The Wyoming Debt

by April Hill

  The same Jack who’d promised to hunt her down like an animal if she ever tried to leave him.

  * * * *

  Her final week at the store had been worse than usual. The heat was oppressive, and under the relentless glare of the sun, the dry, baked wagon ruts that crisscrossed Big Dooley Creek’s only street had turned into drifts of dust. Gritty dust that swirled around her feet and rose up in choking clouds when it was disturbed, settling on her skin and clothing and clinging there until she scrubbed it off with hard yellow soap and the hottest water she could stand.

  On what Alex intended to be her final day at the store, however, two unusual things happened at the store. Mrs. Peppmueller, hugely pregnant with her eighth little Peppmueller, felt ill from the suffocating heat. With obvious reluctance, she had abandoned her usual rocking chair behind the sales counter, and waddled off up the street to the relative cool of her vine shaded front porch. Alex sighed with relief, grateful for the opportunity to help herself to the day’s profits without worrying about her always watchful employer’s whereabouts.

  The second unusual thing happened late that afternoon. After spending the last two hours doctoring the sales ledger to cover her most recent thefts, she was preparing to close, when a new customer came into the store. His last minute appearance was annoying, since she still needed to pack, but when the stranger asked if she could remain open for just a few minutes longer, she agreed. He had made the request politely, and even referred to her as ‘Ma’am,’ a rare occurrence in Big Dooley. Most of the store’s regular customers purchased only the bare necessities, and many of the men came in just to gawk at the pretty new sales clerk, hoping for a quick peek up her skirt while she was on the store’s rickety ladder to search for something on an upper shelf.

  This particular customer drew even greater interest when he made no rude or suggestive remarks, and didn’t try even once to glance down her dress. He was clean-shaven and tall–some inches over Jack’s six feet, with a slender, muscular build, deep blue eyes and dark brown hair.

  And he wasn’t chewing tobacco.

  He was, quite simply, the most attractive man she’d seen since Denver.

  When she offered to help him, he thanked her, but chose to wander around the store by himself, picking up an item here and there, then putting it down, again. Finally, when he seemed to have found what he wanted, he approached the counter with a small wooden box of marbles and a handful of brightly colored ribbons.

  “These are lovely, sir,” Alex remarked, touching a prettily striped blue ribbon. “I’m sure your wife will love them.” She paused for a moment and smiled up at him. “Or are they for someone else?”

  “My daughter,” the stranger replied. “She’s twelve, and kind of hard to buy for.”

  “Girls that age can be difficult,” Alex agreed, humming as she began wrapping the ribbons in brown paper. “Is she your only child?”

  He shook his head, and indicated the marbles. “No. The marbles are for my boy. He’s eight years old.”

  She smiled again, and wrapped the marbles, as well. While she was finishing, he selected a sack of penny candy, and handed it to her.

  “How much do I owe you, Miss? “ he asked, reaching into his pocket.

  When she gave him the total, the stranger paid her, thanked her again, and left the store. Alex sighed as she watched him untie his horse and walk away down the street, leading the animal behind him. For the first time since she arrived in Big Dooley, she felt a stab of regret about her coming departure.

  Moments later, she locked the front door, pulled down the big green shades in the front window, and began emptying the big brass cash register, stuffing the bills down the front of her dress and the change in her pocket. The horse she’d purchased two days ago was tied at the back of the store, already saddled. By tomorrow morning, when Mrs. Peppmueller opened the store and discovered the theft, Alex would be miles away, headed to the nearest railhead, and then to California.

