Loving the Horseman

by Davalynn Spencer

  The boy pointed upstream. “See that light there in the trees? That there’s our camp.”

  “Aren’t you a little far from home for this time of night?”

  “Yessir, but like I said, I was huntin’ a bush.”

  A woman’s voice called through the dark, quietly at first, then with greater urgency.

  “You’d better answer,” Caleb said.

  “Comin’, Ma!”

  The boy’s voice cracked and Caleb dropped his head and smiled. He poked the fire with a broken branch and sparks licked the sky. “So, Springer, before you head back, I have two questions for you. First, tell me why they call you Springer.”

  The boy grinned and stuck his thumbs in his suspenders. “That’s ‘cause I can jump higher ‘n anybody.”

  Life should be so simple.

  “Fair enough. Next question. Why were you sneaking up on my horses?”

  Springer hung his head, and his hands dropped to his sides. “I just wanted to pet ‘em. We had to get rid of our horses, and I miss ‘em somethin’ fierce.”

  “Benjamin Springer Smith! I’m gonna tan your hide if you don’t get your tail over here right now!”

  Caleb laughed. “Off with you, Benjamin Springer Smith, or you won’t have a hide left to tan the next time.”

  “Yessir. Thank you, sir.”

  The boy crashed through the cottonwoods like a razorback on the run. A high-pitched yelp signaled that his arrival wasn’t as quick as his ma expected.

  Caleb chuckled, stashed the revolver, and poked the fire again. Embers scattered like Missouri fireflies, and the wood snapped and cracked in surrender to the flames.

  The sound punctured his chest, reopened a wound. He shoved the heel of his hand against his breastbone, winded by the unexpected pain.

  Once he’d surrendered to a searing flame. Twice, really. Answered a call that proved fruitless and offered his soul to a woman who proved faithless. Both failings twisted into a noose, and he wanted nothing but to rid himself of it.

  Inexperience had cost him his life’s endeavors—his small pastorate and the affection of the woman he loved. Too young to earn many converts, he thought he’d at least turned Miss Mollie Sullivan’s.

  He’d turned her, all right. All the way into the arms of the wealthiest man in his congregation. Who also happened to sit on the elders’ board.

  He grunted and stabbed at the fire again, refusing to let it burn out. He dug for the brightest ember and held the stick against it until the probing wood flamed into a torch.

  A similar torch had gutted him, left him ruined for both the ministry and matrimony. He refused to stand in the pulpit, avoiding Miss Sullivan’s eyes while he preached God’s love and forgiveness. Nor could he call a meeting of the board and explain his sudden departure.

  He simply traded his frock coat and collar for a duster and broad brim and tacked a note to the chapel door.

  Not exactly Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses.

  A sneer lifted his lip.

  He had wanted to smash the elder’s smirking, self-righteous face. But then he’d be no better than the thieving scoundrel himself. And what would that tell his parishioners? Turn the first cheek so the parson could punch the second?

  He shoved the charred branch into the dirt, stretched out on his bedroll, and folded his arms across his chest. For three months he’d argued with himself about returning to St. Joe and owning up. But he’d already said his piece in the note on the door. Told those gentlefolk they needed a more experienced preacher. Left them the name of his seminary professor.

  And if he went back and knocked out one of his congregants with anything other than preacherly conviction, he’d have to apologize all over again. Better leave well enough alone.

  He rubbed his chin, scratched at the stubble.

  Tomorrow he’d start forgetting. Forget Mollie, the ministry, and everything familiar, including the three people he’d met since riding into Cañon City—an apologetic hotel clerk who didn’t have a room for him, a beautiful woman with a broom, and a youngster camping on the river with his family. Two of the three he wouldn’t mind seeing again, but that likely wouldn’t happen.

  Setting his boots aside, he slipped from his clothes and into the shallow water, lowering himself with a harsh gasp as the current wrapped around him. Cold but cleaner, he quickly dressed, stirred the fire, and crawled into his bedroll.

  The familiar mix of wood smoke, leather, and dried horse sweat swirled above him, and he stared at the only thing there was to see. A starry band swept across the sky, sparkling a thousand times brighter than it did in St. Joseph. A glittering contrast against the black vault.

