An Unexpected Redemption

by Davalynn Spencer

  Shifting the crate against one hip, she limped away.

  Cade would have a wild-horse fit the moment he learned she’d come home but not to the ranch. She disliked the prospect of squaring off with her big brother, but refused to let him plot her future. On the other hand, he had assisted her financially after Edward’s abandon—

  The remaining syllable came growling up from her chest much like the dog’s departing remark.

  It took great restraint to keep from glancing behind her. No need to see if Sheriff Wilson and his sidekick were watching her progress. She could feel his smirk, the lout.

  Give a man a gun and a badge and he thought he ruled the world.

  Dust danced around her shuffling steps and clung to her damp hem like a bad reputation. Who was she kidding? The residents of Olin Springs had memories like elephants. They didn’t need to witness her arrival to know that she’d returned. Alone. Without a husband. Tongues would wag faster than that yellow dog’s tail for a ham hock.

  She’d need a running iron to change the brand she’d acquired.

  ~

  The ornamental brackets and wide eaves of Mrs. Snowfield’s elegant home came into full view, exactly the sanctuary Elizabeth sought. Perhaps the elderly widow had someone to assist boarders with their belongings. Someone not prone to supposition and a flapping jaw.

  The Snowfield grounds took up a generous acre. In the morning’s fresh light, the mistress stood at her wrought-iron fence, leaning over the decorative spires as she craned her neck and dabbed her forehead with a hankie.

  Elizabeth was sweating like a lame pig.

  The gate swung open. “My dear Betsy, what happened? I heard the train arrive last night and when you didn’t come—and then the fire. Oh my lands, I was worried sick about you. And look at you. Let me help you with that box.”

  “It’s quite heavy. If you could open the front door for me, that would help.”

  As wispy and lithe as ever, Mrs. Snowfield fluttered up the veranda steps and held open the ornately carved door.

  Elizabeth made it to the oak staircase and set the crate on the second step before plopping down beside it.

  Her new landlady closed the door with purpose and turned, hands on her narrow hips. “My dear, you look as if you walked all the way from Denver and then helped fight the fire.”

  Just what Elizabeth needed—a reminder of her bedraggled appearance. She unpinned her hat and laid it atop the crate. “You’re half right.”

  “Let me get you some refreshment and then you can tell me what happened.” Whisking down the hallway, Mrs. Snowfield called over her shoulder, “Your room is on the second floor, first one to the right.”

  Clearly, there was no one to help guests with their belongings. But there was indoor plumbing and a bathing room. Elizabeth had confirmed that bit of rumor in her letters when making arrangements to board with Mrs. Snowfield. At a dollar per day, certain amenities were expected.

  A thick floral runner carpeted the stairs, and Elizabeth welcomed its cushion beneath her weary feet. Rather than share refreshment and information, she preferred to take a long nap and soaking bath, but the latter must wait until she had her trunk.

  At the open door to her room, she stopped with a gasp. The furnishings were as lovely as anything Denver had offered, though she’d not enjoyed the opulence of the Windsor Hotel. She set the crate and her hat on a writing desk at the curtained window, then tossed her ruined reticule onto the four-poster bed. The embodiment of her emotional state, it too, had come home in tatters.

  An in-laid rosewood bed table and washstand complemented an imposing wardrobe and dressing table. The elegantly carved mantelpiece bore keepsake boxes, cut-glass dishes, and painted figurines. The cheval mirror accentuated the grime clinging to her torn skirt, and she opened the wardrobe in search of a clothes brush. Lavender sachet wafted out, and she nearly burst into tears at the long-lost luxury.

  Matured by betrayal and thinned by the formerly unknown experience of true hunger, she counted on the residents of Olin Springs not recognizing her as the impulsive rancher’s daughter they’d once known. Not until she was employed, providing for herself, and no longer in need of her brother’s assistance.

  And her plan did not call for sitting mildly by and letting things work out.

  Pushing aside blue damask curtains, she lifted the window. A hesitant breeze replied, tainted by the smell of wet ash, but a clear view of the depot lay beyond the tree tops. Perhaps a mile or so in the hazy distance rose the nearest ridge, around which the railway curled.

