Cactus Flower

by Duncan, Alice

  “How do you do, Mr. Taggart?”

  “I’m right lively, ma’am, and I hope you don’t mind my saying that you’re the purtiest thang to visit these parts in a month of Sundays.”

  For once, Eulalie truly didn’t mind one of the Taggarts saying nice things to her. This was probably because Junius, now that he wasn’t reeling from having consumed a wholly indelicate amount of intoxicating liquors, possessed an innocent and childlike air about him. It was an air his nephew didn’t share, but Eulalie found it charming, in a rough and rugged sort of way.

  “Thank you, Mr. Taggart.” She gave him one of the gracious smiles her mother had trained her to deliver to her audience. “You’re very kind.”

  “Only bein’ honest, ma’am.” Junius clapped his hat back onto his head. “Reckon I’ll get to the smithy, Nicky. No sense wastin’ the day.”

  “I’m going to take Miss Gibb to Mrs. Johnson’s place, Junius. See if she can rent a room there.”

  “Good idea. Mrs. Johnson, she’s a fine lady.” Junius executed an astonishing bow, considering his mien and the location, said, “See ya later, ma’am,” and lunged off.

  “Your uncle seems to be an … er … enthusiastic individual, Mr. Taggart.”

  “You got that right. Uncle Junius, he enjoys life.”

  Eulalie recalled that she’d once enjoyed life, too. The ability to do so seemed to have slipped away during the past couple of years. That wasn’t surprising, she supposed, but she hadn’t noticed it slipping away, it had happened so subtly. She sighed.

  “You all right, ma’am?” asked Nick. They’d resumed walking on the dusty boardwalk.

  “Yes. Just … remembering things.”

  “Don’t appear to be happy thoughts.”

  “Some of them are.” Especially memories of her family. And Edward. Dear Edward. Curious, she asked, “Do you have any family other than your uncle, Mr. Taggart?”

  “None close by.”

  She sensed, although he didn’t say so, that he’d have liked to add a thank God to that sentence. “Oh? Where does the rest of your family live?”

  “Got a stepmother and a bunch of stepsisters in Texas. Reckon there’s more family around there. I haven’t been back to see ‘em, and I don’t aim to.”

  “Oh? Don’t you care for your family, Mr. Taggart?”

  “Well, now, I don’t know that I don’t care for them. I just seem to get along better with my uncle than with a bunch of females.”

  “There you go again, disparaging us ladies.” Eulalie laughed a little and peered at Nick to see how he reacted. From the glower on his face, she gathered he hadn’t taken it well. Difficult man.

  “I had my fill of females when I was a boy. My daddy and I were the only males in the whole family and, believe me, those women drove us like a pair of mules. When my daddy died, I got out of there, and I’m not going back.”

  “I’m sorry you had such a bad experience.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s over.” He hesitated for a moment. “What about you, Miss Gibb? You got family somewhere? Besides your sister in Chicago, I mean.”

  “I have an aunt and uncle and several cousins in New York City,” she said, thinking wistfully of the company she’d had to leave when Patsy was injured. “We were all part of an acting troupe.” She hadn’t intended to divulge that bit of information, although she didn’t think it would do any harm.

  “That so? That’s interesting. I don’t recall ever meeting a real actress before.”

  Eulalie considered asking if he’d met any imaginary ones, but opted not to. No sense in baiting a touchy man.

  As they clumped along the boardwalk, Eulalie had been taking in the sights and sounds of Rio Peñasco. They were very unlike anything she was used to. In New York and Chicago there had been oodles of traffic, most of it in the nature of carriages and carts, and throngs of people, male, female, young and old. Here most of the vehicles were rustic wagons pulled by big, rangy horses. The foot traffic consisted primarily of males in dusty trousers and jackets, with the occasional person whom Eulalie assumed was what was known as a “cowboy” thrown in here and there for color. So to speak. Two women walking together on the other side of the street wore drab morning dresses. She assumed they were doing their marketing, or what passed for it in this remote village.

  The softening influence of womankind on the place was depressingly absent. No flower boxes graced windows. No school bells clanged. No music swelled from church doors. For that matter, Eulalie didn’t see any churches. A couple of the buildings had been adorned with false fronts, but they only made Eulalie’s overall impression of Rio Peñasco that much more melancholy. She couldn’t imagine Patsy being happy here. She couldn’t imagine herself being happy here, if it came to that. She could kill Gilbert Blankenship for forcing them to take this drastic step.

