The knob turned twice more, and then fell silent. Heavy footsteps clumped across the porch and down the steps, and Cord pulled aside the window curtain to see a dark, bulky figure moving across the yard toward the barn. Tom Malloy.
He lifted his finger from the trigger and turned to find Eleanor at the top of the stairs, her revolver clutched in her hand.
“It was Tom,” he said quietly as he moved toward her. He lifted the gun out of her hand and checked the chamber. Empty. “Just what were you going to do with an unloaded revolver?”
“I—I didn’t know it was unloaded.” Her voice shook.
“What are you doing down here?” he asked.
“I heard you go down the stairs and I thought you might need help.”
He couldn’t help his low laugh. “Hot damn, Eleanor, I’m not so green that I’d check out a noise in the middle of the night without a loaded weapon in my hand. Besides, you can hardly lift that revolver of yours.”
“I know,” she said in a quavery voice, “but I can shoot it. You showed me how, with both hands and I—Oh, for heaven’s sake, Cord, why are we standing here arguing?”
Cord looked past her into the darkened kitchen. “Maybe because we’re both standing here in the middle of midnight dressed in not very much and we don’t know what else to do.”
She choked on a bubble of laughter. “I am wearing a good deal, as a matter of fact, a long nightgown that buttons up to my chin and has long sleeves.” Her eyes flicked downward. “You, however, are wearing only your drawers.”
He was silent for a full minute. “That nightgown is damn sheer.”
She laughed again. “I must say, your eyesight in the dark is very good.”
He couldn’t think of a darn thing to say to that, and then she fired off another barb. “Besides, I’ve seen men’s drawers many times before. Yours are not that unusual.”
He stifled a grin. Discussing each other’s nightwear seemed kind of crazy. “Next time you figure on helping me, make sure your revolver is loaded. And,” he added with a smile, “I don’t care what you’re wearing.”
That wasn’t exactly true, he acknowledged. He couldn’t help noticing that her filmy white nightgown was so sheer he could see every dip and curve of her body. Even worse, he was drinking in the sight like a thirsty man in the middle of the desert.
“Eleanor, go back to bed.”
Without a word she turned away. He followed her into the parlor and watched her climb the stairs and disappear behind her bedroom door.
And then he poured himself a double shot of whiskey and sat nursing it until the sky turned pink.
* * *
The next morning, Cord and Danny loaded six more bushels of ripe shiny apples into the wagon and drove them to Rose Cottage, Sarah Cloudman’s boardinghouse in town. Her husband, Rooney, helped lug them into the root cellar, where it was cool and dry, and then invited them to stay and share a fresh pot of coffee.
Sarah invited Danny inside to join her grandson, Mark, for milk and molasses cookies, then brought a tray with the coffeepot and two blue ceramic mugs and set it down on the wide porch railing for Rooney and Cord.
“Got somethin’ to show you,” Rooney said when Sarah and Danny disappeared into the house. He handed Cord a page from the Smoke River Lark-Sentinel.
THEFT RING SUSPECTED IN
TEXAS MURDERS
“Whaddya make of that, Winterman?”
Cord studied the gray-haired man for a long moment. “Suspected of stealing what?” he asked.
“Gold, I’d guess.”
“Funny thing to be reporting so far from Texas, don’t you think?”
Rooney’s bushy eyebrows rose. “Oh, that newspaper lady Jessamine Sanders is one smart cookie. She keeps up with most everything that goes on in the western half of the country and reports it in the Sentinel. Uses the telegraph, ya know. She sure doesn’t miss much.”
Cord accepted the mug of coffee Rooney filled. “You mind telling me why this caught your eye?”
The older man blew into his cup and gave Cord a steely-eyed perusal. “Well, now, I’ll tell ya. In the last six months, there’s only two new fellers come to town. One of them’s you, and the other’s Miz Malloy’s husband, Tom. Now, I know for a fact that Miss Eleanor ain’t payin’ you wages to work as her hired man.”