  Exhaustion drew her to the bed, where she fell onto a matching damask counterpane and feather tick, judging by the absence of lumps and crunching husks. Just pure, downy comfort. Oh, to skip dinner and simply sleep…

  “Betsy, dear. Are you all right?”

  Waking with a start, she elbowed up. Betsy again.

  A gentler light filled the room, and her hostess stood in the doorway, concern bunching her dark brows. Oddly, those brows had not faded to match the cloud of white atop her head, and they accentuated the woman’s worry.

  “I must have dozed off.” Elizabeth threw her legs over the edge, embarrassed that her landlady saw she’d not taken time to remove her soiled clothing before flopping across the bed.

  “Well, yes, you did doze. It’s almost suppertime.” A forgiving smile. “But you must have needed it, I dare say. Come down when you’re ready and we’ll have a bite. It will be just the two of us this evening. Sheriff Wilson has a late meeting.”

  “Excuse me?” Surely Elizabeth had misheard.

  Mrs. Snowfield paused at the door. “The sheriff, dear. When he delivered your trunk, he said to go ahead without him.”

  Elizabeth choked, her raw throat burning as she coughed until she couldn’t breathe.

  Mrs. Snowfield rushed to the washstand, filled a tumbler with water from the pitcher, and handed it to her with a sharp slap on her back. “Goodness, child, whatever is the matter?”

  CHAPTER 2

  Garrett smacked his hat against the side of his leg, then slapped it onto his head and strode down the alley toward his office. That dark-haired gal owed him two bits for hauling her trunk to Snowfield’s. And he owed himself a bath, but the washbasin at the back of his office would have to do for now.

  He shed his shirt and took to his hair with a soap cake, dirtying the basin’s water to near black by the time he finished with his face, neck, and arms. A clean shirt, though worn, felt like the start of a new day, and he tossed the soiled one on a chair with his other trousers waiting on a trip to the laundry house.

  Why’d she have to be so all-fired uppity? He’d seen her in the bucket brigade last night, slinging water with the men, and had gone looking for her this morning. Too bad he didn’t find her before Pearl did. Things might have turned out different. Then again, maybe not. She was a snippy thing.

  And of course she’d holed up at Snowfield’s. With the hotel still smoldering, she didn’t have much choice.

  He grabbed the comb from his washstand and raked his wet hair back, then tucked in his shirt. He looked and felt considerably better. Better than Mrs. Elizabeth Beaumont had when she limped away from his offer to help, head high and that confounded crate as close as an infant. And he’d felt almost guilty lettin’ her haul it all the way by herself.

  His grandma had raised no heathen, but there was a limit to the abuse a man could take when he was trying to be gentlemanly.

  And there was probably a limit to the meals he’d enjoy now at Snowfield’s. As in few and far between without the new boarder’s vinegary attitude setting his teeth on edge. Snowfield’s beat Bozeman’s café six ways to Sunday when it came to laying a table.

  Hoss Bozeman had cooked for a trail boss before he opened his eatery, and it showed. Depending on the length of Mrs. Beaumont’s stay, good food might be scarce as rooms at the hotel.

  Garrett tethered Pearl to her picket out back, rubbed her ears, and went back inside leaving the
door open. Maybe he’d sleep in a cell tonight since Snowfield had one too many customers and he currently had none.

  He propped the front door back with a chair and a prayer for a draft. It’d been hot as blazes lately, a fact that had fed the flames at Olin Springs’ only hotel. Two ground-floor rooms survived, and one was the parlor. If it weren’t for Snowfield, he’d for sure be bunking in an airless cell.

  Catching a cool breeze at the jail was near impossible with the way it was built like a stockade and trussed up in the center of Main Street. Pearl grunted, and Garrett shot her a look down the narrow walkway fronting three cells. The dog would have been fine if not for that fandangled shiny bag on Elizabeth Beaumont’s wrist. Or was it Betsy? Snowfield had called her Betsy when he lugged the trunk in the back door and left it in the kitchen.

  He huffed. Didn’t matter what name she went by so long as she didn’t cross his path with that high-falutin’ attitude. She was entirely too kind to a man’s gaze. A regular misdirection, she was, and not one he intended to follow again.

