Wyoming Heather

by DeAnn Smallwood

  “Heather, I don’t even know him, but I already love him. And that little blonde doll, well, who wouldn’t love her?”

  “Well,” Heather said, “apparently quite a few people didn’t. She had no one to fight her battles until Toby appeared on the scene.” Heather grew quiet.

  “Heather.” Alice stood up. “She’s exhausted. Let’s put her to bed. There’s no way you’ll be making the trip back tonight. We’ll let her nap while you and I look this store over for enough clothing to make a little girl feel special. Then we’ll look it over again for her big brother.” Suddenly, she stopped talking and sat down hard as another thought hit her. “Heather, what is Whip going to do? Two little ones and a ranch to get up and running. That poor man.”

  “Well, we . . . What?” She frowned at a smiling Alice.

  “Do you realize how often the word ‘we’ comes up in your conversation whenever you’re talking about Whip?” She loved to see the blush flood her friend’s face. Since the death of her parents, Heather’s smile was an infrequent visitor. Alice had worried about her friend and felt helpless. Now, not only had Whip Johnson pushed his way into her life, but two children had invaded it also.

  Heather cleared her throat and found something interesting to look at in the oilcloth-covered table. “We, uh, that is, Whip and I.” She lowered her voice until it was almost inaudible, “We’re going to petition the orphanage for another child.” She glanced up at Alice’s shocked look. “An older child,” as if that would explain everything.

  She was totally unprepared for Alice’s gales of laughter.

  “Okay, Alice, what’s so funny?”

  “You. You love this. Don’t deny it, Heather. The more wounded animals you can gather around you the better. Now, you’ve added wounded children to your big heart. Not one, two, but three. Oh.” She chuckled. “This is so sad, so very sad.” But her eyes and face showed happiness.

  “Alice, you’re my friend but you are not making one iota of sense. What is funny and what is sad?”

  “Oh, I shouldn’t tease you, Heather, but it’s so much fun. Rarely do I get one up on you, and don’t you see, I have to make the most of it.”

  “Alice—”

  “Okay, okay. I think it’s funny and sad both that Whip has no idea, no clue, as to what he’s done by throwing his rope around you. I’ll bet that poor man had his life all planned out. He’d build his ranch, add his stock, expand, and live happily ever after. Then along came Heather. It’s sad, don’t you see? He doesn’t even know or suspect his life as he knew it, and even more so as he planned it, will never be the same. Already, he doesn’t know if he’s coming or going. Two kids, now three. Tell me, Heather, I’ll bet he agreed to this, you coming to ask the orphanage for another kid. Didn’t he?”

  “Alice, I don’t see what—”

  “Didn’t he?”

  “Well.” Heather grinned.

  “I knew it. And he probably thanked you for thinking of it.”

  “Well, he didn’t exactly thank me, but he did thank me for sharing this load,” she said smugly. “But, Miss Alice, you’re wrong. Whip and I are just neighbors helping each other out.”

  “Mmmm, hmmm.”

  “Really, there isn’t anything else to ‘mmmm, hmmm’ about. Whip has hurt in him. It’s lodged deep. There’s no room for anything else. I don’t know his story, just town talk, but I know it’s enough to keep him from moving on. And me, well, Alice, I honestly have to admit I don’t know what I’m feeling. Whip is so . . . Whip is so,” she tried again, then finished, “special in many ways. I’m afraid I may be the one whose life may never be the same.” She glanced down at the little girl. “I’ll take you up on that offer of a bed. My arms are about to break. She may look like a mite, but she’s heavy. And, Alice, could you put something under her that won’t matter if it gets soaked. She wets indiscriminately I’ve heard. One other thing, we’ll have to check her often. She doesn’t talk.”

  “Oh.” Alice’s hand flew to her mouth, tears pooled in her eyes. “Oh, Heather. The poor little doll. What’s the matter with her?”

