Taming Eliza Jane (Gardiner, Texas Book 1)

by Shannon Stacey

  Lucy Barnes was the center of attention—as usual—waving a piece of paper around while her husband sat on a bench fanning himself. What was unusual were the tears running down her cheeks.

  “She’s gone!” the woman was shouting at the sheriff, and Eliza Jane was shocked to see she didn’t have her Bible in hand. Something terrible indeed must have happened.

  “Calm down,” Adam told her. “What do you mean she’s gone?”

  “She was upset earlier about fainting, so she went home to lie down. When I went to check on her a few minutes ago, I found this note. She’s run off to marry some cowboy named Joey Keezer!”

  Eliza Jane’s gasp of surprise was lost amidst all the others. Beth Ann was gone?

  “You’d better go after them right now, Sheriff,” Lucy ordered, waving the paper under his nose. “You go get my daughter and bring her back.”

  Her earlier disagreement with Will slid to the back of her mind as Eliza Jane pondered Adam Caldwell’s situation. Having Beth Ann married to somebody else would make his life immeasurably easier. But as the sheriff, did he have a duty to go after the runaways? She wasn’t a child, after all, but a woman old enough to marry.

  “Well, I reckon Guapo’s pretty tuckered after winning the race earlier,” Adam said slowly. “It might be best to head out at first light.”

  “Guapo?” Eliza Jane repeated, unable to help herself. “You named your horse handsome?”

  His black eyes swung to focus on her. “I did. You see some reason why he shouldn’t be called that?”

  “I…um…he just didn’t look Spanish to me.”

  “You!” Lucy Barnes shouted at Eliza Jane now that she’d gone and drawn attention to herself. “You’re behind this, aren’t you?”

  Every head turned in her direction, and Eliza Jane was struck speechless by the accusation. While she supported independence and free thinking in women, she would never counsel a young girl to run off and elope with a cowboy. Especially the daughter of Lucy Barnes. Good Lord, that was just asking for a heaping plate of misery.

  “I had nothing to do with this,” she finally managed to say, wondering if her hesitation made her look guilty in the eyes of others. Perhaps a little more… “I was under the impression Beth Ann and the sheriff here were practically betrothed and I certainly wouldn’t stay in the way of his blessed matrimony.”

  Adam and Will both snorted, so she assumed that was a little too much. “Beth Ann has never confided in me, Mrs. Barnes. That’s all I can say.”

  With the wind taken out of her sails on that regard, Lucy turned her attention back to the sheriff. “You go and fetch her back here right now.”

  He took the paper from her and gave it a quick read. “Beth Ann ain’t a little girl, you know. She’s old enough to go off and get married.”

  She stepped right up to him, though, being short, that meant she had to crane her head way back. “I don’t think she run off with him. I think he took her and you’d best go get her back.”

  “Oh, for the love of God, shut up, woman!” Brent Barnes yelled, and the whole town fell silent.

  She turned on him like a snarling wolverine. “How dare you speak to me like that, with our own daughter taken away from us and in danger?”

  “She wasn’t taken, and you know it. That boy and her have been courtin’ since she was sixteen and you’re just too stubborn to admit it. The only reason our daughter is gone right now is because it’s the only way she could get a lick of happiness.”

  Eliza Jane wanted to cheer, but everybody was still silent, no doubt waiting to see what the sheriff would do if Lucy Barnes started beating her husband to death in the middle of the town social.

  “I did not raise that girl to marry a good-for-nothing cowboy!”

  “I was a good-for-nothing file clerk when we got married, Lucy. Do you even remember back then—back when we were young and in love and you didn’t feel a need to be somebody?

  “This isn’t about my happiness, Brent Barnes,” she shouted back.

  “Well, it certainly isn’t about Beth Ann’s.” He turned to Adam. “You go on and enjoy the festivities, Sheriff. I reckon I’m still the man of this family and my daughter has my blessing.”

  He turned and walked away, but the crowd could hear her henpecking at him all the way up the street.

  As people went back to what they’d been doing, she turned to find Will looking at her. “I had nothing to do with any of this!”

