Noting Sloan's direction, the young man stepped out to greet him. "Mornin', Mr. Talbott. My wife and I've been admiring this place you've got here. That's a right nice smithy sitting there unused. Mind if I ask how much you'd charge in rent? I've brought my own equipment so I could get into business right away. I reckon I could pay you something up front if you want."
At the mention of the word "wife," Sloan stiffened, but Samantha noted the anger seemed to go out of him. Sloan Talbott was a very odd man. She'd never understand him if she lived to be a hundred, but then, she didn't have to. All she needed to do was understand him enough to persuade him to keep a few of these people.
"Mr. Craycraft, I'll consider the offer, but I'll tell you right here and now, this isn't any place for a woman. I could use a good smithy, I'll admit, but the Neely ladies will be gone come spring, and there won't be anyone to keep your wife company."
The young man looked surprised, but didn't appear ready to question Talbott's assertion. Samantha scowled, pinched the wretched man through his suit coat, and spoke for herself. "We're not planning on going anywhere come spring, Mr. Craycraft. That's just a notion Mr. Talbott's got in his head. We'd be purely delighted to see another woman around town."
Sloan jerked her away, leaving the man staring after them in confusion. "You're leaving in the spring," he growled low in her ear as he made a steady path for his next target. "The bet was only good for the winter."
"The bet has nothing to do with it at all, Mr. Talbott, as I told you at the time. That house is ours, and we're staying." Sam pulled her arm away and sashayed ahead of him. One thing she could say for petticoat and taffeta: They crackled and rustled quite nicely when she was mad.
Sloan caught up with her and grabbed her arm before she could approach the Bible-toting preacher. "Go home and put something practical on while I get these people out of here. You're needed back in the sickroom, not out here."
She gave him a sassy look. "This is the only dress I own, Mr. High-and-Mighty Talbott. And I've decided I like wearing it. Why don't you go terrify the preacher some more while I talk to Mr. Smith. He wants to open a general store."
"I own the general store," he informed her furiously, keeping a grip on her arm as she lifted her skirt and started across the plaza.
"What general store, Mr. Talbott? That miserable hole in the wall covered with dust and rat droppings? That's not a general store. That's a disgrace."
"I'll hire someone to clean it up, but I'll be damned if I let you bring in competition."
"Hire Harriet and I'll agree, but you've got to put her in charge. She knows twenty times what you do about what people want to buy." Samantha halted abruptly, startling even herself with this new notion.
Talbott stared at her as if she were crazed, but the idea was positively perfect, and she beamed up at him.
"Harriet? That wouldn't be one of the twins, would it?" he asked cautiously.
"See? You won't even have to allow another woman into town. She's just one of us. She can make you more money in one day than you're making now in two weeks."
He frowned. "What would a woman know about what men want? This isn't high society here. They'd walk all over a little thing like that."
"Not while they're bending over backward trying to sweeten her up. But you'll still need to hire Mr. Smith to bring up the supplies she orders. You're going to need different stock than what you're carrying now once these women start moving in."
Enraged, he dropped her arm and glared at her. "There are no women moving in."
"The blacksmith's wife," she reminded him.
"One."
"Clara's the blacksmith's sister-in-law." She smiled sweetly.
"Damn it to hell, I'm not having any more women in this town!"
From behind him Reverend Hayes approached nervously. "Perhaps this isn't the best time, Mr. Talbott, but I was wondering ... Do you think we might have use of your empty kitchen for a chapel?"
Samantha thought Sloan's eyes just might bulge from his head. His veins certainly turned a nice shade of blue as he swung to glare at the preacher. All in all, she thought the preacher came off fairly easy when Sloan merely roared, "You can take your hell and damnation to perdition for all I care!" and stalked off.
That sounded like a yes to her.
Chapter Twelve
“What we need is a restaurant." Alice Neely stabbed a needle through the blue alpaca hem she was adjusting for her oldest daughter.
"Your cooking is just fine. Why would we need to eat out?" Samantha murmured absently as she studied the intricacies of the bodice interior she was supposed to take in.
