McKenna nodded and closed the door, gathering up her bag that contained everything she would need to get cleaned up, along with a clean dress. Cole must have figured she could get cleaned up over there.
Bret was waiting downstairs to escort her over to the store. When they arrived, she noticed the inside was quite clean with all the shelves hanging and fixtures where goods would be put for sale.
“I can’t believe this is the same store,” she remarked.
“Cole and I worked long into the night, and one of the miner’s families came over to help out. They were really down on their luck since their family hasn’t been able to find any gold as of yet.”
“I see. That was nice of him, providing they were paid.”
“Of course I paid them,” Cole said as he came down the stairs. “I hope you’re hungry. I have breakfast for you.”
McKenna’s brow shot up. “That sounds interesting.”
“You say that like I don’t know how to cook. I assure you I had to learn after my wife died or I’d have starved.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say you were incapable, but most men can’t cook or wouldn’t want to.”
“It’s not something I’d want to do all the time, but I wanted to make up for what I said yesterday. Can we have a fresh start today?”
McKenna smiled. “I’d like that.”
He motioned to the stairs and she carried her belongings to the upper floor. There was a worn table and two chairs with plates loaded with eggs and bacon. Not only did that shock her, but also her attention went over to the top of the stove where large pots were boiling.
“I thought you’d like a bath today,” Cole said.
McKenna’s face lit up. “I can?”
“Yes. I found a brass tub.”
McKenna was so excited she almost forgot food was on the table, but she finally wandered over there and sat. She nearly threw herself into Cole’s arms and kissed him. She picked up her fork and began to eat, nodding at Cole. “This is pretty good,” she said. “I half-expected to get a mouthful of egg shells.”
“Really? I guess when you were raised, your father never did any cooking.”
“No, we had a very traditional family. Papa ran the store and Mama cooked. Us girls learned a little of both, but I was the only one who had any interest in the store. Abigail kept the house in order from the age of twelve, which allowed Penelope, Cadence, and Kayla freedom to enjoy their childhood.”
“When I met Abigail, I figured her for the oldest. She’s going to be a tough woman to find a husband for.”
“Husband? I hardly think she wants one of those.”
“She’ll have to if she doesn’t want the label of spinster.”
McKenna just shook her head. “That’s just like a man to say that. Actually, I was more of a spinster than her, since I’m twenty-two. She’s a year younger.”
“Well, you’re not a spinster now.”
She concentrated on her meal. She had the feeling that Cole thought this was a real marriage. However, she’d keep her thoughts to herself since he had not only cooked her a good meal, but was warming water so she’d be able to take a real bath!
McKenna used some of the hot water to wash the dishes and the remainder was taken into another room.
Cole returned and announced, “I set your bath up in the other room. You might need to add cold water from the pump so you don’t burn yourself.”
He went back downstairs and she practically ran to the bathtub. It was steaming nicely and she added water from the hand pump until it felt hot yet comfortable. She started to remove her clothing, but suddenly realized the curtains were open and snapped them closed. Why, there was even a man staring up at her.
When McKenna finally took her clothing off, she eased into the tub, sighing. She leaned back, enjoying how the hot water invigorated her. She had to admit Cole knew a thing or two about making a woman happy. Of course, he had also been married before. She certainly couldn’t stay mad at him anymore.
* * *
McKenna came down the stairs and when Cole’s eyes met hers, she felt a warmness that she couldn’t explain. She gazed around; it was clean enough to open the store if only they had more than some mining equipment.
“Why are you standing around?”
“I thought we’d take a stroll around town. We could even thank the women who helped clean last night. I have yet to pay them.”
“Are they here in town?”
“We’ll be heading out to the tent city.”
“B-But I thought it would be dangerous there.” McKenna’s eyes widened at the thought.
“I’ll be right with you the whole time. I’ll leave my mind open in regards to the miners in this town until I get to know them.”
McKenna smiled. “This sounds like a start to a great day.”
Cole took her arm and they waved to Bret who was sanding the shelves. While they walked down the street, men were hammering nails to boards in the structures that were being built. Women in worn dresses strolled into town with a few children weaving in and around them, but staying somewhat close.
They drew attention when they entered the outskirts of the tent city, and McKenna was appalled at the poor conditions. The tents were very small and few had room for a campfire even. It smelled bad, too.
“Watch your facial expressions, dear. We don’t want to offend anyone.”
McKenna nodded at the women and miners they passed, and Cole waved at a group of four women.
“Hello there, ladies.” He pulled out money, slipping a gold coin into each of their hands. “I can’t thank you enough, ladies.”
“Is this your wife?” one bright-eyed woman asked.
“Why, yes, I am. I’m McKenna.”
“I’m Grace,” the woman responded. “This is Betsy, Joslyn and Irma.”
“Nice to meet you, ladies, and thank you for helping ready the shop.”
“Is the table working okay?” Grace asked. “It was our mama’s set, but we don’t have no place to have anything that fancy.”
‘Fancy’ wasn’t a word that would describe the table and chairs, but McKenna said, “Once you have a better place to stay, I’ll make sure you get it back.”
