Brokken Yesterdays

by Lynda J. Cox

  Victoria snapped her head up, dislodging several lengths of hair to fall over her furrowed brow. Jon raised his hand and gently brushed the hair off her face. “The only men I killed in that war were the ones shooting back at me.”

  “I believe you.” The words sounded on a breathless whisper.

  He slipped his hand around the back of her neck, drawing her minutely closer. She stilled but didn’t resist him. Jon leaned into her, his gaze dropping to her lips. Her mouth parted, and she pressed her palm against his shoulder, not pushing him away but not drawing him closer, either.

  The shrill yapping of a small dog a few houses away intruded into the stillness between them. Reluctantly, he lowered his hand and stepped back, putting distance between them.

  “Lavender and her collection of critters. You wouldn’t believe the complaints I’ve gotten about her barking dogs.” A rueful, half-smile curled her lips. “I’ve spoiled supper.”

  Jon lifted his shoulders. “No, you didn’t. It should still be warm.”

  Victoria tilted her head toward the table. “It looks good and smells even better. You said you’re gainfully employed now.”

  “Yes.” He allowed the less than tactful change of subject, grateful she moved away from her doubts and took her arm just above the elbow. Gentle pressure guided her toward the table. “Instead of discussing how good it looks, let’s find out. Either Molly or her husband slaved for hours in a hot kitchen to make that meal. And, we can talk about how proud you are of your husband for securing a job as a greenhorn wrangler at the Brokken Arrow.”

  Jon wasn’t prepared for Victoria to suddenly stand on tiptoe or for the quick kiss she left on his clean-shaven cheek. Before he could catch her in his arms and pull her into him for a proper kiss, she backed away.

  He stared at her for a long moment, noting the color—like one of his mother’s deep red roses—creeping across her cheeks. He asked, “What was that for?”

  The bloom of color deepened. “Because I am very thankful you’re not him.”

  Chapter Ten

  Jon ran full out the last short distance to the Brokken Arrow. He skittered to a halt in the middle of the yard, and dropping his hands onto his knees, struggled to catch his breath. Several horses were saddled and tied at the hitching rail outside of the barn. Before he had leveled his breathing, Isaac and four hands emerged from the main house.

  Isaac said, his voice taut, “You’re late, English.”

  Jon forced himself to stand upright and threw a glance at the eastern skies. The sun hadn’t even fully crested over the horizon. It was just a little past first light. “Yes, sir, I am.”

  “Where’s your horse?” the foreman demanded.

  Jon recognized Hale as the man walked past him, though Hale didn’t give him any eye contact. The other three he didn’t know. “The livery was closed when I left the house. I didn’t want to take a horse and risk being accused of stealing one.”

  Iverson walked closer to Jon. “You didn’t think to tell Mrs. Walsh you would need one early today?”

  He wasn’t off to the best start. Jon shook his head. “No, sir, I didn’t. I’ll make arrangements for a mount this evening, when I go back to town.”

  “Come on, Boss,” one of the now mounted wranglers said. “We’re burning daylight.”

  The quirk of Iverson’s mouth could have been amusement, though Jon wasn’t willing to wager on that. “Nothing sadder than a wrangler without a horse, English. So, I can either tell you to hit the road—”

  Jon braced himself for his immediate dismissal.

  “—or I can give you something to do that will help reinforce your need of a horse for this job. What do you think, gentlemen? Should I give Mr. English another chance?”

  “Barn needs cleaned,” Hale said, still not meeting Jon’s gaze. “None of us want to do it, but it needs done.”

  Iverson dipped his head in a quick, terse nod. “That it does. English, we’ll be back around sundown. Hope the barn meets my inspection when we get back.”

  The suspicion that even if he had shown up with a mount, he would still be cleaning the barn registered with Jon. As the new hire, he would find himself being given the jobs none of the other wranglers really wanted to do. “Yes, sir. It’ll be cleaned.”

