“Thanks, I’d love some.” He sat down next to Chisholm.
“Well, we’d better get moving, Pa,” Hays said, pushing his chair back.
“All right, all right.” Their father clambered to his feet. “Let me get my hat.”
When he and Hays were out the door, Chisholm frowned at Crockett, his eyes troubled. “Pa looks awful.”
“I know. I don’t think he feels good lately.”
“He won’t admit it,” Caro said, “but I am sure you are right.” She set down her cup and smiled. “I am going to help Emma with some sewing, so I will leave you two alone.”
Chisholm laughed. “That’s hard to do in this house.” He slapped her backside playfully, and Caro’s eyes sparked. She leaned over and kissed him.
“You behave.”
He laughed again as she sashayed out of the room.
“Got yourself a wild mustang there,” Crockett said, reaching for a cookie.
“Don’t I know it. So.” Chisholm eyed him with speculation. “I heard about the fire. Hays says you’re spending a lot of time over at the Haymakers’.”
“They need a hand.” Crockett took a bite of the cookie and chewed the sweet, spicy confection.
“You going to join us in marital bliss anytime soon?”
Carefully, Crockett picked up his mug and sipped the hot coffee, then set it down. “What makes you say that?”
“You like Jane, don’t you?”
“She’s nice.”
“Yeah, but…”
“What?”
Chisholm smiled tightly and picked up his mug. “Nothing. Just … her pa.”
“Oh, yeah, Boyd’s something to consider.”
“I mean, having him for a father-in-law…”
“You’re gettin’ a bit hasty,” Crockett said and took another bite of cookie.
“Well, the year’s waning.”
Crockett eyed him keenly. “Why do you think Pa told us all to get married? Don’t you think that’s odd?”
“Sure, but it’s not the first odd thing Pa’s done. Bringing breeding stock over from Spain—everyone for miles around thought that was odd, when we’ve got so many cattle here to choose from. Pa spent a fortune on that. But it paid off.”
“So, what’s the payoff for us boys getting married all of a sudden?”
“For Pa? Don’t know. Peace of mind, maybe?” Chisholm ran a hand over several days’ growth of beard. “I know I need to shave, though.”
“Can you come to my room for a minute?” Crockett asked. “There’s something I want to ask you about.”
“Sure.”
Crockett drained his coffee mug and stood. He and Chisholm headed upstairs, passing Annie on the way.
“Glad you’re back, Chisholm,” she called over her shoulder with a smile.
“Thanks, sis.”
In his room, Crockett opened his bottom dresser drawer and took out an old biscuit tin. He opened it and fished among the fishing sinkers, odd coins, brass shell casings, and horseshoe nails to pull out the banknote Jane had entrusted to him.
“Here we go. What do you think of this?”
Chisholm frowned and took the bill so he could study it closely. “Where on earth did you get this?”
Crockett hesitated only a moment. “You can’t tell anyone, all right?”
Chisholm nodded.
“Jane gave it to me. She found it in a cave on their place, along with a whole lot more.”
“How much more?”
“A total of five hundred dollars.”
Chisholm whistled softly. “That’d make a big difference to the Haymakers about now.”
“I know,” Crockett said. “But they can’t spend it, can they?”
“Doubt it. Not in Texas, anyway. I don’t know if it’s still legal tender or not. Before the war it would have been, but…” He shook his head, looking at the creased twenty-dollar bill. “Did she say how it got there?”
“She didn’t know, but she was careful not to tell her pa. I don’t even think she told Ben. Just asked me to try to find out anything I could.”
Chisholm’s eyes took on a faraway look. “Well, the last I heard about any quantity of Louisiana Bank bills was when the chief ranger told me about the robbery at the State Treasury in ’65.”
“I remember that,” Crockett said.
“A lot of the stolen money was never recovered. Seventeen thousand was in coin, but there was also eight hundred in Louisiana banknotes.”
“You don’t say. And they never caught the robbers?”
