She clapped her hands together girlishly and
left the rocker in an eddy of long curls and flowing skirts. “Oh,
yes, how wonderful!”
Jeff put down the screwdriver he was holding
and wiped his hands on the rag he’d stuffed in his back pocket.
“Come on this way, ma’am, and watch your step. It takes a minute
for your eyes to adjust to the dim light in here.”
Olivia giggled as they stepped into the barn.
“Ma’am. No one has ever called me that. It makes me sound all grown
up.”
Jeff made no comment, but wondered if this
little-girl act was just that, an act. Or was there really the mind
of a child in this adult’s form? He led the way over the
hard-packed mud floor to the corner where the swallows were
nesting. “There, see?” He pointed up at the nest. “One of the
parents is feeding them.”
Olivia looked up, following the direction of
Jeff’s arm. “Ohh, aren’t they precious?” She stood with her hands
clasped to her chest, and delight made her face glow. This
innocence and sweetness were not what he’d seen when she’d eyed him
from the porch.
“
They’re sure growing fast. The first
time I saw them, they didn’t have any feathers at all. Now they’ve
got that baby fuzz. I suppose they’ll be learning to fly pretty
soon. I was hoping your sister could see them before they’re
gone.”
She turned to him with gratitude in her
voice. “Oh, Mr. Hicks, I know Althea would like to see this! She
just loves birds—she can even make them come to her and eat from
her hand.” A scowl flashed across her features as she muttered, “I
could never get them to do that for me.”
“
Well, maybe when Allie—I mean, when
Miss Althea wakes up from her nap you can send her out here to have
a look.”
Olivia tapped her chin with her fingertip.
“Hmm, I don’t think today would be good. She’s so tired. I know!
Let’s make it a surprise. Althea is always doing little things for
me, and I never really get to pay her back. Tomorrow would be
better. Say, in the morning, when she brings you your breakfast.
Tell her to close her eyes so that she’s won’t have a clue about
what you’re doing, then lead her in here to have a look. I probably
won’t be up in time—you two are such early risers and I guess I’ve
always been a slugabed. But I know she’ll be thrilled. I wish I
could see her face!”
The sincerity of Olivia’s wish to please her
sister surprised Jeff. Maybe she recognized that Allie got so few
small pleasures in her life. Doubt niggled at the back of his mind,
but he dismissed it. Those years as a sheriff still made him
second-guess people.
“
Sounds like a good idea to
me.”
“
Yes, doesn’t it?”
Olivia left him then and went back into the
house. The next time Jeff saw her was later that afternoon when
Seth Wickwire came out with a grocery delivery from his father’s
general store. She came down the back porch steps, smiled at Seth,
and handed him what looked to be a letter to mail.
Just before she turned to climb the steps
again, she waved at Jeff and gave him a smile too.
~~*~*~*~~
“
Got anymore swell ideas to get even
with Hicks?” Floyd Endicott took a long pull from a whiskey bottle
and wiped his mouth on his shirt sleeve.
“
I got him lookin’ over his shoulder,
don’t you worry,” Cooper Matthews replied and took the bottle. The
two men occupied their usual post, the back doorway of Kincade’s
Livery. Floyd sat on the milking stool and Cooper leaned against
the door frame with his arms folded over his chest. This late at
night, even the clanging piano at the Liberal Saloon was silent.
“He’ll think twice before he even goes to the outhouse. Didn’t you
see how scared he looked the other day?”
Floyd shifted uncomfortably on the milking
stool. “I dunno Cooper, he just looked riled up to me. An’ you
heard him yourself—he don’t care what happens to him. Anyways, what
if he don’t come back to town? It’s nigh on to impossible to get
even with a man when you don’t meet up with him.”
Cooper gave him a poisonous look. “It’s a
good thing I’ve got the brains in this outfit, Floyd, or we’d be
like bogged heifers. You don’t need to come face to face with him
to get revenge. Anyway, maybe he doesn’t care what happens to him,
but I think he cares about that Ford woman. That son of a bitch,”
he continued bitterly, talking to the empty street outside, “still
actin’ like he’s better’n everyone else, after all that’s happened.
