[Dakotah Treasures 01] - Ruby

by Lauraine Snelling

  “Oh, I will, little girl, you can bet your corset I will.” The enmity glittering from Belle’s eyes made a shiver run up Ruby’s back as she stalked to the door.

  Little girl, eh? She shut the door carefully behind her, even though slamming it would have felt wonderfully refreshing. There was no way she would return to the kitchen in this frame of mind, so instead she made her way upstairs so she could stand in the open window and get some clean air.

  In front of the window she opened the letter from the bank and read it once, then again. Another demand for payment. And she’d promised Charlie they’d go to Dickinson tomorrow. Was there anywhere else her father owed money? Some inheritance this was.Would tearing up floorboards reveal the buksbom? The nerve of Belle. The rage that had burned so hotly previously flared again. She didn’t like it before, and she didn’t like it now.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  This place was driving her crazy. Belle had to go.

  “Ruby, can I help?” Opal pleaded with her sister. “I know Belle didn’t mean it.” She leaned against her sister’s arm. “She won’t have no”—Opal flinched and corrected her bad gram-mar—“ any place to go, least not here in Little Missouri.”

  “Did she send you up to plead her case?”

  “No. I just know you will be sad and worried about her and then Daisy gets worried about you and I get worried about Daisy and Charlie worries about all of us.”

  And Belle just blithely goes about whatever she wants without paying much attention to anyone else. Unless, of course, they get in her way. Yet Far was concerned about someone taking care of the girls. Did that include Belle, or did he realize she’d take care of herself, while the others couldn’t? One thing for sure, Belle didn’t want to do any of the work around Dove House. Unless one wanted to call dealing cards for hours every evening work. And while she was thinking about it, did she trust Belle to turn over the house portion of the evening’s hands? She thought about that for a moment. Did she have any real basis for her doubt, or was it because she wanted Belle gone on general principles?

  “What are you going to do?” Opal turned back from the window.

  Ruby sighed. While she’d never considered herself a sighing person, lately she caught herself doing so more and more. “Opal, I wish I knew.” She headed for the stairs. “What I do know is that Charlie and I are catching the train for Dickinson, and I better be ready. That train waits for no one.”

  “Not even the president of the United States?”

  “Well, maybe, but since he isn’t here . . .”

  “I wish I could go with you.”

  “Perhaps next time.”

  Opal followed her down the stairs. “Do you think Captain McHenry will come back from patrol one of these days? I sure would like to go riding again.”

  “Me too.” At least when she was riding, she hadn’t been thinking about Dove House. She’d been too busy trying not to fall off the horse. Besides, she wanted him back for Opal’s birthday in two days. Keeping the party a secret was getting harder by the day.

  “Good morning.” Cimarron came in through the back door. “You all need to go outside and see the sun setting the dewdrops to blazing. Some house sparrows are building a nest on the back porch, and Cat thinks they are going to provide her dinner. I explained to her that mice are her food, not birds.”

  “And she understood you?” Milly asked.

  “Most certainly. I promised her milk if she would come inside and leave the birds alone.” She glanced down, and sure enough, Cat sat at her feet, the tip of her tail twitching as if counting the seconds until the promise was fulfilled.

  Opal returned from the pantry with a saucer of milk, which she set on the floor at the back of the stove, out of the way of human feet. Cat did not like her tail stepped on. The last one to make that mistake wore claw marks on her ankle.

  The bell announcing a customer sent Milly out the door to the dining room, coffeepot in hand.

  Cimarron turned the bacon in a skillet on the stove. “Hard to believe, but I’m getting homesick for greeting the folks out there.”

  “But—”

  “I know, Daisy. One of the men will recognize me, so I’ll stay in back for a while longer, but still . . .”

  “Breakfast is nearly ready.” Daisy slid a platter into the oven.

  “What are we having?” Ruby asked.

  “Fried cornmeal mush is in the oven, bacon about done, eggs if anyone wants them, and warmed canned peaches.” Cimarron flipped bacon onto a platter.

