“Or when he’s got some woman’s skirts to hide behind,” Matthews added with hooting derision.
Jeff turned to face them, anger throbbing through his limbs, but he bit back the fury. Despite everything that had happened, he never forgot that he’d cut short the life of this man’s son. That knowledge and the guilt that went with it had saved Cooper Matthews from Jeff’s wrath more than once, if he only knew it. The shotgun Matthews carried gleamed dully under the afternoon sun.
“I got a bone to pick with you, Hicks. More than one bone, in fact, and my list keeps growing. So you’d better watch your back. I aim to get satisfaction one of these days.” He hefted the shotgun once, a short, light bounce in his hand, as if to bring the weapon to Jeff’s notice.
Weariness, heavy as a millstone, descended upon Jeff. Cooper Matthews was a mean son of a bitch, mean to the core. Jeff wasn’t about to let him think he could be pushed around, but he just wanted to walk away and be left in what little peace he had.
He gave Cooper a wry grin, then stared into the man’s small, cruel eyes. “Hell, Matthews, you can’t kill a man who’s already dead. Even you and your dimwit pard, here—” he gestured at Floyd, “ought to be smart enough to know that. You can threaten me all you want—it just doesn’t matter to me.”
Plainly spoiling for a fight, Jeff’s indifference made the man even angrier. While Floyd gaped at Jeff, his companion sputtered for a snappy retort, choler twisting his face. People on the street were turning to stare at them.
Jeff turned and walked on toward the Liberal. Then he heard Cooper yell an extremely crude remark about Althea Ford, one that sent another surge of anger through his veins. Jeff knew he did it to goad him, and oh, damn it, he shouldn’t care. He should just let it go. But Althea had no part of this fight, not really. It had started long before the day she talked to Cooper about working for her, and she didn’t deserve to have anyone call her a filthy name. He turned and strode back to the two men, his boot heels pounding on the boards in the sidewalk. It felt as if there were a face at every window up and down the street watching and listening.
Floyd let out a short yip and jumped aside. Jeff grabbed Cooper by the suspenders on his baggy overalls and pulled him up to his face. Although Jeff done nothing with his life in the past two years, he didn’t feel that he was as completely worthless as the man who faced him now. Stealing an egg was nothing compared to Matthews’ history of bullying and inflicting years of physical and mental abuse on his wife and child. Jeff thought Elly Matthews died simply to escape her life with Cooper.
“Say it again, Matthews. Call Miss Ford that name again, this time to my face.”
The other man only grinned at Jeff, showing off his stained, peglike teeth. “What’re you gonna do, Hicks? Kill me? You two think you’re better than everyone else, you and that cu—”
Jeff’s fist smashed against Cooper’s mouth, cutting off the end of the word. The man’s head snapped back and he landed on his backside in the street. He wiped his dirty hand across his mouth and looked at the blood there. He sent Jeff a look of pure, undiluted hatred.
“You’re gonna pay for that, Hicks.”
Jeff stood over him and pointed a finger at him. “That’s fine. I don’t give a damn. You just leave the lady out of it.” He turned and walked away again, past goggle-eyed bystanders and counter boys who’d come out of the stores and saloon to have a look.
He didn’t think Cooper and Floyd were following him. He’d barked louder than they had. This time. But just as he’d recognized the other day, this thing between Matthews and him wasn’t finished, and Jeff truly didn’t know which of them that would die in ending it. But all of it had come about because he’d gone to Wickwire’s that night and seen Wes, instead of riding home to have dinner with Sally.
Guilt, fury, and the frightening novelty of dealing with trouble sober had his insides shaking. More determined than ever to get that drink, he reached the saloon and gripped the top of the batwing doors. From within, the noise and smells and voices, all so familiar to him, drew him with an unspoken promise to kill the pain in his soul. He pushed on the doors—he thought he heard someone inside call him by name. This was where he belonged, even if he’d once had other dreams . . .
Then a pair of blue-gray eyes rose in his memory. The effect was so sudden, so unexpected, that Jeff stopped as if someone had pulled him back by his shirt tail.
