Romancing the Widow

by Davalynn Spencer

He strode across the lawn, out the front gate and into the side street without looking back.

  Picnickers resumed their pleasant conversations. Haskell breathed again.

  Martha gathered her basket and stood. He offered his hand as she stepped over the bench and she took it and raised her eyes to his. “Thank you.”

  He placed his other hand atop hers. “Did he hurt you in any way?”

  Her lips quivered in a slow, sad smile. “No, he did not hurt me. He simply opened my eyes to things I hadn’t seen years ago. Perhaps I didn’t want to then.” She withdrew her hand and looked around at the others enjoying their Sunday afternoon.

  “Would you join me on the porch? Your mother and I haven’t eaten yet. She’s been busy serving lemonade and I, well, I...”

  “Yes, thank you.” She held the basket with one hand and gathered her skirt with the other as they walked to the front steps. Her father was making the rounds of the tables crowding his front yard, thanking people for donating to the church’s support for the coming winter.

  And keeping one eye on his daughter and Haskell.

  Chapter 14

  Martha’s heart raced and every inch of her skin tingled. She looked eastward for gathering storm clouds, but the only storm brewing did so in her jumbled thoughts. Haskell had rescued her again—this time from public humiliation, for she was about to shove Tad backward off the bench. Either that or stab him with her fork.

  In a way, she pitied the boy who was stunted somehow, trapped in the same spot he was in when she’d left. He had aged, but he had not grown.

  Martha took the stairs with Haskell close behind. Perspiration glimmered on her mother’s forehead as she served a never-ending line of lemonade seekers. When Haskell joined her on the porch, Martha handed him her basket.

  “Please take this and insist that Mama eat something. I’m going to take her place serving. She should also put her foot up, but—” Embarrassed, she glanced sideways at Haskell who looked like he’d been asked to attend a quilting bee.

  “Never mind. Just make her eat something.”

  She stepped behind the serving table and took the ladle from her mother’s hand. “Thank you, Mama. It’s my turn. Haskell is waiting for you. Make sure he has some of your fine chicken and potato salad before he finishes off your apple butter.”

  Her mother dabbed her forehead with her apron hem and gave Martha’s shoulder a squeeze. “Perfect timing, dear. Perfect.”

  Martha’s timing was not all that was perfect. She accepted a cup from a freckle-faced little boy and peeked at the tall, dark-haired man seating her mother at the table. She was developing a new definition of perfect.

  She tipped the crock and ladled out enough to give the little boy a swallow. “That’s it. You got the very last drop of lemonade.”

  He grinned his thanks and bounded down the stairs. Martha’s father dodged quickly enough to avoid a collision with the freckle-faced lad, and then joined his wife and Haskell on the porch. Martha wiped her hands on a towel by the crock and did the same.

  Taking her seat with a sigh, she relaxed for the first time that day. Relief washed over her like the afternoon sunshine, clarifying and defining more than the tables and people scattered across the yard. Martha was beginning to see herself in a different light, one that illuminated possibilities here in Cañon City, possibilities with a certain Colorado Ranger. If he chose to stay.

  She pulled her basket closer and saw a pile of biscuit crumbs in the center of the table, brushed into a neat little pyramid. She cocked a brow at Haskell, who was busy working over a chicken leg, but her mother caught her question.

  “That one didn’t make it,” she said with a laugh.

  “Best social event of the year so far, Pastor.” Foster Blanchard stood among her mother’s peonies that fronted the porch, no doubt breaking off several stems. “I think your missus and daughter raised more for the coal-bin fund than the last two years put together.”

  Blanchard laughed at his cleverness, but as the church treasurer, he was probably right. Martha bent her head to a napkin hoping to avoid the need to comment.

  “Don’t forget,” Blanchard continued. “We’ve got a bumper crop o’ apples this year and I hate to see ’em go to waste. Come out and pick whatever you can haul off.” He gave Martha’s mother serious regard. “Best there is for that apple butter of yours, Mrs. Hutton. Right good.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Blanchard,” her mother said. “We do appreciate it.”