He killed my boy but tried to make me look bad, like I pulled the
trigger. Folks around here blame me almost as much as they
blame Hicks.” He turned to Floyd, worked up into an angry rant. “I
expected that boy to be a comfort to me in my old age. Who’s goin’
to do that now?”
Floyd shrugged. “Hell, Cooper, you could just
get married again.”
“
You got anything else on your mind
besides females?”
“
Well, they’re soft and some of ‘em
smell nice and are pretty to look at. A woman is even better than a
dog for keepin’ a man warm on a cold night.”
“
Yeah, and they’re more trouble than
any dog ever thought of being. At least if a dog pisses you off,
you can throw it outside or shoot the damned thing. Do that with a
female and folks who got nothin’ better to do take it into their
heads to complain. That’s how I landed in jail one time.” Cooper
waved a hand in disgust. “Damn it, Hicks even turned that crazy
Ford woman against me. Well, by God, he’s got to pay for insultin’
me. Her too. But I’m going to fix ’em both, startin’
tonight.”
Floyd shrugged and passed the whiskey bottle
to him. “Maybe we just ought to leave well enough alone. He don’t
bother us, and we don’t bother him. Anyway, there’s something not
right about someone who talks like a dead man.”
“
He called you a dimwit,” Cooper
reminded him.
A faint light of realization crossed Floyd’s
slack features. “Hey, that’s right.”
“
He thinks you’re stupid, Floyd. As
stupid as an old cow.”
“
That bastard!”
“
How do you like that, Jeff Hicks
thinkin’ you’re so damned dumb while he’s better than anyone
else?”
Floyd was clearly insulted. “Well, by God, I
don’t like it a-tall.”
Satisfied, Cooper smiled. He drank from the
whiskey bottle and turned to head back to his shack. “Then grab
that lantern and come on. We ain’t the only ones who want to get
the upper hand with Hicks, and I know about a woman who’s even
willin’ to pay us to do it. A right smart sum she’s offering, too.
We got us some work to do.”
~~*~*~*~~
The next morning Althea rose early. Though
she’d heard Olivia stirring around several times before dawn and
had made a couple of trips to her sister’s door to check on her, at
least she’d been able to sleep in her own bed. Or rather, lie in
her own bed. At any rate, it was more restful than sitting up in a
chair as she’d done the previous night. But with Olivia rattling
around in her room, sleep had come to Althea in fits and starts.
Most of the rest of the night she lay staring at the ceiling and
thinking of Jeff. What he’d told her about himself, and how he
looked, and the way that Allie sounded on his tongue.
Now she padded to the window, gritty-eyed and
tired, and looked out at the clean new day. Ribbons of mist
lingered in the cottonwoods down by the creek bottom, and above
them dawned a sky that was pink and blue and yellow-white with a
rising sun. A pair of mallards skimmed the treetops toward the
water, quacking as they flew. Dew sparkled like crystals on the
overgrown lawn, making it seem more magical than unkempt. It was a
beautiful pastoral scene.
A movement caught her eye. She dropped her
gaze to the yard where she saw Jeff tinkering with the old seed
drill. He looked so much better than he had the first day she met
him. Now his back was straight and he stood a little taller.
Working in the sun had erased his unhealthy pallor, and his hands
were strong and steady. She had kissed that man—God, had it been
just two days ago? After what had happened at dinner that night, it
seemed like ten years ago.
She gripped the window sill. What if that
were her husband down there, starting his day, heading off to the
fields? They would build a life together, just the two of them. She
would be like the other farm wives around the valley—she’d cook big
hearty meals to feed her hungry man and their sturdy, healthy
children. There would be chickens and cows to tend. In the summer
the whole family would pile into the wagon to go to the grange
dance on Saturday nights, and she would save all the waltzes for
Jeff. No one would stare at her and whisper behind their hands
about the peculiar Ford sisters, because she would not be Althea
Ford. She’d be Mrs. Allie Hicks.
At harvest time she would put up preserves
and fruit and vegetables to fill the pantry, saving the prettiest
and best samples to enter in the state fair. On cold winter nights
they would burrow beneath down-filled quilts and she would confess
her love to him again and again. Jeff would whisper her name and
tell her that he loved her too while he pulled her into his arms
and kissed her . . .
