Heartbreak Creek

by Kaki Warner

  “Mercy sakes,” his wife said. “Who was that?”

  “Thomas Redstone.” Declan wrapped the reins around the brake handle. “Lost his band at Summit Springs, so now we’re his family.”

  “He’s Indian?” Pru asked.

  “Cheyenne. Mostly.” Declan watched the ex-Dog Soldier melt into the thicket along the creek and wished Thomas had stayed a while longer. He could have used his help to distract the women while he broke the news of their new mother to his children. Moving stiffly, he climbed down from the driver’s box. As soon as he touched ground, children came at him from all sides—Brin tattling on Joe Bill, Joe Bill tattling back on Brin, R.D. trying to tell him about a cougar he’d seen on a ridge behind the creek. Only Lucas remained silent, all of his attention fixed on the women in the wagon.

  “Go on, now. Leave a man in peace to stretch his legs.” Declan tried to sound gruff, even though he was gratified by their warm reception.

  “Who’s that lady?” Brin stared in fascination at Miss Priss’s bonnet. “And what’s that on her head?”

  “Never you mind.” He waved them toward the building on the left. “Get on into the house. I’ll be there directly to talk to you.”

  “But we’re hungry,” Brin complained. “Thomas didn’t feed us nothing but some roots and berries out of his parfleche bag.”

  “Pemmican.” Joe Bill made a face. “Smelled like R.D.’s boots.”

  “Better than your feet.”

  Declan gave Brin a gentle nudge. “Go. I’ll bring food when I come.”

  “But—”

  “Now.”

  As his children headed toward their sleeping quarters, Declan grabbed the bags and helped the women from the wagon, anticipating some scathing comments about his unruly children or his home. He knew the place was a bit rough and rustic compared to some grand two-story southern plantation mansion, but it was sturdy and warm and he’d built it with his own hands, and he was proud of it, no matter what they said.

  Surprisingly, they said nothing—good or bad—but filed silently after him as he carried their carpetbags not toward the parlor entry but to the working end of the dwelling that housed a kitchen and eating area on the ground floor, and a spacious master bedroom in the loft above.

  After Lucas was born eight years ago, he’d added the second structure with a connecting breezeway to provide separate sleeping quarters for the children. A year later, Sally had insisted on enclosing the breezeway and adding a front porch so they would have a nice entry and a sit-down parlor in case anyone dropped by, which no one ever did. Now he used the enclosed area between the two buildings mostly for storage.

  After waiting inside the kitchen doorway for the women to pass through, he kicked the door closed and looked around, his sense of frustration rising again.

  The room was a mess and smelled like burned something—hair?—Joe Bill’s “accident” no doubt, judging by the puddles of water on the floor and the charred rag in the sink. It also appeared that Brin had tried her hand at cooking—a hopeful sign, despite the stack of dirty dishes on the counter and the flour dusting the floor and the broken eggs dripping yolk off the edge of the table. At least she was considering a more feminine role than that of army scout or buffalo hunter.

  With a sigh, he turned toward the staircase rising along the west wall and over the door into the parlor. “You’ll take the loft,” he explained as he carried their bags up to the open mezzanine that overlooked the first level. “I’ll move my things out later.”

  Prudence Lincoln started up the stairs behind him. “And where will you sleep, Mr. Brodie?”

  “In the parlor.”

  Miss Priss paused on the bottom step and looked around. “There’s a parlor?”

  “Between the two buildings.” Ducking to clear the beam across the landing, he walked past the oversized bed he’d built to accommodate his height and dumped the bags on the floor beside the wardrobe he’d also built. He waited until both women entered the open room, then nodded toward the six-foot partition against the inside wall. “There’s a hip tub and wash bowl and necessary behind that screen. I’ll bring up water later. Anything else?”

  Miss Priss unpinned her bonnet and set it on the night table beside the bed, then turned a slow circle as she took in the room.

