Joe's Wife

The knock came again, assuring him he’d actually heard it. He sat up in surprise. “Hold on.”

He threw his legs over the side of the bed, immediately grimacing at the pain that shot through his thigh. Awkwardly stepping into his pants, he wondered who’d be calling. The only townspeople who spoke to him were the regulars at the Pair-A-Dice, whom he doubted would be up this early, Jed Wheeler himself, the Reverend Baker and Tye’s landlady.

Pulling on a rumpled Calcutta shirt and leaving the laces loose, he ran a hand through his hair and squinted at his dark-whiskered cheeks in the mirror before opening the door.

A young boy stood in the hall, threadbare knees in his trousers, his cap askew. “Message for you, mister.”

Tye stared at the envelope. “For me? You sure it’s for Tye Hatcher?”

“Yes, sir.” The boy thrust it forward with an important flourish.

Tye accepted the envelope with a frown. “Here, wait up.”

He found a nickel on the stand beside his bed and flipped it to the boy, ignoring the fact that he’d regret it later.

“Thanks, mister.”

Tye closed the door and tore open the envelope. Unfolding a piece of paper, he read the words scrawled in black ink.

Hatch, I need to see you. I’m at Rosa Casals’s s house.

Lottie

He had wondered if Lottie still lived in Aspen Grove. No one spoke of her, and since he hadn’t seen her in the time he’d been there, he’d assumed—or hoped, for her sake—that she had found a husband and settled down.

Rosa Casals and Lottie Prescott had both been saloon girls at the Pair-A-Dice before the war. He and Lottie had enjoyed a satisfactory relationship, nothing serious, but something that took the edge off the loneliness.

Tye shaved and dressed in his good clean shirt. He needed a haircut, but he was saving every penny. He’d discovered years ago that the custom of eating three times a day was merely a habit that could be modified, too.

Tye added his wide-brimmed hat to his ensemble. A morning exercise usually took the stiffness out of his leg, so he determinedly walked to the house on the edge of town where Rosa had grown up with an aging father.

Like most of the houses he’d seen on his travels home, the outside needed a coat of paint, a new fence and several boards replaced on the porch.

Tye rapped on the door and waited, hat in hand.

The door opened, and Rosa Casals smiled a familiar smile, one front tooth overlapping the other and giving her a girlish look, even though silver had appeared at her temples. “Hatch,” she greeted him. “Come in.”

He glanced at the street behind him. “You sure it’s all right?”

She grabbed his wrist and pulled him forward.

“It’s a little late to be concerned about my reputation,” she said teasingly, taking his hat and hanging it on a rack in the hallway. She waved him into a neat parlor that smelled sharply of lemon wax and candles.

Tye met her round, brown-eyed gaze and smiled. Rosa had always been fun-loving and impetuous. Working in the saloons hadn’t been conducive to finding a decent husband, however. “Are you still working somewhere?” he asked out of curiosity.

“Nah. Papa, the old coot, died three years back and left me enough to live comfortably. He was such a penny-pinching old miser. I never had a decent dress or a cent to spend on myself the whole time I was growing up. Then I find out the skinflint was hoarding it all those years.”

Tye glanced around. “I had a note from Lottie.”

Rosa’s face grew serious. “I know. I sent the boy for you.”

“She’s here?”

“Yes. She’s been with me for a little over a year now. She wants to see you, Hatch.”

“Okay.”

“She’s not well.”

“What’s wrong with her?”

“Consumption. Doc says he’s done all he can.”

And she wanted to see him? “Oh.”

“Ever since we heard that you were back in Aspen Grove, she’s been wanting you to visit. She has some good weeks and some bad weeks, and this is one of her better times, so we decided to send for you now.”

Tye stood waiting, uncomfortable, but unwilling to turn aside a friend’s request.

“Come with me,” she said. “I’ll take you to her room.”

He followed her down a hallway where several candles flickered, though the day was bright, and he soon realized they were meant to dispel the cloying smell of the sickroom.

Rosa swept into the room ahead of him. A frail, strawberry-haired woman rested against a bolster of pillows on a lofty four-poster bed. Tye had to step close before he recognized Lottie’s warm brown eyes. Their luster was gone, as was the shine of her unruly hair. Her pale skin seemed paper-thin and drawn too tightly over her fragile bones and pallid face.

