Nell took the flowers and said formally, “I am in your debt.”
“No, ma’am, I’m in yours. You see, I always wondered what I’d do if someone needed me. I worried that I wouldn’t be man enough. But now I know I am, even though it was you who knocked out that fellow.” He grinned at her, a smile that lit up his face and made his eyes shine.
Nell smiled back, but Betty didn’t. In fact, she watched him, as if wondering what he wanted. Nell knew Betty didn’t trust men, even the good ones. She believed they were always after something. “You want that porterhouse now?” Betty asked.
James shook his head. “I imagine it’s time for you ladies to go home.” Later, Betty said she’d thought James would ask to escort Nell home, and then who knew what he might try. But instead, he said, “I hope you’re all right, Miss … Miss…”
“Nell,” Nell said.
“Nell. I always did favor that name.” Then he turned and said over his shoulder, “I’ll see you around, Miss Nell.”
* * *
Two weeks passed before Nell saw James again, and by then she was disappointed, thinking he wouldn’t be back. She wanted to thank him, but more than that, she wanted to see him again. He was the nicest man she had met in Denver, and she hoped he wasn’t married. Then one midmorning, when the café had only two or three other customers, James sat down on a stool and ordered coffee and doughnuts. “I just thought I’d stop by and see if you’re all right,” he said.
“I’m pretty well, I guess,” Nell told him, but of course, she wasn’t. She had gone home the night of the attack and taken a bath and climbed into bed, but she couldn’t sleep. Every time she dozed off, she saw the bleached-out eyes of the man who had attacked her. She felt his hands clawing her, scratching her breast, pulling at her skirt. After a time, she got up and went downstairs, where she had left her quilting, and sat in a rocker, her sewing in her lap. But she couldn’t take a stitch. She picked up the needle, but instead of inserting it into the fabric, she pricked her finger and watched a tiny drop of blood seep out. She put her finger into her mouth.
“Can’t sleep, can you?”
Nell jumped when she heard the voice, and she clutched the rocker, her elbows poking into her sides as if she could make herself smaller.
“I can’t either.” Ignoring Nell’s startled state, her landlady, Mrs. Bonner, sat down on a hard chair. “I came downstairs to make myself a cup of tea. It’s chamomile. I dried the flowers myself last summer. You want a cup?”
“Yes, please,” Nell said. She wasn’t sure she wanted the company, but she didn’t care to be alone either.
“Any reason you can’t sleep?” Mrs. Bonner asked when she returned with the tea.
Nell shook her head. She was too ashamed to confess what had happened. “A bad dream, I guess.” She sipped the tea, which almost scalded her mouth.
“Bad things happen sometimes,” Mrs. Bonner said, and Nell wondered if Betty had told her about the incident in the café. “Like the fellow says, you got to remember the good things, not the bad ones.”
“Oh, nothing like that,” Nell said, determined no one should know what had happened. “It was just a dream.”
“A man came by today,” Mrs. Bonner said, and Nell turned to look at her, startled. Had James Hamilton followed her home? Or worse, had the police let her attacker go and somehow he’d found out where she lived?
Mrs. Bonner studied her a moment. “He asked if I took male boarders. I said no. I wouldn’t have taken him even if I did. He was older than I am, all bent over. He couldn’t have climbed the stairs.”
Nell gave a slight smile, glad Mrs. Bonner had diverted her attention to such a small thing, and glanced down at her quilting, although she didn’t seem to have the energy to stitch on it.
“What are you making?” Mrs. Bonner asked.
“A Lone Star,” Nell replied, holding up the patchwork.
“A Texas quilt. Didn’t you say you’d been living in Texas?”
“New Mexico Territory.”
“Well, same thing. Looks like a cowboy quilt.”
Did it? Nell wondered. Had she chosen a cowboy pattern? “I picked it because I like stars.”
