“Aye, even if they do stain my best dress shirt with strawberry juice.”
“I can get that out.”
“Thank ye for offering, but Mum will be able to.”
“I reckon that she’s done it a time or two. She loves her grandchildren.”
He smiled. “Mum loves all her children. She’s always been full of love. I didn’t appreciate it in my youth. I felt suffocated. There’s no reason I should have had such a temper and an anger streak meaner than any mountain lion. I’m not sure where that came from. My father never showed any signs of a temper, and neither do my brothers. I used to wonder if I was an orphan left on their doorstep, until I noticed the strong family resemblance between me and my mum’s father.”
“You’re a handsome man.” A deep crimson blush covered Ida Mae’s cheeks.
Olin’s chest puffed out slightly. “I thank ye for sayin’ so. You’re a mighty fine lass yourself.”
“Forgive me, we shouldn’t. . . .”
Olin wrapped his arm around her shoulders, then quickly removed it.
Ida Mae looked down at her feet.
“I didn’t mean that the way it sounded, Ida Mae. I just moved back to town. I don’t own anything and. . .”
She lifted her head and gazed into his eyes. “You’re right. I’m just getting my parents’ estate settled now. My brothers and I are finally at a place where we can decide who gets what.”
“Ye know, a man would be foolish not to marry a lass such as yourself. With all your land and properties, ye would make him rather well-off.”
Ida Mae stopped.
Olin noticed she no longer followed and stopped a couple paces ahead of her. Her eyes widened and she lifted her right eyebrow.
“What, what’s the matter?”
“Forgive me, I’ve got to go.” She marched toward her building.
Olin watched and waited until she slipped safely through the doorway.
❧
Ida Mae tossed and turned all night. Olin’s words swirled around in her mind like the spool of thread on her spinning wheel. Why hadn’t she thought of that before? If she were to marry, the law stated that the man would assume the rights to oversee all of her properties. New doubts about Cyrus surfaced, not to mention Olin and his family. John had made it perfectly clear that he and Kyle would inherit their father’s farm, not Olin.
Could he have thrown the rock through the window? He was outside her back door at the time she thought she had heard something.
After hours of remembering her moments with Olin, she no longer felt that way. She was glad he was moving to his parents’ house. Her heart would be safer now. Dear Lord, give me strength.
The next morning she spent hours searching the shop for her favorite shears.
“Good morning, Ida Mae. How are you today?”
“Fine, and yourself, Mrs. Connors?”
“God’s been blessing my boy. The corn is sprouting and nearly a foot tall already. The cotton is coming in, as well.”
John’s words about Cyrus planting late in the season came back. “What can I help you with, Mrs. Connors?”
“I wondered if you could spin this.” She lifted a cloth covering a basket full of fur. Ida Mae lifted a few strands of the soft hairs. It would take some work but she could probably do it. “I reckon I can.”
Mrs. Connors’ smile went from ear to ear. “Thank you. Will it cost much?”
“It will take some time. I’ll try to give you a good price.”
“Thank you. I want to knit a lap blanket with it, help remind my boy of his favorite rabbit.”
Ida Mae wouldn’t question the woman’s reasons for asking her to spin rabbit fur. Income was income. “How soon do you need this?”
“Next week should give me plenty of time.”
After the woman left, Ida Mae gave in to her senses and chuckled all the way to the spinning wheel. The fur was soft and it would make a fine yarn, perhaps too fine. The question was: Would the fur bind with the other hairs to make a strong enough yarn for knitting? “Wouldn’t it have been easier to tan the hide with the fur on?” she mused.
“Tan whose hide?” Olin asked as he closed the door.
What happened to her bell? Ida Mae looked up to where the bell once hung over the door. “I can’t believe it.”
“What?” Olin spun around, looking behind him.
“My bell is missing.”
Olin looked up at the hook that once held the bell. “I’ll fix ye up with another. Is anything else missing?”
“I couldn’t find my shears this morning, and Minnie noticed my mother’s cranberry glass vase missing the other day.”
