by Beverly Long
“Let’s make our way, Bella. It’s going to be dark soon.” Aunt Freida took a step, pulling Bella along. “I suppose you’re probably pretty hungry. We’ll have an early supper.” She stopped and looked over her shoulder. “Jedidiah, why don’t you join us?”
The Sheriff let out a woof of air, sounding like he’d been sucker punched in the stomach. “Well . . . I . . . uh . . . ”
Earl Bean, the man she’d promptly christened String Bean after he’d introduced himself on the stage, stepped forward. He looked hopeful, sort of like her coworkers did when someone brought in donuts. “Freida,” String said, “I’d be much obliged to—”
Thomas Bean, the brother who’d been silent for most of the trip, started coughing like a three-pack a day smoker who’d swallowed a cigarette whole. When the poor man started turning red, Sheriff McNeil stepped up and slapped him sharply between the shoulder blades.
The coughing stopped and in the awkward silence afterward, when she’d been expecting to hear a thank you, she thought she heard Thomas whisper, “Jedidiah, please?”
“Jedidiah?” Freida prodded. “I ain’t got all day.”
The handsome sheriff looked from Aunt Freida to String and his gaze finally settled on Bella. “I’ll be right along,” he said.
His voice sounded strangled, as if he’d been the one coughing, and he didn’t look nearly as hopeful as String Bean had.
“Good,” Aunt Freida said. “Be there in thirty minutes. Come along, Girl.”
Bella managed a nod and hoped that it merely felt like her head was spinning and that it truly was not. She was finally here. After her father, Averil and she had discussed the plan, there’d been a whirlwind of activity. She’d called her boss and begged for a week off. When he’d demanded to know why, she’d claimed family emergency—after all, being cursed truly did qualify as an emergency.
By the time she’d hung up the telephone, Averil had twitched her own nose and whipped up some 1877-appropriate clothes as well as a case to put them in. The fact that her sister had resorted to magic had been the first evidence of how worried she was about Bella making the trip. The second had been the hug Bella had gotten before she’d left. She thought she was lucky that a rib hadn’t cracked.
As planned, her father’s magic had popped her into Shinoah—a town just twenty-five miles north of Mantosa. Her sudden arrival in an alley had taken two men, who were propped up against a wall, sharing a bottle of whiskey, by surprise. One of them had knocked his head back so hard that she’d worried he might have injured himself. The other had crossed himself, pushed the bottle toward his friend, and closed his eyes.
She’d turned, started walking, and finally managed to take a deep breath when she reached the corner and realized that neither one of them was following her. She’d managed to find the stage depot—not that hard in a one-road town—and she’d been on the stage when it left, headed for Mantosa. She’d been thankful for the petticoats that she’d initially scorned. Not only had they helped to keep her legs warm on the cold stage but they’d somewhat cushioned her now very sore rear end. These people could benefit from some padded seats or at the very least, some nice pillows, like those really great red ones she’d gotten at Crate & Barrel last week.
Damn. She already missed Crate & Barrel. And every other store along Michigan Avenue, the greatest shopping street in America outside of Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.
The Beans—Thomas, String, and Mother Bean—along with Mother Bean’s scowling companion, who, by the way, would all look ridiculous on either Michigan Avenue or Rodeo Drive, had already been in the stagecoach. She’d welcomed the body heat and had endured the long lingering stares of String. She’d mostly tuned out Mrs. Bean’s and Constance VanHopple’s endless chatter but she had sat up a little straighter while the Bean Brothers had explained the changes to the town since their mother had last visited five years before.
Now, as she let Aunt Freida lead her down the wooden sidewalk, she realized that Sheriff Jedidiah McNeil must be the son of J.W. McNeil, the man who’d been sheriff in Mantosa for twenty years before he’d suddenly died five years before. Mother Bean’s eyes had cooled at the mention of this J.W. and she’d made odd noises at the back of her throat. Thomas and String had assured their mother that the son was made of better cloth than the father had been.
