by Martha Hix
Linnea asked another question, then another. Then several more.
Sam took it upon himself to freshen the teacups, then to offer some cookies that Jewel had baked—there being no end to the wonder woman’s talents!—along with scrambled eggs and a few strips of venison jerky.
“May I please show you where I’d like to do the planting?” she asked the helpful sheriff, once the man of the house had cleared away the dishes.
Alington followed her outside; she pointed out the roof and the areas around the house, plus paths to the outbuildings and the patches of cotton and vegetables. “I know it’s too much to expect, getting it all planted this season,” she said. “Too expensive. And our best efforts must go to cotton and cattle.”
“Do as you can. The Nussbaumers in San Angelo keep a stock of seeds and starter plants. They ship orders. Most folks get their shipments inside a week. There’s a nursery in Jacksboro. Matter of fact, my mother’s bleeding hearts should be on the stage from there, when it gets here tomorrow.”
Dang! All this flower talk, and I plain forgot about tomorrow’s stage . . . and the talk I must have with Sam . . . tonight.
“It’s getting awful dark, Miz Linnea. Best we head back. Besides, Sam has something to announce.”
Indeed, he did. What Sam said brought tears to her eyes. She fell crying into his arms, yet he took it to be joy over his promise to show her a New Orleans trick. It was not joy. She forthwith pled a stomachache and went to sit in front of the cold fire. There was no way she could have forced out her confession. Her husband—her dear husband!—stood behind her, rubbing her shoulders, asking what he could do to make her feel better. All she could do was cry silently.
With shame.
Chapter 9
It was only the middle of June, yet the sun broiled by midmorning. This afternoon? Hell couldn’t have been hotter.
The cotton patch always stood in need of everything, and was all Linnea’s until picking time. At least it progressed. In that, Linnea took pride. While the men refused to think of those two acres as an experiment, she knew hard work and pure luck would make the planting a success.
Every day, she struggled, pulling weeds and yanking water pipes over the flat, boring beige prairie. Yet Linnea had caught cotton fever. Thanks to her many talks with Sam, she now shared his enthusiasm for turning all that beige into a deep green with white financial promise dotting each and every bush.
She took a great deal of pleasure in contributing to their financial future.
Please let that be enough!
As for Jewel, she refused to step into the cotton field. Her excuse? Just last week, Charlie had puffed out his chest and announced, “My darlin’ companion is expecting a bairn!”
Actually, Jewel hadn’t set foot in the patch, not since her ultimatum.
Jewel absolutely refused to teach housewifery, although she had taken over meal preparation, after Linnea traded clothes-and-linens-washing, plus all the ironing and tidying for both domiciles.
Reconciled to all of that, Linnea took delight in Charlie’s news. She found it impossible not to love the dim light that was Charlie Craig, and for all her hard work, his wife deserved the ultimate marital reward—a child.
If only Sam and I were also expecting!
“I must stop that.” Linnea tugged one of the heavy water pipes to reposition it on the next row. “I don’t deserve a child. I am still a faker.”
To get her mind off her lack of courage, she glanced at the Craig dugout, where Jewel’s chimney was puffing with evidence of her repast of jackrabbit and dumplings. When Sam found out about the planned rabbit, he failed in his campaign to exchange one of Linnea’s now-grown Cluck children.
Sam couldn’t understand why poultry should matter, beyond its tastiness, and Linnea couldn’t explain her sheltering attitude toward the rather large family of fowl. There was no way she could bring herself to chop anyone, and she wouldn’t let Jewel do it, either.
The Clucks—especially Henny—had become her companions. They even accompanied her in the cotton rows.
All three of the humans had laughed at Linnea, calling her a city girl.
Now, alone in the field, her stomach turned at the thought of gobs of dough swimming in milk, grease, and bunny parts. With all this hot work, she had overextended herself and she just hoped that Sam would take the Craigs up on their offer to share the meal, and she could turn in early.