  * * * *

  Will Cameron walked out of Peppmueller’s slightly disconcerted. He’d never known Arabella to hire a female sales clerk–sure as hell not like the pretty young woman who’d waited on him, today, with a fine, full figure, dove-gray eyes, and golden red highlights in her hair that caught the sunlight when she moved. As he untied Ben, Will swore under his breath. He was feeling a little annoyed with himself for having noticed so much about the woman. He’d come into town to order feed and wire, and it was his habit to take back a small treat for both children. Caleb, always ready with gift ideas, had asked for the new sack of marbles to replace the ones he’d lost trying to hit the pesky crows that ignored his scarecrows to feast with impunity in the cornfield. Hannah had been the difficult one, of course, and he could only hope that she’d get some use from the ribbons. She’d never even tried on the green calico dress he’d bought her on his last trip to town, and the little bottle of lavender water from the time before had finally gone rancid. Past twelve, now, she was still showing no sign of giving up her tomboyish ways, and scoffed at any suggestion that she was growing prettier every day.

  “No, I ain’t,” she’d protested, the last time he’d tried the compliment. “Ma was pretty, for sure, but I’m turnin’ out plain as some old mud fence, and you know it!” Will had flinched at her grammar, but decided not to comment. There was no school within riding distance of the cabin, and both Hannah and Caleb had lost a lot of ground in their lessons, without Maddie to prod them on, wielding a grammar book in one hand and a fresh-cut willow switch in the other.

  Will had been four years a widower, and four years without a woman, and until five minutes ago, he’d been all right with that. He’d simply put it out of his mind–or at the back of his mind, anyway. He had plenty to deal with, already, with the ranch, and the children, and keeping ahead of the bills. His memories of his wife were bittersweet, but good. It wasn’t that he tried not to think about Maddie, not consciously, anyway. But Will was a practical man, who’d learned that it hurt too much to think about the beloved wife he’d lost. That kind of pain got in the way of everything else that needed doing. Gideon had been after him for the last three years to start “looking around,” but Will had no interest in meeting another woman. Not yet.

  “Not yet!” Gideon had growled. “When, then? You ain’t an old geezer like me, yet, friend, but you’re gettin’ that way damn fast. You know as well as me that Maddie’d be the first one to kick your stubborn butt in that direction. She’d want you to get out there and find yourself a good woman. Not just for you, but for them kids of yours.”

  “The kids are doing just fine,” Will said, not really believing it.

  “Like hell they are,” Gideon argued. “They’re growin’ up wild and ignorant, like a couple of little varmints, and they’re startin’ to talk like me, and that ain’t a good thing. Besides all that, I ain’t seen Hannah in anything but your cut-down britches in longer’n I can remember, and Caleb’s startin’ to cuss like a Missouri muleskinner.”

  Will grinned. “An old Indian fighter like you ought to be able to handle one eight-year-old running his mouth to show off,” he said. “Maddie’d probably recommend that bar of yellow laundry soap over there by the sink.”

  Gideon snorted. “You always was an idiot about some things, Will Cameron. That ain’t what the boys needs. What he needs is a woman around to bring him up right, and to see he does his lessons. He needs himself a mother, damn it, and so does Hannah, even if she don’t admit it. She’s nothin’ but a sad little girl, tryin’ to fill Maddie’s shoes. In case you ain’t been payin’ attention, friend, she’s gonna be a woman grown before you know it. All them kids got is you and me, and most nights, both of us drag in here too dog-tired to do a thing but shovel down whatever Hannah’s put on the table, then drop down in bed with our boots still on. I love those younguns like my own, but I ain’t gonna live forever. I’m seventy-nine years old next month, and I’d like to go to my reward knowin’ they was being taken care of by a woma
n who cared about ‘em, and about you, as well.”

  Will wasn’t happy leaving the children alone at the cabin for this long, even with Gideon there, cabin, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. His horse, Ben, had thrown a shoe on the trip here, and Big Dooley’s only blacksmith was somewhere else–fifteen miles east, fixing a broken axle on the stage that was due tomorrow morning. There’d been few Indian signs lately, but he’d wanted to get back home as soon as possible. Still, if there should be trouble, there was no one he’d trust more than Gideon to watch out for things.

