Billy blinked. “Dickinson County . . . along the Smoky Hill River?” he read aloud. “Why, that’s not too far from us! But—”
He thought better of finishing his reply when he saw how intense their expressions got.
“Land agent’s letter done told us the husband of that family passed on ’bout a year ago,” Reuben remarked. “He said the widow, she didn’t have the means to—”
“We sent ’em our money, just like it said!” Sedalia cut in, extremely agitated. “And now they’s tellin’ us nobody from this land office issued that certificate. That fella don’t know who got our money, but it weren’t him. And with winter comin’ on and Libby gonna have her baby any day now, and—”
“Mr. Billy, you look like you seen a ghost,” Reuben remarked.
Billy swallowed so hard his throat clicked. That pair of Kansas land agents, listed in tiny print at the bottom of the certificate, had names that did indeed resurrect faces from his past. A sick suspicion knotted his stomach. He looked again at the shabby wagon, the careworn furniture strewn in the street, and the awkward bulge of Libby’s belly—not to mention the crowd who was hanging on their every word.
It just didn’t set right. But he didn’t know enough details to paint these desperate folks the full picture—and he didn’t have the heart to disappoint them even more with half of Abilene watching. The mule whickered and stomped as Hank smeared salve on its wound.
“Why don’t you folks come on home with me?” Billy suggested quietly. He handed the certificate back, glad to be rid of it. “We’ll hitch your wagon to my horse and let your mule walk behind. Won’t take us half an hour to get there. You can rest and eat a decent meal, and we’ll get to the bottom of this.”
All three Negroes gazed at him, dumbfounded.
The man scratched his head, raising tufts of coarse, curly hair. “Now, why you wanna go do such a thing for—”
“You lookin’ for work, Reuben?” Billy asked, his heart pounding. “I’m guessin’ you’re no stranger to livestock and crop farmin’, and I know a man needin’ some good, honest help. And his new wife’s taken in more little kids than she’s got hands to grab ’em with,” he added with a glance at the two women. “Not sayin’ you’re hired. Not sayin’ you’ll wanna stay. But it might just be the answer to a lotta prayers, you know?”
After a few moments’ silence, the big man looked back at Sedalia. “I’m thinkin’we got nothin’to lose, goin’ with him.”
The woman replaced her bonnet at a jaunty angle, her face lighting up. “I never seen a redheaded angel before, but we sure got one watchin’ over us now! Can’t do no harm, can it?”
Billy grinned, suddenly ecstatic about the way this little adventure was working out. “Get your things together and I’ll be right back. Gotta talk to somebody before we head out.”
“And what was that all about?” Christine demanded before he was even inside the room. “My God, Billy, you could’ve been killed, leaping onto that crazy mule’s back as though—”
“But I wasn’t. And if I hadn’t helped ’em out, who would have?”
He closed the door so their voices wouldn’t carry out into the hallway. His sister’s hair glowed with the light from the sunset coming in the window. With a few slight exceptions, Christine was so much their mother’s image, it almost hurt him to look at her.
He could already guess her reaction, but her little dramas didn’t bother him anymore. His sister had her mission and he had his.
“I’ll be back for you tomorrow,” he told her. “I’m gonna take the Gates family to Mike and Mercy’s, to—”
“You’re what?”
“—clear up a little situation they’ve gotten into. And probably to hire Reuben on as a field hand, while the two ladies help Mercy with the children.”
Her brows arched and her eyes shone hard like green marbles, so he put his hat on before she could light into him again. “If you don’t wanna stay here by yourself, you’re welcome to come along. We’ll drive back into town tomorrow to see if you’ve got a telegram.”
Christine put her hands on her hips, and once again she looked for all the world like Mama. “Well, aren’t you getting to be the muckety-muck, presumptuous—”
“No, I’m the livestock manager for the new Triple M Ranch,” he said, grinning broadly as surprise overtook her face. “Just doin’ my job, scoutin’ for the help we need to run the place. Gettin’ paid top dollar for it, too. Now whadaya say to that?”
