A Western Romance: Matthew Yancey: Taking the High Road (Book 2) (Taking the High Road series)

by Morris Fenris

  “Yes, Rob. May I help you?”

  “Uh—I was just wonderin’—you got an amount set for those rabbit foot good luck charms?”

  For a few minutes the discussion centered on good-natured but determined bartering, on both sides, until Star eventually admitted defeat, to the boy’s great delight, and let him name his own price.

  It was a congenial group, with the ladies looking like a cluster of spring butterflies in their powder blue muslin and flowery cotton lawn. Summer in San Francisco: lightweight fabric, pastel colors, short sleeves and low necklines. By contrast, Star might have been some exotic bird, flown down from mountain hideaways, in her soft butter-yellow deerskin dress, fringed and feathered and belted by beads.

  “Well, you all seem t’be havin’ a good time over here,” said Sheriff Goddard, approaching. “Matt and me, we reckoned we’d come see what was goin’ on.”

  Frances gave him the sort of withering look only a sister can perfect. “It took you long enough,” she sniffed. “Didn’t you see that Star was being bothered by that odious Bower person?”

  A quick figurative back-pedal, and a vigorous protest: “We were keepin’ an eye on the situation. If trouble started, we’d’a been right in the middle of it, jig time. B’sides, Frannie, I knew you’d hold the fellah in line.”

  “Daddy, look. Daddy, see what I got!” The excited little boy, eager to show off his new purchase, was joggling his father’s arm. “The lady—I mean, Miss Mendoza…we worked out a deal, and she gived me a really fair price.”

  “Did she now?” Smiling, Matt knelt to examine his son’s prize with respectful attention. “A rabbit’s foot, by golly. You’ve been wantin’ one of those for a long while.” Rising to his feet in one lithe movement, his gaze shifted, dark eyes warm with amusement and appreciation. “I take it you’re Miss Mendoza,” he said, reaching out. “My name is Matthew Yancey, and I thank you for bein’ so kind.”

  She accepted the shake, feeling her fingers being swallowed up by his big firm clasp. And a spark. A definite spark. Maybe even a tingle. Slightly puzzled, she glanced down at their joined hands, then up again at his face. A good-looking, good-humored face, darkened by the day’s growth of dark beard, with perceptive dark eyes that surveyed his surroundings with friendliness and favor.

  “It was my pleasure,” she finally managed to respond without stammering. “Young Rob is well-versed in the ways of bartering, that one.”

  The man was studying her just as intently. Was it possible that he, too, had felt that small jolt?

  “Yes, he’s—uh—well, for a five-year-old, Rob is—uh—”

  “I’ve explained that I’m your housekeeper, Mr. Yancey,” put in Sarah at this point, with some sensitivity for the tentative first meeting. “Miss Mendoza should know that I’ve helped with the raising of this fine boy for some time, so I feel I must take credit for the person he’s becoming.” She finished up with a smile, half-solemn, half-droll, which so brightened her expression that the sheriff, standing nearby, suddenly took notice.

  “Say, listen, Frannie, no reason for all of us to stand around jawin’ in the street,” he commented. “We could get better acquainted at supper tonight, at our house. Think you could put somethin’ together by then?”

  Frances could never resist a challenge. “I’m sure I can. What about you, young man? Will you be hungry about six o’clock?”

  “Sure,” agreed Rob, after a quick upward glance at his father for confirmation. “Whatcha havin’ for me to eat?”

  “For one thing, the chocolate cake I baked and frosted this morning.”

  The boy’s dark eyes, so like his father’s, widened. “I like choc’late, Miss Goddard. I really do like choc’late. That’d do me just fine.”

  The adults laughed, while Matt affectionately ruffled his son’s hair.

  “And that includes you, too, Star,” added Frances, turning toward her. “You know where we live. Will you join us?”

  Feeling suddenly shy, she took a small step backward. “Thank you. I’d like that.”