  Suddenly the dullness of the day was broken by the thunder of hoof beats. Turning, Eulalie saw two men in bright blue coats riding down what seemed to be the main thoroughfare, if such a meager road could be so called, of Rio Peñasco. She stopped to squint at them—she was looking into the sun.

  “Oh, my, Mr. Taggart, those men look like military fellows.”

  “Yeah,” said Nick gruffly. “Fort Sumner’s real close by.”

  A frontier fort! Imagine that. Eulalie’s heart leapt slightly. Or, if it wasn’t precisely a leap, it was at least a lift. “My goodness!”

  The two men brought their horses to a spectacular stop in front of Nick and Eulalie, bringing to Eulalie’s mind romantic notions of cavalry charges and sabers and so forth until the cloud of dust thereby produced made her sneeze.

  “For crying out loud, Fuller,” barked Nick. “Don’t you know better than to show off in the middle of springtime?”

  Eulalie didn’t know which man Nick had spoken to. They both dismounted, smiling. The taller of the two fellows bowed low before her, almost sweeping the ground with his hat. “I’m mighty sorry, ma’am. Didn’t mean to kick up so much dust.”

  Beside her, Nick grunted.

  Sneezing again into the handkerchief she’d hastily withdrawn from a pocket, Eulalie couldn’t speak, but she tried to convey her acceptance of his apology with a sweet smile. My, my, but he was a handsome fellow. He looked magnificent in his uniform, too. So did the other man, but the taller one outshone him in every particular. Both were ever so much more elegant and civilized looking than Nick Taggart.

  “Lieutenant Gabriel Fuller, ma’am. At your service.”

  “She don’t need your service, Fuller,” said Nick in a menacing voice. “She’s got mine.”

  Eulalie ignored Nick. Holding out her daintily gloved hand to Lieutenant Fuller, she assessed what she saw. He was a handsome man, if not quite so rugged as Nick Taggart, with blond hair that looked as if it had been bleached by the sun, a flowing cavalry mustache, and a tanned face. “Eulalie Gibb, Lieutenant Fuller. So happy to meet you.” Turning to the other uniformed man, she said, “And this is?”

  “Lieutenant Willoughby Nash, ma’am,” the other man said, stammering a little, and blushing up a storm. Eulalie thought he was adorable, in a cuddly sort of way. While she appreciated cuddliness and had an uncle who was likewise endowed with the charming trait, she didn’t need it at the moment. She needed spirit, grit, strength, and ruthlessness. While she didn’t want to leap to conclusions, she sensed she’d still be better off with Nick Taggart than with either of these uniformed gents. Besides, they were soldiers and owed their first allegiance to the United States Army. If she decided to enlist the aid of a male, she wanted someone who’d be around when she needed him.

  “I’m taking Miss Gibb to Mrs. Johnson’s place,” Nick said, his voice hard. “We don’t have time to stand here in the heat and gab.”

  “Of course, of course. We’ll just tag along, then,” said Fuller, fairly oozing charm.

  Eulalie didn’t need charm any more than she did cuddliness, although she thought it was rather sweet of the fellow to be so blatant in
his pursuit of her. Perhaps “sweet” wasn’t the word she was looking for, come to think of it, especially if the lieutenant was laboring under the same conclusion most of the other men in town had made about her.

  That being the case, and because she wanted to nip that sort of thing in the bud, she said, “Thank you, Lieutenant, but there’s no need to interrupt your busy day. Mr. Taggart is doing a fine job of taking care of me.”

  Fuller stepped back a pace and eyed Nick with disfavor. “He is, is he?”

  “Yeah,” said Nick. “I am. Go on about your business, Fuller. Don’t you have duties or something?”

  The lieutenant didn’t answer, but swept Eulalie another bow. “I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other again, Miss Gibb. And I, for one, am looking forward to catching your show tonight. The men from the fort who saw it last night said you were a truly gifted artist.”

  “Thank you.” Eulalie demurely dropped her gaze. Good Lord, she had a reputation already. She’d heard that word spread fast in a small town, but she’d never performed in one before, so this was the first opportunity she’d had to test the adage. It was, clearly, true.