  Milly hurried through the door. “Two orders including eggs.” She set two plates on a tray and, using a folded towel, took the platter from the oven and dished up several slices before setting the platter in the middle of the table. “There’s plenty more to be fried if we need it.” As soon as the eggs were flipped and then dished onto the plates, she backed out the door carrying the tray.

  Ruby watched as each of them took part in the meal preparation and serving, talking back and forth, laughing and doing whatever had to be done without anyone prompting them.

  What a difference from the early days. She filled her plate and sat down, mentally running through all she had to do before boarding the train. And that included packing an overnight bag.

  “With Charlie and me both gone, someone needs to make sure that any new guests are checked in properly.”

  “I will,” Daisy volunteered.

  “Milly and I’ll clean rooms today.” Opal took the chair next to her sister. “After we go fishing. We’ll serve fried fish for supper.”

  “You’ll stay away from the deep pools.”

  “Ruby.” Opal rolled her eyes. “You say that every time.”

  “If you’re going to be on the river, you have to learn to swim.”

  “Still too cold for that—give the river time to warm up some first.” Cimarron shivered for emphasis.

  “You can swim?”

  “Of course. My brothers—”

  “I know. Your brothers taught you.” Opal finished the sentence.

  “Actually they just threw me in the water, and I kinda taught myself. One of them yelled ‘Kick,’ and I did, and when I got out of that water, I went over and kicked him a good one.”

  “Then what happened?” Opal’s eyes were round as her plate.

  “They all laughed so hard one of them fell in the river backward. Nearly drowned.”

  “What did your mother say?”

  “Didn’t have no ma by then. She died birthing another baby.”

  “Oh.” Opal glanced at Ruby. “Same thing happened to my mor, but it was me who killed her.”

  “Opal Marie Torvald, you did not kill our mor.”

  “Then God did?”

  “No, not that either. Sometimes those things just happen. It’s part of life.”

  Ruby dropped her dirty dishes in the dishpan on the stove. When Milly came back through the door, Ruby motioned toward the table. “You eat, and I’ll go take care of our guests.”

  “Table two wants more coffee, and table one asked for another helping of fried mush.”

  Ruby filled the orders, greeted their three guests, and then headed back upstairs to pack. She changed into her red traveling costume, set her hat in place with a jeweled hatpin, and took her satchel back downstairs with her. She rubbed her midsection where it felt like bubbling mush. The thought of meeting with Mr. Davis, the manager at the bank in Dickinson, made her want to run farther down the river and hide behind the rocks so no one could find her. Just because her father had dealt with this man didn’t mean he would be helpful to her. She’d thought to include the letters from her father to prove who she was and a list of the changes she had made in Dove House.

  “Train coming,” Charlie announced.

  “I’ll be right there.” Ruby hugged Opal as if it might be the last time she saw her. “You behave now, you hear?”

  “Ruby.” Hurt looked back from Opal’s eyes.

  “I’m sorry, I know you work hard li
ke everyone else here.”

  “You could take me along.”

  “I’ll keep her out of trouble. Opal, perhaps this afternoon we can start on your piano lessons.” Cimarron stirred the pot of beans cooking on the stove.

  Ruby hugged Opal one last time. “All right, you two ready with your baskets?”

  Milly and Opal nodded, took up the food prepared to sell on the train, and followed her out the door.

  Once they were seated and the train was heading east, in order to ignore the knotting in her middle, Ruby turned to Charlie. “I have a question.”

  “Yes?”

  “How did you and my father get to Little Missouri?”

  “After we joined up on the gold strike, we stuck together ever since—Belle too. Per had a streak of good luck at the tables and decided to invest his money, and here we are.”

  “Didn’t you ever have a family?”

  Charlie looked out the window as if the waving prairie grass was the most intriguing sight he’d ever seen. He sighed and nodded. “Yeah, I had me a wife and a little boy.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Guess you would call Per and me wanderers at heart. I always thought I’d go back, but then . . .” He shrugged and shook his head. “Just better not to. She prob’ly got a different life and . . .”

