Jed threw back his head and let out a yell, one she’d heard Ben imitate many times. Lifting her gaze skyward, she smiled. The little part of her heart where Ben’s memory lay was full to overflowing with love, and now the rest of it would be filled as well.
AN INCONVENIENT
GAMBLE
by Michelle Ule
Dedication
For my girls:
Carolyn, Angela, Alisha
and
Ashley, Shayna, and Emily
Chapter 1
August 1867
Jenny Duncan pulled her father’s shotgun off the wall and hoped she’d not have to use it. A stranger on horseback ambled toward the house from the dirt road to town. He wore an army slouch hat and carried a full load in his saddlebags. A long shape, maybe a rifle, stuck out behind him as he gazed about the property.
There had been too much death lately; she couldn’t risk appearing vulnerable on the isolated farm, even if she were as strong and tall as a man. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a coal-black crow light on the split-rail fence to ruffle feathers and caw. Jenny tightened her grip.
The horseman stopped the handsome chestnut mare and tugged a canteen off the saddle horn. He took a long pull, wiping his plaid shirtsleeve across his mouth when he finished.
Jenny waited by the front door, glancing toward the south pasture where her teenage brothers were supposed to be working the ripening summer hay. Tom’s no-good yellow dog, Sal, lay with her head on her paws, just watching. Curious, that; they didn’t get many visitors five miles outside of Nechesville, Texas. Jenny nudged her. “Go get the boys.”
The lazy mutt flicked her ears. Her husband used to say his dogs didn’t need any training, they knew instinctively what to do. Jenny blew out her cheeks. Maybe how to hunt but not how to protect the house, much less her. Where were her brothers?
The stranger rode forward into the yard, and Jenny stepped out on the porch, shotgun to her shoulder. “Don’t come any closer.”
The hat’s brim shaded his face, and she couldn’t get a good look at him. He put up his hands. “I’m a surveyor, traveling with Colonel J. S. Hanks. Put down your weapon.”
“I don’t see Jimmie Hanks anywhere.” She nudged the dog. “Git.”
Sal looked up with tired eyes and dragged herself down the two porch steps and lifted her nose to the air. Jenny smelled the sweet clover from the nearby pasture but doubted the dog savored the same scent.
“Come here, pup,” the man said in a deep voice.
The traitor dog picked up her floppy paws and jogged to the stranger. The man slipped off his horse and squatted to rub her belly. The horse whinnied.
“Don’t come any closer.” Jenny steadied the gun against her body.
“Nice place you got here. Are you Mrs. Duncan? Could you maybe put your shotgun down? It makes me feel a mite nervous.” He faced Sal, but his voice carried in a clear commanding way.
“How do you know my name?”
“Is your husband home? He’ll remember me. I’m Charles Moss, surveyor. Colonel Hanks stopped down the road and told me to come ahead and get set up. We’re surveying out here.”
“What for?”
He pushed up his hat and scrutinized her. A young man with clear blue eyes and a stubble of dark beard, his face bore a thick scar twisting from temple to jaw. She’d seen a wound like that before. Bayonet cut, most likely from the war.
“It’s my job,” he said.
“I know how Jimmie Hanks works. He rides all over the county picking out the best property and when he gets the chance, snatches it up at the courthouse door.”
Moss shrugged. “I don’t know anything about that.”
The late August sun bore down on the farmyard, and the hot air magnified the scent of cut hay. Weariness swept over Jenny. She tried to remain calm, but the end of the shotgun shook.
Moss saw it, too. “Why don’t you put the gun down? Even your dog likes me. I’m not going to harm you.”
“I don’t trust dogs or soldiers,” she said.
He flinched. “I’m not a soldier.”
“Maybe not now, but you were.”
Moss scratched Sal’s belly harder. “The war’s over.”
“Which side were you on?” she demanded.
He shook his head. “There’s no good side in a war.”
Jenny agreed. The war had stripped the land of young men, sent them far away and returned them broken like Tom or scarred like this man before her. Life was still turned topsy-turvy with no end in sight to normal.
