The Lady's Arrangement (Help Wanted)

by Colleen L. Donnelly

  I stared at the gray slivers jutting from my palm, then swiped my hand across my trousers, fixing every sting as a permanent recollection. I gave the barn one last glance, then turned to the mound of kindling and bundles of dried and broken switchgrass I’d brought, toted and stacked an armload at each of its sides. I sprinkled gunpowder on each pile, a little more than I had at the house. Enough to catch, and do the job quickly. I circled the building, bent at each heap, and struck the flint until it sparked. As the powder ignited, I stood back, watched each bundle sputter, its grasses wilting like lit fuses, orange heat traveling up their stems.

  The kindling began to glow, little flames climbing higher, but the barn stayed as it was—stubborn. It refused to catch. I ran a finger over the splinters in my palm. This building wanted to live forever. All of it, not just the little fragments under my skin. And it should. It was too striking to give in and die. I glanced back at the buckets. I could just let the house go, run around the barn and kick the burning kindling aside. I looked at what was left of our home, nothing more than a glowing frame in the waning light. Morrissey would keep his horse in this barn while he built a new house. I walked to each side of the barn, knelt, cupped my hands around the tiny flames, and blew.

  “Enjoy living in ashes and dirt, Morrissey. It’s far more than you deserve.”

  The barn caught and began to light up the sky, faster and brighter than the house had, turning our ranch into a beacon. Someone would surely notice. Another settler, even though far away, could spot a fire this size. Or maybe Morrissey, if he was around. He’d been lying low enough I hadn’t been able to find him. But if he was close, and foolish enough to come here and try to stop me, I’d be glad, and I would have him. Make him regret pretending to be a ranch manager so he could steal into my father’s funds. Morrissey would suffer. I’d make sure of it. Then I’d take him in. See that he hanged before I left for Kansas. The last place on earth I wanted to go.

  “I need you to go up north, to Kansas. A place called Liberal.”

  The orders from my boss, Jim Handling, rang in my head—up north, to Kansas. I marched toward the smokehouse. If it wasn’t for Jim’s edict, I wouldn’t be here now.

  I scooped up and dropped another bundle of grass and kindling at the corner of the small building. I sprinkled the pile with gunpowder, lit it, and waited for it to catch. It sputtered. I was going to have to kneel again. “Not funny, Ma.” I shot a glance at heaven, where the woman who had drilled repentance into me and Luke no doubt watched me drop to my knees with her little half-smile. I bent over the small flame, cupped my hands, and blew until it shot up close to my face. I rolled back on my haunches and watched it leap toward the broad surface of the smokehouse’s dried wood and begin to climb upward.

  The flame grew, creating an orange background to what I remembered from this afternoon. Jim, sitting at his desk, leaning back in his seat as I argued with what he’d said. “I have plenty of work here. I can’t go to Kansas.” I was looking not only for Matt Morrissey but also for a couple of other hoodlums who had swindled neighboring ranchers in the area out of all that was theirs.

  “Turns out the work here might be tied to something bigger. A ring of thieves, by the looks of it.” Jim leaned forward, stared up to where I planted myself at the opposite side of his desk. “Not just a couple of local crooks down here. Seems the same pattern’s going on up north. Ranch managers somehow able to foot loans, take advantage of the owners, ruin their finances, and send them off penniless. Or in a casket.”

  “Let Kansas handle them.” What I said was right, my kind of right, but not right for Jim. No one ever argued with him and won. He was the boss, his face a weathered roadmap of the work he’d done, proof of all he had accomplished in this section of Indian Territory, bringing it from a lawless piece of red dirt to a semi-civilized land. His way. A way that shaved a little off the edge of right to undo everything that was wrong. A way I always swore I’d never copy. Until today.

  “I’ll stay down here and catch this gang.” I crossed my arms.

  “There might be a main man somewhere. Maybe up there. Someone calling the shots, supporting these loans to floundering ranches. We need a man no one’s seen before to go up there and nose around without looking like the law. That someone has to be you.”

  “Has to be me? It can be anyone. You have a half dozen good men you could send.”

  Jim scooted a newspaper across his desk and tapped on a few lines of print he had circled.