“Hatch. Come sit by me. Let me see you,” she said, patting the spread. Only her voice was familiar.

She took his hand, and her skin felt powdery smooth against his palm, her fingers thin and bony. “God, you feel good. You look good. You look older. Not a bad look, mind you, just older.”

He perched on the edge of the bed. “Yeah, well, it’s been a while, Lottie.”

“Yes.” She looked deeply into his eyes. “We had some good times back then, didn’t we?”

They’d kept each other company for a while, was all. But he wouldn’t spoil her enhanced memories when she had so few and no time left to make more. So he nodded. “Yes.”

“Where were you?” she asked. “During the war. I mean.”

“I was with General Thomas.”

She frowned as if she were trying to remember. “Chattanooga?”

He nodded. “And Chickamaugua. We held off Braxton Bragg’s army.”

“I knew you’d be one of the strong ones who came home.”

“How did you know that?”

“I don’t know. I just did. You’re a survivor. Strong inside, where it counts.”

Lottie’d always seemed strong, too. Full of life and energy and big plans for the future. The antithesis of the ghostly pale woman in this bed before him. Life sure took some unfair twists. “I thought you’d have found a man by now. Be living in the city in that big house you wanted.”

“Yeah, well...” She gave him a sad-sweet smile. “I had hundreds of offers. Just that nobody ever measured up to you.”

She was teasing him. Theirs had never been a passionate relationship. She’d had plans for a rich man and a house in the city. He’d wanted a patch of ground and some livestock to call his own. He gave her a warm smile.

“I’m not here for much longer,” she said simply.

Tye didn’t know how to reply.

“I need you to do something for me,” she said tentatively.

“You know I will.” He leaned forward, and she placed her palm on his chest as though touching him gave her strength. “I’ll do anything you ask.” Did she have last-minute debts to repay in order to go to her resting place in peace? Damn! He couldn’t help her if she needed money. “What is it?” he asked.

“I have a child,” she said, and tears welled in her eyes.

“You do? Where is he? Do you need me to go get him for you?” Perhaps she needed to say goodbye.

“No. She’s here. What I need you to do is...”

“What?”

“I need you to take care of her for me.”

Tye stared at her. “I don’t have much, Lottie. I can help, but—”

“Not money,” she interrupted. “I mean take her. After I’m gone,” she clarified, and blinked back the moisture in her eyes. “Raise her.”

Was she all right in the head? Had her sickness gone to her mind? Tye glanced behind him but Rosa had left them alone. Lottie was asking him to take responsibility for a small person! A kid he didn’t even know. “I don’t know the first thing about a kid. I’m sure she’d be better off with someone else.”

“No!” she said firmly. “She wouldn’t. Nobody else would have her, you know that. She’d end up in an orphanage or worse, and I can’t die afraid of that happening to my Eve.”

“What about Rosa?” He glanced over his shoulder again, as though he could conjure up some help.

“No. She’s getting married. Emery Parks has a brother-in-law whose wife died, and Rosa is marrying him. He already has five children. He wouldn’t take another one.”

“Well...” Tye glanced about the room helplessly. “Surely there’s someone.”

“That’s what I’ve been believing all along. I’ve been praying that someone will want her before it’s too late. Before she goes to an orphan asylum.” She pierced him with a steady gaze. “She’s a child born out of wedlock, Hatch. Folks consider her trash, just like they do me. She’ll grow up just like me, too...unless somebody takes her. Unless you take her and give her a different life. And a name.”

She knew exactly what she was saying to him, and exactly how he’d react. Tye’s own father had been a rancher right here in Colorado. He hadn’t married Tye’s mother, and he hadn’t claimed Tye as his son. More than anyone, Tye knew the stigma of being a bastard. And Lottie was using that against him.

“Nobody’d want my name, Lottie,” he argued. “My name’s no better than hers would be.”

“At least it would be somebody’s name,” she said, her voice stronger than her appearance dictated. “It would show that somebody wanted her. That you wanted her. You’re a good man. I know you’d take care of her, and you wouldn’t let anything happen to her.”

Her urgent pleas hung in the air like the unpleasant smell of sickness and the cloying scent of wax.