  He pitied her husband.

  Pearl barked, a rare occurrence. Poor girl always had been partial to doodads, and Garrett couldn’t rightly blame her for running after one. But grabbing it while it was still attached to its owner? It irritated him to admit the woman was right. The recall of her ruined suit and general disarray graveled him further, as did a reluctant regret that he’d deliberately let her fall a second time. But her arrogant struggle for the crate was more than he could tolerate. It was as if she didn’t trust him.

  He took a handful of jerked beef from a bag in his desk drawer and walked back to Pearl. The bones she got from Snowfield’s table might be as few and far between as his suppers.

  After returning to his desk, he wrote out his thoughts on the hotel fire and categorized things he’d noticed, including the fact that the fire started on the second floor. Talk about forming a hose team had swirled as thick as the black smoke last night, and he’d been invited to an impromptu meeting this evening at the bank. Charles Harrison wanted to form a volunteer brigade. As the bank president, he had a vested interest. It wouldn’t be a bad idea, but first, they needed a hose and reel.

  An itch under Garrett’s collar said the meeting was also connected to another recent event. The arrival of Anthony Rochester, Esquire.

  Rochester’s store-front office butted up against the feed store, an odd combination. He’d hung a shingle out front, his name underscored with Attorney at Law. Nothing wrong with the law, though Garrett suspected that he and Rochester were on opposite sides of it. Something about the slicked-down man in his fancy striped suit smacked of a carpetbagger fixin’ to fleece the flock.

  Garrett shoved away from his desk, locked the front door, and went out the back. Good a time as any to make his rounds, look in on the hotel, and check with the express agent about a telegraph he expected from his old friend George Booth. Rochester claimed to hail from Kansas City, and if that was true, Booth would know.

  The Kansas lawman would also know why a big-city lawyer had set up shop in a small Front Range cow town.

  By late afternoon, Garrett’s stomach was huntin’ his backbone, and he figured Bozeman could run a decoy. Beans and beef satisfied his hunger but not his taste buds. They sorely missed Maggie Snowfield’s table. For a fella not yet thirty, he was gettin’ mighty soft.

  The old trail cook had wrapped up a soup bone for Pearl, and back at the jail, Garrett dropped it in the chipped wash basin she ate from. She licked her jowls and looked up at him with obvious affection, as if he’d just given her a four-bit steak.

  At his desk, he leaned back, crossed his boots on the blotter, and settled in for an hour. The Regulator on his wall ran five minutes fast. When it chimed, he’d have time to get to the bank by six and then some.

  He pulled his hat down over his eyes and folded his arms, chasing a contradiction that darted in and out like a worrisome horsefly. It tempted his self-control near like that sparkly bag had tempted Pearl.

  He had looked twice, and then he’d looked again just to make sure. And the evidence had been the same each time.

  Mrs. Elizabeth Beaumont wore no wedding ring.

  ~

  Somewhat refreshed after washing and changing out of her ruined suit, Elizabeth had also recovered from coughing up her lungs at Mrs. Snowfield’s casual announcement. The news of a certain fellow tenant rattled her to the bone, but she started for the stairs, grateful that she didn’t have to share a table with Laughing Eyes tonight.

  That dog probably lay at his feet and begged for scraps.

  A bitter snort escaped. Surely Mrs. Snowfield didn’t allow the creature on her premises, much less under her roof and table.

  It wouldn’t fit under her table.

  Not that Elizabeth disliked dogs in general. Fond memories of Blue and other ranch dogs over the years had been a comfort during her more depressing days in Denver. But she and Pearl had gotten off to a start nearly as bad as the animal’s breath.

  The savory aroma of roast beef hit her at the third step from the landing. She hadn’t had a home-cooked meal in more months than she cared to count, and the appetizing perfume squeezed her memory as well as her empty stomach. It smelled like supper at the ranch before Mama and Daddy’s accident.

  Stuffing the prickly recollection in a dark corner, she followed her nose to the dining room, where a linen-topped table awaited with only two place settings facing each other. Were there no other boarders?