  Mountain man Gideon Copple and his wife, a Northern Cheyenne woman named Creek Woman, had raised Will and his sisters from the day they were orphaned in a flash flood, when Will was ten. Creek Woman had passed on fifteen years ago, and Gideon was getting on in years, too–closer to eighty than the seventy-five he usually admitted to–but he still spent his winters hunting and trapping in the high country. He was the best man with a weapon–gun, bow, or knife–that Will had ever known. The fact was, thanks to Gideon and Maddie, young Hannah was a better hand with a rifle or shotgun than most grown men, and at not quite eight, even Caleb could pick off a squirrel at fifty yards or so–if it didn’t move around too much. Maddie had seen to teaching them that skill, right along with their ABCs and their prayers.

  “I’ll not have my children come to harm just because they never learned which end of a firearm’s the business end,” she’d insisted, when Will suggested that a six-year-old girl might be too young to be handling an aging shotgun she could barely lift. “If I catch her messing with the damned thing when she shouldn’t, she’ll get herself a licking she won’t soon forget, but if the day comes she needs a weapon, I don’t want her ignorant of how to use it.”

  When Gideon sided with Maddie, the argument was pretty much settled. Hannah learned to shoot, and Caleb was barely toddling when Maddie showed him how to ring the big bell in the yard, summoning help if the cabin was in danger. Had Martha Humboldt Cameron survived the fire that burnt their first cabin to the ground, her son would have learned how to handle a shotgun as well as her daughter had. And as things turned out, Maddie had been right. Three years ago, when a young grizzly wandered into the yard and threatened her baby brother, nine-year-old Hannah had dragged the big shotgun from the double rack over the mantel and brought the marauding animal down by herself.

  The first roar of the ancient gun brought Will running from the barn just in time to see the wounded bear rear up on its haunches, bellowing with rage. Having already reloaded, Hannah was standing in the yard, and taking aim. Ignoring the displaced and severely bruised shoulder she’d suffered on her first shot, the little girl squinted coolly down the long blue barrel, let out a deep breath–exactly as Maddie had taught her–and slowly squeezed the trigger. The blast threw her backward, once again, onto the dirt, but the shot caught the bear squarely in the chest, bringing it down less than five feet from where little Caleb splashed happily in a mud puddle.

  And that’s what Gideon didn’t understand. Women like Maddie were rare. And Will wasn’t ready to settle for less.

  * * * *

  After Will had settled Ben in at the livery stable for the night, he walked down the street to find a place to stay for the night. Normally, given the accommodations available in Big Dooley, Will would have bedded down in the stall with his horse, but a storm was threatening, and the dirt floor of the livery stable would be three inches deep in muddy water and wet manure by morning. He settled on Delia’s, a small rooming house at the edge of town. Delia got twenty-five cents more for a bed than the Yellow Dog did, but the place was cleaner, and relatively free of vermin.

  The storm kept him awake most of the night, and as he lay there, unable to sleep, Will began thinking about Maddie again.

  Had anyone asked him, Will would have said that everything about Maddie, and about the years they’d shared, had been perfect. She was ten years younger than he was, barely sixteen when he married her. He’d been around some women during the war, but most of the women he’d been with weren’t the kind a man married. Will smiled sadly as he remembered, realizing that maybe they had been the kind, and that he’d just been too young and arrogant and full of himself to see it. One thing he’d figured out for himself, since then, was that just knowing a lot of women and then moving on doesn’t count for much when you got right down to it. Maddie was the only woman he’d ever loved, though, and she was all he needed. He’d always hoped, especially after she was gone, that Maddie felt the same way about him, but he’d never asked her the question, and that was something he regretted. He’d tried to be the best husband he knew how to be, and Maddie was as good a wife as any man could want. They’d had a fine life together, mostly, and what happened between them in bed at night made the bad things that sometimes did happen in the day seem unimportant.

  Like most men, Will had come to his wedding night not thinking much about whether Maddie was going to enjoy it or not. He was smart enough to know that most of the women he’d been to bed with weren’t really having as good a time as they put on, and he’d learned that two dollars could buy a man a lot of not necessarily sincere compliments on his performance. But Maddie had surprised him. She took to it like a duck to water, and she wasn’t the least bit shy about telling him what he was doing right in that department, and what he wasn’t.

