The Hired Man

by Lynna Banning

  “Daniel, pour those eggs into Molly’s pan and stir them around.”

  “Aw, Ma, let Molly stir them around. I’m gettin’ too old for this cooking stuff. Besides, she’s a girl.”

  “You are most certainly not too old for ‘this cooking stuff.’ In this household everyone does their share.”

  “Sure can’t wait ’til I’m growed up,” he muttered.

  “Even ‘growed-ups’ help out!” his mother replied.

  All through the meal Cord tried to catch Mrs. Malloy’s eye, but she steadfastly refused to look at him. Daniel, on the other hand, gazed at him with intelligent blue eyes and peppered him with questions in between bites of scrambled eggs.

  “What’s your horse’s name?”

  “Sally.”

  “How old is she?”

  “About three years. Got her when she was just a filly.”

  “Can I ride her?”

  “No. She’s too much horse for a boy your age.”

  “Do you like venison jerky?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “What about chocolate cake?”

  “Well, sure, son, everybody likes chocolate cake. You gonna bake one?”

  “Nah. But I keep hopin’ my mama will bake one someday.”

  Mrs. Malloy said nothing at all. When the last slice of toast disappeared, Daniel and Molly scooped the dishes off the table into the dishpan in the sink, and Cord waited for orders from his employer.

  Five minutes went by while Mrs. Malloy sipped her coffee. Finally he cleared his throat and she looked up. She looked paler than ever this morning.

  “You want me to milk your cow, ma’am?”

  “No.”

  “How ’bout I fix your front gate?”

  “What?”

  “Your gate. Yesterday I accidentally knocked it down.”

  “Oh. Yes, do repair it.”

  “And the fence? Wood looks half-rotten, and—”

  “Of course.”

  “I’ll need to get lumber from the sawmill in town. You have a wagon?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Then there’s the barn roof and the corral and the front porch step and the rusted door screen and...” Hell, she wasn’t even listening.

  “Yes, fix it all, please. I have accounts with the merchants in town if you need...nails or...things.”

  “Kin I help him, Ma?” Daniel called from the sink.

  Molly splashed soapy water at her brother. “An’ me, too?”

  “We’ll see,” said Mrs. Malloy quietly.

  Cord picked up his hat from the hook near the back door. “Guess I’ll be going on into town, then. You want anything from the mercantile, ma’am?”

  “A newspaper. And some flour and a bag of coffee beans. Maybe one of chicken mash, too.”

  He studied her hands, cradling the china coffee cup. The knuckles were reddened. Daniel and Molly were making plenty of noise having a soapsuds-splashing contest, so he risked a question for her ears alone.

  “Miz Malloy, how long have you been on your own out here?”

  She glanced up at him, then quickly refocused on her coffee. “Seven years.”

  “Uh, is there a Mr. Malloy?”

  Her shoulders stiffened under the faded green calico. “There is. Or rather there was.”

  “What happened to him? The War?”

  “I assume so. He went off to fight and he never came home.”

  Cord’s first thought blazed through his mind like a fire arrow. What a damn fool. “If it’s not being too nosy, how have you managed all these years?”

  Her laugh surprised him. “Believe it or not, until six months ago I had a hired man.”

  It was his turn to laugh. “Sure hope you didn’t pay him much.”

  “No, I—Why do you ask?”

  He stuffed back a snort. “I can’t see that your hired man did a da—Darn thing around the place.”

  She set her cup down with a snick. “Most assuredly he did not,” she said, not meeting his eyes. “But I trusted him around my children.”

  He stared at her. “Ma’am, you don’t know me from Adam. How come you trust me around your children?”

  She met his gaze with calm gray eyes. “I don’t really know why, Mr. Winterman. I just do. Only once before have my instincts been wrong, and that had nothing to do with my children.”

  Eleanor rose and moved into the kitchen. “Children, stop that!” She rescued the suds-soaked dish towel, and when they rattled past her out the back door, she wrung it out and hung it on the rack by the stove. When she turned back, Mr. Winterman’s chair was empty.