All this work was getting to her, though. She had so looked forward to flowers and shrubs, yet tending the seedlings and plants that the Nussbaumers had sent from San Angelo had become just another chore. That night with the sheriff, she’d learned that Sam had sacrificed his silver toothpick for a tray of seeds and starter plants. He’d loved that toothpick—it had been his Craig grandfather’s. She couldn’t say “thank you” and “I hate to tell you, but . . .” Not in the same breath.
Linnea had started to accept reality. She might never be able to confess.
Recently, she’d decided to learn cooking and sewing on her own. After church the previous Sunday, the sheriff’s mother—despite the fact that Mrs. Estella Orrey Alington wasn’t the librarian—had unlocked the library and allowed Linnea to check out cookbooks and periodicals filled with instructions on how to make a home.
Linnea’s attempts were . . . coming along. She had learned to flip fried eggs with a greased spatula, but when it came to biscuits, the results were as hard as the boot heel of Missouri.
“I think you’re trying too hard,” Sam had said that very morning. “Biscuits need a toss and a tickle, and that’s it.”
In what had been an obvious attempt at making her feel better about wasting flour, lard, and milk, he added, “Don’t worry, darlin’. Let’s just save ’em all up, and when we’re looking for something to do, we’ll lob ’em at the prairie dogs.”
“Sam, no! Stop! I like dogs. I think. I liked the Reston’s Boston bulldog, Fanny.”
“Darlin’ city girl, prairie dogs are rodents, not sweet little puppy dogs. They’ll eat your sage and yucca.”
“I wouldn’t like that. The plants are growing so nicely . . .”
“Right. Those dogs will eat our stock of corn, if we’re not careful. And move indoors to eat your ass if it isn’t covered by a blanket.”
“Really? Oh, no!”
“Aw, honey, I was storying you. They’ll just eat your shoes.”
Linnea thunked his bicep with an elbow, but he deflected the blow and kept smiling. “I hear there’s a prizefight in town, not this Saturday but the next. Pretty Boy Lloyd Smithers is challenging contenders. I think you should try your luck. There’s a big hundred bucks in it, if someone can knock Smithers down, even once.”
“You think I could do that?” she asked, shocked.
“Aw, honey, no. Never!” Sam wound his arm around her. It went without saying, he would have carried her back to bed, if they both hadn’t been on their way out the door for an early start on Friday.
After kissing her, he said, “I was thinking an evening in town might be nice, just us. Dinner at the Jerry & Larry. Then a ride home in the buckboard, with you singing to me.”
“We can’t. The buckboard has a loose wheel.”
“Forget the wagon. We’ve got my mother’s sidesaddle. And we’ve got a nice little filly to take you there. What say?”
“Yes, oh yes!” Then she looked away, ashamed. “I—I don’t know how to ride.”
He jerked. His smile faded. “I thought you said you had a pony as a child.”
“Did I write that?”
“You did.” Sam chomped down on a frown. “You didn’t lie about that too, did you?”
“No,” she insisted, “but . . . that was when I was no more than a child.” Please, dear Lord. Please don’t let me lose my man over my stupid lies!
He eyed her suspiciously. “I’ll make sure the buckboard is in working order by the time Smithers hits town.”
“Thank you, husband.”
He gr
umbled a response.
Her heart pounding, Linnea knew: You’d best watch what comes tumblin’ out of your mouth.
Such was life on the High Hopes.
Why had she not confessed? She had become a gambler. She had decided to go all in and confirm her faith in the future. She wouldn’t look back, would try not to think about the real Ermentrude Flanders, much less wonder how the ambitious girl fared in her strive for a medical education.
* * *
The afternoon of the prizefight Sam drove the buckboard into town, with Linnea seated next to him. There had been no more recent rough spots about her background. The day had dawned with Linnea’s realization that this was Miz Myrtie’s birthday. Not for the first time, conscience reminded the imposter that her deceit would have greatly disappointed the grand lady.
They arrived to excitement.
A crowd gathered at Heaven’s Gate Missionary Church, waiting for Sam and his bride. “It’s all over town,” said Brother Fred Inman. “Word’s gotten out that you, Sam Kincaid, late of Natchez, and your bride, the former Miss Ermentrude L. Flanders”—he wedged his lips into a smile at Linnea—“with help from Charlie Craig and his missus, the Kincaids planted cotton and are irrigating it.”
