Читать книгу Wildwood - Lynna Banning, Lynna Banning - Страница 11

Ben reined in the gelding on a hilltop so green with lush spring vetch it glowed like an emerald in the afternoon light. Land out here in the West wasn’t manicured as it had been in Carolina, at least the way he remembered it before Sheridan marched his marauding troops through. But this Oregon country was beautiful nonetheless. The late-day sun washed luminous fingers of light against the rolling greengold hills. His throat swelled into an ache.

Land, and the crops that could be grown on it, was more precious than gold. And the price more costly. All through history, lives had been laid down for possession of bits of earth. Sometimes he wondered if land—if anything—was worth fighting for. A war took everything a man had, sucked his spirit dry.

He gazed down at the farms and ranches spread over the wide valley below. From his vantage point, Ben picked out the southernmost pasture of the seven-thousand-acre Kearney spread—the one he’d bought after the war. After he’d gone home to North Carolina and found what that Yankee bastard Sheridan had done to the plantation and the life he’d known before.

After that he’d had no stomach for the North’s version of Reconstruction. There was nothing to do then but come out West and start over. He’d worked hard to build a new life.

When his brother, Carleton, later followed him to Oregon, Ben had turned the ranch over to him and his new bride and taken the position General Van Dyke at Fort. Umpqua had offered—Indian agent for the Klamath River tribes.

Carleton had been just old enough to join the militia when the war ended. He was inexperienced as a cattleman, but he learned fast. And Carl had a good wife to help him. His brother, Ben reasoned, would make a success of the ranch. He nodded approvingly at the fenced field of rye below him. Instead of cutting it for hay, in late summer Carl would turn his herd into the enclosure.

As usual, his sister-in-law had invited him to supper this Sunday. Ben’s gut wrenched. Suddenly the last thing he wanted to do was ride down off this hill and join his brother’s family. One evening of watching Ella, her face flushed from the heat of the woodstove in the stifling kitchen as she fussed and puttered around Carl, left Ben restless all the next week. The woman adored his younger brother. And it was just as obvious Ella was the most important thing in Carl’s life.

The most important thing in Ben’s hardworking, solitary life was Wildwood Valley. He knew his presence as sheriff made a difference to the ranchers and townspeople. If nothing else, his reputation as a marksman served as a deterrent to the drifters and unsavory riffraff that occasionally rode into town.

He’d been a good Indian agent, too. But by damn, sometimes he wanted something else, something he couldn’t even name. He wanted it so much it almost suffocated him.

He pulled on the gelding’s reins and turned the horse back toward town. A cold pit of despair yawned in his belly. It was going to be, as Jeremiah often remarked, another two-glass night.

He got as far as Carl’s south pasture on his way to the road when he glimpsed a tiny figure in a blue pinafore skimming over the grass toward him.

“Uncle Ben!”

Ben reined in the dark horse alongside the fence.

“Uncle Ben! Please, can I open the gate for you? Daddy says I’m too little, but I’m not! I can reach way up high. Please?”

Ben shook his head. “Not this time, honey. Tell your mama I’ve got some business in town.” He pulled a bag of penny candy out of his vest pocket and stretched his arm over the fence. “No need to tell her about these, though, is there?”

The child grinned and shook her head. Ben tipped his hat and headed toward the town road.

Jessamyn unbolted the press lever arm and lifted the platen cylinder away from the roller. “Well, would you just look at that,” she murmured. “Clean as a new penny.”

Except for a film of surface dust on the exterior of the black-painted casing, the press was immaculate, the joints and connections free of old grease and dirt. The moving parts had been polished to a shine.

She had to smile. Papa always insisted on keeping his press in perfect working order. Cleanliness, he joked, was right up there next to banner headlines. He wiped his equipment down after every press run.

Still, she wanted to run her hands over every inch of the imposing piece of machinery. The press belonged to her now. It was her responsibility to see to its maintenance. Resolutely she smoothed her starched white work apron and reached for the whiskey bottle and a clean rag.

Jeremiah kept her company while she worked over the huge machine, and then Cora arrived, their supper swinging in a wicker basket over one ample arm. “Here y’are, Miss Jessamyn. There’s plenty here, and more at the house iffen you want it.”

“Thank you, Cora. Will you stay and have some with us?”