  Like the shimmer he’d seen in the broom lady’s lovely eyes.

  Tomorrow. He’d forget all of them tomorrow when he started his new life.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Annie heard the plop before the smell penetrated the rough wall. Her nose wrinkled and she buried her face in her pillow. Never in all her seventeen years had she dreamed she’d wake up in a barn.

  A horse whinnied and pawed, impatient for breakfast. Annie’s stomach returned the complaint, but the stench of the fresh deposit warred with her hunger pangs. She pulled the quilt over her head and burrowed into the blankets on her straw-filled pallet.

  The Overland Stage had safely carried her and her father across the wide prairie last month, and they’d shared primitive accommodations along the way. But the Planter’s House in Denver City and their week-long stay there had led her to believe the rugged Rockies weren’t so rugged after all.

  Hah. That was Denver, this was not.

  What would her sister say if she could see Annie curled up in the Cañon City Livery? A vision of Edna’s tightly seamed lips and disapproving fan roused Annie’s ire, and the imagined words shot heat through her veins.

  I told you so.

  Annie tossed the quilts back and reached for the clothing she’d draped over the foot of her pallet. After pulling her arms inside her cotton gown, she traded out the stockings and drawers she’d slept in but kept her chemise. She tugged on a flannel petticoat, topped it with two skirts, then exchanged her gown for a long-sleeved shirt and buttoned on her high-top shoes. She loosened the long braid that hung down her back, and with dexterity born of practice, brushed through the thick strands and deftly twisted them into a knot and pinned it in place. Not that she counted on it to stay. By noon it would be hugging the base of her neck.

  She smoothed her quilt top, tucked in the edges all around, and prayed that no mice worried their way into her bed looking for warmth.

  A shiver scurried along her spine.

  What were their chances of surviving the winter? How would she and her father not freeze to death?

  Needing relief, she had no time for fearful thoughts and pulled her heavy cloak about her shoulders for a trip to the necessary.

  Since she was always up before her father, she quietly stepped around the curtain they’d hung to separate their pallets and stopped short. He sat at the pallet’s edge, galluses drooping off his hunched shoulders, head in his hands.

  “Daddy?” she whispered. “Are you all right?”

  He raised his head, and worry rimmed his moist eyes. “We are not all right, Annie.” He spread his hands, palms up. “Look where we are. We sleep in a barn. I’ve brought my beautiful young daughter all the way to the Rocky Mountains to live in a barn.”

  His head sank to his hands again.

  His words burned into the doubts she’d so carefully tucked away, and unladylike thoughts of their new landlord—one Jedediah Cooper—sparked her resolve. “Oh, Daddy, we’re going to be fine.” She knelt beside him and clasped his arm.

  He pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his eyes. “We should have stayed in Omaha. My sister and yours were right.”

  Annie’s hackles rose at the idea of Edna being right—again. “No, they were not. They simply don’t have the adventurous streak that you and I have.” She forced he
r lips into a smile and smoothed his uncombed hair off his forehead. “We’ll talk to Mr. Cooper again about giving us the back room in the store. It’s just whiskey he’s got in there, and he can move it to his saloon. I’ll even help.”

  Her father’s eyes latched onto hers and his bushy brows lurched together. “You will not. You don’t go near that place of his.” He stuffed the handkerchief in his pocket and shook his head. “If we sold the mare, we’d have money against a loan and could build a small cabin. And we’d save on her feed too. She eats as much as the other three horses combined.”

  Annie stood and brushed off her skirt. It wasn’t completely true. Her beloved mare, Nell, didn’t eat quite that much. Maybe just as much as two of their other horses, but that wasn’t the point.

  She buttoned her heart against her father’s remark and her cloak against the cold. “I’m going out back and then to the mercantile. You banked the fire last night, so it won’t take me long to get the place warmed up.” She bent to kiss his snowy head. “That potbellied stove is a blessing. I’ll have coffee going in no time.”