“You said you’d do anything for me,” she said softly. Unfairly. And she knew it. But she was dying, and she had a child to look out for.

A trapped sensation made him want to bolt for the door. But he couldn’t. He wouldn’t. She had to have been desperate to have called on him.

“Go see her,” she urged. “She’s in the room next door to mine.”

He stood slowly, releasing her hand. Her eyes held so much hope. So much fear. So much love for her child. With uncertainty bombarding his mind and a sense of human duty harping at his conscience, Tye walked out of the room to the next one like a man walking toward an uncertain fate.

He took a deep breath, his head not understanding why his feet were going ahead with this monstrous demand on the rest of his life. He didn’t know the first thing about a kid. Sure, he wanted one or two someday, but not until he had a place to live and a wife to give him his own.

What if he didn’t even like her? The door stood ajar, and he tapped his knuckles against the wood.

He didn’t know what he was expecting. Certainly not the fragile, dark-haired angel who sat beneath the window holding a rag doll and looking for all the world like a porcelain doll herself. She raised wide eyes the shade of deep blue pansies and blinked.

Something in Tye’s chest contracted painfully. She looked so small and helpless. “Eve?” he asked softly.

She nodded, and her midnight black ringlets bounced against shoulders he could span with one hand. “Are you Mr. Hatcher?”

“Yes.”

She merely stared at him.

What should he say to her now that he was here? He didn’t have any experience with kids. “Did your mother tell you I’d be coming?”

She nodded again. “I stayed clean till you got here. Me an’ Molly was getting kind of tired of staying clean an’ all.”

“Well, you look very clean to me.”

“Thank you. You look clean, too. Them’s my manners and Mama said I best mind ’em.”

Her piping voice and serious expression enchanted him. He found himself wanting to hear her say more. “How old are you?”

“Five and a half. My birthday’s behind Thanksgiving.”

“Oh.”

The tiny creature hopped to her feet and placed the doll on the bed. Her wrists and hands were as delicate and frail-boned as anything he’d ever seen. A stiff wind would blow her clean to Texas.

He crossed to sit on the corner end of the mattress, wondering what to say next. He glanced at the cloth doll. “Is that Molly?”

She bobbed her head. A smattering of pale freckles across her golden skin reminded Tye of Lottie, but her dark hair and lovely wide eyes were a mesmerizing combination all her own. No wonder Lottie adored her. No wonder she feared for this child’s welfare being placed in the hands of strangers.

Not that he’d ever laid eyes on her before. But the unknown was often more frightening than the familiar, and Lottie’d known Tye for many years. He was the only person she could turn to. The only person she trusted.

How pathetic.

“My mama’s bad sick,” she said, adjusting the doll’s dress and arranging her against a pillow.

What must she think of this frightening situation? She’d grown up over a saloon and only now moved to a house so her mother could die. “I know.”

Eve climbed onto the bed and dangled her feet over the side.

“Sometimes I’m scared to go to her room and see her.” Her silvery voice and tiny chin trembled.

Oh, Lord, what if she cried? What if she asked him something he didn’t want to answer or didn’t know how to answer? “That’s okay,” he said to reassure her.

“She don’t look a whole lot like my mama anymore, but she sounds like her, and she loves me like her.”

Her observation seemed too mature. But he’d noticed Lottie barely looked like herself. Her dreadful appearance must be frightening to her daughter. “She loves you very much.”

“She said someone would come for me before the angels came to get her.”

Tye’s throat closed up tight. He didn’t know how to handle this. He’d seen so many people suffer and die, he shouldn’t have had any feelings left when it came to death. He’d fought and killed with his own hands. He had blocked out recrimination and sorrow. What did he know about a child losing a mother?

Nothing. But he knew a lot about being a kid without a father. It wasn’t really the cruelty of classmates and townspeople that hurt so much at this age; a kid didn’t have anything to compare his experiences with. It was the memory of those humiliating slurs years later that ate at a person’s gut.

What kind of burden had Lottie asked him to carry? What kind of mess would he make of it, of this kid’s life, if he went along with her request?

Nothing worse than life in an orphanage. Unwanted kids didn’t even get to eat the foods they needed to grow healthy. They got the scraps, the dregs. And it was never enough.