Chapter Six
“Say there! Might I have a few minutes of your time? If you could answer just a couple of questions—”
Billy paused on the hotel’s front stairs to look at the fellow addressing him so urgently. He was tall and skinny and pink as a pig’s belly, gripping a pencil and a tablet. “What kind of questions? I gotta be headin’ back home.”
“What possessed you to leap onto that runaway mule?” he exclaimed. “You went above and beyond the call for colored folks nobody’s seen before.”
“You oughtta be askin’ why nobody else jumped in to help ’em,” Billy replied cautiously. “Whatcha writin’ this down for?”
“Sam Parsons, local man reporting on the cattle drives for The Kansas City Times,” he said, sticking his hand out to shake Billy’s. “The way Reuben and Sedalia Gates tell it, you’re their guardian angel, Mr. Bristol. Certainly the man of the hour—a hero! Not only for stopping their mule, but for looking into the situation they encountered at the land office.”
Glancing toward the livery stable, he saw Reuben and Sedalia loading a box back onto their wagon while Libby stared blindly at the haunches of Billy’s horse, waiting. Sedalia’s cheerful wave suggested she had sent this reporter his way, so he relaxed a little. Judging from what Mr. Parsons had already scrawled, he’d gotten his story and just wanted a few choice details.
Billy shrugged. “Like I said, I didn’t do nothin’ out of the ordinary—”
“You surely realize those Texans who taunted this family believe Negroes belong back on plantations with their masters,” Parsons challenged. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he watched Billy’s reaction. “What possessed you to take their part when everyone else wants to drive them out of town?”
The question struck a nerve, so Billy considered his answer carefully. If he gave the wrong reply, maybe this man wouldn’t print his story in the paper back home.
And maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing.
“I know how it feels to be the outsider—the one who’s fallen on hard times through no fault of his own,” he said quietly. “If it weren’t for the kindness of strangers who took me in three years ago, who knows how I mighta ended up? This family needed help and I was able to give it. Their color has nothin’ to do with that.”
Billy almost ended it there, but figured this fellow might as well know where he stood on the skin issue. “Matter of fact,” he went on a little more boldly, “it was an old colored cook who took me under his wing when I lost most of my family to the Border Ruffians and other . . . outlaws, after the war.”
Parsons had stopped scribbling to stare at him. “Pardon my saying so, Mr. Bristol, but you seem awfully young to be so—”
“I know when to tend to my own business—which is more’n I can say for them cowboys,” he replied pointedly. “So if you’ll ’scuse me, Mr. Parsons, I’ll be goin’ now.”
As he headed toward the Gates family and their wagon, Billy wondered if he should make sure Mr. Parsons didn’t interview Christine. The last thing he needed was for her to run off at the mouth about those outlaws he’d mentioned—or the fact that he’d offered the Gates family jobs on the Triple M. Too many smoking coals had flared up already today without his sister fanning the flames.
“Well, Mr. Billy, you’re a hero for sure!” Sedalia crowed. “That reporter’s hot-footin’ it down the street like he’s gotta write his story now.”
Billy smiled at her enthusiasm, and at the way her outlook had improved. Mercy Malloy needed a helpe
r with energy and a sunny disposition—with enough patience to make Joel, Lily, and Solace behave themselves. Any woman who could keep her seat in a runaway wagon, and who dared slap her man with a bonnet after comforting her sick, upset companion, had the right qualifications for that.
“Better save your opinion till we talk to Mike and Mercy,” he suggested. Vaulting up into the seat beside Reuben, he smiled at the two women, who sat squeezed into the back with their load of ramshackle furniture. “Once we straighten out that land office situation, you might not want nothin’ to do with me.”
“Why, there’s a party goin’ on! And Lord a-mercy, ain’t that a pretty bride?” Sedalia piped up. “Surely this can’t be the place—”
“Yep, it is.”
Billy halted the wagon on the road. “I need to tell you somethin’ before you meet these people. That bride is Mercedes Malloy—we call her Mercy. Her first husband Judd died in an Indian attack last year. There’s a chance she’s the widow you was readin’ about in that land agent’s letter.”