Chisholm shook his head. “They shot one man that night, at the treasury building. The rest got away. But the Rangers were disbanded during the war, and the locals weren’t up to tracking them down.”
“What should I tell Jane? I mean, if Boyd knew about the money in the cave, this could implicate him in the robbery. And I don’t know who else would put it there. He’s owned that land at least twenty years, probably more.”
“I’ll ask one of the older Rangers.”
Crockett’s chest tightened as he imagined a posse storming the Haymaker ranch and Jane’s reaction. “You won’t tell them who has it, will you?”
“I’ll be discreet.”
“Thanks, brother. I might have known lazy old Boyd Haymaker was involved in something like that. But why didn’t he spend the money?”
Chisholm held up one hand. “Wait a second. We don’t know he was involved. Innocent until proven guilty, remember?”
“You’re right. I shouldn’t let my experience with Boyd color my thoughts on this money thing. But you should see him with his kids. He treats them like slaves. I wanted to paste him one this morning when he started ordering Jane around.”
“Take it easy,” Chisholm said. “I’ll see if I can find out anything before the house-raising tomorrow.”
Crockett shook his head. “You just got home. I don’t want to put you to work again already.”
“Maybe I’ll go to town in the morning and join you afterward at Boyd’s place.”
“That sounds good. Thanks.”
“And as to why he didn’t spend the money over the last nine years, if he knew about it, well, anyone local would probably get suspicious if he tried to spend a banknote like that.”
“True.” Crockett eyed him, trying to sort out the implications. “If you find that Boyd was in on the robbery and word gets out about it, feelings will run even stronger against the Haymakers.”
“I’m afraid there’s no turning back, now that you’ve showed this to me. It’s my duty to find out who put it in that cave.” Chisholm folded the bill.
Crockett wanted the truth to be found, but it made him uneasy to see Chisholm put the banknote into a pocket inside his vest. Would he have to decide whether he would turn against Jane and her family?
No, not Jane. He would have to separate the money from Jane in his mind. She had nothing to do with it. Even if her father stole it, he would not desert her. And if the whole town turned on Boyd, he wouldn’t let any of them badmouth Jane and Ben because of their father’s deeds.
Jane carried the sack into the barn and pulled out the dress. She brushed her hand across the smooth green material. The tucks on the bodice and the dark green buttons down the front were too pretty for words. She would have to try it on later and see if it needed altering, but the size looked about right.
The dress might be old and rejected by all of the Hart daughters-in-law, but it was far finer than anything she had ever owned. She had long since made over and worn out the three dresses her mother had left behind, and those much-mended garments had burned up along with the house. True, Annie had brought her a skirt, but it was plain and drab. She hadn’t even worn it yet, because trousers were better for the work she’d been doing this week.
Someone had added a petticoat to the sack. It looked fresh and crisp, and she didn’t think it had been in a trunk for eleven years, since Victoria died. One of the wives over at 7 Heart had sent it out of her own
wardrobe. For some reason, just knowing that brought tears to Jane’s eyes. She hadn’t cried when she saw the smoke rising or when she galloped into view and saw their house hopelessly engulfed in flames. She hadn’t cried when she and Ben found Ma’s china platter, blackened and cracked, in the rubble. But this—knowing someone truly cared about her loss. This touched a place deep inside her.
From outside, she heard Pa yell something. Noontime would be here in an hour or so. He probably wanted his dinner. She slipped the Bible inside the sack with the other things and hung it on a nail near the bridles. When she came out, her father appeared to be sleeping in the grass near the fence. She walked over and watched his chest rise and fall for a few seconds, just to be sure.
“What you lookin’ at?” he asked.
Jane snorted and turned away.
“Mealtime comin’,” her father said.
Ben had not returned to the logs, but was once more poking about in the ash pile where the house had been. They had hauled away a lot of the charred timber and sifted through the ashes over and over. Jane went to the makeshift cooking area she had set up and stoked the fire. When the blaze settled down to coals, she would cook something for lunch. She walked closer to Ben and stopped on the blackened grass.