Moss stood up and squinted toward the road. “I don’t know where the colonel is. He said he needed to check on something.”
“Where?”
“Down the road near a stand of trees. He tied off his horse and hiked up. He didn’t say why.”
The graves. He’d seen them and stopped to count. Maybe she should tell Moss the truth and scare him away.
“Tom will vouch for me,” the ex-soldier said. “He’s the reason I’m here.”
Jenny nearly dropped the gun. “What do you mean?”
“I met him up North. He said I should come out to Anderson County and make a new life after the war was over. Beautiful country, all right, with these rolling hills and piney woods. Is your husband here?”
She slid the shotgun to her side. “Where did you meet Tom?”
Charles Moss took a step forward and met her eye. “Fort Delaware, ma’am. We were in the prison camp together.”
A wave of nausea hit, and she trembled. Jenny shut her eyes to fight it, to remain in control. She dropped the gun, plunged off the porch, and lost her breakfast corn-bread in the bushes. Her face flamed with heat, and her body ached from the cramping. She sputtered when cold water doused her head.
Moss had turned his canteen upside down over her. “It was a bad place, ma’am,” he said. “That’s how I usually feel about it myself.”
Jenny put out her hand to lean against the porch pole. Her mouth tasted foul, and her knees could scarcely keep her upright.
“Can I get you a chair, ma’am, or maybe more water?”
Jenny lowered herself to the porch. “There’s a tin cup at the well. Water, please.”
She rinsed and spit, not caring if it wasn’t ladylike. She finished the cup and handed it to Moss. “More, please.” Jenny leaned forward, shading her eyes from the noontime glare. Exhaustion poured over her; she’d been tired for weeks. If Moss had planned anything, she’d be too weak to fight.
“You okay, Jenny?” Another deep voice, this one with the rich slur of Tennessee, spoke from far away.
Colonel J. S. Hanks rode up on the splendid stud stallion her father once owned. Jenny sighed. She had nothing suitable to serve them for dinner as country hospitality required. “Yes, sir, just feeling a little peaked.”
“I haven’t been this way lately, and with school out for the summer, we haven’t seen your brothers. Tom or your pa around?”
“You just saw them, sir.”
The fine leather saddle creaked as he shifted his weight. She could smell the sweat on his horse, and her stomach turned again.
“How’s that?” he asked.
Jenny jerked her head in Charles Moss’s direction. “He told me where you were. That’s Tom and Pa lying up there in those new graves with Ma. Yellow fever got ’em.”
Chapter 2
Charles stepped away. He’d been too close to a vomiting woman who had a burning hot forehead. He knew the symptoms of the deadly disease.
The colonel, however, got off his horse and handed the reins to Charles. “Tie him off.” He removed his hat. “My condolences, Jenny. How long ago did they pass?”
She waved her hand wearily. “A week, ten days, maybe. I wrote the date in the Bible under Ma and the boys’ dates.” She made as if to get up, but the colonel indicated she should stay put.
“Where are Caleb and Micah?”
The pale woman pointed to the south. “They’re trying to work the hay. St
orm may be coming, and we need to get it in.” All three scanned the western horizon, the direction weather came. Charles saw tall white billowy clouds, but nothing appeared dangerous. Of course, he’d not been in the county very long.
“Are they well?” Colonel Hanks asked. “How about Tom’s mother?”
She nodded. “We feared we might get sick, too, but didn’t.” She sniffed. “Pa wouldn’t let us stay, told us to take Ma Duncan and return in three days. We left ’em here and slept in the old dugout. They were dead when we came home.”
“I’m sorry,” Colonel Hanks said. “Your pa was a fine man. Tom fought hard in the war.”
The woman stared at him.
“I’m sure Tom would’ve found peace in time and settled down.”
Charles watched her reaction. Her pretty face blushed, and he saw she wanted to believe the colonel. She pushed back tangled mahogany curls with a large, strong hand. “Thank you for your kind words.”
“You want the preacher out here to pray over the graves?” Hanks asked. “Why didn’t you send notice? Rachel will be troubled you didn’t let her know.”