He paused to let this information sink in, watching their dark faces. Meanwhile, Joel and Lily, who were chasing chickens near the corral, caught sight of them. Their squeals started the four dogs barking, and got everyone else’s attention as well.
“You tellin’ me our deed is for this Miz Malloy’s land?” the man beside him mused aloud.
“That’s what we need to find out. But let’s have us some weddin’ cake and get acquainted. Let the neighbors go home, ’fore we bring this up.”
Billy looked first at Reuben, then back at Sedalia. “I just want you to understand that Mercy had nothin’ to do with that ad or that certificate you got. She and Mike are joinin’ their land into the Triple M Ranch now, and none of it’s ever been for sale. Legally, leastaways.”
“Are you tellin’ me . . .” Sedalia’s smile sagged like a pricked balloon. “Lord a-mercy, I hope that don’t mean—”
“Billy! Billy!” Joel cried out as he ran toward them. His new jacket and pants were as dusty as his face, but there wasn’t a happier-looking little kid on the prairie. “Who that, Billy?”
Billy hopped down from the wagon to catch the little boy who leaped at him, laughing as Joel landed with a whump against his chest. Snowy and Spot, the border collies, circled him in their own show of welcome as little Lily toddled along at the end of this parade.
“Joel and Lily,” he said, “this is the Gates family, and they’ve come to see about workin’ for us. The man’s name is Reuben—”
“Happy to see you, Mr. Joel and Miss Lily,” he responded politely. “This here’s my wife, Sedalia, and my little sister, Liberty. We call ’er Libby.”
“Mighty glad to meetcha,” Sedalia added, her smile wide. “And who’s these fine collie-dogs? I betcha they’re your best friends, ain’t they?”
“Uh-huh! That one’s Spot,” Joel replied, pointing to the black dog with the white patch around one eye, “and that’s Snowy, ’cause she gots a white face. They’re Billy’s dogs, really, but me ’n’ Lily gets to play with ’em.”
“And ain’t you just the sweetest little doll-baby?”
Sedalia hopped lithely from the wagon, and—like everyone who saw Lily—crouched and held her arms open to the beautiful little girl.
Lily was all dressed up in pink, with a huge ribbon tied atop her curly blond hair. While she loved having new admirers, she wrapped one chubby arm around Billy’s leg as she peered at these strangers with her fingers in her mouth.
“Lily’s just a few months past her first birthday, best we can figure,” Billy explained. “Her daddy dropped her off on our doorstep with a note pinned to her dress, and that’s all we know about her. ’Cept that she’s spoiled rotten—ain’tcha?” he teased the little girl.
She gazed up at him with huge blue eyes and giggled. “No, Joel is!”
“No, you, Lily Stinkerpants!” the boy teased, leaning down in Billy’s arms to point repeatedly at her.
“I can see things is lively around here,” Sedalia remarked, and then she looked toward the house. “And here comes Mr. Malloy—and another baby on his shoulder!”
“Solace was born last spring, after her daddy got killed by them Indians. And Joel here lost his mama in a gunfight last May, so Mike brought him home—just like Mercy and Judd took in me and my older sister a few years back,” he went on. “We’re pieced together ’bout like one of Mercy’s patchwork quilts, but we get along good, mostly.”
Michael’s wide smile was one more reminder of why Billy would never set off across the country with his sister. Mike’s face was tanned from hours of field work, and his compact body bespoke the strength of a larger man. Billy had watched in awe when this man effortlessly drove a stagecoach across the plains at full speed, but Mike Malloy looked even stronger cradling a baby. Not many men took to children, but this one was a natural daddy.
“Hey there, folks!” he called out, but his grin was for Billy. “Glad you’re back, son. Didn’t know when we’d see you again.”
“I convinced Christine to send a telegram and wait for me in town,” he explained. “But meanwhile, I met Reuben and Sedalia and Libby Gates here, and they’re lookin’ for work.”
“And if this young fella hadn’t flung himself onto our runaway mule, we’d be lookin’ for St. Peter—or least-aways a good doctor,” Sedalia said as she rose to her full height. “Reuben, he was testy after the fella at the land office told him the certificate we got for our life savin’s was—”
“We’ll settle that later,” Reuben reminded his wife.
