by Loree Lough
Bess reached up to hug her younger brother. “You’re big and strong as a man twice your age,” she said, laughing softly, “but you don’t behave a day over fourteen.”
His twin, Mark, playfully shoved Matthew aside. “Maybe that’s ‘cause he ain’t a day over fourteen…least not ‘til tomorrow,” he said, getting a sisterly hug of his own. “Will you put a candle in the center of our birthday pie, and wish us a hundred more happy birthdays?”
“Don’t I always?” She gave the boys a motherly shove. “Now, get in there and eat, the both of you, before your food gets cold, and let me worry about the birthday party…if there’s going to be a party at all….”
Micah got to his feet. “Enough tomfoolery. It’s time we said the blessing and let these hungry men eat. These boys have a big day ahead of ‘em tomorrow.”
Mark and Matthew obediently took their seats as Bess stood in the doorway, lowered her head, and folded her hands.
“Dear Lord above,” Micah began, “we thank You for our countless blessings, for our health and home and hearth. We especially thank You for our dear, sweet Bess, here, who made a tasty feast of this bounty You have so generously provided. We thank You for providing us with strong, honest men again this year, men who’ll help us tend and harvest our crops. In Your most holy name, Amen.”
Micah introduced his daughter to each man at the table, then pulled out the chair nearest his. “Come, sit and eat with us, Bess.”
“Now, Pa, there’ll be time enough for me to eat later,” she said matter-of-factly.
Like a mama hen, Bess walked among the hands, each slouched eagerly over steaming bowls of stew. “Is it good, boys? Don’t be shy now, there’s plenty more!”
“Ain’t you gonna set at the table with us, ma’am?” the man named Jeremiah asked.
The only chair left was the one beside her father’s…and directly across from Chance Walker’s. A glance was enough to tell her he’d realized the same thing, for his mustachioed mouth slanted in a wry grin.
“We’d be right pleased if you’d join us,” he drawled. And without taking his eyes from hers, added, “Ain’t that right, boys?”
The men stopped talking and chewing and reaching for food long enough to nod and voice their agreement. Matt, true to his nature, said, “But before you get all good and comfy, sister dear, would you mind refillin’ the biscuit basket?”
“We could use more ‘taters, too,” his twin put in.
Chance stood, ignoring the dull squeal of his chair as it grazed the polished pine-planked floor. In an instant, he was beside her, one big hand pressed lightly to the small of her back. “Y’all just settle down there, Miss Bess. I’ll fetch the biscuits and the ‘taters for you,” he said, pulling out her chair. Then, with what looked suspiciously like a sly wink, he added, “Is it all right if I call you Miss Bess?”
She forced herself to look away from his tantalizing smile and focused on her father. “‘Miss Bess’ indeed!” she repeated, grinning as she put her hand on Micah’s shoulder. “Tell him the rules, Pa.”
Micah cleared his throat and blotted his bearded face on a napkin. “We don’t stand on ceremony around here, Chance. While you’re at Foggy Bottom, you’re family. I’m Micah. That’s Matt and Mark. And this is…”
“…just. Plain. Bess,” she finished.
Chance leaned close and whispered into her ear, “Nothing plain about you, if you don’t mind my sayin’.”
The nearness of him and the boldness of his statement caused her to inhale sharply. It amazed her that even after the long ride from Baltimore to Freeland, he smelled like fresh hay and bath soap. His compliment echoed in her mind. She’d always seen herself as quite ordinary, especially when compared to her mother’s dark, natural beauty. But the way Chance looked at her made Bess feel anything but plain.
Not knowing what else to do, Bess dashed into the kitchen to fetch the biscuits and potatoes. When she returned, Chance was still standing where she’d left him, beside the empty chair. He took the bowls from her, put them unceremoniously on the table, and returned to his own seat. “So, will you be joining us, Just Plain Bess?” His words, his gentle smile, even his voice belied his flirtatious attitude.
For a reason she couldn’t explain, her heart fluttered in response. “I…I think I’d best get busy scrubbing those pots and pans instead,” she said, heading back into the kitchen. “If you gentlemen need anything,” she added over her shoulder, “just whistle.”
