The Major's Daughter

by Regina Jennings

  “That’s right. It was his own foolish wager, putting this stuff here when we were trying to keep him out of the area. He deserves to be taught a lesson. And he’s got quite a stash. Enough to support a person for a couple of months.” The major turned a full circle.

  Caroline held her breath. It seemed that the tide was turning. Her father couldn’t help but like the fact that Caroline had gotten the better of Frisco after years of playing cat and mouse with him.

  “I don’t approve of you being here by yourself.”

  “I’m not the only single woman homesteading,” she said. “And with Bradley and Amber next door . . . ”

  “You do have a secure place to live for now. And I could post a sentry here. I have to post them somewhere. This would be as good a place as any.”

  Still under her father’s watchful eyes? If Caroline thought she was running away from home, she hadn’t run far enough. But she smiled. “At least until those who missed out have stopped roaming and looking for a place. Once they’re gone, it should quiet down.”

  “Don’t count on it.” Major Adams reached up to pull an earthworm out of the dirt wall. He watched it squirm between his fingers. “If I know Frisco Smith, he’s not going to give you any peace until you return his things.”

  “I’m not afraid of him.”

  “But you should be afraid of starting on a course if you aren’t determined to see it completed. Are you sure you have the tenacity to succeed here?”

  “Yes, sir.” Caroline almost saluted. If she could convince her father of her success, then surely she could convince herself.

  Frisco pushed the moth-eaten Indian blanket off his face and squinted into the light filtering through his cheap tent. How could the night have been so short? For hours after sunset, people had wandered about, shouting greetings when reunited with friends, hunting down missing livestock that had gotten loose from hastily constructed pens, sitting around campfires, and comparing the breathtaking stories of their runs. They weren’t ready for the eventful day to end, while Frisco wished it had never happened.

  How he wished he was back at the boardinghouse in Silver City awaiting the race. How he wished he could do it again and not get tied up chasing down moonlighters. Not leave his horse at the mercy of that horrid woman. Not get beat to the piece of land that was going to be his forever home. Instead he was on the ground with a moldy blanket while someone else slept in the house he’d built with his own hands.

  That someone else was a girl who’d been nothing but trouble her whole life. He should’ve known better. He’d let down his guard, and she’d taken advantage of him. While her father had always treated him courteously when he was arrested, he had a motive—to plumb Frisco’s knowledge of the territory and what was going on in the recesses of the Unassigned Lands. Miss Adams had treated him the same way. Smiled politely, listened intently, and then taken the information gleaned and used it for her own purposes without any consideration for how it affected him.

  The apple didn’t fall far from the tree.

  And now it was morning, although the hammers had been ringing for hours. Roosters remembered their dawn duty even in their new environs, while someone belted a maudlin song that begged a young lady named Barbara Allen for mercy. What was he doing lying around? Just losing ground.

  Frisco tossed off the blanket and reached for his boots.

  “Yah, boys! Forward! Forward!”

  Frisco got through his tent flap in time to see massive flatbed wagons laden with lumber rolling past. Dressed in a leather vest with Indian beading and boots laced up to his knees, the driver snapped a black bullwhip over the backs of his eight-oxen team. They surged forward, their massive muscles bulging against their yokes. Frisco had never seen the like, until he looked down the street behind them. Four more identical wagons and teams stomped forward. No sooner had they gotten past than the wheels stopped turning. Two middle-aged Chickasaw men with white sleeves rolled up for business hopped off the back of the wagon bed and began selling.

  People came from every direction. Everyone, like Frisco, had the same dirt-worn clothes they’d worn yesterday, but they had cash, they had land, and they needed the freshly sawn boards that some genius had hauled to town. Men called out amounts, getting larger and larger. Losers stepped back while the moneyed bidders closed in on the wagons. Soon all five wagons were spoken for. The drivers woke their whips and, with a bellow, the oxen followed the winning bidders to their lots.

  All that happened before Frisco had tasted his first cup of coffee.

