“Annie, I have to ask you—has Cooper ever tried anything like this before today?”
Her face blanched, but she shook her head.
“The day I asked him about renting the storeroom, I was pushed into his arms.”
Caleb said nothing, waiting for more.
“I went to the saloon to talk to him, but I went no farther than just inside the door. As I stood there, someone outside pushed the door from behind. I lost my balance and fell against him.”
She glanced at Cooper’s still form and shuddered.
“Did he hurt you then?” Revenge skirted Caleb’s thoughts, goading him to finish what he’d started with the scoundrel.
She shook her head again. “No. But I was humiliated. The way he looked at me—”
Again he encased her hand in his. “He’ll not try it again, I promise you. You were going to tell me something, something he said. What was it?”
Fresh tears formed against her lashes, and she wiped them away. “Today he said if I told Daddy, he’d kick us out of the mercantile.”
Caleb pulled air in through his nose as hate filled him. God help him, he wanted to do a lot more than just hate Jedediah Cooper.
“That won’t happen. I’ll be speaking with the magistrate as soon as your father returns, and I intend to tell him the whole story.”
“I’m so ashamed.” The chin that usually took every assault from a lofty perch drooped against her chest.
“No, Annie.” Gently, he tilted her face to meet his eyes. “You have nothing to be ashamed of. Nothing at all.”
He longed to tell her how he felt, but now wasn’t the time. She was too vulnerable. He’d wait.
Heavy footsteps fell across the threshold, and Daniel Whitaker’s voice boomed into the store. “Did you see me coming with this monstrosity and leave the door open?”
Whitaker held the cut end of a large evergreen as he dragged it through the door. Both Caleb and Annie rose to help him.
One look at Annie’s disheveled appearance and Daniel dropped the tree and reached for his daughter.
“Caleb Hutton!” he thundered.
“Daddy, it’s not what you think.” Annie threw her arms around her father’s waist. “He saved me, Daddy. He came just in time.”
A moan from the back room drew their attention to the man on the floor. Caleb bolted to Cooper and hefted him to his feet. Blood stained Cooper’s shirtfront and brocade vest, and he held his bound hands to his broken nose.
Caleb grabbed his arm and shoved him past the stove toward the store’s front. “Tell Whitaker what happened, Cooper, or I will.”
Red-faced and sputtering, the man’s eyes darted between Annie, her father and escape. Caleb stepped around him and soundly shut the door.
* * *
Annie stood with her arm linked through her father’s as they watched Caleb usher Jedediah Cooper, none too gently, to the magistrate’s office.
“Annie, girl, I never would have forgiven myself if that man had hurt you.”
She hugged his arm and looked into his guilt-reddened eyes. “I shouldn’t have gone to the saloon, Daddy. I should have listened to you. You were right.”
He pulled her into a fatherly embrace and cupped her head in his big hand. “I’ve been thinking too much about myself lately and not enough about you.”
Annie pulled away to look him in the eyes. “Nonsense, Daddy. You’ve been happy, and that has made me happy.”
Her father blushed and blustered and pulled Annie into a hug. “I’m just glad you’re all right.”
“Have you delivered Martha’s tree yet?”
“Don’t know that I’ll ever view a Christmas tree the same after today.”
Still shaken from the ordeal, she willed her nerves to calm and steadied her voice. Brushing aside her father’s comment, she reached for the aromatic tree that lay across their floor. “I’m not letting Jedediah Cooper spoil my Christmas and neither should you.”
If she quaked at every horrible thing that might have happened, she’d cower herself into an early grave.
She closed her eyes and pressed her face into the branches. “This smells so good. Help me set it in the window.”
“Let’s lean it against the wall. Turk showed me how to make a cross and nail it to the tree bottom so it’ll stand by itself. I’ve got an old box out back that I can bust up and use. Be right back.”
Her father stopped suddenly and pegged her with a warning. “You holler if anyone comes in, and I’ll be here in a flash.”
