“My family must approve my groom. All of them,” she stressed.
“How many is that?”
“Not counting children and youths … sixty-seven.”
J.R. thought about Dixon and imagined him in the Tumble Inn dining hall being interviewed by Jane’s relatives. All sixty-seven! If Jane had thought this through at the husband auditions, she would have never agreed to allow the reticent lawyer to court her. The man was likely to suffer apoplexy after five minutes just in the intimidating presence of her cousin, Cyrus.
“And if they don’t approve of the man you wish to marry?” Me. What if they don’t approve of me?
She released a little hmmph, as if being approved was a given. Then she smiled, and his doubts flittered away. “Oh, J.R., once they see how wonderful life is here in Turtle Springs, they’ll decide to stay.” She pointed at the field spreading east. “Most of this is my land. I own some up by Antelope Creek.”
As her joy grew, his faded.
She’d made plans to reunite with her family. She’d made plans to build her future here. He liked Kansas well enough. The genial climate surpassed Philadelphia’s. Even if he waited a decade, the state’s population would not reach that of Sacramento alone. California had readers. Thousands of readers.
Kansas had farmers.
“Once I finish my article, I’m going to Sacramento.” He tucked a loosened strand of hair back behind her ear. “Come with me.”
“This is my home.”
“It’s a house, Jane. It’s land. You can sell it and start over.”
“This is my home.” Tears pooled in her dark eyes. She pushed away and stood. “People here need me.”
“Do they?” he said, scrambling to his feet. “Or is this what you tell yourself because you want to feel needed?”
Her mouth gaped.
“Sweetheart,” J.R. said quietly, and as the tears slid down her cheeks, his heart broke. “Your parents deserted you. You’ve lived here for three years, and if any of the sixty-six other people in your family besides Cyrus wanted to see you, they would have visited. Yet you think if you become engaged, your family will rush over here to render judgment on your fiancé. You may want to consider they don’t care who you marry.”
“You sure are full of vinegar,” she snapped. “But I hear you. I’m not someone people crave to be with. There’s always going to be someone or somewhere everyone wants more.”
“I want to be with you,” he said—begged, really. “I’m leaving for Sacramento, and I want a wife, a partner, to join me on the adventure. I want you. Come with me.”
Her mouth tightened, and she looked away. “I’ll think about it.”
“Thank you. I—”
She grabbed the ice cream bucket and strode away, in the direction of the church. By the time she was out of sight, J.R. knew full well she’d finished thinking.
She wasn’t going anywhere with him.
Chapter 10
Love is often the fruit of marriage.—Molière
Monday morning, June 25
Four weeks to finish an article,” Zumwalt said as J.R. hammered a nail into the loosened, ornate tin square securely it onto the ceiling. “You sure do write slow. Or is it you keep looking for a reason not to leave?”
“I keep getting interrupted. When the army arrived”—J.R. stopped hammering and looked down at the shoemaker—“I couldn’t not interview them. It’s my patriotic duty. Just as I couldn’t not write something on those English chaps.”
“I suppose you couldn’t not miss Millie’s wedding.”
J.R. leaned against the top of the ladder, his mood as bright as the morning sunshine. “Certainly not! She’s my sister.”
“Sister?”
“Practically speaking. She’s done my laundry since I arrived, and only charges me a quarter an item… and still only charges me a quarter, even after I moved into the inn. Only a sister—practically-a-sister, in her case—would be that kind.”
“Your perception of sisters is astonishing.”
The moment J.R. said, “Thank you,” Zumwalt remarked, “I thought you were an only child.”
“I really don’t see how that’s relevant.”
Zumwalt laughed.
As thunder rolled in the distance, J.R. descended the ladder. He grabbed his gray suit coat off the workbench and deposited the hammer in its place, anxious to leave before the storm came in. Less because he didn’t want to have to run through the rain, and more because it was only a matter of time before Zumwalt mentioned Jane. He always brought her into their conversations. Especially when she was in the same room as J.R. Whether it was hearing her name or seeing her about town or sitting near her during whatever afternoon tea they’d both been invited to, his heart faithfully catapulted in his chest. How sure—how calm—he would strive to seem, while inside he fidgeted like a love-struck schoolboy trying to put his feelings in a rhyme.