  “I don’t know. We only know what Toby told us. I suspect it’s her way of dealing with all the injustices life has thrown at her. I only pray that with love and care, her voice and desire to speak will come back. That’s why I’m hoping so hard the orphanage will have just the right girl to send us. Whip and I,” she said and smiled at how easily those three words came, “we need all the help we can get.”

  “Well, you’ve got me, that’s for sure. Let’s get started on our shopping.” Alice stopped halfway to the bed. “Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh!” She danced around, facing Heather. “Why didn’t I think of this before?”

  Heather ignored Alice’s outburst and gently laid Jesse on the bed. The child curled into a ball and happily stuck her thumb in her mouth, her comfort evident as Heather pulled a quilt over her. Then Heather straightened up and gave Alice a dubious look.

  “Okay. What? Alice, you’re beginning to worry me. First one thing and then another’s popped out of your mouth. Are you the real Alice I know, or are you an imposter hiding in my friend’s body?”

  The normally reticent woman was beaming from ear-to-ear as she reached out and grabbed Heather, hugging her while pulling her back to the kitchen table. “Sit down, I’ve got the solution to all your worries. I’ve got you and Whip’s answer to prayer. I’ve got the perfect—”

  “You’ve got two minutes to tell me what’s going on in that head of yours, that’s what you’ve got. Now, stop patting yourself on the back and for heaven’s sake, TELL ME!”

  “Two words, Heather. Two words.” Then at Heather’s scowl, she hurried on, “I can tell you in two words. Molly McVee.” She sat back in her chair, crossed her arms, and smiled at Heather, appearing much like a tabby cat that had eaten the cream.

  Heather gave a sigh and closed her eyes. “Molly McVee. Those are your two words? I’m sorry, Alice, Molly McVee apparently doesn’t conjure up knowledge and divine intervention with me like it does you. What is Molly McVee?”

  “Who is Molly McVee?” Alice corrected. “Who?” She hurried on. “I forget you probably don’t know Molly.” She gave Heather a questioning glance.

  Heather emphatically shook her head.

  “Molly is hard to describe, Heather.”

  “Try,” Heather said tersely.

  “I will, but it won’t do much good. You just have to meet her to understand.”

  Alice blew out her breath, took a sip of the cooling tea, and said, “Molly McVee is larger than life. She’s got a heart of gold. She and her husband, Jake, lived on a small farm miles from town. Lived,” she repeated musingly. “They scratched out a living by working night and day. Still, when they came to town you wouldn’t know they were facing any trials. Happiness beamed from the two of them. Heather, they made you want to stand close to them so to maybe absorb some of that sunlight. They’d stay in town for a few days getting supplies and invitations.”

  “Invitations?”

  “Yes. We all enjoyed their company. Molly especially enjoyed the invitations to dinner.” Alice smiled at a memory. “And if there was someone needing help, Molly and Jake were there.”

  “Alice, I don’t remember hearing about those two, or meeting them.”

  “You wouldn’t. It was all before you moved here. See, one day, Jake stepped on a rusty nail while patching his barn roof. He forgot about it until a few days later. Molly cleaned the sore, and tried to get Jake to let her soak it. He refused all doctoring and said it was only a small puncture, nothing to worry about.”

  “I know what’s coming next,” Heather said sadly.

  Alice nodded. “By the time Jake would admit it was more than a small puncture, it was too late. Molly got him on a train to Cheyenne, hoping a doctor there could do something. He died in Cheyenne. I think a part of Molly died there, too. Anyway, Molly didn’t come back. She sold the farm and went to Laramie to live with her sister. Then, about three mont
hs ago, Molly returned, smiling, but lost. She’s renting a place here in town from the bank. According to Molly, she missed all of us and woke up one morning realizing she needed to be back around people that knew her and her Jake.”

  Both women were quiet, absorbing the story.

  “I suspect,” Alice said, “Molly didn’t fit in her with her sister’s home and friends.”

  “Why?” Heather’s brow was wrinkled in puzzlement.

  “Well, uh, Molly is . . . Molly is Molly and that’s all I can say, Heather. You just have to meet her. But I know two things. Molly is lonely and has no purpose in her life. And, you and Whip need Molly.”

