by Jo Goodman
Morgan’s smile was wry. “Several.”
Both of her dark eyebrows lifted. “Well, you can rest easy. I can keep a confidence.”
If that were true, Morgan thought, she would be the first woman of his acquaintance who could.
Cil appeared with their food. Ribbons of steam rose from Jane’s bowl of oatmeal and Morgan’s plate of hotcakes. The distinctive aromas of bacon and steak hovered in the air. Cil set down a small pitcher of molasses syrup in front of Morgan. “Mind you eat them warm,” she told him. “They’ll be tastier.”
When she was gone, Morgan looked over at Jane. “She winked at you again.”
“Did she? Maybe she has something in her eye.”
“Hmm. I’m sure that’s it.”
Jane picked up her spoon and slipped it into her oatmeal. She tasted it, relishing the slightly nutty texture of the oats. “Aren’t you going to eat?”
Morgan tore his eyes away from her mouth and drizzled syrup around the melting pat of butter dead center on his hotcakes. He cut a neat triangle from the three-stack and observed that Jane was watching him out of the corner of her eye. He wondered if her thoughts about his mouth were as darkly erotic as his had been about hers. Hunger put him on notice, but he wasn’t certain that food could satisfy it. His lips parted and he closed them around a forkful of hotcakes.
He tasted the syrup first, but then . . . oh, but then the hotcakes all but dissolved on his tongue. Light, airy, with just a hint of crispness at the edge, these were splatter dabs worth coming to town for. He could imagine lingering at the breakfast table. Morgan cut another triangle and speared it and had it halfway to his mouth before he saw Jane was studying her oatmeal with an intensity that oatmeal never deserved.
His eyes crossed slightly as he stared at the bite on his fork before he took it in his mouth. He swallowed and then tapped the tines of his empty fork against the side of Jane’s bowl. That garnered her attention.
“Yes?”
Now Morgan pointed to his plate of hotcakes. “You made these.” It was more accusation than question. He already knew the truth.
“I made the batter,” she said. “Mrs. Sterling made the cakes.”
“That’s why Miss Ross was winking at you. She knew.”
“I still think she might have had something in her eye.”
“All right. I’ll let that go. Why?”
“Why?”
“Why did you do it?”
Jane set down her spoon. “It would have been insulting for you to test me, Mr. Longstreet, but I realized that if I showed you what I can do, I might persuade you I am not without some skills.”
“Huh.” He cut into the stack of cakes again, took another bite. “It was a risk. What if I didn’t like them?”
“Then I would know one of two things to be true: Either the coffee scalded your taste buds or food is merely fuel to you and you take no particular enjoyment in a satisfying meal.”
“You’re surely confident about these cakes.”
“With good reason, don’t you think?”
“All right, yes. They’re excellent.”
“Did it pain you so terribly to say so?”
“Not nearly as much as letting them grow cold on the plate.” He watched Jane’s emerald eyes brighten with her expression of mischief and satisfaction. “Eat,” he said. “Cold oatmeal’s good for caulking pipes and mending fences but not for eating.”
Jane picked up her fork and dug in.
• • •
After breakfast Jane asked Morgan if he would escort her along the main thoroughfare so that she might see the town. When he asked her why she wanted to do that, she told him, “So the four or five people who don’t know that I’m with you are not kept in the dark any longer.” He made a noise at the back of his throat that sounded suspiciously like a chuckle choked off. “If I am not to live at Morning Star,” she explained, “then it is merely prudent for me to learn more about Bitter Springs. There might be opportunities for employment.”
Jane had no difficultly reading his response this time. Both his expression and his grunt were disapproving. Still, he put his objections aside, reminded her she would need her coat and hat, and then waited for her at the front entrance of the Pennyroyal while she retrieved them.
The wind nearly lifted her hat from her head when she stepped onto the porch. Morgan stood by while she secured it but intervened when she looped the scarlet scarf only once around her neck. He picked up one of the tails and made a second loop, giving it a little tug at her chin so that it nearly covered her mouth. When they turned onto the sidewalk and were buffeted head-on by the wind, she was glad for his interference.