A mute confession is his glance, her blush a mute replying.
You read my soul, you know my wish; oh grant me its fulfilling.
She answers low, “If heaven smiles, and if my father is willing.”
Therein lay the crux.
J.R. could ask her father and all sixty-seven members of her family for permission to marry her. As sure as rain (fittingly, another crack of thunder rolled), the answer would be yes. Take her to Sacramento. Take her wherever. She’s capable of managing without us. J.R. would be given his heart’s desire … and Jane would continue believing the lies that no one needed her. She was unneeded. Unwanted. Unloved.
Here he was. Stuck. Unable to leave town without her. Unable to be with her because she refused to leave behind her past.
J.R. shoved one arm and then the other into his suit coat. “Besides,” he said to Zumwalt, “how often does a man’s practically-a-sister get married in a joint service with her mother and her mother’s best friend? Three couples hitched in one wedding is a news story, and one I’ve sold to every paper and journal in the state, plus ones in Kansas City and Omaha.”
Zumwalt’s face scrunched as he slowly nodded. “Seeing how one of the couples included me, I should get two-sevenths of the money.”
“Two-sevenths?” J.R. chuckled. “How do you arrive at that number?”
“Lucille and Hank—two-sevenths, Millie and Will—two-sevenths, me and Gretchen—two-sevenths, and one-seventh to the writer. You wouldn’t have a story if we hadn’t married. Think of it as a finder’s fee.”
“You have a point there.” J.R. folded up the ladder. Instead of carrying it to the back room, he gave the shoemaker his most ponderous, most I’m-taking-this-serious look. “Although … a better division is ninths.”
Zumwalt’s silvery brows rose. “Ninths?”
“Sheriff Ingram deserves a percentage because you wouldn’t have married Gretchen if he hadn’t telegrammed you to come to Turtle Springs, and,” J.R. stressed, “he wouldn’t have known the town wanted a shoemaker unless Abby hired him to be sheriff. Two-ninths to the happy newlyweds.”
With a soft grumble, Zumwalt lifted one end of the ladder, leaving J.R. to carry the other. They stowed the ladder in the back room.
J.R. strolled back into the shop, his good mood sinking. A sheet of rain now cascaded over the wooden awning and onto the boardwalk, blurring the view of the street despite the bright sunlight. “Even if I wanted to leave town today, it’s raining. Again.” He sat on the nearest stool then swiveled to face Zumwalt. “Did I tell you Liam Logan asked me to stand up for him at his wedding?”
“I hadn’t heard he proposed.”
“Emma wanted to wait until they had all the Logan and Mason ducks—umm, children—in a row.”
Zumwalt sat next to his workbench, laid a partially constructed shoe in the lap of his white apron, then studied his tools. He picked up a pair of pincers that looked like four other pincers on his workbench. “Tenths is more like it.”
“So who else are you whittling my earnings out to?”
Zumw
alt frowned at the pincers then at the shoe in his lap and then at his pallet of tools. “Who do you think?”
Jane.
Everything came back to her. In a town this size, avoiding someone was near impossible. Not that he was the one doing the avoiding. If anything, she ought to pay him for all the time he wasn’t writing because he was thinking about her.
J.R. checked his pocket watch. “I wonder how long this rain is going to last. I need to get on over and help Oliver finish typesetting.”
Zumwalt looked up, confused. “That press is for sale. Does his mother know about this?”
“I didn’t think to ask.” J.R. pocketed his watch. “Oliver and I were talking over breakfast, about how much I abhor writing multiple copies of my work to send to editors. I wouldn’t have to do that if I owned a letter copying press. Since I don’t, I decided to be a Scrooge and hire myself a Bob Cratchit to overwork and underpay.”
“That’s kind of you,” remarked Zumwalt.
“I know. Unfortunately, your stepson couldn’t catch my vision. He suggested we use the printing press. Why are you smiling?”
