Summer Breeze

by Catherine Anderson

  For a time, Rachel had tried to bring in extra money by hiring out as a seamstress, but she’d been in direct competition with Clarissa Denny, who owned the dress shop in town. Later, Rachel had turned to crochet, needlepoint, and embroidery, hoping to sell her creations on consignment at a few of the shops on Main Street, but eventually the items had been sent back to her, via Darby, yellowed and dusty from sitting untouched on a shelf. Nowadays, people who could afford fancywork preferred store-bought items.

  Or so Rachel told herself. The only other explanation for her abysmal failure to sell her work—that being reluctance among the townsfolk to purchase things made by a crazy woman—was wholly depressing and better ignored. She couldn’t change the attitudes of others, after all, and fretting about it only upset her. As if she chose to live this way? As deeply as she yearned to feel sunlight and a soft breeze on her face again, she couldn’t breathe and eventually lost consciousness if she went outdoors. Two deadlocks and a thick bar on the front door were all that made her feel safe.

  Looking on the bright side, the wolves weren’t scratching to get in yet. The ranch made enough to cover expenses and see to her needs, with a little left over for extras. Except for yarn, thread, an occasional bit of fabric, and a weekly dime novel or two, Rachel was careful about her spending. The only other luxuries she allowed herself were scented soap, some extra flour and sugar each month for baked goods and candy, and additional lamp fuel because she detested living like a mole. Light, and lots of it, was her only respite from the darkness, a substitute of sorts for the sunlight she so sorely missed.

  With a sigh, she set her crocheting in the basket at her feet and got up to stir the beef stew simmering on the Windsor range. Darby would be along shortly, expecting his supper to be set out for him in the wood safe. She should stoke the cooking fire and get the cornbread in the oven. The old foreman was nothing if not punctual when it came to mealtimes.

  Keeping to Darby’s schedule was difficult for Rachel sometimes. With her windows boarded over, inside and out, she couldn’t tell daylight from darkness, and it was easy for her to lose track of time. Sometimes, if she strained her ears, she could hear the rooster crowing to herald the dawn, and at other times, if she concentrated, she could discern the difference between a morning and afternoon breeze buffeting the house. But overall, she existed in a limbo, the only structure to her days imposed by Darby’s growling stomach.

  The thought made Rachel smile as she added wood to the firebox and adjusted the stove damper. Her arrangement with Darby was more than fair, preparing his meals her only contribution. In return for tasty cooking and a middling wage, he worked the ranch and saw to her every need. Thanks to him, she never wanted for anything—unless, of course, she counted conversation. Darby turned loose words like a poor man did hard-earned pennies.

  Rachel guessed that Darby’s quietness resulted from the solitude of his occupation, riding the hills with only cattle for company his whole life long. He occasionally mumbled a short sentence to her through the door or wood safe, but that was the extent of it. Consequently, her yearning for conversation was only satisfied when she dreamed of her family, her mind recreating life as it had once been, with her parents and siblings talking and laughing over a meal or shouting to each other from different parts of the house.

  Her thoughts drifting, Rachel set to work on the cornbread. It always cheered her to bake. She suspected it was partly due to the colorful bags and containers that peppered the counter. A man in a dark suit and top hat, wheeling a barrel, was imprinted on the Gold Medal flour sack. The Royal Baking Powder crock provided a lovely splash of crimson. Her speckled enamel saltshaker added a touch of blue, one of her favorite hues. The cornmeal sack, emblazoned with a cornstalk laden with partially shucked ears of field corn, lent green and yellow to the spectrum, along with GARNER MILLS scrolled across the top in bright red.

  But it wasn’t only the colors that made her enjoy baking. She loved the delicious smells that filled the room. They reminded her of days gone by when her family had still been alive. Oh, how she missed those times—with her fourteen-year-old brother, Daniel, forever up to mischief, her five-year-old sister, Tansy, running from room to room, and their mother always scolding. Rachel’s dog, Denver, had contributed to the confusion as well, his brown eyes alight with affection, his tail wagging. Her pa had complained about the animal being allowed inside the house, but in truth, Henry Hollister had been as guilty of spoiling Denver as everyone else in the family.