Better cloth? She didn’t know about that but there was no arguing that Sheriff McNeil was very handsome and very sexy with his lean hips, his long legs, and his scuffed boots that seemed to scream I’m the real deal. He had nice thick hair, good teeth, and those incredible eyes. His looks were pure cashmere.
But she thought he perhaps carried out the duties of his office more like a polyester blend. When her father had come to town, Jedidiah had been in charge, responsible for the law and order. As far as she could tell, he’d done a damn poor job of it. She wondered if the sheriff had ever figured out what had happened in his town on December fifth, 1877.
When her father, Averil, and she had been debating the plan, her father had explained that he hadn’t wanted Toomay’s body found near the saloon. He hadn’t wanted anybody to connect the dead man with him. He’d quickly erased all memory of the event from Delilah’s mind, sent her on her way with several hundred dollars in her satchel, and arranged for Toomay’s body to be in a deep ditch, outside of town. And then he’d gotten on his horse and ridden out of town. And tried to forget. About Rantaan Toomay. About the curse. But he never had because in his soul, he’d known it was true.
Bella and her aunt passed an unpainted wood building with its door wide open. She looked inside and could see the sparks from a hearth and could hear the pounding of metal on metal. It smelled even worse than the time she’d ironed her rayon dress on high.
Next they crossed a wide alley. Then they breezed past the saloon, with its swinging doors and big glass windows. It looked like it had been plunked out of a movie set. Bella wanted desperately to stop, to acquaint herself with the place where her father had encountered the Bad Magic, but she didn’t know how to explain her sudden interest to her aunt.
Next to the saloon was Stroganhaufer’s Mercantile, which Aunt Freida waved a hand toward and said, “I’ll show you my store tomorrow.” They continued on and passed a bigger building, at least two stories, with nice windows and painted trim, that had a sign that proclaimed it the Mantosa Hotel.
She was glad she’d come a few days early. It would help her get the lay of the land. Her father, Averil, and she had agreed that she needed to be in Mantosa before Toomay showed up. He’d have no way of knowing that she wasn’t originally from the area, no reason not to trust her. Then, on December fifth, before he ever started playing that card game, she was going to lure him aside and do the deed. She patted the pocket that Averil had carefully sewed into her long skirt. She could feel the small, round cylinder that held the pain pills that Averil had gotten when she’d filled her prescription. Once she mixed the pills with a bottle of whiskey, Toomay wouldn’t know what hit him.
Her aunt pointed to a building across the street. “We’re headed that way,” she said.
The building looked like a big barn. Above the wide doorway, someone had nailed letters into the coarse wood. Livery. The Y had lost a nail and hung at an angle. The smell knocked her back when they entered. It was the throat-clogging scent of dirt, the eye-watering smell of what was probably horse poop, and then something a little sweeter. She figured that might be hay or straw or whatever it was that horses ate or slept on.
There were stalls around the perimeter, and horses in more than half of them. Several wagons were parked inside, too. One had two horses hitched up to it.
Directly in front of them, a man knelt next to a horse. He held one foot in his big hand and used the other hand to nail on a new shoe.
She hoped he did a better job with the horse than on his sign. Otherwise, the poor thing would be lopsided for the next month.
“Afternoon, Wymer,” Aunt Freida called out.
/> “Afternoon, Freida. I got your rig ready,” he said, nodding his head toward the wagon with the horse.
“Thank you. This is my niece, Mrs. Merribelle Wainwright.”
Wymer stood up and smiled, causing Bella to note that he was shorter than her and had very few teeth. Those he had were yellowed and stained brown at the edges. He looked to be somewhere between sixty and eighty years old. “Pleasure, Ma’am,” he said. “Good to see you made it safely.”
“Wymer runs the livery and handles all the mail and telegrams coming in and out of Mantosa,” Aunt Freida explained.
“It’s nice to meet you,” Bella said.
Freida motioned for Bella to climb up onto the wagon. It had a narrow wooden seat that looked just big enough for the two of them, with a ten-foot long flat-bed behind it. Bella resisted the urge to rub her sore butt.