When he slid down from the wagon to approach Mike, he stood two heads taller and twice as broad across the shoulders. “I surely appreciate the way Mr. Billy brung us here to see ’bout hirin’ on. He didn’t say nothin’ about it bein’ your weddin’ day—”
“And congratulations to ya,” his wife said with a wide grin.
“—so we can just wait in the shade of them trees along the river—”
“You’ll do no such thing.” Mike gestured toward tables where food was set out. “We’ve got sliced ham, fried chicken, wedding cake—”
“And punkin pie, and pecan pie,” Billy added with a big grin, “ ’cause our cook, Asa, used to be a plantation chef in Atlanta.”
“Lord a-mercy, we come up from Georgia, too!”
Sedalia’s face shone as she surveyed the harvested wheat fields. “Mighty kind of ya, Mr. Malloy,” she said quietly. “I can’t help thinkin’ the Lord’s took us by the hand and led us here. We just had to come through that orneriness in town ’fore we could see the silver linin’ of the clouds, was all.”
She looked up at the slumped, silent girl who hadn’t shifted from her spot in the back of the overloaded wagon. “Libby, girl, we gonna get you somethin’ to eat and a place to rest yourself for awhile. You and that baby’s gonna be just fine now. Everythin’ about this place tells me so.”
“Poor Libby looks miserable, even though she’s sound asleep,” Mercy murmured. She’d changed from her wedding gown into everyday calico and joined them at the table in the front room. The Gates girl was now asleep in Mercy’s bed because the stairs to the guest rooms were too much for her.
Sedalia looked up from her plateful of Asa’s ham and yams and biscuits. “Poor child ain’t had a real bed for weeks. We’s guessin’ she’s gonna birth that baby any day now.”
The coffee-skinned woman let out a tired sigh. “Just so you folks understand, she ain’t never told us how she come to be in the family way—who done it to her, or when or where,” she said softly. “We tried ever’ way we know to get her to talk, but she’s been locked up inside herself since the day it happened.”
“She’s my little sister, and we take care of our own,” Reuben insisted. “But we promise y’all, she and the baby won’t be no trouble. Won’t keep us from doin’ our jobs, if you folks hire us on.”
“I would never think that way,” Mercy said as she filled her plate.
“And it ain
’t like she weren’t raised to know better,” Reuben continued. “ ’Bout how she shouldn’t cave in to temptation—”
“If she had a choice.” Sedalia glanced sadly at Mercy from across the table. “Libby ain’t but thirteen. Real smart when it comes to book learnin’, but not about the way menfolk has always looked at her. Plenty of ’em coulda helped theirselves and scared her—or shamed her—into keepin’ quiet.” Sedalia shuddered. “That’s one reason I’m so glad to leave where we was at, Miz Malloy. We heard tell of abandoned homesteads up here. Scraped together all we had, and thought the Good Lord was finally showin’ us the way to the Promised Land.”
She shook her head sadly, making her coarse, coiled braids shift against her scalp. “Couldn’t b’lieve my ears this mornin’ when that land agent shooed us out like a couple of pesky ole flies. Tellin’ us he didn’t know nothin’ ’bout our land! It was spelled right out, on that deed we got.”
Billy swallowed his last mouthful of pumpkin pie, drinking in these details. “Show ’em that certificate. They’ll have a better idea ’bout the location on it.”
Reuben reached into the back pocket of his denim pants and pulled out an envelope. As he handed it across the table to Michael, the paper trembled in that massive black hand—a hand that could crush the life out of any of them if Reuben’s temper flared. It was something they’d have to watch, judging from how this massive man acted when he got riled.
But seeing how this family’s hopes and dreams—and all their money—rode on what Mike found inside that envelope, Billy understood why Reuben Gates was upset. He’d felt that same awful helplessness when Mr. Massena, the banker in Missouri, had foreclosed on their home a few years back, turning them out without a speck of mercy or remorse.
Journey to Love (Angels of Mercy) Page 5