  “I know you didn’t. Now come and dance with me and I’ll try to behave myself.”

  13

  Two days later, Eliza Jane was pondering whether or not to squander some of her hard-earned wages on a sour pickle when a short, leather-skinned woman with a straggly knot of hair and work-hardened hands marched over to her. It was hard to tell, but Eliza Jane thought the woman might have a wad of tobacco tucked into her cheek.

  “You that women’s libber what told my daughters how not to have so many young’uns?”

  Eliza Jane sighed. She was exhausted and not in the mood to be accosted while pondering the wooden pickle barrel. “I am.”

  The other woman smiled, confirming her chewing tobacco suspicions. “Good. I had ten young’uns, one right after the other. Two died in birthin’ and I lost three to sickness along the way.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Eliza Jane said, her own woes fading into insignificance in the face of another’s hardship.

  “I played the hand God dealt me,” the woman said without a trace of self-pity. “If my girls get to play a better hand on account of having an ace or two up their sleeves, then I’m all for that.”

  She wasn’t sure she’d ever heard her cause described as cheating the Lord at poker before, but Eliza Jane understood the sentiment. “Making women’s lives a little easier is all I try to do.”

  “Well, you’re not a bad woman, no matter what them other folks say.” And then she walked out, leaving Eliza Jane to stare after her.

  She couldn’t possibly buy a pickle now.

  The money she earned was supposed to be getting her back to Philadelphia, but she’d grown complacent. Instead of writing letters and reaching out to acquaintances in order to procure the means necessary to further her campaign, she was still in Gardiner, Texas, bookkeeping for prostitutes and carrying on a clandestine affair with the town doctor.

  Making the lives of a few women easier wasn’t enough. There were countless women in towns just like Gardiner waiting for somebody to show them how to make their world a slightly better place. And she was failing them.

  Suddenly, she couldn’t take a full breath and she pressed a hand to her chest. Doubt clouded her mind to the point she didn’t think she could think straight.

  Doing what she thought was right meant leaving Gardiner…and Will. And then there was Sadie and her baby. Would she marry Dan O’Brien? Would Lucy Barnes ever get Adam Caldwell backed far enough into a corner he’d marry Beth Ann? There were so many people in Gardiner she’d hate to leave behind.

  But especially Will. It was hard for her to imagine her life without him—his strength, his laugh. His touch. The pain of leaving behind him threatened to be even be worse than the pain she’d suffered when her husband cast her aside—she’d never loved Augustus.

  Maybe it was time to preserve the money she had and earn some more so she could head out of town before she and Will became even more attached to each other. Then he could find one of those perfect doctor’s wives he was talking about and she could continue her work.

  He thought he wanted to marry her, but she could see it would never work out. She simply wasn’t what he needed.

  Why did doing the right thing always have to be so painful?

  “Mrs. Carter, you all right?” Tom Dunbarton asked from behind the counter.

  Belatedly realizing she was making a spectacle of herself in the Mercantile, Eliza Jane managed a wobbly smile. “I need a job.”

  “Thought you were working over to the livery? Not that I think you should
be, of course.”

  “I am. I need a second job—more money. Do you need any help here in the store?”

  He looked at her like she was plumb crazy, which she more than likely was. “I been thinkin’ on hiring a young man to—”

  “I can do anything a young man can do.”

  “Is that right?”

  With the day’s general ailments behind him, Will had just propped his feet up and cracked open a recent medical journal when his door flew open damn near hard enough to rip it off the hinges.

  “Do you see this?” Adam Caldwell demanded, holding up a bullet. “This one’s got Eliza Jane Carter’s name all over it, whether you’re bouncing the bedsprings with her or not.”

  If the sheriff was looking for him to be shocked, he’d be sorely disappointed. The woman had been damn near begging to be shot since she’d arrived, and the sheriff damn near begging to do the shooting. He did look particularly vexed this evening, though. And Will had thought Adam was growing accustomed to Eliza Jane.

  “What’s she gone and done now?”

  “It seems the idiot men folk of this town decided she could have a job at the Mercantile if she proved she could take her drink like a man.”

