Surely suitors flocked around Desert Rose. For some strange reason Carmichael resented the thought then wondered why. Yet, knowing one Birchfield as he did, and judging from Desert Rose’s advertisement, he’d bet not a man in a hundred would so much as carelessly attempt a caress.
Carmichael jerked upright in bed, appalled at his train of thought. Good heavens, if just writing a letter to Nate’s cousin affected him like this he’d best tear up the letter and write to Nate in no uncertain terms that he disapproved of the whole scheme and would have no part of it.
He tossed and turned and awakened more determined than ever to retrieve the letter from his desk in the writing room and replace it with a scorching missive to Nate. Tired, out of sorts, and thoroughly ashamed of his weakening before Mercy’s assault, Carmichael dressed and strode down to the writing room.
The desk lay empty.
“Mercy?” he called, his heart thumping.
“Here,” came the answer from the hall. “I just ran out and got your letter posted.”
Chapter 3
To Carmichael’s amazement, Mercy turned out to be capable and thrifty in running his household. Mandy, who had felt without direction since the elder master and mistress died, gave thanks and sang Mercy’s praises. “I can cook most anything that’s fried, baked, boiled, or stewed,” she stated, “but I needs someone to tell me what they want cooked.” She added a little forlornly, “Master Michael, you just ain’t so good at that.”
He sighed, thinking of his lack of interest in food the past months, but his eyes brightened and he patted faithful Mandy’s arm. “You won’t let Mercy boss you, will you?”
“Land sakes, why would she do that?” Mandy settled into her favorite pose, her arms akimbo. “We works together. Like two hands on one person.”
Carmichael’s keen observance confirmed Mandy’s claim. The girl-woman and the old cook complemented each other and the household machinery never creaked under their joint efforts.
To Carmichael, Mercy’s abnormal curiosity and romantic views were the only thorns in his life. Long before the letter to Wyoming could have reached its destination Mercy haunted the post for an answer. Her uncle laughed at her until his blue eyes crinkled at the corners. “You don’t honestly think she’ll reply, do you? Writing to such a magazine on a dare is a far cry from actually responding to an unknown man over two thousand miles away.”
Mercy’s round chin set stubbornly. “She’ll answer. Any girl with Desert Rose’s spunk is bound to. I would,” she belligerently added.
“I don’t doubt that!” her long-suffering uncle agreed. He clasped his hands behind his head and looked at his pretty companion. How nice to have someone across the table at meals! To hear singing while Mercy cleaned and dusted and proved how well trained she had been by her conscientious mother. Carmichael knew he had always avoided girls, especially those who showed eagerness for his company. Having sisters so much older than himself had been a disadvantage. He didn’t feel comfortable around giggling girls. Teaching at the boy’s school had only compounded the problem. He never had difficulty dealing with mothers, but his situation offered little opportunity to meet the opposite sex. Besides, his studies and work had absorbed him. Someday he’d marry, but with the comfortable home his mother provided he had been lazy about pursuing such a relationship. Only since living in the big and empty house alone had Carmichael realized how much he missed the presence of others. Once he suggested that Mandy eat with him but she had thrown her apron over her head.
“It ain’t proper,” she announced.
He hadn’t pursued the idea. Now Mercy filled a gap he hadn’t even known existed until recently. It made all the difference in the world to come downstairs and see his plump niece tucked into a chair, her pretty hands busy with needlework or mending.
One evening he told her, “You really are going to make a good wife someday.”
Her silver knitting needles slowed and her dimples appeared. “I know.”
He laughed the joyous laugh that had returned with her arrival. “Of all the smug and complacent girls, you’re the worst.”
“Why?” she dropped her half-knitted sweater and squared off. “Don’t you know that you’re a good teacher?”
“Of course I do.” He had the grace to turn red and grin weakly, thinking what an attractive picture she made in her simple pink dress with something white and frothy at the neckline.
“Uncle Michael, what are you going to do at the end of summer? I still have a year of school at least. Mother and Daddy want me to go to college—can you beat that? Me, in college!”