  As Rachel clipped sugar from the cone into a mixing bowl and crunched it into fine granules, she drew the memories close, a warm cloak around her heart. Life could be tragic. She would be the last to argue the point. But it could also be wonderfully rich. One had to hold tight to the good things and try not to focus on the bad.

  When she had whisked the dry ingredients together, she fetched milk and eggs from the icebox, melted some lard, and soon had a batch of bread in the oven. That done, she decided a hot peach cobbler for dessert would be lovely on such a windy March day. Darby had a sweet tooth, and regrettably, so did she, a weakness evidenced by her ever-increasing waistline. Her reflection in the water closet mirror told her that she wasn’t actually fat yet, but in another few years she would be. The long walks and horseback rides that had once kept her trim were no longer possible, and the relentless boredom of her existence fueled her appetite. Homemade chocolate drops had recently become her favorite treat.

  After collecting the lamp from the table and lifting the bar on the cellar door, Rachel descended the four wooden steps to collect a Mason jar of last year’s peaches. Minutes later, she was back upstairs, sipping the extra juice she’d drained off the home-canned fruit while she mixed the cobbler batter. Darby would show up soon. By the time he finished his supper and brought his dishes back from the bunkhouse, the dessert would be cool enough to eat.

  The cornbread was done to a turn by the time the cobbler was ready for the oven. While the dessert baked, she sat at the dining table to resume reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a fascinating novel that was, in her opinion, every bit as good as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, heretofore her favorite—except, of course, for Jane Eyre and Little Women.

  Dimpling her cheek with a forefinger, Rachel searched for her place on the marked page, and within seconds she was transported to the damp banks of the Mississippi, the blackness of night closing around her with only the light from Jim’s lantern to penetrate the darkness.

  Some minutes later, the smell of the cobbler jerked Rachel back to the present. “Consternation!”

  She leaped up and ran to the stove, praying with every breath that she hadn’t burned the dessert. Grabbing a cloth to protect her hand, she hurriedly drew the pan from the oven and sighed with relief when she saw that it hadn’t scorched.

  “Praise the Lord,” she said. “When will I learn not to read while I’m baking?”

  After adjusting the stove damper, she dusted her hands. En route back to the table, she glanced at the wall clock. Five after six. It wasn’t like Darby to be late. She wondered if Poncho, his old buckskin gelding, had gone lame again. Rachel hoped not. Darby fussed over that horse as if it were a child.

  Resuming her seat, Rachel found her place in the book, wishing as she started to read that she were actually there on the island with Jim and Huck. The thought no sooner took hold than she scoffed at herself. If she couldn’t step out onto her own porch without succumbing to mindless fright, how could she possibly contemplate grand adventures on the fathomless, churning waters of the Mississippi?

  Joseph pulled back on Obie’s reins, bringing the stallion to a halt in Rachel Hollister’s back dooryard. David drew up beside him, his sorrel snorting and stomping its front hooves. A moment of silence ensued as both men squinted through the deepening shadows of twilight to peruse the large, two-story house. Every window had been boarded up, and not a sliver of light seeped out through the cracks.

  “If this don’t beat all,” Jo
seph muttered. “I heard she had boards over all the windows, but I had to see it to believe it.”

  David shivered and turned up the collar of his coat. “You sure we shouldn’t go around front? Seems like poor manners to knock at a lady’s back door.”

  “You heard what Darby said. She lives in the kitchen at the back, boarded off from the rest of the house.”

  “You suppose she’ll answer if we knock?”

  Joseph swung off his horse and dropped the reins to the ground, confident that Obie would stand fast as he’d been trained to do. “There’s only one way to find out.”

  As Joseph crossed the short expanse of frozen, grass-pocked earth to the wide, covered back porch, which was about two-thirds the width of the house, he marveled at the strangeness of someone who chose to live this way. Since coming to No Name four years ago, he’d heard stories aplenty about Rachel Hollister, all with one common theme: that she had bats in her belfry. But this went beyond crazy. The woman lived in a hidey-hole, cut off from the world.