  As the man blazed a path out of the peonies, she whispered, “He says that every year. I think he takes great pride in that apple butter.”

  “As do I,” Martha’s father said, squeezing his wife’s hand.

  “But I can’t pick apples this year.”

  Martha felt the penetrating gaze, and a sense of foreboding shadowed the otherwise pleasant setting. Reluctantly she looked up from her napkin to see that she was right. Her mother spoke volumes in molasses-colored tones.

  “You know I can’t go hobbling around out in that man’s orchard. Not with my ankle in the shape it’s in.” She blushed the slightest bit and lowered her eyes. “Pardon me, Mr. Jacobs, for speaking so personally.”

  Haskell coughed, caught unawares by the apology. “No pardon necessary, ma’am.”

  Martha scripted out the next comment before it hit the air.

  “And your father can’t go either, can you dear?” She gave him a look that only a husband could interpret, which he did quite skillfully.

  “No, I’m sorry, but I can’t.” He reached for the last biscuit. “Too much to do around here in the next several days. And I need to get the church ready for winter.” He spooned a large helping of apple butter onto his biscuit. “I guess that leaves you, Marti. If you can find someone to go with you, that is. I’d rather you didn’t drive out to Blanchard’s by yourself. Maybe one of the ladies from the library would like to pick apples. Or a student working the dig up at Finch’s quarry.”

  Haskell seemed oblivious to their machinations. Not Martha. She’d ridden home on the train and she was about to be railroaded again with Haskell Jacobs, straight for Blanchard’s apple orchard. Why must her parents interfere so blatantly?

  She dropped her hands to her lap and opened her mouth to speak, but Haskell picked up the trail.

  “Might I accompany your daughter to the orchard?” He looked her father in the eye as if she were not sitting at the table with them. As if she were twelve and he needed permission to go with her. Of all the—

  “A wonderful idea, Mr. Jacobs.” Her mother smiled demurely, effectively masking the manipulative nature that lurked just below a glowing surface.

  Haskell turned to Martha as she fumed. “What day would you like to go?”

  His question demanded a clear answer and his laughter-laced eyes banished her anger. A day with Haskell? She should be so fortunate. He was indeed stealing her heart. But could she trust him?

  Doubt slipped a cold hand around her neck and reminded her that she knew very little about the man. But she knew quite a bit more about Tad Overton and she’d take Haskell’s company over Tad’s any day.

  “Wednesday.” That day required them to return in time for the midweek service and thus ensured they’d be home before dark. And it left two days open for a trip to the fossil quarry.

  “Wednesday it is.”

  “I shall pack a lunch for you,” her mother said. “It’s the least I can do.”

  Martha rolled her eyes and wondered if Haskell had any idea he’d been set up.

  * * *

  Monday morning’s nine-mile ride to the fossil site in Mr. Winton’s cab proved dustier and rougher than Martha remembered from her youth. Then again, at her age with a still-sensitive shoulder, she was not the young woman she’d been at seventeen.

  Enthusiasm
seemed to have waned over the dig, as her mother had suspected, for few people joined the excursion. Golden cottonwoods and aspen paraded along the creek bed that marked the road into the red canyon, and bold blue sky reminded her that fall reigned in the wide Arkansas Valley.

  At the wash that held the quarry, Mr. Winton was careful to hand her down from the cab and lead the way up the ravine to the site. With her sketchpad under her arm, she paused to tie on the bonnet her mother had insisted she take. The sun made a furnace of the hard-baked earth and yellow stone that formed the gully’s walls. Not a green thing grew at the dig site other than stunted juniper trees that clung with gnarled fingerlike roots to barren rock.

  From a distance, Mr. Finch looked much the same as she remembered, hunched over his work with a small pick and brush, pitifully shaded by his soiled farmer’s hat. Hesitant to lose her footing on the loose shale, she held back as others ventured across the site to join in the careful digging and brushing. She situated herself on a large flat rock to sketch the scene before her, careful to mind the details.