  “There are more coming behind us,” the Chickasaw man called. “Our sawmills are running nonstop. Get your foundations dug.”

  “Breakfast for sale.” A barefoot boy with patches at his knees jogged by. “Eggs, potatoes, corn bread, coffee. One plate, thirty-five cents.”

  “Surgeon and dentist!” a man shouted, declaring his skills. “Anyone ailing or hurt, come see Doctor Carr at the corner of Main and Fourth Street. I’ve got the cure for what ails you.”

  “Livery services,” a woman with a baby on her hip advertised. “Feed and water for your horses for only five cents a day. Professional farrier looking for work.”

  It was a lot to absorb. Whatever Frisco had imagined, this hadn’t been it, but these people were wasting no time. The town was getting built. From an empty prairie, they were going to have a city in a matter of hours. They’d gone to bed worried about procuring sleeping mats, fires, and vittles, and they’d woken to the morning ready for commerce and construction. The pace dizzied him.

  His horse’s tail swatted at a cloud of gnats rising from the dew-drenched grass. He’d check into that livery. After what had happened before the race, he didn’t like leaving his horse tied to his tent with no corral or protection.

  But first, breakfast. Frisco dropped his wide-brimmed hat on his head and took out after the boy who’d offered the best deal on morning sustenance.

  Chasing down breakfast gave him an appreciation for how the town was being laid out. It also frustrated him to know that his own Redhawk property was idle. He should be getting word out to his subscribers to come meet him. He should be directing them to their lots. If some were successful in the race and had found farms then they wouldn’t get their money back, but otherwise he would have to refund anyone who was relying on him—and from the crowd of people still milling around looking for unattended property, he imagined there were many whose only chance for a plot was on his shoulders.

  The only thing he knew for sure was that all his subscribers wouldn’t fit on his town plot here in Plainview.

  The eggs and corn bread were dished out on a tin plate. He stood by the back of the wagon and ate with an odd assortment of others in various costumes and stages of dress. Frisco supposed that if you slept outside, bathed in the river, and relieved yourself behind a tree—of which there were but a few—then maybe appearing before your neighbor without your shirt buttoned to the collar wasn’t a serious offense.

  “Excuse me.” The man addressing him had soulful eyes and a posture that looked used to waiting. “I don’t mean to interrupt your breakfast, but did someone say you’re an attorney?”

  Frisco scraped a last bite from his dish, then shook it upside down to dump the crumbs before giving it back to the woman in the wagon. “Yes, sir, I’m an attorney, but I haven’t set up a practice yet.”

  “You haven’t?” The man’s forehead wrinkled. “What are you waiting for?”

  Good question. He wanted to be a town father, but this town had more fathers than a litter of twenty kittens. What if he couldn’t get his land from Miss Adams? He’d staked a claim here as a contingency but hadn’t thought beyond that. And if he had to refund the money of everyone who’d purchased a lot in Redhawk, he was going to be light in the pocketbook.

  After taking another look at the man, Frisco nodded. “How can I help you?”

  “I thought I had a claim,” he said. “My wife and I came in a light buggy and made good time, but
when we got here, it seemed like every good plot was already spoken for. We took one out of the way and began setting up, but then some fellow showed up and said that he had both sides of the street. Mind you, there was nothing on it showing that this plot was connected with the one opposite of it, and I didn’t think that was legal, claiming two town lots.”

  “It’s not.” Frisco could say with certainty because he himself had monitored the wording of the bill as it had been debated in Congress. He’d considered every nuance when the law was passed. Most definitely, two claims by the same homesteader wasn’t allowed. “Have you left the property?” he asked.

  “No, sir. I hate to leave my wife there alone, but one of us is staying put until we have a claim filed.”

  “The nearest claims office is in Kingfisher.”

  “And I hear you’ll wait in line for days before they call your number. But now it’s gotten more complicated.” The man took a clean handkerchief out of his overall pocket and folded it over and over. “A second man came and is squatting on our plot. The neighbor and he say that it’s his plot. That the neighbor was holding it for him.”

