In Want of a Wife

by Jo Goodman

  Morgan pointed his butter knife at Jem. “Swear to God, Jem, you’ll take your supper on the porch if you keep going on.”

  Jane leaned toward the much-chastened ranch hand and patted him on the forearm. “It’s all right,” she said softly. “You can tell me everything while you are helping me with the dishes.”

  “I sure will,” Jem said, beaming. “I sure will.”

  Across the table, Morgan gave Jane a grateful look before he addressed Max. “What about the wolves? How far did you ride?”

  “Ten miles or so past Whiskey Knob. Followed the pack’s trail for a while, then Jessop here saw something else worth following so we took it on ourselves to take a different course.”

  Morgan switched his attention to Jessop. “When were you going to tell me about that?”

  Jessop’s eyes swiveled the smallest degree in Jane’s direction. “I figured it could wait until after supper.”

  Morgan caught Jessop’s guarded expression. He nodded. “I’m sure it can.”

  Jane said, “Am I to be excluded, then?” She looked around the table until her gaze landed on Morgan. “That’s what you mean to do, don’t you? Discuss whatever it is outside of my hearing?”

  “Yes,” said Morgan. “That’s exactly what we mean to do.”

  “That is very disappointing.”

  “How you feel about it is up to you. You could choose to believe we’re doing you a favor and be grateful.”

  Jane started to say something, but Morgan gestured to the other men at the table, who were currently staring at their plates and at least trying to give the impression they were uninterested. She put a forkful of braised beef in her mouth instead.

  • • •

  Over the course of the next three weeks, while Jane was establishing a routine for herself, she observed that her husband and his ranch hands seemed to be more comfortable working outside of one. Or at least they were trying hard to be unpredictable. She stopped asking who would be present for dinner or supper because the only thing she could depend upon was that one or two or even three of them would be missing. They ate breakfast in shifts. Some nights the men stayed on the range instead of returning to the bunkhouse. They did not talk about where they were or what they did in her presence.

  Morgan did not ride out, although Jane could tell that he wanted to. She was not certain if she were the reason he stayed behind or if his injuries kept him back. He was improving daily. His limp had disappeared so completely that sometimes Jane could not recall which foot he had injured. His ribs, though, still bothered him. Sometimes when he took a deep breath Jane could hear crackling in the area under his bruise. He allowed her to apply cream to it, but it came from Burnside’s Drugstore. Dr. Wanamaker’s Miracle Liniment and Medicinal Rub was good only for the bottle it came in. Jane had cleaned it out and placed it on the windowsill in the kitchen. It looked pretty to her when it was filled with sunlight.

  Morgan walked Sophie every day but not at regular times. He finally got the bridle on her. He could not put himself on her back until he could tolerate the pain if she threw him off. Jane could tell that it frustrated him, but he never talked about it.

  One afternoon she walked out to the corral while he was taking a turn with Sophie. He sent her back inside within minutes and refused to explain his reasoning. His refusal to explain himself was something Jane was coming to expect, but it was in no way something that she could tolerate in the long term. She settled on biding her time, watching, and when the right moment presented itself, she would tell him that keeping so many things to himself was unacceptable.

  He took out his Winchester and sometimes his Colt and shot at mud bricks or stones that he set on fence posts away from the house but always within earshot of the dinner bell. Jane knew better than to suppose that the bell was only used to announce that meals were on the table. Jem, then Jake and Jessop, Max, and finally Morgan had all come to her at one time or another and found a way to mention the other use of the bell. Yes, she understood she should use it if she needed to bring them to the house; yes, she understood it was not to be moved from the porch because everyone expected it to be there. She believed the intention of this instruction was to make her feel easy that someone would come if she needed help. In fact, their instruction only eased their minds. Jane was much more than merely alerted; she was alarmed.

  She asked Morgan several times about teaching her to shoot, but he always put her off. It further supported her impression that he did not want her outside. It did not help her understand why.

