“It’s not charity if that’s what you’re worried about,” Mr. Price replied, still holding it out. “I brought the Indian here, he’s my responsibility, and I want to help pay for his keep. That’s all.”
Still, Charlene hesitated. Having the boy under their roof, eating their food, would indeed add to her burdens when she had so many already. The cash would buy the extra food he would be eating when Charlene and Olivia had so little to share.
Tentative, she reached out to accept the money. She held it up to him before pocketing it. “This will be for him, then, Mr. Price, not my mother or I.”
“I ask nothing else, ma’am.”
His wide-brimmed hat in his hands, Mr. Price continued to stand in their living room, gazing down at her as though he wished to say something else. Charlene felt something pass between them, an acknowledgment of a shared experience perhaps, or the beginning of a friendship. The moment vanished, and Mr. Price offered Charlene and Olivia a grave nod.
“Thank you for your kindness in caring for the boy,” he said at last.
“I do appreciate your kindness and willingness to help him.”
“May I return to, uh, visit him, ma’am?”
This time Olivia spoke up. “Of course, you can, young man,” her voice holding a confidence Charlene had not heard in a long time. “Drop by anytime.”
Mr. Price’s lips turned upward, and Charlene suspected his grin wasn’t just because he had received permission to visit. “I’ll be heading back home now.”
He settled his hat on his head and turned toward the open door. “Ladies.”
“Good night, Mr. Price.”
* * *
Though she hadn’t informed anyone about the injured Comanche in her bedroom, Charlene discovered half the town knew about it anyway. Leaving her mother to bring the Indian food, water, hot tea and dose him with laudanum, she went to the Apple Tree to work as usual. Walking in the door, she found Jean standing in the middle of the store, her fists on her hips.
“Just what are you about, young lady?” she demanded.
“Whatever do you mean?”
“You know what I’m talking about.” Jean trailed after her as Charlene removed her bonnet and hung it up on a hook in the back room. Harold gave her a sympathetic look and returned to reading his paper. “You took in an injured Comanche.”
“Town tongues are busy, I see,” Charlene replied, tying her apron around her waist.
“I heard about it from three different people in less than an hour,” Jean went on, watching Charlene take a cloth to begin dusting the shelves. “What were you thinking?”
“Why does Christian charity in aiding someone else require thought?” Charlene continued to dust, her back to her employer.
She heard Jean sigh. “How will your mother handle the care he needs?”
Charlene paused to turn and grinned. “You won’t believe it. She was up before me this morning, cooking breakfast and spoon feeding him. He had such an expression of astonishment on his face.”
Jean huffed, her countenance turning thoughtful. “This might be good for Olivia,” she said slowly. “Give her new purpose.”
“I hope so.” Charlene returned to her dusting. “Oh, by the way.” She pulled the money Mr. Price had given her from her dress pocket. “I will need to buy extra food from you. For the Indian.”
Jean eyed it as though she held a snake in her hand. “Where did you get that?”
“Mr. Price. He insisted on paying the boy’s way.”
Accepting the money, Jean counted it. “There’s enough here to feed him for a month. I will collect together what you need and have Harold take it to your house.”
“Thank you for adding to my already busy schedule,” Harold called from the back room.
Jean shook her head as Charlene grinned. “This store is far too small,” she complained. “Now our suppliers are sending wagon loads, and Harold will be occupied unloading them into the back room …–”
“My back aches already.”
“…and I will be ordering more in the office. Which leaves you to wait on the customers, Charlene.”
“Happy to,” Charlene answered, resuming her dusting.
The front door opened, its bell chiming. Two matrons entered, dark blue bonnets on their heads, their gowns also of a dark hue. The Winston sisters. Both were widowed, living together in a house in the center of town, and also the center of all of Bandera’s gossip. They offered Charlene twin stares as she set aside her cloth and approached them with a smile.
“May I help you, ladies?”
Miss Harriet Winston said, “You have a – guest, Miss Quinn?”
Miss Darla Winston nudged her sister with her elbow. “Don’t be rude, Harriet. Yes, Miss Quinn, we would like three yards of that dark green cloth right there, if you don’t mind. And thread to match it. Thank you.”
Charlene took down the requested bolt of cloth and laid it out on the counter to measure it. Jean left the store for the back office, as the widows advanced on the counter. She glanced up at Miss Harriet. “Yes, my mother and I took in an Indian in dire need of medical assistance.”
Miss Harriet gasped. “Is that not a dangerous thing to do? After all, he is a savage.”
“He has a broken leg, Miss Harriet,” Charlene replied, cutting the cloth with scissors. “Hardly dangerous.”
“But what will happen when he is healed? He might turn on you and your helpless mother.”
“I suppose we will worry about that if and when it happens.” Charlene folded the cloth neatly and fetched a spool of matching thread from a drawer. After wrapping the goods in paper, she handed the package to Miss Darla. “May I get you anything else, ladies?”