The older woman shook her head. “I like my chicken hot, thanky. Mine’s warming in the oven, waitin’ for some pan gravy to go with it. Since you’ve got Jeremiah watchin’ over you, I’ll just go along to my supper.”

She bobbed her gray bun and headed toward the door. “Front door’s unlocked. Jes’ walk on in when you finish—” her china blue eyes took in the disassembled press “—whatever it is you’re doin’. Night, Jessamyn.”

Jeremiah politely held the door for her, and Cora bustled off down the board sidewalk, her solid footsteps reverberating against the pine planking.

Jessamyn corked the half-empty bottle of Child’s and wiped her hands on her apron. “Let’s have supper. I’m starving!”

The deputy declined her offer of a chair at her father’s desk. He ate his fried chicken and potato salad standing up, periodically checking up and down the street through the now-sparkling front window. “Mr. Ben’s gone out to the ranch for supper. I got to keep my eye peeled for any trouble in town.”

“Trouble?” Jessamyn spoke over a mouthful of flavorful potato salad. “What kind of trouble?”

“Just Saturday-night kinda trouble, Miss Jessamyn. Ranch hands in town for a little fun, maybe drink too much and bust up somebody’s head. But this here’s Sunday— won’t likely be any shootin’. That’s why the sheriff rides out Sundays to visit his kin.”

“His younger brother and his wife, is that right?” Jessamyn said. “I met his wife at the mercantile this morning.”

“Yes’m. Mr. Carleton and Miss Ella. An’ Miss Alice. There’s a fine-lookin’ child, ‘cept for her eyes.”

Jessamyn glanced up. “What about her eyes? They looked perfectly normal to me.”

Jeremiah hesitated. “Got her daddy’s eyes. Kinda hard and shifty-like sometimes. Got her momma’s nose and mouth, though. Guess she’ll be all right when she grows up some.”

Jessamyn laughed out loud. “Jeremiah, maybe you just don’t like children?”

“Mr. Ben grew up fine, he did,” Jeremiah countered. “Handsomest man I ever did see, even when we was young’uns. His eyes were different from Mr. Carleton’s, even then. ‘Course, they’re sadder now, since the war an’ all.”

Jessamyn came to instant attention. She needed some background on Ben Kearney for the newspaper article she planned to write. Here, standing before her, was a walking, talking firsthand source.

“What about the war, Jeremiah? Tell me about it—about you and the sheriff, I mean. About your experiences.” She bit into her second drumstick and waited as Jeremiah cleared his throat.

The town lay dark and quiet by the time Ben rode in past the livery stable. Crickets sang, their strident voices carrying over the occasional cry of a coyote. Heat rose from the dusty roadbed, the rich smell of honeysuckle and tobacco smoke drifting on the warm night air.

Ben slowed the horse to a walk. Nights like these made his groin ache. He wanted to yell or break something to ease the tension curling inside.

He needed a woman.

He’d settle for whiskey.

The Dixon House hotel and Charlie’s Red Fox glowed like Mississippi paddle-wheelers. The sheriffs office was dark. Jeremiah must be out keeping an eye on things.

He dismounted, tossed the reins over the hitching rail and pushed open the door to his office. Touching a match to the lamp wick, he watched the pool of golden light settle over the cat lazing on his desk. “Move over, Shiloh.” He lifted the boneless animal off the clutter of papers.

More mail. Maybe something that would provide a clue’ to Thad Whittaker’s murder.

And maybe not. So far, he’d run into nothing but dead ends. It shouldn’t be that difficult to figure out who wanted the outspoken editor of the Wildwood Times silenced, but with each batch of new communications, Ben’s investigation turned into a bigger ball of snakes. A corrupt Bureau of Indian Affairs administrator, shady railroad investors trying to outmaneuver each other, cattle rustled from valley ranches, Indians mad enough to smoke a war pipe. Ben ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. The war’s end hadn’t brought peace to the West. Far from it.

He scratched the cat under its chin until a throaty purr rumbled, then turned his rangy frame toward the open doorway. Maybe he’d leave the mail until morning and drop by the hotel for a steak and some of Rita’s baked beans.

Across the street, light glowed inside the newspaper office. He focused on the paned front window opposite him. Then again, maybe he’d just see what Miss Starched Petticoat was up to at this hour.

He lifted his Colt from the hook behind the door, strapped the revolver low on his hip and headed for the Wildwood Times’.

