Enchanted Heart

by Brianna Lee McKenzie

  As he walked around the counter to find the catalogue where he ordered educational material for the school, Tyree remembered the day when he had first set foot in Fredericksburg. He was twenty years old, long and lanky, sunburned so red that one would have thought that he was an Indian if he hadn’t had sandy brown hair which was bleached to almost white from riding his horse from town to town in search of his destiny. Everything that he’d owned was on his back, in his saddlebags and strapped to his hip and he was ready to stop somewhere and try to make a living if it killed him. He’d lost his horse three days before he had come to Fredericksburg when a rattle snake attacked and had sent the buckskin running away with his clothes and what little money that he’d stashed in the saddlebags, leaving him with only the clothes that he wore and his pistol.

  The handgun, which he had stolen from his father when he’d run away from home six years before, had not been fired since a pack of wolves had infiltrated his camp one night four years after he had left home. The shirt and trousers were worn and tattered and the soles of his boots were thinner than paper the day that he walked into Fredericksburg and decided that he would have to stay. With no means of transportation and no money to purchase a stagecoach ticket even to the next town, he knew that he would have to get a job and save every cent in order to move on.

  He started working at the butchering house for room and board and eventually was given the clerk’s position at the Alfred Winters’ store. It was while he was working there that Josephine had walked into town and upon seeing her, he had fallen in love with her even though she had no use for him. It was then that he had decided to stay in town and try to make her love him. He tried for two years to turn her head while she sewed dresses and shirts to sell at the store.

  But it was not to be. She eventually married Mr. Winters, although Tyree was certain that she did not love her new husband. But when she became a widow ten years later, his hope of wooing her bloomed anew. For three years, he tried to get her attention but to no avail. Seeing the way that she scowled at him when he took notice of the new woman in town, he knew that Marty was his ticket to winning Josie’s heart and he was prepared to attempt anything in order to make it so.

  Tyree sat with Marty, perusing the catalogue, inching closer and closer to her and even “accidentally” touching her hand with his. Marty dismissed the contact as unintentional and ignored it. But, to Tyree, it was an opportunity to make Josie jealous and he would take advantage of any chance to cause the woman that he loved to take notice of him. He knew that using his new friend, the beautiful Marty Ingram, as a pawn was wrong but he felt that the younger woman was not likely to fall in love with him since she had told him while they were looking through the catalogue that she was only working as a teacher until her fiancé found her.

  When they left, Josie walked beside Marty spouting obscenities about the man. But Marty didn’t see any harm in keeping company with him as long as she told him in the beginning that she was engaged and that there would only be friendship between them. Josie, who apparently hated men of every deed, creed and breed, tried to talk her out of it, saying that no man was worth wasting her time on and that Marty should take her advice.

  That day, while they walked away from the store, Josie confided in Marty, “That used to be mine, you know.”

  “What, the store?” Marty asked, but she seemed to recall that Tyree had confided that fact on their first meeting.

  “Yep,” Josie said with contempt in her voice. Then, she corrected, “Well, it belonged to my husband and I worked there when I first came into town. I made dresses for women and shirts for the men folk. I was right good at it too, if I might say so. I do miss the needle in my hand…”

  “I had no idea!” Marty lied while Josie stared at her plump fingers. “What happened?”

  “Alfred, my husband, was a very prominent man. He had several businesses before he pissed it all away and left me with nothing but the boarding house.”

  Josie took a deep breath and sat on a bench outside the bank. With a nod toward the bank’s window, she said, “He owned that too. All gone now! All shot to hell in a canon of gambling and carousing. Why, if I’d have known what a wretch he was, I’d have never married him.”

  She tilted her head in thought for a moment before she chuckled, “Well, I suppose he got what was coming to him. He died in the cathouse. He almost smothered that whore Skinny Minnie!”

  She let out a guffaw at the sight that must have greeted the undertaker that day. That poor waif of a woman flailing her thin arms and legs about beneath the hulk of dead weight that was Alfred Winters must have feared for her own life at that moment. And to see the look on the undertaker’s pious face when he had to pry old Alfred off the hapless whore must have been priceless!

  Then, her face became somber again and she growled, “Makes me want to spit bullets that he gave that harlot more than he ever gave me! And then, when he died, there were so many bills that I had to sell everything off. That grease-head Tyree Parnell bought the store, the bank AND the saloon!”

  She shook her head, “But I was ready to give up the store anyway. At the end, Alfred gave it as much attention as he gave to me. Good riddance, I say!”

  “I’m sorry that I invited you to go shopping with me,” Marty said with remorse. “If I had known…”

  “Ah, don’t you worry your head about it, Marty, my friend. Why if that pillaging peddler’s barter barn wasn’t within walking distance, I would never set foot in it. But, as you can see, I don’t get very far very fast. So, if I’m gonna waste my money somewhere it might as well be at Parnell’s.”

  Marty helped Josie to her feet and they continued their journey back home in silence. When they rounded the corner where the big blue house stood, both of them seemed to be glad to see it. Walking up the brick sidewalk, the larger woman began to cluck her tongue as if she had just had a disdainful thought.