It was a good reminder of how much knowledge he had at his fingertips and how much she had to learn. She smiled gamely, and when he offered his arm, she did not hesitate to accept it.
Morgan did not have much to say along their walk. He dutifully read the signs on the storefronts. Barbershop. Johnson’s General Mercantile. Bakery. Land Office. Leather Goods. Hardware. Feed Store. Taylor’s Bathhouse and Laundry. Jane let him go on that way. It struck her that he was isolated at Morning Star and perhaps preferred it that way. If he knew details about the druggist or the milliner or the blacksmith, he kept them to himself. She realized that he had told her more about the former marshal of Bitter Springs than about anyone else, and Benton Sterling was dead.
They passed Ransom’s Livery, the corrals where cattle were herded to wait transport on the trains, and stood near the platform at the station but never stepped onto it.
“What is the next stop west?” Jane asked.
“If you mean a town, that’d be Rawlins. The train has to stop for water and fuel before then, but it’s mostly grass on top and coal below. It’s rough country. There aren’t many women.”
Jane nodded, thanked him for the information. They were on the point of turning when a youthful and, in Jane’s mind, a vaguely familiar cry stopped them in their tracks. Jane turned her head toward the station. Beside her, she thought she heard Morgan mutter something under this breath. Jane laughed under hers. The rascal she had met at the train yesterday was bearing down on them.
Finn skidded to a halt at the edge of the platform, waved an arm in a wide arc, and then dropped over the side. He no sooner alighted than he was spinning around and calling to his brother, who was at that moment emerging from the station.
“Hey, Rabbit! Come see who’s here! It’s Mr. Longstreet and his special delivery.” His head snapped around and he looked wide-eyed at Jane. “Sorry, ma’am, but I can’t recollect what comes after ‘Middle.’ Burn? Bury? Borough?”
“Bourne,” said Jane. “Middlebourne.”
He snapped his fingers. “Got it.” He hollered back to Rabbit, who was rapidly approaching. “It’s Miss Middlebourne!”
“Finn,” Morgan said, wincing slightly as he tugged on one ear. “You don’t need to yell like he’s standing at the other end of town. Besides, shouldn’t you both be in school?”
“On my way. Got plenty of time. Mrs. Bridger is usually a little late these days on account of her condition is what you call delicate. I think there’s a lot of puking so I’m not clear about what makes it delicate, but that’s what Granny says it is.”
Jane recalled seeing Mr. and Mrs. Bridger the previous afternoon on her way to the Pennyroyal. Perhaps the secretive nature of their smiles had something to do with Mrs. Bridger’s condition and nothing at all to do with her being in the company of Mr. Longstreet. She liked to think that was it. It occurred to her that the marshal’s wife could only be in the early stages of her pregnancy. There were no obvious signs.
Jane said, “How many children does Mrs. Bridger have?”
Finn’s eyebrows fused together as he counted on his fingers. His lips moved silently around the names of each child. “I make it to be thirteen,” he said at last. “How many you got, Rabbit?”
Rabbit jumped down beside his brother. “Got what?”
“Mrs.
Bridger’s kids. How many?”
Rabbit used the same counting method as his brother. “Thirteen. Six that come and go, but mostly thirteen.”
“Thirteen?” Jane blinked. “That can’t be—”
Morgan interrupted. “They’re telling you the number of children Mrs. Bridger has in her classroom.”
“Oh.”
“She and the marshal have no children of their own.”
“So this will be their first. She must be delighted.”
Frowning deeply, Finn poked Rabbit hard in the side with his elbow. “What’s she mean about Mrs. Bridger’s first?”
Rabbit shrugged. “What did you mean?”
Jane looked from Finn to Rabbit and back to Finn, and when nothing came to mind that would extricate her from her dilemma, she turned to Morgan.
There was no sympathy from that quarter. He said, “From now on, you probably want to mind where you step around these two.”