“The parent in me likes hearing my stepson is not following in your rapscallion ways.” Zumwalt’s smile abruptly fell. His expression grew serious. “It’s time to move on, J.R. Pack your trunks and get on to Sacramento. Delaying the inevitable isn’t fair to you or to Jane.”
There was an awkward moment of silence, and then J.R. whispered, “I can’t leave.”
“Can’t is an interesting word choice. Why can’t you?”
“She needs me to rescue her.”
Zumwalt’s lips parted in surprise. “Not what I was expecting you to say, but I’ll entertain your thinking. What are you supposed to rescue her from?”
“I don’t know.”
He didn’t—and it plagued him. What was he missing? What didn’t he see? It was there. He could feel it, sense it, know he needed to act, but couldn’t. He was a man standing waist-deep in an icy lake, neither swimming nor drowning, frozen immobile. As bad a feeling as staring at a blank sheet of paper and having no idea what to write.
Muttering under his breath, Zumwalt tossed the pincers and shoe onto the workbench. He gathered his stool and moved it next to J.R.’s. “You know the answer”—he tapped J.R.’s chest—“in here. You come into my shop every day, wanting to know what you can do to help me, but all the while you are wanting me to tell you why you can’t act. Why you can’t move.”
“You’re not the first person who’s told me I’m a stick-in-the mud.”
“You can’t be the man you want to be until you face it.”
“Face what?”
“I don’t know.” Zumwalt tapped J.R.’s chest again. “Fight the battle, son.”
J.R. swallowed, but his throat still felt tight. He tipped his chin in acknowledgment of Zumwalt’s challenge, but he wasn’t going to battle anything. There was nothing to fight. The war was over. He didn’t need to fear that anymore. He didn’t.
But he did.
As Zumwalt returned to his workbench, J.R. stared out the window. Rain pounded and thunder continued to roll, and yet the sun shone bright. He’d never seen a storm like it. Fascinated, he walked to the window for a better look. Leaving his hat on the rack, he strode outside. Into the street. Into the rain. Into the sun storm. Not a dark cloud overhead, but a line of dark clouds crawled across the western horizon. Lighting danced. Thunder crackled. As rain soaked his clothes, as mud oozed into his shoes, he stood there. And then he took a step. Then another. J.R. kept walking. One destination in mind. By the time he reached the church steps, his hands were shaking, his lungs tight.
It’d been five years.
“You’ve limited God’s grace to man-size proportions … and allowed your fear to grow into God-size proportions.”
Jane had been right about him. He had to face his fear. He had to for himself, and a little bit for her, too.
With an indrawn breath, J.R. gripped the door handle and walked inside.
Wednesday noon, July 4
“In a letter to his wife, on July 3, 1776, John Adams wrote that Independence Day should be commemorated”—Jane lowered the newspaper to see if Misters Underwood and Quimby were paying attention to her more than the checkerboard, and they were—“and I quote, ‘with pomp and parade, with shews, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other from this time forward forever more.’ Unquote.”
“So that explains why we shoot fireworks,” remarked Mr. Underwood as Mr. Quimby studied for his next move. “Too bad we didn’t have the parade. I’ve always like parades.”
“There’s always next year.” It was the best response Jane could give without lying. Unlike Mr. Underwood, she didn’t like parades. The last one she’d attended spotlighted the newly enlisted soldiers marching off to war. Their standards raised. The trumpets blew. Everyone in Lawrence—in Douglas County, for that matter—had lined both sides of Massachusetts Street, cheering. She hadn’t seen her younger brothers since that day.
The band changed tunes.
While several townsfolk strolled up and down the boardwalk, visiting the businesses that were open for a few more hours, most of the town and homesteaders in for the celebration were congregating over on the green, enjoying the day’s entertainment. Games. Music. Reenactment “shews” put on by the schoolchildren. Upon popular request, the Ladies’ Handbell Choir would perform a prelude to the fireworks display.
If J.R. were in town, that’s where he’d be. Surrounded by people.
But he wasn’t in town.