“That’s true, she isn’t paying me. I came to town dead broke and I’m gonna leave the same way.”
“How come? Now that she’s bringin’ in her apple harvest she could afford to pay her hired help.”
Cord leaned against the porch railing and studied Rooney for a long moment. “I’m not accepting any money from her. She needs it for herself and those kids of hers. And besides—”
“Besides,” Rooney interrupted with a twinkle in his blue eyes, “you’re in love with her.”
Cord dropped his coffee mug, which tumbled off the railing into the yellow rose bush. “Just how do you figure that?”
“Son, I watched you at Jensen’s dance a coupla weeks back. Now, in my time I’ve seen a hundred or so twosomes movin’ around a dance floor in each other’s arms, but I never saw one like you and Miss Eleanor. You’re so deep in love with her you couldn’t dance straight.”
“Guess there’s nothing sensible I can say to that.” Cord moved off the porch and busied himself fishing around in the rosebush to find his mug.
When he came back up the steps, Rooney sat grinning at him. “Brush the dirt outta yer cup and I’ll fill it up again.” He topped up his own mug and then pinned his keen eyes on Cord.
“Now, you tell me all about yerself, and I’ll just set here and listen.”
Cord talked for a quarter of an hour before Rooney raised a leathery hand to stop him. “That’s enough, Cord. I reckon there’s lots more, but it ain’t none of my business.”
Cord stared at him as a growing suspicion dawned on him. “Mr. Cloudman, are you thinking what I’m thinking about Tom Malloy?”
“Prob’ly. And call me Rooney.”
“I’m teaching Danny to shoot Eleanor’s revolver,” Cord said casually.
“Fine idea. Every young lad oughta know how to handle a gun. Last summer I taught Sarah’s grandson, Mark, how to fire my Walker Colt. Scared him silly. I told him I might not always be around to protect Sarah, and the kid fell to wailin’ like a scalped Indian.”
“I figure Danny’s gonna do the same,” Cord said. “Can’t be helped.”
“Aw, hell, life’s like that, ain’t it? Too much that can’t be helped.”
The two men exchanged a long look, and an hour later, after he and Rooney shared a firm handshake, Cord and Danny climbed onto the wagon bench and started down the street. Before they turned the corner, Cord looked back at Rooney Cloudman one final time.
The older man stood on the boardinghouse porch, a grin on his weathered face, and gave him a thumbs-up.
Cord focused on guiding the wagon down the road leading out of town and decided the time had come. “Next time we come to town I’m bringing your mother’s revolver, Dan. I’m gonna show you how to fire it.”
* * *
The following week Cord and Danny made another trip to town with a wagon load of apples, and this time Cord had sneaked Eleanor’s revolver into his waistband. After unloading half a dozen bushel baskets of apples at Ness’s mercantile, they walked across to the sheriff’s office for a quick visit.
Both jail cells were occupied. “Drunk and disorderly,” Rivera explained. “I ought to charge the Golden Partridge rent on Saturday night.”
So Danny thumbed through the sheriff’s newspaper while Cord inspected the wanted posters. He didn’t know whether he wanted to find a familiar face or not. Maybe not. He didn’t want to bring even more heartache for Eleanor, and with the apple harvest in full swing, she had
no energy for anything else.
Tom was still sleeping in the barn and grumbling loudly about it, but ever since Cord had installed not only a lock on the back door but a dead bolt on the front door, he’d paid Eleanor’s husband less attention at night. When Tom was out of sight, Cord tried to keep him out of mind.
Most nights Tom wasn’t even around. Often he rode off somewhere after supper, and sometimes he didn’t turn up for supper at all. And, Cord noted with increasing disgust, Tom never appeared in the apple orchard to help, even though he could sometimes hear Eleanor and her husband’s arguments about it when Eleanor thought no one was listening. Most of those arguments occurred after breakfast, far away from the house or behind the chicken house in the backyard.