Jeremiah drew in a long breath and blew it out through pursed lips. “Can’t tell you all of it ‘bout the war, Miss Jessamyn. ‘Twouldn’t be fittin’. But some of it I can.” He cocked his head to one side. “Yes’m, some of it I surely can tell you.”

Jessamyn stopped chewing and listened.

“Mr. Ben and me, we went to war together, like I said. I was his aide-de-camp. Mostly I just do for him like his manservant always done in Carolina—wash his shirts, shine up his boots, be sure he takes time to eat. He was awful busy in the war—had near two regiments to command after the other colonel got himself killed. Mr. Ben got his horse shot out from under him twice at Shiloh. Madder’n a hen caught in the creek, he was.” Jeremiah grinned at the memory.

Jessamyn resisted the impulse to reach into the desk drawer for her pencil and writing pad. Rather than interrupt Jeremiah, she’d commit the important parts to memory.

“How did he get that scar on his neck?” she prompted.

The deputy’s grin faded. “He doesn’t like to talk about it much. He took a minié ball. Tore into his chest and mangled him pretty bad up to about here.” He tapped his throat with a chicken bone.

“The surgeon didn’t fix it quite right, and it festered. Woulda been all right cept’n he was captured at Vicksburg and sent to a Northern prison. They had to cut it open to drain it and then sew him up again.”

Horrified, Jessamyn stared at the deputy. “You mean it was a Yankee doctor who—”

Jeremiah nodded. “Fought like a son of a—Oh, ‘scuse me, Miss Jessamyn. Weren’t any use, though. I saw it had to be done. Otherwise, it’d have the gangrene in it.”

Jessamyn’s appetite vanished. “Oh, how awful.”

“Yes’m, it was.”

“You were there, Jeremiah? But why? Surely you could have gone back to your home on the plantation?”

“I stayed,” Jeremiah replied quietly. “The colonel, he tried to get me to leave him when he saw the Yankee boys comin’ over the hill at Vicksburg. I wouldn’t budge, though. So, in the end they took us both.”

“Oh, Jeremiah! How courageous that was!”

The deputy flushed under his tan. “’Tweren’t no such thing, Miss Jessamyn. Ben and me been friends from the cradle, you might say. We grew up together, fishin’ and ridin’—even some schoolin’ afore his pappy sent him off to the academy. Besides, I promised Miss Lorena I’d watch out for him. A body couldn’t refuse Miss Lorena nothin’, so I stuck with him.”

“Miss Lorena?” The question slipped out before Jessamyn could stop herself.

“Good thing, too,” Jeremiah continued, purposely ignoring her query. “After the surgeon cut Ben’s chest open, he like to bled to death till I poulticed him like my momma taught me.”

Jessamyn found her hand shaking so violently she couldn’t hold her fork steady. She laid it down on the desk. “No wonder he’s so brusque,” she said half to herself. “He must hate all Northerners.”

“Oh, no, ma’am,” Jeremiah offered with a chuckle. “Not just Northerners. Part of him hates most everybody, ‘cept your pappy—Mr. Whittaker—and me. And sometimes I think he even—”

Something in the man’s raspy voice struck a nerve. Sometimes, she supposed, the sheriff acted as if he even hated his faithful companion, Jeremiah. A resonant chord of understanding tolled in her heart. She knew from her own experience how devastating it was to be abandoned. She also knew how healing it could be to find a friend.

She had nothing in common with Sheriff Ben Kearney. He was a rich Southern plantation owner, she a poor Northern working girl. Ben Kearney was a man of few words, a loner, unfathomable and unyielding as an iron strongbox. Jessamyn relished every waking moment of watching the fascinating parade of people that made up day-to-day life.

No, sir, she had nothing in common with Sheriff Ben Kearney. But she shared an unspoken bond with thoughtful, soft-spoken Jeremiah. Then and there she resolved she would be the deputy’s friend.

“Come on, Jeremiah,” Jessamyn announced. “Let’s have some of Cora’s applesauce cake, then get back to work!”

She unwrapped the square of cinnamon-scented cake, cut it in two pieces with the paring knife Cora had provided, and handed one to Jeremiah. Just as she opened her mouth to take a bite, the door banged open.

Sheriff Ben Kearney leaned his tall form against the door frame, the rowels on his spurs chinging. With slow, deliberate motions he pushed his hat up off his forehead and crossed one black boot over the other.

“Evening,” he said, his voice lazy.

