Chapter 1 #2
Well, that was it. He was stranded in a frosty town with a measles epidemic, no clue when the next stage would come by, fairly certain the trains wouldn’t stop at all.
Not if the ever-increasing clouds were any indication.
No one was in the mood to buy brushes. By his father’s standards, he was a complete failure.
By his own standards, he was due for a change.
He rubbed his gloved hands over his face, warming up his red nose.
He needed something else to warm him up, and fast. The only thing he could see that would help with that was the saloon across the way.
“Well, at least I’ll be able to forget my troubles for a while,” he said aloud. And now he was talking to himself.
He picked up his trunk and headed on to the saloon. Something in his life had to change, and soon.
Exasperation. That was the word Miranda Clarke had been searching for this last hour. She was exasperated up to her eyeballs.
“No, Mr. Hoover, I will not pour you another one,” she sighed, nudging the old, rail-thin man off of the bar stool he’d sunk into two hours ago. “You’ve had quite enough already.”
“But you pour that sarsaparilla so pretty-like,” Mr. Hoover croaked and grinned, getting his balance, then shuffling across the saloon’s large, empty room toward the door.
He swayed, and Miranda caught him, murmuring, “That wasn’t sarsaparilla.
” She glanced around at the thinning patrons of the saloon, anxious to get on with things.
None of them were pleased with her for closing up early, just as she wasn’t particularly pleased with any of them for being there in the first place.
At least the disreputable women had stopped patronizing the place since she’d taken over and put her foot down.
At least, all but one. Her gaze settled on the tall, lithe figure of Starla, with her red, satin petticoats and painted face. “Starla, could you help?”
“Sure, honey.” Starla sashayed away from the end of the bar and scooped Mr. Hoover under his arms. “Come on, Frank. Time to head home.”
“You should all head home,” Miranda told the three other men lounging around the saloon, finishing their drinks.
She smoothed her hands over her conservative skirt, tucked the fly-away strands of her soft, brown hair back into the severe bun she wore, and pressed her hand to her high-necked bodice. “Please,” she added.
The men hummed and grumbled. The two playing cards at one of the liquor-stained tables stood, leaving their cards and several empty bottles where they were.
“What kind of saloon closes before the afternoon is over?” one commented to the other.
“A piss-poor one, that’s for sure,” the other replied. Miranda tried not to wince at their harsh language.
The two men shrugged into their wool coats and marched grumpily toward the door. Miranda wanted to shake her fist at them or give them sharp kicks in their rears as they left, but in the first place, a lady would never do such a thing, and in the second, they were right.
She sighed, shoulders sagging, and turned to walk back to the bar. Old Teddy Potts, the last man standing, slipped hazily off his bar stool, leaving a shining quarter on the counter.
“Cheer up, sweetie,” he slurred. “Old Buford mighta been a bit barmy to leave his old place to you, but it’s Christmas.”
Miranda blinked. She planted her hands on her hips. “And?”
Teddy chuckled, stumbling toward Miranda and giving her arm a good pat. “Christmas is a time of magic, of wishing on moonbeams, of miracles. Didn’t your old Uncle Buford ever tell you that?” He hiccupped.
“No, he did not.” As soon as the words were out, she softened her expression and turned to escort Teddy to the door.
The man was harmless, dependent on drink, and had been one of her batty uncle’s best friends.
“Uncle Buford would have done better to leave this saloon to you in his will, Mr. Potts.”
“Me?” Teddy jerked straighter, swaying as he did. He snorted. “Psht! I couldn’t run a saloon if it had a hundred legs all its own.” He laughed at his own joke.
Miranda wasn’t sure she understood it. She took Teddy’s coat down from a hook and helped him into it. As she was winding the muffler around his neck, Starla strode back into the room.
“Well, Frank’s taken care of. It sure is nippy out there, though.
The clouds are moving in fast. Looks like we’re in for another storm.
” She finished with a shudder and marched across the wide room to the huge fireplace.
She held her hands out to the crackling blaze.
“Of all things, Everleigh Walsh just told me she saw a stagecoach stop in the middle of Main Street earlier.”
Miranda finished helping Teddy into his warm things. “A stagecoach? I haven’t seen one of those in years.”
“We used to ride ’em all the time before the trains came,” Teddy said, his voice muffled. “Nothing like a stagecoach ride.”
“Nothing like your own, warm living room and fireplace either,” she added, pushing Teddy toward the door. “Tell Mrs. Teddy I give her my best,” she added before helping Teddy through the door.
As soon as it banged shut behind him, Miranda turned to the now-empty saloon and let out a weary breath. “What were you thinking, Uncle Buford?” she murmured. She started back toward the bar, dry-washing her hands.
Even across the room, Starla heard her. “My guess is that he was thinking you had the drive and the know-how to own a business.”
Miranda stopped in her steps. “A well-bred lady does not have drive and know-how .” Her face pinched at the thought. The words tasted sour in her mouth. She continued on toward the bar, shaking her head. “At least, not when it comes to being a saloonkeeper .”
She cringed, still having a hard time believing that that’s what she was.
For two-and-a-half whole weeks, that’s what she had been.
It was inconceivable, unbelievable, and also true.
She’d arrived on the train in Mistletoe, Montana on December 1 st , answering a summons sent by the executor of her late Uncle Buford’s estate.
The man had handed her the deed to the saloon with a wide, teasing grin, wished her luck, and hopped on the very train she’d just stepped off of.
And that was how proper, modest, respectable Miranda Clarke had ended up as the saloonkeeper of The Holey Bucket.