  Declan looked around, too, trying to see it through her eyes. Sun-bleached calico curtains hanging listlessly over the tall window on the peaked wall. Dusty books stacked in one corner, an overflowing basket of soiled clothing in another. A faded floor runner with a tattered edge beside the rumpled bed. It was a mess, just like downstairs.

  But that’s why he needed her, damnit. How was he to keep a house going, meals cooked, washing done, a garden tended, and ride herd on four young children while managing a sixty-thousand-acre spread and three thousand head of cattle, with only a twelve-year-old boy, an ex-preacher who was drunk most of the time, and a crippled handyman to help him?

  Bracing himself for criticism, Declan planted his hands on his hips and glared at his wife, waiting for the complaints to begin.

  Spinning slowly to a stop, she finally met his gaze. She looked perplexed. “Where did you get this furniture?”

  “I built it.”

  “All of it?”

  He nodded and waited for her to say something bad about it.

  Instead, she smiled. “It’s nice. I like it.”

  Declan was so thrown off balance by that comment he didn’t know what to say.

  “I like the sturdy simplicity of it.” She ran her hand over the sixinch-diameter log foot rail, then slowly up the corner post. “With the warm, natural color of the wood showing through.”

  Declan watched her fingers move over the pine he had oiled to a satiny sheen, and for one shocking moment he could have sworn he felt the stroke of that hand on his back.

  “I’m so tired of dark, fussy, ornate European furniture.” Letting her hand fall to her side, she looked at him in a way she hadn’t before. “I like this much better.”

  Battling a sudden overwhelming feeling of confinement, although he wasn’t sure why, Declan crossed to the stairs. “I’ll bring water after I talk to the children. And clean up the mess they left,” he added as an afterthought, then was irritated that he had. Tending the house was her job now. She might as well get used to it.

  “Don’t you worry about cleaning up, Mr. Brodie,” Prudence Lincoln called after him. “We’ll take care of the kitchen and rustle up something to eat, too. You go do what you’ve got to do.”

  As soon as the door beneath the stairs into the parlor closed, Pru turned to Edwina with a scolding look. “What was that about?”

  “What was what about?”

  “You were toying with him,” Pru accused. “Rubbing up against his furniture and saying how much you like it.”

  “But I do like it. Come over here and feel the finish and—” Pru’s words suddenly sank in, and Edwina gaped at her sister in shock. “Rubbing? I was not rubbing on anything! What a nasty thing to say!”

  Prudence regarded her through narrowed eyes. “You weren’t flirting with him?”

  “Heavens no! I’m struggling to find ways to hold the man at arm’s length, not lure him closer. Why would you think such a thing?”

  Pru relaxed her truculent stance. She gave Edwina a wry smile and shook her head. “For all that you’re a widow and were the biggest flirt in the parish, you really don’t know that much about men, do you?”

  “And you do?” Peeved to be accused of something she hadn’t done, and by a person who supposedly had even less actual experience in such matters than she had, Edwina added testily, “I wasn’t flirting! And I do prefer this furniture to that dark, heavily carved style Mother so favored. Anyone would, considering.”

  Pru raised her hands in a gesture of surrender. “All right. Sorry I misspoke. I’m just concerned.” She started down the stairs.

  Edwina stomped after her. “Concerned about Declan Brodie? Ha!”

  �
��He’s a good man, Edwina,” Pru said over her shoulder. “I think you should give him a chance.”

  Edwina was about to issue another retort when she glanced over the banister and down into the kitchen. The fight went out of her. “Lord, what a mess. Looks like marauding monkeys came through.”

  “Nothing a little scrubbing won’t fix.” Crossing to the cook stove, Pru lifted two faded aprons from a peg, tossed one to Edwina and tied the other around her waist. She looked around, spotted a frayed broom and battered dustpan in the corner, and handed them to Edwina. “You sweep and I’ll come behind you with a mop. We’ll be finished in no time.”

  While Edwina swept the eggshells, flour, and unidentifiable chunks from the plank floor, Pru set about mopping up the puddles by the sink.

  “What do you think of the children?” Edwina asked, bending to sweep a pile of debris into the dustpan.

  “I think he’s right. They need a mother.”

