by Natalie Dean
Mary-Lee, her failed search for her nightgown forgotten, had tucked the sheets under her arms to cover her body. Her unbound hair covered her shoulders. She looked, to Benjamin, like a mythological creature, something not entirely human, not yet divine. But utterly entrancing.
Mary-Lee surveyed the plate. The toast was burnt. The eggs were runny. The bacon was rather crispier than bacon ought to be. Benjamin stood over the bed, beaming with pleasure, awaiting her verdict.
She smiled up at him. “How very thoughtful of you,” she answered. “I have never been served breakfast in bed. I ought to have gotten up early enough to cook for you. This will not happen again,” she said.
“I liked doing it,” he said. “Go on, eat.”
Mary-Lee forced a bite of the eggs into her mouth, and her smile appeared to be entirely genuine. “Delicious,” she lied. “But cooking breakfast is my responsibility. I’ll be sure to cook it for you from now on.”
“Well, eat before it gets cold. I have to head to town and relieve Carson. I’ll come by for lunch and give you a tour of Knox Mills,” he said.
“I’ll have lunch ready for you,” she promised.
He bent over her to kiss her. As she raised her mouth to meet his lips, she remembered the sweet abandon of the night before. His kiss for the morning was more decorous, but the familiarity of his kiss from the night before made her blush with pleasure.
Benjamin was smiling as he left the house. Having a wife who blushed like that was a form of entertainment he hadn’t been expecting in marriage. He liked it. It was like watching roses bloom in her perfect, flawless skin, he thought as he saddled Sal. Enchanted with his own attempt at poetry, Benjamin was whistling a song as he rode into town. Let Mr. Wiessen boast of the poetry he’d composed for his wife’s eyes; Benjamin figured he could do it, too.
Mary-Lee bounded out of the bed as soon as her husband was out the door. She never stayed in bed so long, she scolded herself as she dressed. With so much to do, she had no business idling.
First, she began to prepare lunch. That required going outside to confirm, as she had guessed, the presence of a garden. And such a garden! She knew that the warm climate of Texas made it a paradise for produce almost year-round, but she had not expected to be able to pick tomatoes, peppers, squash, zucchini, beans, cucumbers, and corn all at the same time.
Humming contentedly, she filled a basket that she found by the front door with vegetables, then went inside to plan her meal. She decided to make cornbread; it was baking now before the heat of the day became too intense. By the time the cornbread was done, the house would have time to cool back down.
Going back outside, she found the springhouse, as she had expected, where meat was kept to avoid spoiling. She cut off a generous piece of ham and brought it to the kitchen to prepare for lunch. Potatoes would fry quickly and serve as a heartier partner to the green beans. Perhaps tomorrow she would bake a pie; for today, the watermelon that she had seen growing would serve the purpose for a sweet dessert.
While the bread was baking in the Dutch oven in the fireplace, Mary-Lee went to the bedroom to work. She unpacked some of her clothes; there wasn’t space for all of them, even though she did not regard herself as an extravagant woman. Perhaps Benjamin’s carpentry talents ran to building an armoire. For the time being, she would simply continue to store her clothing in her trunks.
The hatbox, inconspicuously stacked with several others, caught her eye. It had been an excellent place of concealment, but she knew that Benjamin had thought it odd that she had not allowed him to hold it for her when he was trying to be helpful. It was not that she did not trust him, but the papers had been her secret for so long that she could not easily relinquish the private knowledge. But where to hide them . . .
Mary-Lee scanned the room. There was a dearth of hiding places, she realized. It was a plain room, and she longed to make it more attractive, but for now, she needed to find a place that would not be detected.
She walked through the rooms of the house. The little parlor, with its pair of rocking chairs and a desk in the corner, likewise offered little in the way of concealment.
But the kitchen, now . . . papers folded up in an envelope could more readily be hidden somewhere where they would not be expected. Not on the pantry, out in the open . . . not on the shelving with the plates and mugs . . .