  Will let his feet slide to the floor with a thump. “I don’t want to hear this, do I?”

  “You’d better hear it, or you’ll be hearing the gunshot. She’s in the saloon right now, drinkin’ down the liquor like she’s at a goddamn tea party.”

  “Shit.”

  “I’m giving you a ten minute head start on account of us being friends.”

  Will didn’t even grab his hat on the way out the door. The damn fool woman was going to be the death of him.

  He heard the laughter and shouts of encouragement well before he stepped into the dimly lit saloon. Eliza Jane stood at the bar, surrounded by a crowd of men. Judging by her bright eyes and flushed cheeks, they’d been at this for a while before the sheriff caught wind of the goings on.

  “Doc!” she yelled, raising her shot glass in a none-too-steady salute.

  “Doc!” the crowd chorused.

  “What in blazes are you doing?” he demanded.

  It was Tom Dunbarton—a little pink-cheeked himself—who answered. “I’m gonna give Eliza Jane here a job if she can drink me under the table like a man.”

  “Well, if that ain’t the most damn fool notion I’ve ever heard, I’ll eat my hat.”

  “You aren’t wearing it,” Eliza Jane pointed out helpfully, waving her glass in what she probably thought was his general direction.

  “Time for you to leave, sweetheart,” Will said in his best deputy voice. No doubt Adam would be along very shortly.

  “Ooh, are you going to give me another one of your special examinations?”

  Every head in the saloon swiveled in his direction, but she was too busy giggling to notice.

  “Eliza Jane,” he warned.

  “Doc likes to sit in his fancy leather chair and have me ride him like a horse,” she cheerfully informed at least half the male population of Gardiner. “Giddy up, Doc!”

  “Giddy up, Doc!” the crowd shouted.

  Eliza Jane giggled, belched and then passed out cold on the floor.

  Aw, hell.

  Eliza Jane didn’t remember getting kicked in the head by a mule recently, but she couldn’t think of any other way to explain the excruciating pain.

  She knew with a certainty if she opened her eyes or tried to move she was going to lose whatever remained in her sour stomach.

  “You awake, darlin’?”

  “No,” she whispered with cotton-dry lips, wishing Will didn’t have to shout quite so loud. Cracking one eye just enough to get a glimpse, she realized she was in the narrow bed he kept for patients.

  “Let me guess—pounding head, upset stomach, dry mouth? Think you’re dying?”

  “Yes.” Maybe he’d cure her of it.

  “Good. Maybe you’ll think twice before you do something so foolheaded again.”

  Up until that moment Eliza Jane had thought doctors were supposed to be compassionate, but this one’s bedside manner was sorely lacking.

  The front door to the office opened and then closed with a bang that nearly rattled the window loose. Eliza Jane moaned aloud and prayed for death.

  “Good morning, Doc! Patient awake yet?” Sheriff Caldwell yelled, and there was a cheerful note to his voice that told her he knew exactly how she was suffering.

  “She just woke up, as a matter of fact. Was thinking I’d send over to the restaurant for some runny scrambled eggs and maybe some warm milk.”

  Her stomach rolled and she gagged, but she kept down whatever evil concoction was burning up her stomach.

  “I hate you, Will Martinson,” she forced out in a croaky voice.

  “Now that’s funny,” the sheriff said—shouted, “because just last night you were telling every man in the saloon how you ride the doc here like a horse.”

  Oh…good lord. Moving very slowly and gingerly, Eliza jane grasped the thin blanket Will must have given her and pulled it up over her head. With any luck people would mistake her for dead.

  Glimpses of hazy memories returned. Giddy up, Doc. She’d actually said that right before things got really blurry—then dark. Poor Will.

  She’d have to sneak out of Gardiner in the middle of the night. She could hide under the blanket until dark, then steal a horse and ride like the wind. Assuming she could move by then.

  “What I want to know, Miss Carter,” the sheriff continued, “is if you wore spurs.”

  His laughter sliced through her head and Eliza Jane whimpered.