  “Men are like dogs,” Josie said with a condescending sneer. “They dig and dig and dig, searching for a bone and then when they finally find it, they carry it off and dig a hole to bury it and off they go to find another one. It is not the biting of the bone that they crave, mind you. It is the searching, the digging, the finding of that bone that makes them pant like there ain’t no other bone in the world for them…until they get that itch again.”

  Marty laughed at her friend’s colorful expressions, but then, to quell her curiosity, she asked, “Why do you hate men so? I mean, I understand what your husband did to you. But, you seem to hate all men.”

  They had reached the porch of the boarding house by then and Josie had seen Marty stare at the sign on the door that declared that men were not welcome. She heaved a great sigh and revealed, “When I was a child, about seven or so, I was captured by Kiowas. I stayed with them because I was so young and didn’t know my way back home even if I wanted to escape. They fed me, a family took me in, made me a part of their loving unit, and eventually, I learned to love and depend upon my family and the village.”

  Marty felt a tug of sadness for the woman as Josie spoke about her life, “As time passed, I forgot my name, all but my first name and the one that they gave me after I had run away one day when I’d realized that I was different from my family and I knew in my heart that I had a real family somewhere, somewhere out there…”

  Her chubby arms waved in the air over her head to emphasize her words, “They caught up to me days later, after I had walked for miles and miles, blindly searching for my real family, a family that had no faces, that I had no recollection of, but one that I was certain did exist. When the Indians found me, I was nigh on crazy, begging God to let me die and I was so glad to see that band of Kiowa braves that had tracked me down that I hugged them with tears of joy. From that day on, I was called Walks Far Woman.”

  She shook her head as if a distasteful thought had entered her mind before she continued, “My Kiowa family didn’t want me because I had left them. They called my leaving them ‘spitting on
the heart’, which meant that I had chosen to leave them out of spite and with no gratitude for their love and hospitality. I was alone then. Alone with no family, real or not.”

  A sneer curled her lips when she said, almost in a growl, “But by then, I was old enough to satisfy the manly needs of the unmarried and unsatisfied and I was passed around like a peace pipe.”

  Josie took a long, thoughtful breath before continuing with hatred in her voice, “It made me wish that God had let me die…”

  After a long silence, she sighed and said, “Then, when I was nineteen, I guess—I lost track of time by then, I was sold to a Comanche chief for two horses and a repeating rifle.”

  She paused then and unconsciously rubbed the scars on one of her wrists before her eyes lit up and her voice changed to a chiming chirp while she revealed, “But I showed them ornery savages. When I was sent to the Comanche village, there was only one Indian escorting me. Well, I took a big stick to the back of his feathered head and lit out on my own. Then, I found my way here to town one day and decided to settle down. I changed my name from Walks Far Woman to Josie Walker and I worked hard to make a name for myself. I was fully prepared to live my life alone, taking care of myself and relying on no man. But, then I met Alfred Winters at the bank and he got sweet on me so I married him.”

  Josie leaned in closer to snarl, “Worst mistake of my life.”

  Alfred liked the ladies, Josie told her, and he had made no excuses to his wife for sidling on over to the local brothel now and then. So, she had not been upset when he’d died while in the pinnacle of passion in that very brothel and she’d made no excuses for hating men after that.

  All men, that is, except for Henry Buchanan. While her husband was carousing, Josie, it seemed, was looking for his replacement and the town doctor was a fitting choice. But, at that time, Buck was already married and had two Indian sons following his every step and in addition, Buck did not give Josie a second look, which perturbed her all the more.

  When Buck’s wife passed away a few months after Alfred found his glory in a less than virtuous way, Josie had thought that she would have a chance with the doctor. But he had been too heartbroken and had moved away, leaving Josie with more hatred for men than she had ever felt.

  And when Marty had told Josie that Buck was married to her very own sister, Josie almost refused to rent a room to her. But Marty had persuaded her to let her move into her home where only women were welcome, a large, inviting house that boasted a huge sign on the front porch that warned, “No Men Allowed”.

  Marty thought of Josie’s attitude towards men as amusing but her friend was adamant about her convictions that men were only put on the Earth to reproduce and if there was some miracle method of producing offspring without their rooting around ‘where the sun don’t shine’, Josie would be the first to endorse it.

  So, when Tyree wanted to call on Marty, he had to meet her at school and leave her at the front steps of the boarding house, for Josie was always watching from her parlor window and if any man even set foot on those steps, she would come bursting out with her shotgun cocked.

  Respecting Josie’s wishes, Marty made sure that the new man in her life would adhere to the rules. When Tyree had asked to walk her home one day after school, she had told him that he could not go inside the boarding house, but he had replied with a knowing smile, “Crossing Josie Winters is the last thing I want to do!”

  Chapter Thirty

  At first, Greta had been banned from Josie’s house because Marty’s sister had married the only man that Josie had an eye for. But later, Marty convinced her that Buck was not the man for her and that it was not Greta’s fault that Buck had fallen in love with her. It was just meant to be. Josie didn’t believe in fate but she learned to believe that something more than human intervention could possibly shape one’s life so she allowed Greta to visit her sister when she was physically able to.