Mary-Lee sighed. Perhaps, for the time being, the papers would need to be concealed inside the sash of her favorite blue hat. It was the hat that she wore most of the time, so the papers would be in her presence and safe. Yes, she decided, that would do.
Chapter 8
Benjamin was properly impressed when he returned home for lunch to find plates ready on the table. He praised the texture of the cornbread as the butter melted into it and lauded her for the tenderness of the ham. He told her that the spring planting had gone well, and they’d be planting again in July for the next growing season. She’d have a garden year-round, he told her. “That’s one of the best things about this part of Texas, even if it does mean putting up with the Devil’s own hellfire heat.”
Mary-Lee generally preferred to clean up from meals right after she’d eaten, but Benjamin couldn’t linger over his meal, so she cleared the plates and put them aside to wash after she returned from the tour of the town that Benjamin had promised.
“If you don’t object to a bit of heat,” he said, “we can walk to town. It’s not so far as it seems at night.”
She was willing; her legs still felt cramped from the hours spent in the stagecoach just days before. She put on her hat and tied the ribbon beneath her chin, very aware of the papers that were stealthily hidden in the sash above. It was wrong to keep secrets from a husband, she knew, but this was a secret that belonged to Papa.
As they strolled down the path that lead to town, Benjamin pointed out the houses, all far apart, where their neighbors lived. “More land than people here,” he said. “But that won’t last.”
Mary-Lee was accustomed to houses a distance apart, because Kansas farms were large, but here, the land seemed to have been parceled out by a giant. Most of the houses or ranches that Benjamin called to her attention were far from the path upon which they were walking. She wondered if Texans were just naturally private or if they liked the fact that, with land, came solitude. The people at her wedding party last night had not been of a solitary disposition, she recalled. Even Mayor Winslow, disinclined to share information though he had been, had not been unfriendly. She resolved to speak to him again; keeping tabs on the Townsends was a matter of concern for her. Having that man-legged coyote in the state of Texas put him too close for comfort. Having a whole clan of Townsends was reason to be wary.
“And that,” Benjamin said, halting on the path, “is the school.”
Of course, school was out of session now that it was summer, but some children were playing in the grass. Their cheerful yelling and energetic activity made Mary-Lee feel homesick for the first time since she’d left Abilene. But the school . . .
“It’s not much of a school,” Benjamin said, divining her thoughts. “It needs some repairs and some . . . “
“Attention,” Mary-Lee said. That was kind. When had the building been painted? Whatever color it had once been, it was now an uninspiring faded hue that seemed to have been bleached by the sun.
“Attention,” Benjamin agreed, thankful that she had chosen to be diplomatic with her description. If she were to become the teacher and she began her work with a complaint about the condition of the schoolhouse, he wasn’t sure that the town council would be very receptive.
“May we go inside?”
Benjamin didn’t see why not. As they walked into the schoolyard, the children stopped playing to survey the couple. “Hey, Deputy Graves,” called one of the boys. “You fixing to go back to school?”
This sally met with a round of laughter from the children.
“Maybe,” he said, “my wife’s a schoolteacher.”
That got the children’s attention. “A schoolteacher?” one of the girls, a saucy-looking lass with freckles and pigtails said. “She sure doesn’t look old enough to teach.”
“How old should I look?” Mary-Lee countered.
“Shoot, Lizzie, just ‘cause Miz Greenwell is twice as old as Noah’s wife doesn’t mean all teachers have one foot in the grave,” disputed a youth, who appeared old enough to appreciate the prospect of a teacher with smooth skin, bright eyes, and blonde hair. “You really a teacher, Miz Graves?” he asked.
“I am.”
“You gonna teach us?”
“I believe you already have a teacher,” Mary-Lee said demurely.
The children began to dispute this. Mrs. Greenwell was old. She sometimes fell asleep when they were taking tests. She couldn’t handle the Singer boys at all and they were forever getting into mischief.
Lizzie gave Mary-Lee a dubious look. “I don’t know as you’d be able to handle the Singer boys either,” she said. “Thurlow is just twelve, and he’s already taller than you.”
