Chapter 16
“We can unload that in the morning,” Owen said of the log rounds that filled the bed of the wagon. “I’m starving.”
“Same.” Emmett hurried with him to put the horses in their stalls.
Clarence had had a busy day of peeing on every tree on the far side of the South Platte. He was eager to get into the house and relax, too, but even though he was scratching at the door, Temperance didn’t open it to let him in.
The fire was cold when Owen entered with Emmett. There was no sign of Temperance and no meal waiting for them.
“Rose?” Owen called, pushing into the parlor.
“Oh, you’re home.” Temperance was coming in the front door to the parlor. She shut and locked the door. “Why did you call me that?”
“It’s quicker to say when I’m in a hurry.” He’d been worried. “Did you run to the mercantile?” Her hands were empty.
“Only to look for Jane. She wasn’t at the trading post, either. I’m not sure where else to try.” She hung her short coat and bonnet.
“She’s not at the Bijou?” Most saloon keepers opened by midday. The girls appeared when things got busier toward dark.
“Mr. Fritz was here an hour ago,” Temperance said in a stark tone. “He thought you’d poached her because she hadn’t turned up for work.”
“That’s not like her.” Owen exchanged a sharp look with Emmett.
In this town, unexpected dangers could show up from all directions. Owen couldn’t help thinking of Sureshot, hoping he’d gone back to Horsefly by now, but what if he hadn’t?
“I checked with Mavis on my way home,” Temperance added. “She said Jane stepped out to buy coffee this morning and didn’t come back.”
“Does she have anyone she likes to visit?” Emmett was also frowning with concern.
Temperance turned a cool look on him. “If you’re asking whether she visits a man, she does not. At least none she’s ever told me about,” she admitted in a quieter voice. “But I honestly don’t think so.” She tangled her fingers together and sighed anxiously.
“We’ll ask around for her,” Owen said. He was bone-tired and ready to eat the dog, but he only had to glance at Emmett and his friend nodded agreement.
“Thank you,” Temperance breathed.
Temperance puton beans for dinner and gave the dog the scraps she’d been saving for him, then tried to sew by firelight, but she couldn’t concentrate. She was worried about Jane.
Thankfully, Owen returned within the hour.
“Jane is fine,” were his first words on coming through the door. “She was on her way to the mercantile this morning when someone said they’d heard she could help with childbirth. A woman employed at the brothel was in labor. It took some time, but the mother and baby are resting and doing well.”
“Oh, what a relief!” On all counts. She covered her heart, then looked past him. “Where’s Emmett?”
“That traitor stayed at the Bijou,” he said with mock insult. “Fritz wouldn’t serve me, but I wanted to come home and put your mind at rest anyway. I think Emmett’s sweet on Jane,” he divulged with a lift of his brows.
“Oh?” She set aside her sewing to fetch their bowls and served the beans. “The way things are going, Mr. Fritz will have to change the name of his saloon from the Bijou to the Ido.”
“Well done,” he said with appreciation of her joke as he accepted his bowl.
“I thought so.”
They ate without ceremony, then she helped him bring in the pieces for the bed frame. It went together without any pegs or iron nails. The rails were notched to fit into the heavy square legs.
“That’s ingenious,” she noted as the pieces only needed a few taps with a mallet to fit together.
“That’s Emmett. He owns shares in the mill so he planed and notched these while I was still saying, ‘Good morning.’ I drilled these holes, though. Right after he showed me where to put them. Here.” He fed her the tail of the hemp rope and she carried it across to the opposite rail.
They worked in silence, the only sound the hiss of the rope moving through the holes.
“I wanted to ask you,” he said carefully. “Did we offend you yesterday? Joking about Pearl making moonshine?”
“I wasn’t offended.” She stepped into the middle of the bed frame and brought the length of rope back to him, waiting while he fed it out one hole and in through the other. “I did wonder whether you really need me if you have a woman who can make whiskey, though. I presume she could keep your ledger for you, if you asked her to.”
“She probably could.” He met her gaze as he handed her the tail.
“So why don’t you?”
“She came here wanting a husband. I’m not looking to become one.”
“Ever?” She was both surprised and...unsettled.
“No.” His voice was gentle but firm. “Too much responsibility.”
Did he feel that way because of his brother? An ache sat in her soul on his behalf, wishing she could take away his loss and self-blame.
