s wrists that her knuckles turned white.
Daniel readjusted the hat on his head. No point in terrifying the woman more than she already was. He’d head inside and find out what happened. Turning, he led Blaze through the gates of the fort and into the chaos that made Bartholomew Rutherford the richest man in the county after Agamemnon Westin V.
Traders, both Mexican and American, filled the corral along with their livestock. Teams of oxen took up the westernmost wall while horses stood tethered to the northern wall. Most of the beasts sought shade beneath the woven mats of dried ocotillo that served as a weak sort of roof.
Daniel strode to the nearest guard, Rooster. “What do you know about the woman and children camped outside?”
Plumes of dust from the constant movement of hooves filled the space, and the sounds of lowing oxen and snorting horses against the backdrop of human voices made it nearly impossible to hear Rooster when he spoke. “I don’t know anything, Sheriff.”
“Surely you know who I’m talking about.”
Rooster kept his gaze latched on the constant commotion of the coral. He was big and burly, just like every guard Rutherford hired. Definitely not the type of man a trader would want to run afoul of. “Maybe Mr. Rutherford can answer your questions.”
Great. Getting a minute alone with the man would be like finding a stream that hadn’t dried out in July.
Daniel had to wait behind two others before he led Blaze to one of the watering troughs. After he tied Blaze to a shaded hitching post, he headed into the courtyard, and from there to the trading post.
The post itself was slightly cooler than being outside, but the press of bodies made it feel stuffy. The stench of body odor mixed with the scents of leather and spices created a smell that not even the general store in town could mimic. Bartholomew Rutherford held court at the back of the room, and a long list of men holding ledgers and full sacks waited for their turn.
Daniel worked his way through the crowd to where Rutherford sat behind a plain wooden table, his own ledger open in front of him. A scale was positioned at the far end of the table, and behind him rested a large pile of goods he’d already traded. Two Mexican workers sifted through the pile, handing various wares off to a third worker who then carried them from the room.
“Those aren’t worth more than a nickel,” Rutherford grumbled in Spanish at the gray-haired Mexican man standing at the table.
“No, señor.” The Mexican looked down at the plates he’d laid on the table. “My wife, she made them by hand. They are beautiful and will grace the tables of many grand homes.”
“A nickel for the lot of them.”
“Pero…” The man’s face fell.
Daniel stepped closer to the table and scanned the plates. The clay pottery had a delicate feel to it, but the plates didn’t look so fragile they would break after a few uses. Each had a carefully painted scene on it, some variation of mountains and trees beneath a dark starry night. His ma would love them, not for eating, but to hang on the kitchen wall. “I’ll give you fifty cents for two.”
“Don’t,” Rutherford growled in a voice low enough only Daniel could hear.
Daniel reached into his pocket and p
ulled out the coins.
“Gracias, gracias. You will not be sorry you bought them. They are lovely, are they not?” A smile split the man’s weathered face. “Which two would you like?”
All of them were beautiful, capturing perfect images of the terrain he loved. “On second thought, I’ll take all five at a quarter a piece.”
Rutherford rose from his chair. “A word, Sheriff.”
Daniel bit back a wince. He hadn’t thought that through. He might have a nice surprise for his mother, but he’d also just ruined any chance of getting Rutherford to tell him about the woman outside. Although he had found a way to get Rutherford alone…
Daniel shoved the rest of the money into the man’s hand, then turned and followed Rutherford into the corridor that opened to the courtyard on one side.
Rutherford stalked into a room with rich tapestries covering the whitewashed adobe walls, and fancy, cushioned furniture carefully arranged around a low-lying table. He turned on his heel, his face red. “You have no right coming into my fort and robbing me.”
Daniel stepped close enough the warmth from Rutherford’s cigar-scented breath touched his jaw. “I didn’t rob you of anything. You’re the one trying to rob the Mexican.”
“Rob a Mexican. All they are is thieves and bandits. They’re lucky I do business with them. If I didn’t—”
“Somebody else would, probably someone who doesn’t cheat them.” Daniel studied the long, narrow face, prominent nose, and high cheekbones of the man he’d known for nearly twenty years. Rutherford might share the same features as Harrison, Rutherford’s son and Daniel’s friend, but the similarities ended there. “That man and his wife should be paid fairly for their work. Even the Bible speaks of a laborer being worthy of his wage.”
“A nickel is plenty decent for a Mexican,” Rutherford spat.
Daniel clenched his teeth together so hard his jaw ached. Why did the Mexicans tolerate Rutherford? Why not go farther up the Chihuahuan Trail to…?
But that was the problem. The Mexicans tolerated Rutherford because he had the only trading post for miles.
Tomorrow's Shining Dream Page 6
