by Zina Abbott
Josh had sheepishly confessed that he slept in the crawl space under Gus’s kitchen to keep from freezing to death. With his two blankets left from before the accident, he wedged himself in the area just under the stove. There was enough heat in both the ground and directly under the wood floor to keep him “tolerable warm” until early morning.
That was when Beth had hit upon a solution for her hatching eggs.
“Can you abide the smell of chicken, Josh?” she had asked him.
“I can abide the smell if it keeps me fed and gives me an almost warm place to sleep,” Josh had replied with a shy smile.
It had taken some persuasion with Gus. With his usual stubborn tendency to disagree with anything that was not originally his idea, he had argued with Beth for some time, leaving Josh, a worried frown on his face, shuffling his feet, sure that he was the cause of the disagreement. Beth knew she had succeeded in getting her way when Gus threw his hand in the air and muttered, “Ach! Herrisch Witwe!” Bossy widow.
Gus agreed to leave his back door unlocked at night for the next few nights so that Josh could come in and keep the stove going. In the daytime, Josh took the baby chicks under the kitchen. He kept bricks heating on the back of the stove and changed them out, keeping hot ones down next to the basket of baby chicks to keep them warm. Once they were all hatched and couldn’t be kept in the basket, he helped rig up a pen for them where he could put the heated bricks underneath.
At Gus’s insistence, Josh had to agree to clean the chicken pen beneath the kitchen at least once a day. Josh was willing to smell chicken, but Gus wasn’t.
In between those tasks, Josh started to scavenge for wood in order to help build the lean-to. Beth talked Gus into financing the rest of the lean-to that would protect his firewood. Her part was to provide a small wood stove and extra firewood to keep the inside warm.
Beth had gritted her teeth at the expense of the woodstove that didn’t measure much more than a foot in diameter plus the pipe to go with it. But, as she had decided with her pie safe purchase a month earlier, once she finished settling her late husband’s estate, she would be able to take it with her to the place she chose to make her permanent home.
That first night, Beth had once again gone through Jim Dodd’s clothes that Judge McLean had already turned over to her. The judge determined they had no value. He declined to make them part of her late husband’s estate, although he had hinted that she might want to wash them up and see if she could sell them.
Beth had washed and saved the clothes, figuring she would get more for them if she waited until the men were back working the mines.
Beth had shaken her head at the number of shirts her husband had owned. Then again, there was no reason for him to not be well-dressed. After contracting with her father to buy the family farm and marry her so he could take care of her and her family for life, Jim Dodd had stayed on the land only a little over two years. After he had sold the farm and left southern Ohio with the proceeds, leaving Beth, her sister, and Beth’s unborn child behind.
That had given him plenty of money to buy the clothes needed to impress Flora, the madam at the Blue Feather. It was in Flora’s room that he had spent the last two nights of his life.
But, after seeing the sorry state of Josh’s clothing, she had brought him two shirts, a pair of wool pants, a union suit, wool socks, a pair of boots and a heavy jacket.
Josh had been speechless when she first gave the clothing to him. She insisted he take them as part payment for tending her chickens. At first, while he was still so thin, he practically swam in his new clothes. As a result of eating regular meals, he gradually put on enough weight so that he almost filled out the clothes, leaving only a little growing room.
Bringing her thoughts back to the present, Beth slid her two sheets of turnovers into the oven to bake before she once again stuck her head through the doorway to the main saloon. The place continued to fill up. Soon, those men drinking beer, playing billiards and socializing would start thinking about buying something to eat. Gus would be back before long. Best she start cooking the rice and mixing up the biscuits so she had them ready to bake once the turnovers came out of the oven. Then, she planned to make a spice cake for those who wanted a slice of dessert after their dinner.
Where are you, Val Caldwell?
CHAPTER 2
“More brot, ya?”
“Yes, Gus we have more bread.”
“Ya, bread,” Gus enunciated the word while he tried to fix it in his brain. Beth thought his English was improving, but there were still many words close enough in German that the German version slipped off his tongue, especially when he felt under pressure.
It was a good pressure, Beth decided. The chop shop was busy because of the influx of miners in the town. Evidently, the word had gone around that there was more on Gus’s menu than when the men had been there the previous fall. The bread rounds and turnovers, especially, had proven popular.
Gus trotted back into the kitchen from serving up another table full of men. Out of the corner of her eye, Beth saw another group of laughing men saunter over from the bar across the room and head for the empty table nearest the back wall.
“Frau Dodd, food order you ask, ya?” Gus nodded his head in the direction of the back of the room as he headed up the ladder to the loft where he kept his bratwurst.
Beth stopped cutting flour into her lard and peeked out of the doorway. The men had settled in their seats and several stared at the doorway with expectation. One sitting with his back to the wall caught her eye and slammed his open palm on the tabletop.
“Hey! You gonna take our order?”
The man who yelled at her appeared to be well into his liquor. But, it was the one next to him that made her blood run cold. He fixed a stare on her, and Beth could tell he proceeded to undress her with his eyes
He’s a bad one.
Still, she had a job to do. It was best to let them know right from the start that she was a cook, not an upstairs girl.