  Frisco’s mouth twisted. Legal work would be the easiest labor out here if every case was this clear. “He’s living there with you? That’s ludicrous. The land is yours. I’ll be happy to present your challenge to the land office.”

  “I don’t have a lot of cash money to pay you, but maybe I could pay you in kind.”

  “What do you do?”

  He produced a hammer out of his waistband. “Carpenter.”

  Finally some good news. “If you don’t have cash money now, you will by nightfall. All that lumber being hauled in needs someone to work it.”

  “That’s what me and the missus are counting on, but I don’t want to lose my land while I’m working.”

  “Come back to my place, and let me take some notes,” Frisco said. “We’ll get your story on paper, and then I’ll have a talk with your neighbor. How’s that sound, Mr. . . .”

  “Mr. Nesbitt. And it sounds dandy.”

  Soon Frisco and Mr. Nesbitt were sitting outside Frisco’s tent on barrels borrowed from a neighbor, scratching down the basics of his story along with the location of his land. It seemed a simple case of bullying and nepotism. Something Frisco could address, set aright, and move on. And with each friendship he made, he’d feel more secure in leaving his scant belongings behind while he traveled out to visit Miss Adams and reclaim his land.

  Speaking of Miss Adams . . .

  Frisco bolted off his barrel when he saw the fiery red hair. “Miss Adams! Get over here. I want to talk to you,” he bellowed.

  He hadn’t meant to sound so commanding, but it did the trick. Miss Adams turned her horse from the public thoroughfare and rode onto his plot. She was a sight to see on horseback, but Frisco was determined not to be swayed by how her simple riding habit and split skirt accentuated her lithe curves. Or how her robin’s-egg blue hat accentuated her complexion. Or how her ease and beauty accentuated his frustration at being her victim.

  She dismounted and led her horse to his tent. “Mr. Smith, am I ever relieved to find you settled here. What a splendid location you’ve found. Right in the middle of a booming town, just like you wanted.” She was breathless, hopeful, and oh, so wrong.

  “This is not my town,” Frisco said.

  “It might not be where you planned your town, but it certainly is your town.”

  “It is not my town. These are not my investors. These roads are not the roads I planned. This is not Redhawk.”

  She drew back at his outburst, but her face smoothed into an unreadable mask. Then she noticed Mr. Nesbitt. “You have a guest. I apologize for interrupting. Good day.”

  “This isn’t a guest. It’s Mr. Nesbitt. He was just leaving.”

  “I was just leaving,” Mr. Nesbitt said as he stood. “About this matter—?”

  “I’ll be by directly to speak to the man on your land. If he fails to yield, I’ll apply to the Register and Receiver at the land office. You should have resolution soon after.” He didn’t mean to rush Mr. Nesbitt off, but if he was dealing with claim jumpers, Miss Adams was a priority.

  Mr. Nesbitt tipped his hat to Miss Adams as he passed. He was a real gentleman, because his eyes didn’t linger. Frisco wasn’t always so gentlemanly with a beautiful woman, unless the woman had usurped his success.

  “What did he want?” Miss Adams tilted her head as she inspected his tent.

  Frisco stepped back and pulled the flap closed to protect the interior from her prying. “He’s a client. I’m an attorney, remember?”

  “I’d almost forgotten. I have something for you.” She walked back to her horse, then returned with a bag. “I guess these belong to you.”

  The morning sun emphasized the smoothness of her skin, but he couldn’t forget the conniving of her heart. He opened the bag to find his law books. “There’s a lot that belongs to me that you should return. Why did you decide to give this back and not the other stuff?”

  She twisted her fingers together. “You can have the rest of it back too. As soon as I can get a wagon, I’ll cart it to you.”

  “Don’t you dare. Those supplies are exactly where they are supposed to be—in my house. There’s no reason to move anything, because you and me are going to trade.”