He couldn’t help teasing. “From the sound of your grammar, college wouldn’t hurt you.”
Her laughing blue eyes darkened. “Don’t change the subject.” Concern showed in every line of her body.
Carmichael respected that concern and answered accordingly after staring out the window into the summer dusk. The heavy scent of night-blooming flowers drifted in to color the conversation. Night birds crying sent a pang of loneliness through the young man at a crossroads. “I don’t know, Mercy,” he told her quietly, speaking as if to a contemporary rather than a girl. “Now that I’m alone I don’t relish the thought of staying here. That’s why I resigned.” He felt her stir but she remained silent, perhaps from shock. He hadn’t even told Mandy about his resignation.
“You laughingly said a few days ago I could sell this place and go buy a ranch out West. At first I laughed at the idea….” His voice trailed into the twilight.
“And now?” Mercy leaned forward and kept her voice low.
“It isn’t such a bad idea.” In a wave of companionship he opened up hopes and dreams he had never shared with anyone but God. “I love Concord and all it stands for, but something inside me cries out for adventure. What am I doing here spending my time teaching mostly sons of rich parents who will send them to all the places I long to see? I have the money to travel, to see and do and go. Once I marry, what chance will there be for me to experience foreign places or the West or a hundred other things?” His well-shod feet paced the costly Oriental rug.
“I also wonder if I could succeed in a place where I am not known and accepted because of our long line of worthy ancestors. You know what I’d really like to do? Go somewhere and work with my hands. Sweat and become exhausted and know hunger and cold. If I could find a place that requires manhood and hard work, I’d leave Concord tomorrow!” His eyes glowed and he could feel excitement surge through his entire body.
Mercy stared at him. He saw how her face gleamed in the deepening dusk. “Then go, Michael. Don’t let anyone stop you.” The glitter of tears in her tangled lashes confirmed how much she meant every word. “If I were a little older or a young man, I’d go with you.” A small smile hovered on her lips. “Remember Desert Rose’s description of Wyoming? It sounds an awful lot like the place you described.”
Blood rushed to Carmichael’s head. The feelings he had denied ever since looking at the jutting mountain background against which Desert Rose Birchfield so easily sat her mount returned in full force. “Who would hire anyone like me in a country like that?”
Some of Mercy’s usual dreaming joined with her New England practicality. She impatiently brushed away her tears. “If you owned a ranch you’d have a job just as you said you wanted.” She jumped up and hugged him. “Will you let me come out as soon as I finish school next spring?”
“Whoa!” His arms tightened around the niece he had really only discovered in the last few weeks. “You’re going too fast for me.” Yet he thrilled at the pictures that frolicked in his mind. Away from everything he knew, among new people, facing a new land, might he lose the anger he held toward his heavenly Father for not intervening and saving his parents? If mountain peaks, rolling hills, and green valleys could offer healing to his spirit and a return to his childhood faith, any amount of money would be well spent.
For hours they sat up talking until even Mercy couldn’t keep her eyes open.
The next day they continued their conversation, weighing and considering. Finally they decided Carmichael should write, not to Desert Rose, but to Nathaniel Birchfield II, casually inquiring about the availability of small ranches in the area near Antelope. The letter would contain a strict warning for Nate to say nothing to anyone concerning Carmichael’s questions.
A reply arrived in record time. Nate obviously had hopped on his horse and thoroughly researched every ranch within miles. Carmichael could picture the eager young man who stood as tall as his former teacher interviewing various cowmen, his hat shoved back on his forehead, his dark eyes giving nothing away. Nate’s enthusiasm was evident.
There isn’t a lot for sale but what there is will knock your eyes out. I had no idea Old Man Turpin wanted to sell out and go live with his daughter in Rock Springs. The Circle 5 is a pretty little spread that could be made into a paying proposition if a man had the money to do it. The house and out-buildings are a little rundown. I guess since Mrs. Turpin died, the old man hasn’t cared enough to keep them up. Besides, he doesn’t look too well.
There are only a couple hundred cattle but the range will hold many more. The spread is quite a ways from Antelope but not so far from Gandpa and Grandma Brown’s Double B ranch.