“Do you believe that height is the ultimate decider of a teacher’s effectiveness?” Mary-Lee inquired.
The children stared, not comprehending. “What do you mean?”
“Is a teacher better for being taller?” she asked, translating her own words.
This was a conundrum. Then the boy said, “I don’t reckon Thurlow would be much of a teacher, for all that he’s taller than you are.”
Mary-Lee smiled at him. “Well reasoned,” she said.
He didn’t quite know what she meant, but he knew she was offering praise. He turned to Benjamin.
“You’re the law,” he said. “Can’t you make her teach us?”
“That’s not the way the law works, I’m afraid,” Benjamin answered, hiding a smile at the boy’s logic.
“Mrs. Graves, I think you’d be a fine teacher,” Lizzie declared. “I think Mrs. Greenwell would be right glad if she didn’t have to come back in the fall and teach us.”
Mary-Lee gave a polite answer that was both diplomatic and encouraging. When she said that she wanted to see the inside of the school, the children ushered her into the building.
It was very dark inside; the schoolhouse needed windows for light, even if conventional wisdom held that children were likely to be distracted if they were able to see the world outside their schoolhouse. The desks were not in very good condition. The flooring was battered, and there was still mud left over from the rain that had fallen earlier in the spring. A good cleaning would do wonders, Mary-Lee told Benjamin after they said good-bye to the children and continued on their way to town.
“I could clean it up in no time,” she said eagerly.
Benjamin couldn’t imagine anyone objecting to that. “Wait until I have some time,” he suggested, “and I’ll give you a hand. Between the two of us, we can get this old building in shape before school starts up again.”
“And then?”
“Who knows,” he answered. “Mrs. Greenwell would like to retire from teaching; she’s said so plainly enough. There’s no one else qualified to take on the position.”
“What about married women not being allowed to teach?”
Benjamin grinned and offered her his arm. “If Knox Mills wants a teacher,” he said, his green eyes glinting with mischief, “then Knox Mills must take what’s offered. If it’s offered.”
They walked along the street together, Benjamin tipping his hat to the ladies as they passed and stopping to introduce Mary-Lee to folks along the way. He took her into the general store where Mrs. Wiessen regaled Mary-Lee with the tale of the advertisement that Benjamin had sought help in writing. Benjamin felt that the episode didn’t show him at his best, but he took the laughter in good humor. They stopped at Mrs. Melisande Cravner’s dress shop so that Mary-Lee could examine the newest patterns that the proprietress had ordered all the way from New York City. He introduced her to the hotel manager, a courtly gentleman with a foreign accent who bowed low over her hand and called her Madame Graves. They passed the saloons, but Benjamin did not bring her inside either of them. He told her that he spent enough of his time in there, by duty rather than choice, and he wasn’t proposing to subject his wife to the same. He re-introduced her to the doctor that she had met the night before at the Walker home; he was an energetic young man named Philemon Darnley, who had received his education back East and seemed to have modern ideas about medicine. She met the preacher, the Rev. Lachlan McCallister, a middle-aged man who came from Belfast and entered into a good-natured dispute with Benjamin over the merits of his city in comparison to Dublin, where Benjamin’s family had their roots. Lastly, he brought her into the sheriff’s office, where Jack Walker was writing up a report to send to the army at Fort Worth.
“For what it’s worth,” Jack said after he had greeted Mary-Lee and she had thanked him for his hospitality. “I can alert them that I think the Townsends are up to no good, but they can’t act on a hunch.”
“The Townsends,” Mary-Lee repeated. “There are Townsends in Abilene.”
“There are Townsends all over the West,” Jack Walker said in disgust. “They’re like one of the plagues of Egypt sent to torment us. They have their grubby fingers in just about every venal act that goes on west of the Mississippi. But they’re a canny lot and no one can pin the blame on them, especially since they have a passel of crooked kinsmen in government. And now this Lance Townsend is going to be heading our way to run for mayor.”