  Her father slapped his hands on his knees and threw back his shoulders. “You’ve got spunk, Annie girl. Just like your mama.”

  His words picked at an old scab. The one that always opened anew when he mentioned the mother she had never known.

  “I’ll feed Nell too, Daddy.”

  He huffed, wagged his head, and grunted as he pushed to his feet.

  Annie opened the stall door and gathered her skirts against her as she pulled it closed. The mare whinnied and hung her massive head over the railing across the alleyway.

  “Hungry again, are you, Nell?” Annie scooped an armload of loose hay from a pile and tossed it over the gate. She brushed off her skirt again and picked stubborn pieces from her cloak.

  “Take it slow, girl.” Reaching over the gate, she stroked the thick yellow neck and hushed her voice to a whisper. “Daddy’s going to sell you like the others if you don’t quit eating so much.”

  Nell’s ears flicked forward and back as if taking due note.

  They’d needed all four draft horses to haul their supplies south from Denver City because Daddy refused to drive mules or pay someone else to do so. But after renting and stocking the mercantile, he’d sold off the other three horses, their harnesses, and the heavy freight wagon. Everything excess had to go, he’d said. She’d fought dearly to keep the big yellow mare.

  She checked over her shoulder for unlikely onlookers, then rubbed her backside, remembering how it ached during the jolting ride to Cañon City. Much worse than during the dust-choked miles on the Overland Stage from Leavenworth, though mercifully shorter.

  She hurried to the necessary behind the livery, then to the boardwalk, where few people appeared so early—merchants or carpenters or stone masons preparing for the day. At the mercantile door she slid the key in the lock and entered beneath the brass bell’s cheerful welcome. The scent of coffee beans, tobacco, and oiled leather soothed her nerves and she drew in a slow, deep breath. Their modest store held everything a person could want—a person with a soul brave enough to head west, that is.

  Fine flour and sugar, pearly oats and smooth dried beans, barrels of sour pickles and pale crackers. Bright dress cloth and drab canvas, blue-speckled dishware and cast-iron skillets. Black leather boots and shoes and a few saddles. Strong soaps, wooden toys, a precious sampling of books, and notions like needles and threads and buttons and pins—better than a drummer’s wagon.

  Peeling off her cloak, she surveyed the cramped, full-to-the-brim space. Aunt Harriet would tell her she had best watch her step, for “pride goeth before destruction.” Annie sniffed at the imagined scolding. Of course she was proud. She was useful here, working beside her father, as if what she did mattered. They met people’s needs, and that was important. Much more important than sitting on Aunt Harriet’s front porch waiting for one of Edna’s many beaus to give her a second glance.

  To pick her up as second best.

  Disappointment clawed at Annie’s ribcage, finding her wanting in comparison to her sister. Her unruly hair never stayed put like Edna’s flaxen tresses, and her thin chest only half filled Edna’s ruffled bodices. But Daddy had called her beautiful this morning. She smiled at his tenderness, though she knew she would never be as fetching as her sister.

  So be it.

  Her jaw tightened with determination. It was better this way, that she didn’t turn the head of every man who saw her. Her father needed help, and she refused to sit by and wait for some man to come along and make her life better when she could do that herself.

  She marched to the stove that anchored the long narrow room, bunched her skirt to protect her hand, and opened the door. With a poker she scraped at the ash pile and uncovered a glowing red eye. Perfect. She added a few chunks from the nearby coal bucket and adjusted the damper.

  “Lord, you promised you’d meet our needs.” She rubbed her hands together and held them open above the squat stove, careful not to let her skirts touch its iron belly. “And you know Daddy and I need a warmer place to stay until we can afford to build a house.”

  Guilt pointed a grimy finger. Some folks had it worse. How many were camped by the river in canvas tents, cooking over open fires? And hadn’t one man died when his gun slipped to a rock and discharged, killing him instantly?

  Frustrated that she couldn’t build a house with her own two hands, she squirmed inwardly at the doubt behind her pleading prayer.

  She left the warm spot and ground fresh coffee, then filled a blue enamel pot with water and set it on the stove. Satisfied with the fire, she closed the damper and arranged several chairs around a braided rug before the stove.

