“Get yourself some more if you want, kid,” Joe said.
Sarah filled half her plate with stew, the rest with corn-bread.
“For a little thing, she sure can eat.” Joe put a spoonful of stew into Mary’s mouth. “For a woman who was about to meet her maker, you sure talk frisky.”
“I’m afraid any frisk I had disappeared long ago,” Mary said, feeling a little as if she’d been chastised, “but I do have a sharp tongue. That’s been a problem all my life.” She swallowed another spoonful of stew. Her stomach didn’t hurt anymore. Much to her surprise, she was beginning to feel full. She leaned back on the pillows.
“You haven’t told me a thing about yourself,” she said. “I don’t even know why you’re here.”
“That can wait. All you have to do now is eat and sleep. It would help, though, if you could convince the kid to talk to me.”
“The kid is named Sarah.”
“Maybe, but she doesn’t answer to that either.”
“Talk to the gentleman, Sarah. It would be rude to remain silent, especially after he’s been kind enough to cook our dinner.”
“I’m not kind, and I’m not a gentleman,” Joe said. “At least, no one ever thought so before.”
“Maybe you never gave them reason, but you have me. Thank you.”
“The only thanks I want is to see you eat up every bit of this food.”
“I’m feeling rather full.”
“That’s because your stomach has shrunk to nothing. Eat a little more. Then we’ll let you rest until supper.”
By the time Mary managed to eat everything on the plate, she was exhausted. She was also hardly able to keep her eyes open. The hot food, the warmth in the cabin, and the knowledge that she was safe combined to overcome her desire to stay awake and question this unusual man.
“You must tell me what you’re doing here,” she said as she slipped back down in the bed. Joe adjusted the pillows under her head and pulled the covers up to her chin.
“Later. I’m going outside now so you can get some rest.” He picked up his saddlebags and headed toward the door. He turned back. “Tell the kid she doesn’t have to be afraid of Samson. He never did more than growl at a kid in his life.”
“I’ll explain it to Sarah,” Mary replied.
Joe disappeared through the door. A moment later she heard him start to whistle.
Mary nestled down in the bed, but she couldn’t sleep. She had never met a man in the least like Joe Ryan. She couldn’t imagine him being Pete’s partner.
Mary had disliked her husband. She was ashamed to admit it, but now that he was dead, it seemed pointless to continue pretending. He’d been mean, thoughtless, frequently brutal. She had never been able to imagine why her uncle had thought his stepson would make her a good husband. Not even her uncle’s affection for his wife could blind him to the fact that her son was a cruel, selfish man. Her father should have protected her, but he was eager to get her out of the house. One less mouth to feed. Mary had been relieved when Pete left to prospect for gold in Colorado. Not even learning she was pregnant had made her wish for his return.
“Look out the window and see what he’s doing,” Mary said to Sarah.
“He’s just looking,” Sarah told her.
“At what?”
“Everything.”
“The horse?”
“Yes.”
“What’s he doing now?”
“Looking in the shed.”
“Anything else?”
“He’s digging a hole next to the shed.”
That made Mary uneasy. Any partner of Pete’s was likely to be of poor character. Stealing horses from a helpless woman would probably be a small thing to him.
“Bring me the pistol,” she said to Sarah. The child got the pistol from its place in the dresser drawer and brought it to Mary.
Mary checked to see that it was loaded. “Tell Mr. Ryan I would like to see him.”
CHAPTER TWO
Joe rubbed the last of the dried sweat off General Burnside with a handful of straw. “I shouldn’t have left you standing this long,” he apologized to his mount, “but I had to dig a few holes first. No gold buried next to the shed.”
He tossed the straw aside. They both contemplated the corral. “I suppose you might stay in that if you’d been ridden so hard you were wobbly in the knees.” He pushed on a rotten rail. It broke into two pieces and fell to the ground. “I guess I’ll have to hobble you.”