The look in his hard gray-blue eyes sent Jessamyn’s heart skittering into her throat.

“Smells like a Carolina stump whiskey still in here,” the sheriff remarked, his voice ominously soft.

Jessamyn bristled. “We were—I was cleaning my printing press, Sheriff.”

“With whiskey?”

“Yes, with whiskey. The mercantile had no kerosene. Your deputy here—” She glanced toward Jeremiah and gasped. The solidly built man had vanished out the back door.

“Jeremiah came to my aid at the Red Fox,” she finished lamely.

Ben’s dark eyebrows rose. “The Red Fox,” he echoed. “A saloon is no place for a woman. Miss Whittaker. I thought I made that clear yesterday.” Flinty blue eyes bored into hers as he waited, arms folded across his chest, for her response.

“You did. But, you see, without kerosene, I had no choice but—”

“You had a choice,” the sheriff said, his voice barely more than a whisper. “A choice that didn’t involve my deputy in your difficulties. No doubt Jeremiah ‘came to your aid,’ as you naively put it, because he’s an intelligent man and he saw that your presence at the Red Fox spelled trouble. In the future—”

“Now, just one minute, Sheriff,” Jessamyn interrupted. “You don’t own this town. You’ve no right to come barging in here and tell me how to live my life!”

“I’ve got the right,” Ben said. His tone hardened. “You’re a damn menace traipsing into a saloon in your petticoats and lace. When you Yankees mess with things you know nothing about, mistakes come easy. It’s a wonder you didn’t start a hell-fired hullabaloo.”

A heated silence fell. Jessamyn felt her cheeks flame. She rose to her feet, twitched her apron into place with short, jerky movements and turned her back on the man lounging in her doorway.

“Excuse me, Sheriff. I have work to do.” She snatched up her rag and the bottle of Child’s.

A hand closed like an iron band about her upper arm. “Put that down and listen to me.” He gave her a little shake and pulled her about to face him. The whiskey sloshed back and forth in the container.

Jessamyn sucked in a breath.

His mouth thinned into a fine, straight line with no hint of a smile. “Put that down,” he repeated. “Now.”

His voice, Jessamyn thought irrationally, became oddly quiet when he was angry. The timbre of it sent a current of unease dancing up her spine.

She lowered the bottle to the floor, dipping her knees to settle it with care on the plank surface. “Take your hands off me,” she said evenly, keeping her eyes on his.

A flicker of pain surfaced in the smoky depths of his gaze, masked at once by a careful shuttering. Jessamyn cringed at the unfathomable expression in his eyes.

He lifted his hands, dropped them to his sides. For a long minute their gazes locked.

Across the street the piano plunked out a ragged snatch of “The Blue Tail Fly.” A moth batted against the windowpane, and the slow tick-tock-tick of her father’s clock on the wall contrasted with her heart’s erratic beating beneath the starched white waist.

Ben breathed in, out, in again, the air pulling raggedly through his nostrils. Jessamyn blanched at the carefully expressionless face of the man before her. It was plain as day he was furious at her. She had challenged his professional judgment as sheriff.

When, she moaned inwardly, will I ever learn to keep my mouth shut? What was he thinking? Worse, what was he going to do?

At last his low, quiet voice broke the stillness.

“Let me explain something about life out here in the West, Miss Whittaker.” He held her attention riveted to his face by the sheer force of his steady blue eyes and menacing tone. He enunciated his words in quiet, deliberate syllables, with no outward rancor, yet Jessamyn sensed a volcano of fury just beneath the surface. His demeanor frightened her.

“We live by a code here in Wildwood Valley,” he continued. “Any lady who is a lady stays at home in the evening. She doesn’t come into town after dark unless it’s to attend a dance or a social, and even then she doesn’t go about alone.”

His voice dropped even lower. “And she certainly does not work, alone, late at night, smelling of whiskey and—” he sniffed the air “—some flowery-smelling perfume, even if she owns the whole building! Now, go—”

“I wasn’t alone!” Jessamyn blurted. “Jeremiah was here, helping—”

“Of course he was, you damn fool. Jeremiah’s a good man. He wasn’t going to leave you to your own devices here at night, all by yourself. He did what any deputy worth half his salt would do—he stood guard over a rattlepated woman who doesn’t know which end of the horse to mount.”

