Radclyffe - Promising Hearts

"Why, hello, Montana," Mae said, using the nickname she had coined when Jessie, just eighteen, had first started coming into the saloon with her ranch hands after taking over the running of the Rising Star Ranch when her father died.

"How are you?" Jessie regarded with real pleasure the elegantly made-up blond in her signature off-the-shoulder emerald green dress, cut so low in the front as to flout propriety. Still, she carefully kept her gaze above the level of that creamy expanse of skin, looking into Mae's deep green eyes instead.

"The week after roundup?" Mae laughed sharply. "About ready to shoot half the men in this town. I can't wait till they spend their last dollar and ride on out of here for another year."

Jessie hid her grin and said seriously, "I surely hope it's none of my boys giving you any trouble."

Mae gave her an arch look, one carefully plucked brow rising.

"And I suppose you think because they take orders from you out there on that ranch that they're different than ordinary men? When they've been out on the range for a few months with nothing but their own ornery selves for company, there's only two things they're looking for when they got money in their pocket. Liquor and women."

"If any one of them causes you or your girls any trou--"

"No," Mae said, resting her soft hand on Jessie's forearm. "The Rising Star boys are usually the best in the bunch. Still, I've had my hands full all this week keeping peace down here and making sure that my girls aren't in the middle when some of these hotheads start in on whose ranch raises the finest horses, who can shoot the farthest, who's the best card player..." She shook her head. "You name it, men will argue over it."

"I can't see as there's much to argue about," Jessie said. "Everyone knows the Rising Star has the best horses and the best hands."

Mae threw back her head, her shoulder-length gold ringlets, worn fashionably free that evening, dancing over milky shoulders. "I forget sometimes you're not all that much different than those men of yours."

Her expression grew tender as she took in the handsome rancher's sky blue eyes, her sun-kissed hair caught carelessly at the back of her neck with a leather tie, her worn and trail-stained clothes. Everything about her was so much more appealing than any of the cowboys who frequented the bar or her bed. Her smoky voice grew deeper. "Just different in all the ways that count."

"Mae." Jessie laughed. "I'm about as ordinary as they come."

Mae forced lightness into her voice, reminding herself that things were different for Jessie now, and anything she might have once dreamed about her would never come to pass. Leaning close, she whispered conspiratorially, "I'd bet that's not what your young Miss Kate Beecher would say."

Blushing, Jessie hooked her thumbs in her front pockets and glanced around, grateful that no one was in earshot. "Uh...well, I--"

"Oh, Montana," Mae said, taking pity on her. "You are a wonder.

Where is she? With her folks?"

Jessie nodded. "I had to come into town for supplies, and Kate stopped by for a visit with her mother."

"But not you?"

"I think it's going to be a spell before the Beechers are real comfortable with me."

"Or with Kate living with you."

"Yes."

"Well, never you mind. They'll come around," Mae said kindly, though she doubted that Martha Beecher would ever accept what Kate and Jessie shared--what Kate refused to give up or deny. As much as she'd once mistrusted Kate's motives, Mae had to give her credit for standing up for what she wanted, and for standing by Jessie. "How is Kate after her first week out on the ranch?"

"She's fine," Jessie said with relief. "She still gets a little tired if she overdoes it, which she usually does, but she's nearly back to her old self."

"I think we were lucky that the grippe didn't take more," Mae said angrily. "Seems like life out here is hard enough with the weather, and the outlaws, and the troubles between the army and Indians. We don't need to be dying in droves from the grippe and cholera, too."

Mae's tone was bitter, and Jessie wondered who she had lost in her life. As long as they had been friends, there was far more she didn't know about Mae than what little she did.

"Hate to go through anything like that again," Jessie agreed.

"Looks like the doc is going to have some help, though."

"What do you mean?"

"A new doctor came in on the stage today. At least, I guess she's going to be working with the doc. She was headed in that direction."

"She?" Mae's eyes brightened with curiosity. "I never heard of a woman being a doctor."

"I saw something about it in the newspaper not that long ago.

There are schools back East especially for women to be doctors."

"You don't say. And now we've got us one." Mae tapped an impatient finger on Jessie's arm. "Well. What's she like?"

"I don't know. I only talked to her for a minute." Jessie recalled her encounter with Vance Phelps. She'd seen that look of quiet desperation in men's eyes before and felt a pang of sympathy. "I have a feeling you'll be meeting her soon, though."

"Me? Why?"

"Isn't this where everyone comes for comfort of one kind or another?"

"Why, Montana," Mae whispered. "How'd you ever get to be so smart."

Jessie smiled wistfully. "It doesn't come from being smart, Mae.

It comes from being lonely."

"But you're not anymore, are you?"

"No. I'm not." Jessie leaned forward and kissed Mae's cheek. "It's about time I go collect Kate."

"You tell her I said hello," Mae called as she watched Jessie walk away, her heart aching. She wanted to be happy that Jessie had found someone to love, but remained inestimably sad that she hadn't been the one to claim Jessie's heart.

CHAPTER THREE

Vance knocked on the plain wooden door marked by a small sign that said Doctor's Office in unadorned hand printing.

When no one answered, she peered through the rectangular pane of glass adjacent to the door and, in the murky interior light, could make out a desk, several chairs, and a bookcase. An unlit oil lamp stood on top of the bookcase. After she knocked again to no response, she tried the door handle and, as she expected, it opened. She entered, put her valise down just inside the door, and took a seat in the straight-backed wooden chair opposite the desk. She felt no particular sense of urgency since there was nowhere else she needed to be. She'd long since learned how to let time slip away, so that the passage of it was no longer a painful burden. Closing her eyes, her mind carefully blank, she settled in to wait.

v "Really, Kate," Martha Beecher said with an aggrieved expression.

"Just because Jessie refuses to dress appropriately is no excuse for you to disregard your upbringing."

Kate Beecher took a deep breath, having known that she would invite such a conversation when she'd come to visit her mother wearing only her plain cotton walking dress, without her crinoline underneath. The wide-hooped understructure made her dresses far too cumbersome to move about easily on the ranch or to sit comfortably in the buckboard. She'd never understood why women had considered such an imposition to activity fashionable to begin with, and intended never to wear one again. Nevertheless, she was resolved to keep her temper in check when her mother criticized Jessie. She and her parents, especially her mother, were still on tenuous terms when it came to her new living arrangements and, more critically, her personal relationship with Jessie. "Jessie could hardly be expected to do the work she does dressed any differently, and," she said with a small pleased smile, "she looks wonderful just as she is."

"I'm well aware of Jessie's...differences," Martha said primly, "but I see no reason that you should suddenly forget yourself and the things you've been taught."