  Ruby waited. What came over men to not go back? Per and Charlie and most likely many others. Bestemor had called it wanderlust.

  “Perhaps sometime you could write and see.”

  “Maybe.” He half shrugged. “Only Belle knows all this.”

  “I never share a confidence, Charlie.”

  “Thank you.”

  How can men just walk away from a family? Ruby shook her head slowly, the tip of her tongue worrying the back of her teeth.

  Myriads of other questions droned like pesky mosquitoes, but she kept them to herself and turned her thoughts back to the hotel. Now she wished she’d never asked him.

  “Do you think Belle has set the town against me and Dove House?”

  Charlie sucked at the gap between his front teeth, then shook his head. “Belle looks out for Belle, and I know she wanted Dove House for herself, thought it her right. But she’s not the sneaky kind. Leastways I don’t think . . .” He twitched his mustache, then smoothed it with one finger.

  Don’t think what? Patience had never been Ruby’s strength.

  “Dickinson.” The conductor swayed past. “Dickinson coming up.”

  Ruby wove her fingers together, then smoothed her gloves, sure the bank manager would throw her petitions right out the door and say that the funds they had worked so hard to collect would not be sufficient payment. She stepped off the train fighting to keep a smile on her mouth instead of a trembling frown. How had the money disappeared so quickly? But she knew where every dime had gone—into the refurbishing of the hotel.

  Charlie unloaded the remaining cases of whiskey and commandeered a dolly to deliver the cases back to the store. They had decided they would get a better price returning the liquor rather than selling it to Williams.

  “Do you want me to go with you, Ruby?”

  “Do you think that would be better?”

  “I believe so. I accompanied your father at times.”

  “Fine.” Amazing how the load lifted somewhat from her shoulders. If only she could get the knot out of her middle.

  Charlie held open the door of the Dickinson Bank to let her precede him. Together they approached a desk to the right of the doorway. A counter with two clerks behind green shades divided the bank down the middle.

  “We’re here to see Mr. Davis,” Charlie explained to the young man behind the desk.

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “Ah, no, but tell him Miss Torvald is here from Little Missouri.”

  The young man rose. “I’ll be right back.”

  Trying to ignore her teeming midsection, Ruby glanced around the room. Several men stood in line at the two windows where the clerks waited on them. One woman stood at a window quietly conversing with the cashier. Two plate-glass windows fronted the street where horses and wagons either lined the hitching posts or traveled the rutted road.

  “Mr. Davis will see you now.”

  Ruby smiled in response. At least she hoped it was a smile. The distance between a smile and a grimace was less than a dimple.

  “Good day, Miss Torvald.” A medium man stood behind a shiny oak desk. Medium was the only word she could think of. Medium height, medium weight, medium brown hair, and a medium face, other than a gold tooth that flashed when he smiled. He even wore all medium brown clothing—but for a gold watch fob. He came around from behind the desk and bowed slightly. “Ah, Miss Torvald. I am glad to meet you. I enjoyed doing business with your father and was most distressed to hear of his demise.”

  “Th—thank you, Mr. Davis.”

  “Please be seated.” He gestured to the chair in front of the desk and returned to his, clasping his hands on the desktop. “Now, how may I assist you?”

  “Since you already know that my father died, I am sure you have heard also that I am now the owner of Dove House. The bill you sent, demanding payment. . . ?”

  “Yes, it has been six months since I received a payment from your father.”

  “He was very ill.”

  “I see. Perhaps that is why . . .” He glanced at Charlie.

  “Yes, sir. I called on you the last few times. Per—Mr. Torvald asked me not to mention his illness.”

  “I see.”

  Ruby glanced at the man sitting beside her. Had they been concealing her father’s illness for a reason? And if so, why would they do that?

  “So, Miss Torvald, how is it that I may help you?” Mr. Davis clasped his hands on the desk in front of him and waited.