“I do, too. Last quilt I made was an Evening Star.” Mrs. Bonner chatted as she picked up her own quilting, Nell only half listening. In fact, the drone of the landlady’s voice made her sleepy. After a few minutes, she finished her tea and said good night.
She went right to sleep, and in the morning, she wondered if Mrs. Bonner had known the conversation would make her drowsy. Women, she thought, could be wonderful friends. She’d hoped to find a husband in Denver, but it wasn’t such a bad thing that she had found two good friends.
* * *
Nell was thinking about James at the very moment he came into the café. He had been like a medieval knight rushing in to rescue her, then disappearing into the sunlight. What reason was there for him to come back? There really was no reason he should come around, and Nell had given up seeing him again.
Then he was there, grinning at her and sitting at the counter, removing his hat. He was smartly dressed in a fashionable suit, with a tie and a high starched collar, but the fine clothes didn’t hide the boyish look.
Nell’s eyes lit up when she saw him. She poured him a cup of coffee. “Cream?” she asked.
James shook his head. “Don’t need it. Your coffee’s too good.” Then he inquired how she was.
After Nell told him she was fine, he said, “Well, I’m glad for it. With a day like this”—with a wave of his hand, he indicated the sun outside—“who wouldn’t be fine? I love Denver. I surely do. Can’t stand to be away from it.”
“You’re a traveling man, then?” Nell asked. Apart from his name, she didn’t know a thing about him.
“Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nebraska.”
“New Mexico?”
“No, not there.”
“What do you sell?”
“Fabrics, mostly, and notions. I work for a big company. We manufacture anything you need to stitch a dress or make a tablecloth. I have clients all over.” He opened a case and took out some fabric samples. “Pretty, aren’t they, and high quality. Just the thing to appeal to a housewife.”
“Or a quilter,” Nell said.
“You quilt?” he asked. “I thought you just might be too elegant for something as simple as quilting.”
Nell laughed. It felt good to laugh with a man again. “I’m pretty simple.”
“Well, these are for you, then.” He laid the samples on the counter.
Nell touched one of the swatches, and James put his hand over hers. She savored the warmth of his touch before she took her hand away. “Oh, I would like to buy them someday,” she said. The fabric looked expensive, and she was close with her money.
“They’re not for sale. I’m done with them. I was going to throw them out. I’d like to know they will end up in a quilt. I’ll give them to you if you promise you’ll use them for something pretty.”
Nell was flustered and not sure it was proper to accept such a gift. Then Betty came into the room from the kitchen and said, “Take them. You can make them into a quilt for me.” She added, “That porterhouse is getting awfully old.”
James shook his head. “Coffee. If you’ll give me a cup of coffee, I’ll call it square.”
Nell thought James might ask her out then, and she was disappointed when he finished his coffee and rose, putting another cartwheel under his saucer. “See you next trip,” he said.
Betty watched him go. “Here I thought he was ready to ask you to go to the pictures with him. Maybe next time. He’ll be back.”
“Do you think so?”
“Oh, yes.”
“I hope so,” Nell said, remembering how the touch of his hand had warmed her.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Nell began to look forward to James’s visits. Each time the door opened, she looked up, hoping to see him. She never knew when he would show up. Sometimes he came by t
wo or three times a week, and then he’d skip a week or two because he was calling on stores in another state, he said. He told her little about himself other than that he’d grown up in Idaho.
“On a ranch?” Nell asked.
“Oh, my, no, in a town. My father had a dry goods store. I could have taken it over, but I get restless staying in one place. That’s why I became a purveyor of yard goods and such.” He removed a spool of thread and set it on the counter. Each time he came into the restaurant now, he gave her samples of notions he sold—snaps, buttons, thread. “Try this, it has a new twist,” he said, taking a skein of embroidery floss from his sample case.
Nell thanked him, and as she did, she removed a quilt square from under the counter. “I kept this here to show you how I used the fabric scraps you gave me.” The square was wrinkled, and she smoothed it with her hand. She had brought the best of the squares, the one in which the corners matched perfectly.