After taking their coins, she watched with amusement as the matrons left the store, whispering, their heads together. Throughout the day, she endured question after question, townspeople coming in to buy something as an excuse to inquire about the Comanche. She answered them all patiently yet forced her eyes not to roll. “Yes, he has a broken leg. No, he is not dangerous to the community. Yes, I’m sure he will return to his people soon. Yes, it was my Christian duty. Yes, Dr. McFadden was very kind to enlist his aid.”
During a lull in the waves of customers, Harold came in from the storeroom, grinning broadly, his clothes covered in dust. “Your Comanche friend is certainly good for our business. I am almost out of coffee and flour, and I just unloaded a shipment.”
“I almost feared the town would condemn me for it,” Charlene admitted, wiping her hands on her apron, “and shun the store.”
“Nonsense,” Harold snorted. “These folks are basically very kind-hearted. Your broken legged Indian is a novelty, not an excuse for the town to turn on you. You and your mother are highly regarded in Bandera, girl. People understand your kindness.”
He pulled out his pocket watch. “It’s time for your lunch,” he said. “I’ll mind the place.”
“Can you handle it?” Jean called from the back room.
“I was running this place before I met you, woman.”
Grinning, Charlene went to the office to fetch her bonnet and remove her apron. “I’ll be back soon, Jean.”
Jean nodded, scribbling out an order on paper. “Give your mother my love, dear.”
Tying her bonnet’s ribbons under her chin, Charlene opened the front door, dodging a pair of cowboys in tall hats and leather chaps who entered the Apple Tree just as she exited. With her appetite gnawing in her stomach, she walked hurriedly down the sidewalk, her head down, hoping no one else felt the need to stop her and ask nosy questions about the injured Indian.
The savage sun beat down on her head, making her glad she had remembered her bonnet, perspiration already beading on her forehead. Though she had been born and raised in this part of Texas, she still wondered if she would ever get used to its terrible heat. “How can anyone ever get used to it?” she muttered.
Not really paying much attention to what was going on around her,
Charlene all but strode headlong into a man who had stopped in front of her. Seeing only his boots and legs from under her bonnet, she lifted her face and stopped before she tripped over him. “Oh, excuse me.”
She recognized him instantly. Harvey Johnson, Bandera’s local drunk, who worked performing odd jobs around the town and spent his money in the saloon. Charlene knew he lived in a tiny shanty when he wasn’t sleeping off a bender in the town’s jail, and she raised a faint smile. “Mr. Johnson.”
She did not receive one in return. Instead, he glared down at her as though he hated the very sight of her, despite that they had quite often exchanged pleasantries. Nor was he currently intoxicated and did not smell of whiskey or beer. A little alarmed when he said nothing and continued to leer at her with rage, Charlene tried again. “Mr. Johnson, how are you?”
“Damn Injun lover,” he snarled, his brown teeth bared in a grimace. “I’ll show you how I am.”
That was when he pulled the knife from behind his back.
Chapter Four
Fanning himself with his hat, Aaron Dawson sat in the questionable coolness of the saloon, occasionally taking a drink from his tall glass of beer. Like everything else in the God-forsaken country, it had warmed considerably and tasted foul. Gazing idly out the window, he watched as passersby on horseback or buggies, some fools on foot, strode or rode down the dusty street outside.
“Let’s go back north,” suggested his brother Franklin, adjusting his spectacles on his damp nose. “Where it’s cooler.”
“How can anyone live down here?” asked George, also a brother and the second to the youngest in the family. “This heat is stifling.”
Aaron glanced at them and took another drink from his glass. “Benji isn’t in the north,” he replied, still fanning himself. His dark red hair, long, oily and slick with sweat, dripped small rivulets down the sides of his face. Not even the air moving across his skin cooled him. “He’s in Texas, and that’s where we stay until we spring him from jail.”
“Why couldn’t he have been busted in a nice place like Colorado?” George muttered, shooting an uneasy glance toward Aaron.
Aaron restrained himself from backhanding George across his measly face. Always a complainer, George never failed to get under Aaron’s skin and create a savage itch. As he often did, Aaron wished he could simply dump George somewhere and ride off, to never see him again. But he was blood, and the Dawson family never abandoned their own.
“Pipe down, George,” Elmer said, his tone soft. He always spoke quietly, never raised his voice, yet even Aaron tread carefully when Elmer’s voice grew almost inaudible. The less voice he spoke with, the more dangerous he became. “If you were in prison, we’d ride through hell to get you out.”
George smacked his cards down on the table, irritated. “I know. This heat is making me crazy. It doesn’t even cool off at night here.”
“This is getting to all of us,” Frank admitted, picking up George’s card hand and inspecting them. “Once we have Benji back with us, we’ll go back north. Right, Aaron?”