“Hey, Jeff, are you coming in or not, son?” A ripple of laughter rolled through the place.
He released his grip on the doors. No, he wasn’t. Althea had put her trust in him, and it sat on his shoulders with his weariness, a burden that he knew he couldn’t put down. Not even for a minute.
Not even for one drink.
Jeff turned around and walked back to the wagon that had borne a child into adulthood. He climbed up to the same sprung seat that had held her, and unwrapped the reins from the brake handle.
“We’d better get back, Kansas. Allie’s waiting.”
CHAPTER NINE
Calling herself every kind of God’s fool, Althea had watched Jeff leave with a leaden feeling in the pit of her stomach. He’d been gone for what seemed like hours, and though she tried to keep her mind on her ironing and hide her concern from Olivia, she wasn’t having much luck with either.
“I don’t know if I would have given him money, Althea. After all, a man like him might just take it and never come back.” Olivia sat at the kitchen table sipping tea and stitching on a doll’s dress. Her nose wrinkled delicately as she spoke, as if she discussed a very disagreeable smell.
Althea had been surprised to see her downstairs—lately her sister had begun looking wan again and taking to her bed. Today, distracted though Althea was, she noticed that Olivia positively bloomed. Her cheeks had color and her eyes were bright, even though she pursed her mouth slightly with obvious disapproval.
Trying to change the subject, Althea gave her sister a fond smile and said, “You look so fresh and pretty today, dear. I’m glad to see you up and about again.”
“Well, when I looked out my window and saw your Mr. Hicks leave, I knew you’d be needing company. It’s so disappointing when someone you’ve counted on lets you down. I hope the sheriff puts him back in jail if he catches him.” Olivia shook her head and tsk-tsked while she tacked a narrow strip of lace onto the little skirt. “You probably should have told him to have the supplies put on account.”
The same thought had already occurred to Althea. But if he bought clothes for himself, he might feel uncomfortable about getting them on what might look like charity, and a woman’s charity at that. With cash, no one was the wiser. She tried to sound unconcerned when she replied. “I’m not worried. Besides, he’ll probably show up starving for his dinner.”
Olivia peered closely at the fine stitches she took in the doll’s dress and shook her head again. “No, I think we’ve seen the last of him. But when he doesn’t come back you won’t have to worry about cooking for another person, or sewing for him, or doing his wash. Next time, you can hire someone who’ll go home at night.”
Her sister’s pessimistic certainty made her head begin to ache. “Of course he’ll be back. We still have lots of work to do around here.” But Althea looked out the kitchen window even more often than she had when Jeff was plowing in the field without a shirt. That was a dangerous thing to do when working with fire-hot flatirons. With her gaze fixed on the road outside, she groped blindly for the iron and her hand came to rest on the bare metal.
Letting out a cry that launched Olivia from her chair, Althea jerked her hand away and ran to the sink to pump cold water over it.
“Let me see,” Olivia demanded. She made passing swipes to grab her wrist, but Althea refused, afraid to see the burn herself.
“No! I’ll be all right! Please,” she begged, huddled over the sink, “please just leave me alone.” Her voice shook with suppressed tears and frayed nerves. She didn’t mean to be short with Olivia. But a sense of defeat sa
t on her heart like a rock, and searing her hand on the iron stole the shreds of her brave front.
With a pointed show of hurt feelings, Olivia dropped her hand and backed up. “Certainly, Althea. I’ll run along to the parlor, if that's the way you want it.” Allie could tell from her tone that her sister was thinking of herself again.
With a shaky sigh, Althea forced herself to look at the burn. A big triangular blister was forming on her palm, its angry red shape conforming with the top end of the iron. Butter—that’s what people put on burns. She pulled out the butter crock and spooned some onto the blister. Then she cradled her hand to her chest and tried to fight the tears rising in her eyes, while Olivia played the piano, battering the keys like an asylum inmate.