  “From the rafters down.” Iverson strolled over to his horse and swung up. As the other men rode out, the foreman reined his horse around to Jon, and said, “There’s fresh straw for bedding in the lean-to behind the barn. Other cleaning supplies are in the tack-room.” He then put his heels into his horse.

  By noon, Jon found himself wondering why he’d agreed to this. He’d already stripped out seven of the ten stalls, hadn’t even had a chance to sweep the aisleway down the center of the barn, and the cobwebs and dust decorating the windows promised a long afternoon climbing up and down a ladder. He hadn’t even brought anything for dinner, though the water from the pump at the trough was ice cold and did slake his thirst.

  He picked up the pitchfork and set about throwing the soiled straw into the wheelbarrow he placed in the doorway of the stall.

  “Jonathan, you need to take a little time for dinner.” Deborah Hale stood next to the wheelbarrow.

  He paused and raked a hand through his sweat-soaked hair. “I didn’t bring dinner, and I really need to have this barn cleaned by sundown.”

  Deborah’s chuckle sounded as light as the water gurgling down a small stream. “Is that what he has you doing?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Jon carefully tossed another forkful of the straw into the wheelbarrow.

  “Ma’am? We’ve known each other since I was in short skirts and pigtails. You used to pull my pigtails.” Her smile grew brighter. “I was so jealous of Miss Victoria. She was married to the most handsome man in the whole county.”

  He was in dangerous territory here. Jon sucked in a deep breath. “That was before you grew up, and before you married Mr. Hale. I don’t think either my wife or your husband would be appreciative of me tugging your hair, now.” He forked up the last of the soiled bedding. “If you’ll excuse me, Miss Deborah, I need to take this out.”

  Deborah stepped back. “Isaac isn’t going to fire you for sitting down to dinner with me, Grandfather, and Grandmother.”

  Jon clutched the handles on the wheelbarrow more tightly as he backed it out of the doorway. “I’m not being paid to sit down to dinner, Miss Deborah. I appreciate the offer, but I have to decline.”

  When he returned to the barn, Deborah was gone. Jon heaved a deep sigh of relief. He didn’t think the young woman had been flirting with him, just trying to rekindle what she believed to be an old friendship. Still, it had been uncomfortable.

  He inwardly winced when the sound of Deborah’s footfalls entered the barn again a short while later.

  “Jonathan, if you won’t come into the house, I brought your dinner to you.”

  Jon twisted his head over his shoulder. Deborah walked down the aisle with a covered tray, carefully balancing it so the glass in the corner of the tray didn’t spill. Condensation already formed on the glass with the thick humidity of the day. She set the tray on one of the clean straw bales he brought into the barn earlier to bed the stalls with, then pulled the checkered fabric off the tray.

  “You can take a few minutes to eat dinner. Isaac knows no matter how much work he assigns, Grandmother refuses to allow anyone to work through either dinner or supper.” She patted the straw bale. “So, put that pitchfork down, go wash up at the trough, and eat.”

  “I may assume that is an order from your grandmother?” Jon put the pitchfork in the wheelbarrow.

  “Yes.” Deborah grinned. “If you want to dispute it, you have to take it up with her.”

  “No, ma’am. I would never engage in a dispute with Grandmother Jackson.” Jon knew as soon as he said it, he had made a mistake. While he washed his hands and wiped the sweat from his face, throat, and neck, he wondered just how to explain away the mistake if Deborah questioned him on it
.

  When he returned to the barn, the younger woman sat on a straw bale near his dinner, her brow furrowed. “You’ve changed, Jonathan.”

  Jon turned his attention to the bowl of what appeared to be a hearty stew of some sort. His heart pounded so fiercely it echoed in his ears. He spooned up a portion of the stew, struggling to keep his composure. “How so?”

  “You hated Isaac. Everyone in town knew it. Even I knew it.”

  “War changes how a man thinks, Miss Deborah.” He gulped a spoonful of the still hot stew, hoping to dissuade her from much further inspection of how much he had changed. “How much did that war change your husband? He was a Sharpshooter for the Union, wasn’t he? How much did that change him? That war changed you, too. Instead of marrying some fine, upstandin’ Yankee, you settled for a man some might call a coward.”