“Yes, Gus, I’m on my way.”
Beth brushed flour from her hands and wiped them on a dishtowel she kept by her work area. She smoothed the front of her pinafore style apron with its wide shoulder bands that protected the front of her shirtwaist and skirt from the spills and grease spatter of the kitchen. She smoothed back wisps of hair and tucked them into her loose chignon. Then, she reached down and loosened the knife in the sheath strapped to her right calf.
Just in case.
Beth stepped out of the doorway and walked quickly toward the back table, keeping an air of professionalism about her. She stopped at the end of the rectangle table next to the vacant chair, well back from the men, but still close enough to be heard without yelling. She deliberately refused to look at the man to her left whose stare drilled into her. Since she didn’t recall seeing any of them at the eatery before, she decided to go through the entire menu.
“Thank you kindly for stoppin’ by Gus’s Chop Shop. We done fixed two kinds of vittles for tonight. One’s pork and beans over rice. We also got bratwurst and fried potatoes. They come with two biscuits. I also got bread rounds you can buy extra and a slice of dried apple pie that’s extra. You want somethin’ to take with you for breakfast, I done got dried apple turnovers for sale, too.”
“The only thing I want to turn over is you, darlin’,” the man sitting across from her said with a leer.
“This ain’t that kind of saloon!” Beth’s sharp retort rang throughout the building.
Beth glared at the man for only a few seconds before she turned away and ignored him. She could hear the shuffle of a few chairs behind her as some of the other customers from the bar turned to see what the ruckus was about.
“Well, ain’t you uppity.”
“I ain’t uppity, and I ain’t no painted lady,” Beth snapped back. “You ask around and folks’ll tell you, these here Germans don’t tolerate no upstairs girls. You can’t talk respectable, get on outta here and get your vittles so
mewheres else.”
Most of the men appeared to sober up and settle back in their chairs. Only the one to her left glared at her, taking her words as a challenge. Beth explained Gus’s policy about needing their own mess kits or buying a plate and fork from him. They all needed plates and forks.
“Wash water’s in the far corner.” Beth nodded in the direction of the counter in the corner where they kept two metal buckets of hot water—one soapy, and one clear.
“Didn’t come here to wash no dishes,” one of them grumbled.
“Reckon Josh or I can wash them up for you. But Gus don’t tolerate folks walkin’ off with his dishes, so he won’t serve nobody less they bring their own. If you ain’t ready to order yet, I’ll be back directly.”
“I’ll take them beans and rice, if they ain’t too hot. Don’t like that Mexican hot.”
Beth turned back toward what appeared to be the youngest man in the group. He sat directly to her right. He made a show of following the lead of the others, but was not going out of his way to be obnoxious.
“Them beans ain’t pepper hot.”
The young man agreed to the order. After some head-shaking, the men gave their orders. Beth nodded in acknowledgement and repeated each order, giving each man the briefest of eye contact when finished.
The last to order was the man immediately to her left. He spoke so low, Beth had to listen carefully to hear what he said.
“I’ll go and get you your vittles.” Beth turned once again to leave.
“You do that, darling,” the mean-eyed man to her left said. He reached forward from his chair and slapped Beth on her rear end.
Beth spun back to face the man, her eyes blazing. She pointed her right hand toward the front door of the saloon.
“Get out!”
The man jumped to his feet and grabbed Beth by the left wrist and pulled her to him.
“I’m not going anywhere. Now, go dish up our food. Understand?”
“Get your hands off me and get out!” Beth hissed.
Gus was serving food two tables away. As the sound of the commotion reached him, he turned.
“Was ist los?” What is happening?
The man jerked Beth even closer until she could smell the fetid odor of rotting teeth.
“I’ll put my hands on you where I want, doxy, and there’s not a thing you can do about it. Any woman who works in a place like this deserves however I choose to treat her. You got that?”
Out of the corner of her eye, Beth saw Gus quickly drop the biscuits he was serving on the table before he ran back into the kitchen. Gus didn’t keep a gun. Beth knew what he would grab for a weapon. But, she needed to prove that she could handle this alone rather than wait on a man to come to her rescue. She drove her knee into the man’s crotch.
Beth stepped back as the man let out a yelp of pain. He doubled over as he pressed his left wrist against the part of him that hurt. Instead of releasing her, the man tightened his grip on her arm, digging his fingernails into the veins of her inner wrist.
Beth knew she still must act or he would come after her with a vengeance. She stepped as far away from him as she could and reached beneath her skirt for the knife strapped to her calf. In one motion she pulled it out and sliced through the cuff of the shirt at the man’s wrist above the hand that gripped her. As blood spurted from the cut, the man let out another cry of surprise and reflexively released her wrist.
Until that point, the other men at the table had watched the show with amusement. The sight of Beth with the knife and blood dripping down the arm of their comrade brought them to their feet, sending their chairs clattering to the floor. The young man that been to her immediate right started to back away, but, to Beth, the others appeared to reach for weapons.
Ignoring the sting as the blood rushed back into her left hand, Beth shifted her knife to that hand and with her right hand fumbled in her pocket until her fingers closed around her derringer. She drew it, pulled back both hammers with her thumb and pointed it at the other men who had been at the table. Three of them stood with small pocket revolvers pointed at her.