  She watched as Lieutenant Fuller and Lieutenant Nash led their horses away from her and Nick.

  Nick said, “Fools.”

  Lifting her chin, Eulalie said, “They were both very polite.”

  “Yeah, they’re polite, all right. But what’s that Fuller said about you being an artist? You draw too? I thought you only sang and danced.”

  “Singing and dancing are considered arts, Mr. Taggart. A fine dancer is an artist, as is a fine singer.”

  “Oh. Well, it sounded funny, the way he said it. But that’s no more than I’d expect from that Fuller fellow. Always showing off.”

  Eulalie had the impression he felt foolish, and she wished she hadn’t had to give him the lesson. She didn’t want to antagonize him any more than was inevitable. “They seem like nice young men.”

  He eyed her, frowning. “You sound like you’re a hundred years old, Miss Gibb. I’m sure they’re both older than you are.”

  With dismay, Eulalie realized he was right. She had sounded like a little old lady. She felt a hundred, too. She sighed. “Please take me to Mrs. Johnson’s house, Mr. Taggart.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” And with her arm still attached to his, Nick stomped down the boardwalk. Eulalie had to hustle to keep up with him.

  Chapter Five

  Damn Gabriel Fuller and every other damned officer stationed at Fort Sumner. Show-offs. They were all a bunch of show-offs. Nick knew good and well that Fuller had put on that spectacular rearing stop in order to impress Eulalie Gibb. And he’d succeeded, too, damn his eyes.

  Nick wasn’t sure why that annoyed him so much, but it did. Yeah, it was true that Fuller was a good horseman, and yeah, Nick was too big for most horses, but that didn’t matter, did it? Hell, Nick had other talents that Fuller completely lacked. He couldn’t think of any of them offhand, but he knew he had them.

  Anyhow, it was nothing to him if Miss Eulalie Gibb fell under the handsome officer’s spell. Hell, the two of them could run off and get married and it would be nothing to him. He experienced a sharp pain in his chest and slammed his hand over it, wondering if he had indigestion. He doubted it. Not only had he not eaten anything since last night, but he never had indigestion.

  His notion to have Eulalie Gibb stay with the Johnsons was a good one, and he was proud of himself for thinking of it. Mrs. Johnson was one of the few respectable women in Rio Peñasco, and she’d spiffed up her place with sunflowers and a vegetable garden and lots of civilized things like that.

  And that was another thing. Until Eulalie Gibb came to town, Nick hadn’t considered his little town lacking in any particular. Sure, it was kind of far away from any big cities, if you had a hankering for that sort of thing, but Nick didn’t. He’d had his fill of big-city ways when he was a boy. His stepmother had cured him of any hankering he might once have had for high society. Not that the society available in Galveston, Texas, was all that high, but his stepmother had sure scratched and clawed to get to the top of the heap of what there was of it. And she’d yanked his poor father along behind her in her quest to conquer the societal mountain. Even thinking about those bad old days made Nick shudder.

  He rapped more sharply on Mrs. Johnson’s door than he’d intended, startling a squeak out of the poor woman, who must have been standing right in front of the door, because it opened a second later.

  “Nick Taggart, you like to scare me to death!” A small woman with a face like a slightly worse-for-wear cherub, clad in a faded calico dress and men’s heavy shoes, beamed at him from the open door. Her graying hair had been secured into a haphazard knot at the top of her head, and she looked as if she’d been scrubbing something, because she wore an apron and carried a scrub brush.

  “Sorry, Mrs. Johnson,” Nick said sheepishly, regretting that he’d allowed himself to show any sign of upset in front of Eulalie Gibb.

  Before he could state the purpose of his unexpected arrival at Mrs. Johnson’s door, several shrieks emanated from inside the house.

  “Uncle Nicky! Uncle Nicky!”

  And before he could warn Eulalie, an entire herd of excited children raced past their mother and leaped upon Nick. Damn. He liked the Johnson kids all right, but he’d sort of hoped he’d be able to preserve his air of dominant masculinity around Eulalie Gibb, at least for a little while. That was difficult to do with a bunch of kids crawling all over him.

  “Charles! Clarence, William, Sarah, and Penelope! Stop bothering Mr. Taggart right this minute,” their mother commanded.