“I think we’ve found everything useful that we’re going to.”
Ben leaned on the end of his hoe and gazed at her. “Probably. I’m just tired of peeling bark.”
“Me, too.” Jane looked toward the pasture. “I guess the stock is all right.”
He nodded. “Not much we can do for the cattle. I’m just glad they were all out when the fire started.” He swiveled his head and gazed at the debris. “Are you sure you don’t want the house in the same spot?”
“It would smell all the time if we built over the ash, don’t you think?”
“I suppose, if we didn’t dig it all out.”
“Well, we can’t do all that before tomorrow, and if we have the neighbors do it, it will take all day and we won’t get a house built. I don’t want to ask them to come back another day. One day is pushing it.”
“Maybe we should mark out the corners of where we want it, then. Where do you want your front door?”
She had already considered this and chosen a flat area beyond where the old house had stood. She walked to it and stood facing the lane that came in from the road. “Here, I guess.”
Ben came to her with a stick and a sledgehammer. He drove the stick into the ground right in front of her. “All right, you go start your beans or whatever you’re cooking. I’ll get some string and measure off where we think the corners ought to go. The Hart boys can help me make sure it’s straight when they get here.”
After Jane had dumped beans into the kettle, chopped up a turnip, and added some dried meat, she straightened.
“Make sure you put salt in,” her father called.
Her lips tightened. She rooted through her tin box of foodstuffs and took a pinch of salt from the small sack. When she had added it to the stew and stirred, she set the wooden spoon on a rock and walked to where Ben was working, out of earshot of their father, she hoped.
“Hey.”
Ben glanced up. “Can you hold the end of this string?”
She took it and said, “Pa sure is complaining a lot.”
“I reckon his burns hurt.” Ben frowned as he unwound several yards from the ball of string.
“It’s been five days, and I don’t think his burns were that serious to begin with.”
Ben shrugged. “Pa uses anything he can to get out of working. You know that.” He walked away from her backward, toward another stick he had pounded into the ground about ten yards away.
She had to admit it. Her father had always been lazy. It hurt to hear people say so, but they only spoke the truth.
“All right,” Ben said.
She let go of the string and walked toward him. “I think we’ll like the house here.”
“Yeah, we probably will.” He tied off the string and looked along what would be the front wall of their new home. “Those Harts are smart, and they’ll bring a lot of tools. We’ll make it square and true, Janie.”
She smiled. The new house was the one good thing that had come out of all this. Well, that and having all the neighbors come around and treat them nice. Ben’s mouth twisted in a scowl.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Sometimes I think we should go somewhere else and start over.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I dunno.”
“Yes, you do. Tell me.” She touched his shoulder, and his gaze met hers. Ben had the same green eyes she had, inherited from their mother, but today his looked troubled.
“When I was a kid, I hoped I could go to college someday. It was foolish of me, looking back.”
“No, it’s not. You’re plenty smart, Ben. You could do it.”
“That dream ended a long time ago. We could never pay for it. Now I just want to support you and me. That’s all I can think about anymore.”
She looked out at the view of the hills that never changed. Why couldn’t they have a normal family? Some families thrived, even if the mother died. Look at the Harts! They had the richest ranch in the whole valley. But GW Hart was a workhorse, and he expected his sons and the men he hired to work hard, too. Not Pa.
She looked at Ben. “No matter where we went, we’d have to take Pa with us. We couldn’t just leave him here on his own. And even if we did, his troubles would follow us.” Ben said nothing, but his face was set in grim lines.
“Ben, you won’t strike out on your own without telling me, will you?”
“I’ve thought of leaving,” he admitted. “But I’d tell you.”
Her stomach clenched. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea for Ben to go work for another rancher. That would keep him away from Pa’s influence, at least, but she didn’t know how she could manage both the livestock and Pa without Ben.
“Before I knew about the fire, I was going to ask Mr. Leonard if I could work for him all the time.”