“None of us have been feeling too good.” The tall woman leaned against the porch rail.
A curlew bird swooped from the rooftop toward the thick woods on the other side of the road. The colonel watched it fly then indicated Charles. “This here’s Charles Moss from Lexington, Kentucky. He’s helping me survey and will teach at the Stovall Academy come fall.”
Charles stepped forward. “Sorry to hear about your loss, ma’am.”
“Jenny Duncan.” She introduced herself in a murmur. “Thank you for your sympathy.”
The colonel put his hat on and waved at the neat farmyard. A fenced-in pasture contained several yearlings and their sturdy dams. A roomy wooden barn separated the farmyard from the pastureland. “Jenny’s pa and her husband ran this farm. How many horses have you got?”
“Two dozen head,” Jenny whispered. “Do you need a horse?”
“Not right now. I tell you what, we don’t need to complete the survey work today.” Colonel Hanks slipped off his black jacket and loosened the string tie around his throat. He tossed them across his saddle. “We’ll help the boys bring in the hay. You’re right, a storm’s brewing.”
Charles’s jaw dropped. Sure, he knew all about feeding horses, but he hadn’t harvested hay in years. “We’re not dressed for hard labor, sir.”
Hanks’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not willing to help a widow lady and some orphans? I thought you were a Christian man.”
“Mr. Moss is right,” Jenny said. “This isn’t suitable work for you, Colonel.”
“I can’t think of any better,” Hanks said.
She frowned. “I can offer you Tom and Pa’s old clothes. I don’t know if they’d fit so well, but you wouldn’t damage yours.”
Charles didn’t fancy wearing a dead man’s clothes and particularly not Tom Duncan’s. “I’ll be fine. Where are we headed?”
“They’re in the southern fields, at the bend in the river,” Jenny said.
The colonel tipped his hat. “We’ll be on our way.”
“I’ll take you.” Jenny toted the gun into the wood-framed house and returned wearing a black sunbonnet.
Charles secured his horse then followed them through a split-rail fence into tall grass. The dog, Sal, trotted after him.
Swallows and wrens sped through the grass heads and whisked overhead in smooth movements. Scores of butterflies fluttered in the warm sun, and they surprised several black-tailed jackrabbits.
“Mighty fine property your parents settled,” Hanks said. “Your pa loved this land.”
The woman straightened her lips and a line appeared between her eyebrows. “Yes. Land grants to Pa.”
“I remember.”
The property included large stands of woods to the hilly east, and fenced pastureland dotted with ponds and weeping willows from the road to the wide river. Two young men and a small woman worked with rakes beside a laden wagon several acres away. “Your pa and older brothers worked hard to clear this land by the water.”
“He dreamed of horses,” Jenny said. “This farm meant everything to him.”
When they reached the wagon, Colonel Hanks removed his hat and murmured condolences to Tom’s mother. Her white hair stuck out from the sides of the faded red sunbonnet, and her rheumy blue eyes filled with tears. She seized Colonel Hanks’s left arm. “I’ve lost ’em all now. My family is gone and dead. What’ll become of me stuck here on this farm with these children? I’m lost, I say, lost. We’re doomed.”
“Come now, madam, all is not lost. Your daughter-in-law is here, and the Lord will not allow you to be tested beyond what you can endure.”
Charles noted Jenny didn’t look happy with the colonel’s answer.
“You took my boy, Colonel, and I never got him back until after the war. I never wanted my Tom to marry into this family and make me live so far from town. Now fever took him. What’ll I do now?”
“He thought you would be safer out here,” Jenny murmured.
Colonel Hanks drew himself tall and removed her hand from his arm. “Tom signed on with me of his own choice. He was a man. He made his own decisions.”
“But you came home,” the woman pointed her finger at the colonel. “My boy sat in that prison camp and up to near died. And look where he ended up!” Mrs. Duncan jerked her scowl in Jenny’s direction.
Sal barked, and Mrs. Duncan backed away.
“We’re here to help today. The future’s in God’s hands.” Colonel Hanks beckoned to the boys. Charles saw they were mere teenagers. He glanced at the young widow. How would she manage if the old woman and these two boys were all she had?