Before she even reached the kitchen pump, Bess heard the sweet, soft imitation of a songbird. Grinning, she wondered which of her ornery brothers had done it.
“Say, Chance,” one of the men said, “when you’re finished chirpin’, how ‘bout passing the peas?” As she listened to the chorus of male laughter, Bess pumped water into the dishpan. Oh, you’re going to have to keep an eye on this one, she warned herself, adding hot water from the kettle.
A mighty close eye….
***
Hours later, Chance lay back on his bunk, trying to remember when he’d last felt as contented. The bedsheets beneath him smelled like sunshine and spring breezes. Beside his cot, a three-drawer bureau. He’d only needed the top one to stow his gear. A man on the run had to travel light, for he never knew when he’d be hitting the road in a hurry.
Smiling, he patted his full belly. Yes, his stay at Foggy Bottom would be pleasant, all right…though six months was a long time to stay in one place. Did he dare risk it?
He stared into the darkness for a long time, hands clasped under his head, thinking about Bess. She was beautiful, with a waist so tiny he could likely encircled it with his hands, and feet so small he wondered how they held her upright. The top of her head barely reached his shoulder, even in the high-heeled boots that had peeked out from beneath her lacy petticoats as she’d scampered up the porch steps.
Would her hair feel as soft as it looked? Frowning, he tried to come up with a word that described the luxurious color. Chestnuts, he decided after a moment.
And those eyes, big and round as a fawn’s. Chance didn’t think he’d ever seen longer lashes. The sadness in her eyes confused him, though; Bess had a rich daddy, brothers who adored her, a home that was more mansion than house. What on God’s green earth does she have to be sad about?
Surely she’d never felt the hot sting of the buckle end of a belt, or spent days locked up in a dark root cellar. Certainly Micah had ever forced her outside on a cold, windy night to teach her to appreciate the roof over her head, and Chance didn’t suppose she’d ever been forced to memorize Bible verses when she got the wrong answer on an arithmetic problem, or stand in front of the entire congregation and admit she’d gone fishing rather than attend mid-week services. She probably didn’t know what it was like to sit at a food-laden table and not be allowed to eat because she’d nibbled at the crust of a pie without first asking permission….
She hadn’t experienced any of those things because she’d grown up in the loving presence of a good daddy. Micah, Chance reasoned, had been everything his own father had been…good and decent and rock-solid. If the prairie fire hadn’t taken his ma and pa, life would have turned out differently for Walker Atwood…alias Chance Walker.
He’d worked for enough bosses during his ten years on the run to know a good one from a bad one, and Micah was a good one. If only he hadn’t said that confounded prayer before they ate….
Everything about the man, from his folded hands and bowed head to his tight-shut eyes, reminded Chance of his Uncle Josh, deacon of the King’s Way Church.
Josh Atwood, his father’s only living relative, had taken Chance in after the fire. He’d lived a happy, sheltered life to that point in his life. Then, suddenly and mercilessly, the gentle, loving lessons of his parents were replaced with the harsh, sometimes brutal ‘disciplinary’ methods of his uncle.
One month to the day after he buried his parents, Chance had been in the cemetery, standing between their tombstones when Uncle Josh joined
him. “W.C.,” he’d said, “starting right now, you’re going to begin earning your keep around here. There’ll be no more molly-coddling. ‘Spare the rod an’ spoil the child,’ the Good Book says,” declared his uncle, raising the Bible high above his head.
“Are you gonna hit me with the rod…or your Bible?” he’d asked, grinning.
His uncle failed to appreciate young W.C.‘s humor, and the boy endured the first of many beatings that day. Chance couldn’t help but wonder how his pa and uncle, both raised by the same mama and papa, could have become such different men. His father had been so loving, so tender and kind, while Josh had been….
Whipping and chastising his nephew didn’t appear to satisfy the uncle. Ridicule and shame, it seemed, were as important in the rearing of a child as food and water. And Chance endured it, mostly because he wanted to believe it when his uncle said, “I’m doing these things because I care about you, boy.”
He’d stopped believing that, once and for all, when Josh testified at the murder trial. “Heard him arguing with Horace that very afternoon,” Josh had said. “Heard him tell Pickett if he ever caught him threatening a woman again, he’d break his fat red neck.” Leaving the witness stand, he’d stood beside Chance and, with tears in his eyes and a sob in his throat, said “May the Good Lord forgive you, W.C.”