Girl, stop that lollygagging and do your
chores. They won’t get done by themselves.
Althea released her hold on the sill and left
the window. Turning to her washstand, she poured some water into
the bowl and caught her own reflection in the mirror hanging over
it. Crimson-cheeked Althea Ford stared back at her, not Allie
Hicks. But it was Amos Ford’s voice she heard in her memory, stern
and cold.
When Allie went downstairs she was surprised
to find that all of yesterday’s dishes had been washed and put
away. The teacups were placed right side up in the china hutch, as
Olivia stored them, rather than upside down, as Allie preferred.
But she was touched by her sister’s effort, just the same. Olivia
seemed to know instinctively when Allie had been pushed to the end
of her rope, and would do something nice for her, like wash the
dishes or offer to brush her hair. The little gestures always made
Allie feel small and selfish for those moments when she would wish
she were someplace far away.
Or with someone else far away. She glanced
out the window at Jeff.
Better that she keep her mind focused on the
resolution she had come to during the hours she’d spent at Olivia’s
bedside. That dreams and wishes were luxuries she couldn’t afford.
They only tore at her heart and had no possibility of coming true.
She had her duty and responsibility, and Jeff Hicks had his job to
do around the farm. Nothing more. And come harvest time, he’d be
gone. Yes, best that she remember that, best all the way around, no
matter how it made her heart ache.
Not only for her sake, but for Olivia’s,
too.
~~*~*~*~~
Jeff had started in on the seeder again at
first light. He had to fix it today or give up—time was slipping
away and that field had to be planted. He was engrossed with the
farm implement and calling it every filthy name he knew when he
heard the screen door open on the back porch. Althea stood there
with his tray. He straightened to look at her and realized with a
sense of hopelessness that just to see her lightened his heart.
He’d missed her yesterday. She had a way of making him feel better
about himself. A smart, sensible woman, she had demanded a lot from
him since he got here—his best work—more often than not, he’d been
able to deliver his best. And she had never once judged him. When
the time came to leave . . .
She was as tidy as always, with every hair in
place, and her lavender dress was crisp with starch. But even from
here he could see that her shoulders drooped a bit and her pretty
face was drawn.
“
I brought you a big breakfast since I
wasn’t able to fix you much yesterday,” she said, lifting the tray
as if to show him. She put it down on a little table on the porch
beside the rocker. “I’m sorry about—” She broke off awkwardly, then
turned to go back inside. He wanted to tell her to stop
apologizing. She was always apologizing, and for things that
weren’t her fault. “Well, I’d better get back to my
chores.”
No, don’t leave. Please, not yet— He dropped
the oil can and took a couple of running steps toward her. “Allie,
wait.”
She paused with her hand on the door
pull.
He pushed aside the warnings he’d given
himself yesterday. He just wanted to spend a minute or two with
her, and the plan that Olivia had devised would do the trick. “I
want to show you something. A surprise.”
A shadow of distrust crossed her face. “A
surprise?”
Jeff wiped his hands on the seat of his pants
and closed the distance between them. Hopping up the steps, he
touched her arm. “Yeah, something I found the other day. I
guarantee you’ll like it. Come on.” Lightly, he tugged her
sleeve.
“
But you should eat this food while
it’s hot.”
He glanced down at what looked like a pound
of bacon and four fried eggs, and felt his stomach rumble
appreciatively. He could put it off a little while, though, for the
chance to smell her hair again, to stand close to her. “It looks
like a real good breakfast. I promise it’ll only take a minute.
Then I’ll come right back and eat.”
She looked at the kitchen behind her, as if
searching for watchful eyes. “Well, I guess . . . ”
she replied, and released the door, letting him pull her across the
porch to the steps.
He grinned at her. He felt a little silly
about what he meant to say next. It seemed childish to make such a
fuss about something as ordinary as a bird’s nest. Only to Allie,
it wouldn’t seem ordinary, and for reasons he didn’t want to
examine too closely, he wanted to make the moment as special as
possible for her. He suspected there had very little foolishness,
or joy, in Althea Ford’s life. “Great! Come on—” Then he remembered
Olivia’s advice. “But close your eyes.”