“Ida Mae, is there someplace safer where ye could live?”
“No, there’s only here and the farm, and I don’t want to live at the farm with Cyrus and. . .” She cut off her words before she broke confidence with Cyrus.
“My guess is Rosey Turner,” Olin supplied.
“You didn’t hear it from me.”
“No, but I watched folks at the picnic, and she was the only one who couldn’t keep her eyes off of Cyrus.”
Ida Mae smiled. “Well, that’s good for young love, right?”
“Right.” He stepped farther into the shop. “With your indulgence, Ida Mae, I’ll be workin’ late this evening. Will that be a problem?”
“No. As I said before, you could have stayed here.”
“I still think it best. I hope that whoever sent ye that note saw me pack my wagon and move back to my house. I’ve been asking around for a new place to rent. Unfortunately, several folks have come needing some help with basic blacksmithing. I don’t know much about that skill, but I picked up a few things along the years. I can make a set of shoes fit the horse, and a few other simple things, like nails and such.”
“A town always needs a good blacksmith. I’m glad you can help folks out.”
“Ye should place an advertisement for a blacksmith. I really work better with tin.”
Ida Mae clutched the counter to steady herself. How could she be taken in by the stranger’s charms so quickly? Cutting his hair had unraveled her sensibilities.
❧
Olin wanted to stay the night and watch over Ida Mae’s place. Instead, he had arranged for Kyle to keep watch in the shadows. The only way for Olin’s plan to work would be if he truly went back to his parents’ house tonight and tomorrow night. How long he would be followed, if he would be followed, he didn’t know.
He bade Ida Mae good-bye and couldn’t help noticing the tension that grew in her as he left her shop. Father, protect her, he prayed as he saddled his horse for home.
He returned home and, with a great deal of self-control, managed not to wear a hole in the parlor’s braided rug.
Kyle came home close to midnight.
“Anything?”
“Not even a stray rat. Are ye sure there’s a problem?” Kyle flopped down in the chair by the large window in the living room.
“The bell over her door went missing today. Now why would someone take that bell unless they were plannin’ on sneakin’ into the place?”
“Don’t know, little brother, but ye got your hands full with this one. John will be out there tomorrow night, but you’ll have to be there the night after that.”
“I know.” Olin walked over to his brother and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Thank ye for your help.”
“Is there a wedding in the near future?”
Olin huffed. “She’d make a fine wife one day, I think.”
Remembering her touch, his gut felt like a piece of tin under the hammer, being shaped into something new. The tender touch of her fingers reminded him of a gentle summer rain.
“I need to call it a night, little brother. Perhaps we could spend the night in your shop rather than come back so late.”
“Not for a few days. If there is someone watching her, I don’t want him to know that we’re watching for him.”
“I hope ye are wrong.”
&
nbsp; “I do, too.”
After saying good night to his brother, Olin returned to his childhood bedroom. At one time he had shared this room with Kyle. He now had one of their sisters’ rooms. Olin wondered when Kyle would find a wife and move on to his own section of the farm. John, as the oldest brother, would inherit the main house. But there was the old log cabin in the side acres of the property. Perhaps Kyle planned to move in there one day.
Olin stretched and slipped under the covers. Tonight he would trust the Lord to keep Ida Mae safe.
❧
A week later he found himself crawling into bed after still seeing no sign of someone watching Ida Mae’s. Perhaps he’d been wrong to assume. And she hadn’t said anything about any other objects being missing. He made a crude bell out of the iron her father had in his shop. Someday he hoped to find the original bell, or replace it with a shiny brass bell.
The next morning while Olin was at work, Ida Mae walked into the shop from the street entrance. “Olin?”
He looked up.
“We need to talk.”
Six
Ida Mae knit her fingers together to keep them from shaking.
“What can I do for ye?” Olin set aside what appeared to be a large pair of shears.
“I saw you last night.”
“Pardon?”