"I mean, I need to start a restaurant. It's not quite right for the men to keep bringing me supplies in hopes I'll cook them something. And we could use a little extra cash around here. Even if Harriet gives us a bit of a discount at the store, supplies are expensive. And I don't see much hope of farming come spring."
Samantha blinked her eyes and looked up at her mother. Alice Neely had worked every day of her life, but she had never worked for money. Straits must be getting pretty dire, indeed. "Don't you think Daddy will have found us by then?"
Alice hid the worried look in her eyes by bending to bite off the piece of thread she was using. She knotted the end and reached for the spool without looking at any of the girls watching her. "It's a big state. He could be anywhere. He never was much for farming, anyway."
This commonplace knowledge reassured the twins, but not Samantha. Her father liked writing letters. He wrote pages of commentary even when he didn't know how he would mail it. They should have heard from him by now.
"The valley is bound to be out there somewhere. We'll farm it when the weather turns. We'll just have to hire someone to do the plowing." She said this as much to reassure herself as her mother.
Alice nodded uncertainly. "I suppose. But we could still use the cash. If we can just put enough on credit to get started, we can earn it back quickly, I imagine. These men are all starved for good cooking."
Samantha made an unintelligible noise as she jabbed her needle into the material. "The schoolteacher certainly isn't going to give them that. Even Joe couldn't eat that pie she made for Talbott."
Harriet giggled in her corner. "Joe brought it in and tried to sell it by the piece, but even the preacher knew better than to touch it when he found out where it came from. Seems she near burned down the wagon train when she tried to cook over a fire."
"Girls, gossip isn't polite," Alice admonished. "I want to know if any of you have objections to the restaurant. We'll have to set up tables in the parlor, so you better think about it hard."
"Where will we entertain our callers?" Bernadette inquired, frowning as she looked around the long front room they were currently using.
"Callers? What callers? Talbott has ordered his men to stay clear of us upon penalty of dismissal. We're not likely to have callers. We're not likely to have customers when it comes down to it." Samantha grimaced at her snarled thread as she tried to untangle it.
"There's still some of the men from the wagon train, and people like Doc Ramsey that he can't dismiss. And the others won't stay behind once they hear about the food. They'll come." Alice said this with complete assurance in her culinary abilities.
"I'm willing to agree just to see Talbott's face when he finds out what's going on, but there's one minor matter to overcome. There isn't any way he's going to let me out of this wager to wear pants again so I can hunt. What will we do for meat?" Giving up on the bodice, Sam sat back and looked to her mother for a suggestion.
Alice Neely had apparently thought this through thoroughly. "We'll pay someone to bring in meat. It would be nice if Mr. Talbott would sell us some of his stock, but Bradshaw actually offered to have someone go down and buy a cow if I could cook it. It's cold enough out there now to keep it frozen until spring. We'll do just fine."
"You'll have to charge exorbitant prices. Donner will have to build us more tables." Samantha played d
evil's advocate, but in truth, she wanted to dance with delight. Talbott had been more than surly these last few weeks. He'd been downright cantankerous. He practically growled every time she came near him. She'd like to think it was the silk and the laces her family decorated her in for their amusement, but she suspected pure frustration at not getting his own way ate at him. He now had seven women and four children in his precious town.
Not only did he have the four Neelys and Jack, the blacksmith's wife and her sister and their two children, but one of the widows and her youngest from the wagon train had decided to rent a hotel room for the winter rather than try to find a house in the valley. Sam figured the widow planned on marrying the first man who asked rather than go house hunting, but Talbott had been denied any say in the matter. The widow had wept herself into hysteria when Talbott tried to turn her out, and the men had threatened to quit if he didn't let her stay.
She could almost feel sorry for the man if she didn't hate him so much. Sloan still wouldn't say a word about her father. He wouldn't admit to knowing about the valley. And he wouldn't give up on these damned dresses. He'd caught her once going up a tree after a kitten with her skirt tucked up in her sash and nearly laughed himself silly. She would make him pay for that yet.