  “We need Molly?” There was apprehension in Heather’s voice.

  “Yes.”

  “We need Molly?” Heather asked quietly. “How do you figure?”

  “Don’t send that telegram, Heather. You and Whip don’t need another older child. You and Whip need a Molly McVee. Now, I’m not saying anything else until you meet her. I’ll tell you what. I’ll send word over to Molly and invite her to supper. She’ll come. You and I will go ahead as planned and get these two kids of Whip’s and yours”—She smiled teasingly, enjoying the two words—“some clothes. Then, if after supper you don’t agree with me that you need a Molly McVee, we’ll go over to the telegraph office and wire the orphanage.”

  Alice walked through the door, back into the store, leaving behind Heather with a name dancing a jig in her mind. Molly McVee, Molly McVee.

  Chapter 28

  Heather felt exhausted. She and Alice found several items that would work for Toby and Jesse. They had even managed to find a pair of the coveted Levi Strauss denim overalls for Toby, which would need to be cut off and hemmed. Heather could just imagine the look on the little boy’s face when he saw the pants every cowboy wanted. They were reputed to wear like iron and feeling the stiff material Heather had no doubt they would do just that. Mr. Strauss had come from Bavaria, Germany, a few years ago to open a dry goods store in San Francisco. The cloth was made from hemp. Copper rivets reinforced the points, the pocket corners, and at the base of the button fly. Heather had heard about these jeans and had read that there was even a patent on the rivets.

  There wasn’t as much ready wear for a little girl, so Heather had ordered several dresses from a local seamstress. She had even been bold enough to have the seamstress make a pair of pants for Jesse. The seamstress had tried to talk her out of it, stressing how inappropriate they would be for a girl to wear, but Heather had held her ground. Jesse was now a part of a working ranch, and Heather knew firsthand the value of pants.

  Alice had agreed to bring the finished dresses out later in the week. There had been a bolt of pink calico that Heather could hardly wait to see on the little blond-haired girl that was now awake and sitting in a corner of the kitchen, petting one of Alice’s cats.

  Jesse seemed content, but it was obvious this contentment lasted only as long as Heather was in sight. She watched Heather’s every move. She smiled when spoken to, but it was a smile that never reached her eyes. They remained dark blue orbs of sorrow.

  Heather had found a rag doll among the inventory in Alice’s store and snapped it up like a miner would a nugget of gold. The doll had a cotton cloth body, but the crowning glory was her hair, thick strands of yellow string trailed from under a bonnet. Her eyes were painted on a smiling face and were as blue as cornflowers. She hadn’t given the doll to Jesse, as much as she wanted to. It would come from Whip back at the Powder River ranch. A smile played around her mouth as she visualized the masculine man gentled by the small girl he was calling Mite.

  Heather glanced over at the child and knew Whip would be surprised when he saw how “Stinky” had been transformed by a new dress, shoes, and hair ribbons. Transformed on the outside, yes, but not on the inside.

  Not a word had been spoken as her small fingers ran the length of a hair ribbon and plucked at the lace peeking out from the small sleeves. Heather had seen her, when she thought no one was looking, rub her cheek against the soft flannel nightgown she still had folded across her lap. She hadn’t wanted Heather to put away any of her clothes, and there had been tears in her eyes until Heather managed to convince her they were hers to keep. Still, every so often Jesse would get up, walk over to the chair, and open up the cotton sack, peer inside, reach a hand in just to feel. Then, reassured, she would sit back down, only to check again and again throughout the evening.

  Heather sighed, wondering again what she had gotten herself into. It wasn’t that she regretted her offer of assistance. She was already attached to the children and knew she’d fight like a cornered wolverine if anyone threatened them harm. She meant every word that she had spoken to Whip. Together, they would manage to work the two children into their busy lives. But how? How could they possibly manage to look out after two active children and still run their ranches?

  A cool breeze of longing engulfed her. And the realization of its origin surprised her. She missed Whip. She missed his quiet wisdom, his strength, and his acceptance of her, and her many idiosyncrasies. She missed the sound of his voice, his soft drawl of, “Well now, Heather,” as he capitulated to a demand or gave in to an argument.

