Corbet reined in his temper. Without Brucker's help, he was stuck in Burdeen, so he didn’t send him back to Cheyenne City as he wanted to suddenly. Jodee was not keeping a list, and he wasn’t using her as bait to lure Tangus into jail. He dreaded the day Jodee had enough money to buy her ticket.
Standing, Corbet felt in sour spirits without warning. “I’ll clear out my things from the sleeping room.”
Brucker tipped the chair back like he already owned the jailhouse. “It’s going to rain.” He flexed his hand. “Wet weather makes old wounds like this ache like a son of a bitch.”
The rain began later that night. Brucker got soaked making rounds and getting acquainted with storekeepers and town officials. The man might as well get used to it, Corbet thought, packing his saddlebags and heading out of town without a word to anybody. Let them get used to the possibility that he might not be around much longer.
Making his first camp under a rock overhang and suffering the cold, Corbet spent a troubled night alone in the mountains with his thoughts. He should’ve told Jodee where he was going, but he no longer trusted himself where she was concerned.
• • •
Early the next morning Hanna’s eldest daughter Bonnie tapped at Avinelle’s back door. “Miss Jodee? Are you awake? Ma’s staying home sick today. You’ll have to do the cooking. Will you tell Miz Ashton, or you want me to? I ain’t a-scared of her.”
Scrambling up from her clammy pallet on the back porch, Jodee shook sleep from her eyes. “Is Hanna all right?” She pushed open the back door to the dripping dawn gloom. “Come inside for coffee.”
“I can’t dawdle, thanks all the same. Ma’ll mend. She always does.” Bonnie was a fifteen year old version of her mother, heavily freckled and plain as a post. “Ma was sure you could manage. Feed ’em dry toast and weak tea. Ma says they’re getting fat as ticks.”
Chuckling, Jodee was sorry to see the girl disappear into the rain with nothing more than a shawl over her head. In minutes she had the cook stove lit and the kettle on. She fixed coffee for herself and Bailey, pulled on her old boots to spare her good shoes the mud, and hurried out to tell him about Hanna before the ladies were out of bed. The carriage house smelled of horse and hay.
“Could we take Hanna something later?” she asked the man when he answered his door. “I want to check on her.”
With his hair sleep-mussed and his suspenders down, Bailey looked alarmed in an endearingly befuddled way. “It’s not like her to stay home,” he said, revealing a slight accent. He sounded like Mr. Quimby. “I’ll take you. Tell Miz Ashton the horse needs exercise.”
Jodee bustled around the kitchen, thinking of all she must do in Hanna’s place. She laid the table and counted the spoons—all twenty-four stacked in the chest—and gave a start when Maggie appeared as silently as ever to catch her staring at the ornate finery.
Maggie looked pale as she noticed Jodee’s boots peeping from beneath her rain-damp hem. Jodee’s heart sank. She had tracked muddy footprints all over the dining room floor. She’d have to tend to that later. While Jodee readied a basket of food for Hanna, she braced herself to ask permission. The moment she heard Widow Ashton seat herself in the dining room, she hurried in, her heart in her throat. The woman’s hair was still in curling ribbons, a startling sight compared to her usual impeccable appearance.
Jodee dipped a curtsy. “Morning, Miz Ashton. Hanna sent word she’s staying home sick today. I think she wore herself out yesterday. Do you mind if I take her some leftovers—to keep her strength up? Here’s what I have put by, slices of beef and cobbler. It shouldn’t go to waste. Bailey said the horse needs airing, too. He’ll drive me. If you don’t mind. Please.”
Widow Ashton held Jodee with a hard eye. “Can I hope for hot tea before you leave?” If she noticed the footprints on the floor, she didn’t complain.
Jodee found herself scurrying back to the kitchen like Maggie. Forcing herself to return at a calm pace with the tea steaming fragrantly in the silver pot, she poured and then stood at attention, waiting.
“Finish your chores first,” Widow Ashton snapped. “Take a loaf of bread and a jar of jam.” She selected a key from a ring of keys hanging from a cord at her waist. “You may go into the cellar with Maggie. She will know what to pick. Let me see everything you take.”
Jodee took the key. “Thank you, Ma’am.”