Eleanor never prevailed. He thought about getting her a little derringer to slip in her apron pocket, but he knew she’d never carry it for fear of accidentally hurting one of the children. All the more reason, he thought as the empty wagon rattled out of town, why Danny should know how to handle Eleanor’s revolver.
He turned off on the road that led to the river, pulled to a stop in a grove of leafy cottonwoods and loosened the cinch on the gray gelding. Danny bobbed at his side.
“How come you do that, Cord? It’s a lot of botheration to get her cinch tightened up in the first place, so why do it twice?”
“We’re gonna be here awhile, son. So while we work, the horse gets to rest.” He walked the boy a good thirty yards away from the road and set an empty lima bean can on a flat rock with a wall of boulders behind it. Then he showed him how to hold the gun in both hands and take his time sighting down the barrel. “It’s gonna kick hard when you fire it, Danny. So if you have to fire more than once, let it settle down first, then take aim again.”
“Okay,” Danny breathed. He brought the revolver up, aimed and squeezed the trigger. The can flew off the rock and Danny did a little dance of triumph.
“Whooee, Cord, look what I did!”
Cord retrieved the can. “Looks like you put a hole right dead center. You shot the he—Heck out of that can, all right.” He replaced it on the rock. “Think you could do it again?”
“Sure. I never liked lima beans anyway,” the boy quipped.
Cord laughed, and after Danny’s next successful shot he recognized a potential marksman. After seven more accurate shots, the tin can was so torn up it would no longer stand upright.
The boy’s grin was so wide it showed all his teeth. “I learn fast, huh, Cord?”
“We’re not done yet.” He showed him how to clean the revolver, check to see whether it was loaded, and how to carry it in the waistband of his jeans. He knew Eleanor would never let her son have a proper holster. He also talked to him about how to decide when to use a firearm in the first place.
“Not all situations call for a gun. Most disagreements with folks aren’t important enough to risk a life for, but for those that are life-threatening, the rule is you don’t shoot unless you have to. Fire only to save your own life or somebody else’s.”
“Did your pa teach you all this stuff?”
Cord flinched. “No, he didn’t. If he had, I’d have grown up a lot smarter.”
“You ever kill anyone?”
God in heaven, where did that come from? “Yeah. I’m sorry to say I’ve killed a lot of someones in my life. Spent a lot of years regretting it.”
“Wish we’d brought another tin can so’s I could practice some more.”
“Next time we’ll bring two cans,” Cord promised. “What else don’t you like besides lima beans?”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Eleanor floured the chicken pieces and dropped them into the Dutch oven to brown, then started chopping up two onions and enough carrots for her stew. Ever since Cord and Danny had returned from town she couldn’t help the feeling that they were keeping something from her. But with supper to cook and bread dough to mix up and set to rise, she couldn’t worry about it now.
Her hired man and her son had rumbled through the gate, bringing the supplies she’d ordered and a bag of lemon drops for Molly, but when Cord and her son walked up on the porch she sensed something was different. Danny couldn’t seem to stop smiling, and then he refused to play jacks with his sister. “That’s sissy stuff,” he pronounced. And for the rest of the afternoon he swaggered self-importantly about the yard until Eleanor’s concern turned into genuine worry. What had gotten into her son?
Oh, Lordy, had Danny and Cord had a man-to-man talk about the facts of life?
Cord was acting different, too. Moody and silent and so thoughtful she wondered if there had been some trouble in town. But when she questioned him about it, he clammed up. It made her downright furious the way males stuck together.
At supper, the tension grew even thicker. Tom tramped in, impatient for his meal and short-spoken to the point of rudeness. He yelled at Molly when she accidentally slopped milk on the table, and when her blue eyes filled with tears he’d made it even worse. “Just like a girl,” he snarled. “Cryin’ over every little thing.”
At that, Eleanor’s backbone went rigid. Molly rarely cried about anything, even skinned knees, and Eleanor, who prided herself on her own stiff upper lip, could not recall the last time her daughter had shed tears.