“And stay at his ranch?”
“Yeah. I was seriously thinking about it. I could send my pay home, and I’d come visit once a month. You’d be better off, Janie.”
She didn’t know what to say. How would she go on without Ben here? “You—you won’t do anything sudden-like, will you?”
“No. Let’s get a new house built for you, and then we’ll sort it out.”
Chapter Five
Jane had no mirror, but she could tell when she put on her new dress in the morning that it fit her well. She had tried it on in the barn before sundown last night, after Pa headed for the cave with Ben. She’d told them she wanted to stay down here and use the daylight that was left to get her clothes ready. All she’d ended up doing was to turn up the hem a bit. The soft material hugged her in all the right spots, but not too tight. It swished when she walked.
She closed her eyes for a moment, imagining twirling to the sound of Hays Hart’s fiddle. Would Crockett ask her to dance?
Her eyes snapped open at the sound of wagon wheels. They were here so soon, and she hadn’t even made Pa’s breakfast. She yanked on the new shoes and hurried to the barn door, pushing back her hair.
Crockett and his brother Travis. She ought to have known the Hart clan would arrive first. They were driving the wagonload of lumber Crockett had promised. Two of their ranch hands rode atop the load. Crockett pulled the team to a stop, and the men jumped down.
“’Morning, Jane,” Crockett called. His eyes flickered as he observed her dress from top to bottom and back up again. He grinned. “You look fine. Where are we building?”
She stepped forward, blushing. “Uh, over there. ’Morning, Travis.”
Travis touched his hat brim. “’Morning. How’s your father?”
“He’s all right. My brother put up some stakes and string where he thought we should build, unless you think it should be otherwise.”
She
walked toward it, and the Hart brothers fell into step beside her.
“That looks good,” Crockett said. “Maybe kinda small?” He arched his dark eyebrows at her.
“It’s the same as the old house.” She smiled sheepishly. “I guess it was kinda small.”
Crockett laughed. “We’ll make it however you want it.”
Jane heard hoofbeats and looked toward the trail. “Here comes Ben now. He and Pa are just getting around.” Beyond Ben, she could see Pa slowly riding her horse down from the cave.
Ben jumped from his saddle and let his mount’s reins trail. “Howdy, Crockett. Dr.—Travis. Thanks for coming.”
Travis Hart grinned and stuck out his hand to shake Ben’s. “Morning, Ben. Now, don’t you start saying ‘Mr. Hart’ today, or you’re likely to get six or eight answers. Let’s us and the boys start unloading this lumber.”
Things happened fast after that—too fast for Jane to keep up. While the Harts and their men began unloading studs and beams under Ben’s uneasy direction, another wagon pulled in. Mr. Allen had brought a load of planks and siding boards, along with four hired men and his thirteen-year-old son, Billy. Mrs. Allen, her two girls, and their foreman’s wife followed in a buggy, bringing food. A few minutes later, three of the Hart boys’ wives rolled up with more food.
Jane took a deep breath and greeted the ladies, thanking them for coming and for contributing.
“That dress looks wonderful on you,” Annie said with a smile.
Self-consciously, Jane touched the buttons at the neck. “Do you think so?”
“I know so.”
Jane helped them set up a makeshift table using sawhorses and boards that would later go into the new house, and then they arranged the food. It kept coming as more families arrived—stewed beans, rolls, corn bread, sourdough, biscuits, roast beef, fried chicken, roast chicken, smoked ham, meat loaf, burritos, carrots, sweet potatoes, collard greens, succotash, and pickles. And pies. Jane lost count of the pies.
The Hart wives seemed to know what to do with it. In fact, Jane had the impression that all of them were used to large gatherings and entertaining in general. She tried to push down her shyness and smile the way Coralee and Annie did when other people spoke to them. Mostly, people smiled back, and she began to feel that they were actually glad to be here. Maybe they were happy to have a reason to neglect their own chores for once.
Seven Brides for Seven Texans Romance Collection Page 35