Her heart warmed at his protective nature, and she resisted the urge to follow him outside. “I’ll be fine, Daddy. Besides, I can just topple this blue spruce on anyone who is less than gentlemanly.”
He wagged his head as he headed for the back.
Annie’s thoughts wandered to her other protector. A shiver coursed through her body as she recalled the chilling anger in Caleb’s eyes when he’d found Cooper pinning her to the cot.
Held in two men’s arms in less than ten minutes time, yet each with such different intent. She shivered again at the taste of Cooper’s brutality, fingering her swollen lower lip.
Sighing, she leaned into the evergreen branches, imagining they were Caleb’s strong, protective arms. The thought fanned a fire in her belly as sure as the open flue pulled sparks from coal.
Thank You, Lord, for being my first protector. But thank You, too, for sending Caleb.
The back door shut, and her father stomped his feet before coming up front.
“It’s snowing.”
Annie turned toward the window. Penny-size flakes fell from the gray sky and settled on the boardwalk. Dry and crisp, they held their starry shapes instead of melting like the first snow back home in Omaha.
“Oh, Daddy, it’s beautiful.”
“It’s also cold,” he said, brushing the white dust from his shoulders. “Let’s get this tree set and I’ll stoke the fire. It’s going to be a cold one tonight.”
Grateful to be in the store and not the livery, Annie prayed that Caleb would be warm and dry in the box stall. Maybe she should take him another quilt. With the down from their Christmas goose, plus what she’d gathered at the river, she could start a feather cover for him. She would let Martha know, too, and maybe barter for enough down to finish one this winter.
Warmth flooded her neck. Such a thought for a single woman to have.
Her father laid the tree flat on the floor, held a squared wooden cross against the cut edge and positioned a large nail in the center.
With two swift hammer hits, he drove the nail head flush to the wood.
“Imagine,” she said. “A cross and nails at Christmas holding everything together.”
Caleb’s confession came to mind and sadness engulfed her. A bittersweet recognition that he must follow God’s leading—even if it took him away from Cañon City.
Away from her.
Her father raised the tree to stand straight and tall. Annie slipped an arm around his waist. “Thank you.”
“We’d better get some corn popping so you can start on a garland for the tree. If you’re feeling all right, Annie. Do you need to see the doctor?” he asked, his gaze falling to her bruised mouth.
“No, Daddy, I’m fine. I promise.”
She wasn’t as fine as she wanted to be and her lip stung where it had cut on her teeth. She still felt Cooper’s weight pressing her down, and if she could, she’d strip off the dress she wore and burn it in the stove. Burn away the memory of his sour breath and rough hands.
But right now she had to put on a good face for her father.
Just then, the bell clanged as the Smiths poured through the door, bundled and stomping and laughing. The children’s eyes glittered like Christmas candles when they saw the stately pine.
&nb
sp; “Oh, Mama. It smells so pretty. Can we have a tree?” Emmy Smith tugged at her mother’s skirt. “Can you buy one from Mr. Wicker for us?”
Louisa Smith laughed and knelt beside her daughter. “Where would we put a tree in our tiny cabin?”
Emmy’s lower lip quivered, and her blue eyes pooled with enough tears to set Annie’s father astir.
“I know just where you can get a tree for your home.” He threw an exaggerated wink at Springer, who stood behind his mother and sister, failing to hide the yearning in his own eyes.
“Just this morning I saw one that could sit on a tabletop. Just right for a pint like you.” He patted Emmy’s head, and she tucked her chin.
“I ain’t no pint.”
“You aren’t a pint,” Louisa corrected.
Emmy stomped her little foot. “That’s what I said.”
Annie stifled a laugh and moved behind the counter. Did she look like that when she stomped her foot?
Annie’s father drew something from his pocket and slipped it to Springer with a whisper and a nod. An oversize grin spread across the boy’s face, and he tugged his hat and addressed his mother. “I’ll be right back. Got an errand to run.”