  Her head lifted. Her direct gaze caught him. “What do you have to trade?”

  “This plot, right here in the city. Just think of it, Miss Adams. You could resume the spectacular life you left behind in Galveston instead of resigning yourself to the drudgery of a farm.”

  “You think I want to mimic the life I lived in Galveston?” She blinked wearily, then turned her face away to look over their surroundings. “Let’s see, we have an assortment of tents, wagons, crates. I’m sure it’ll rival the beautiful architecture on the Strand soon. And then there’s the Gulf. Where exactly will the shore be when they are finished?”

  “It’s better than being on a homestead all by yourself. What are you going to do with that farm, anyway?”

  “I’m going to build a luxurious sanctuary where people can rest after traveling across the territory. My inn will have extensive gardens surrounding a spacious porch. Who knows? I might dabble in making scented soaps or perfumes for income while I wait for the railroad to come through with the travelers.”

  “There aren’t going to be any travelers coming through for years, and you won’t be satisfied living out there alone.”

  “How do you know what will satisfy me, Mr. Smith?”

  He was losing control of this conversation. “I’m a very good judge of character,” he said, “especially people I’ve known as long as I’ve known you.”

  “You know my family, but you don’t really know me, and in this instance, you’re mistaken. I loathed my time in Galveston. I was nothing but an ornament dragged out for inspection at every social function. If I wished to resume that life, which I don’t, I would do it somewhere more interesting than . . . what’s the name of this town?”

  He shrugged. “Does it matter?”

  “I suppose not. I’m rejecting your offer. Life in this sorry excuse for a town does not interest me. At least on the homestead I have shelter. There’s nothing here. Where would I keep my things?”

  “Back at the fort where you belong?” He tossed the bag of books into his tent.

  “I’m done with the fort too. It’s time I struck out and made my own way.”

  “And how better to begin than by stealing a man’s house, property, and goods?”

  “Then file a grievance,” she said. “If what I did was wrong, the land office will evict me.”

  He really hoped it wouldn’t come to that. “Don’t you feel some remorse?” he asked.

  Beneath the flawless sheen of her skin, her face went rigid. “I might pity the man who didn’t succeed yesterday, but that doesn’t mean I would give him my prize.”

  Frisco bristled. He didn’t like being a commonplace
loser in her books. Winning his land was going to be more difficult than he’d thought.

  Chapter twelve

  What had she expected? That he’d graciously thank her for taking all his possessions from him? It was unlucky that things had turned out the way they did, but she knew no remedy. This was the first time in two years that she’d felt hope for her future. The first time she’d seen a challenge that would mature her into the woman she could be. He couldn’t ask her to give up on something that important.

  “Why are you here?” Frisco asked. “Did you come just to bring my law books back?”

  “Since you asked so kindly,” she said, “I’m on my way to the land office in Kingfisher to file.”

  “It’s a waste of time,” Frisco said. “You’ll get a number and then wait for days before it’s your turn.”

  “Are you trying to keep me from finalizing the process?”

  “The process won’t be finalized for five years—five very long years.”

  She straightened the cuff on her riding habit. “If the land office isn’t expedient, I could do some shopping today to supplement the supplies we bought in Darlington. Would you happen to know where the mercantile is?”

  “What do you need to shop for?” he asked. “Don’t you have everything of mine?”

  “I need a better lamp. Yours smokes something frightful. And the dishes? I nearly cut my lip on that chipped mug.”

  It was the first time she’d seen him smile since the run. He smiled until his eyes wandered to her lips, and then he growled.

  “Toughen up, buttercup.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “If you can’t take a scratch from a mug . . . Besides, I don’t want you filling my house with superfluous junk. You’re going to have to cart it all out when I get an official decision from the land office.”

  He’d have better luck appealing to her sympathy, because if he thought he could intimidate her, she was disappointed in his intellect. Compared with the task of proving her claim, Caroline didn’t lack confidence in her ability to win an argument.