Ida Mae squared her shoulders and grasped her hips. The familiar scent of a recent open coal fire filled her nostrils. Memories of her father and the hours she’d spent with him in here aroused a tingling sensation that traipsed down her spine. She fought the memory and recaptured her resolve to address this man. “I saw you hiding around the corner of the building behind mine last night. What’s going on?”
He picked up a metal rod and rolled it in his stained fingers. His focus remained on his hands as seconds chipped away at her unyielding stare, then he captured her gaze with his deep brown eyes. “My brothers and I have been keepin’ watch every night since I moved out, to be certain that ye were safe.”
How could she tell him she was grateful but at the same time resented the overprotectiveness? Nothing had happened in days. Seven days, to be precise. The same amount of time since Olin no longer lived there. Which gave credence to the possibility that the note was about Olin and not Cyrus. “Olin, I appreciate the concern but. . .”
He closed the distance between them. “Ida Mae, I think all this trouble is because of me. The least I can do is watch over you.”
“Won’t they see you in the shadows like I did?”
Olin reached out toward her, then quickly pulled back his hand. Ida Mae didn’t know whether to be pleased or disappointed. One thing was certain, since Olin Orr had arrived, her life had not been the same. She couldn’t even think straight.
“Aye, it is possible. I shall be more careful.”
“No. I don’t want you out there. Whoever is out there isn’t causing any further problems. Stay home, Olin.”
He cocked his head to the right and raised his left eyebrow.
“I’m fine.” She shifted her weight to her right hip. “I have a gun for protection and I know how to use it.”
“Ida Mae. . .” He inched forward.
She stepped back. He stopped his approach, tossing the small rod down on the bench where he’d been working. “As ye desire, miss.” He took off his apron and hung it from a wooden peg. “ ’Til the morrow, then.”
Ida Mae clenched her jaw to keep from saying she wanted him to watch out for her. She wanted him to stay overnight in his shop. She felt safer knowing he was there. Instead, she gave in to Minnie’s insistence that things would be better when Olin moved his shop.
The walls of the tiny room seemed to move in around her. Ida Mae scurried out of Olin’s shop through the hidden doorway.
❧
Leaning farther into the shadows, he watched as Olin Orr left his shop. “Where is she?”
Olin left with his horse. He’d stopped following him the third night. The first night, he followed Olin back to his family farm. The second night he followed him to the edge of it; the third night to the edge of town, where he watched Olin go down the outbound road toward his house.
“Did he hurt her?” Sweat filled his palms. He rubbed them on his trousers. He eased his head out slowly for a better view. A quick glance told him no one would see him. With his hands in his pockets, he walked down the street as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
He snatched a look at the lock on the blacksmith’s shop door. If she was in there, she was locked in. He walked three more blocks, then one block south. The back of Ida Mae’s building loomed in the distance. Ida Mae popped out the back door of her shop, on the side of the building.
He scratched his chin and waved as he walked past on the opposite side of the road. She’ll be mine soon.
He smiled and tipped his hat.
❧
Olin raced back to the farm. John and Kyle were nowhere to be found. “Where are they?”
“Your brothers have an engagement at the Bowers’.” His mother stepped into the parlor with a fresh vase of flowers.
“Oh.”
Olin paced back and forth.
“What is it, dear?”
Olin stopped a couple feet from his mother. “Nothing really. I’m just concerned for Ida Mae. She’s asked me not to keep watch over her.”
His mother sat down in her sitting chair. “Aye, I can see her asking that.”
“Why? Doesn’t she know how dangerous it could be?”
“Perhaps ye aren’t thinkin’ with your head, son. Ye fancy the lass, yes?”
“Aye.” Olin sat down in his father’s chair. “But I can’t entertain such foolish thoughts at this time in my life. I have nothing to offer a wife.”
“The heart pays no never mind to such things. Yer father and I had nothin’ when we married.”
Olin nodded. He knew the stories.
“Bobby, if the good Lord wants ye to be together, He’ll work it out. Seems to me, you’re afraid to trust the Lord for Ida Mae’s protection.”