Samson trotted up from his round of inspection. “Did you find any likely places to bury gold?” he asked the dog as he put hobbles on General Burnside. “I hope you didn’t eat any of those chickens. Apparently the coyotes consider them their own personal property.” He shook his head at the gaping holes in the chicken fence.
He walked to the shed, a large structure open in the front and the back. In between was a room entered through a door from the house side. Much to his surprise, Joe found wire for the chicken yard and a large number of rails for the corral. From the dust on them, they had been there a long time. Apparently Pete hadn’t lacked the money or the materials to keep up the ranch, only the will to use them. Joe looked around, but saw no likely place to hide a strongbox. He’d look under the floorboards, but he doubted he’d find anything. Too obvious.
“I don’t know why Pete thought panning for gold was easier than fixing a few fences now and then,” Joe said. All the tools anybody would ever need were scattered around the shed. “It’s a hell of a lot harder to build a sluice box and defend it from some rascal who’d rather shoot you than build his own.”
He walked back out into the December sun, pulling his hat lower over his eyes. He glanced toward the house. The gold had to be there, but was it inside or out? He’d have to make a thorough search.
He could see the kid watching him through the window. Funny little kid. Odd she should be afraid of dogs. It was almost as if she was afraid of him, too. Her mother wasn’t. In fact, she’d sent the kid to tell him she wanted to see him. He’d obey the summons once he’d finished in the yard.
“Don’t know why Pete left a woman like that,” Joe said to Samson, who followed at his heels. “She’s got a bit of an edge to her, but she’s got standards. A woman ought to have standards. Gives a man something to live up to.” He tested the poles in the chicken yard. They needed bracing. “I can’t believe Pete was such a lazy skunk.”
The broken fence irritated him. It was such a little job, so easy. But it wasn’t his responsibility. He looked up into the hills beyond the ranch house. If the gold was up there, he’d probably never find it.
He didn’t think Pete had told his wife about it. The place didn’t look like five dollars had been spent on it, certainly not twenty thousand. No, Pete had buried it here because he didn’t have time to bury it anyplace else before he was killed in a card game over a pot worth less than two hundred dollars. Only a fool like Pete would do something like that when he had twenty thousand buried.
His irritation made it even harder to ignore the broken fence. “Oh hell, I might as well fix it. Why should the coyotes have all those chickens?”
He was silent while he braced the corner poles and replaced others that looked ready to break. Then he cut out the broken sections of wire, leaving clean sections to be replaced. “Can’t say I look forward to catching all these chickens,” he said to Samson as he wired a new piece of fence into place. “But she’ll need eggs to get back on her feet. After the baby comes, she won’t have time to be chasing them down.”
He finished one section of wire and began cutting a piece to fit the next gap.
“Can’t figure why a woman like that would marry Pete, the lazy son-of-a-bitch. She wasn’t brought up out here. You can tell that from her voice. It’s soft, sort of gives the words a little squeeze before she says them. You know, leaves off a few letters here and there. Virginia or Carolina. After bringing her all this way, why did Pete run off and leave her, especially with a baby coming? It’s a
terrible thing for a woman to be alone.”
He finished the last piece of wire, tested his work, and found it strong enough to withstand coyotes and wolves.
“A lot of good work was done on this place some time ago, Samson. The man who built that cabin knew what he was doing. This shed, too. But everything is in bad need of work now.”
Joe hadn’t been on a farm since he was sixteen. He’d thought he hated it. But as he had grown older, he’d come to treasure his memories of the years he’d spent with his grandmother. But that kind of life needed a family, and he’d had none since she died. He’d never found a woman who made him want to stop drifting. He’d never found the right kind of place. Despite the sagging corral, the missing shingles in the roof, loose hinges, broken windows, this place seemed the right kind, Mary the right kind of woman.