Across from the sewing room was a wall covered with floor to ceiling cupboards. Maggie took the key from Jodee and unlocked a narrow door revealing a steep set of stairs leading down. “Fetch a candle,” Maggie whispered, squirming with anticipation.
She crept down the stairs, holding the candle high, searching the shadows with wide eyes. Jodee followed, surprised to learn of this storage area under the house. The stone-walled cellar was lined with wooden shelves stocked with enough food to feed a family for months. Jodee had never seen the like. Across the room stood crates in stacks, and several large trunks.
Maggie plucked a quart mason jar from a shelf and held it close to read the hand-printed label. Then suddenly she whirled. Her eyes were quick all around the space. Thrusting the jar of homemade apple butter into Jodee’s hands, Maggie dashed to stone steps on the right of the cellar. Above the steps slanted double doors leading outside. Maggie pushed on them. They appeared loose to Jodee but didn’t open.
“I smelled fresh air,” Maggie whispered. “Bailey’s been in here. He robbing us.”
Jodee shook her head. “He wouldn’t.” Was Maggie as addle-headed as Widow Ashton? Was Maggie feeding lies to her? The woman seemed crazy, Jodee thought, watching her look around, eyes stopping at each open space on the shelves where items had been removed. Jodee supposed they’d used a good many supplies for their Sunday dinner just past.
“Is anything missing?” Jodee asked.
Maggie looked frightened but excited by the prospect of a confrontation. “My—Miz Theia will be so upset. She’ll scold him terrible. She might fire him! She’d fire me if I wasn’t so stupid.”
Jodee shivered. She noticed footprints in the hard-packed dirt floor, hers and Maggie’s. And scuff marks. Drag marks suggesting a sack of something had been moved and then shoved back into place. Was she going to be blamed for something?
Grabbing a small brown bottle of cod liver oil and a loaf of bread, which Jodee recalled wrapping in a cloth for Hanna only days before, Maggie ran up the stairs to the kitchen. “Hurry! She’ll want the key back.”
Upstairs, Jodee watched Maggie lock the narrow door and tug on it to make sure it was secure. Jodee had never seen her look so lively. With reluctance, Maggie turned over the key and waved Jodee toward the dining room. Why, even Maggie found her suspect, Jodee thought, furious to think the little old lady of a maid assumed she was a thief, too.
Setting her teeth, Jodee placed the apple butter and cod liver oil in the basket. She carried it and the cellar key into the dining room. Avinelle had joined her mother by then and sat at her usual place, looking sullen.
“My tea, if you please, Jodee,” Avinelle snapped.
“Yes, Ma’am.” Jodee stood, waiting for Widow Ashton to look at the contents of the basket. She placed the cellar key on the tablecloth without making a sound.
Widow Ashton glanced at Avinelle, then Maggie lurking in the pantry doorway. Then she stared hard at Jodee. Her lips bunched together. Would the old harpy consider this food part of Hanna’s pay?
“Oh, Mother, let her take the stuff,” Avinelle snapped. “We’ve got enough put by to survive a siege. Go on, Jodee. I’ll get my tea myself.” She hitched back her chair and stood, glaring at her mother.
Jodee retreated with the basket and nearly collided with Avinelle when fetching back the kettle to refill the teapot.
“I’ll take that.” Avinelle snatched the kettle from Jodee’s hands and returned to the dining room.
Trying not to feel affronted, Jodee hurried out to the carriage house to climb aboard the surrey with Bailey. It was a relief to be outside,
away from whatever was transpiring in the dining room between Avinelle and her mother.
Thirteen
Hanna lived south of town more than a mile, just off the road to Cheyenne City. It was surely a long walk each day at dawn and dusk, Jodee thought, worried and impatient to see her friend as she rode alongside Bailey in the surrey. Rain fell steadily as they arrived. Bonnie appeared in the doorway of the cabin and welcomed them with a smile.
“Look who’s here, Ma!” she called as Jodee climbed down from the surrey and dashed inside.
Bailey followed with the basket, doffing his dripping cap the moment he ducked through the doorway. He looked relieved to see Hanna seated in front of a modest hearth fire. She wore the shawl Jodee had given her. Her graying hair was down, hanging in a long braid. In spite of her red nose and eyes she looked years younger.