Well, she’d drawn the line at the shingle over the saloon’s door.
It had depicted a sacrilegious bucket leaking sudsy beer, hanging on a shining cross.
That had been the first thing to go. The next had been the ladies of ill-repute.
Not only had they made a habit of loitering around the Bucket’s tables and occasionally kicking up their skirts on the small stage at the front of the room, Miranda suspected they’d transacted other business in the saloon’s tiny backrooms. She chased them all away, but she hadn’t been able to get rid of Starla.
If she was being honest with herself, she wasn’t sure she wanted to.
“Being a clever, competent woman with a head for business does not make you any less of a lady,” Starla said, joining Miranda in cleaning up the remnants of the day’s customers at the bar.
“If you ask me, it makes you twice the woman those vapid, preening ladies who do nothing but sit around on overstuffed furniture drinking tea are.”
Miranda sent her a dubious look, but secretly her heart stirred with the compliment.
Even if Starla didn’t know it was a compliment.
Her whole life, Miranda had sat, stiff and unnoticed, with those vapid, preening ladies, never feeling quite accepted.
Her younger, prettier sister, Vicky, had been the darling of those ladies…
and most of the gentlemen, even though she never, ever obeyed their rules.
Miranda obeyed every rule, smiled at every slight, and where had it gotten her?
The Holey Bucket.
“I just wish the men wouldn’t drink so much,” she added with a sigh, piling the last of the empty, dirty glasses onto a platter. She’d wash them in the sink behind the bar as soon as the platter was full.
Starla laughed. “That is the reason most men come to a saloon, you know.” She took a rag and began wiping the bar clean.
“I can’t say I entirely approve of alcohol.” Miranda walked over to the table where the card-players had been seated and began gathering their bottles.
“There’s nothing wrong with a little nip now and then,” Starla advised her. “It’s when they drink too much that it becomes a problem.”
“Poor Teddy can’t stop himself,” Miranda spoke softly, carrying an armful of bottles to the bar.
“Mmm,” Starla hummed in sad agreement about Teddy. “And you watch out for Chet Jamison when he’s had too many in a bad mood. There’s sorry drunks and then there’s violent drunks.”
Miranda blew out a breath as she fit the empty beer bottles into a crate she had started keeping behind the bar.
“Which is why I question Uncle Buford’s wisdom in leaving me this place.
It’s unsuitable. It’s unsavory. It’s ruined my chance—” She snapped her mouth shut, sending Starla a guilty look, and picked up a cloth to wipe down the counters behind the bar.
“Ruined?” Starla prompted her. She’d wiped her way to the end of the bar and sauntered back now, that knowing, almost motherly look in her wise eyes. That was the reason Miranda had no real desire to banish the woman from the bar.
There was no point in hiding things from her sudden confidant. Miranda turned from the back counter to face Starla. “It’s ruined any chance I might have had left of finding a respectable man to marry. Not that those chances hadn’t been ruined already.” She leaned heavily against the bar.
Starla reached out and rubbed her arm. “It’s never too late, honey.”
Miranda arched a brow at her. “What kind of man would want to marry a female saloonkeeper?”
“You might be surprised.”
Miranda’s brow arched higher. “What kind of man would want to marry a woman who threw herself at her sister’s fiancé?” She flushed scarlet at the memory of that afternoon with Micah Lewis.
A sympathetic, but also mischievous, grin sparkled its way up to Starla’s eyes. “I haven’t met your sister, but the man sounds like a complete boob to pass up a determined, energetic woman like you.”
The warmth of the compliment swirled through Miranda even as it deflated her. Determined and energetic, not beautiful or graceful.
Starla straightened. “You know what? I bet Buford left this place to you because he wanted to prove to you that you’re as good as any of those shrinking violets.”
Miranda latched onto the hope of the comment. “Really?”
“Sure. I bet he wanted you to have this place so you could learn to loosen up and live a little too.”
Miranda huffed impatiently and set to work scrubbing the already clean bar top. “I tried loosening up once. It brought me nothing but disgrace.”
Starla laughed out loud. “Then it seems to me that all you need is more practice.”
“Practice? Being loose?” She stopped cleaning and planted one fist on her hip. “Loose women do not exactly have the best reputations, you know.”
“Maybe not, but we sure do have more fun.” Starla winked.
Too late, Miranda realized she’d insulted her new friend. “Oh, Starla. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it.”
Starla shrugged. “Honey, I’m as loose as a schoolboy’s front tooth. I have to be to survive.” She leaned across the bar as if confiding a great secret. “But let me tell you, you don’t have to be as loose as me to loosen up a little.”
Miranda pursed her lips in doubt. “That hasn’t been my experience.”
“Then you need new experiences.” She shifted to rest her weight on one hip. “Take a chance. Open yourself up to life a little. It’s Christmas, after all. You never know what sort of miracles will walk through your door at Christmas.”
Miranda couldn’t help but laugh. “No miracles are going to walk through my?—”
She didn’t have a chance to finish her sentence before the saloon’s front door burst open with a gust of icy wind.
The first thing that entered was a huge trunk with the faded words “Mendel’s Marvelous Brushes” painted on it.
The owner of the trunk came staggering through the door afterwards.
He set the trunk down with a thud, then straightened, brushing tiny flurries of snow from his wool-clad arms. He was tall, with broad shoulders and thick, curling, brown hair, which he revealed as soon as he removed his hat.
“Good afternoon, uh, ma’am. My name is Randall Sinclair, and I come to you today…” He paused, met her eyes, and smiled.