  She bit her lip and watched her new hired man push carefully through the screen and walk out the front door with a slow, easy grace. She couldn’t tell him everything. She just couldn’t.

  Chapter Three

  The two kids tumbled down the porch steps after him. “Watch out for that loose board,” he cautioned.

  “What loose bo—?” Daniel’s shoe snagged on the rotted step and just as he was about to take a tumble Cord scooped him up under one arm.

  “That loose board.” He set the scrawny form on the ground. “Watch where you put your feet.”

  Cord headed for the barn, Molly tagging at his heels. “Where ya’ goin’, mister?”

  “Town.”

  “How come?”

  “Need some coffee and flour and chicken mash for your mother and some lumber to repair the porch step.” And the fence and the gate and the barn and...

  “Kin I come?” Daniel asked.

  “Maybe. If you tell me where your ma keeps your wagon and ask her permission.” The boy danced off, leaped over the loose porch step and slammed the screen door.

  Molly tugged his sleeve. “I’ll tell you where the wagon is. It’s out behind the barn. But I don’t wanna go to town,” she added.

  “You don’t? Why’s that?”

  “Cuz everybody there’s bigger’n me and...and Mr. Ness yells at me.”

  “How come?”

  The girl gazed up at him with huge blue eyes and he went down on one knee in front of her. “How come?” he repeated.

  “Cuz I knocked over his candy jar once. But I didn’t mean to, honest. It just fell over when I reached in to get my lemon drop.”

  Daniel came flying off the porch. “Ma says I can go!”

  The wagon was behind the barn, all right. It should have been chucked onto the trash heap. Cord had never seen a more rickety pile of boards and rusted wheels. Probably wouldn’t hold even a light load of lumber.

  In the barn he led out the gray gelding and lifted a saddle off the wall peg. When he blew off the dust he groaned. The leather was so dry it practically creaked.

  “Got any saddle soap, son?”

  Daniel sent him a blank look. “What’s that?”

  “Stuff you rub on leather things like saddles to keep them soft.”

  “How come?”

  “Because...” Oh, the hell with it. “Come on, son, let’s go to town.”

  The trip into Smoke River was one Cord wouldn’t soon forget. Daniel asked so many questions Cord’s throat got dry answering them. And one of them brought him up short.

  “You ever been in jail, mister?”

  Cord hesitated. “Yeah. A long time ago.”

  “What for?”

  “For...” He swallowed. “For being on the wrong side.” For getting shot in the leg in the field and then captured because he couldn’t run. It wasn’t something a young boy needed to know.

  And the rest of it, spending eight years in a Missouri prison, he didn’t want anyone to know, especially Eleanor Malloy. He was trying like hell to put that behind him, to stop drifting and fi
nd some purpose in life, but it was rough. Everywhere he went people wanted to know things about him. That was one reason he decided to go to California, so he could start over.

  He clenched his jaw. If he had his life to live over, he wouldn’t even carry a gun.

  Smoke River’s main street looked like a hundred small towns in the West except that it was clean and the stores looked spruced up and well-painted. Ness’s mercantile, between the barber shop and the feed store, stood out like a sore thumb with a shiny coat of pink paint. Pink? What next?

  Inside, the proprietor lounged behind the counter, bent over a newspaper. Cord read the upside-down headline.

  MONTANA GOLD RUSH!

  Suddenly the man looked up and scowled at him. “Need some help, mister?”

  Daniel disappeared down an aisle lined with men’s hats on one side and boots on the other. “Yeah,” Cord said. “I need coffee, flour, salt and a bag of chicken mash. And some lemon drops,” he added quietly.

  “You new in town? I’m the owner here. Name’s Carl Ness.”

  “Cordell Winterman. I’m working for Mrs. Malloy a couple of miles out of town.”

  The man’s shaggy eyebrows shot up. “Eleanor Malloy?”

  “Something surprising about that?”

  “Heck yes. Miss Eleanor, she, uh, she usually has her supplies delivered by one of the young men around town. Matter of fact, they have fistfights over who gets to do it. Leastways they did ’til Sheriff Rivera put a stop to it. You puttin’ these purchases on Miss Eleanor’s account?”

