Deborah Bedford - Blessing

Uley’d certainly fooled these men. If they knew who she really was, they’d get all tongue-tied and red in the face and flustered. She and her pa had only deceived them for propriety’s sake, a necessary little white lie so she could come West and they could stay together. Uley had not known that a small deception could carry such a heavy weight.

All day long, she could only think of a man in jail named Aaron Brown. All day long, she could only think that he knew her secret.

By the time she’d finished her day’s work, she figured she knew what she had to do with him. As soon as the four-thirty whistle sounded, she headed to town. She walked right into the jailhouse and sat down.

When Harris Olney saw her, he about pumped her arm off. “Uley Kirkland,” he said, grinning. “If it weren’t for you, I’d be six feet under today. Thank you, son.”

“You’re welcome, Marshal.” Uley paused. It was time for her to save herself. “I came by wondering if you’d do me a favor.”

“Anything I can do for you, I’ll do it. You’re a fine young man, Uley. I’ll always do you favors. I’d especially like to see you happy today. What is it?”

“I’d like to see the prisoner.”

Harris furrowed his brows, sending deep creases alongside his nose. “Why on earth would you want to do that?”

For one brief moment, Uley faltered. “It...it was dark outside. I really didn’t get a good look at him. I thought I’d just like to see who I tackled by the light of day.”

Harris thought about it a minute. “Well.” She could see him hesitating. Of course, she would be the one to testify in court and convict him. “Odd request, it is. But I did promise you a favor.” Harris hoisted an iron key ring off a peg. Then he led her through a door and pointed to one of the cells. “He’s right over there. You stay as long as you want. Holler at me if he gets ugly.”

She saw the stranger sitting on the stained blue ticking of his cot, his knees spread wide, his feet planted firm. His muddy brown Stetson lay upside down beside him.

He didn’t see her coming. He’d buried his face in his hands.

“Hello.”

He lifted his head and gawked up at her, eyes wide with surprise. In the daylight, she saw they were blue.

“I came to see how you were doing.”

“I’m doing dandy.” He didn’t stand up. “Just dandy.”

“Looks like it.”

Aaron Brown appeared younger than she’d thought last night. She figured him to be somewhere in his thirties. He didn’t look as mean now, either. He just looked sad.

A shock of chocolate-brown hair hung down over his forehead like an arrowhead. He plopped his elbows against his knees and let his clasped hands hang down between them. “You ever going to get tired of looking at me like I’m some kind of animal caught in a trap?”

She shook her head. “No.” He wasn’t really bad to look at. If he hadn’t been the sort of person to creep into town and go after the strong arm of the law, she might have given him a second glance. She amended that thought. Even though he was that sort of person, she gave him a second glance.

“So you’re Uley Kirkland,” he said softly. “Miss Uley Kirkland.”

“That is correct.”

Imagine it. He knew she was a woman, and he treated her like one. If a murderer could be respectful, then Aaron Brown was. It wasn’t the way he spoke to her, exactly, but the way he kept his eyes on her. She’d never before seen anyone peruse her with such respect, such open amazement. But then, she’d never before taken a flying leap at anyone, either.

She remembered why she’d come. She leaned closer to the bars to take care of the task at hand. “Judge Murphy’s due back from Denver next Tuesday,” she told him. “You’ll be off this world by Wednesday morning.”

“I’m painfully aware of that.”

She leaned in even closer. “Since you will be gone off this world then, and it is absolutely no concern of yours, Mr. Brown, you must promise me you’ll tell no one about the horrible fact you discovered last night.”

He knew exactly what she was talking about. “When you lost your hat.”

“Yes.”

“Good grief,” he said, sounding mildly exasperated. “Here I am fixing to hang for murder, and all you’re thinking about is covering your own hide.”

“Yes.”

“And I didn’t even get the chance to go after Olney.”

“You would have, if not for me.”

He cradled his banged-up brown Stetson in his palm as if he’d just tipped it to her. “Now, you don’t know that, do you, ma’am?”

It was the most amazing thing, conversing with him. For the first time in four years, she didn’t have to pretend. “You never would have gotten out of this valley alive.”

“However I had to go,” he said, “I did figure on taking Harris Olney with me.”

She shook her finger at him. “You must promise me, Mr. Brown.”

When he rose from the cot, she examined his frame. He was lanky and fairly thin. She’d known from grappling with him how he’d tower over her. He reached through the bars and gripped her wrists. “Your secret is safe with me, Miss Kirkland. I will face eternity next Wednesday with your secret well hidden within my bosom. I will die happy to be the only one knowing that the person who apprehended me and upended me in the dirt was a mere slip of a girl.”

She didn’t know how she felt about promises from somebody who’d pulled a gun to go after a man. But she’d learned enough about the male species to know they’d risk losing everything before they’d risk losing face in front of others. She turned to the other matter at hand. “I am not a slip of a girl,” she said. “I am a woman, Mr. Brown. A full nineteen years of age.”

“Oh,” he said, taken aback at last. Even so, he didn’t release her wrists. “I do see what you mean.”

When he eyed her again, she saw him taking into account the nubby sweater she wore, and her woolen knickers, covered with mud from working the mine. She saw him surveying the shock of dusty red-brown curls poking out beneath her apple hat. “You are the most unusual woman of nineteen years I have ever seen.”

“I’ll thank you to let go of me,” she said, her green eyes remaining level on his own.

He dropped his hold. “Why are you deceiving everyone, Miss Kirkland? And how are you hiding it so well?”

She wasn’t about to let him lead her onto this subject. “I came for your solemn vow, Mr. Brown.”

“You received that last night when you threatened me with your fist.”

“Very well,” she said, smiling a bit. “We understand each other. Good day, Mr. Brown.”

Chapter Two

Well past moonrise, well after Uley’s pa had drawn the curtains and extinguished the oil lamps, Uley removed the dirty woolen cap, dusted it off against her leg and began to pull the pins from her hair. Her hair fell in huge rolls against her shoulders and down her back.

Uley slipped open the top bureau drawer and extracted the beautiful silver brush that had once belonged to her mother. She began to count brush strokes as she worked the tangles from the strands. Five...six...seven...

So Aaron Brown wanted to know how she did such a good job of hiding her womanhood, did he?

Thirteen...fourteen...fifteen...sixteen...

She supposed that was about the most embarrassing thing of all—that she could hide it so well. Her own body rebelled against her. She was small, just like her ma, her waist barely nipping in. She supposed she’d look more womanly if she had any earthly idea as to how to don a corset.

Thirty-one...thirty-two...thirty-three...

Her mother’s name had been Sarah, one of the prettiest names Uley had ever heard. It sounded the same way she remembered her mother, patient and gracious, always ready to break into a song. One of Uley’s only memories was hanging clothes on the line out back of the Ohio house, running through the wet, billowing sheets with her arms outflung while her ma hummed “What Friend We Have in Jesus” through the wooden pins she held between her teeth. It wasn’t easy for a girl to get along in the world without a ma. There were so many questions to be asked that could not be answered by anyone except for a mother. About that first warm stirring in your bosom when a handsome young gentleman let his eyes linger. The proper way to thread the laces through a corset. The only place she might seek answers to these feminine mysteries now was from the hurdy-gurdy girls at Santa Fe Moll’s place. Occasionally Uley passed one of them in the streets, Irish Ann or Tin Can Laura and Big Minnie and Wishbone Mabel. Oh, Uley heard the fellows in the mines talking about these girls, all right!