Once they were situated, Aunt Freida grabbed the reins and the two horses, both brown with a hint of red in their shiny coats, took off. Once outside, Freida clicked her tongue and the horses picked up the pace, their hooves making a dull thud as they trotted down the hard-packed dirt road.
As they left town, the dirt road grew narrower and there were tall trees on both sides. She remembered just enough of her junior-high-school geography to know that eastern Kansas, where Mantosa was, was wooded, but the farther west a person went, the trees almost disappeared and the prairie became an endless stretch of land.
About ten minutes later, they turned into a lane that led to a small log cabin. Aunt Freida pulled on the reins and the horses stopped, giving Bella a chance to assess the building. It was perhaps forty feet long and it had two windows, one on each side of the wide door. It had a shingled roof and a tall chimney made out of large stones.
It was sort of charming.
Twenty feet to the right was a barn. It was twice the size of the cabin and constructed of wide, unpainted boards, so gray that they almost seemed to fade into the winter sky. It had a big door, that was closed, and no windows that Bella could see.
The cabin and the barn were surrounded by large trees that had lost their fall leaves. Long, barren branches stretched to the sky. One especially tall tree, near the barn, had a limb that was almost severed. There was just enough wind that it gently blew back and forth, scratching against the barn roof. It was a strangely rhythmic sound but it didn’t do much to put Bella at ease.
She’d never felt so completely isolated. Bella looked off to her right, then her left, but didn’t see any evidence of neighbors. Aunt Freida lived in the middle of freakin’ nowhere.
Evidently sensing Bella’s concern, Aunt Freida reached over and patted Bella’s knee. “I don’t like people sniffing up my butt,” she said.
Yes, well.
Aunt Freida’s horses apparently knew the drill. They pulled the wagon toward the barn and stood, their heads twitching in anticipation, as Aunt Freida got down. Once she’d slid open the big door, the horses pulled the wagon inside the dark building.
Bella couldn’t see much. But the smell was similar to the Livery, although not as strong. She heard the scratch of a match and suddenly the building was bathed in soft light. Her aunt stood next to the wagon, holding a lantern.
The building had a dirt floor and the roof had a high pitch which allowed for a second story loft. She could see bales of straw perched there. There was more straw scattered inside the two horse stalls as well as buckets of water and some sort of feed.
She managed to get off the wagon without snagging her long dress on anything and then stood at its side, feeling useless. It was like any other first day on the job. She didn’t know where to stand, what to do, and she was filled with a sudden desire to be anywhere else.
Aunt Freida hung the lantern on a wide post and then stood in front of the horses. “This here is Sunshine and this is Rain.” She patted the horses in turn and they tossed their heads in response. Bella wondered if they were twins—they looked exactly alike. Aunt Freida began to unhook the horses from the wagon. “Come on, Ladies,” she said.
Bella was amused. She’d been Girl but the horses evidently warranted a higher level of respect.
Once the horses were unhitched, Aunt Freida grabbed their halters and led them past a wooden bin filled with hay. It had wide slats, big enough for them to stick their heads into. They opened their mouths and tore off chunks of hay with their big yellowed teeth.
Then Aunt Freida picked up a small tool that was sitting on a shelf. She knelt down next to the horse closest to her and picked up his leg. She used the tool to pick out the rocks and dirt that had accumulated in the hoof. She repeated the action until all eight hooves had been cleaned, pausing only once when Rain or Sunshine, Bella wasn’t sure which, decided to poop.
She made a mental note never to bitch about having to put gas in her car again.
Her aunt led the horses to separate stalls and Bella heard the sounds of water getting slurped up by huge tongues. Finally, her aunt hung the lantern back on the wall, turned down the wick until the light was extinguished, and led Bella out of the dark barn.
“Let’s get inside,” her aunt said. “Daylight is about gone.”
When Aunt Freida reached the cabin, she opened the unlocked door and motioned Bella to precede her. Now, given the grip and stride she witnessed in Mantosa, and the austere, no nonsense attitude of the barn, Bella expected the inside of the cabin to have a similar look. It would be Spartan, perhaps even a little masculine.