No use letting those thoughts take root in his mind. He’d be gone in a few days. This place needed a man here day after day, a man who loved it as much as the man who built it. Maybe Mary Wilson could find her a better husband this time. She sure was pretty enough. Dainty and feminine. She was the kind of woman to mess up a man’s thinking, start him to doing things he didn’t want to do.
Like fixing a chicken yard.
Joe went into the shed and started tossing out fence posts and corral rails until he got down to the floorboards. They came up easily. The ground didn’t look as if it had ever been disturbed, but he took a shovel to it anyway. Half an hour later, he knew Pete hadn’t buried the gold under the shed. He replaced the floorboards, but balked at dragging all those posts and rails back inside.
“Hell! As long as I’ve got everything out, I may as well fix the corral. I’m going to need someplace to put that damned cow once I find her.”
Joe picked up the poles and started for the first gap in the rails. He wasn’t able to get thoughts of Mary out of his mind. Nor of the farm he hadn’t seen in seventeen years. In his mind they just naturally seemed to go together.
Mary woke up feeling better than she had in days. She was strongly tempted to get up and have some more of the stew. But she resisted. She was going to tell him to leave. She couldn’t have a stranger of unknown character hanging about the place.
“He’s coming!” Fear sounded in Sarah’s voice and showed in her eyes. She bolted from the window into the corner between the bed and the wall.
Mary felt tension mount within her. It was a lot easier to plan to tell Joe to leave than actually do it. The sound of his footsteps on the porch made her flinch. The grating sound of the door frayed her nerves.
He entered with a plucked chicken in his hand.
“I figured the coyotes could do without this cockerel,” he said as he walked over to the table and laid the chicken down. He poured part of the water into a pot, the rest into a basin.
“More water,” he said to Sarah, holding out the bucket.
Sarah glanced at Mary. Mary nodded her head, and Sarah inched forward to take the bucket. However, she froze when she opened the door.
“Your dog,” Mary said.
“We’ve got to do something about that.”
Joe sent his dog to keep his horse company. At least that was what he told him to do. Mary doubted the animal would actually obey.
“Do you want this chicken cooked any special way?” Joe asked, going back to the table and beginning to prepare the chicken for cooking.
“No.” She had meant to tell him to go at once, but he had taken the wind out of her sails. She was acutely aware of his overpowering male presence. Just watching him move about the cabin in those tight pants caused something inside her to warm and soften. The feeling unnerved her. She found Mr. Ryan very attractive. Stranger or not.
“You never did tell me how you and Pete came to be partners, or why you decided to come here now.”
She shouldn’t be asking questions. It would just postpone the inevitable. She decided to sit up. It was impossible to talk to this man lying down. She felt at such a disadvantage. Unlike her attempt earlier, Mary was able to sit up and position the pillows behind her.
“It was more an accident than anything else.” Joe spoke without facing her as he worked over the chicken. “We had claims next to each other. A mining camp is a dangerous place. Men who find color sometimes disappear or turn up dead. I watched Joe’s back, and he watched mine. When our claims played out, it made sense to take what gold we’d found and hire on to guard a shipment of gold to Denver.”
He started cutting up the chicken and dropping the pieces into the pot.
“I don’t remember anything after the first mile.”
Joe had paused before the last sentence. He went back to work, cutting through the joints with short, powerful thrusts of the knife.
“I woke up in my bedroll with the sheriff standing over me and the empty gold sacks on the ground next to me. I was convicted and sent to jail.”
He finished cutting up the chicken, wiped his hands, and set the pot on the stove. He looked straight at Mary. “Pete set me up. He stole that gold. When I found out he was dead and the gold never found, I broke out and came here. This must be where he hid it.”
Mary was too stunned to speak. He couldn’t possibly expect her to believe that. She had never thought much of her husband’s honesty, but she couldn’t believe Pete was a common thief.
She started but discarded several responses. “That’s absurd,” she finally said. “Pete didn’t steal any gold. He didn’t hide anything here.”