  Deborah reared back, and her face blanched. “How dare you? You don’t know how deeply being a Sharpshooter damaged Chance.”

  Jon bit back the apology before it escaped him. Thank heavens, Victoria had filled him full of minute details about Deborah Brokken, her brothers, her father, and her grandparents over supper the night before. “So, it changed him, didn’t it? Miss Deborah, your foreman has been loyal to the Brokken family for as long I’ve known y’all. That kind of loyalty is rare. It took that war to make me realize it.” Jon didn’t mention the utter shock and disbelief he and many of his fellow Union soldiers felt when they saw colored men serving in the ranks of the Confederates. Those colored troops were often side by side with the men in grey, very unlike the few colored regiments of the North that were segregated. He set the spoon down. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to go back to work. Thank you for bringing dinner out to me.”

  He made his way to the stall he had been cleaning when she had brought dinner out and busied himself with completing the stripping down of that small area. When he emerged from the stall a little while later, Deborah was gone.

  By the time the sun started sinking below the horizon, Jon swept the last section of the aisle way. The windows glowed red-gold like burnished bronze in the fading light, every stall had fresh bedding, and even the rafters had been wiped clean of the thick gouts of dusty cobwebs. The bridles and saddles in the tack room were wiped down. The work-bench in the front corner had been cleaned off, the tools hung once more onto pegs on the wall. He took the broom to the tack-room, pausing to give the barn one last look. Each stall had a bale of straw outside to freshen the bedding in the morning. The buckets all had cool, fresh water. Nothing seemed out of place. If Iverson expected him to fail this task, he figured the foreman was going to be disappointed.

  He hung the broom on the hook and heard several horses near the barn.

  Iverson walked into the barn as Jon left the tack room. The foreman’s head tilted back, his gaze skipping over the rafters, down to the clean windows, and then along the trail of straw bales outside the stalls. Without a word, he looked over to the work-bench, and then made his way past Jon to the tack-room. At last, the foreman said, “It’ll do. If you’re late tomorrow, don’t bother to come out here.”

  Jon choked down his anger, reined in the sharp response he itched to hurl at the foreman for his “it’ll do” assessment, and met Iverson’s gaze. “I’ll be on time.”

  VICTORIA SWUNG DOWN off her horse, squared her shoulders, and marched onto the front porch of the Brokken home. Before she could knock, Deborah pulled the heavy door open. “Sheriff, good morning.”

  “Hello, Deborah. Is Isaac here?”

  “He’s finishing up his coffee before we all head into town for church. Is something wrong?”

  Victoria pulled her hat off. “It’s a matter I would rather discuss with Isaac.”

  “All right.” Deborah stepped to a side. “Would you like to come in? I’ll get Isaac for you.”

  Victoria walked into the foyer, the sound of her boot heels tapping on the slate flooring seemingly swallowed by the heavy woodwork.

  Deborah gestured to the formal parlor to the right. “I’ll bring him into the parlor. Would you care for a cup of coffee?”

  “No, thank you.” Victoria crossed the parlor and gazed out the tall window. Brand new posts and freshly milled fence boards gleamed bright in the early morning sunlight, waiting to be whitewashed. Since the men had started coming to Brokken, the work at the ranch hadn’t been neglected. Perhaps, having all the prospective grooms over the past twelve months stay at the Brokken Arrow until they either married or moved on hadn’t been fair to the rest of the town’s folk.

  “Miss Deborah said you wanted to talk to me, Sheriff?”

  Victoria craned her head over her shoulder. Deborah stood back, in the foyer, her face alight with undisguised curiosity. “Yes, Isaac, I do. Please close the doors first.”

  The crestfallen expression crossing Deborah’s face would have been laughable if Victoria weren’t so angry. Isaac slid the pocket doors closed and the moment the solid wood pieces touched one another, Victoria rounded on her heel to the foreman. “Where is Jon...nathan?”

  She silently cursed herself for the near slip.