  Sliced roast, freshly baked bread, and gravy served as centerpiece. A hand-painted china tea-pot boasted flowers similar to those on a black-lacquered Sholes & Glidden machine she’d once used, and a matching cream and sugar service stood nearby. All were delicate evidence of Mrs. Snowfield’s earlier life with her wealthy and now departed husband.

  Somehow, Elizabeth felt she’d come to sanctuary.

  Her hostess swept into the room with a cut-glass dish full of red jam.

  “Please, sit at either place, dear. We don’t stand on propriety here.”

  Elizabeth’s mouth watered. She chose the chair offering a view into the kitchen and immediately regretted it. Her trunk sat near a windowed door that led to what appeared to be a porch. Gratitude warred with her bruised hip.

  Mrs. Snowfield sat across the table and signaled her intentions with folded hands. “Shall we offer thanks?”

  Elizabeth held her tongue.

  “Dear heavenly Father, thank You for bringing Betsy home safely and for Sheriff Wilson’s kindness to deliver her trunk. And thank You for Your provision of this food. In our Lord’s name, amen.”

  Two out of three wasn’t bad. Elizabeth spread the linen napkin across her lap.

  “So tell me, Betsy, how was the train ride from Denver? I haven’t ridden the train in years. No need, you know. But I hear the cars are as nice now as any that Daniel and I rode in during our various travels.” She took a breath, picked up the platter of sliced meat, and offered it to Betsy.

  “About that, Mrs. Snowfield—”

  “Posh.” A slender hand swatted the air. “Call me Maggie, dear. Mrs. Snowfield sounds so stuffy, don’t you think? My word, I’ve known you all your life.”

  At that, the woman flashed a curious glance her way.

  Elizabeth took a generous helping of meat and a slice of warm bread, then reached for the rhubarb-currant jam. Tears pricked and she pulled back. Perhaps coming home during berry season had been a bad idea—ripe, as it was, with memories of hunting the precious jewels with her mother.

  Blinking rapidly, she held the napkin to her lips and gathered her emotions.

  Mrs.—Maggie—poured her a cup of chamomile tea and then one for herself. “Sugar or cream?”

  “No, thank you. Only with my morning coffee.” She sipped the hot tea, calmed by its comforting aroma. “If you insist that I call you Maggie, please, call me by my given name, Elizabeth.”

  Maggie stirred sugar into her cup, and the spoon chirped lightly against th
e saucer as she laid it aside. “As you wish, dear. But might an old woman satisfy her growing curiosity and ask why? Betsy fits you so well.”

  The dark brows stood guard over clear, blue eyes.

  Settling her cup in its delicate saucer, Elizabeth sighed. She needed an ally, and her old friend Sophie Price might never speak to her again once she learned that Elizabeth had come home without letting her know.

  But the fewer people who knew, the better. The more time it would give her to get situated before contacting Cade.

  And she trusted Mrs. Sno— Maggie. Changing a familiar name might be harder than she thought.

  “Your letters asked only that I not tell anyone of your return.” Maggie forked off a piece of tender meat. “And I abided by your wishes.”

  “I do so appreciate it. It means more to me than you can know.”

  The woman glanced up without raising her head, as if to say, “Prove it.”

  Stalling for the right words, Elizabeth spooned jam onto the edge of her dinner plate. That’s where she’d start. At the edge.

  “Betsy was my childhood name. Since then, I’ve chosen to use Elizabeth. I’m a different person than I was.” She topped a corner of her bread with the ruby delicacy and bit it off along with the additional words screaming for escape.

  “It’s hard to come home again and not be remembered for who you were, dear.”

  Maggie’s quiet comment drifted gently across the table but found its mark with pointed precision.

  Elizabeth chewed it over and swallowed. “That’s just it. I can never again be who I was. Who I was before I left. I’m branded. I’ll always be seen as the ungrateful daughter who ran off with her beau after her parents’ funeral, leaving her brother alone to take care of the family ranch and explain to everyone how his good little sister went so terribly bad.”

  Maggie laid her fork down and pinned Elizabeth with hard, glaring judgment. “Anyone who thinks so should be horsewhipped.”

  Surprised by the elderly woman’s vehemence, Elizabeth struggled to regroup, but her throat pinched her words into a whisper. “It’s true.”