Blessing

by Deborah Bedford

  “That’s how it works, all right.”

  Uley had put off leaving for as long as possible. She gathered Old Croppy’s reins and tugged the mule toward her. “Goodbye, Aaron,” she said with one backward glance. “I suppose I’ll see you around town.”

  My life’s been changed because of you. I’m not who I was before you kissed me. I’m trying to figure out what it is that God wants from me now.

  But she couldn’t say those things. She centered her attention on the furry pack animal, which was still resisting her. “Come on, mule. We’ve got mining to do.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Aunt Kate Fischer’s business at the boardinghouse doubled while Elizabeth Calderwood and Aaron Brown remained in her keeping. Elizabeth cheerfully carried plates to the men at every meal, setting the steaming food upon the table with a mitt while the fellows lining the pine benches watched her every move, like cats ready to pounce on a mouse.

  “Thank you, Miss Elizabeth,” they said, one after another.

  “Right pretty dress you’re wearin’, Miss Elizabeth.”

  “Nice-looking meal, Mrs. Calderwood.”

  “Pretty thing like you shouldn’t be workin’ in a boardinghouse, Miss Elizabeth. I’ve got enough gold to pay your keep. Wish you would let me.”

  She smiled at them all, graciously accepting their attentions, knowing full well they’d act the same way around any woman as long as her arms and legs were in the right place and she didn’t have two heads. She answered them kindly.

  Aaron stood inside the kitchen, up to his elbows in dishwater, listening to the miners wooing his sister. As he swished a rag over a plate, he decided Aunt Kate had no idea how much extra money she was pulling in with Beth serving out there. The place was packed morning, noon and night.

  Beth came back into the kitchen with a pile of dirty plates balanced precariously on one arm. As she turned to place them on the sideboard, he could see the white linen bow of her apron tied perkily at the back of her waist. She’d make some man a fine wife, he thought. She’d made Fred a fine wife. They’d been happy until Harris Olney started meddling in their lives. As she piled up the plates, they finished the conversation they’d started before Aunt Kate’s noon crowd had come in.

  “I don’t see why you’re askin’ me all these questions about women, Aaron.”

  “Because you know these things,” he told her, carefully polishing another plate and doing his best to look noncommittal. “I want to know what it means when a woman says she likes you to kiss her one minute and says she’s afraid of that kiss the next.”

  “It means she feels something for you in her heart, Aaron.” She stopped where she stood and tilted her head at him like a sparrow. “No woman likes to be kissed by somebody she doesn’t care about, Aaron. And often, when a girl starts caring for a fellow, it scares her a bit. Did a girl say she liked you to kiss her?”

  He nodded his head.

  “She said that it frightened her when you kissed her?”

  “Something like that.”

  Beth tucked a stray wisp of hair behind one ear and grinned at him. “You’ve done it, then, little brother. You’ve made some young gal fall for you. I’d like to meet her.”

  “It isn’t like that. You don’t need to meet her. Nothing can come of it.”

  “Did you leave a sweetheart behind in Fort Collins that I don’t know about?”

  “No.”

  “Well,” she said, filling three more plates and making ready to head back out the door to serve them. “It’s clear you’re sweet on somebody. Who is she, Aaron?”

  At that moment Aaron would have liked nothing better than to tell her about Uley Kirkland. But he’d made a solemn promise never to reveal Uley’s secret. “I can’t say.”

  “Why not?”

  “I just can’t.”

  She shook her head at her brother, teasing him. “I can’t stand here all morning and listen to a fellow pining about a love he can’t have. I’ve got to get these lunches out, or those hungry men’ll have my hide.”

  “They want your hide, all right,” Aaron said, “and it doesn’t have anything to do with lunch.”

  After she left, Aaron turned back to the dishwater. I promised to keep Uley’s secret all my life, he thought. That life may be over in four days. Or it may last another fifty years. How can I face any more months of feeling what I feel for Uley and not telling anyone?

  Even before the thought was completed, Beth, white-faced, came back through the door and leaned up against it as if to hold it shut.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “Olney just stepped in,” she said, her breath coming in short gasps. “Wants me to serve him some of Aunt Kate’s ‘possum.’ Doesn’t the good Lord know there’s only so much I can stand?”