Opening a restaurant was a good start.
***
"They're doing what?" Sloan swung on his heel and skewered his right-hand man with a black glare.
Seemingly oblivious that he ought to be falling down dead, Joe twirled his gun and sighted it at some object out the window. "Opening a restaurant. I've got a personal invitation to opening night. They promised to make me peach pie from those canned peaches Miss Harriet had shipped in last week."
"They can't open a restaurant," Sloan said flatly. "That's my property. I didn't give them permission to open anything."
Joe shrugged, twirled his gun again, and holstered it. "Don't see anything wrong with eating a decent meal for a change."
"If I wanted decent meals, I'd hire a cook! Next thing we know, people will think this is a real hotel. They'll be coming up the mountain, looking for rooms and planning on eating at a fancy restaurant." Sloan stalked restlessly up and down the floor of his room. He was bored. He needed to go to 'Frisco and find a woman. He needed to do something before he started losing his mind. He was imagining Samantha Neely serving peach pie to a passel of miners, and he wanted to shove all their faces in it.
"This is a hotel," Joe answered laconically, taking a seat on a wooden chair and propping his boots on the bed. "Used to be people up here all the time on the way over the pass to the silver mines. You could make a mint of money just off those idiots who come here wanting to climb the peaks now."
That wasn't worth the effort of an answer. Sloan slammed out of the room and headed for his office. He'd come out here to the wilds of the Sierras for a reason. He had bought this mountain and kept it off the beaten path for a reason. He avoided people for a reason. He might occasionally forget why he kept on living, but he damned well knew why he was out here. Because he detested people. He detested civilization. And he particularly detested lying, conniving, thieving women.
And now he remembered why he detested women. They manipulated things. They manipulated people. Hell, they manipulated every man who crossed their paths. He refused to be one of the manipulated anymore. He'd sworn off that kind of existence ten years ago.
A few minutes later, he discovered he had donned his Colts and was loading his rifle. He shrugged. He didn't need an arsenal to scare away a few women, but it wouldn't hurt to keep the men out of his way. It was going to be a damned long winter if he didn't do something soon.
As he went outside, Sloan noted the lanterns hanging festively from the porch rafters outside the hacienda. More light poured through the windows. Despite the fact that the unrelenting western sun would rot right through the fabric, the women had hung wine-colored velvet on those front windows, just as if they still lived back East. It did give the room a certain cozy familiarity as he strode in, but the sight of nearly a dozen tables crowded end to end did not.
The room was packed with diners. Men waited on the parlor sofas pushed up against the walls. Real china and silver sparkled on the tables. Each table had a candle, although the candleholders were a little mismatched. Some of the tables were covered with fine linen. Others had little more than hastily hemmed fabric gathered from the never-ending store of surprises the Neelys had hauled in here. Other settlers might strew half their possessions across the countryside, getting here. The enterprising Neelys had apparently picked up everything everyone else had left behind.
Sloan was still chewing on this knowledge when Samantha swept into the room, carrying a tray filled with dishes. It wasn't the tray he noticed first. It was the dress. Those damned dresses were driving him to distraction. She never looked quite normal in one, probably because they were always made for somebody else. But she always managed to startle him in some new and different way. This time, she had gone out of her way to drive him nuts.
She was wearing the same thing as one of the twins. On the twin, the modest blue merino and ruffled apron looked perfectly normal. On Samantha, the hem came nearly half a foot from the ground, and he could clearly see her ankles in their scuffed boots. He caught himself straining for a glimpse of stocking, wondering what kind she wore or if she wore any. The gown swirled just barely above the top of her half boot. He knew he could tell if he just watched closely ...
Sloan suddenly realized the room had fallen silent. He glanced up and found the whole damned place staring at him, including Samantha. As he pictured the sight he must make wearing Colts and carrying a rifle, standing in the doorway trying to look under a woman's clothes, he ground his teeth together. The woman was driving him insane.