  As was usually the case with the Johnson children, they subsided almost at once, with William, the youngest boy, slowest to obey. Little Penelope, who had turned five-years-old the week before, clung to Nick’s big hand. “Did we hurt you, Uncle Nicky?” she asked in her sweet, piping voice.

  “It would take more than a little mite like you to hurt me, Miss Penny,” Nick assured her.

  Mrs. Johnson had been taking stock of Eulalie while she was disciplining her children. Now she turned to her and held out her hand. “I’m mighty sorry for the ruckus, ma’am. I’m Louise Johnson—Mrs. Ezekiel Johnson, who’s gone on to his maker, God rest his soul—and these here are my children. They act like a pack of wolves, but they’re not so bad once you get to know them.”

  Wide-eyed and staring, Eulalie gave a small start, as if she’d been transfixed by the swarm of children and suddenly jerked out of her trance. “Oh! Oh, yes. I mean no, I’m sure they’re not. Bad, I mean.” Eulalie flushed and took the other woman’s hand. Then she flashed one of her patented, knock-’em-dead smiles. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Johnson. I just didn’t anticipate them. I’m really quite fond of children. My name is Miss Eulalie Gibb.”

  Mrs. Johnson nodded. “I heard all about you, Miss Gibb. But here, there’s no need to stand out in the sun. Come on indoors, and have a sit-down. It’s not elegant, but it serves us all right.”

  She ushered Nick and Eulalie into her house, which boasted a total of five rooms and a sun porch. The children slept on the sun porch in the spring and summer. Nick didn’t know where they slept in the wintertime, but he began to question his wits in bringing Eulalie here. It was true that Mrs. Johnson had the kindest heart in the territory, and it was also true she needed money, but her comment about lack of elegance struck Nick where it hurt.

  As he gazed around the shabby little house, he understood for the first time since he’d proposed the idea that Miss Eulalie Gibb, actress, from Chicago, Illinois, was probably accustomed to grander surroundings than this. She might not be thrilled to rent one of the only five rooms in this house, especially since the house came equipped not only with bedrooms and a kitchen, but a pack of unruly kids. Damn. Where had his wits gone begging?

  “Have a seat, you two,” said Mrs. Johnson happily, waving them toward a faded sofa that sagged in the middle. An obvious effort had been made to perk it up with homemade
throw pillows and an afghan no doubt crocheted or knitted by Mrs. Johnson or one of the girls. “I’d offer you a cold drink, Miss Gibb, but I’m afraid there’s no such thing to be had in this little town of ours. But I will take my apron off and put up my scrub brush.” Taking the apron off and sinking into a chair that was as faded and saggy as the sofa, she called, “Charles! Come here and take this to the kitchen.”

  Charles Johnson, fifteen years old and excessively sober for so young a lad, probably because after his father’s death he’d been designated as “man of the family”—a position that Nick had held, too, once upon a time—appeared in the parlor. All the Johnson children had reddish hair and freckles, and Charles looked particularly small and vulnerable to Nick, who’d always been big for his age.

  Because, in spite of himself, he had a lot of sympathy for Charles, Nick smiled at the boy, who smiled back, shyly. “How’re you doing, Charles?”

  “Fine, Uncle Nick. Thank you.” His gaze shifted from his mother, who had taken a chair, to Eulalie, who sat on the edge of a sofa cushion, as if to assess their willingness to put up with a kid. Nick’s heart twanged.

  “What projects you got going, Charles? Need any help?”

  Another glance at his mother, who smiled indulgently, prompted Charles, clutching the apron and scrub brush to his breast, to blurt out, “Oh, Uncle Nick, if you could help Bill and me, we’re building a tree house, only there’s no trees, so we’re going to have to stick it somewhere else. And Clarence,” he added belatedly. Nick understood. Being the youngest boy, Clarence was kind of a pest. Nick figured that was only because he didn’t get enough attention from his siblings because he couldn’t do as much as they. Again his heart twanged. He wished like thunder it would stop doing that.

  “I reckon I can do that,” said Nick.

  “Thank you, Uncle Nick!” And Charles fled the room, still clutching the apron and scrub brush, a huge smile on his face.

  Nick flashed Eulalie a quick peek to see if she was sneering at his softhearted attitude toward the boy. To his surprise, he saw that her face had lost its set expression, and she appeared almost pleased with him.