  He’d never had cause to be truly angry with Maddie, except once, and that had been in their first year together. She’d left the tiny, half-finished cabin they were building to pick blackberries down by the creek, ignoring his warnings about the small parties of Sioux that had been seen hunting along the river. There’d been rumors of murder raids to the south, and both he and Gideon had cautioned her to stay close to the cabin, but she went anyway, determined to try her hand at a blackberry pie. When her berry picking was interrupted by a band of Sioux on the same errand, she hid in the bushes all night to avoid them. Will and Gideon had spent most of the night searching for her, and Will was half out of his mind with worry by the time she strolled back into the front yard, carrying two buckets of blackberries and nibbling at them while she walked.

  Gideon had come out of the house shaking his head. “None of my business, boy, but if that woman was mine to deal with, I’d take a razor strop to her backside, and make damned sure she couldn’t sit down on it for a week.”

  And possibly because he had been so frightened by the idea of losing her, Will had done just that. Maddie seemed surprised, but she didn’t fight much when he picked her up under one arm and carried her to the barn.

  “Are you about to do what I think you are?” she asked, her voice trembling just a little.

  “I’ve got no damned way of knowing what you’re thinking, right now,” Will replied grimly, dumping her facedown over a bale of hay. “And I don’t care, but what I’m about to do is whale the tar out of you.”

  Maddie nodded. “That’s what I figured. I reckon you want me bare, huh?”

  Will answered the question by tossing her mud-stained skirts up and yanking her worn drawers down to her knees. “You bet I do. And I want Gideon to hear every damn screech out of your mouth, too, all the way up at the cabin.”

  Maddie sighed. “Well, then, you’d best get to it, and get it done. We’ve both got chores to do.”

  Before that morning, Will had never raised his hand in real anger to any woman, and certainly not to the woman he loved more than any other human being in the world, and after it was over, he often wondered how he got through it, and how Maddie had, because after the first few blows, Maddie did start screeching at the top of her healthy young lungs. There was no razor strop in the barn, and Will wasn’t wearing a belt, but the barn was full of likely implements for his purpose–including a wooden box full of broken harness. Will pulled out a thick, foot-long length of stiff leather and ran his hands down it, checking for rips or metal studs. Later that night, in bed, he tried to explain to Maddie that while he’d been bound and determined to set her ass on fire a
s a lesson, he hadn’t really wanted to hurt her.

  “That’s about the dumbest thing I ever heard a man say,” Maddie replied, yawning. “Anyway, I hope you got it out of your system. I’m not real sure it’s a good thing to wallop me too often–now that I’m carrying a baby.”

  With that, she kissed him once, and fell asleep–on her stomach.

  “I had what you did to me that day coming,” Maddie told him, a few years later. “Every damned swat, and probably a lot more. It kind of surprised me, and I knew, even then, that if I’d asked you to stop, you would have.”

  “Then, why…?” Will began, bewildered.

  “Because it was the right thing to do, and you had what it took to do it, even when you didn’t especially like doing it. I’m not an easy woman, Will. I always think I’m right, and I can be downright bullheaded and stubborn.” She laughed softly at her own remark. “Well, I guess you figured all that out a long time, ago, but the thing of it is, I never liked being reined in, either, and that’s something I needed. I want you to know that I wouldn’t have laid there and taken a hard whipping like that from just any man. I’d have cracked him over the head with a frying pan, first. But I trusted you, then, and I still do, and I’ve never been sorry I did.”

  Maddie smiled. “But I wouldn’t let all that go to my head, if I were you,” she said. “If ever I do something dumb enough or ornery enough to earn another licking like I got that day, I’ll be the first to admit it. I’ll even bring you the razor strop, take down my own drawers, and not make a sound while you blister my backside. But that won’t happen. A woman knows when she’s grown up enough not to need another licking, and that day in the barn, I grew up.”