He wasn’t looking at her. He kept his attention on pulling through the slack of the rope. She stepped out of the way while he tugged to increase the tension on the lines that were already strung across the frame. The wood squeaked against its joints.
At least he was honest about his intentions and lack thereof. Not that she was looking for marriage, either. She had resigned herself to spinsterhood after Adelaide had pronounced her ‘ruined.’
Temperance had been devastated by that label. Her stepmother had spent all of Temperance’s adolescence impressing on her that a woman had no choice but to marry. Working for your father is unseemly. You need to know how to care for children and keep house. You want a family of your own, don’t you?
Temperance had wanted a family of her own, mostly because Adelaide had made her feel as though she lacked a place in her father’s. Kicking her out had put an exclamation point on her painful sense of being an outsider.
Owen tied off the horizonal rope and plucked one. It gave a dull thrum.
They began stringing the vertical lines. It was more involved since they had to weave it between the horizontal ones as they went.
Owen didn’t seem to think she was unchaste or tainted, she reminded herself. In fact, he encouraged her to envision a life where she didn’t need to marry because he was giving her a means to support herself.
Was he, though?
“What if you can’t get whiskey?” she asked.
“I’ll get whiskey.” He spoke with confidence. “Cecil Dudley is nothing but a pebble in my boot that I’ll shake out sooner than later.”
“What if the saloon keepers do something worse?” She was recalling Emmett’s remark about a saloon being deliberately set ablaze.
“You can drive yourself crazy with ‘What if.’ What if all the other saloons burn down and mine is the only one standing? Deal with what’s in front of you.” His voice grew strained as he leaned back, pulling the final line taut. “Ignore the rest.”
“That’s not an answer!” She clutched her elbows as she paced restlessly to the other side of the room. “I know I’m not your wife, Owen, but I’m still relying on you.” He didn’t even want the responsibility of a dog, so she knew he wasn’t putting much store in his obligations toward her. “Please don’t be so cavalier about my future.”
“What do you want me to say? That I know what the future holds?” He tied off the rope and pushed the bed frame into place, leaving enough space on the side by the wall for her to get in and out.
When he moved to the rolled mattress standing on end by the door into the parlor, Temperance joined him. They walked it toward the bed then tipped it onto the ropes. From there, it was a small struggle to unroll it and wrangle it into place, but they did it.
He stretched out on the bed with a sigh and patted the spot beside him.
It was too tempting not to see how it felt.
The ropes creaked as she joined him, but even though it was freshly strung, the bed sagged her toward the middle and rolled her into him. She bent her knees to put space between them and pillowed her head on her curled arm.
“This is all you can do,” he said, turning his head to look at her. “Hope for a comfortable place to sleep at the end of a hard day and appreciate it when you get one.”
“I suppose I should be grateful you’re not making false promises.”
“I try not to make any promises at all.”
Make a promise to me, she wanted to urge, unsure why she wanted that so badly. She wasn’t even sure she could believe him that she would have a job next week.
Clarence picked himself up off the floor and padded toward the door right before there was a knock.
Emmett.
Temperance scrambled off the bed and moved to let him in, embarrassed that he’d almost caught her on the bed with Owen, even though it was unmade, and they were fully clothed. Owen stayed exactly where he was.
“I came back to help you with that,” Emmet said as he removed his cap and hung it on a peg by the door.
“Temperance did. We made our bed and now we’re going to lie it in, aren’t we?” he joked, glancing at her.
She supposed she would have to, she thought with a pang of fatalism.
Emmett leftthe next morning with Owen’s message that the next one of their partners to come to town should bring enough gold to clear his debts and outbid Cecil Dudley for whiskey.
Owen wasn’t letting Cecil’s interference bother him. He spent the morning unloading the wood he and Emmett had collected, then chopped enough to keep the fire going for a few days. When the sun came out in the afternoon, he posted the latest letters Temperance had written for him, then took her out to an empty field where he showed her how to shoot.
“Is that the pistol you took from that outlaw from Horsefly?” she asked with a frown of worry.
“He knows how to get it back if he wants it.” He showed her how to load the Colt.
“What if he doesn’t want to pay you twenty dollars? Do you shoot him with his own gun?”
“I’m not going to hand it to him and let him shoot me, am I?”
“Owen.” She sounded exasperated.
“People always accuse me of not being serious, but most of the time, I’m being as honest as I know how. Now, I want you to empty this at those sticks I set up on the log over there.” He pointed, taking up a stance behind her where he could smell the fresh air in her hair overlaying the traces of smoke from their breakfast. “The noise and the kick will scare you, but that’s what I want you to get used to, so it won’t make you hesitate if you actually have to use this thing.”
