Josiah stopped on the threshold and stared. The woman who’d watched him from the Baxters’ front porch the day before stared back. Without blinking. Without moving.
He cleared his throat. “Beg pardon, ma’am.” He took a pace to his left and she moved to her right. Then they bobbed in the opposite direction. All they needed was a fiddle player and they’d be dancing. His pulse two-stepped.
She scooted back, mail and a magazine against her waist.
A long stride landed him indoors, and he removed his hat. “Name’s Josiah Hanacker, ma’am. Mighty fine… day, isn’t it?”
She looked as if he’d said a blizzard was coming on. “Indeed. It is.” Then she walked out the door leaving a firm but gentle “Good day” in her wake.
Josiah watched her cross the street. She didn’t look back. Just walked up the boardinghouse steps and went inside. His chest deflated with unexpected disappointment. Shoving his hair back, he plopped his hat on and closed the door.
“Got a letter here for you, Josiah.” Hobson pulled mail from his honeycomb of slots behind the counter. “All the way from Missouri. Came about a month ago.”
Josiah took the small envelope, not surprised, since Pop didn’t leave the ranch anymore. A vise gripped his heart when he caught the return address. He slid the letter inside his vest and pulled out a small paper.
“That was Letty Baxter’s sister you just, uh, met. Corra Jameson.” Hobson reached for Josiah’s list. “Been here since midspring, helping out at the boardinghouse.” He held Josiah’s note the length of his arm, tipped his chin up, and squinted. “Said she was worried about me falling off the ladder.”
“Looks like you need spectacles, Hobson.”
The man huffed. “I see good as ever. Maybe it’s your chicken scribble that’s giving me fits.” He went to the back of the store and returned with a wooden crate that he set on the counter. “Saw you come through yesterday. Nice herd of longhorns.”
Josiah picked up a liniment tin and rolled the woman’s name around in his head. Corra. It suited her, with her dark eyes and willowy build. Not that he took notice of a woman’s build lately. But she had a way about her that gave him the need to pause and think about breathing. He pulled in a lungful and looked around the store. Nothing caught his fancy, so he hefted a bag of flour and set it on the counter next to the crate while Hobson filled a paper sack with Arbuckles.
“Never been married, I hear.”
Leaving most of what money he had on the counter, Josiah eyed the storekeep. A real busybody, but a fairly reliable source.
The man jerked his head toward the street. “Miss Jameson, that is.”
“That so.” Josiah picked up the flour and a sack of dried beans. Hobson followed him out with the crate, and with one more trip, Josiah loaded the remaining supplies in the buckboard.
“Be back come fall.” He gathered the reins and clucked Rena into the street, cutting his eyes to the boardinghouse as he drove by. When he reached the wide spot where Texas Creek fanned out in a sandbar at the river, he pulled off the road and set the brake. Dread hammered his temples as he unfolded the letter from Maisie’s sister, Beatrice. In a few lines of her tight and perfect script, his fears were realized. She was coming in September to check on the “babies,” as she called them. He snorted at her choice of words.
Jessica, in particular, the old bat wrote. Living on an isolated cattle ranch with nothing but men for role models is no way for a young lady to grow up. I can give her everything here in the city and will take her home with me in September if I find her lacking in any way.
Like that would ever happen while he was kicking and breathing. He read the last line again. If necessary, I shall involve the authorities, so do not think to dissuade me.
Josiah crumpled the thin paper to toss it away, but some nosey so-and-so might find it and tell his business to everybody in Ford Junction. He shoved it back in his vest, released the brake, and snapped the lines. The wagon jerked, and Josiah’s mind ran ahead in a blind fury. He couldn’t let that conniving, grasping woman bust up his already broken family. He slapped the reins again, and the mare lunged before he got a grip on her and his emotions.
Beatrice had tried to prevent Maisie from marrying Josiah in the first place. And then she’d attempted to weasel the children away from him at the funeral. Could she really get the law on him for not having Jess in dresses and curls? An image of the Baxter girl came to mind. That was how his daughter should look. Fixed up proper. But she’d outgrown all her dresses in the past two years, and the best he knew was to raise her like her brother. Like himself.
Over the next five miles, Josiah chewed on the woman’s threat. Truth was, parts of her letter nettled him like a cocklebur. Jess sat her horse astride in her brother’s old denims and out-grown boots, her braids stuffed under her hat. Before long she’d be faced with the way of a woman, and Josiah couldn’t help her a lick then. He had three months before Beatrice showed up, and if Jess wasn’t cleaned up like a girl ought to be, he might lose her. The vise around his chest tightened. He’d rather die.
At the border to his property, he pulled up. “Lord, I need Your help. I can’t lose my baby girl to that ol’ hide.” He glanced apologetically at a sky so close to the color of his children’s eyes that it twisted his heart inside him. As did the thought of a full summer’s work ahead—haying and cutting wood and doctoring cows and every other thing that sucked daylight out of a man.
He took in the wide park dappled with grazing cattle. The cedar barn, the house, and outbuildings tucked up against the hillside on the east. His band of mares must have found themselves a private valley over the first ridge. Warmth grew in his belly like a fire on the hearth. “Thank You, Lord. You’ve blessed us. I imagine You won’t fail us now.”
He drew a deep breath, and with it came a crazy idea that darted through his mind like a swallow on a bug. It was worth a try.