  “I put him to work repairing the fence along the river.”

  Victoria well knew that section of fence. It started a good mile from the house and ran for nearly three miles along the Brokken River. “What are you trying to prove here, Isaac? For the last six days, my husband has been out of the house at least an hour before first light, and he isn’t back until hours after sunset. He comes home too tired to eat, and all he does is fall asleep on the chesterfield.” She wasn’t about to tell Isaac that was where she and Jon had agreed he would sleep. “It’s Sunday. He shouldn’t even be here, today.”

  “Livestock still need tended to and looked after.”

  “You have three hired hands who reside here and Mr. Hale to do that on Sunday. What is your point in this?”

  Something shifted in the foreman’s expression. Victoria recognized it as admiration. “He’s stubborn, I’ll give him that,” Isaac said. “I want him to quit.”

  “Why?” Victoria took a step closer. “If he wasn’t doing the work you’ve told him to do to your satisfaction, just fire him.”

  “That’s the problem,” Isaac said, a smile crossing his face. “He’s done everything I’ve told him to, done it right, done it without having to have anyone standing over him, and done it without complaint.”

  A paperweight shaped like a twisting fish on Franklin Brokken’s unused desk drew her attention, and she lifted the small brass sculpture. “I’m confused. Why do you want him to quit if all of that is true?”

  Iverson sighed, softly. “Sheriff...Miss Victoria...can we sit down and talk like friends, instead of the adversaries we seem to be at this moment?”

  She placed the paperweight back where it had been on the desk and took a seat in one of the chairs near the window. The foreman sat across from her. He leaned closer, and then turned his head toward the pocket doors. “Deborah Brokken Hale, you get away from those doors, right now, or I will let your grandmother know you’ve taken to eavesdropping.”

  The scuffling of feet outside the room brought a smile to Victoria. Isaac murmured, “No matter how old she gets, some things never change.” He then leaned even closer, propped his elbows on his knees, and clasped his hands together. “Speaking of things that never change...that man isn’t Jonathan.”

  Victoria’s heart leaped into her throat and lodged there. “Are you telling me I don’t know my own husband?”

  “I’m telling you, even though I believe through Christ all men are made anew, no man can change as much as Jonathan English claims that war changed him. He isn’t Jonathan English.”

  Victoria forced a calm to her voice she wasn’t feeling. “And I think you’ve lost your mind.”

  Another smile brushed across the older man’s features. “Perhaps I have. Let me explain to you why I want Jonathan, or whatever his name is, to quit. Before the war, Jonathan English wasn’t fit to wear that badge yo
u’re wearing.”

  Victoria glanced at the badge pinned to her blouse.

  “Jonathan used that badge for personal gain. He abused the power it gave him. He turned a blind eye to things he never should have and heavily-handed enforced the law on those who crossed him.” Isaac’s voice remained just above a low murmur, to avoid any possibility of being overheard.

  All of that was true. When she pinned the badge on the first time, she promised herself she would be impartial and wouldn’t use it as Jonathan had.

  “This man you’ve claimed is your husband is the man who should be wearing that badge.”

  Victoria’s head snapped up. Iverson raised a hand, forestalling her protest. “Since the afternoon he came here, hat in hand, apologizing for actions that weren’t his, I’ve known he isn’t Jonathan. I’ve done everything I can to push him to his breaking point. I’ve given him every single job on this ranch not a one of the wranglers will do without a month of complaining and threats of being fired if they don’t, made him work by himself, and he’s done those jobs without a single complaint. Do you know how hard it is to completely strip out a hog shed in this heat?”

  Victoria turned her gaze to the floor. “He doesn’t want to be sheriff, again.”

  “Whether it’s again or just doesn’t want to be sheriff, that’s all the more reason he needs to put that badge on.” Iverson’s large hand rounded on her shoulder. “Miss Victoria, I will do everything I can to make him quit and put that badge on.”

  “He won’t quit.” The intricate inlay of the wood floor held her gaze. “He won’t.”

  “How do you know that?”