He hadn’t been anywhere near Lubbock when the murder was committed, but who were the good people of Lubbock to believe…the angry young man who rarely attended church, or the good deacon who’d provided a home for his dead brother’s orphaned son?
During his years with Uncle Josh, he sometimes had vivid dreams…memories of his parents’ caring ministrations. Waking was heartbreaking, because then he was forced to admit that never again would he experience their brand of love. The images were fiction, no truer than the stories written by that Dickens fellow.
The Beckleys seemed an awful lot like Josh Atwood, praising God for clean water and hot food, thanking the Almighty for bringing the hired hands safely from Baltimore to Foggy Bottom. If life hadn’t taught him anything else, it had taught him this: When something appeared too good to be true, it was. And he had the scars up and down his back—put there by the good Deacon Atwood—to prove it.
Chance rolled onto his side and decided that here at Foggy Bottom, he’d earn his keep, just as he’d done on every ranch and farm between Lubbock and Freeland these ten, lonely years. He’d exchange idle talk with his bunkmates, with Matt and Mark Beckley. He’d show Micah the respect and courtesy due him as owner of the spread.
Exchanging niceties with lovely little Bess would be the easiest part of his job. May as well enjoy your stay for as long as it lasts, he told himself, grinning slightly.
He had very little to call his own. Family and home were mere words to him. Why, he’d wasn’t even free to use his given name! But Chance had his life, and he had his freedom—such as it was since the U.S. Marshalls tacked pictures of him on every lamp post, fence rail, and wall throughout the southwest. “WANTED,” the posters said, “DEAD OR ALIVE: W. C. ATWOOD.”
He’d traveled about as far from Lubbock, Texas in ten years as a man could go. And when things started looking too cozy in Freeland, Maryland, he’d head still farther east. Right out to the Atlantic Ocean, then north, all the way up into Canada!
The Rangers’ authority stopped at the Texas border, but U.S. Marshalls could chase a wanted man from Maine to California if they had a mind to. And oh, they’d had a mind to! Chance deliberately let his trail lead them southwest, from Old Horse Road beside that battered, overturned jail wagon, into Mexico, praying he’d get lucky, and the marshals would believe he’d holed up in Tijuana with a pretty senorita.
He had not been lucky.
Two years ago in Kansas, the relentless marshals almost caught him. If not for the outlaw gang that hid him in their shack on the outskirts of town….
Chance shut his eyes tight, hoping to block the horrible memories of running for his life, and when he did, Bess’s beautiful face came into view. Her easy, honest smile. That lilting, lyrical voice. Those sad, doe-eyes…. She was everything he’d ever learned about angels, and then some.
His ‘too good to be true’ rule gonged in his mind.
W.C. Atwood—alias Chance Walker—sighed deeply. He’d have to be careful here at Foggy Bottom. Very careful. He’d had women. Plenty of them. But he’d kept them at an emotional arm’s length, because gut instinct told him that the surest way to jeopardize his freedom was to go and fall in love.
Chapter Two
Moonlight, slanting down from the heavens, reflected bright white from the corral fence. The black loam of the well-trod earth contrasted with the silvery coats of six horses, motionless, save the vapors of their soft, puffing breaths.
Bess didn’t know how long she’d been sitting there, staring at them through her latched window. She only knew that this perch high above Foggy Bottom was one of the few places on earth where she felt truly happy. On nights like this, when sleep eluded her, this window drew her near. Of all the well-appointed rooms in the manor house, she liked this one best, because everything in it reminded her of her mother.
Her mama had sewn the ruffled white curtains that hung at the many-paned windows. She’d crocheted the lovely fringe that trimmed the canopy above Bess’s bed, and embroidered flower baskets from colorful satiny threads on the fluffy white pillows plumped against the window seat. Even the paintings, hung by wide pink satin ribbons from ornate black hooks near the ceiling, bore her mother’s signature. And in the chiffonnier hung now-too-small dresses and skirts, jackets and shirts of every style and rainbow hue that Mary had designed and sewn for her little girl. The lovely frocks might be handed down to her own daughter one day…if Bess ever changed her mind about marrying.