  “Good, it’s all settled then,” was the brisk response. “Even if my brother does issue his invitations like a buffalo in a china shop…” Riding roughshod over his blustered protest of “Oh, now, Frannie, no such thing—”

  II

  From his vantage point of a window looking out of Hanrahan’s saloon, Franklin Bower watched the group across the street. Convivial conversation, light laughter, interaction with the kid—a pushy little tadpole if Bower had ever seen one—and then eventual dispersion. Frances and Sarah wandered off with their charge in tow. Yancey and the sheriff sauntered away in the direction of his office. And that eyeful and a half, Miss Goldenstar Mendoza, was finally left alone with her stall of goods and a trickle of customers.

  Franklin nursed a shot glass of whiskey while he debated the merits of seeking her out again. He wanted her. God damn, he wanted her, this toothsome wench with all her curvy parts in all the right places in all the right order. He wanted her for daytime and he wanted her for bed sport.

  Not for anything as meaningful as marriage, of course.

  As a half-breed, Star’s mixture of Mexican and Indian blood might all come together into one perfect desirable package: the lush black hair that, when unbound, he’d be willing to bet, fell past her waist; the skin like warm Chinese tea, with a little bit of bronze tipped into it; the eyes clear but as changeable as a nugget of amber. And the mouth, blessed with mobility and charm—holy saints above, he could imagine doing great things with and to that mouth.

  But all that physical beauty in one perfect desirable package didn’t mean she could ever be considered respectable. No, no marriage. Something much less than.

  So far he’d been patient. He’d done his best with engaging her, teasing her, wooing her, only to be figuratively slapped down and shunted aside. As if she stood on some high pedestal, far above him, able to look down on all his efforts with contempt!

  No, soon all that would be past. He intended to take action and seize what he saw as his, by fair means or foul, come hell or high water. Her friendship with the two Goddards counted for nothing in his opinion; nor did her status with anyone else in this town, which stood on shaky ground.

  “Hey, Bower, you randy old son-of-a-bitch, ain’t seen much of you lately.”

  The boisterous voice reached him through a fog of reverie, and he turned his head. “Sykes,” he acknowledged the newcomer. “C’mon and sit down.”

  Beer bottle in one hand, Russell Sykes pulled out a chair to straddle and plunked himself in place. “Been keepin’ busy out at the Condor?”

  “Fair t’ middlin’, Russ. And you? What’re you up to these days?”

  “Ah, just been considerin’ some options.” With the glugging down of several giant swallows, his Adam’s apple bounced around like a rubber ball. “Thought maybe I’d head back east and join up.”

  Bower looked his surprise. “The hell you say! Why wouldja do such a damn fool thing?”

  Silence for a minute. Sykes, pondering the question, rolled the glass bottle back and forth between his palms as if to think through his answer. “I was born and raised in Virginia, Frank. Most of my family still lives there. There’s been a mess of fightin’ roundabout, and I’d like t’ get in on it, do what I can. Seems only right, y’ know.”

  “One of our valiant boys in gray, then.”

  At the faint hint of sarcasm in that tone, Sykes shot a suspicious glance toward his companion. “Y’think I’m only interested in wearin’ some fancy uniform?”

  “No, Russ. Not a bit of it. Just wonderin’—you seem to have a pretty good life here. Why go outa your way to risk takin’ a bullet? You wanna be a martyr, dyin’ for the cause?”

  “A good life?” Brushing back a forelock of tumbled red hair, Sykes stared at his companion. “If you mean sunshine and wide open spaces, you’d be right on that score. But I’m off and on between jobs, no trainin’ for anything in particular, no steady income. Withou
t money, Frank, a good life ain’t so very good.”

  Tapping his shot glass softly and reflectively on the table top, Bower returned his gaze to the window and his prey across the street. With the blend of two cultures— one passionate and demonstrative, the other more stoic, constrained—Goldenstar Mendoza presented a challenge. And a promise.

  “Well, don’t go ridin’ off into the sunset just yet,” he advised. “I might have a job for you to do in the near future.”

  III

  If not for the loyalty of her male customers, Star reflected soberly, this business, she did her best to manage, would hardly be viable at all, since the virtuous ladies of this town would have little to do with her on the best of days. It was probably just as well they weren’t aware—or chose not to ask—as to where their husbands had picked up those lovely agate earrings, or the hand-loomed rug for their entryway, or the tooled leather saddlebag thrown so casually over a horse’s rump.