The man who had attacked her yelled at the young man backing away.
“Anson, you fool! Grab her!”
Still holding his bleeding wrist, the man glared at Anson who threw his hands up in a gesture of denial.
“Want no part of this, Jeb. Just came here to eat. You had no call to treat her that way.”
The man named Jeb narrowed his hate-filled eyes at Anson. “I’ll remember this. Don’t ever turn your back on me in the mine. I don’t take kindly to those who cross me.”
“Let’s just give it up and go, Jeb. We’ll get your wrist wrapped and go eat somewhere’s else.”
“You think I’m letting her get away with this, you’re loco.”
Jeb’s chest heaved and his shoulders trembled from the adrenalin pumping through him. Malevolence poured out of his stare that locked on Beth’s face.
Beth knew she was in over her head. Yes, in her three month search for her late husband, Jim Dodd, she had entered saloons to enquire after him. More than once she had pulled her knife on a man to convince him that she had no intention of showing him a good time. But, this was different. If the man who had attacked her were to lunge at her again, could she take him with the knife in her weaker left hand? She had two shots in her double barrel derringer, but three men stood before with guns pointed at her. With the grace of God and a great deal of luck, she might be able to take out two of them. But, the third would get her. Then again, Beth knew she’d let these men shoot her before she’d willingly let them treat her like a street whore.
Lord, help me!
Gus rushed back into the room waving his meat cleaver in the air.
“Aussteigen! Aussteigen!” Get out! “Go!”
The man who had made the suggestive remark to Beth turned his pistol towards Gus and cocked the hammer.
“Back away, Dutchman. It’s not your fight.”
The threat of the gun pointed at him halted Gus in his tracks. His eyes alert and his chin jutting out in stubborn defiance, he continued to hold the cleaver in the air, waiting for an opportunity to attack.
The cleaver, my knife and gun against four men. Still ain’t good odds.
Behind her, Beth heard chairs scrape across the floor as the room grew quiet. Her back remained to the main room. Beth did not dare glance behind her to see what was happening. She refused to reveal the terror that coursed through her as she heard a few more gun hammers click. She had no idea if the men behind those guns were for her or against her.
The brotherhood of miners. I’m surrounded.
Only the sound of Fritz Gluntz readying his shotgun the two Germans kept behind their bar provided Beth with a feeling of reassurance. Out of the corner of her left eye, she saw a man slip through the door next to the bar that led outside.
Beth heard the front door of the saloon open seconds before the cool evening air wafted past her. She blinked and suppressed a shudder, willing herself to stay focused on the men who threatened her. She wanted nothing more than to close her eyes and wish the whole situation to disappear. She listened as several heavy boots tromped in, then stopped just inside. The door slammed shut. The swoosh of pistols sliding out of leather holsters and the click of cocked pistol hammers echoed through silent room. The sense of doom threatened to drown Beth.
“Got your back covered, sweetheart.”
Beth heaved a sigh of relief. She knew that voice.
About time, Val Caldwell.
“Luther. Hank. Frankie,” Val called to the men. Beth assumed he must have signaled the others with him since she heard their boots walk to different parts of the room. Only one set of boots approached her back.
“You cowboys get on out of here,” a voice behind Beth threatened. “This has nothing to do with you.”
“Afraid it does,” spoke Luther. “It appears that those men back there are threatening my brother’s intended. We aren’t leaving
until she’s safe and those responsible are gone.”
A voice buried in the anonymity of the crowd called out.
“You’re plain stupid if you think you can take on a whole room of miners and win.”
”Unless you boys are real partial to beans the rest of the year, you’re threatening the wrong people,” Luther laughed. “Who do you think just drove up a bunch of meadow-fed beef to your slaughterhouse? If your butchers up here get busy, you’ll be eating steak by tomorrow.”
A cheer rose up from several of the men scattered throughout the room.
“This isn’t about winning or losing,” said Val. “It’s about right and wrong. And, anyone who crossed Mrs. Dodd, I know was in the wrong.”
“Awww, we would’ve stopped them before they hurt her,” a voice from the crowd called out. “We just wanted to watch her put them in their place like she’s done most of us.”
“When did you plan to start stopping them?” Val’s eyes blazed with anger. “Can’t you see they pulled guns on her?”
Another of Val’s hands, Hank, broke the silence that followed. “Unless you’re one of them who abused Mrs. Dodd, why don’t you go on and put your guns away. Our complaint ain’t with you.”
Fritz called out from behind the bar. “For the constable I sent.”
Beth felt the cold of Val’s sheepskin jacket against her back, but his warm breath caressed her ear. She inhaled the scent of farm animals and hay, the smells of home so different from the bitter odor of alkaline dirt that clung to the miners. From the corner of her right eye she saw his arm stretched out next to hers, a six-shot Colt single action Army revolver firmly gripped in his hand.
“She’s mine, cowboy,” spit out the man named Jeb, his hate-filled eyes boring through Val. “I saw her first.”
“What do you think she is? A rock? A chunk of gold you claim because you saw it first?”