James touched Nell’s arm as he leaned over to study it. “What’s the pattern?”
“Lady of the Lake.” The quilt was for Betty. Nell had chosen a pattern she thought her friend would like, but she wondered if she had really picked it because she thought it would please James. That was foolish, because, as Nell reminded herself again, James really had never been more than a customer, although he was a friendly customer. Betty thought perhaps he was married—or maybe he had a girl at home, wherever that was. That would explain why he’d never asked Nell out.
After he inspected the quilt square, James admired Nell’s workmanship, and she wondered what other man ever paid attention to the stitching on a quilt.
“I like the way you use the blue against the purple. You have a way with colors,” James said.
Nell glanced at Betty, who was listening in the kitchen and rolling her eyes.
“I’d say you’re an artist—an artist with fabric.” He smiled at her, his eyes lighting up. “Say, there’s a painting show at an artist studio uptown. I passed it yesterday and wanted to go back to see it. Would you like to go with me? I could come for you when you get off work.”
“Yes. Oh yes, I would,” Nell stammered, glancing over her shoulder at Betty for approval. Betty shrugged. Nell didn’t know a thing about art. She remembered the print of the lone wolf in her grandparents’ living room and the one of dogs playing cards that she’d seen in the bunkhouse. She was pretty sure they wouldn’t be in the art show. “I love pictures,” she said.
“I enjoy them, too. I do a bit of painting myself.”
“You’re an artist?”
“I wouldn’t say that. I just like to paint.”
“There was an artist wanted to draw Nell, wanted her to pose for him. Are you like him?” Betty called from the kitchen.
James blushed, which made his freckles stand out. “I wouldn’t do that. I mean, if I painted people, Nell would be a fine subject. But I only paint landscapes and still lifes.”
Nell was pleased he no longer called her Miss Nell.
Betty came out from the kitchen then and looked James up and down. “I thought maybe you was married.”
James laughed. “That’s a good one. Do you think I’d be asking Nell to go out if I was?”
“When’s that ever stopped a man?”
“You don’t think much of me, do you, Miss Betty?”
“Sure I do. You saved Nell from that scapegrace, didn’t you? It’s just that I don’t think much of men in general.”
“I’m sorry about that, but maybe I can show you we’re not all bad—show Nell, anyway.”
After James left, saying he’d come back when the café closed, Nell said, “I like him fine. More than fine, in fact. Why don’t you?”
Betty was staring at James’s back through the window. She shook her head. “I don’t know. There’s something … Maybe it’s what I said, that I just don’t like men. I’m suspicious of all of them. It doesn’t matter who they are.” She paused. “Don’t pay any attention to me.” Betty picked up James’s empty cup and saucer and slid the silver-dollar tip along the counter to Nell.
“He’s nice, and I think he’s a gentleman. And after the way he came in that day … I sort of feel I owe him.”
Betty swirled around. “You don’t owe him. You don’t owe anybody. That’s what gets girls into trouble.”
Nell studied Betty. “I’m not as naïve as you think. I can take care of myself.”
“Can you?”
* * *
James returned just after the café closed, with a corsage of violets for Nell. She started to pin them to her throat, then realized she was wearing her uniform. “I ought to have brought another dress,” she said, embarrassed.
“You look fine. Take off your apron and put on your coat and hat, and nobody will know you’re wearing a uniform. They’ll just see the violets,” Betty said.
Nell did as she was told and looked at her reflection in the mirror over the sink and decided she didn’t look so bad. The New Mexico tan had long since worn off, and her skin was fair. She’d changed her hair when she moved to Denver, thought the new style emphasized her blue eyes.
“Why, you look grand,” James said when Nell returned from the kitchen. “After we view the pictures, I’ll take you to tea at the Brown Palace Hotel.”
“Hotel,” Betty muttered.