  “They were so filthy I couldn’t even tell which one was the girl.”

  “The tattler with the gray eyes, I think. Unless she was the one hiding in the doorway.” Having dealt with the wet floor, Pru stoked the fire in the cook stove, then dug out the makings for corn biscuits. “The tall one must be the oldest, R.D., and the blond with the singed bangs had to be Joe Bill.”

  Edwina found a waste barrel by a door leading out the back of the house to a fenced garden area and beyond that, a big, rambling barn. She emptied the dustpan, propped it with the broom in the corner, and went to help Pru, who was working the pump lever at the sink. “I’ll wash the dishes, if you find us something to eat. I’m famished.”

  Soon the smell of onions and frying fatback filled the kitchen. Edwina scrubbed listlessly as she stared out the window above the sink at the wagon track stretching down the valley. That sense of isolation and alienation tugged at her again. Was this what her life was to be from now on? Endless chores, a lonely marriage to an unapproachable man, raising another woman’s children, and staring out of this small window, hoping to see a visitor come down that road?

  “Pru,” she said in sudden panic. “Promise me you won’t leave.”

  “I’ll have to someday.”

  “Don’t be silly.” When her sister didn’t respond, Edwina turned and watched her spoon cornmeal batter into a muffin tin, then slip it into the oven. “You know you can stay here as long as you want, Pru.”

  “And if I don’t want?” Without meeting Edwina’s eyes, Pru pulled several cans from an open shelf, then rummaged in a drawer for away to open them. “What if I want to do something on my own?”

  Dread uncoiled in Edwina’s chest, rising to constrict the muscles in her throat. “Like what?”

  Working at the cans with a knife, Pru managed to get them open enough to pour the contents—beans—into the skillet of onions and fatback. “Maybe I’ll teach. Start a school for freedmen and women.”

  Edwina stared at her, dread building to heart-thudding panic. What would she do if Pru left her? How would she survive without the sister she had depended on for all of her life?

  And how would Pru survive without her? To be a woman alone was risky enough. But to be a beautiful mulatto woman, who was neither white nor Negro, left Pru prey to both races. “But, Pru,” she argued weakly, her mind still unable to grasp what her sister had said. “Where would you go? How could you be on your own and be safe?”

  “I’m not helpless. I can take care of myself.” She sent Edwina a chiding smile. “I’ve been watching over you all this time, haven’t I?”

  Edwina started to point out that she watched over Pru, too, which was one of the reasons they were out here in the back of beyond in the first place. But Pru would only laugh. Her sister didn’t see the danger posed by the drunken gangs in Crappo Town or the white night riders. Pru thought if she didn’t cause a ruckus and kept her head down, trouble would pass her by.

  But Edwina knew different. She had heard the talk and seen the resentment in the eyes that followed Pru. And the hunger. Pru was a beautiful woman of mixed blood—an unforgivable thing to some. She was also better educated than most white men and carried herself with a quiet dignity that roused spite and envy—in whites and blacks.

  That girl doesn’t know her place. She’s uppity. She needs to be taught a lesson, and if Edwina doesn’t do it, someone else will.

  It was sickening. Edwina’s instinct was to lash back, show them such evil talk didn’t matter, brazen it out. But she didn’t dare. She wasn’t about to risk her sister’s life, or her own, just to stay in a place that held no meaning for them anymore. There had to be a better way, a better life waiting for them somewhere.

  Was this it? Here on this lonely ranch with this unruly family and awkward man? Edwina didn’t know. But for now, at least, she and Pru were safe. It was a start. But if Pru left her, it would all be for nothing.

  “I worry about you, Pru. And about me. What if I made a terrible mistake?”

  After stirring molasses, a can of tomatoes, and a big pinch of ground mustard into the beans, Pru wiped her hands on her apron and turned to face Edwina with a smile that was both sad and determined.

  “And what if you haven’t? It’s obvious this family needs you.”

  Edwina gave a broken laugh. “It’s you they need. Not me.”

