Oh!” Corra jerked her hand back and stuck the offended finger in her mouth. A red line swelled along a break at the quick, and she plopped down on the freshly scrubbed step. Taking the half-torn nail between her teeth, she yanked. Better to be done with it than snag it on everything she touched. She spit the white crescent into the pail. Keeping a boardinghouse was no dainty task, though her sister seemed to manage quite well. In the two months she’d been at the boardinghouse, Corra felt she wasn’t really needed for anything other than easing Letty’s conscience over leaving her spinster sister behind.
When Letty’s husband, Robert, packed up his Cincinnati dental practice and moved his family west, he’d chosen Ford Junction of all places. Hardly a place at all, but purchasing the boardinghouse had turned out to be their saving grace. Robert had taken a back upstairs bedroom for his office and left the larger front rooms for boarders—boarders who would tsk and shake their heads were they to climb the staircase before Corra finished.
She squeezed out the rag and started on the next step, lifting the burgundy carpet runner with care. Fine grit covered everything, like the memory of a dusty cowboy covered all reasonable thought. A leather-gloved hand touching a hat brim over gold-green eyes sent tremors through her middle for the hundredth time. She shook her head and scooted down the stairs with her bucket and rag. Already the water was dirty.
Hefting the pail and her daydreams, she carried the cloudy water through the delicious smell of fresh bread and out the back door to pour into the lilies. She left the pail by the door then went to the oven and removed three browned loaves to cool on racks.
“You’ve been at it again, haven’t you?” Letty swept into the kitchen with her quick smile and gave Corra a hug. “I’ll be as fat as a sow with all your baking. Two dried-apple pies this morning, and now bread?”
Corra scooted the cooling racks from the edge of the counter. “You will never be fat. But you might have a full house to feed, depending on how many train passengers stay the night. I’m sure it won’t go to waste.”
“Corra, sit and have some coffee with me. You’re putting me to shame. Usually by now you’re reading in the parlor.”
Alicia hopped down the stairs and bounced into the kitchen, her blond curls springing off her shoulders like golden coils. “I know why.”
Uneasiness climbed Corra’s spine as she eyed the little tattletale.
Smiling sweetly, the child sidled next to her mother just beyond Corra’s reach. “One of those cowboys tipped his hat to her this morning.”
Letty turned her daughter to face her and wrapped an errant curl around a finger. Her fine brows arched with an unspoken question.
Corra retreated to the cupboard for two cups. She filled them with coffee, set one before her sister, and took the seat across the table. Stirring sugar into her own cup, she envied the speed at which the sweet crystals dissolved. Oh, to disappear with such ease. A cautious glance assured her that Letty was waiting for a full account.
Corra quickly summarized the three riders and their dust-swirling cattle. Letty shook her head with a sad line to her mouth.
“That was Josiah Hanacker and his two children. A rancher up Texas Creek. The canyon cuts south to the Wet Mountain Valley, and the stage road runs right through his property. He was real regular in church, even living so far out, before his wife passed two years ago, poor man.” Letty rolled her lips and wagged her head again, a sure sign of sympathy. “He’s raising those children alone, with his crippled father’s help.” She caught Corra’s eye. “If you can call that help.”
After the brief break, Corra spent the remainder of the morning contriving details around Letty’s explanation. A keen-eyed widower raising two boys alone on a ranch in the mountains sounded like the perfect scenario for the novels tucked securely beneath her unmentionables. Her paper beaus, Letty called them. Though Corra knew her sister meant no ill in the teasing, it stung. Corra’s suitors had always come under cover of book bindings and daydreams. They still did.
Fidgety with nervous energy, she left for the mercantile to check the mail.
Not that she received mail. With Mother gone now, who would write? Only newspapers she’d ordered from the East and an occasional magazine came her way. But she needed to get out of the house, far from the images swirling in her head of a range-riding cowboy and his motherless sons. The bell clanked as she stepped inside Hobson’s store, and the owner greeted her from atop his ladder perched against high shelving.
“Be with you in a moment.”
“Take your time, please. I just came for the mail.”
Mr. Hobson reached too far and the ladder tipped then settled back. Corra gasped and covered her mouth. If the portly man fell and broke his teeth, her brother-in-law could help him. But what if he broke an arm? Or his neck?
Hobson shuttled down the ladder and puffed out a hard breath.
“Mr. Hobson, you gave me a fright! What if you had fallen?”
He chuckled and his apron pulled against his stomach. “Gave myself a fright, too, Miss Corra.” He stepped around the counter and hurried across the store to the mail slots. “I do believe you have something here. Came on yesterday’s stage, if I recall correctly.”
Good. Something to keep her thoughts in line. Hobson handed her several fliers for Robert’s dental office, two envelopes for Letty, and the latest Harper’s Magazine. “Thank you, Mr. Hobson.”
“Can I help you with anything else today? Coffee? Dry goods?”
“Thank you, no. But I do have a favor to ask.”
He perked up. “And what might that be?”
“Please don’t climb that ladder unless you have someone to hold it for you.”
His round eyes blinked, and he stared a moment before puffing out a laugh. “Don’t think that brother-in-law of yours could fix me up if I cracked my head?”
She shuddered. “I don’t know if he could or not. But I would appreciate not having to find out.”
Corra bid the man good day and considered the Harper’s cover as she reached for the doorknob. The cold metal turned on its own and pushed hard against her hand.