“Do you have any hired hands?” he asked.
Jenny shook her head.
The colonel rolled up his shirtsleeves. “The older boy here, he’s Caleb. How old are you now?”
“I’m fifteen come September.” The russet-haired boy’s gawky elbows and legs seemed to be growing while Charles gazed at him. “Micah, he’s thirteen.”
The brown-headed boy patted the dog, only looking at the adults through the corner of his eyes. He still carried baby fat, though it would melt away if he worked the fields the rest of the summer.
Colonel Hanks examined them in the manner of a commanding officer. “This is Charles Moss. He’ll be your teacher at the Stovall Academy. You boys coming to school in the fall?”
They looked at their sister.
“If I can manage the fees,” Jenny finally said.
“I’ll see you at school,” Colonel Hanks told them. “Let’s get to work. Mr. Moss and I will help you today.” Hanks gestured for Charles to take the scythe, and he picked up a hay rake.
Charles hadn”t used a scythe in a long time, but the sweeping cut of the blade at the grass returned easily. He quickly adapted to the rhythm of sweep, step, sweep, step. Once the dog got too close and he nearly took off her ear, but a cry from Caleb saved her.
The boy raked after him. “You serve in the war, Mr. Moss? Is that where you got the scar?”
“Yes.”
“Who with?”
“Second Kentucky. I was one of Morgan’s Raiders.” He waited for the reaction. Even from this Texas teenager, it came in a breathless rush.
“Did you ride with him? With the Thunderbolt of the Confederacy? You knew him?”
“I rode in his cavalry.” Charles felt the pull of unused muscles across his back and shoulders. He continued his sweep, walking slowly and deliberately in a straight path so the hay fell smooth about him, thus making Caleb’s raking easier.
“What was Morgan like?” Caleb asked.
“Brigadier General John Hunt Morgan was a charismatic, well-meaning officer,” Charles said. “He was a good leader, a lot like your Colonel Hanks. Everyone liked him.”
The boy frowned. “Colonel Hanks? He only lasted a year in the war.”
“But he came home,” Charles said. “Mo
rgan died during the war and left a pregnant wife to raise a baby by herself.”
Caleb picked up a stone and tossed it away. Sal sat up to watch it fly but didn’t follow. “That would be tough, raising a baby by yourself without a husband.”
Charles agreed. “How will your family manage without your father?”
The boy shook his head. “Jenny’ll figure something out; she always does. Maybe I won’t go to school.”
So much for Charles teaching them. “What would your parents want?”
“Ma’s been dead eight years, and now Pa’s gone.” He raked up a pile of hay. “Might not matter what they’d have wanted.”
Charles paused in his swing and glanced toward the figure of a determined young woman trying to reason with an agitated old lady. “Someone’s going to need to help you.”
A thought flitted through his mind: Did he want to help her?
Charles swung the scythe.
The last thing he needed was to gamble away his peace of mind on Tom Duncan’s widow.
Chapter 3
Jenny didn’t know whether to feel surprised or relieved when Colonel Hanks drove his buggy into the farmyard several days later. His saddle horse trailed behind and Charles Moss followed after, but Jenny’s eyes went to the one person who really mattered: Rachel Hill.
Tears started in her eyes. It had been so long since Tom warned Rachel to stay away. She’d missed her friend so much, but for both their sakes, they’d avoided each other the few times Jenny got to town.
Colonel Hanks reined up, and Rachel handed him the bundle from her lap. She adjusted her straw hat, climbed down, and opened her arms wide.
Jenny ran to meet her. She hadn’t cried since Pa died, but when Rachel hugged her, the tears poured. She felt Rachel’s hand rubbing her back and smelled her lavender scent.
“There now, cry your eyes out. I’m here to help,” Rachel whispered.
By the time Jenny used her apron to mop away the tears, Charles Moss had unhitched the horse from the buggy and led it to pasture. Colonel Hanks handed the now crying bundle to Rachel.
Texas Brides Collection Page 20