Are you serious or just asking? So far nobody but I knows the ranch is for sale but news like that leaks out fast. You won’t have any trouble getting good hands and the view’s grand. A dandy trout stream runs through the upper part of the property and there’s enough timber to build a dozen ranchhouses. Besides, you’ll have great neighbors! Let me know pronto if you’re interested and send along a few bucks to hold the deal until you can get here.
Nate had scrawled his name below and sketched in a crude drawing of what must be the Circle 5. On one ferocious-looking critter that must be a bull he had drawn the Circle 5 brand. The miniature 5 that held Carmichael’s attention seemed to draw the disapproving looks of all his New England ancestors pictured in gold frames around the living room.
“Are you going to buy it?” Mercy hung over her uncle’s shoulder in her favorite position for inspecting his mail. She took a long breath. “If you do, I want Indian rugs on the walls of my room and a soft bed and two windows overlooking that.” She pointed to the rough portrayal of rolling hills that rose to serrated peaks.
“Your room? My dear young woman, how you run on.”
She smiled her bewitching smile that so often won whatever she wanted. “You’ll be busy at first, but you have almost a year to get your log house built and you may as well know before you start how I want my room to be.”
He threw up his hands at her daring. “The idea. Why, you’re ready to move into an imaginary bedroom in a house that isn’t and may never be built on a ranch I don’t own!”
Unfazed, she merely reached for the sketch and began making outlandish suggestions for a house of lodge proportions that any Astor or Vanderbuilt would be proud to occupy.
Mercy received more fuel to add to her growing fire of reasons why her favorite uncle should go West. The morning post brought a squeal from the excitable girl and put her more practical uncle in shock.
Desert Rose had answered Carmichael’s letter.
He could hardly believe his own eyes when he saw his name and address in a clear, firm handwriting that had no “feminine” swirls. He could see that Mercy itched to tear open the letter, but a newborn loyalty to the girl in the picture made him say, “It wouldn’t be fair for me to let you read it.”
She looked so downcast he quickly added, “I’ll tell you what she says, though.”
“Good.” Mercy settled herself in a nearby chair and Carmichael could feel her eyes boring into him as he read. Unwilling to keep her in a suspense too long, he skimmed each paragraph and condensed its contents.
“She’s quite surprised that anyone so far away would run across her advertisement. She says she hadn’t realized that Hand and Heart would ever penetrate the august walls of a private boys’ school.”
Mercy giggled and her eyes flashed. “What else?”
“Oh, she says she asked Nate about me and he assured her that it’s safe to correspond, that I’m not the kind of man who would take advantage of her letters or would bother her.” Carmichael exploded. “Confound the rascal! I’ll bet he’s laughing behind both of our backs.”
“Don’t stop there,” his niece begged, sitting on the edge of her chair.
“She says it’s kind of me to write and that she appreciates the opportunity to learn more about the East than her parents and Nate have told her and that—” He stopped reading but his gaze traveled on.
Mercy couldn’t restrain herself. “What does she say? What does she say?” She bounced up and down despite the danger of falling off her chair.
Carmichael couldn’t keep back his grin. He folded the letter and put it back into the envelope. “Just that if I ever decide to visit Nate, all the Birchfields will welcome me.” He didn’t repeat the final part of the last sentence: Nate speaks highly of you and I am thankful that you are the one to answer my advertisement.
Mercy crossed her arms and looked at him suspiciously. Carmichael maintained an expression of bland innocence to match her own and diverted further questions. “I think I’ll write to Nate and send those ‘bucks’ he talked about. Even if I don’t decide to become a cattle rancher this Circle 5 sounds like a good investment.”
“I agree. As your friend Nate said, you’ll have such nice neighbors.” With this parting shot Mercy ran toward the kitchen. “It must be time for lunch and I’m starved.” She paused in the doorway and mischief surrounded her like a halo. “Better eat civilized food while you can, Uncle dear. If things get tough in Wyoming you may end up dining on rattlesnake and prairie dogs.” A smothered laugh later, she disappeared.