His return, however, was eminent, or so everyone said. How could they know? He’d left eight days ago without telling anyone where he was going or when—if—he would return.
Mr. Quimby breathed deep. “Mmm-mmm. Doc Carter’s roasting us a good pig this year.”
“Indeed.” Jane scanned the rest of the paper for something of consequence. “There’s a story here on the railroad and one about last month’s flooding. Gentlemen, your pick?”
“Hmmph,” came from Mr. Quimby.
Jane lowered the paper again. Both men were standing and looking in the direction of the church where the music had stopped. People lined the boardwalk. Unable to see what garnered all the attention, Jane stood. Still nothing.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“Dust storm, I reckon. Come here, gel. Ya gotta see this.” Mr. Quimby grabbed her by the arm and pulled her out to the middle of Main Street. They stood there, with Mr. Underwood moving to Jane’s other side.
Dust rose in the air above the road leading into town. Over the hill came a couple-dozen riders on horseback. All men, it looked like. Next came buggies and wagons and more single riders, some of these looked to be females, their colorful skirts fluttering.
“I’ll wager we aren’t about to be attacked by a gang of thieves,” she said in hopes of lessening their scowls. “Or the army. Everyone is in civilian clothes. Look, there’s even a few ladies riding shotgun on some of those wagons.” As the lead riders neared the outskirts, Jane squinted. If she didn’t know better, that one in the middle without a hat covering his white-blond hair looked like—
A resounding cheer went up on the far end of the town.
“Well, I’ll be,” bellowed Mr. Quimby. “That there’s ol’ Locky. Did ya know he knew how to ride a horse? He’s sittin’ as high in the saddle as them others.”
Jane pursed her lips to hide her smile. She didn’t know J.R. knew how to ride, but riding a horse wasn’t all that difficult to learn. The real question was, what was he doing wearing buckskins? And where did he find all these people? Not to mention, why was he leading them into town?
She gasped.
Her chest tightened and vision blurred, the moment she recognized the gray-haired man riding next to J.R. “Papa,” she whispered.
“Those yer kin?”
Mr. Underwood reached behind Jane and slapped Mr. Quimby’s hat right off hi
s head for asking such a dunce question.
Upon reaching the town, the riders slowed their horses to a trot. People on either side of the street waved at J.R. and those with him. A few cheers rose up. The band burst out in a rowdy march.
“Mr. Underwood,” Jane said, smiling, “I believe that’s about as close to a parade as we’ll get today.”
“Indeed, Miss Ransome, indeed.”
J.R. reined his horse to a dead stop. Cousin Cyrus stopped next to J.R., an amused grin on his handsome face. One by one, the other riders and those driving buggies and wagons stopped, too, all in a cluster in the center of the street. It’d been years since Jane had seen her sisters and their families, her aunts, uncles, and other cousins. Mama drew her horse up next to Papa, he in his trapper clothes and Mama in her beaded tunic and leggings. None of the women wore hats. Their hair hung unbound or in braids down their back. Chief Black Bob, leaner and grayer than she remembered, wore tan trousers. No shoes. No shirt. Just trousers, the most clothes she’d ever seen on him during a summer month. Her family was a beautiful mix of savage and civilized. And they were here. In Turtle Springs.
Jane straightened her shoulders and stepped forward. She didn’t know what to say to J.R. or to Papa, especially since they all sat there watching her walk to them.
She finally came to a stop a few feet from J.R. He was covered in dust and dirt and clearly hadn’t shaved since he left town eight days ago. He looked wonderful.
They stared at each other for several long seconds.
J.R. dismounted. That’s when she saw the bandage around his left hand. He handed the reins to her father, said something too low for Jane to hear, and then smiled. At her. She was so happy she could weep. Please let this be what I think. If it wasn’t, the heartbreak would be too great to bear.
He strolled forward. “Hello, Jane.”
“Hello, J.R.,” she said with more calm than she felt. “Why are you dressed like that?”
“Chief Black Bob wanted to trade.”
“So you traded him your fancy suit? Or just your trousers?”
He gave her a sheepish grin. “It was the only way to convince him to agree to come with us.”
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