Tye had learned to use his fists and his wits for survival. But this little girl? He didn’t even want to think about it. He had only to look at Lottie to see what would become of her.

Unless someone stepped in.

“Did you come for me, Mr. Hatcher?”

Tye looked up. Knowing what was happening, yet unable to do anything to prevent it, he fell headlong into her black-lashed, blue-violet gaze, eyes that reflected trust and innocence and waited for him to make the decision that would shape the rest of her life. She had no one in the world. No one but him.

Heaven help her.

“Yes, Eve. I came for you.”

Chapter Three

Before dark, Gus and Purdy returned from the hills with the welcome news that others who’d been fighting a brushfire since yesterday had been successful in quelling it and that they’d be following. Meg had a hearty stew and corn bread warming, as well as rice pudding with raisins and currants in a milk pan in the oven.

Freshly washed, his thinning gray hair combed back in streaks on his sun-browned head, Gus entered the kitchen without knocking, as was customary on the Circle T. He did as much cooking as Meg did, coming in early each meal to grind the beans and start the coffee.

“Fire’s out?” she asked.

“Yup. Got a big patch of brush up by Lame Deer and was spreadin’ to the Anderson place, but we stopped ’er.”

“I could smell it on the wind this afternoon.” Meg had kept herself busy, the thought of the fire spreading this far licking at her already edgy nerves.

“Seen you got the cows milked,” he said, opening the oven and stirring. the rice pudding, which had turned a smooth caramel brown.

She nodded. “Thought Patty was going to kick me good, though.”

Joe’s Newfoundland “puppy,” which he’d brought home from a buying trip, only to watch rapidly grow to the size of a Shetland pony, had slipped in behind Gus and now stood with a chunk of firewood in his mouth.

Meg propped the door open with the wood. “Good boy, Major. Get more.”

The dog immediately bounded for the woodpile, returning several times and dropping the wood into the firebox. Gus had taught him the trick, perhaps with the idea of saving his own steps, and the dog had caught on the way he did to everything.

After several trips, Major sat before Meg, his snout quivering in anticipation. She rewarded him with a lump of sugar, and he found a place in the corner of the long room to settle. He caught much of his own food: rabbits and squirrels. Meg had thought the practice disgusting at first, but had since grown appreciative due to the fact that she couldn’t afford to feed another mouth.

The rest of the hands arrived minutes later: Purdy, along with the “boys,” Aldo and Hunt Eaton, brothers in their teens, who’d been too young to go to war and needed to work to eat. Their parents lived on an acreage near town with several younger children. For lack of grown men, Meg had hired the brothers on as reps a couple of years ago.

Joining them as the day progressed came reps from nearby ranches, stopping to eat before heading to their own places. She fed them gratefully, this bedraggled bunch of cowboys who’d been too young or too old to fight, or who’d only recently come home to ranches in need of more attention than they could afford.

All were respectfully solemn in deference to her widowed state and her mourning clothing, and they soon headed out.

Purdy was shorter and wirier than Gus, a long gray handlebar mustache his distinguishing feature. He walked with a hitch now, and lengthy stretches in the saddle enfeebled him for days. Tomorrow he probably wouldn’t be able to do much around the place, and the others would work harder to make his slack unnoticeable.

“I’m gonna take care o’ the horses now.” He grabbed his hat.

“I’ll do it,” Gus offered.

“No,” Meg said immediately. “Aldo and Hunt, will you see to the horses, please? You two—” she shooed Gus and Purdy with a flour-sack towel “—hit your bunks. I’ll finish up here.”

“Yes, ma’am.” The boys got up from the bench and headed for the corral. Gus and Purdy followed.

Another hour passed before she had the dishes washed and beans soaking for tomorrow’s noon meal. If she weren’t so tired from checking the stock and doing all the chores while the men fought the fire, she’d have filled the big tin tub that sat in the space beside the pantry. The prospect sounded too exhausting for this evening. She’d settle for a tin basin of water in her room and sponge herself off.

At the sound of a horse and buggy, she paused in scooping warm water out of the stove’s well. She peered out the back door, but the rig must have continued to the front.