  There was current running between them that she resisted recognizing. She had no time in her life for anything but the Circle C if she wanted it to continue to grow and prosper. Still, she wondered if Whip felt the same current, or did men think of such things? She had no idea. She just knew she’d be glad to be on her way tomorrow, back to the Circle C, her home, back to the Powder River Ranch and Whip.

  I’m being foolish and romantic as a heroine in one of the dime novels. She laughed at herself and shook free from her musings, then walked over to the stove to give the potatoes a stir.

  Alice was putting the finishing touches on the table when the front door to the store flew open, hitting the wall with a bang. A voice of hurricane force boomed through the store snaking around counters and into the small kitchen. Heather jumped, Alice smiled, and Jesse scurried for Heather’s arms. The forgotten cat ran to hide behind the kitchen range.

  “Alice, you in the back and is that pot roast I smell? Dang if I didn’t know better I’d say you got one of your apple pies in the oven. Could it be, could it be?”

  Heather was sure the building shook with the questions.

  “I’m sure looking forward to one of your meals, Alice. Don’t rightly know though why you’re being so secretive over who’s joining us. Got me a beau held prisoner in that kitchen. Ha, ha, ha.” Laughter hit and bounced off the walls of the small room.

  Jesse buried her face in Heather’s chest.

  Two minutes later the voice and the person filled the kitchen. The room shrank, and Heather’s eyes widened. In the doorway stood a red-faced woman, arms akimbo as she nailed each person in the room with small, beady eyes.

  Heather gulped. No wonder Jesse was digging her small body into hers. To say the woman was large was an understatement. Mountainous would be more apt. Her upper arms were like small hams that came down to hands attached to wrists a large man wouldn’t be able to circle. Her fingers were thick, fat, and stubby. But it was her face that caught and held Heather’s attention. It had been scrubbed, dried, and scrubbed again. The phrase homely as homemade soap went through Heather’s mind, making her instantly feel ashamed of her uncharitable thoughts.

  Then Heather realized there was indeed something beautiful about Molly McVee. At first glance her eyes were small and beady, especially when squinting at someone or something. But when they opened wide, they brimmed with love and joy of life. Now they bounced from one person to another, and Heather knew they missed nothing. Her hair was thick in rowdy curls around her large face. It was as if the good Lord offered hair and eyes in way of apology for the trick he’d played on her with the hefty body and voice.

  Then a smile broke across her face and the loud, homely woman became beautiful.

  Heather smiled back and knew in that instant there
wouldn’t be a dark day with Molly McVee around.

  “Heather,” Alice broke in, “I’d like you to meet Molly McVee. Molly, Heather owns the—”

  “I know, the Circle C. Right?” She beamed the question at Heather.

  “Right.” Heather smiled back. “Do you know the Circle C?”

  “Sure do. Me and my Jake looked over that land several times, wishing it were ours. Course, we knew better than to buy it up when it came for sale.” She nodded her big head, curls bouncing.

  “Uh, why is that, Mrs. McVee?”

  “Molly,” she boomed. “I ain’t no Mrs., not even when I was a Mrs.” And she punctuated the statement with another infectious chuckle. “Course we knew not to buy it up. Don’t take no smarts so to speak of to know that. Ain’t hardly no water. Can’t do much in this country without water, honey.” The look she gave Heather was one of sympathetic commiseration. “’Course your father, being a city slicker and all, couldn’t be held accountable for making such a mistake. ‘Course not.” And again the head nodded emphasizing each word.

  “Molly,” the word croaked from Alice’s dry throat. This wasn’t going at all as she planned. “Heather has made a real ranch out of the Circle C.”

  “That so?”

  She narrowed her eyes, pinning Heather like a botanist pinning a beetle to a board.

  “It is,” Heather agreed. “And you’re right, Molly. My father knew little about ranching, but what he didn’t know, he made up for with good old American know how and hard work.”