Cheryl St.John - Joe's Wife

“Five and a half. My birthday’s behind Thanksgiving.”

“Oh.”

The tiny creature hopped to her feet and placed the doll on the bed. Her wrists and hands were as delicate and frail-boned as anything he’d ever seen. A stiff wind would blow her clean to Texas.

He crossed to sit on the corner end of the mattress, wondering what to say next. He glanced at the cloth doll. “Is that Molly?”

She bobbed her head. A smattering of pale freckles across her golden skin reminded Tye of Lottie, but her dark hair and lovely wide eyes were a mesmerizing combination all her own. No wonder Lottie adored her. No wonder she feared for this child’s welfare being placed in the hands of strangers.

Not that he’d ever laid eyes on her before. But the unknown was often more frightening than the familiar, and Lottie’d known Tye for many years. He was the only person she could turn to. The only person she trusted.

How pathetic.

“My mama’s bad sick,” she said, adjusting the doll’s dress and arranging her against a pillow.

What must she think of this frightening situation? She’d grown up over a saloon and only now moved to a house so her mother could die. “I know.”

Eve climbed onto the bed and dangled her feet over the side.

“Sometimes I’m scared to go to her room and see her.” Her silvery voice and tiny chin trembled.

Oh, Lord, what if she cried? What if she asked him something he didn’t want to answer or didn’t know how to answer? “That’s okay,” he said to reassure her.

“She don’t look a whole lot like my mama anymore, but she sounds like her, and she loves me like her.”

Her observation seemed too mature. But he’d noticed Lottie barely looked like herself. Her dreadful appearance must be frightening to her daughter. “She loves you very much.”

“She said someone would come for me before the angels came to get her.”

Tye’s throat closed up tight. He didn’t know how to handle this. He’d seen so many people suffer and die, he shouldn’t have had any feelings left when it came to death. He’d fought and killed with his own hands. He had blocked out recrimination and sorrow. What did he know about a child losing a mother?

Nothing. But he knew a lot about being a kid without a father. It wasn’t really the cruelty of classmates and townspeople that hurt so much at this age; a kid didn’t have anything to compare his experiences with. It was the memory of those humiliating slurs years later that ate at a person’s gut.

What kind of burden had Lottie asked him to carry? What kind of mess would he make of it, of this kid’s life, if he went along with her request?

Nothing worse than life in an orphanage. Unwanted kids didn’t even get to eat the foods they needed to grow healthy. They got the scraps, the dregs. And it was never enough.

Tye had learned to use his fists and his wits for survival. But this little girl? He didn’t even want to think about it. He had only to look at Lottie to see what would become of her.

Unless someone stepped in.

“Did you come for me, Mr. Hatcher?”

Tye looked up. Knowing what was happening, yet unable to do anything to prevent it, he fell headlong into her black-lashed, blue-violet gaze, eyes that reflected trust and innocence and waited for him to make the decision that would shape the rest of her life. She had no one in the world. No one but him.

Heaven help her.

“Yes, Eve. I came for you.”

Chapter Three

Before dark, Gus and Purdy returned from the hills with the welcome news that others who’d been fighting a brushfire since yesterday had been successful in quelling it and that they’d be following. Meg had a hearty stew and corn bread warming, as well as rice pudding with raisins and currants in a milk pan in the oven.

Freshly washed, his thinning gray hair combed back in streaks on his sun-browned head, Gus entered the kitchen without knocking, as was customary on the Circle T. He did as much cooking as Meg did, coming in early each meal to grind the beans and start the coffee.

“Fire’s out?” she asked.

“Yup. Got a big patch of brush up by Lame Deer and was spreadin’ to the Anderson place, but we stopped ’er.”

“I could smell it on the wind this afternoon.” Meg had kept herself busy, the thought of the fire spreading this far licking at her already edgy nerves.

“Seen you got the cows milked,” he said, opening the oven and stirring. the rice pudding, which had turned a smooth caramel brown.

She nodded. “Thought Patty was going to kick me good, though.”

Joe’s Newfoundland “puppy,” which he’d brought home from a buying trip, only to watch rapidly grow to the size of a Shetland pony, had slipped in behind Gus and now stood with a chunk of firewood in his mouth.

Meg propped the door open with the wood. “Good boy, Major. Get more.”

The dog immediately bounded for the woodpile, returning several times and dropping the wood into the firebox. Gus had taught him the trick, perhaps with the idea of saving his own steps, and the dog had caught on the way he did to everything.

After several trips, Major sat before Meg, his snout quivering in anticipation. She rewarded him with a lump of sugar, and he found a place in the corner of the long room to settle. He caught much of his own food: rabbits and squirrels. Meg had thought the practice disgusting at first, but had since grown appreciative due to the fact that she couldn’t afford to feed another mouth.

The rest of the hands arrived minutes later: Purdy, along with the “boys,” Aldo and Hunt Eaton, brothers in their teens, who’d been too young to go to war and needed to work to eat. Their parents lived on an acreage near town with several younger children. For lack of grown men, Meg had hired the brothers on as reps a couple of years ago.

Joining them as the day progressed came reps from nearby ranches, stopping to eat before heading to their own places. She fed them gratefully, this bedraggled bunch of cowboys who’d been too young or too old to fight, or who’d only recently come home to ranches in need of more attention than they could afford.

All were respectfully solemn in deference to her widowed state and her mourning clothing, and they soon headed out.

Purdy was shorter and wirier than Gus, a long gray handlebar mustache his distinguishing feature. He walked with a hitch now, and lengthy stretches in the saddle enfeebled him for days. Tomorrow he probably wouldn’t be able to do much around the place, and the others would work harder to make his slack unnoticeable.

“I’m gonna take care o’ the horses now.” He grabbed his hat.

“I’ll do it,” Gus offered.

“No,” Meg said immediately. “Aldo and Hunt, will you see to the horses, please? You two—” she shooed Gus and Purdy with a flour-sack towel “—hit your bunks. I’ll finish up here.”

“Yes, ma’am.” The boys got up from the bench and headed for the corral. Gus and Purdy followed.

Another hour passed before she had the dishes washed and beans soaking for tomorrow’s noon meal. If she weren’t so tired from checking the stock and doing all the chores while the men fought the fire, she’d have filled the big tin tub that sat in the space beside the pantry. The prospect sounded too exhausting for this evening. She’d settle for a tin basin of water in her room and sponge herself off.

At the sound of a horse and buggy, she paused in scooping warm water out of the stove’s well. She peered out the back door, but the rig must have continued to the front.

Meg walked through the house and opened the seldom used front door. Niles Kestler stood on the grouping of boards that could only be called a porch in the broadest of terms. “Niles! How nice to see you.”