  Aaron’s hands stilled in the water. “Don’t go out. I’ll take care of him.” He let go of the plate he was washing and turned to dry his hands.

  Beth stopped him with an upraised hand. “No,” she said vehemently.

  “It shouldn’t be a woman’s job to handle it. It should be mine. I’m your brother. I’ll protect your honor.”

  “You’ve done too much of that already. Do you know how sorry I am I got you involved in all this in the first place?” All the while they talked, she dished up a plate of barbecued goose, beans, carrots and corn bread. “I won’t give the people in this town another reason to convict you,” she said, pushing her way back out the door to the dining room. “He’s just here to eat. I ought to be able to handle putting a plate down in front of him.”

  The lunch rush was over. For a moment, as Aaron listened, all remained quiet in the room next door. He heard the other men leaving. Then he heard Harris Olney say, “Thank you, Beth. Looks like a mighty fine meal. Did you cook it?”

  “No,” she answered tersely. “Kate cooks. I just serve the plates.”

  “Fred used to say you were the best cook in the state of Colorado.”

  “It isn’t my place to cook here, Harris.” She turned her back and started toward the kitchen.

  “Surely you don’t think I came in here to eat this stupid goose filled with buckshot and covered with molasses,” Harris began. “I came in here to see you.”

  “Well, you’ve seen me.”

  “I want to do more than see you. I want to talk to you.”

  “You’re talking to me now. You’ve already gotten more words out of me than I care to emit.”

  “I want to know if you’re stayin’ in Tin Cup after Aaron hangs.”

  “I don’t see how I can stay here, Harris,” she said quietly, anger and hurt filling her eyes. “You’ve already personally done away with one man I loved, and now you’re tryin’ to do away with another. Just because you wear a star, you think you can do anything. I’m here to support Aaron, Harris. After it’s all over, I don’t want to be anywhere within two hundred miles of you.”

  When the marshal spoke again, his ire was palpable. “You’d do best to get rid of that attitude right now, Mrs. Elizabeth Calderwood. All you’ve got is Aaron’s word against mine.”

  “Aaron is my brother, Harris. He’s my own flesh and blood. I helped Mama bathe him when he was a baby. I know who I trust and who I don’t.”

  “Ever the vixen,” he said, leaning back and laughing much too heartily.

  “Stay away from me,” Beth said. “You’re the murderer, not Aaron. We both know that.”

  “Dawson Hayes isn’t coming to help your brother, Beth. I want you to know that.”

  She glared at him. “Why would you say that? What makes you think such a thing? Of course Dawson Hayes will come.”

  “Don’t you think he’d have been here by now if he was on his way?” Harris asked pompously. “I’m the marshal around here.” He toyed with his meal with his fork. “I make it my practice to know what’s going to happen in this county.”

  “You make it your practice to manipulate things.”

  His eyes locked with hers. When
he spoke again, it was in a seductive yet disdainful tone that thoroughly repulsed her. “I don’t want to see you disappointed on Saturday. It will be easier to face it now.”

  This was too much for Beth. How she hated Harris Olney. How she longed for the moment when she and Aaron could bring him to justice. For the first time, she understood Aaron’s fierce commitment to track Olney to the Western Slope.

  Father, forgive me for disliking this man as much as I do. “My brother could have killed you easily. But no. He had to do things right. He had to do it the hard way and bring you in. And look what he’s gotten for being fair.” She knew Harris well enough to recognize his discomfort. “I don’t know what you’re up to, Harris Olney, but you’re not going to get away with it.”

  Olney laid his napkin beside his plate and rose to go. “We’ll see about that, won’t we?” He looked down at her as if he were chastizing a child. “I suppose I’ll go somewhere else for my supper. Doesn’t seem like I’m welcome here.”

  Three days before Aaron Brown’s trial was set to resume, attorney John Kincaid sifted through the papers on his desk for the fifth time, doing his absolute best to find something, anything, that might break this case wide open.