  She was able to sell some of her items directly to the neighborhood’s largest store, the Emporium, on a regular basis. That, coupled with her street sales, augmented the family income.

  The sun was drowning itself in San Francisco Bay, dying in reflected hues of blood-red, orange and gold. Time to close up. With plans for the evening to look forward to, Star began wrapping and folding and packing the remainder of her goods for the trip home.

  “Easy, there, lady, kindly don’t be so quick to put stuff away.”

  Near the wagon stood a man, barely out of adolescence, dressed in cowboy gear. Clearly, he was togged out in his best to impress the sweet young thing clinging to his arm like a limpet.

  “We was just wonderin’, ma’am,” he went on, doffing his rather tattered sombrero, “if you might have any jewelry purty ’nuff to match my Abigail here, in looks.”

  “Oh, you shush, now, Clint,” said Abigail, blushing. And then hissed from the side of her lovely rosebud mouth, “But she’s a—she’s a—”

  “I am, indeed,” Star assured the girl without even the smallest loss of her merchant’s smile. An encompassing, sympathetic look for the couple, from one to the other. “Something—ah—of substance?”

  The cowboy was grinning ear to ear. “Yes, ma’am. Show her, Abby.”

  Thus entailed, and blushing even more furiously, Abigail extended her left hand to display a modest silver ring encircling the fourth finger. “We’re newlyweds,” she murmured.

  “Yes, ma’am,” proclaimed Clint proudly, glancing down at his little bride with an expression of such blazing happiness that Star, taken aback, caught her breath. “Just a little while ago. This is Mrs. Clint Roscoe, and we’re headin’ on back out to the ranch where I work, in a few minutes. But I saw your cart here, and I thought…”

  “Of course you did. And you’d be right. You want a special piece for your beautiful wife. And I have exactly the thing.” Turning to the small wagon, with its load of wrapped and folded merchandise, she moved several items here and there. “Let me see. I know there’s—ah, here it is.”

  Carefully removed from its brown paper package, a long silver chain, links glinting in the sunlight, lay draped across her open palms. The accompanying attached pendant glowed with all the fiery iridescent colors of a Mexican opal.

  Abigail was staring at the unique work of art with an almost comical mixture of awe and desire. “Oh, Clint,” she breathed, enraptured.

  “Yes, Abby,” Clint agreed with her reaction if not her words. He swallowed hard and then asked, nervously and tentatively, “And—uh—how much would you be askin’ for that, ma’am?”

  With an empathetic smile, Star stepped forward to slip her necklace over the girl’s blonde head and down, where it hung, just below her collar bone, shimmering and shining with every beat of her heart.

  “Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. Roscoe,” she told them. “Consider this my wedding gift to you.”

  Two voices burst out simultaneously: “But we can’t take—” and “Oh, I love it, thank you!”

  Before she realized what was happening, Star felt herself being enveloped in a monster hug from the bridal couple that ruffled her braids, entangled her turquoise earrings, and shut off her breath. After a minute or two laughing, everyone disengaged and smoothed disrupted things into place.

  The young man extended his hand for a hearty shake. “Ma’am, thank you. Thank you heaps,” he said fervently. “I dunno what we done to deserve this, but I wanna tell you—we appreciate it more’n you’ll ever know.”

  “Be happy,” said Star quietly. “There’s little enough happiness in this world, and I’m glad to see yours. So, just—be happy.”

  It was with a very light heart and quickened step that she finished packing the rest of her goods, hitched up Ezekiel, the mule, and started on her way home. With soft twilight beginning to cast long shadows, and a couple of early stars peeking above the violet horizon, homeowners and shopkeepers alike had lit lamps, closed doors and drawn curtains in preparation for full night.

  Normally so self-sufficient and a world unto herself, Star felt a stirring of loneliness as she freed Ezekiel into his small grassy corral and bolted the shed door upon her loaded wagon. Perhaps it was the soulful tune of a harmonica being played somewhere down the street. Perhaps it was the homely whiff of smoke from someone’s cook fire.

  More likely, she realized, fitting her key into the lock and entering her two-room cabin, it was because loneliness came from—what else?—being alone. Her house sat empty, with no one to greet or be greeted; her life stood empty, with no one to share the smallest happenings or the most eventful of incidents. Maybe she should consider adopting a dog.