  Jane overheard Morgan telling Jake that his aim was off with the rifle but true with the Colt. Jake put it down to recoil and Morgan’s ribs, and Morgan seemed to accept that, but Jane noticed that he took particular care that evening with cleaning and examining the weapon. The next day, he spent half again as much time practicing. In the house, Jane found herself snapping to attention every time she heard a shot.

  They slept apart just as they had done every night since their marriage. It was not something they planned or even spoke about. It was just the way things were.

  In Jane’s mind their separate sleeping arrangement was not unlike Morgan’s trouble with the Winchester. It had something to do with recoil and his ribs. She tried not to think about the day his ribs would finally be healed. Then there would only be his recoil to explain why he was not in her bed.

  She was sleeping in the larger room again. Morgan had insisted that she have it, and Jane did not argue. He never moved his belongings from the room. They shared the dresser, the washroom, the clothes cupboard, and the wardrobe, but what they did not share, as she had intended, was the space. They did not dance around each other in preparation of either their day or their night. They acted more familiarly in the kitchen than in the bedroom, but Jane believed that Morgan’s behavior there was predicated on whether or not they had an audience.

  The presence of one or more of the ranch hands made for odd moments of intimacy, and Jane could not permit herself to attach too much importance to them. To pretend they meant anything except keeping up appearances was to recklessly endanger her heart. There was no bell she could ring to summon help for that, so she did what she watched the men around her do. She raised her guard and kept her silence.

  • • •

  Morgan threw his cards on the table. “Fold,” he said, getting to his feet.

  “Where are you going?” Jessop asked without looking up from his hand. “You can’t leave. We haven’t even started this round, and you owe me money.”

  “You lost money. There’s a difference. And I’m going to do something about the fire in this stove. Why don’t you ever complain about how cold it is in this bunkhouse?”

  “Figured you knew,” said Jake. “Give me a card, Max. I’ve got my eye on adding a pretty lady to the pair I already have.”

  “Here’s your card,” Max said. “But you’re a liar.”

  Morgan opened the door to the stove and poked at the fire. He tossed in a piece of wood and a shovelful of coals and then poked at it some more. “Jane makes a better fire than you do.”

  “Jane’s got the dragon,” said Jessop. “What we have isn’t big enough to be the dragon’s smallest egg.”

  Morgan pushed the door closed with the tip of the poker, leaned the poker against a post, and warmed his hands in front of the stove.

  “Blocking the heat,” Max told him.

  “Don’t care.” Still, he moved out of the way and back to the table. He spun his chair around and straddled it, resting his forearms along the back rail. “How much longer do you think Jem will be?”

  “Is that the burr under your saddle tonight?” asked Jake. “I stopped keeping count of how many times you’ve been in and out of that chair.”

  Jessop looked up at the door as if he expected his brother to walk through it. “He’ll be along directly, I expect. It’ll be something about Renee that’s kept him.”

  Max tossed two cards at Jessop when he asked for them. “I got
ta say what we’re all thinkin’, boss. Seems like these rustlers have you spooked.” He held up his hands when Morgan pinned back his ears with a look. “I said ‘seems like.’ Maybe it’s because you haven’t been able to ride out yourself, and I figure that’s because of Mrs. Longstreet, not because you got hurt.”

  “You can’t be in two places at once,” said Jake. “You gotta trust us to do right by you here or there.”

  Morgan said nothing.

  “Well, I said it,” Max said, more to himself than anyone at the table. He threw a chip into the pot. “And whaddya know? I still got my head attached to my neck.”

  “Jesus,” Morgan said.

  Max simply shrugged, but Jessop said, “You’ve been kinda touchy lately.”

  “Jesus,” Morgan said again, this time mostly under his breath. He looked at the men. “How long has this been rattling around in your heads exactly?”