Nell didn’t acknowledge the remark. Although she barely knew James, she trusted him.
“We could ride the trolley, but I’d rather walk,” James said, taking her arm. She liked that, liked the warmth of his hand on her. His touch made her feel safe.
The street was crowded. Because the café was near the depot, most of the passersby were men, hurrying to catch the trains or walking from one appointment to another. They were dressed in suits and high collars, like James, and walked quickly, occasionally giving Nell a glance. She and James passed a beggar girl dressed in rags, her face dark from dirt or maybe bruises. She held out a tin cup and repeated, “Help me. Help me,” over and over in a kind of rhythm. The girl couldn’t be more than five or six. James reached into his pocket and took out a silver dollar, dropping it into the cup. The girl looked into the container, then stared at James, her eyes wide in disbelief. She was too surprised to thank him.
“That was generous,” Nell said, pleased at his kindness.
“Oh, not so generous. She has one silver dollar, and I have a pocketful of them. Poor tyke.” They watched as the girl ran over to a man and handed him the money. “Her father will drink it up, but maybe he won’t beat her tonight.”
“How do you know that?”
James shrugged. “That’s the way it is with those poor kids. Their fathers send them out to beg money for liquor and punish them if they don’t get it. I can’t stand that. I love kids. I hate to see them treated that way.”
Nell liked that about James, liked that he loved children, and smiled at him, noticing then how tall he was. In the bright sunlight, she saw that he was older than she’d thought. There were wrinkles—laugh lines—around his mouth and touches of gray in his hair. They made him look distinguished. She stared at a scar on his chin and wondered how he’d gotten it.
James saw her looking at him, and he tightened his hand on Nell’s arm. “The violets look nice on you. I was hoping they were your favorite flower.”
They weren’t, but Nell said, “They are now.” She glanced down at the violets but was distracted by the music coming out of a saloon. Someone was playing “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight” on the piano.
James hummed a few bars. “That was the favorite song of the Rough Riders,” he said.
Nell knew that perfectly well. “Was it?” she muttered.
“The Rough Riders,” he said, as if she didn’t understand. “They fought in Cuba under Theodore Roosevelt. They were the most famous fighters in the war. Do you know about them?”
Nell nodded.
“Some of them went to fancy schools in the East, like the one Roosevelt went to. But there were weste
rners, too. They came from Arizona and New Mexico Territories—” He stopped. “You said you lived in New Mexico once. I bet you knew some of them.”
“Probably.”
“Probably.” James studied her a moment but didn’t say more. They had reached a tiny brick building with an ART SHOW TODAY sign in front, and he led her inside.
Nell had never been to an art show, and she stared at each picture as she stood in front of it, frowning a little and not commenting. In fact, she found most of the pictures boring and didn’t know what to say. James told her they were the latest trend in art, but they didn’t make sense to Nell. “Is this what you paint?” she asked.
“No, but I like them. Look at the way the paint is applied, thick as butter. And the lines on that one. I like the way they intersect.”
“But what is it? All that doesn’t mean anything to me. Look at this one. The woman’s foot is bigger than her head. It doesn’t make sense. And that one over there; the man looks like he’s starving.”
“I see that I’m going to have to take you in hand and teach you about painting. You don’t want to make statements like that around people who really know art.”
For a moment, Nell bristled. Who was he to tell her what she had to know? “What if I don’t care?”
James turned to look at her. “You’re a funny one. You say violets are your favorite flowers because I like them, and now you say you don’t care about art after I tell you I want to teach you. I don’t know if you’re trying to please me or not.”
“I please myself,” Nell said. If James was going to try to control her, she wanted to know it right off.
“Of course you do,” he said, throwing up his hands. “I misspoke. How about if I make it up over tea?”
Nell was a little ashamed of herself then. She’d been too outspoken, and she had offended James. She wanted so much for him to like her. “You don’t have to,” she said. “I was perfectly awful, wasn’t I?”
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