  At least she and Daddy could get warm and be out of the crisp fall air. The acknowledgement settled like a thick quilt against her soul, reminding her that small blessings were still blessings.

  “Thank you, Lord,” she whispered, chastened.

  Since her father had agreed to handle the mail for Cañon City, at least a couple hundred people trailed through the mercantile each week. Not everyone had family to write to them, and a few, she’d learned, chose not to have folks know where they were.

  Housing a post office, such as it was, her father’s store had become a gathering place for several of the town’s more respectable residents, as well as a few who weren’t—like Jedediah Cooper, their landlord who owned nearly the entire block and acted like he owned his renters too.

  She shuddered at the memory of his whiskey-colored gaze.

  With everything in order, she hung her wrap on the back wall that separated the mercantile from the small storeroom. Pulling an apron over her head, she dislodged her hair in the process and peeked around the empty door frame.

  Anger threatened to get the better of her. That old miser Cooper should have rented them the whole building. What were eight more feet, give or take?

  She tied the apron strings and quickly repinned her rebellious strands. Combs. She’d order more combs and hairpins the next chance she got. Other women must have the same problem, and combs might sell along with the gloves and hats they kept on hand.

  The bell chirped.

  “Smells good in here, Annie.”

  Relief rushed in with the return of her father’s usual cheerfulness. She offered another prayer of thanks and set about greasing a cast-iron skillet. “Coffee’s almost ready. Come have a seat and I’ll make some pan biscuits.”

  He pegged his coat and donned an apron. “If the freighters stop in today, I’ll mention the mare again. Then you could have a cabin with a real cookstove. Maybe an iron bed too.”

  Annie swallowed against the dread of losing Nell as she floured the sideboard and rolled out the dough.

  The bell rang again, and Duke Deacon and his son, Joseph, stomped in. Annie’s heart plopped like a doughy wad. Of course the day’s first customers had to be freighters.

  By the time she had the biscuits on the stove, the men had taken
chairs and coffee. Annie set to making a fresh pot, praying the freighters wouldn’t want her Nell.

  “Gonna be a long, hard winter, Whitaker,” the elder driver said. Blue eyes shone like lights from his weathered face, and his black hair lay slick and flat against his skull. “If there’s somethin’ you’ll be needin’ ‘fore spring, better order it. I’ll be freightin’ ‘tween storms, so won’t be near as regular as it is now. Fact, this is my last trip to Denver City for a spell. When I get back, I’ll be stayin’ put for a couple weeks.”

  Her father leaned against a cracker barrel, nursing his own tin cup. “Tell me how you figure on a hard winter.”

  “Skunk cabbage,” Joseph piped, a shorter, smoother version of his coal-haired father. “Higher ‘n it’s been in a long time, ain’t that so, Pa.”

  Duke nodded and sipped. “That’s right. Surprised to see it too. Don’t usually get that much snow down here ‘long the Arkansas. Not like falls up on the Platte.”

  Annie caught her father’s laughing eyes above his coffee cup. He put no stock in such folklore about cabbage and snowfall and hard winters, and he was more inclined to refer to the almanac he kept under the front counter. Not that he’d say so to his new customers.

  The Deacons left with a dozen biscuits in their bellies and an order for ladies’ combs and hairpins. All the cabbage talk must have driven Nell from her father’s mind, and Annie sighed with relief when the freighters climbed onto their wagon without having bought her beautiful mare.

  Strange, the things she’d thanked the Lord for lately.

  Perspiring in the cramped space, now that the stove was hot, she rolled her sleeves and wiped her neck with her apron hem. No time to cool herself with a brief walk outdoors. More customers were sure to come.

  She plopped a fresh batch of dough onto the floured side-board sending up a dusty cloud. Rolled and cut and amply greased, a second batch browned on the pot-belly within minutes.

  “Believe I’ll buy this tin o’ molasses to go with those fine biscuits you’ve got there.” Her father stood behind the front counter dusting the tin top with his shirt sleeve. Then he penciled the item on a notepad where he listed their personal purchases.