One foot inside, she realized she couldn’t have been more wrong. It was one big room. On the left side was the kitchen. Well, sort of. It didn’t necessarily look like her and Averil’s kitchen but there was a big black stove, some cupboards, a sink, and a small rectangular table with six straight-back, unpainted, wooden chairs.
Towards the center of the room sat two upholstered chairs in a gray fabric that was shiny from use. The sofa next to the chairs was a pale blue. On the far right hand side, there was a bed—with sheets and a thin blanket that looked like they’d been hastily pulled up. It was not nearly as wide as the full-sized bed she’d left behind, a full 130 years in the future. There was a closed door on the far side of the cabin, almost directly across from where they stood.
She thought it was just short of amazing that she could catalog all these things. It wasn’t amazing because there were so many things—after all, it was just a table, a few chairs, a couch, and a bed. What was amazing is that she could see past the collection of hand-painted dolls, in various stages of dress and condition, and china tea cups that seemed to take up every square inch of available surface.
Dolls and tea cups?
There had to be more than a hundred of each. “My,” she said, unable to think of any other word. Her aunt was full of contradictions.
“I started collecting them after my Herbert died. I get them shipped from back East, all plain, and then I paint them. I make clothes for the dolls, too.”
“They’re beautiful,” Bella said, stepping forward to finger the skirt of one of the porcelain beauties.
Aunt Freida shrugged. “I just needed something to keep my hands busy. I suppose you know about things like that.”
After her mother had died, her father had dragged his teenage daughters from place to place. They’d had dinner in a different part of the world every night for three months while he grabbed on to one activity after another. Bullfighting. Auto racing. Mountain climbing. It had stopped as suddenly as it had started and the three of them had returned home. And tried to pretend everything was okay. “Yes, I think I do,” she said. She held up her small hard-sided case. “Where should I put this?”
Aunt Freida pointed to the closed door. “When me and Herbert first built this cabin, we had our two children still living with us. We had ourselves our own room,” she said proudly. “It’s yours while you’re here.”
Which meant that Aunt Freida was giving up her bed. For her niece. Who wasn’t really her niece. “I don’t want to take your room,” Bella said. She s
hould probably sleep outside with the horses.
“You’re not taking my room. I haven’t slept in there since Herbert died. And since I don’t have much company, I’ve been airing it out for the better part of a week.” Aunt Freida walked as she talked and Bella followed her across the room. When her aunt opened the door of the small bedroom, a blast of cold air hit Bella.
It looked like this room had escaped the chaos that permeated the rest of the house. There was a white bowl and a matching pitcher, both delicately painted with blue flowers, which sat on the plain wood dresser, but nothing else. She sat her case on the narrow bed that had a heavy pale gray bedspread and turned to close the open window. “Smells great to me,” she said.
Her aunt nodded, as if she was satisfied. “Privy is out back and so is the pump.”
Privy. Outside. Swell. The Girl and the Ladies would both be doing their thing outside.
It wasn’t like she’d never used an outdoor toilet. She’d done summer camp, after all. But even at twelve, she’d thought it was disgusting.
“I suppose I’ll have to make my way that direction pretty soon,” she said, offering her aunt a bright smile. She could do anything for a week—anything and absolutely everything to save her family from being cursed.
She wanted to ask Aunt Freida about Rantaan Toomay, whether she knew the man. But she knew she couldn’t just blurt out the question. Merribelle Wainwright had obviously never been to visit before, she had no reason to know any of the town’s inhabitants or regular visitors. But maybe there was a way.
“I’m hoping to find some work while I’m in town,” Bella said. “I don’t have much money.”
“You’re kin. Don’t be worrying about that.”
“No, really. You’ve been so wonderful to open your home to me. I’d feel so useless if I wasn’t paying for my share.”
Aunt Freida studied her. “I’ve always appreciated a woman who knew how to work. You can help me at the store.”
Perfect. A reason to be in town. Stroganhaufer’s Mercantile had the hotel on one side and the saloon on the other. She knew Toomay drank. She had to assume he slept as well. “Can I start tomorrow?”