Jane sighed. It was sound advice even if it was offered after the fact. She regarded the boys again, who were regarding her expectantly in turn. “Perhaps you should ask your grandmother to explain ‘delicate condition.’”
Beside her, Morgan whispered out of the side of his mouth, “You will not make a friend there.”
Jane resisted the urge to follow Finn’s suit and poke Morgan in the side with her elbow. She told the boys, “We are going back to the Pennyroyal. Would you care to walk with us as far as the schoolhouse? Mr. Longstreet has been telling me about your town.” As an exaggeration, Jane rated it as somewhere between mild and moderate.
“Sure,” said Finn. “Me and Rabbit know a lot about Bitter Springs.”
“Rabbit and I,” Jane said automatically.
Finn screwed his mouth to one side and shook his head. “I’m just not gettin’ the hang of that one, Miss Middlebourne, and you ain’t the first to point it out. Mrs. Bridger bemoans it real regular-like. So does the marshal, come to think on it.” He shrugged. “C’mon. Which side of the street did you come down? We’ll go up the other. That good with you, Mr. Longstreet?”
• • •
Morgan’s ears were still ringing with Finn’s enthusiastic narrative by the time he and Jane reached the Pennyroyal. Rabbit had only been marginally more restrained. “Well?” he asked Jane as he escorted her up the steps. “Was there a detail they omitted?”
“It beggars the imagination.”
He opened the door for her, but his attention was diverted by the sudden appearance of Marshal Bridger at the foot of the steps.
“Marshal,” Morgan said with a nod. As he held the door for Jane, he said to her, “Wait for me in the dining room. I need to speak to the marshal. I won’t be long.”
Jane glanced over her shoulder.
“Ma’am.” Cobb Bridger lifted his hat.
Jane offered a faint and uncertain smile and then looked to Morgan.
“It’s fine,” he said, bending his head toward her. “He’s not here because you told the boys his wife is pregnant.” He thought Jane appeared relieved. For Morgan it was further proof that she was naïve. Perhaps hopelessly so.
Morgan closed the door behind Jane, then joined the marshal. “How long were you following us?”
“Not long. I watched you deliver Rabbit and Finn to the schoolhouse from my office. You afraid you’re losing that sixth sense of yours?”
“Can’t lose something I never claimed to have.”
Cobb shrugged.
Morgan looked the marshal over. He and Cobb Bridger were of a similar build, tall, rangy, and with a tendency toward lean, although Morgan thought Cobb might be turning the corner on that, a consequence of his recent marriage and his wife’s cooking. As far as Morgan could tell their similarities began and ended with their bones. Morgan held his ground as the marshal’s cool, blue-eyed gaze bore into him.
“I thought the plan was for you to be back at Morning Star by now,” said Cobb.
“It’s still the plan. There was a . . . complication.”
Cobb tilted his head toward the hotel. “She have a name?”
“Jane Middlebourne.”
“She’s not the woman in your photograph.”
“No, she’s not, but she is Jane Middlebourne.”
Cobb rested his elbow against the railing. “Look, Morgan, I don’t have a problem with you. Never have. I have a problem with the people you might attract.”
“No one’s come, have they?”
“No,” said Cobb. “No one’s come.”
“I brought you Jane’s photograph as a courtesy, Marshal, not because I had to. I keep my distance because I like it that way, not because I’m trying to avoid a confrontation. And to that point, there might never be a confrontation. You said it yourself, no one’s come.”
“Yet.”
Morgan nodded. There was no getting around the “yet.” “Do you want Miss Middlebourne to stand in front of your Wanted Wall so you can tick her off your list?”
“That won’t be necessary,” Cobb said.
Morgan smiled narrowly, without humor. “You’ve already done it, haven’t you? I bet you watched us across the way from your office. One eye on her. One eye on your wall.”
“I made a study when I saw her in your buckboard yesterday. When you weren’t gone this morning, I thought I better take a second look.”
“And?”
“And she’s not on my wall.”
Morgan looked back at the dining room window. He couldn’t see Jane standing there behind the glass, but that did not mean she wasn’t. “What now?” he asked.