  Things did not look good.

  Resolutely he pushed himself back from his desk and poked one arm into his suit coat sleeve. He finished with the other and did up the buttons. He had an appointment over at Santa Fe Moll’s place of an unusual sort, an appointment that couldn’t wait.

  He helped himself to a cheroot from the humidor on his desk, chomping it between his upper and lower bicuspids like a dog carrying meat away to be buried, then settled his fine derby hat at a jaunty angle atop his crown.

  If he could win it, this was the case that would make his career. This was the case that would have everyone calling for his expertise, criminal and law-abiding citizen alike.

  If, he reminded himself again, he could win it.

  The way things stood, he didn’t have much hope of that. But Kincaid knew how to fix things. He wasn’t going to rely on some old coot of a trapper who lived out with the Ute Indians. Nosiree, Bob. His law career was too important to leave to happenstance. It was time to take matters into his own hands.

  Kincaid swung onto his horse and made his way directly to Ongewach’s. He arched one booted leg over and off the saddle, slid down and jumped to the dirt. By the time he flipped the reins over the hitching rail, Santa Fe Moll was standing in the doorway waiting for him. “You’re late.”

  “I got tied up in business this morning,” he said, removing his derby.

  She didn’t move back from the doorway, but just stood there, clasping her emerald-green dressing gown around her. She took the cheroot from his teeth and kissed him full on the mouth.

  He grinned down at her with teeth as white as pearls. “I believe we’ve got business to attend to.”

  “Ah,” she said, laughing as the huge pine door swung shut behind them. “So it’s business now, is it?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Business before pleasure. However unfortunate that may be.”

  “Nothing’s unfortunate with you, John.”

  He took his cigar out of her hand and placed it back in his mouth. “I need to hire the services of one of your girls on Friday afternoon, Miss Moll.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “It isn’t for me, Moll. Don’t you worry. You know how I feel about you. There could never be anybody else.”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  “Answer one question for me, Moll. Has Aaron Brown ever been at your place?”

  She thought back. “No. I don’t think so.”

  “Has he ever come into Ongewach’s? Has he ever gotten close enough that we could place him here?”

  “Never more than to poke his head in the front door looking for somebody.”

  “I need somebody who’ll be willing to testify in Aaron Brown’s trial. Somebody who’ll be willing to say he’s been in. Someone willing to say she’s spent time with Brown.”

  “Pick your girl. I’m sure any of them would be happy to assist you, John.”

  “I’ve already picked. I want Wishbone Mabel. Of all your girls, I think she’ll have the most credibility on the witness stand.”

  “You tell her I said to do whatever you need. She’ll accommodate you.”

  “I’m going to need to talk to her for an hour or two this afternoon.”

  “Fine. She’ll keep track of the time. That’ll be two dollars an hour, for today and tomorrow, too.”

  “Moll? You going to charge me for putting Mabel on the stand?”

  “Of course I am.” She grinned. “Business is business, isn’t that what they say?”

  On Thursday, the seventeenth of May, the supply wagon came in.

  The crowd began to gather along Washington Avenue a good thirty minutes before Lester McClain and his mule team appeared through the trees. Shop owners locked their doors, discarded their aprons and waited outside for the arrival. Taking advantage of the crowd, Judge J. M. Murphy officially began his campaign for Gunnison County commissioner, lingering on the front steps of the town hall and shaking every hand. Harris Olney donned his best paisley vest, polished his marshal’s star and trotted his horse up and down Grand Avenue, telling everyone in no uncertain terms that he meant to keep order should anyone cause a ruckus.

  Contrary to her brave words about watched pots never boiling, Uley stood there, too, Old Croppy’s reins in her hands. She’d worked shaft eleven all morning, driving the broadax in characteristic splintering strokes. But as 2:00 p.m. had approached, she’d known she had to get to town. This marked the third half-day’s pay she’d forfeited during the past week, but it didn’t matter one whit to her. This afternoon would mean the difference between death and life to Aaron.

  She stood with the rest of the miners, waiting for this last-ditch possibility, waiting for one grizzly, toothless man, one rickety wagon and a team of mules.