The place smelled deliciously of coffee and cinnamon. Grinning, Jodee presented the basket.
“Would you look at all this! Think she could spare it?” Hanna winked, her voice hoarse. “You’re one for giving presents, aren’t you, Jodee?” She fell into a fit of coughing. “Hello, Cedric,” she said to Bailey, smiling in a way Jodee hadn’t seen before. “Sit yourselves down. There’s plenty of coffee. My young’uns are at school, except for Bonnie here who quit and does mending for local ladies. She’ll probably get herself married soon. Then I’ll have grandchildren.” Hanna laughed and sputtered into another coughing fit. “I—I—imagine me, a g—g—grandmother!”
Bailey remained by the door. When it was time to leave, Hanna promised to be back at work the next day. “Say hello to our favorite ladies for me.”
As Jodee and Bailey arrived back at Avinelle’s house a while later, Jodee whispered, “Would you mind showing me the outside door to the cellar? This morning Maggie thought it was unlocked.”
Bailey's eyes sprang wide. With a tremendous frown, he slopped through the mud to the slanting doors set in the foundation of the house on the north side. The sturdy padlock seemed secure, but he studied the house and the stone foundation and the surrey’s tracks already filled with rainwater. “If anybody’s been coming around, their tracks are washed out.”
“She smelled fresh air, she said. Would she toy with me? You know how folks like to say I done things I haven’t.”
Bailey slogged to the dining room window and hooked his fingers on the sill as if judging whether someone could climb in. Squinting, he prowled all the way to the front porch.
“Could somebody get in through these doors?” she asked. Like Burl, she thought. “I’d be blamed for anything taken.”
“I keep a close watch every night, Miss. Won’t nobody get in that I don’t hear ’em. Get yourself dried off now, before you catch your death.” He gave her a rare smile that folded his face into charming lines.
Worried nevertheless, Jodee supposed there was no use going to the Robstarts’ that afternoon. She couldn’t do laundry in the rain. Glancing at the pallet where she slept on the porch, she supposed it looked undisturbed, for once. Sometimes she felt more at risk of being robbed than ol’ Widow Ashton or Avinelle.
In the kitchen she built up the fire in preparation for making luncheon. Knowing there was another way into the house left her uneasy. Bailey might keep watch, but he was no match for Burl Tangus. Burl wouldn’t hesitate to shoot that padlock, or Bailey for that matter. If he got inside the widows’ house, he’d pick the place clean.
• • •
When the rain let up later in the week, Jodee was so busy she didn’t have a moment to worry. Widow Ashton had Jodee, Maggie, and Hanna, barely recovered from her cold, turning the house upside down with spring cleaning. Each lower room was aired, dusted, and swept from the ceiling to the farthest corner under the heaviest furniture. Rug beating was the worst.
On Saturday all chores associated with bathing and preparing for Sunday occupied Jodee’s time. Corbet hadn’t called all week, so Avinelle looked worried, too. Her attitude toward Jodee became unbearably harsh.
When a knock came at the front door Saturday afternoon, Avinelle, who was seated in the kitchen near the cook stove drying her hair, broke into a huge smile. It had to be Corbet, Jodee thought with a pang of excitement. She listened in the rear hall as Maggie answered the door. The voice they heard was not Corbet's but that of a gruff stranger. Jodee felt let down. And anxious all the more.
Maggie rushed back into the kitchen. “It’s a deputy, Miz Avinelle!”
“Well, for pity’s sake, Maggie, I can’t receive, looking like this. You go, Jodee. Get him off Mother’s porch. Deputy, indeed. He could be anyone. Even your former associate,” she snapped at Jodee. “What was his name? Turner? Tangle?”
Jodee’s stomach rolled over. Burl would never come to the front door. He wasn’t that brash. She smoothed her apron and soon faced a stocky stranger. He looked her over with no effort toward decent manners.
“Miss McQue, is it?” His voice had a harshness she didn’t like.
Jodee’s mouth went dry. Now there was a lawman. How did he know who she was? “The widows’ ain’t receiving,” she said. Aren’t, she thought.
“Truth be told, I came to see you, Miss McQue. Ed Brucker’s the name. I’m the new deputy up from Cheyenne City. The marshal wanted me to tell you, next time you’re in Cheyenne that the sheriff has a ledger. He can tell you where your pa’s buried at.”