Meg walked through the house and opened the seldom used front door. Niles Kestler stood on the grouping of boards that could only be called a porch in the broadest of terms. “Niles! How nice to see you.”

She probably smelled like cows and lye soap. Belatedly, she whisked off her spattered apron. “Won’t you come in?”

“I don’t know if I should,” he said, stepping from one foot to the other uncomfortably.

He’d been to their home many times when Joe had been alive; Niles and Joe had been pals since their youth. But her widowed state changed that situation. For propriety’s sake, she shouldn’t have asked him in.

Which was ridiculous. Gus and Purdy and the Eaton brothers had the run of her home, with nary a thought to impropriety. But to meet his standards of decorum, she stepped outside. “What brings you?” she asked.

“I thought I’d pay a call and see how you’re doing.”

“I’m doing fine.”

“Good.”

“How is Celia?”

“She’s well, thank you.”

Niles’s wife was expecting a baby, but men and women didn’t speak of such delicate things.

“Harley spoke with me this week,” he said.

So that was why he’d come. Harley’d gone ahead with it.

“I can get you a sizable price for this land, Meg. There are investors who will snap it up in a minute.”

Her civility fell to the wayside. “Oh? And would they be among those select few Northerners who got rich off the war?”

Niles bristled. “The point is, Meg, you need the money. You can’t keep going without some help.”

“Well then, how about a loan until I get this place back on its feet?”

“You must know I can’t do that.”

He could probably do it out of his own pocket. He would have done it for Joe. The thought angered her. As Joe’s wife she’d had respect because he’d been respected. As his widow she had sympathy and little else. She’d known Niles her whole life, yet he wouldn’t consider an investment in her.

Exasperated, she turned and gazed across the expanse of dirt and grass to the corrals, where several horses stood outlined in the moonlight. “And you must know I can’t sell. You know what this place meant to Joe.”

“I do know,” he said quickly, and then added, “but Joe’s not here anymore.”

“And what a nice commission you could make off the sale of Joe’s ranch.” She didn’t bother to withhold the derision in her tone.

She turned back to look at him.

“You know you have to do it sooner or later,” he said. “Don’t be a foolish woman. Why not do it before you’ve sold everything that means anything to you?”

“The ranch is what means everything to me,” she replied. “And it’s worth any sacrifice.”

He stepped back and placed his smart, narrow-brimmed felt hat on his head. “All right. Do it your way. But you’ll be coming to me soon. And by then you’ll be in dire straits.”

“Well,” she replied matter-of-factly. “I’ll do everything else in my power first.”

“Good night, Meg.” He climbed up to the leather seat of his fancy buggy and guided the horse back toward town.

Meg folded her arms beneath her breasts and watched him disappear in the darkness. Her anger had only been a temporary disguise for hurt and fear, and as it dissipated, tears stung her eyes. She set her mouth in a firm line to keep the desperation at bay.

Movement caught her eye. Gus stood silhouetted in the doorway on the side of the barn where the men slept in roughly finished rooms. She waved, knowing he’d been checking on her visitor and her safety. He returned the wave and closed the door.

Exhausted, she entered the house, dipped her water and washed up in her tiny bedroom before donning her cotton gown, extinguishing the lamps and climbing into bed.

She’d thought about her situation every day and night since Mother Telford and Harley’s insistence. It wouldn’t improve. Without a man to take on much of the physical work, she couldn’t keep the place going. And the Telfords would keep trying to wear her down.

The more she’d thought about it, the more she’d resigned herself to the fact that a husband was exactly what she had to have. For the past several nights she’d gone over the limited possibilities. All the bachelors were too old or too young, except for three. Jed Wheeler ran one of the saloons, but just the thought of marrying him made her shudder. Besides, he wouldn’t know anything about ranching.

Colt Brickey was a year or two younger than she, but had come home from the war teched in the head. He could probably work, but she needed more than that—she needed someone who could help her make decisions.

The third and last was Tye Hatcher.

Still not husband material in society’s eyes, but the only prospect capable of working and planning. He limped, but that shouldn’t keep him from riding. If Purdy could do it at his age, surely Tye could. He’d done ranch work since he’d quit school to take care of his mother. He’d worked as a rep and helped with roundups, and from everything she’d seen, he seemed honest and hardworking.