“The only way I see that happening is if our sister Fanny strikes it rich. So far, she hasn’t found any gold.”
“Sister? So, you’re not here with a husband?”
“Oh, no, none of us are married,” Grace told her.
“The pickings are slim,” Irma added with a cockeyed smile.
“With all the men here, I can’t imagine that’s the case.”
“Except all the good ones are busy working their claims most of the time. Whenever they make it into town, it’s for a visit at the saloon. We can’t compete with a saloon girl,” Irma explained.
“I don’t know why you’d even want to. Men are often pretty dense when it comes to women. Sometimes you have to put some effort into it by at least saying hello to a man,” McKenna said.
“Oh, I could never do that,” Betsy said. “And men tend to take it the wrong way here.”
“She’s right,” Cole said. “Do you have regular jobs?”
“We work in the kitchen tent,” Grace responded. “We were headed there now.”
“Great. I’d love to tag along,” McKenna said. “If you don’t mind.”
“That’s no place for a lady such as yourself,” Joslyn remarked. “It’s not like a fancy restaurant back in Ohio.”
“How do you know where we’re from?”
“I told them,” Cole said.
“Oh, well, no matter. I’m ready to get my hands dirty. It’s the least I can do since you’ve all helped us with the store.”
Grace shook her head. “It’s not like we weren’t paid, and we’d really rather give our business to you than that Chastity Burke. I don’t care for her at all.”
“And I’d watch my husband around her, too, if I were you,” Irma added.
McKenna looke
d over at Cole. “I-I don’t think I have to worry about Cole, but it sounds like solid advice.”
She followed the ladies to a large tent, which held makeshift tables and chairs made out of crates and boxes. Along one end, a long table separated the kitchen from where the miners ate. In the kitchen area were two wood-burning stoves, which made it hotter in there than outside. Two burly women turned, one of whom asked, “Who do you have there, Grace? Those folks should be eating at the restaurant, not here.”
“We’ve come to help,” McKenna said.
The woman cocked a brow. “Now that’s a switch. Ladies like you don’t usually bother even looking in the direction of our tent city.”
“Actually, my husband and I came to Silver to open a store, Winters Mercantile.”
She laughed. “Chastity Burke won’t be liking that. I’d watch my back if I were you. She’s not above running the competition out of town.”
“Now, Bertha. We don’t know that for sure,” Grace reprimanded.
“I thought the owner of the building we bought was killed over cheating at cards,” McKenna said.
“That’s what they like to tell folks, but it wouldn’t surprise me if she put somebody up to that and he hadn’t cheated at all. All it would take is for one man to even suggest the other might be cheating to turn the other players against him.”
“Bertha is right,” the other woman agreed. “I’m Maggie, and I’d actually love some help.”
“Thanks,” Cole said. “Because my wife McKenna doesn’t take no for an answer.”
The women laughed and McKenna frowned, looking down at the bread that had bugs in it. “Where did you get this bread?” she asked.
“That’s what Chastity sold us. We should have checked it over before we left the store with it,” Bertha admitted. “We’re making fresh bread.”
“Do you buy all the food supplies from Chastity’s store?”
“Don’t have much of a choice. Her father owns the only shipping company that delivers goods in Silver, and they won’t even take orders from us. The whole system is jaded if you ask me,” Bertha stated.
“I see. I hope we don’t have a problem getting our order delivered.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me. How about coming over here and cutting up vegetables for the stew,” Bertha said.
McKenna began to chop up carrots, onions, and potatoes. “You bought the vegetables from Chastity, too?”
“Yes, she must have been in a generous mood. We don’t get fresh vegetables here much.”
“I guess not if Chastity is controlling what comes into Silver and who she sells what to.”
“When our store gets up and running,” Cole began, “I promise you’ll have fewer problems. I’ll make sure you get what you want and at a cheaper price.”
“Now, that’s what I’d like to hear, but you’ll have to sort out your deliveries before you’ll even make it a day. Don’t trust Chastity, no matter how sweet she acts. She’s a real snake in the grass,” Bertha said.
After she added the vegetables to the stew, McKenna asked, “What do you want me to do next?”
“We scored a few bags of apples from one of the miners. He just came back from Reno,” Maggie told her. “Do you know how to make pie crust?”
“I sure do.” McKenna smiled.
Cole gathered up the apples and proceeded to peel them while McKenna got busy with the flour, lard and water. She used her fingers to mix it and was handed a roller to flatten out the dough. She twitched her nose when it itched.
“Cole, can you itch my nose?” she asked.
He laughed and scratched it for her and she thanked him by flicking flour at him.
“Teach me to help you itch your nose.”
After the crust was in the pans, Cole added the apples, sugar, and cinnamon. Then they were handed off to Bertha to place in the oven.
“Oh, Cole, look,” McKenna called, holding up her hands that were covered with sticky dough that hadn’t fallen off when she rolled it.
Bertha shook her head and handed McKenna a towel to clean off with. “You two make my heart feel good. I don’t think I’ve ever seen two people more in love.”