  I read what he had drawn a ring around. More of his little bit of wrong to make a right. “No.” I shook my head, my voice sounding like I’d been gut-punched. “Nothing can make me do that.”

  And I’d meant it. The determination in what I’d said to him earlier today was still there as I backed away from my father’s burning smokehouse. But the circle Jim had drawn was even stronger, tighter, like a rope looped all the way around me. Jim’s staid expression and what he’d mandated turned everything inside me cold, even in the escalating heat. I slapped the back pocket of my trousers, tugged at the newspaper, the one Jim had shown me, until it came out. I tipped it toward the orange-and-yellow blaze, let the inferno illuminate the tiny print in Jim’s circle. I re-read the words. Words that had sealed my father’s ranch buildings’ fate.

  A gunshot exploded the air around me. Louder than Pop’s window panes, and far more deadly. I dropped low, hunched down in the dirt, crumpling the paper in one fist while my other hand went toward the pistol in my holster. The echoing ring of the explosion faded. I waited, but no other shot followed. I half crawled, half ran to the woodpile, logs I had cut for my father late last year. I pressed low against the base of the pile, more splinters scratching through the shirt at my back. I stared into the dark, trying to see or feel who had fired the shot, hoping it was too dark for them to see me. I stayed low and to the far side of the pile, listening, waiting for the next round of gunfire, or a horse riding into the barnyard. The nose end of someone else’s gun was never a place I liked to be, but I hoped it was Morrissey’s this time, if that’s where I ended up. I’d have him, if so. The land lay silent; the only sounds the protests of my family home, the buildings succumbing to the fires I had set.

  I glanced from where I crouched to the two buildings beyond me. The outhouse. And the shed with Ma’s and my buried relics. Those buildings wouldn’t mean much to Morrissey if I left them, but they meant everything to me. And Pop. And even to Luke. I studied the buildings’ faces, weathered boards lit up with the orange glow of what was to come. Gunfire or not, those had to burn too. Even, and especially, the shed. I tore the newspaper into thirds. “No disrespect, Mrs. Howard.” I stuffed one part, the part with what the widow had to say, into the woodpile. “Well, maybe just a tad of disrespect. No, make that a lot.” I scraped the flint and steel. The newspaper caught, sucking the flame deep into the dry logs, the fire devouring Jim’s ringed words.

  “Wanted: Husband to co-own a ranch immediately. Purely business arrangement, and will be well compensated. Able to take orders. Contact Mrs. R. Howard, Liberal, Kansas.”

  Another shot split the air. A warning, if it was one of Pop’s neighbors, a threat, if it was Morrissey. I hunkered even closer to the pile, snapped bark and twigs from the nearest logs, and fed them into the newspaper’s flickers until flames sprouted and began to lick up the woodpile. I scuttled around the dark side of the wood to the outhouse and dropped low against its side. The shot had come from the same direction as the first. One man. Closer. Near enough to take me, but not close enough to identify me. No one was going to drop or find me in the middle of what I knew had to be done. I stuffed another section of the paper that held the widow’s ad between two of the outhouse’s boards, struck the flint hard enough it popped like a tiny gunshot, and lit it. “Come on,” I whispered. Flames sprouted and devoured what was printed beneath the edict I hadn’t been able to argue my way out of, sending red hot heat through my craw and up the edge of the splintered wood.

 
; “You’re the only single man I have.” Jim’s explanation roared louder in my head than the crackling of the outhouse. It had silenced me the way one well-aimed bullet would stop me now. At least Jim hadn’t said what he could have—that I should have married years ago. Married Becky Landon. I’d meant to marry her. I’d wanted to. I just didn’t get it done like I should have. Now she was Becky Carson.

  But even not saying it, he and Mrs. Howard’s blasted ad had set me wondering again if Becky was the first or second woman I’d lost by my own doing, since I never knew my real Ma or what happened. That wondering had fired right up as I stood in front of Jim’s desk, praying he couldn’t see the gnawing stuck in my insides.