“Tom,” she said in a firm voice, “do not discipline Molly by speaking sharply or saying something hurtful.”
“Oh, yeah? I’ll say whatever I damn please in my own house!”
That made Molly cry even harder.
Cord rose from the table, picked up his bowl of chicken stew and walked out onto the front porch. Then Danny hurriedly slurped down his milk and asked to be excused, followed by Molly. Both children made a beeline for the front porch.
Every bone in Eleanor’s body wanted to do the same thing. But she couldn’t.
“Tom, do you want more stew?”
“Nah. Tastes kinda paltry compared to steak.”
“I cannot afford steak, not until the apple harvest is finished.”
He leaned forward and planted both elbows on the table. “When will that be?”
The question surprised her. “Surely you remember farming the orchard before you went away? The harvest finishes in October. Sometimes as late as early November.”
“Oh, yeah. Guess I forgot. Ellie, how long is that hired man gonna stay around?”
“It depends.”
“Depends on what? What’re ya paying him, anyway?”
She hesitated. “I am not paying him until the end of the season. As for how long he stays, that depends on him.”
“Huh! What kind of hired man decides how long he’s gonna stay around and work?”
My kind of hired man. “Cord is his own man, Tom.”
Her husband shot to his feet. “Well, I’m gonna get rid of him.”
“Sit down, Tom,” she said quietly. “Cord does not work for you. Remember, this farm belongs to me now.”
She stood up, snatched up his half-eaten bowl of stew and stalked to the sink. The children had already added their dishes to the pan of hot soapy water; she added her own, then plunked in Tom’s plate and silverware and his coffee cup.”
“Guess supper’s over, huh?”
“Yes,” she said through gritted teeth. “Supper is most definitely over.”
He looked at her for a long time, as if deciding something. “It’s still light outside, Ellie. I’m gonna ride into town for...for a while.”
He tramped out the back door, and through the kitchen window she watched him cross the yard to the barn. A few minutes later that black horse of his galloped out the gate.
She walked out to the front porch, where Cord sat rocking in the swing. Molly was snuggled under one arm; Danny sat on his other side, fiddling with his jackknife.
“I’m washing up the
dishes, Cord. May I have your bowl?”
He handed it over, then nudged Danny. “Dan, you think you and Molly could wash up the dishes tonight? I’d like to talk to your mother.”
“Sure, Cord.” Danny grabbed the dish out of his mother’s grasp, and both children streaked through the front door. Eleanor sank down beside Cord, leaned her head back and closed her eyes.
He pushed the swing into motion. “Tired?”
“Not physically, no. Emotionally, I’m a wreck. And don’t ask why.”
Cord gave a short laugh. “I don’t need to ask why.”
She rocked in silence for some time. Their shoulders weren’t touching, but every nerve in his body was aware of her. She smelled good, like fresh bread and cinnamon, and her warmth made him want to roll his sleeves up higher so her bare skin would touch his.
“Eleanor, I need to tell you something.”
“Oh, not now, Cord. Let me enjoy being out here in peace and quiet just for a few minutes.”
His chest tightened. “It’s not about me. It’s about Tom.”
Her lids snapped open. “What about Tom?”
“I think I know why he was gone for so many years.”
She jolted upright so fast the swing jerked. “Why?”
He took his time answering. “I think he might have been in prison.”
“Prison!” She twisted toward him. “What on earth makes you say that?”
This was the part he’d struggled with, not how to tell her he suspected what he did, but why. He drew in a long breath.
“I’ve been watching him, Eleanor. The way he walks, the way he eats. Especially the way he eats. He kinda hunches over with both his arms around his plate.”
“I have noticed that, too. He never used to eat that way.”
“Prisoners eat that way to guard their food. It keeps someone else from snatching it away.”
“Prisoners? How on earth would you know—?” She broke off. “Oh, no. Oh, Cord, no.” Her voice sounded funny.
The Hired Man Page 18