  The place had lost much of its appeal. It looked the same, but the intriguing mystery of what lay beneath the ancient streambed had been replaced by wonder at what stirred in her heart regarding a certain, very much alive, Colorado Ranger.

  * * *

  Not much in Haskell’s Monday telegram to Captain Blain resembled the one he’d planned Sunday before church. Nor was it the only thing that had changed since then.

  He slid the paper across the counter, followed by a coin. Outside the train station he lingered, watching people buy tickets and leave trunks on the platform. He’d hoped to be leaving by this time as well, with a prisoner cuffed to his arm and Cache tied in a boxcar. His original purpose in Cañon City had faded next to his growing affection for Martha Hutton and he needed to get back on track. Lack of discipline had him hobbled.

  That accounted in part for nearly wadin’ into Tad Overton in the parson’s front yard. He’d let a beautiful woman distract him. The case might have been wrapped up, with the crook in custody, if he hadn’t been drawn off course by the widow’s charm.

  He huffed, looked up the street and then crossed toward the café. Nothing about Martha Hutton said widow any longer. In two weeks’ time she had shed her dark dresses, and her pale features had warmed. Just that morning he’d trailed her and a group of bone hunters to the bluffs in what the locals called Garden Park. Who spent all day in the sun digging for dead animals, regardless of how large the bones were?

  Martha Hutton, for one. He stomped his boots outside the café door and entered to a full house. One small table sat empty in the far corner. The perfect spot to no one but him.

  With his back to the wall and a clear view of the door, he ordered steak and eggs and coffee and was pleased to see that the meal also came with a pile of fried potatoes. He forked the eggs onto the steak and dug in.

  He needed a plan. If Overton had sold off the stolen horses—demonstrated by the double eagle he’d brandished in church Sunday—how could Haskell prove the man was the culprit? He needed evidence.

  He shoved down a curse unspoken, a recent tendency inspired by intrusive thoughts of Martha, her family and their God.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t believe. Of course he believed. But God didn’t get involved in his work and Haskell didn’t invite him to. He stabbed the steak with his fork and cut off a chunk.

  Whit Hutton had mentioned Texas Creek. It was worth a half-day’s ride up the canyon to find out who had bought the horses, and it had to be tomorrow. Wednesday he was picking apples.

  He shook his head at the yellow yolk bleeding across the meat. The Huttons were good. Very good. He chuckled, remembering Martha’s discomfort at the table as they herded her toward a hired-gun chaperone.

  “Something funny?”

  The aproned waiter stood with a steaming coffeepot and a puzzled frown.

  “No.” Haskell wiped his mouth and then held his cup out. “Thanks.”

  The man considered him with suspicion, but Haskell did not explain anything to anybody he didn’t work for. With a sniff and a shake of his head, the waiter moved off to another table

  It wouldn’t hurt to stop in and check with the sheriff again. He was aware of Haskell’s assignment, and if he wasn’t in cahoots with the thief, he might have heard something and be willing to exchange information.

  He certainly wasn’t out beating the bushes for the snake. Fact was, Haskell didn’t know what the sheriff did, other than gouge the top of his desk with his spurs. A man didn’t need spurs if he didn’t ride—unless he just liked the sound of his own janglers.

  And that was how Haskell found him when he walked into the sheriff’s office after breakfast. Feet up on the desk, hat slouched over his face, fingers laced across his belly. Haskell slammed the door and watched the man scramble to keep from tipping backward.

  “Morning, Sheriff.” Making enemies wasn’t Haskell’s way, but this man wasn’t smart enough to be his enemy.

  “Jacobs.” The sheriff coughed and sputtered and righted his hat. “Ya find your horse thief yet?”

  “No, that’s why I stopped in. Wondered if you’d heard anything.”

  The sheriff stood, hitched his britches and walked to the board where he displayed wanted posters. He mumbled the names to himself and then walked back to his desk chair, spurs a-janglin’. “Can’t say that I have.”

  Or wouldn’t say.