“Lance Townsend belongs in a jail cell, not in political office!”
Her tone of alarm was unfeigned. “You know him?” Jack Walker asked curiously.
“He’s from Abilene. His father was the mayor; when I left, Lance Townsend was planning to run for the office. Why is he in Texas?”
“That’s something we’d all like to know. Abe Winslow being among the curious—and not just because Abe is a good mayor and he wants to keep the position. He’s one of the ones who knows the Townsends have too much power. It’s going to be a hell of an election; pardon my language, Mrs. Graves, but I mean what I say. Satan himself couldn’t campaign with more malevolence than a Townsend. They liquor up the voters on election day; they bribe and threaten to get the votes they need. They’ll stop at nothing to put one of their own into office.”
“You’re sure that Lance Townsend is in Texas?”
“Sure I’m sure. Old Abel, who’s a rogue if ever there was one, says that Lance has been living at his ranch for months. Well, that’s an outright lie, but who’s to refute it when that ranch is home to a revolving door of Townsends?”
“I don’t know when Lance Townsend left Abilene,” Mary-Lee said, thinking. “He had been gone before I left. But why Texas?”
“I don’t know,” Jack repeated patiently. “I guess because the old man is here, and he figures he might as well come home to the family wasp nest. Gil Dunaway has his feelers out with the newspapers in the region, and they’ll keep him alerted to what’s going on. But there’s no law that prevents a man from running for office. More’s the pity. But enough of that. Benjamin, you escort that lovely wife of yours back home and take the rest of the day off. You two aren’t having much of a honeymoon, so you might as well have the rest of the day.”
Benjamin didn’t argue with Jack’s offer. Once again, he offered his arm to Mary-Lee, who accepted the gesture with a smile, and they turned to return home.
But Mary-Lee realized that she owed her husband the truth, especially if Lance Townsend had made his way to Texas. It would be a matter of time before he became aware, if he wasn’t already, that Augustus Jameson’s niece was living in Knox Mills and was married to the deputy marshal.
“Benjamin?” she began when they had left the town behind them and were back on the path toward home.
“Hmm?” It was a fine day to be out walking with a beautiful wife at his side, Benjamin thought. On either side of the pathway, wildflowers bloomed, their delicate beauty framing the dusty
path that had been worn by the daily traffic of boots making the trip from the outskirts of Knox Mills into the town. The sky was a cloudless bright blue, almost as bright as Mary-Lee’s beautiful eyes. It was a fine day.
“I ran away from Abilene so that I wouldn’t have to marry Lance Townsend.”
Her words shot into Benjamin’s hearing like bullets. “Marry Lance Townsend?” he echoed. “Why would you have to marry him?”
“My uncle wanted me to marry Lance Townsend.”
Chapter 9
“I wouldn’t want a pet snake to marry a Townsend snake,” Benjamin said, “supposing I had a pet snake. Why would your uncle want that?”
“So that I’d give Lance the deeds to the gold mines that my father owned,” she said evenly.
Benjamin’s expression would have been comic had the circumstances not been so perilous. “Gold mines?” he repeated. “What gold mines?”
“I should have told you before, I know. But I’ve been so used to keeping my father’s secret.”
She told him what had taken place that night, eight years ago, when her father had awakened her during the night to leave the deeds to the mines with her. “He told me he would be gone for a very long time. I’m sure that my uncle killed my father or had him killed. They—he and Lance Townsend—want the deeds, and they know I have them, but I denied it, and they’ve never been able to find them.”
“They’re safe here,” he told her. “I’m not going to steal them. If you’ve got a good hiding place—“
“I do.” She raised her eyes toward her hat. “This was the hat in the hatbox that I was carrying when you met me at the fort. Today, I was searching for a hiding place, but I decided that I’d just hide the papers in this hat that I wear most of the time. They’re inside the sash.”
“I reckon that’s a clever place to hide them. But you need to put them in a safe place. The bank,” he suggested.