  Cord nodded. When Carl Ness studied him a mite too long, he couldn’t resist.

  “Pretty shade of pink on your storefront.”

  Ness’s face turned the same shade. “Blame my daughter Edith for that.” He gestured one aisle over, where two young women stood examining bolts of cloth. “Wants to be an artist, she says. Didn’t know what she’d done to the store ’til one morning all my customers came in laughing.”

  “Women can be unpredictable, all right,” Cord allowed.

  One of the young women looked up from a bolt of gingham and studied Cord for a moment. Quickly she detached herself from her companion and scooted up the aisle toward him. She was extremely pretty, with blond ringlets that bounced at every step and a yellow ruffle-encrusted dress.

  “Ooh, Mr. Ness,” she cooed. “Edith’s been telling me all about...” She gave Cord a flirty look. “Um...all about... Well, aren’t y’all going to introduce me to this handsome stranger?”

  The proprietor rolled his eyes. “Fanny Moreland, Cordell Winterman. There, now you’re introduced!” He went back to his newspaper.

  Miss Moreland giggled and sent Cord a dazzling smile. “Well, hello there! Fanny is short for Euphemia. Ah’m so very happy to meet you!” She slid her hand into his in a handshake of sorts. “Ah find this county is woefully short of good-looking gentlemen.”

  Cord resisted an impulse to roll his eyes back at the proprietor. “Pleased to meet you, Miss Moreland.” He disengaged his imprisoned hand. “Now I—”

  “Oh, please, you must call me Fanny.”

  “Okay.”

  “And ah may call you—?”

  “Like the man said, my name’s Cordell Winterman. Now, I—”

  “Oh, surely you’re not leavin’ already?”

  The mercantile owner made a choking sound.

  “Yep,” Cord said. “I sure am.” He stuffed a bag of lemon drops and one of caramels in his shirt pocket, hoisted the flour sack onto one shoulder and called out to Daniel. “Think you can wrestle that bag of coffee out to the wagon?”

  “Yessir.” The boy grinned, waved goodbye to the girl at Cord’s elbow and bolted out the door. Cord followed him.

  The owner came out with the bag of chicken mash over his shoulder, plopped it into the wagon bed and gave Cord a grin. “Kinda entertaining morning, I guess.”

  “Not too much, no,” Cord replied.

  Carl Ness chuckled all the way back into the mercantile.

  The next stop was the feed store, and then the sawmill, where once again Cord managed to raise the owner’s eyebrows. “Eleanor Malloy? Say, mister, you know I could have all this delivered.”

  “Nope. I brought a wagon.”

  “Miss Eleanor know about this?”

  “Yeah, she does. It’s her wagon.”

  On the way back to the farm, he fed Daniel caramels and plied him with questions. “How come your mama has all her deliveries made by somebody else? Didn’t your previous hired man bring the wagon into town?”

  “Nah. Isaiah was too old to drive it. Besides, people like helpin’ Ma out.”

  “Men, you mean?”

  “Yeah. Lots of ’em, ever since I was little. Even Sandy, the sheriff’s deputy. The only one who doesn’t bring her stuff is Doc.”

  “Doc?”

  “Doc Dougherty.”

  That brought Cord’s own eyebrows up a notch. “Your ma’s been real ill, huh?”

  “Yeah. She had pneumonia for a long time. She was real sick. I had to learn how to milk Bessie, and Molly and I cooked all the meals and took supper up to Ma every night.”

  “Is she well now? She looks kinda pale.”

  “Doc says she’ll be fine, but she’s gonna be weak an’ tired for a real long time. I’m sure glad you’re here, Mr. Winterman. I can’t hardly chop enough wood by myself.”

  “How old are you, Daniel?”

  “Nine. Molly’s just seven, and Ma won’t let her touch the ax, so I have to do it all by myself.”

  The oddest sensation crawled into Cord’s chest. Here he was, out here on the Oregon frontier with no home and no money, trying to stay alive on an apple farm with not one thing that was working right. God had some sense of humor.