Stung, Jessamyn raised her chin and straightened her spine. “This ‘rattlepated woman,’ as you so quaintly put it, is now the owner and publisher of the Wildwood Times. As such, I expect to work late, and alone, many nights. That’s what printing a newspaper requires—hard days gathering information and long nights writing stories and setting type. As a taxpaying citizen—” she bit her tongue at the exaggeration “—I expect support, not criticism. So, if you have nothing constructive to offer, Sheriff Kearney, I will bid you good-night.”

Ben sighed. Arguing wasn’t going to solve the problem. Someone as stubborn as Thad Whittaker’s daughter would have to be shown. God almighty, he’d give his right arm if she’d just climb back on the morning stage and go back to Boston where she belonged.

Ben took a step forward and studied her. To think Jeremiah had wasted an entire evening with this prickly, overstarched Northerner. He must be ready to chew nails by now. His deputy had hit the truth for sure; women were definitely troublous creatures.

He shook his head. “Troublous” didn’t half describe Jessamyn Whittaker. He’d have to find Jeremiah and buy him a drink at the Red Fox. Inflicting this bullheaded Yankee lady on anyone, even for a few hours, was sure to raise a thirst.

“Miss Whittaker, pack up your things,” Ben ordered softly. “I’ll see you home.”

“Thank you, but I’d prefer—”

“Now,” he added in a rough whisper. He snagged the Child’s bottle off the floor, set it on the cabinet against the wall. Folding up the handles of the wicker picnic basket, he lifted it from the desk and bent to blow out the lamp.

“Best take off your apron and get your shawl.” He puffed once, and the room was enveloped in inky blackness.

Oh, my, Jessamyn thought. She’d gone too far. She needed the sheriff’s help, not just to operate the newspaper, but to find her father’s murderer. Much as she disliked Ben Kearney, she couldn’t afford to make an enemy of him. Not yet, anyway. Not until he’d arrested her father’s killer.

In the dark she untied her apron with fumbling fingers, felt around on the desk chair for her blue paisley shawl.

Without a word, Ben moved to her side. He made no sound, but she sensed him draw near in the pitch-black room, felt the warmth radiate from his body. She breathed in his scent, heavy with horses and tobacco smoke. The faint smell of mint lingered on his breath.

Jessamyn choked back a nervous hiccup. She must smell of—what was it he’d said?—stump whiskey and flowery perfume? Without thinking, she reached out to steady herself. Her fingers closed over his bare forearm.

He swore under his breath. His voice was so raw Jessamyn jumped.

“I—I’m sorry,” she blurted. “It’s so dark in here I can’t see.”

“Wait a minute, then. Your eyes will adjust.”

My eyes, Jessamyn thought, will never adjust to the picture presented by an angry Ben Kearney. How could a man be so fine-looking and so unnerving at the same time?

“Maybe you’re thinking you’d be better off back in Boston,” he said close to her ear.

“I was not!”

His hand touched her elbow. “The floorboards are uneven. Don’t stumble.”

“I won’t,” she breathed. Acutely aware of his warm fingers on her skin, she took a tentative step forward. Pulling her shawl tight about her shoulders, Jessamyn let him guide her to the doorway.

“And, Miss Whittaker,” he murmured at the threshold, “I trust you won’t come here alone at night again?”

“I wouldn’t think of it,” she lied.

The door opened on a street bathed in silvery moonlight. Jessamyn stalked out onto the boardwalk and gazed down the street at the painted sign above Charlie’s Red Fox Saloon. Laughter drifted on the warm night air, punctuated by the metallic sounds of the piano and a man’s clear tenor singing an Irish ballad. Ladies who weren’t ladies—soiled doves, the sheriff called them—were probably drinking spirits and dancing with the ranch hands.

Jessamyn sighed. Ladies who were ladies weren’t supposed to have that kind of fun.

She studied the spill of golden light through the saloon’s swinging entrance door. She’d risked everything, coming out West. She’d left her position at the Boston Herald, abandoned her comfortable, refined life in the East.

Had it been worth it?

The answer came in an instant. Yes! Every single, frightening, fascinating moment of her first day—and night—in Wildwood Valley had been worth it. After what she had experienced so far, she thought with a little catch of excitement in her chest, just being alive in this rough, dusty town was going to be exhilarating. And fun.

Tomorrow she’d ignore the sheriff and his silly warnings and put her next plan into action. She could hardly wait.