If she married—and what chance was there of that!—Bess would do things differently from other brides, right down to the sort of reception she’d organize. No pomp and circumstance for Bess Beckley! Her informally-garbed guests would gather in the shady back yard to watch and listen as the bride and groom exchanged vows beneath the grape arbor. She’d wear her mother’s wedding dress, and the ring Bess would wear for the rest of her life would be the one Micah had slipped onto Mary’s finger on their special day.
String quartet? Absolutely not! Fiddlers, instead. A banjo, a mandolin, a jug blower and a juice harp to make music that would set folks’ toes to tapping.
She’d serve none of those fancy finger sandwiches so favored by Baltimore’s elite. Fried chicken and a spit-roasted pig would feed her hungry guests. Her mother would have loved a celebration like that, Bess knew.
Sighing heavily, she wondered what her mama would have thought about the handsome stranger who arrived today. A romantic by nature, Mary, too, would have been mesmerized by his soft southern drawl. She’d have hidden a grin behind her dainty hand and whispered, “Oh, Bess, honey, isn’t he a fine-looking fellow!” And when the giggles faded, Mary’s dark brows would have risen sympathetically as she commented on the sadness in his ice-blue eyes…and speculated on what might have caused it.
Bess snuggled deeper into the overstuffed backrest of her window seat and hugged a fat white pillow, her fingertips lightly stroking the tiny knots that made up the candle-wicked bouquet. By now, her mother would have discovered the cause of the big stranger’s woes, for she had such a way with people! Bess envied her ability to identify and soothe the pain in others.
It had been that aspect of her gentle nature that cost Mary her life. Bess leaned her forehead against the cool window glass and closed her eyes as the memory roll over her like a wave at high tide….
On a cool March day, much like this one had been, Everett Thomas had sent his son to fetch Mary, the local midwife. She’d been baking bread, and a dozen loaves of spongy dough were waiting for their turn in the oven when the boy burst into the kitchen, teary-eyed and panting. “M-m-ma’s baby is comin’, m-m-Miss m-m-Mary, y-y-you gotta come, quick!” Mary had laid a flou
r-dusted palm against his fear-flushed cheek and kissed his forehead. “We’ll stop at the barn on our way out,” she told him, removing her frilly white apron and cooking cap, “and let Mr. Beckley know that a miracle is about to happen at your house.” Her touch had been enough, Bess recalled, to ease the boy’s fright. He was smiling by the time he and Mary headed for the barn, hand in hand.
At Mary’s funeral, the Thomas clan talked about it in excruciating detail: Three times that night, Everett had said, Lizbeth would have died, if not for Mary; nearly twelve hours after arriving at the Thomas house, Bess’s mother gently placed a howling ten pound, four ounce baby boy in his mama’s waiting, weary arms. Neighborly concern inspired Everett to invite Mary to stay the night. But she declined the friendly offer, saying in her playfully polite way that she’d rather brave the perils of the night than listen to newborn Daniel exercise his powerful little lungs for even one minute longer.
Birthing babies often took countless hours, so when Mary didn’t return to Foggy Bottom before dark, her family hadn’t given it a thought. First thing next morning, Micah headed out to the Thomas’s. As usual, his plan was to hitch his horse to the back of her buckboard, the way he often did when a woman’s labor kept her away from home all night, and drive the wagon so that his exhausted wife could doze, head resting on his shoulder.
But halfway between Foggy Bottom and the Thomas farm, Micah had found her, lying still and pale alongside Beckleysville Road. Later, he told his only daughter how he’d dismounted, scooped her up, and gently lay her in the blanketed wagon bottom. All the way to the doctor’s office, he’d said, he refused to believe that her cold, clammy skin and partially opened eyes were proof of the unthinkable.
“I never should have let her hitch that horse to her wagon,” Micah whimpered at the funeral. He’d been trying for weeks to break the beast, but it was a spirited steed. “I told her he wasn’t ready for such work just yet….” Still, he’d let Mary convince him they couldn’t spare the other horses for her mission of mercy at the neighbors’ that day. She’d reminded him she was an able horsewoman, and that the short ride to Lizbeth’s was the best use they could make of the newly-acquired animal. If he’d been more forceful….