  “Have you heard talk of any new horseflesh around? Anyone buy a few head lately with blistered brands? Like maybe up around Texas Creek?”

  The sheriff cut his eyes sideways and pulled on the end of his mustache. “Nope. Not lately. ’Course we don’t hear much from up the canyon without ridin’ up there, seein’ as how they ain’t got no telegraph ’til Salida.”

  Haskell reset his hat and turned for the door. “Thanks anyway.”

  The desk chair creaked. “Say, Jacobs. You thinkin’ of stayin’ in these parts? Settlin’ down, maybe?”

  Haskell faced him. “Why do you ask?”

  “Well, election’s comin’ up this fall. They’ll be needin’ a sheriff, seein’ as how I’m goin’ back to Missouri. Thought you might be interested in the position, you bein’ a lawman yourself and all.”

  The man had more nervous twitches than an old woman on chewing tobacco. “That right?” Haskell folded his arms. “No takers around here?”

  The sheriff snorted. “Can’t get nobody. Ain’t enough goin’ on around here to keep a man busy. Not worth the trouble.”

  That depended on the correct definition of trouble. Haskell reached for the door. “Thanks for the tip. I’ll think about it.”

  He thought about it the rest of the day.

  And all the next. He thought about it while he brushed and saddled Cache and rode to Texas Creek. He thought about how he could find that place he wanted and raise a few cows, maybe a couple of youngsters like Whit and Livvy’s boys.

  And build a house with a porch that faced the sunset.

  He pressed a fist against an ache in his chest.

  As he rounded the bend to the junction, a small park spread out from the river and the mountains leaned back against a clear sky. A mighty hand had cut this land and forested these slopes. A hand Haskell could use right now.

  He cleared his throat, rubbed his jaw. “Lord.”

  Cache’s ear twitched back at the sound.

  “I know we haven’t spoken much lately, but I’d be obliged if You’d turn me in the right direction where Overton is concerned.”

  The horse shook his head and jerked on the reins.

  “And help me win Martha’s hand.”

  Cache nickered.

  Fool horse was laughing at him. “Amen.”

  Yellow cottonwood trees flared along the river, their gold lea
ves quivering like paper coins against a blue sky. Autumn’s sharp edge cut the fine air, and a lungful invigorated Haskell as he climbed off his horse at the Texas Creek General Store.

  A man had ridden through the week before with a string of ponies, the storekeep told him. “Wouldn’t have minded havin’ the little mare for myself,” he said as he stacked canned peaches on a shelf behind the counter. “Green broke, fresh branded.” He faced Haskell with the air of a busy proprietor. “But I don’t got time to be breakin’ no horses.”

  “What did this man look like?”

  “Younger than you. Thin, dark hair. When he came back through he didn’t have the horses.”

  “Any idea who he sold them to?”

  “Rancher, I expect. But wouldn’t know which one. I’ll ask around, though. Send word if I hear.”

  Haskell drew a pencil and paper out of his coat, wrote his name and handed it to the man.

  The storekeep read it. “Tillman,” he said, and glanced up.

  “I’m at the St. Cloud. They’ll take a message.”

  On the way down the mountain, Haskell studied on how he’d explain having two last names if he ran for sheriff.

  If Martha Hutton would have him.

  Chapter 15

  In the last two weeks, Martha had joined the Women’s Reading Club, helped at the mercantile and rode up to the Finch quarry north of town. Between helping her mother and keeping up with her new activities, she’d found herself thinking less and less about Joseph.

  She pulled the hairbrush through loose tangles, closed her eyes and tried to picture him as he brushed her hair in the evenings. Though she loved him still, his features more often blurred and melted into a murky memory. She plaited the long strands and coiled the braid at the base of her neck to keep it from snagging on tree branches or falling across her face. A full day’s work awaited her. A full day with Haskell Jacobs.

  A shiver ran up her back and her gaze fell on the matching brush set on her dressing table. Blue forget-me-nots trailed around pink and yellow roses on the porcelain backing. Was she forgetting? Was she being unfaithful to consider another man?