The local newspaper had carried a piece about it. Sam obviously enjoyed his local-yokel celebrity; Linnea cringed at seeing her “name” in print. As well, she rather resented that the kinfolks got credit, when neither had done a dad-blasted thing to help in the field, but Linnea decided to let them all have their moment to shine.
After the evening of prizefighting, where no one knocked Pretty Boy Lloyd off his blocks to collect the hundred dollars, Linnea and Sam returned to the High Hopes.
* * *
The cotton grew knee-high, budding nicely. After the prizefight, the sheriff agreed to allow one of the banished cowhands to return to the High Hopes. Manuel helped Charlie with the herd, which freed Sam up to help with the cotton. Thank heavens!
Again and again, as Linnea worked alongside her husband, she heard him pine for a cotton gin.
“This won’t be a big crop, not this year, but I’m here to tell you, m’darlin’, we will show these High Plains ranchers that there is a second way to make a living on the Llano Estacado! And a good one, if we can gin our own cotton.”
She knew that a fellow over in Levelland had ordered one from the Murray Gin Company in Dallas; Sam yearned for one just like it. Even if he had the money, one of the gins wouldn’t just magically show up. The rest of this year’s Murray stock had been pre-ordered by planters in the cotton-growing states.
As for today, she was alone in the field, with Sam accompanying Charlie into town to help build a chimney for Scarlett Garter Jenny’s fancy new townhouse.
Linnea kept to her normal task of piping well water to the rows. As usual, she just didn’t feel well. Just about every morning of late, her stomach hadn’t been quite right—to the point where she had asked Sam to take breakfast with Charlie and Jewel this day and the previous one. The insufferable heat had gotten her down.
Her head spinning, she flopped down to the ground on her behind. The horizon waved in front of her. What . . . ? What was it, that waving object? It appeared to be a horseless carriage. As it drew closer, rumbling down the road that linked Levelland to Lubbock, she noticed that the brougham was empty, save for a single driver at the wheel.
She had never seen one, but she would have bet anything that this was a roadster, or maybe a runabout. Really, she didn’t know the difference, had never seen either one. The sight jolted her out of her doldrums.
The driver called to her, once he got within shouting distance. “You wouldn’t happen to be interested in sharing some of that water with a thirsty traveler, would you, ma’am?”
“We have plenty of water. Do you have your own dipper?”
“That I do, ma’am.”
He was a very tall elderly man, maybe even as old as fifty. He wore a pair of scarlet-red galluses over a white shirt with a polka-dot bow tie, and his khaki britches showed signs of having been pressed. His feet? They were shod in scarlet-red boots.
“You must be a tinker,” she surmised aloud.
“No, ma’am. I don’t deal in pots and pans. David Jimmerson at your service, ma’am. I represent the Murray Gin Company. I’ve been to Levelland to conduct business, but it did not go well. We sold a gin to a gentleman over there, but he has backed out on the deal.”
“Oh, really?”
“What are you growing in this field, ma’am? Looks to be cotton . . .”
“It is.”
“Do you have your own gin?”
“No, Mr. Jimmerson, but owning one is one of my husband’s dreams.”
“Mrs. . . . Mrs. . . . I don’t believe I caught your name.”
“Lin—Mrs. Ermentrude Kincaid. Most folks call me by my middle name. Linnea.”
“Well, Mrs. Kincaid, I might could make you a special deal. That cotton gin is boxed up, sitting on a freight bay in Dallas. It could be yours for a song.”
She chuckled. “I’m afraid we’re both out of luck. A pickpocket would get nothing from me but practice.”
David Jimmerson laughed along with her, but he turned a questioning gaze to her earbobs. “Those earrings look to be nice.”
“They are.”
“You know, my missus has always had a hankering for a topnotch pair of cameo earrings. Mrs. Ida always says she wants them set with diamonds and real cameos from Italy.”