What if he didn’t come back? What if Jeff took the mule and the wagon and never came back? It wasn’t losing the money that worried her, although that wasn’t a happy prospect. And she’d have to pay Mr. Smithfield for the loss of Kansas. She looked out the window at the plowed field. But who would plant that garden out there? Who would help her? Her gaze drifted to the lean-to.
Who would stir in her those frightening, fascinating feelings that he did? a tiny voice whispered. Althea practically jumped away from the window, guilt adding its burden to her anxiety.
In the parlor Olivia continued to pound out a song, and Althea felt that she must escape or completely lose her composure. Grabbing a small meal sack from the corner, she pushed on the screen door and went outside, away from the pouting and the angry piano notes. There was a stiff breeze blowing, but the afternoon was hot, so she crossed the yard to the leafy shade of the old oak that towered in the meadow next to the barn. It was always cooler under here, and even in the hottest part of summer, the grass and wild flowers under the tree’s limbs stayed green and tender.
Opening the meal sack with her uninjured hand she reached inside and took out a small handful of shelled sunflower seeds. Then with her hand open and slightly outstretched, she stood perfectly still and waited. In the peaceful hush of the countryside, she could hear her own breathing, and her heartbeat beneath her breastbone, but the only other sound was the whisper of her skirts against the high grass. Still she waited.
It didn’t take long. First she heard curious chirps coming from the higher branches above her, and the sound of wings fluttering against the leaves. An instant later she felt an airy tap on her shoulder, and then a black-capped chickadee jumped from her shoulder and settled on her fingers.
“Ohh, there you are,” she murmured softly. “I came to see how you’re getting along. Did you bring your wife?”
As if answering her question, another bird with plainer feathers fluttered down to her hand from a low branch, and Althea’s heart warmed as the little black and white birds plucked the sunflower hearts from her palm. Watching them, she could almost her forget the pain in her other hand, and the very real possibility that Jefferson Hicks had taken her money, her wagon, and Mr. Smithfield’s mule, and now was long gone.
~~*~*~*~~
After his encounter with Cooper and Floyd, Jeff spent the ride home in moody reflection. There was no telling how Cooper would decide to strike next, and Floyd Endicott was his toadying tagalong. Floyd didn’t have as dark a mean streak as Cooper, but he’d do anything his friend told him, so that was just as bad.
When the Fords’ peeling yellow house came into view, Jeff was surprised by the vague sense of relief that settled over him. Not because of the house—although the roof looked better, overall the thing was an eyesore that might never be right again. But there was refuge here, and a kind of peace where the Cooper Matthews’ of the world wouldn’t bother him, and the pull of the Liberal Saloon wasn’t as strong.
As he and Kansas passed the house on the way to the barn, he noticed Allie standing stock-still in the fruit orchard with her hand extended. The breeze whipped at the hem of her skirt and her apron ties, and strands of her dark-red hair pulled loose from its knot. What the hell was she doing? She looked like a statue in a town square, or a photographer’s notion of a forest nymph, posed and captured on a camera’s glass plate.
He let the reins grow slack in his hands and Kansas took that as a signal to stop. Jeff heard the tortured piano notes coming from the house, but his attention was on the mahogany-haired woman in the grass.
The whole family had never been quite right, Eli Wickwire had said. Was he was seeing an active of example of Allie being not “quite right?”
Then suddenly, a bird landed on Allie’s shoulder and hopped down to her open palm to eat something right out of her hand.
Jeff hunched forward and put his elbows on his knees. “Well, I’ll be damned— ” He’d never seen anything like it. Most birds were as skittish as horses, flying off with little or no provocation, never letting anyone get close. Yet here was Allie, feeding them as if she were one of them. The sight of it lifted some of the darkness from his heart.
It suited her, he decided. She was small and delicate like those birds. She had graceful little ways, like when she pushed her hair back with her hand. It reminded him of a bird preening its feathers.
He wondered if she knew about the bird’s nest in the barn, the one with the family of new swallows. He’d seen it when he’d gone in search of the shingles. She’d like to see that little family, he’d bet. Watching her now, he knew it would be just the kind of thing to make her smile.