  “Goddammit, Adam,” she heard Will say. “Are you here for any reason besides tormenting me?”

  “You? Hell, I thought I was tormenting that women’s libber of yours. I gotta say, she is one liberated woman.”

  “I may not be able to take you in a bare-knuckle brawl, but you’re going to be damn sorry you said that next time you need doctoring.”

  “Now don’t go getting up on your high horse, Doc.”

  “Adam, you—”

  “Just sit tall in the saddle and it’ll pass.”

  “Stop.”

  “You need to be a man about this or folks will start wondering if you’ve been gelded.”

  There was a scuffle that echoed through Eliza Jane’s skull as if her head was a burlap bag and her brains were pots and pans.

  “Dammit, cut it out, Will! Jesus, you’ve sure got a burr under your saddle blanket this morning.”

  There was more scuffling and male laughter, and Eliza Jane thought about lowering the blanket to see what was going on, but that would require movement. It would also let the light back in.

  Finally they settled down and turned to the real business at hand. Eliza Jane tried to hear what they were saying over the awful pounding in her head.

  “Lucy Barnes heard all about last night and she’s on the warpath,” she heard Adam tell Will. “Word is she’s declared you unfit to treat anything but diseased swine, and anybody offering your woman a job will be boycotted by the Bible Brigade. And she’s convinced Dan O’Brien the wrath of God will descend and turn his hotel into a pile of scorched lumber if Eliza Jane spends another night under his roof.”

  She heard Will mutter a string of words she couldn’t repeat, even in her own mind. But they did seem to sum up what she was feeling.

  “Maybe she could stay at the Coop,” Will then suggested, which was even worse than the cussing in her estimation.

  Eliza Jane genuinely liked Sadie and the other chickens, but taking up residence in a whorehouse was close to the bottom of the list of things she’d hoped to accomplish in her life.

  “Dan and I had a little talk this morning,” Adam said, and Eliza Jane pondered how busy everybody had been while she lay dying in the doctor’s office. “And it seems Dan’s more afraid of me than he is of God.”

  “Well, there ain’t no stories in the Bible about God shooting a man just f
or calling his horse ugly.”

  “He lived. And my horse ain’t ugly.” There was a short pause. “Of course, as horseflesh goes, he ain’t nearly as pretty as you.”

  When the sheriff’s laughter finally died down, Will called out, “You still suffering, darlin’?”

  She unglued her tongue from the roof of her mouth well enough to say she was.

  “Good.”

  There was a little more conversation she couldn’t quite make out, and then the sheriff left as boisterously as he’d arrived. She hated Adam Caldwell with a passion, whether he’d scared Dan O’Brien into keeping her or not.

  “Why did you do such a thing?” There was no trace of the jovial ease with which he’d spoken to the sheriff.

  She pulled the blanket down and opened her eyes as far as a squint. “I need another job. I need to make more money.”

  “So you can leave me.”

  His voice was so flat it almost hurt more than her head. “Will, I…you knew I wasn’t staying forever.”

  “You know, Adam told me a while back you’d either stay here for me or you wouldn’t. I guess he was right. A life with me is either enough for you or it’s not, Eliza Jane.”

  Tears leaked from her puffy eyes, spilling over her cheeks, and she didn’t have the strength to wipe them away. “It’s not about you. It’s not even about me. I need to make a difference.”

  “You make a difference here,” he snapped, and his tone echoed through her head like a thunderstorm. “You make a difference to the chickens and to Melinda Barnes and a whole lot of other people. And me. I don’t want you to go.”

  Why did he have to do this now—now when her head was screaming and her whole body hurt and she couldn’t even think straight? “It’s not enough.”

  He was quiet for a moment, and when he spoke again his voice was so sad she could feel her heart break. “I have to ride out to one of the ranches and check on some cowboys laid up with a fever. You think on it, and when I get back I’ll give you the money to get whereever it is you think you’ll be happy.”

  And then he was gone. Eliza Jane pulled the blanket back up over her head and cried. It hurt to cry and the sobbing wracked her sore body, but it couldn’t even come close to the pain she was feeling on the inside.