  Studying the modified rear exterior of the house, Joseph heard rather than saw David coming abreast of him. The back door looked to be four inches thick, constructed of oak planks that only a battering ram might penetrate. To the left of the door, next to a boarded-up window, a large iron wood box had been set into the wall. Joseph had a similar setup at his place, a wood safe that could be filled from the outside and opened from inside the kitchen. He guessed that Darby normally kept the box stocked so Miss Hollister never had to venture outdoors for firewood.

  Hoping that they might be invited in out of the cold, Joseph stomped his boots clean on the porch as David mounted the steps behind him. When they stood shoulder to shoulder before the door, Joseph glanced at his brother before raising his fist to knock.

  When Rachel heard footsteps on the porch, she closed her book, thinking Darby had returned. She almost parted company with her skin when someone started pounding on the door. Not Darby. He only ever rapped on the iron wood safe to let her know he was home.

  “Miss Hollister?” a man called out.

  Rachel leaped up from the chair and fell back a step. No one ever came to call on her anymore. Her last visitor had been Doc Halloway, and that had been well over four years ago.

  “Wh-who is it?” she asked in a voice gone thin with anxiety.

  “Joseph Paxton, your neighbor,” the deep voice replied. “I own the spread just south of here.”

  Rachel vaguely recalled Darby’s telling her that someone had bought the land due south of her ranch, but the name Paxton didn’t ring a bell. She whirled and ran for the gun case that stood between her night table and the armoire. Her hand went straight for the Colt breechloader, a 10-gauge shotgun with shortened barrels that Darby claimed would stop an enraged grizzly dead in its tracks. At close range, all you had to do was point and pull both triggers. Rachel had no desire to shoot anyone, but it only seemed prudent to have the weapon ready, just in case.

  Muscles jerking with fear, she spilled a few shells from the ammunition drawer when she jerked it open. Hurry, hurry. She broke open the shotgun barrels, shoved a cartridge into each chamber, and snapped the weapon closed again. In the otherwise silent room, the rasp of Damascus steel seemed deafeningly loud.

  On wobbly legs, she turned to face the barred door, braced the butt of the shotgun against her hip, and yelled, “State your business!”

  She heard boots shuffling on the porch planks. More than one man? Her blood ran cold. Oh, God. Oh, God. Where was Darby? Had these men harmed him? The old foreman was never this late unless something detained him.

  “This isn’t the kind of news I want to shout through the door,” the man replied. “The marshal is with me, if that eases your mind any.”

  The marshal? Rachel’s heart skipped a beat.

  “Can you open up for a minute, ma’am?” another man asked. “This is David Paxton, the marshal of No Name. I give you my word, we mean you no harm.”

  Rachel curled her forefinger over the triggers of the shotgun, prepared to start blasting if they tried to come in. “State your business through the door. I can hear you just fine.” She swallowed to steady her voice. “My foreman will be along at any moment. If you prefer to speak face-to-face, you can wait a bit and talk to him.”

  Another silence ensued. Then the first man said, “That’s why we’re here, Miss Hollister, to bring you news about your foreman. Along about three this afternoon, he rode in to my place, looking for help. He’s been hurt.”

  “Hurt?” Love of Darby had Rachel taking a hesitant step toward the door. Then she caught herself and drew to a stop. She was a woman alone, miles from the nearest neighbor. It would be sheer madness to trust two strangers. “How was he hurt?”

  Rachel had grown up on the ranch and knew all the dangers. Darby could have been cut by barbed wire, thrown from his horse onto rocky ground, or kicked by a steer, to list only a few possibilities. Unfortunately, he might also have been bushwhacked by two thieving ne’er-do-wells.

  She heard a low rumble of male voices. Then the man who called himself Joseph Paxton finally said, “He was at the north end of your property, tracking a heifer, Miss Hollister. When he left the rocks and headed back toward the creek, someone shot him in the back.”