  Ruby thought of the money in her reticule. Would it be best to bring that out now to show her good faith? Had the temperature in the room really dropped enough degrees that she wanted to shiver? Far, how could you go and leave me like this?

  She mentally squared her shoulders and leaned forward slightly, again hoping that the motions on her face indicated a smile. “Since I am now the owner of Dove House, I would like to know the arrangements my father had with you. I’m sure he had hoped to have time to explain things to me, but since his death prevented that, I hoped you could tell me what I need to know.”

  “Certainly.” Mr. Davis proceeded to explain to her the dealings he had had with Per, from the initial deposit to the building transactions and on to the furnishing and operating expenses. “Your father had an open account that he paid quarterly and a savings account that now has a zero balance since we had to use that to pay for the last two quarters.” He glanced to Charlie. “Since Mr. Torvald had always kept his account current, I am sorry I had to write such a firm letter, but the bank cannot carry an account in arrears for long. You understand that.”

  Both Charlie and Ruby nodded.

  “So I am hoping you have sufficient funds to bring the note up to date.”

  At no point did a smile mar the man’s medium face.

  “I have some cash with me, but I would like to know the amount owed on the account.”

  Mr. Davis glanced down the page on the desk in front of him. “Six hundred two dollars and fifty-one cents.”

  Ruby closed her eyes and fought the nausea that threatened to choke her. Six hundred dollars. Where would she ever lay her hands on that kind of money? She met the gaze of the man behind the desk. “And how much of that is past due?”

  “One hundred eight dollars and twenty-six cents.”

  Ruby’s thoughts moved to her reticule, which held a grand total of eighty-five dollars, all her earthly wealth but for the ten-dollar gold piece she had sewn into the lining of her coat, as Mrs. Brandon had suggested. And if she paid it all to the bank it was unlikely that the general store would continue to sell them supplies. Was the money
they needed in the illusive buksbom, the box she’d dreamed about in her few sleeping hours?

  Had there been more money at Dove House, and if so, where had it gone?

  “Mr. Davis, how long has it been since you have visited Dove House?”

  His medium face adopted a tightening around the eyes and mouth. “I have never been to Dove House.” The inference shouted from between the words: As if I ever would. You think that I would deign to enter such a place?

  “Things have changed at Dove House. The saloon is now a dining establishment, and we have a cardroom open in the evenings or, if someone makes arrangements, in the afternoon.”

  “You are no longer serving liquor?”

  “That is correct.”

  “But that was your most viable asset.”

  “Yes, well, I cannot have my little sister living in a saloon, nor myself.”

  “And, ah, the other?” One eyebrow slightly raised and a bit of color showed above his stiff collar. He looked to Charlie.

  “As we said, things are different at Dove House. The. . . .the other is no longer.”

  All right, gentlemen. Ruby drew herself up a trifle straighter and planted her feet. “The girls, as you gentlemen”—she emphasized the word as if in doubt—“refer to the lovely young women, are now employed as maids and waitresses at my hotel. Because men with baser instincts, unlike yourself, of course, force innocent young women into that form of servitude, Dove House has acquired an unsavory reputation, which we must now put to rest.” She ungritted her teeth and smiled with no semblance of warmth. She could hear Charlie shifting in the seat beside her and realized the red on the man’s face in front of her had nothing to do with the red haze before her own eyes. “Pardon my frankness.”

  “Ah yes.” Mr. Davis studied the papers in front of him.

  Good, I’ve made you as uncomfortable as I am. She thought back to Mrs. Brandon. Would she have felt an urge to gloat? And was that the best way to handle this situation, or had she just fallen into the trap of speaking before thinking? Oh me. What am I to do? She waited, keeping the fidgets at bay only by relying on long years of training in deportment, thanks to first her mother, then Bestemor, and finally Mrs. Brandon, who had taught mostly by example. Ladies did not spout off and castigate gentlemen, and if they did, it was always done with grace and gentleness.