As he shoved his way past the tables toward Sam, she blithely continued serving her customer. She had the tray emptied by the time he grabbed her elbow and jerked her away from Ramsey's table. The good doctor was practically grinning, but said nothing as Sloan steered his waitress out of hearing.
"What in hell are you doing in that getup? Practicing for the role of saloon girl?"
Sam raised her auburn eyebrows. "It's a dress. You told me to wear dresses, remember? I know it doesn't fit very well, because it's Bernie's. Mother insisted that the twins have matching uniforms to wait on tables, but Bernie was a bit..." She hesitated over the description of her sister's female complaint. "Bernie isn't feeling well. So I'm taking her place." Realizing she owed him no explanation, she glared back at him. "Now unhand me. I've got work to do."
"You damned well do not. I'm shutting this place down. You can tell all your customers this is their last meal. I'm going back to talk to your mother."
Samantha deliberately blocked his path. "I wouldn't do that if I were you. Mother's up to her ears in feathers at the moment."
"Feathers?" Sloan wasn't certain he heard right. He had just noticed that Sam hadn't bothered fastening the top two tiny buttons of her bodice. The gown was too high- necked for it to make much difference, but he kept staring at the rest of that row of buttons. He was in the habit of ignoring her admonitions, but this one about feathers struck him as slightly incongruous. Maybe his eyesight was affecting his hearing.
"Feathers. Jack was supposed to have plucked the chickens this afternoon, but some of your cronies at the billiard parlor distracted him. You really don't want to see my mother when she's up to her ears in chicken feathers."
"Hey, Talbott! We were here first. Get in line like the rest of us. We're waiting for our suppers," a voice called from across the room.
Samantha made a small noise and escaped Sloan's grasp, hurrying back toward the kitchen. Not about to be thwarted by chicken feathers, Sloan followed close on her trail. Her strides were long, but her hips swayed quite satisfactorily, he noted. She really was a female, just a rather unusual one.
Walking from the candlelit ambiance of the parlor into the chicken-strewn chaos of the kitchen set hi
m momentarily aback. Samantha disappeared somewhere into the hellish interior of steaming pots and smoking stove before he could see where she went.
"Here, throw this out the back door." Someone shoved a dishpan full of dirty water into Sloan's hands. He stared at it incredulously, looked around for somewhere to unload it, and came to the conclusion that the back door was the only safe place. Boiling pots or chopping knives covered every other surface.
As he wended his way across a feather-strewn floor-, between nearly a half dozen swaying skirts, Sloan kept his eye out for Samantha. He noted her position chopping chickens at a cutting board in the corner. Satisfied he knew where to find her, he hauled the water out the back door, heaved it off the porch, and returned to the chaotic kitchen.
Alice Neely was stirring something in a skillet, testing the contents of a pot, and ordering her nephew to get the broom moving before she took it to his rear end. Sloan didn't think it diplomatic to try talking to an angry woman wielding a skillet, and he turned in search of Samantha. She wasn't where he'd left her.
Cursing, he stalked through the room toward the parlor where she no doubt showed her ankles to half the men in town again. He ought to be thanking her. The saloon would be packed tonight with men too horny to sleep. Didn't the female have any idea at all of what she did to them?
The schoolteacher sidled in front of him before he could reach the kitchen door. Wiping her hands on her apron, she smiled up at him. "I could make up a plate for you back here, Mr. Talbott. We're having chicken and dumplings. They're quite delicious."
Lord, he didn't know how long it had been since he'd had chicken and dumplings. He didn't spend much time thinking about what he couldn't have, but his stomach told him he really needed a decent meal. His head told him he had to get Samantha the hell out of that dining room.
Sloan made a cursory nod and pushed past the schoolteacher. He practically crashed into Samantha out in the hall as she hurried back with another empty tray.
"Good, there you are." She thrust the empty tray at the schoolteacher standing in the doorway and spoke to Sloan at the same time. "Mr. Smith has a seat at his table, and he says he wants to talk to you. He thinks he's found another outlet for your lumber."
Denim and Lace Page 10