  “Exactly?” asked Jake. “Couldn’t say. Upwards of ten days, though, would be a good guess. About the time you came to me complaining about your shot being off. Couldn’t have been off more than a couple of inches, and at the distance you were firing that Winchester, seemed a little odd to me that you’d be fussing about it. Got me thinking.”

  “Bit longer than that for me,” said Jessop. “I understood that you didn’t want to talk about it right off in front of the missus. We didn’t know much at first, but when you told us not to say anything ever, well, that sort of spooked me. Like maybe you knew something we didn’t.”

  Max folded his cards and tapped a tattoo against the table with one corner of the stack. “About the same for me. None of us talked about it until yesterday. Guess since Jem isn’t here, we can blame him. He brought it up.”

  “Jem,” Morgan said flatly. “Jem brought it up.”

  “More or less. He said something about Mrs. Longstreet bein’ just about the quietest woman he knew. I guess that’s when we realized she hadn’t always been that way. Only natural that words would come to be exchanged about you.”

  “Only natural.”

  “Well, it does seem as if she should know,” Jessop said. “If you think we have notions rattlin’ around in our heads, what kind of things do you suppose she has rattlin’ around in hers? They’re rustlers, boss. Cut the fence, take a few head of cattle, hightail it off your land, and come around again when they think it’s safe to take a couple more.”

  “And what if they’re not rustlers?” Morgan asked quietly. No one said a word. An ember popped in the stove and Max jerked, but other than that they were still. “What if they’re not only rustlers?”

  Jake asked, “What do you mean?”

  “How often do rustlers make off with just a few head of cattle? And how often do they come back in so short a time?”

  Max said, “We’d have caught up with them already if they’d run off with more cattle.”

  “Maybe. I hope so. But again, if not getting caught is that important, why return?”

  “Hunger,” said Jessop. “Could be they’re rustling for food, not profit. Feeding a group, say. Squatters.”

  Jake shook his head. “No squatters on this land.”

  “Of course they ain’t squatting here,” Jessop said. “But there’s plenty of unclaimed land north of here and only four of us that can ride out.”

  “Not homesteaders,” Max said thoughtfully. “The whole point of homesteading is to put down roots. Same with squatters. These thieves are movin’ around. Hiding out, I reckon you could say.”

  “Outlaws?” Jake sat up straight. “Is that what you’re gettin’ at?”

  “Rustlers are outlaws,” said Jessop.

  “I know that. Max knows what I mean, and I was talkin’ to him anyway.”

  “You should be talkin’ to the boss,” said Max. “I reckon it’s his thinkin’ that matters.”

  Jake looked at Morgan. “You think it’s outlaws?”

  Morgan knuckled the stubble on his jaw. “It’s better to entertain the possibility than pretend it can’t exist.”

  “You mighta entertained it with us. I can see why you don’t want Mrs. Longstreet fretting about a thing like that, but the rest of us should be prepared.”

  “And what would you be doing that you aren’t already? You ride out every day armed and alert. You know what I know. More, probably, since you’ve been out there. I just have another thought about it, is all, and it’s the kind of thought that I want to keep from my wife. So now you know.”

  Jessop laid his cards down and pushed them toward the pot. “You have some suspicion about who the gang might be? Cassidy, maybe?”

  “He and Sundance are up at Hole-in-the-Wall,” said Jake. “Everyone knows that.”

  “Well, everyone ain’t found them yet, have they?”

  Jake flicked a card at his brother. It struck Jessop in the chest. Jessop started to come out of his chair, but Morgan threw out a restraining arm before there were blows and blood.

  Morgan waited for the air to become less agitated. For a moment there Jake and Jessop were putting out more heat than the stove. “Done?” he asked them, looking at each of them in turn. “So help me God, if I see one or both of you sporting shiners in the morning, I’ll keep Jem on and exchange the pair of you for Rabbit and Finn Collins.”

  Neither brother had anything to say to that, although they did exchange squinty looks.

  Morgan said, “I don’t have any suspicions about a particular gang, so let’s just leave it.”