  Lord, she prayed. This might be the last chance for Aaron. You’ve got to help him. Please.

  At precisely 2:45 p.m., a shout went up at the end of the street, and then the wagon appeared.

  “Yah, mule!” Lester McClain hollered as he snapped his whip into the air. “Get goin’! You mules are the slowest confounded animals I’ve ever had the misery of drivin’.” As the vehicle clattered up the lane toward her, Uley could see wooden crates, barrels and unbleached muslin bags teetering in the wagon bed.

  No man rode there except McClain.

  Murmurs began passing from one observer to another. “Don’t look like Lester’s bringing any passengers over today.”

  “Don’t see Dawson Hayes anywhere.”

  “There ain’t anybody else in that wagon.”

  “Maybe McClain’s got him hidden on the floor between the flour bags.”

  “I doubt that. A man couldn’t ride back there. He’d be hit in the head with a barrel by now.”

  Uley felt her knees want to buckle beneath her.

  He isn’t on the wagon, she thought. Dawson Hayes isn’t coming.

  As Uley’s hope abandoned her, it left nothing in its wake but sheer defeat. It was over, then. She had no way to stop Aaron from hanging.

  What are You doing, Father? Why won’t You save Aaron? She had to wonder, could it be God’s will for Aaron to be taken?

  “It’s a crying shame,” Old Ben Pearsall said from right beside her. “That Aaron Brown was such a nice young fellow.”

  “Best be searching town for strong hemp rope,” someone said. “We’ll need to trim the leaves off the big cottonwood, too. Looks like we’re in for a hanging Saturday morning.”

  Harris Olney didn’t say anything. He reared his horse, throwing clouds of dust into the air as McClain began to unload his latest consignments. Judge Murphy strode down the steps of the town hall and waved his hat at the crowd. “Citizens of Tin Cup!” he bellowed. “The court of law will be called to order tomorrow morning at nine. We will come togethe
r to mete out justice at that time.”

  Miners swarmed in every direction. Uley followed, not knowing where she was going, not caring. She had to find Aaron, had to seek him out and stand beside him. Where would he be? All of a sudden…as if it were predestined…she found herself nose to chest buttons with him, right in the middle of Grand Avenue.

  “Uley,” he said.

  “Aaron,” she said.

  John Kincaid sauntered up just then and tipped his derby at Aaron. “Well, sir,” he said, rather gravely. “I suppose we have our work cut out for us tomorrow.”

  “Yes,” Aaron said, his eyes remaining on Uley. “I suppose we do.”

  Everybody spied Aaron in the crowd at once.

  “Sorry, young fella,” Lesser Levy growled at him. “It’s been nice having you and that sister of yours around this town. We don’t often take to our criminals the way we’ve taken to you.”

  Ben Pearsall stood right behind Lesser Levy. “Best of luck in the trial tomorrow. I figure you’ll need it.”

  Aaron shook his hand. “Thanks, Ben.”

  Aunt Kate was next in line. “I was shore hopin’ to keep you and that Beth around a good long time.”

  One by one, the people of Tin Cup came and pumped his hand, telling him in small, uncertain ways that he’d earned their respect. They gathered around him—Pearsall and Aunt Kate, Levy and Kincaid, Alex Parent and George Willis—anxious to speak to him, somberly wishing him well, even as they bade him a solemn goodbye.

  Between Aaron and Uley, Old Croppy brayed and snorted at the air, shaking his ears and pawing as if in disdain of the entire proceeding.

  “You got the night off tonight,” Aunt Kate said. “I’m not gonna make you scrub greasy pans when you ought to be out enjoying your last bit of freedom.” They all knew that, if convicted, he would spend Friday night in jail. And come Saturday morning, he would see his last sunrise.

  “Thanks, Kate,” he said. “I’ll put it to good use.”

  Uley’s eyes locked on Aaron’s as he stood politely greeting people in the street. The fleeting expression on his face told her he was glad she’d stayed beside him. “Hello, Hank,” he said, shaking yet another hand. “Thank you, Charlie…Hello, Hollis…”