  “I’ll make sure Mrs. Howard ends up with her ranch,” he said, instead of what was worrying around in my head. “All you have to do is agree to the business arrangement until we catch the ring leader, if he’s there. Just don’t let her or anyone else know who you really are or what you’re doing. When you’re done, you can come back here.”

  Jim said everything was already arranged. Mrs. Howard was expecting me in five days. Five brief days that shortened the life of this ranch. Not enough time to find Morrissey so he could hang, not enough time for my family to have a chance of getting this place back, or for me to explain that burning it was the best thing to do under the circumstances. “You’ll be married right away.” Jim had said it the same way he gave any order: Here’s your job, go do it. Not giving me enough time to make it right or say it was wrong.

  “All she wants is a husband’s name so she can keep her ranch. Seems her husband left the ranch’s finances somewhat unclear when he died. Apparently died in some sort of accident. The bank doesn’t want to leave the operation in a woman’s name, even though she claims she’s quite capable of satisfying them, were they to give her enough time. All you have to do is marry her so she can show your name to the bank. And like I said, when you’ve done your part in trying to locate this thief, we’ll settle with her, sew it up tight as if she’s still married to the fake name I’m giving you, so she can keep the place.”

  Jim’s words, the thought of marrying some widow, jammed up my insides, turning them into ice. I glanced from where I crouched near the outhouse toward the shed, the last building still standing. I needed time. Enough to dig into the dirt in the back corner to get what had been hidden by the one woman who at least had wanted to stick around for me.

  “Stop right where you are, or I’ll shoot.”

  Tiny fissures snaked through the block of ice in my gut. I knew that voice as well as I knew my own. I heard the tremor in it, the sputter of a boy racing through smoke, the same childlike tone of my own voice earlier. He’d spotted an enemy burning down the family home, even if it wasn’t ours anymore. Luke. Why was he way out here instead of at the settlement, at the poor little house he and Pop were stuck in? Luke wouldn’t understand what I was doing, even if I let him know it was me. Not while the flames were hotter than hell itself, the violence of the destruction we’d suffered lighting up the sky. I dropped to the ground and rolled, rolled beyond the next shot my brother fired.

  “I said stop right there!” Luke’s voice was tight, full of smoke, full of horror. “Stand up and face me like a man!”

  Go home, Luke. Go away. I kept my head low and my face hidden, stayed to the dark as much as I could, crouched, and ran to the lone gum tree not far from the shed. Luke shot again. And missed again. Thank God Luke never was a good shot. Tomorrow Luke would report all of this to Jim. I’d be well on my way to Liberal by then. Too far away for anyone, especially Pop, to think it was me that had done this.

  I stayed tight against the tree, gauged the shed, the distance from me to it with Luke somewhere in between. I rubbed my palm, the one I thought would hurt more than anything else until I heard my half-brother’s voice, counting the steps to the corner where my stepmother would have last left that buried tin.

  “Come out from there like I said. Slow and easy.” Luke was near. Too near. The angst in his tone didn’t tell me whether he was shooting at a villain or at the brother he’d always envied.

  I dropped low and ran, ducked away from the fire’s glow, and headed to the safety of the dark.

  “Stop! I see you!”

  I heard Luke behind me. Not just his voice, but his boots, running in the dirt, his grunts of anger and breathlessness as he tried to keep up. I wouldn’t fall. I never did. Neither would I stay just out of his reach to make him a little better. This time I ran and ran hard, but so did he. Damn it, Little Brother, it’s too late to be a hero now. Where were you when Morrissey was robbing Pop blind? He shot again, wild as he ran, or maybe keener than I gave him credit for.

  He stopped after that. Suddenly. The night was silent except for the fiery destruction behind us, and my own breath and boots as I ran.

  “You won’t get away with this, you know.” He broke the silence and called from behind. I listened for “part-brother” as I ran. I didn’t like the way he stopped. I didn’t like how close that last shot actually came.

  It was just me now, Luke still standing somewhere back in the dark. I could imagine him watching and listening as I disappeared in the night, then going back to the ranch and standing in the inferno that had been our home until nothing was left but that shed. And my tin box beneath the ground. Luke would cry even though he was twenty-six years old—it was in his voice when he told me to stop, in the tremor that weakened his threats. He’d stand there and cry just like I wanted to, but never would. Like Pop.