  Shot? The word resounded inside Rachel’s mind, and black spots began to dance before her eyes. She knew the place the man described. She saw it in her dreams every night. Not again, God. Please, not again. A strange ringing began in her ears, and she could no longer feel her feet. Images of her family flashed before her eyes—of her little sister, Tansy, chasing butterflies—of her father, sitting on the creek bank and playing his fiddle while her mother danced on the grass—and lastly of her brother, Daniel, golden hair gleaming in the sunshine, his grin mischievous as he wrestled with Rachel for the last drumstick in the picnic basket.

  She made her way to the table and sank onto a chair. Dimly she heard Joseph Paxton speaking to her, but she couldn’t make out the words. It was as if she had water in her ears. Darby, shot. She couldn’t wrap her mind around it. And to think that it had happened in exactly the same place where her family had been killed. No, no, no.

  A foggy darkness encroached on her vision. Rachel had experienced it before and knotted her hands into tight fists, determined not to let it happen again. Not now, with two strangers on her porch. But the blackness moved inexorably closer, a thick, impenetrable blanket determined to enshroud her.

  Chapter Three

  “Well, hell.” Joseph kicked a piece of stove kindling that lay near Rachel Hollister’s woodpile. “That got us nowhere fast.”

  His breath fogging the frigid air, David hunched his shoulders inside his jacket. “It’s worrisome, the way she went quiet all of a sudden.” He gave Joseph an accusing look. “I knew we shouldn’t talk to her through the door. You’re supposed to break news like that gently.”

  “She wouldn’t open the door,” Joseph reminded him. “And tell me a gentler way to say it. I told her that he was hurt before I told her that he was shot.”

  “You’re too blunt by half, Joseph. She may have a deep affection for that old man. With ladies, especially, you need to sugarcoat things.”

  “How can you sugarcoat such news?” Joseph demanded. “If you’re so damned good with words, why don’t you do the talking next time?”

  “Thank you, maybe I will.”

  Joseph kicked at the kindling again. “Like you’re such a charmer? I don’t see you with a gal on each arm every Friday night.”

  “Saloon girls,” David countered with a derisive snort. “Like your popularity at the Golden Slipper is a measure of your charm? I haven’t seen you with a decent young lady in a good long while.”

  “The same can be said of you.”

  Impasse. Neither of them was in the habit of keeping company with respectable young women. Their older half brother, Ace Keegan, the closest thing to a father either of them could clearly remember, had always spoken strongly agains
t it. When a man trifled with a proper young lady, he’d better be prepared to marry her, end of subject. That was the Keegan and Paxton way.

  David sighed and toed the kindling back toward Joseph. “I just hope she’s all right, is all.”

  “Anyone who boards herself off from the world like that isn’t all right. Alive and halfway rational is the most we can hope for.”

  “With her family getting killed and all, maybe she’s just scared half out of her wits.”

  Joseph considered that suggestion. “Could be, I reckon.” Thinking of what had happened to Darby, he felt a chill inch up his spine. “And maybe with good reason.”

  Before stopping at the Hollister house to speak to Rachel, Joseph and David had ridden to the north end of the Hollister ranch to have a look around. They’d found the place where Darby had been ambushed, and in their estimation, the shooting couldn’t have been an accident. The direction of the hoofprints left by Darby’s horse bore out that Darby had been riding toward the creek when the shot was fired. The prominence of rock behind him would have blocked a stray bullet. Someone had been hiding in those rocks and deliberately taken aim at the old man’s back.

  “So now what?” David asked.

  Joseph knew his brother was referring to the shooting, but he didn’t have all of his thoughts about that in order yet. “The lady will need firewood to get her through the night. I’ll start with that, I reckon.”

  As they loaded their arms with split logs, David asked, “Where you planning to spend the night? In the bunkhouse?”

  “Too far away,” Joseph replied with a grunt. “On the off chance that Darby’s right about her being in danger, I need to be close enough to hear if anyone comes around.”

  Arms filled, Joseph made for the porch, his brother only a step behind him.

  “Where will you sleep, then? It’s colder than a well digger’s ass out here, and there’s no windbreak that I can see.”