“He did both. I mean to find it and clear my name. Besides, part of that gold is mine. Some is yours.”
Mary wondered how much gold was hers. She needed to hire someone to help with the ranch. There was so much she couldn’t do, especially with a baby. Of course, he might not be telling the truth. She wasn’t going to get excited about the money until she saw it.
Joe started a fire under the chicken. When he was satisfied that it was well caught, he opened the window and tossed out the dirty water.
Sarah entered with the fresh water. Joe placed the bucket on the table, and Sarah retreated to her place in the corner.
“You don’t have to hide from me,” he said.
Mary thought he sounded as if his feelings were hurt.
“Why don’t you rummage around on those shelves and see if you can find some canned fruit or vegetables,” he told Sarah. He took out some coffee beans and put them in a pan to roast on the stove. Next he measured out rice and set it on the edge of the stove. Then he cleaned the table and set out plates.
Mary didn’t know what to do. Her hands closed over the gun under the covers. She had to tell him to leave. It was out of the question to let him stay. He had to go now. It would soon be night.
“I find it hard to believe Pete did what you said. But if he did, I’m truly sorry.” She didn’t know how to say there were times she had come close to hating her husband. “It was very kind of you to fix us something to eat, but you needn’t stay any longer. I’m much stronger now. I’m sure you’ll want to make it to town in time to get a room in the hotel.”
Joe looked at her. She felt a flush burn her cheeks. She would swear he was laughing at her. Inside, of course. His expression didn’t change.
“If you’re trying to get rid of me, you’re wasting your time. As soon as I find the gold, I’ll head out for California, but not one day before. As for a hotel, I don’t dare go near town. Somebody might recognize me.”
“There’s no gold here. Pete was home only one night after he came back from Colorado. He went off again the next day and got himself shot.”
“Don’t worry, I don’t mean to stay any longer than I have to. And if you’re worried about your reputation, your condition is protection enough.” He directed a frankly amused look at her. “I wish you’d put that pistol back where it belongs. It’s not a good idea to sleep with a loaded gun.”
Mary didn’t know why she brought the pistol out from under the covers. Maybe it was the fact that he seemed to be able to read
her mind. Maybe she felt she ought to do something and nothing else had worked. What ever the reason, she found herself pointing the pistol at Joe.
“If you’re going to shoot me, get on your feet first. I’d hate to have it known I was killed by a woman so weak she couldn’t stand up.”
“I can stand up,” Mary insisted. To prove her point, she threw back the covers and started to get to her feet. Immediately she felt faint.
Joe caught her before she fell.
“I never met such a foolish woman in my life. Stay in that bed, or I’ll tie you down. You can shoot me when you feel better. Meantime, you’d better give me this.” He took the pistol from her slackened grasp. “Next thing you know, you’ll drop it and put a hole through the chicken pot. I’m not chasing down another rooster.”
Mary started to laugh. The whole situation was too absurd. Nothing like this happened to ordinary people. She was ordinary, so it shouldn’t be happening to her.
She certainly shouldn’t be experiencing this odd feeling. It almost felt as if she wanted to cry. But she didn’t feel at all sad. She felt bemused and bewildered. Her brain was numb. Here she was, completely helpless, and she had tried to shoot the only human who had come along to help her.
She must be losing her mind. This man, this stranger, had taken the gun from her hands, put her to bed, then gone back to fixing her supper. And he planned to stay until he found the gold he insisted Pete had hidden here.
He was always ahead of her. That was a new experience for Mary. She had never known a man to act intelligently. She wasn’t even sure she thought men could be intelligent, but Joe was. He was kind, too, despite his gruff manner.
“The kid has found some peaches,” Joe announced. “I hope that’s all right with you.”
“I like peaches,” Mary said. The aroma of roasting coffee beans permeated the cabin. The smell made her mouth water.
“Supper will be ready in less than an hour. Time for a nap. You can dream of ways to spend your share of the gold when I find it.”