“I am definitely going to hesitate to shoot a person,” she stated, but she let him adjust her posture before she squinted down the sight and squeezed the trigger.
She flinched as it kicked back, and she stumbled into him.
He steadied her. “There you go. Try again.”
She did, reacting less violently with every shot. Her last one picked the stick off the log.
“Good work.” He squeezed her shoulders, then set the pistol aside and picked up his long gun. “Let’s try Mrs. Stames.”
“Mrs. Stames?”
“I’ve slept with her a lot more often than any flesh-and-blood female. She’s reliable when it comes to getting my dinner too.”
Temperance tsked and rolled her eyes.
“You only get one shot, but we’re here so you might as well give her a go. She veers a little to the left.” He helped her fix her posture and gave her tips on lining up the sight.
He was doing his best to keep his touches to only the strictly necessary variety, but he liked having the excuse to stand close and touch her. She was sturdy, but soft and warm. And cute as hell, concentrating so hard as she aimed.
“Now move it just a hair— There you go.”
She squeezed the trigger and staggered back into him while her shot kicked up a bit of bark close enough to the stick that it would have counted on something bigger.
“Ouch.” She rubbed her shoulder.
“Mrs. Stames is the jealous type.” He took the gun and showed her how to load it.
He let her take a few more shots, so she could practice loading it, then they packed up to walk home in the fading light.
“When do you think the saloon will open?” she asked as they ambled over the bridge.
“As soon as I have whiskey. Couple of days, I expect.” He glanced in the direction of the mercantile, but there was no use badgering Mick until he got his shipment in.
“I’d better finish my gown then.” She’d shown him what she had so far, and he’d asked her to put more lace on it, wanting it to look fancier.
“Oh! Mr. Greenly.” They turned a corner and nearly walked straight into Elmer.
“You!” Elmer was red-faced and, for once, didn’t spare a leer for a woman, too busy baring his teeth at Owen. “We had a deal.”
“Go on up to let Clarence out.” Owen touched Temperance’s elbow, muscles gathering with watchful tension. “It sounds like Elmer and I have business to discuss.”
Temperance hurried away, sending him a concerned look over her shoulder.
“Are we doing this here?” Owen shifted his grip on the long gun propped on his shoulder, never liking to use Mrs. Stames as a bludgeon, but it wouldn’t be the first time if he had to.
Elmer looked around. They were outside the cabinet maker’s shop. There was a cabin next door with a coop full of laying hens behind it. Otherwise, they were alone on the street.
“I gave you that building, so she would leave town,” Elmer said through his teeth, pointing in the direction Temperance had gone.
“I bought the building for the price of your debt,” Owen corrected him.
“You know exactly what I expected, Owen. Don’t play ignorant.”
“Yeah. You expected you could leave your child and his mother to starve to death.”
“Shut—” He swung his head around again, still speaking through his teeth. “—up. I got her that job with Fritz so she could look after herself, didn’t I? I didn’t even know if she was really carrying. There’s no proof it’s mine, you know.”
“Only her word.” Owen wanted so badly to feed him this gun. He only hesitated because he couldn’t decide which end to use. “You believed he was yours when you bought the stage ticket.”
“To get my past out of town,” Elmer spelled out in a harsh whisper. “Now she’s marrying Fritz? Staying here? What if Katherine finds out?”
“Then I guess she’ll know what kind of polecat she married.” God, he pitied that woman.
“Our deal is off.” Elmer cut his hand across the air between them.
“The registration is in the vault at Quail’s Creek. That land and building is mine.” Owen tightened his grip on the gun because, despite his assertion, he could feel his plans slipping through his fingers. It was only a hiccup, he told himself, but it was a lifetime of trying to make something of himself and still coming dangerously close to amounting to nothing.
Elmer’s mouth was a thin line before he aired his lungs with a lengthy blue streak that questioned Owen’s parentage, his morals, his personal hygiene, and his level of intimacy with various animals.
When he got to questioning Temperance’s virtue, Owen stopped him with a hard finger in the middle of Elmer’s chest.
“Keep her name out of your mouth or you’ll be chewing your own teeth.”
“Get back to camp where you belong, you gold-grubbing, double-dealing, parlor-stealing piece of shit.” Elmer spat on his shoes and brushed past him.