Chapter Fifteen #2
“Oh, I meant to. I kept meaning to. We’re so busy, you know.
Not only with that ,” she said, at the ribald look Trick gave her.
“With practical stuff, too. We got some farmhands we need to feed, and I help with all the field work. ’Tis tiring being a farmer’s wife, but I wouldn’t trade it for the world. ”
I watched Oscar as he listened to Cal, then met his gaze when he turned to me.
I shrugged. Who was I to say ’twasn’t so—or he or Trick neither.
If Cal was lying—and part of me figured she was, or at the very least she was pretending everything was all right when ’twasn’t.
But there was nothing we could do until she decided to trust us with the truth of it.
We just had to let her know we cared about her, and we were here if she needed us.
“Won’t you come to the saloon for a minute?” Oscar said, “We’ll get you a drink and a bite to eat.”
“Oh, no thank you,” Cal said, turning in the other direction. “I need to go. Albert worries when I’m gone too long.”
“Cal,” Trick said, “we’d love to meet your husband and see your home. Won’t you have us over? You don’t gotta feed us or nothin’. We only want to see this fine house and land of yours.” Trick’s gaze was calculating, and I knew she was trying to figure things out, like I was.
“Oh, well, I…I have to ask him if that’s all right.”
“You do?”
Cal laughed, and it sounded on the verge of hysterical. “Oh, he’ll say yes, I’m sure. But I need to make sure he knows to expect you. He’s very private, my Albert. He don’t like to be with other folks too much.”
That there gave me warning bells in my head. I supposed it could be true that he was simply a loner who loved Cal dearly and owned a big house and fine land—but I had my doubts.
“Anyway, ‘twas lovely to see you all,” Cal said, gathering her skirts again and heading away from us and the dry goods store. “I have to go. Maybe I’ll see you again when you’re in town…
Say hello to Miss June, tell her I’m fine and she don’t need to worry no more,” Cal’s voice broke on those last words and she turned away, hastening her step, then disappeared behind some buildings.
The three of us exchanged glances, in which our unease and unwillingness to accept what Cal had told us, was evident.
“Do you think she was lyin’?” Oscar asked.
Trick spat in the dirt. “Sure, she was. I don’t think everythin’s fine at all.” She scuffed her boot in the dirt and handed me the reins of her horse. “I’m goin’ after her.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said, worried we might scare Cal off and she’d hide herself away even more than she already was. “I know you want to find out what’s what, but I think we need to give Cal the benefit of the doubt. ’Tis possible she was telling the truth.”
“I wanna see where she goes, so’s we can find her another time,” Trick said, stepping away from us. “I promise I won’t get close. I’ll only see what direction she takes when she heads away from town.”
“Fine,” I said. “Don’t let her see you. She’s bein’ cagey, and I don’t know why. She must have a good reason.”
Trick bobbed her head once and walked in the direction Cal had taken.
“We ain’t gonna just go back to The Angel, are we?” Oscar asked, his expression showing concern.
“Well, we need to give Miss June the message from Cal and see what she makes of it. At least we found her. We know she lives around here someplace.”
“Sure, but where?”
“She was on foot, so it can’t be too far. Trick’ll find out the general area and we’ll ride out there tomorrow, see what we can see.
“All right.”
After about ten minutes, Trick rounded the corner of a building and came toward us.
“Did she see you?” Oscar asked.
“Nope. I said I’d be careful.”
“So?” I asked.
“She went East, toward Wildman’s Creek.” Trick shrugged. “I could have followed her all the way home.”
“I know. But let’s give her the respect of believin’ her for now. Tomorrow, we’ll start searching, and if we find her and everything’s as she says, then perfect.”
“And if it ain’t?” Oscar said.
I shrugged and exchanged a look with Trick.
“Then we’ll have to figure out what needs to be done,” I said. “If Cal is lying, I’m sure ’tis not because she wants to. ’Tis because she feels she has to, and I wanna know why.”
* * * *
Miss June was thrilled to hear we’d found Cal, but she was as concerned as we were, when we described how Cal had been acting and what she’d told us.
“I don’t like this one bit,” she said. “It doesn’t seem like Cal at all.
I wonder if that man who took her and married her is keeping her under his thumb.
Especially since he knows Cal has a secret to keep, it gives him something to manipulate her with.
I believe that if Cal was free to do as she pleased, she’d have come and paid us a visit.
And she would have been happier to see the three of you, and maybe even invited you over to show you her ‘ big house and fine property ’. Hmph. I don’t like this at all.”
“Me neither,” Trick said. “Doesn’t seem right.”
Miss June glanced at me. “How are you feeling, Jimmy?”
“Fine. You got magic hands, Miss June.”
“You’re not the first person to tell me that, Jimmy.”
Oscar got her meaning and whooped a laugh, slapping me on the back. “Now, now, Jimmy. Don’t you go seducing Miss June. You got your hands full already.”
’Twas a good break from the serious events of the day, and we laughed.
“Well, you rest now, Jimmy,” she said, “since you’re back early. And tomorrow the three of you can ride out and see if you can find Cal’s homestead—maybe have a talk with Mr. Webster.”
I frowned. “That her husband? She mentioned someone named Albert.”
Trick snorted. “Yeah, that’s her husband. I told her not to trust the bastard.”
“You did?” Oscar said. “Why?”
Trick shrugged. “Had a feeling, that’s all. He was awful nice to Cal when he was purchasing her services. A little too nice, you know? I had my suspicions.”
Miss June sighed and put a hand to Trick’s shoulder. “As did I. And I told her to be careful, that sometimes the things men say to a woman when they want something aren’t entirely sincere.”
“I think,” Trick said, playing with the brim of the hat she held in her hand, “she was so happy to have a man who accepted her the way she was, bein’ that she had…you know, those parts that a woman ain’t supposed to have.”
“No, he didn’t mind that. Paid for the pleasure many times,” Miss June said, her eyebrow arched. “But Cal was in control of it, and she could have denied him. I wonder if, as soon as she left here, that man took her over.”
Trick nodded. “And now he’s got Cal all to himself, he don’t have to pay for it no more, and he can hold that secret over her to keep her loyal. ’Twas a suspicious business all along, if you ask me.”
Miss June looked miserable. “But we did what we could, didn’t we? We couldn’t have forbidden Cal to take a chance at marriage and a respectable life.”
“No, that’s a fact. She’d have gone anyway and never spoken to us again.”
They exchanged a glance and Trick said, “Though she ain’t speakin’ to us now. Didn’t sound like she was gonna come by.”
“It almost seemed like she was more upset to see us than anythin’ else—and that she would rather not have,” I said.
“Which don’t make any sense at all,” Oscar stated. “We were her friends, and we’d come all this way to see that she was all right. If she was really all right, wouldn’t she have laughed, apologized for causing us all that trouble and come back with us to see Miss June?”
“I reckon that would have made more sense.”
“Something’s not right about this,” Trick said. “And I aim to find out what. We ain’t gonna give up on Cal, not now. I reckon she’s in some kind of trouble and needs our help, but she’s too scared or ashamed to ask for it.”