“I-I—” McKenna began, but didn’t know what to say. Bertha had it all wrong; Cole didn’t love her and she … wasn’t sure how she felt. Although she certainly was enjoying her day with him.
“We haven’t been married that long,” Cole explained.
“That explains it then,” Bertha said. “Why don’t you young people have a seat until it’s time to eat?”
McKenna and Cole sat at a table, or what served as one. She was really appalled at the conditions and vowed to somehow make them better. “What they really need here, besides decent food supplies, is an area away from the tent city where outhouses can be built. Somewhere that is nowhere near their water supply. If they keep going on like this, disease will surely follow; cholera for one.”
McKenna got up and asked Bertha, “How do you get water out here?”
“From the well over there.” She pointed it out.
“And where are the outhouses in the tent city?”
She pointed to them, and McKenna shook her head. “That won’t do. They need to be immediately digging new ones well away from the well. Otherwise, a cholera outbreak could happen.”
“I don’t know who we’d find to do that,” Bertha told her. “Most miners work all day long and seldom have energy enough to do more than that.”
“I’d be happy to speak to them,” Cole said. “And even help out myself.”
“That’s the best thing I’ve heard all day.”
“Leave it to me.”
* * *
When it was time to eat, Cole and McKenna helped the girls who worked in the kitchen serve. She refused to serve any of the bread they had bought from Chastity. It wasn’t fit for a dog.
Finally, they sank into chairs and McKenna was shocked at just how good the stew really was. “Bertha should open up her own restaurant,” McKenna told Cole.
“Yes, but if she did, who would feed the miners? They need her here.”
“We could help her out if she had time to make us bread to sell in the store.”
“Do you honestly think she’d be able to do that and her duties here?”
“I could do it,” Grace offered when she walked past. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to eavesdrop.”
“That’s fine,” Cole said. “But I don’t want to take anyone away from working here.”
“Me and my sisters sure could use the extra money. I don’t want to take a job in the saloon. There’s just no other way a woman can make money, unless our sister happens to find gold.”
This was the second time she had mentioned a woman mining for gold.
“You mean your sister isn’t married and is actually mining for gold?” McKenna asked.
“Yes, and she’s the toughest one of the lot. Only woman miner here in Silver.”
“It’s not unheard of,” Betsy said. “I hear there was a woman in California who was a miner, too. She even struck it rich.”
“I think that’s great. It’s bad how us women are treated. If we don’t have a husband by twenty, we’re considered spinsters,” McKenna said. “I’m twenty-two and only married recently.”
“I wouldn’t blame all the men for that. It’s just how it is now,” Cole said. “It won’t always be the case. I, for one, think your sister has moxie for combating society and doing exactly what she wants.”
McKenna smiled at Cole. She was glad he wasn’t the type of man who believed that women had no rights besides getting married and having children.
Cole excused himself and chatted with miners while McKenna helped clean up as others began to file out of the tent. She knew times were tough and she hoped her suggestion to dig new outhouses would be taken seriously. She might not be able to make much more of a contribution there, but she vowed that she’d show up whenever she could to help them out in the kitchen tent. It was the highlight of her
day.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Cole finally joined McKenna, telling her some miners agreed to meet first thing in the morning to begin digging the outhouses.
“Where will they get the wood?”
“There’s a barn behind our building that we own and there is plenty of wood there, much more than we need to use ourselves. I want to help the miners if I can.”
McKenna wanted to hug and kiss Cole, but restrained herself. It surprised her that she felt like doing that more and more. If only she could be certain what he was feeling for her. She was falling for Cole fast and just had to do whatever she could to stop herself. The last thing she needed was to be hurt by the only man she’d ever truly gotten close to.
The pair thanked the women and left with an apple pie they insisted must be taken back with them. Cole’s face actually reddened when the women raved about how great the apple pies were.
It was getting dark by the time they were back at the store. Bret was sitting down with a smile on his face when they returned and he spotted the pie.
“That sure smells like apple to me.”
“It sure is. We made it together,” McKenna told him.
“I should go to the boarding house and gather our things,” Cole said. “Our bed should have been delivered while we were gone.”
“What? Where was all the furniture coming from?”
“I bought it off a family who was leaving town for California.”
“I see. Well, I hope you paid them a fair amount.”
“Of course. I’m not here to make a killing off everyone. Today taught me that, but I assure you that Chastity won’t like it when Winters Mercantile opens.” He smiled.
She locked up while Cole and Bret left to gather the belongings, opening the door only when they returned with her suitcase overflowing and not even closed properly.
“Sorry,” Cole apologized sheepishly. “I was in a hurry. I can’t wait to dig into that pie.”
They locked up and went upstairs and into the kitchen where McKenna dished up the pie, giving each of them a huge chunk.
“Seems like Cole has booked up my day tomorrow,” Bret said.
“I heard about that. It was my idea actually. I hope you don’t mind.”
McKenna, (Sweet Western Historical Romance) (Nevada Brides Series Book 1) Page 9