“It’s not that.” Olin paused. Did he trust the Lord?
“Son, ye always had a strong streak in ye to plow ahead and do what ye thought was best. Like deciding that because ye were the third son ye would have the smallest share of the land and moved on to make your way in this world without the help of your parents.”
Olin took in a deep sigh.
“I say this not to remind ye of what happened but why it happened. In your father’s will ye will inherit ten acres. It’s been that way since the day ye were born. It’s plenty of land for a man to provide for himself and a family if ye were to accept it. But ye told your father over and over again to give the land to Kyle. And while Kyle is planting those ten acres along with the other fifty he’s to inherit, the land is not his. Ye could speak to your father and ask him for your inheritance if ye wish to marry one day.”
Olin fought down the old argument that he didn’t deserve the land after what he’d done to shame his family. Should he accept the gift? Should he pursue a relationship with Ida Mae?
“Have ye told Ida Mae how ye feel?”
“No. I don’t know how I feel. I’m attracted to her, but she’s always pulling away from me.”
“Well, dear”—his mother slapped the arms of her chair and lifted herself out of it—“dinner is on the stove and your father shall return quickly. I don’t see what all the fuss is about if ye haven’t spoken your intentions.”
“She’s in danger, Mum.”
“Aye, but what kind?”
His mother left him in the room to ponder her last comment. As Olin rolled it around, he had to wonder, was she really in danger or was it all about him? He had moved out and, with some luck, he’d find a new place to rent soon and would be permanently removed from Ida Mae’s life. Whoever sent the warning wasn’t out to hurt her, but rather to force him to leave the area. Perhaps if he showed Ida Mae a little interest the individual would let her be.
❧<
br />
Ida Mae stretched her back as she got up and walked around the shop. Sitting on the stool hour after hour had a certain disadvantage. She glanced up at the clock as the brass hammer struck three times. She twisted her body to the left, then the right, and caught a glimpse through the curtained window of the bright sunny day. With a roll of her shoulders, she decided to call it a day. Grabbing her bonnet from the peg by the door, she ventured out of the shop and walked down the street toward the center of town. A small fountain stood in the center of the marketplace. Ida Mae went over and sat on the outer wall with the fountain cascading behind her. People traveled quickly from place to place. Women held bundles and packages while the men loaded freight on their wagons. A lively melody streamed out of the pub. Everyone seemed to have a place to go, a place of belonging.
Chester Adams passed by with a brief wave and a smile.
Regan O’Malley swung a basket full of vegetables in perfect rhythm with her stride.
Then her eyes caught on Cyrus Morgan. She was too far away to hear the words exchanged between him and Mr. McGillis, the merchant of the Grain and Feed store, but Cyrus’s rigid posture left little doubt that it was an unpleasant conversation. Cyrus boarded his wagon and slapped the reins. His horses—correction, my father’s horses—whinnied and rushed the wagon down the street.
Mr. McGillis scanned the area. Seeing her, he marched over to the fountain. “Ida Mae!” He rubbed the dirt and sweat from his hands on a rag. “Cyrus Morgan says you’re paying for all his orders. Is that true?”
“All?”
“Yes. I understand he’s working on your farm, and there are expenses toward rebuilding the house, but a plow is an expensive item. I told him I had to check with you first. I’d say he didn’t like that much.”
I could see that. Ida Mae held back, then asked, “What kind of a plow does he say I need?”
“Another one like your father ordered a couple years back. It didn’t make sense to me. He also ordered a bunch of hoes and rakes.”
“Did he order any seed?”
“No, and that’s the oddest part. If a man is going to be planting fields, he should have done it sooner, but he also needs to buy seed.”
“Mr. McGillis, I appreciate your concern for my interest. I agree we don’t need another plow. I’ll speak to Cyrus about it. I would, however, like to order some seed. Corn and cotton is out of season for planting now. What do you recommend?”
Corduroy Road To Love Page 5