  I slowed and glanced back. “I’m sorry, Little Brother.” Something else he wouldn’t accept or understand. I turned and ran the rest of the way to the pecan grove where my horse was tied—black as the night itself, but he and I always knew where the other was. Our trip to Kansas was going to be much faster than five days. Fast enough for me to disappear in case Luke thought it was me he saw. Fast enough to get done and get back as quick as I could.

  I gripped the reins, and once I hit the saddle I turned my horse toward what was left of the family home. “I’ll settle with you when I get back, Mr. Morrissey. You’ll pay for every tear my brother is spilling right now, and all the heartache you’ve caused my pop.” I tapped my horse’s sides with my heels and spun him hard to the left, leaving the blazing ranch behind. “And I’ll marry you, Mrs. Howard of Liberal, Kansas. But I sure don’t want to.”

  Chapter 2

  Shakespeare spoke of a deed without a name. I have a deed, somewhere. I need a name to make it mine. A man’s name, and nothing else. ~Regina

  Red curls fluttered across the front of my face, catching on my eyelashes and blocking what I could see of my son, of his rounded back as he knelt in the dirt. Twelve years old. My only child. And the reason the hard decisions I’d made had to be right.

  “Jess…” I looped the ringlets behind my ear. He wasn’t going to like what I had to say any better than I did. But it had to be said—now that we were down to two days.

  I watched Jess as he smoothed the ground around his knees with the flat of one hand, and stood quietly as his narrow back flattened, stretching to plow clumps and clods aside, scooping them off the mound he was kneeling on—his father’s grave, my husband’s. Flynn Howard’s.

  He straightened once the lumps had been cleared. Both of us stared at ground now cleaner than the dormant fields scattered around our ranch, Jess’s light brown hair, identical to Flynn’s, swinging into place over his forehead and ears. With one hand he traced the edges of the boards that made up his father’s marker, a simple wooden cross, unfortunately, all I could afford. I followed the course of his finger and read for the hundredth time in the three weeks since Flynn’s death the dates I’d had carved beneath his name. February 16, 1851 to March 30, 1887. Thirty-six years, altogether. Old enough to die, yet still too young. What Flynn wasn’t, was ready. And he hadn’t made Jess or me ready, either. I stared at the dirt in front of my feet and shook my head. Doggone you, Flynn.

  “Pa needs a
better marker.” Jess gripped the arms of the cross with both hands. “This one’s not good enough for him. You can barely read his name or the years he was alive. It’s like he’s more gone than he already is.” Long, thin arms stretched to the ends of the board, white showing on Jess’s knuckles—emotion crowning the dedication I was determined my son would keep.

  “We’ll get a better one. Soon.” Real soon.

  Jess held onto the marker I knew Flynn would be ashamed of. He certainly would have spent for something grander if he’d planned for this. I would have spent more for him myself, gladly, if he’d ever let me know where our money was and how he tended to it.

  “Ted said stone is better and lasts longer. He would help chisel Pa’s name in it, if I asked.”

  I stared at my husband’s name and thought of Ted Morgan and how quiet he had been the day we buried Flynn. Solemn, stolid, no expression or offer of support at all as he stood alongside me when they lowered my husband into the ground.

  There never would have been a Ted here on our place if Flynn hadn’t ignored my suggestions on how we could get our floundering ranch on its feet. Flynn’s own efforts had failed, and my suggestions weren’t what he wanted to hear, but when he stumbled onto Ted, he deemed it a stroke of good fortune and took him on as our ranch manager, swearing it was a miracle someone with Ted’s experience would consider a small spread like ours.

  Ted was compact and solid, slightly older than Flynn and me, and weathered in a way that bolstered Flynn’s confidence Ted was capable in spite of his missing left hand. Lost it in a roping accident, Ted had explained, keeping the arm mostly out of our view. I learned later he’d cut it off himself. It was lose a hand or lose his life. “I trust him just because of that,” Flynn told me when he related the story. Flynn had devoured Ted’s every word, confident that a man who was willing to sever something significant to hold onto something grander, was a man he could trust with his ranch.