Jodee was so surprised she could scarcely speak. “My—how come Marshal Harlow didn’t tell me himself?”
“He’s out of town. Don’t know when he’ll be back.”
Corbet was gone? Jodee felt bereft.
The deputy took a step closer. Jodee edged back. “Anything else?”
“Want to walk out with me some evening, Miss McQue?”
He was asking to call on her? She couldn’t think. “I…uh…”
Blessedly, Widow Ashton’s voice stabbed from the far side of the parlor door. Jodee had never been so glad to hear that severe tone. “Who is it, Jodee?”
Coming into the entry hall, the widow jerked the front door wide open. The deputy’s grin vanished, replaced by an expression every bit as forbidding as Corbet’s most unyielding stare. “Afternoon, Ma’am,” Brucker said, touching the brim of his hat but not removing it. He flashed the deputy’s badge pinned to his vest. “Paying a call on Miss McQue. Nothing’s the matter. It’s personal.”
Shaking her head, Jodee brushed against Widow Ashton in her haste to get back from the doorway. “I don’t want to,” she whispered. “Tell him I don’t go nowhere with no stranger.” She was about to run back to the kitchen when Widow Ashton’s hand closed bitingly around her arm.
Regarding the deputy with her most contemptuous expression, Widow Ashton said, “Get off my porch,” and slammed the door.
Jodee was stunned, but grateful.
Whirling, the woman glared at Jodee, her face purpled with fury. “Back to the kitchen at once. You shall not open this door again.”
Jodee opened her mouth to protest. Maggie had answered the door, she wanted to say. Avinelle instructed her to speak to the stranger. Hanna and Maggie sprang out of the way as she burst back into the kitchen, curses about to erupt.
Hairbrush in midair, Avinelle exclaimed, “Whatever have you done now?”
Jodee’s breath came in gasps. “I ain’t done nothing!”
The desire to flee was so intense that Jodee had to go out to the back porch and stand stock still for five minutes to regain control of herself. It wouldn’t be enough to climb the trail up the mountainside this time and sit a spell on a boulder. She needed to get away. For good.
When she could think again, Jodee marched to the parlor where she found Widow Ashton watching the street from behind the curtain lace. Hearing Jodee, the woman stiffened but didn’t turn.
“I don’t know that man," Jodee blurted out in a tone she’d never used on anybody before. "I don’t know anything about him. Thank you for sending him away. I was just wondering if you would let me take a few hour
s to go shopping. I need a work shirt. I’m getting smudges on my blouse. Then I should stop by Mrs. Robstart’s. I ain’t done up her wash since the rain let up.”
“Go, if you must,” the widow snapped. When she turned, her face was as severe as Jodee had ever seen it. “If you are slipping away to meet that man and I find out, I will discharge you and not let you back into this house. Be warned.”
“I ain’t meeting him! I ain’t never seen him before this day. You don’t believe nothing I say, do you? Will you ever take me for who I am?”
“I know precisely who you are, young woman, and this is the last time you will back-talk me. Buy two yards of the cheapest calico. I will teach you to make an apron. You are a servant in my employ, not some urchin wearing whatever you can find. When seen in my household you must dress appropriately. Now get out of my sight. You have brought nothing but turmoil to this household.”
At the end of her tether, Jodee dipped a curtsey and ground out, “Thank you, Ma’am.” She left the parlor with all the dignity she could muster.
Within a half hour, wearing her boots and britches beneath her skirts because it made her feel more secure, Jodee marched toward town. She hadn’t brought turmoil to Widow Ashton’s household. Turmoil followed that woman like a shadow.
Burdeen’s main street was crowded with Saturday afternoon wagon traffic. Watching for trouble in every direction, Jodee headed straight to Quimby’s for the calico. Signs of spring were everywhere—weeds springing up in muddy alleyways, buds thick on bushes, upstairs windows open to fresh air. She never reached the store.
Hobie called to her. “Where you headed, Miss McQue?” Hobie trotted toward her, clutching a broom. “I sweep up at Wilson’s now. It’s better work for a college-bound boy,” he said with sarcasm. “I’ll get me a degree in sweeping while I’m back east.”
Her Outlaw Heart Page 17