  Of course, it took several weeks for Greta’s leg to heal enough for her to go anywhere besides Buck’s big house in front of the stream at the edge of town. Her most adventurous journey while she convalesced was to the back porch swing overlooking that stream, which began to ice over and then disappear altogether when the blizzards came. Despite the bitter cold, she would sit on the swing, many times in the company of the man who had saved her, and watch the wind blow the leafless trees and listen to the branches clack together.

  Occasionally, a herd of deer would venture close to town and paw in the snow in the meadow just beyond the stream and she would watch them for hours. She was fascinated by their activity and how they seemed to be strong and healthy, not giving the freezing air a second thought. Sometimes, a stray buck would try to take the herd away from the one who dominated over it. Greta would lean forward to watch the battle that ensued, her brow furrowed with worry that one of them might get hurt. One day, when a smaller, younger buck came to challenge the larger and older one, she began to fret aloud to Buck who sat next to her on the swing.

  “Don’t you worry none about him,” he whispered as he leaned closer to her ear. “He’s not gonna hurt much more than his pride when that old buck shows him who really owns that herd.”

  They watched the two bucks battle with antlers clacking together louder than the empty branches. The smaller deer huffed in the wind, his breath wafting in front of him as a warning to the older deer that he was out for blood. He lifted his foreleg and tapped the hard snow as a sign that he was about to attack. But the older, wiser deer stood his ground and snorted while ducking his head low in response. The two met in a clatter of antlers, the momentum of their forward-thrusting bodies jerking their heads around and then unclasping their racks with violent force. Finally, the younger buck shook his head, throwing droplets of spittle around his body. He let out a huff of indignation and he stared longingly at the herd of does for one last time before he trotted away.

  “See there, he’s giving up!”

  “Why does he think that he can outfight such a large male?” Greta asked with wonder.

  “You’ve gotta be a male to think like a male,” Buck said. When she questioned him silently, raising her brow, he explained, “You see, there’s a whole lot of this hormone called testosterone surging around in every male animal. Deer, bulls, birds, dogs, even men are constantly being filled with the inherent need to increase their species.”

  “I know all about that, but why do they have to fight?”

  “They fight because the winner, the fittest, the fastest, the strongest gets to mate and carry on his traits,” Buck answered, watching the losing deer limp away with his antlers hung low. “It’s nature’s way of assuring that the species will continue with the best genes.”

  “And why do men fight?” Greta asked with a tiny bit of anger in her voice. “Why do they make war on their neighbors, on their friends and their brothers?”

  He looked at her then and saw a tear clinging to her dark lashes and he had to take her into his arms, to melt away the anger and the hurt that he knew she must be feeling when she was reminded about her husband’s untimely demise. He wrapped her frail body in his burly arms and he growled with conviction, “Sometimes men can be ignorant and selfish.”

  Greta’s fingers dug into Buck’s muscles while she sobbed into his clean white shirt collar. She knew that she shouldn’t show such childish emotions to a man whom she barely knew but he seemed as if he really, truly cared about her. She could see it in his brown eyes and feel it in his touch. She clung to him while he enveloped her in a show of affection that she had often longed for after her sudden and complete loss of love so long ago.

  She wiped away the tears and sniffed before she asked without pulling away, “Don’t they know the effect their actions would have on their loved ones?”

  Buck thought for a long moment. Then he pulled in a breath before he replied, “Sometimes, they don’t think about that. All they are thinking is that the outcome is for the best for everyone. But sometimes, like that old buck ove
r there, they just have to do it. It’s not like he wanted to fight with the intruding male. Why, he was minding his own business, copulatin’ and taking his herd to the best feeding grounds and the next thing he knows, he’s being challenged for the right to do just that.

  “Humans are the same, in a small way,” he continued. “All we want is the best for our families and then someone comes along and challenges that way of life and we just gotta fight for our beliefs. It don’t mean that one side is right and one is wrong. It just means that someone is certain to win and their beliefs will be the ones that everyone else is bound to follow, whether they like it or not. Or they find a way to work it out, to compromise. But not before many lives are lost and many others are affected by it.”

  “It is a barbaric way to work things out,” Greta accused while she leaned back on the swing’s wooden slats.

  Buck leaned back with her and watched the herd graze peacefully and he agreed, “Yep. But that is why God gave us the testosterone that gives us the urge to win.”

  “Things would be a lot different if women were in charge,” she said and immediately regretted it, for she worried that she was about to start an argument, a conversation that she avoided at all costs with her dear Gunnar because she loved him so much.

  But instead, Buck chuckled and placed his palm on her knee, shaking it in gest while he said, “You ladies ARE in charge! There are very few things that can conquer that all-powerful testosterone. But love is mighty powerful indeed! A man would do anything, even get himself killed for the woman who wins his heart.”

  “Awe, what lovely words!” Greta said as she leaned closer to him, touching his shoulder with hers.

  “They come from my heart,” Buck answered while placing his other hand over the organ about which he spoke.

  Then he scooted forward so that he could face her and he eased closer to her until his lips were so very near hers that his next statement could be felt as well as heard, “I would die for you, Greta Goldstein.”