“Good little scout,” Carmichael said out loud. Mercy had kept quiet about his affairs and even Mandy didn’t know all the possibilities floating around the Blake-Jones home.
Carmichael’s half-formed determination to buy the Circle 5 wavered when he suddenly thought of Mandy. Could Caroline and her husband take her? Never, ever would she be turned out after the decades of service to “her family.” Widowed and childless, she had come to them while still a young woman and had grown old caring for the different children. “Dear God,” he whispered, “is this all some ridiculous plan to escape everything here, even me? Or is it something You want for me?”
For the first time since the double funeral Carmichael Blake-Jones felt a little warmth stir in his frozen heart. He quickly added, “Please, help me know….”
Letters raced between Massachusetts and Wyoming. The price Old Man Turpin was asking for the Circle 5 was both fair and sensible, Nate wrote. His investigation and knowledge of Wyoming land values confirmed it. More and more Carmichael picked up Mercy’s trick of saying, “When I get to Wyoming” rather than “if I go.” At last he finally faced the final hurdle.
Mercy’s usual quick understanding caught the frustration in his voice one day while he raised various objections. Suddenly she burst out, “By the way, if you’re worrying about Mandy, don’t. I asked Mother and Daddy a week ago if we could have her in case you ever decided to teach somewhere else. Mother clasped her hands and looked like I’d offered her a good-sized chunk of heaven.”
Mercy mimicked Caroline perfectly. “‘Having Mandy here would mean free time for me to read and maybe even gad a bit, especially now that Mercy has been working with her. I could turn the housework and cooking over to them and be a lady of leisure.’”
“I wonder how Mandy would feel.” Carmichael dreaded even bringing it up with their faithful friend.
“Want me to find out?” Mercy offered. Her eyes narrowed and she tapped her lips with one finger.
“Would you? Can you, without giving anything away?”
“Just watch me.” She raised her voice and called, “Mandy, could you come in here for a moment, please?”
Carmichael held his breath wh
ile Mandy entered and perched on the chair Mercy indicated.
“Mandy, I can’t bear the thought of having to go home when Uncle Michael doesn’t need me any longer. We’ve had such fun and you’ve taught me so much.”
Her wistful voice and eyes told Carmichael how sincere Mercy really was and brought a wide smile to Mandy’s face. Mercy continued, twisting her handkerchief but keeping her blue gaze on Mandy. “Would you ever consider coming to live with us? I mean, if Uncle Michael didn’t need you anymore?”
Mandy solemnly stared at her then at Carmichael. “It’d be pure joy being with Miss Car’line and you, child.” She turned a longing look at the teasing girl. “I reckon if ever Master Michael takes him a wife he could spare me.”
A great load fell from Carmichael. He impulsively crossed the room, knelt at the old woman’s side, and took her worn hands in his. “Mandy, I’m not taking a wife, but I am seriously considering going away from Concord.”
“It’s a mighty good thing, Master Michael.” Mandy smiled when his mouth dropped open. “This place ain’t really home now that Master and Missus are gone to heaven. I been expecting this. Don’t you worry none over old Mandy.” She beamed at Mercy. “That child will warm my heart just as you did.”
A thought made Carmichael ask, “Suppose I got a home somewhere else, a long way off, maybe. Would you come, as far as Wyoming, maybe?”
Mandy considered for a long while. Then her lined face brightened. “I reckon it would depend on who needed me the most, you or Miss Car’line and this here child.”
“You know you’ll always be part of our family no matter what,” Mercy put in. She bounded over to hug Mandy. “We’ll have the best time. I can just hear mother singing praises when we take over her work so she can rest.”
With the final problem overcome, Carmichael succumbed to the lure of the West. He and Mercy decided that he should not tell Desert Rose who he was when he reached Antelope. “She’d think you raced out there posthaste and it might spoil everything,” Mercy wisely pointed out. She frowned then her face cleared. “I know. Tell her you’ll be traveling and to send her letters in care of me. No, that’s not so good. She might think Mercy Curtis is a rival.”
Wildflower Harvest: Includes Bonus Story of Desert Rose Page 17