  “Then make them need you.” Pru must have seen the tears Edwina was trying so hard to hold back. Blinking against her own, she walked over and put her arms around her. “And how could they not grow to love you, little sister? You’re sweet, kindhearted, fiercely loyal, smart—”

  “Stop,” Edwina said, laughing in spite of herself. “You’re making me sound like a spaniel.” Putting some space between them, she swiped at her cheeks and put on a wobbly smile. “Just promise me you’ll stay until I get my feet under me. Otherwise, I’m going with you, I swear it.”

  “I promise.” Still gripping her shoulders, Pru gave Edwina a hard look. “But you must promise me that you’ll give this marriage a chance.”

  Edwina sighed. “He doesn’t even like me, Pru. You’ve seen the way he looks at me.”

  “Then make him like you.”

  “How?”

  “By being more likeable. And maybe rubbing up on something other than his furniture.”

  “Pru!”

  Her sister met her outrage with a laugh. “Go on, now.” She gave Edwina a gentle shove toward the door. “Call your family to lunch. I think I saw a triangle dinner bell hanging beside the door when we came in.”

  Shaking her head at her sister’s audacity, Edwina turned toward the door just as it opened and her new family trooped in.

  And they didn’t look happy.

  Five

  As Declan ushered his pouting children into the kitchen, he was greeted with the delicious smell of fried pork, onions, and baking muffins. His dour mood immediately lightened.

  The place was clean, too, he saw, looking around. And the women were smiling in welcome. At least one of them was; his wife looked as if she’d been crying. He hoped it was because of the onions. He didn’t need another scene after what he’d just gone through.

  R.D. and Lucas had taken the news of their new mother well enough. R.D. asked if she was a better cook than Chick, the ranch hand who now did most of the cooking. Lucas just looked at him in silence, that same, sad look on his thin face. As expected, Joe Bill had strenuously insisted he already had a mother and didn’t need another one—a tired refrain. Even after four years, the boy still wouldn’t accept that his mother was dead. Brin had simply echoed whatever Joe Bill said, except at a shout and with tears.

  “Children,” he said now, putting on his best smile while gripping Brin’s and Joe Bill’s shoulders in warning. “This is the new ma I told you about.”

  Brin tipped her head back to frown up at him through the dark tangled curls poking out beneath her tattered slouch hat. “Which one?”

  “The one with the light hair.”

  “I like the chocolate one better
. What’s wrong with her hand? Why is it different colors?”

  “She’s not chocolate,” Joe Bill argued. “She’s butterscotch.”

  “She’s Prudence Lincoln,” Declan cut in, feeling his control of the situation already start to unravel. “And she’s not chocolate or butterscotch. She’s Negro. And the other lady,” he went on before they could make any more unmannerly remarks, “is your ma.”

  “I ain’t calling her ma,” Joe Bill said. “I already got a ma.”

  “Joe Bill—”

  “I ain’t calling her ma, neither,” Brin seconded, crossing her arms over her thin chest. “I don’t like her.”

  “Brin—”

  This time his wife cut him off. “Then you may call me Edwina or Pricilla.” She stalked forward with that combative look Declan had come to recognize. “Or Mother, or Mrs. Brodie, or Queen Victoria. I don’t care which, as long as you do it with respect.”

  The children inched closer to his side as she stopped and studied each of them in turn. “I will not tolerate poor manners or unkind remarks directed at me, or my . . . friend, Miss Lincoln. Is that clear?”

  Without waiting for them to respond, she lifted her gaze to Declan and smiled. It wasn’t a friendly smile. “And I’m sure your father will back me up on that,” she added, “since he has paid dearly in time and money to get me here, and is doubtless indisposed to making the long trip back to Heartbreak Creek today.”

  A threat? Declan scowled at her, unsure how to respond and wondering where his cowardly, complaining wife had gone. Maybe his children did need to be chastised for their rude remarks, but they were his children, and he should be the one to do it. But before he could point that out, Prudence Lincoln stepped into the breach with another of her overly bright smiles.

  “Please, please, come sit down everyone. The corn muffins are just about ready.”