Aaron merely nodded. “Texas is a big place. We still don’t know what prison the federal marshals took him to.”
“Just how many prisons are here?” Elmer asked. “Three or four?”
“At least.”
“If we find where they are,” Elmer went on, “maybe we can ride to each one.”
“That’ll take years, idiot,” George snapped. “Benji will have died of old age before we get him out.”
Elmer merely stared at him until George looked away, mumbling under his breath. He took all the cards back and shuffled them, refusing to look at any of his brothers. “I’m just saying,” Aaron heard him mutter.
“Maybe that bounty hunter knows where he is,” Aaron said, gazing out the window again. “What was his name?”
“Tyler Price,” Franklin answered, inspecting the cards George dealt him. “But he’s long gone.”
“Do you know where he went?” Aaron turned his head toward his brother.
“Naw. Just that he packed up one day and left town.” Franklin adjusted his spectacles when they slid down his nose again, slicked with his sweat. “Benji made him a rich man.”
“Someone probably knows where he went,” Aaron said thoughtfully. “He had friends back there in El Paso. Maybe he told his pal the sheriff where he was headed.”
“Is El Paso cooler than here?” George asked, pushing a few matchsticks across the table as his wager.
“The Amazon jungle is cooler than here,” Franklin scoffed.
“How would you know? You’ve never been to the Amazon jungle in your life.”
“I know more than you, dimwit, that’s for sure.”
“Where is the Amazon jungle, anyway?”
“South America,” Franklin snapped, “and if you ask me where that is, I’ll bust you a good one.”
“You think you know more than the rest of us because you read all them books,” George sneered. “Four eyes.”
“I do know more than you, stupid.”
“Knock it off,” Aaron told them, not raising his voice. “You two sound like five-year-olds.”
Like Elmer, Aaron’s temper had earned him their fear and respect. None of his brothers wanted to see him angry, as there was little he wouldn’t do in a rage. Franklin still bore the puckered scar in his left shoulder from Aaron’s knife, and he never forgot how he nearly bled to death. Aaron was sorry afterward, of course, but he had gotten his point across – never make Aaron angry.
“Here’s what we’ll do,” Aaron said, pulling a thin cigar from his vest pocket and lighting it with a match scraped across his boot. “The next couple of days, we scope out the bank. Once we know everything there is to know, we hit it, then skin out. Back west to El Paso.”
“I like that idea,” George replied, squinting at his cards. “We’re almost out of money.”
“We wouldn’t be if you didn’t gamble it all away at poker every night,” Franklin growled.
“I don’t always lose,” George replied easily. He smirked and set his hand on the table. “Like now. Full house.”
* * *
Thus, three days later, shortly after the bank opened, George sat in his saddle, holding the reins to all four horses while Aaron led Franklin and Elmer into the bank, kerchiefs tied over their lower faces, their hats pulled down over their eyes. At this time of day, there were no customers to control, and only the bank manager and a single employee were inside. Not many people strolled by on the street outside, either, as most sensible people remained indoors.
He pointed his gun at the frightened teller’s head.
“Tell your boss to open the safe,” he ordered. “Now.”
Elmer pushed his way through to the back, his rifle cocked and aimed as the manager raised his hands over his head. “Don’t shoot,” the man pleaded, sweat running down his face.
Jerking the business end of his gun toward the safe, Elmer said, “Open it.”
Franklin carried a canvas sack in behind him as the manager spun the combination lock on the safe, then swung open the heavy door. As Elmer and Aaron kept their victims at gunpoint, Franklin stuffed the bundles of cash into the sack, working fast before any customers wandered in. “Got it,” he called out.
Elmer reversed his rifle and bashed the butt against the manager’s head. The man fell to the floor, bleeding from the gash in his scalp. Aaron swiftly forced the teller into the back, his pistol held to the man’s neck, and also knocked him out cold. “Let’s go,” he said, “before anyone comes in.”
Closing the door to the bank behind them, Aaron liked to think that making the place appear normal when a customer walked into the bank gave them a slight head start. He and his brothers mounted their horses, Franklin stuffing the money into his saddlebags. Then at a smooth trot, not drawing unwanted attention to themselves by galloping away in a rush, they rode down the dusty street.
However, once they rode out of sight of the town, Aaron spur
red his mount into a fast canter. With so many similar bank heists behind them, he seldom had to give his brothers orders anymore. They would ride as hard as they dared without exhausting the horses, rest near water and graze, then ride on again.
Aaron led the way westward, often glancing behind him for evidence of someone following them. They hadn’t ridden for an hour when he looked back and discovered a tall plume of dust not far to their rear. “They’re onto us, boys,” he said. “That’s a posse back there, and it’s a big one.”
An Unconventional Bride For The Rancher (Historical Western Romance) Page 4