“Hurry,” she said. “I want to be home in this storm, not out stuck somewhere in a snowdrift.” Louisa pegged Annie’s father with a merry frown that twitched her lips into a smile. “You’re going to spoil us all, Daniel Whitaker.”
Louisa shuttled Emmy to the table to look through a button box, then returned to the counter and lowered her voice. “I’d like to see your calico, please.”
Annie laid a sky-blue cloth on the counter. A dress for Emmy, no doubt. Aunt Harriet wouldn’t be fingering calico for a Christmas gift, nor would her sister, Edna. In fact, Edna was probably up to her ringlets in ruffles and lace planning the perfect dress for her spring wedding.
With no warning, Annie saw herself in a beautiful wedding dress with Caleb awaiting her in the church, but the startling image fled as suddenly as it had appeared.
“Annie?”
Roused from her daydream, she focused again on her customer. “I’m sorry. I was just thinking about...your cabin. You said you had a cabin. So you are out of the tent in time for winter?”
“Yes.” Louisa sighed with appreciation. “My William worked so hard to get it completed, and the Turk brothers helped, bless their souls. It’s not big, but it’s so much warmer with the fireplace and all.”
It didn’t take much for Annie to imagine herself at home in a small cabin with...
The bell over the door rang, and Emmy’s two small hands clapped her cheeks, her mouth a rosebud O.
Springer held a perfect little sapling in his hands. “Just right, don’t you think, Ma?”
Annie reached for a skein of red ribbon, snipped off a generous length and rolled and tucked it inside the Smiths’ package.
“For hanging the stars and gingerbread men,” she whispered to Louisa.
Annie watched the family hurry through the falling snow, wondering what it would be like to hurry home with Caleb.
Chapter 13
Caleb encouraged Cooper through the magistrate’s door and waited for Frank Warren to draw his long, lean body out of the chair by the woodstove. More cabin than jail, the room housed a cage in the back for holding offenders until the people’s court met to decide what to do with them.
A frown creased the magistrate’s brow as he gave the saloon owner a quick once-over, pausing on the man’s bloodstained brocade vest.
“I found him taking liberties at Whitaker’s Mercantile that were completely unacceptable.” Caleb tugged his hat down and stepped back, distancing himself from the scoundrel before giving into the urge for further action.
“And what were you doing at the mercantile, Cooper?” Warren folded his arms and sat on the edge of his desk.
“Can’t a man make a friendly call on the local shopkeeper?”
Caleb took a step forward and Warren stopped him with a glare.
“And that shopkeeper would be Daniel Whitaker?”
Cooper fussed and flustered and mumbled something about the Whitaker woman being excessively unfriendly.
Caleb didn’t know if he could control himself.
Warren ambled across the open space and escorted the bloodied saloon owner to the back corner. Cooper twisted in the magistrate’s grip. “I’ll see you pay for this,” he shouted at Caleb.
“Keep your threats to yourself, Cooper.” Warren locked the door and pocketed the key. Three long strides returned him to the stove’s warmth, where he lowered his voice. “Those liberties happen to involve a Miss Annie Whitaker?”
Caleb’s blood heated. “I figured murder was a hanging offense even this far west, so I brought him to you instead.”
Warren’s sweeping mustache quirked with apparent appreciation of Caleb’s self-restraint. “Court meets day after tomorrow. We’ll hold the old cuss here until then.”
Warren crossed the room, took a seat behind a broad oak desk and opened a ledger. “This isn’t the first report we’ve had of him taking a shine to the single womenfolk, but you’re the first witness we’ve had to the offense, other than the women themselves.”
“Will there be a trial?”
“More likely an informal hearing.” Warren’s gaze shifted from the ledger to Caleb’s reddened knuckles. “I take it you’re the one responsible for the bloodletting?”
“Yes, sir.” Caleb flexed his fingers, swollen now from the force of his fist coming to blows with Cooper’s nose.