  It was easier to throw off such disquieting thoughts when the prospect of dinner with friends waited. Hastily stripping down to her undies, she performed a quick sponge bath with her favorite scented soap and then slipped into something feminine and frothy—a white short-sleeved low-cut blouse and its matching full skirt of rich raspberry hue. Black buckle-strapped slippers and a slender necklace of garnet stone completed her costume.

  A twirl in front of the mirror assured her that, so dressed, she might mingle in any pureblood haut monde crowd. For the most part—other than occasional childhood confrontations, and, more rarely, an adult slur flung in a hiss or a snarl—she had been able to rise above any feelings of inadequacy about her mestizo background. She had grown up tough, strong, capable, and independent.

  Just what the land of sunshine and honey demanded of its citizens.

  It would be a short, easy stroll to the Goddard residence. Collecting her sheer lacy black shawl and black silk reticule, Star emerged into an evening scented by evergreen and fern, colored by bayside dusk and touched by a scintillation of fireflies gliding from bush to bush.

  San Francisco, soon to be known as the Paris of the West, was a city constantly reinventing itself. From the initial discovery of gold in 1848 to its growing pains of chaotic social climate to the cholera epidemic that resulted in the establishment of the county’s first hospital, massive expansion had begun to take place. New buildings in new neighborhoods would appear almost overnight, with sawing and hammering sometimes going on for all hours till next morning.

  “Energy” might have been its watchword. And “Vitality” another.

  Along with the boom in population, however, also came graft and corruption and a large collection of the lawless element. Sheriff Goddard and his three deputies had their hands full just keeping the streets safe for honest folk.

  “Good evenin’, Star,” said the sheriff at that very moment from his seat on the front porch, as she opened the gate and started up the walkway. “My, my, ain’t you lookin’ mighty pretty.” He turned to his companion to invite a similar compliment, “Don’t you agree with me, Matt?”

  “I most certainly do.” At her approach, Matthew rose to his feet in an immediate display of nice manners. “Mighty pretty.” A compliment confirmed by the warmth and approval in his dark eyes.

  “Hey, Miss Mendoz
a.” Rob looked up, smiling, from the checkerboard set up on a small table between him and his father. “We’re playin’. I’m winnin’.”

  Star returned the smile, surprised but pleased by the feeling of comfort and security emanating forth. A lonely woman could bask in it. “I’ll bet you are, Rob. Something tells me you win most of your games.”

  “Yeah, he’s a crackerjack,” said Matt with understandable pride. “I’m thinkin’ we’ll have to move on to chess soon enough. Will you join us out here for a while, Miss Mendoza?”

  “Well, I—thank you, but perhaps later.” Oddly flustered, her voice trailed away; and, as she took a first step up, the tight-fitting high-heeled shoes deliberately tried to turn her ankle. Damned white man invention. “I’ll—uh—I’ll just go inside for now and–um—say hello.”

  A murmur of conversation led her straight through the parlor to the kitchen, where both women were enjoying a cup of coffee while putting the final touches on tonight’s meal. “Oh, hello, my dear,” Frances said cheerfully, coming forward. “I’m so glad you were able to be with us, even if this was a spur of the moment affair. Would you like something to drink?”

  “Just a glass of water, if you wouldn’t mind. Is there something I can do to help?”

  “Not a thing, Star. You’re our guest, and you’ve worked all day. So you just sit down and relax while we finish up. Did that nasty old toad Franklin Bower show up again after we left you?”

  Happy to comply, Star laughed as she took a chair in the corner. “No, things were quiet. Miss Goddard, I wasn’t able to prepare anything to add to tonight’s supper, so I hope you will accept this, instead.” From out of the reticule came something rough and heavy, then onto the table to be admired.

  Sarah, turning from the stove, caught her breath in amazement. “Why, Miss Mendoza. That’s a nugget of pure amber. How absolutely beautiful.”

  “Wherever did you come upon that?” Frances wanted to know. She had picked it up to hold against the waning outdoor light, and now it lay, like a living, vibrating animate object, in her palm.