“I can’t vouch for the origin, but the diamonds are real, and the gold is eighteen karat.”
“Would you be willing to trade those earrings—upon delivery, of course—for something to make your hubby a very happy cotton planter?”
“Oh my,” she said, fanning her face as she rose to her feet. “What a thought!”
Linnea didn’t need to think twice. Mr. David Jimmerson was offering the answer to her prayers, and it was all she could do to keep from grabbing the man and squeezing the stuffing out of him!
* * *
Sam Kincaid got to feeling downright good about life in general.
It was three months since he and Linnea got hitched, and the High Hopes had experienced a run of good luck. He’d heard tell that the farmer in Levelland had come up against some bad luck and might not be able to produce the cash to pay for the gin he’d ordered last October.
“Charlie,” he said, “how about let’s call it a night?”
The two men had been inspecting Linnea’s work and were pleased with the results. She had left the cotton patch at least an hour before, headed home to spread out the leftovers from dinner. Lately, she’d prepared most of the meals for herself and her husband, and they were pretty doggone good . . . if a man didn’t think too long on it.
Most of all, Sam took pride in how Linnea had devoted herself to the betterment of this ranch and their family.
“You made a decision on that gin yet?” Charlie asked.
“I’ve made the decision all right. It’s figuring out how and where to get the money for that blessed machine that’s the kicker.”
“We can work a few more chimneys,” the uncle suggested. “And we could sell some more cattle. I understand a few more drovers are in town at the hotel, wanting to pick up more cattle.”
“We don’t have much of a herd left. Luckily, a number of the cows are pregnant. We can’t afford to lose them.”
Charlie clicked his tongue. “‘No venture, no gain,’ my daddy—your granddaddy—used to say.”
“You’re right, Charlie. We have to take risks in life.”
“How’s it going with you and your missus?” his uncle suddenly asked.
“We’ve been getting along more than fair. I’m proud of the way she works. I’ll be glad when we get to where our ladies can put their feet up.”
“I do reckon both our women work as hard as any man, and harder than most. I sure am proud of my Jewel. How’s it going with Linnea’s cooking?”
“Fine, f
ine, just fine,” Sam lied. “I, well, I figure I might ought to trim down, anyhow.”
The food had improved. When they didn’t spend the evenings making love or with Linnea tending her blooms, she had her nose in cookbooks and how-tos. Linnea Kincaid was a good woman, and he was damn proud to have her as his wife.
As for the choices she made from the Nussbaumer catalog, they had taken root and flourished. But there weren’t all that many. A silver toothpick didn’t go far when it came to blooming flowers and plants. She never complained. She would pick through the sage flowers and the prickly yucca, saying, “Aren’t these the prettiest things, Sammy?”
He didn’t know if she even realized she had started calling him a pet name. If anyone else had called him that, he would have jumped the caller’s ass and slung his innards to the coyotes. It seemed right, though, when Linnea said it.
The one thing she wouldn’t talk about?
Her first marriage.
Truth be told, Sam didn’t care to hear about it. She’d talk when she was ready, and he’d deal with it then.
They did talk about flowers, and a new home in the future . . . and the addition of as many babies as the Good Lord would grant them. He prayed and he prayed hard that he hadn’t brought bad luck on their future family with his meanness the night of their marriage.
“Charlie, I changed my mind. We’re selling more cattle.”
“You’re buying that gin.”
“I’m not. I’ve decided to get my missus a cameo brooch to go with the ones she wears in her ears.” He shut his pie hole. He wouldn’t point out the obvious differences between the two women. Aunt Jewel might be ugly as a mud fence, but she had many sterling qualities. She deserved respect and jewels, too. Linnea? Hell, any man would work his fingers to the bone to satisfy her every whim. “Something to complement her earbobs.”
“Hmm, well, Sam, I don’t think you’ve thought this thing through. Cameos with diamonds, they add up to a bunch of heifers.”
“You don’t say!”
“I do say.”
He had a hankering to tell Linnea right away about his plans, but decided not to. Better he should have the brooch in his hand first. Boy, was she going to love her gift!