  “What about saying something to the marshal?” asked Max. “I’ve seen his Wanted Wall. I reckon he has a notice of just about every miscreant in three states tacked up there. Maybe we should let him know what’s been happening out here.”

  “Bridger’s jurisdiction is Bitter Springs, not the county. The last marshal that came out here on town business got himself killed for his trouble. I’m not going to risk that happening again.”

  Max leaned back in his chair and poked the brim of his hat with a fingertip, causing it to lift a fraction so that it no longer shaded his eyes. “There’s still the sheriff.”

  “I don’t want the law. We’ll handle it ourselves. We are the law at Morning Star.”

  Max nodded. “That’s what I thought you’d say, but I thought I should hear you say it.”

  Morgan stood, spun his chair around so that it once more faced the table. “Good night. If Jem isn’t back in an hour, someone come up to the house to let me know.” He picked up his winnings, which elicited a collective groan. “What? You thought I would leave this behind? I have a wife, gentlemen, and she has set her sights on bankrupting me.”

  In truth, Jane had not asked him for a thing. Morgan was not even sure why he said what he did. The men chuckled in that way men did when they believed they’d happened upon a universal truth about women. The real universal truth was that men didn’t know a damn thing about them. Morgan knew himself to be part of that great collective.

  He found Jane in the front room sitting in one of the large armchairs beside the fireplace. She was wearing her nightdress and robe and had her dark hair neatly plaited in a braid that fell over her right shoulder. He could not tell if she was wearing slippers. Her slim legs were curled to one side and her feet were hidden under the hem of her robe. She had one of his shirts in her lap and a small red enameled sewing box on top of that. The lid was open, and she was staring into the case, poking at its contents with the thimble that was on her middle finger. There was a small vertical crease between her eyebrows, and her concentration was so focused that Morgan did not believe she knew he was in the room.

  He stood there, watching her, wondering how to make his presence known without scaring her, but then her head lifted and she stared directly into his eyes.

  “Did you win?” she asked.

  Morgan regarded Jane without hearing her.

  Jane’s smile faltered. “Did you win?” she asked again. “You were playing cards in the bunkhouse, weren’t you?”

  “Why have you ne
ver asked me for anything?”

  Every trace of Jane’s smile vanished. “Pardon?”

  Morgan repeated his question. He pointed to the enameled case in her lap. “Where did you get that?”

  Jane glanced at the sewing box and then looked back at Morgan. “This? Max purchased it from the milliner for me. At least I think it was Max. It was whomever you sent to town after Jem went.”

  “Max,” he said flatly. “Max bought that.”

  “Yes. I asked him to. I packed an etui, but it holds only the most basic needs. Scissors. Needles. Tweezers. Very small items. To hem my gowns, I needed matching threads.” She pointed to the blue chambray shirt. “And I could find nothing here to properly mend this.”

  “I don’t recall seeing a receipt for that box.”

  “I did not give it to you.”

  “Max paid for it?”

  “I did.”

  “With what?”

  “With money, of course. My own.”

  Morgan took off his hat and slapped it against this thigh. He saw Jane start at the violence in the gesture, but she did not cower. She sat perfectly still, her eyes as sharply cut as the emeralds they resembled. He sighed heavily, tossed his hat on the empty chair, and sat down at the end of the sofa that was closest to her.

  He said, “Why would you buy threads or a box to keep them in or any other damn thing you need with your own money?”

  “Do not swear at me,” Jane said with quiet dignity.

  “I wasn’t swearing at you. I was swearing at any other damn thing.”

  When she spoke again, she was even quieter than before. “Are you done? Because it felt as if you were swearing at me.”

  Morgan collapsed against the back of the sofa, pushed his legs out in front of him, and plowed one hand through his hair. He stared up at the ceiling and was confronted with the absence of smoke stains. That was Jane’s doing.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  Jane made no reply.

  He turned his head and looked at her. “I am sorry.”

  She nodded. “I believe you.”