The birds on her hand flew away to the higher branches above, and Allie’s head came up. Apparently sensing his presence, slowly she turned toward him, and a spontaneous smile lit her face.
“Jeff! You came back!” She sounded surprised. Surprised enough to forget to call him Mr. Hicks. She waded through the tall grass and wild flowers, her skirts swishing like wheatfields in the wind. When she reached the wagon, he noticed the meal bag in her hand.
He pointed at the bag. “I’ve never seen anyone hand-feed birds before. At least not those little ones.”
She tipped her face up to his. “They’re shy, but they’ll come once they realize they aren’t in danger. It took some time and patience to prove that to them, and for them to get used to me.” She smiled again and extended the bag. “And I think the sunflower hearts were too tempting for them to resist.”
Maybe it was more than the seeds, Jeff thought, looking at her. It wouldn’t take much to have him eating out of her hand. She was so beautiful, her face and her slender softness, he got a lump in his throat just looking at her. Sally had been pretty, too, but in a different way. His wife had been younger, and yet there had been a spark of undisguised lust in her eyes that she’d carried to their bed.
Allie’s was a quiet, simple beauty, like that of a clear mountain morning, or wild filly running across a stretch of grassland. She was probably wary of a man’s touch, but maybe her trust could be earned, just as she’d tamed the birds enough to eat from her hand. A man could almost forget his foolish past and begin to think about tomorrow if he had a woman like her beside him.
“You got everything, then?” She searched the wagon box behind him. “The seed and all?
“Yeah. Oh, here—” He leaned back on the wagon seat and dug two fingers into his front pocket. “I’ve got your change.” And a damned good thing he did, too. How could he have come back here with part of the money missing, or worse, with no money at all? He would have run off to hide rather than face her with the proof that she’d been a fool to trust him.
When she held out her free hand to take the coins, he saw an ugly burn on her palm. He gripped her wrist. “Jesus, what happened to your hand?”
Althea had put out her hand without thinking, and she saw the blister at the same time that Jeff did. Self-consciously she struggled to pull her hand away, but his grip was firm and warm. “I burned it on the iron. It was my fault—I wasn’t watching what I was doing.”
“It must hurt like hell,” he said, studying it with a frown that laid furrows on his smooth forehead. But she wasn’t looking at her hand. She was looking at
Jeff. Faint lines fanned out from the outer corners of his eyes, the badge of a man who’d spent time laboring under the sun. His dark lashes were golden at their roots, like corn silk. So were his brows, and the sight fascinated her.
He had come back, she thought. He’d come back even though Olivia had told her he wouldn’t. Even though she herself had doubted it. Althea didn’t think she’d ever been so glad to see someone.
His gaze, as green and deep as a bottomless lake, shifted from her hand to her eyes, and Allie’s thoughts were occupied with nothing but their hold on her. “Doesn’t it?”
“W-what?” She rather wished he wouldn’t look at her like that. How could she think straight if he did?
“Doesn’t your hand hurt?”
“Um, yes, I guess so.” His touch made her completely forget about the burn on her palm.
He continued to cradle her hand in his own. “You should see to it. Did you do anything for it?”
“A little butter. I’ll put some baking soda on it when I go back inside.” Her insides felt like the butter that had melted on her hand, and she hoped he wouldn’t notice the goose bumps that rushed down her bare forearm. “Things went all right in town?”
Jeff released her wrist and shrugged, obviously uncomfortable. “Yeah. Fine.” Althea wasn’t convinced. He jumped down from the wagon, all long legs and grace, and walked around to lead the mule to the barn. “I’d better get Kansas, here, unhitched and these sacks put away.”
She took a couple of steps to follow him. He was so tall that her head just reached his shoulder, and he moved with a loose, easy gait that she found curiously stirring. But something was bothering him. “Did someone in town make a comment about you working here?”
He turned to look at her. “What do you mean?”
She smiled slightly. “It’s funny—people talk about Olivia and me and they think we don’t know. Well, I suppose Olivia doesn’t. But I do. I know what they say—I’ve known it for years. So I thought that maybe someone asked you about working for the crazy Ford sisters.”
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