“Are you going to marry her?”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m inclined to honor my proposal.”
“Really?”
Morgan just stared at Cobb.
The marshal shrugged. “You’re right. It’s your business. The photograph got me thinking, that’s all.”
“It got me thinking, too, but she’s explained it, and I’m not exactly in a position to throw stones, now, am I? I had to think about that.”
“Are you going to tell her?”
“I still like to entertain the notion it’ll never come to that.”
Cobb nodded, blew out a long breath. “Then I hope you’re right, Morgan. Whatever you think, I’m not your adversary. I’m on your side.”
“What I think, Marshal, is that it’s better if we just bump along. Keeps things in balance. Standing on my side tends to tip the boat.”
“If that’s the way you want it.”
Morgan nodded once. “I’ll be packed up and out of here by three, four at the latest. I can’t speak for Miss Middlebourne. She’ll be making her own decision. She made that clear.”
Cobb chuckled quietly. He pushed from the railing and touched the brim of his hat. “Nothing wrong with that. Could be the two of you will bump along just fine.”
• • •
Jane looked up when Morgan stepped into the dining room. She set her cup of tea down and acknowledged his presence with a brief smile. Beside her, Ida Mae Sterling began to rise. Jane protested, but Ida Mae would hear none of it. She picked up her cup in one hand and patted Jane’s forearm with the other.
“I have things to do if there’s going to be ham and cabbage tonight. You and Morgan can sit here a spell, and if I have my way with the girls, you won’t be disturbed.” Instead of heading straight to the kitchen, she veered in Morgan’s direction. “Here. Take this coffee. I just poured it.” She thrust the cup at him, giving him no choice but to take it, and when his hands were occupied, she gave him an affectionate pinch on his upper arm. “I like her, Morgan. I like her just fine.” Then she was gone.
Mortified, Jane stared at the tea leaves at the bottom of her cup.
Morgan set his coffee down, shrugged out of his coat, and dropped his hat on a nearby table. “You can’t mind her,” he said, sitting beside Jane. “She gets ideas in her head and just says what she thinks.”
Jane lifted her head, glanced sidewa
ys. “I believe she holds you in some affection. I observed that yesterday when we arrived, and again just now. Who is she to you?”
“I told you. She’s the widow of the former marshal.”
Disappointed with his answer, Jane pressed. “I imagine she thinks of herself as someone separate from her husband.”
Morgan shrugged. He kept his hands folded around his coffee cup. “Ida Mae’s been free with her opinions since she realized she had a voice. That thought is not original to me. Benton Sterling said that, and I suppose he would have known.” He sat a little lower in his chair, sliding his legs far under the table. His mouth curled to one side. “I guess you could say she’s got me like a chick under her wing. Has for a long time. Even before I settled around here.”
Jane tried to imagine Morgan Longstreet as a chick under anyone’s wing. He stood head and shoulders above Mrs. Sterling, yet from what she had seen, it was probably an apt description of their relationship. Morgan might pretend to chafe at it, dismiss it as unimportant, but what he did not do was try to escape it.
“Does she have children?” asked Jane.
“Yes. And grandchildren. They’re scattered, which makes the rest of us easy pickings.”
Jane hid an amused smile behind her teacup. “Is her advice usually sound?”
“Why? What did she say?”
Jane blinked. His reaction was more reflexive than responsive. “She brought me tea, Mr. Longstreet, and kept me company while you were with the marshal. My question had nothing at all to do with our exchange.” She accepted his suspicious regard without looking away. Mrs. Sterling had advised her to take Morgan Longstreet straight on. He would respect that, she’d said.
Looking away, Morgan raised his coffee cup and breathed deeply before he took a swallow. “I would have to say no one’s gone too far astray listening to Mrs. Sterling.”
“Thank you. That is all I wanted to know.” Jane looked to the window as Walt crossed the porch in front of it carrying a broom. She watched him set it down and begin sweeping around the rocking chairs. “Is Marshal Bridger a friend?”
“I don’t know if he has friends. Friends don’t necessarily settle well with the job.”