“Any other witnesses?”
“Just myself and Ann—Miss Whitaker, but I saw to it that Cooper apologized to her father, who returned to the store not long after the incident.”
Warren grunted his approval. “Good. A confession. That will speed things right along. I’d just as soon get Cooper out of these parts, and this might do it. Time he sold to somebody respectable and moved on.”
He laid his pen down and leaned back in the squeaky chair. “In fact, I think I know someone who might be interested in buying the hotel and saloon. Give Cooper a stake to leave and clean up the town all at the same time.”
Caleb reset his hat. “I work at the livery. I’d appreciate a word about the hearing before it takes place.”
“Oh, you’ll hear,” Warren said. “Court meets in Cooper’s building, upstairs above the saloon. You might even be called on to testify.”
Caleb nodded his thanks and opened the door.
“Good timing,” Warren said.
Pausing, Caleb looked over his shoulder into the magistrate’s coal-chip eyes.
“Good thing you happened by the mercantile when you did.”
A tight throat and tighter chest prevented Caleb from speaking before he stepped onto the boardwalk and closed the door.
In spite of the drop in temperature, Caleb smoldered with the closest he’d ever come to righteous anger. Lord, vengeance is Yours, You say...
A sudden wind whipped down the street, swirling giant snowflakes into his face. He screwed his hat down, turned up his collar and shoved his hands into his pockets. He had to go check on Annie, to make sure she was all right and to let her know she need not worry about Jedediah Cooper, seeing as how he was now locked up.
After scouting both ways along Main Street, he bent his head against the wind and crossed the frozen roadway. A large evergreen filled the mercantile’s front window, and a dozen such trees from his childhood paraded across his memory. As he reached for the knob, the door flew open and his young friend Springer darted out with a miniature tree, his sister chasing close behind. Caleb stepped back and tugged his hat brim to Springer’s mother, who quickly followed, arms heaped high with wrapped bundles.
“Can I help you, Mrs. Smith?”
Ti
red but smiling blue eyes met his for a moment before latching on to running children. “Thank you, but I’ve got help aplenty—if I can just catch it.”
The woman dashed down the boardwalk as if a child herself. Springer had already tossed the tree into a nearby buckboard and was lifting his giggling sister in. He relieved his mother of her armload, then helped her to the seat before climbing in and gathering the reins.
The family scene clutched at Caleb’s heart. Would he ever know such blessings?
“Well, are you coming in or are you going to stand there until you look like a snowman?” Annie stood in the doorway with her hands on her hips.
He stomped his boots on the walk and stepped inside, wondering which he was more grateful for—the inviting warmth of the mercantile or the beautiful woman who worked there.
He slapped the snow from his hat and smiled into gold-flecked eyes. “Don’t mind if I do.”
She laid a hand on his sleeve when she caught sight of his knuckles. “Is your hand all right?”
The heat from her touch shot through him, and he struggled to speak for a moment. “No need to worry about me, Annie. It’s you I’m concerned about.”
Daniel tossed two coal chunks in the stove, shut the belly’s door and clapped black dust off his hands. “Looks like we’re about to have the first good storm of the season.”
Responsibility pulled Caleb’s attention to the windows. Snowfall had thickened in a matter of moments, and it covered the boardwalk with a downy blanket. From what he’d heard of Rocky Mountain blizzards, he should leave now for the livery and check the stock before the storm worsened.
“Surely you’ll stay and have a bite with us. Won’t you, Caleb? I’m sure my father is as eager as I am to hear what happened with the magistrate.”
A slight flush replaced Annie’s pallor, and he ached to pull her into his arms again. Torn between duty and desire, he chose the latter, convincing himself that a quick meal, hot cup and good company would give him the sustenance he’d need to weather the storm in a stable.
“Let me take your hat while you warm yourself at the stove. And I’ll have the stew heated in no time.”
The Cowboy Takes a Wife Page 13