  “You gonna stay with us, mister?”

  “Yeah, I think so. For a while, anyway.” The warm feeling in his chest got bigger. Somebody needed him. Or at least needed his help. It made him feel...wanted. Worthwhile.

  * * *

  Eleanor glanced up as the wagon rumbled into the yard, a new screen door riding on top of a load of lumber. Oh, my heavens, she couldn’t afford all this, not even after the fall apple harvest came in and she had money in the bank. Her hired hand must have intimidated Ike Bruhn at the sawmill. Which wasn’t surprising, she thought as she watched him set the brake and climb down from the bench. Her hired man was tall and muscular; Ike Bruhn had been over-plump for years.

  Mr. Winterman headed for the house with a bag of something—flour? Coffee beans?—over one shoulder. Daniel struggled to keep up with those long legs.

  Her heart gave a queer little thump. Maybe if her hired man was around she would no longer have to make conversation with those too-eager young men from town, not until she was completely well and could fetch her own supplies.

  Danny burst through the screen door. “Ma, guess what? Mr. Ness painted the mercantile pink!”

  “Pink? Why on earth would he do that?”

  “Actually, Miz Malloy,” said Mr. Winterman at Danny’s heels, “Ness claims his daughter Edith painted it. You want these coffee beans in the pantry?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  Danny stopped short in front of her. “You all right, Ma? You look kinda funny.”

  “Yes, I—Well, I tried to milk Bessie and I guess I overdid it.”

  Cord stopped short. “I milked her before I went into town this morning, ma’am, even though you said not to. Didn’t you see the milk pail? I set it inside the back door.”

  “I... Well, I...” How could she ever confess what she’d done?

  He waited, a frown creasing his tan forehead.

  “I, um, I accidentally kicked over the bucket. I had to mop it all up, and then I decided to milk her again, but first I had
to catch her and...” She closed her eyes in embarrassment. Only an ignorant city girl would try to milk a cow twice in one morning, and she was certainly not a city girl. Ignorant, maybe, but not a city girl. And only a clumsy idiot would kick over a pail of milk.

  Molly came to her rescue by stomping her little feet down the stairs. “Mama made me go to my room!” she announced in an aggrieved tone.

  “How come?” her brother asked.

  She stared at the floor. “Dunno.”

  The hired man and the burlap bag of coffee beans disappeared into the pantry, and then he tramped back out through the screen door. When he returned he had a big white sack of flour over his shoulder. But this time the screen door twisted off its one remaining hinge and hung sideways. Without breaking his stride, he yanked it all the way off and sailed it off the front porch.

  Molly and Danny watched, wide-eyed. “Wow,” her son breathed.

  Suddenly Eleanor was bone-tired. She made an effort to breathe normally, in and out, like Doc said. In and out, slowly. She couldn’t manage all of this, the milk pail, the mop, the cow, Molly’s incessant questions, the screen door...she couldn’t manage any of it. She closed her eyes. She wanted to scream, but she didn’t have the energy.

  She felt a hand on her shoulder and she snapped her lids open.

  Cord stood beside her, dusting flour off his jeans. “Got any whiskey?”

  “In the pantry,” she said wearily. “Top shelf.” She shut her eyes again and concentrated on her breathing.

  “Ma’am?” He stood in front of her, holding out a cup of coffee. She hesitated, then lifted it out of his hand and downed a big swallow. Her throat convulsed as something hot burned its way down her throat. Tears came to her eyes.

  “Guess you don’t drink much liquor,” he observed.

  “I don’t drink liquor at all,” she rasped. She risked a dainty sip of the brew this time. “It tastes awful, like varnish.”

  He chuckled. “You drink a lot of varnish?”

  She laughed in spite of herself—in spite of her exhaustion, in spite of everything. She breathed in the scent of sweat and sunshine and caramel. “Mr. Wint—”

  “Name’s Cordell.”

  “Cordell—”

  “Cord,” he corrected. At that moment Danny streaked out through the front door, stopping to inspect the space where the ruined screen had been. Molly tagged at his heels.