Jake Walker's Wife Page 4

  Bess noticed all this, and said nothing.

  She noticed all this, and went ahead and fell in love with him anyway.

  Chapter Three

  Matt, Mark, and Jake had left before sunrise to mend fences along Foggy Bottom’s north acres. It had been a long, hard day, and the boys gladly bedded down when Jake suggested it. They snored contentedly in their bedrolls, Jake took a deep, satisfied breath of early June night air as he stirred the coals beneath the coffee pot. After spreading his own blanket on the dusty earth, he laid back, fingers entwined behind his head, staring into the star-studded sky. As he peered through the branches of the yellow pine above him, Jake smiled, because the tree reminded him of the day, just last week, when he’d seen Bess heading for woods behind the manor house.

  He’d told himself he wouldn’t follow. That she probably only planned to pick wildflowers for the kitchen windowsill, gather mulberries for a batch of sweet jam, or hunt up mushrooms for one of her savory soup stocks. Besides, he couldn’t spare the time to traipse behind her as she did girlie things.

  So Jake didn’t for the life of him understand it when he found himself doing exactly that.

  A gold eagle had screeched overhead, and she didn’t duck or lurch with fright. A raccoon scampered across her path before disappearing into the thick underbrush, yet her steps never faltered. It took a white-tailed doe, grazing beside a scrub pine, to alter her pace. She moved slow and steady, and, speaking in low tones, held out her hand to invite the deer to share her sunflower seeds.

  During his years as a cowboy, he’d seen his share of rough-country beasts, but never had one walked right up to a body! From where he stood behind a locust tree, he could see her smiling face and knew how disappointed she’d be when the deer high-tailed it into the woods. He also knew that her disappointment would be short-lived, and that she’d likely shrug and carry on with her walk in the matter-of-fact way that was so typically Bess.

  But the doe hadn’t run into the woods, as he’d predicted. Instead, it stepped guardedly—ears pricked forward and tail flicking—right up to her, and after a moment of wary scrutiny, nibbled seeds from her upturned palm. She filled and refilled her palm twice, and, much to his amazement, stroked the deer’s sloping forehead!

  Grinning now, he shook his head. He shouldn’t have been surprised. Only the day before, he’d seen her in her rose garden, crawling around on her hands and knees, playing what appeared to be a game of hide-and-seek with a rabbit no bigger than her hand. And a few days before that, as she hung freshly-laundered sheets on the clothesline, a chickadee perched upon her shoulder…and stayed there even as she added quilts and embroidered pillowslips to the low-slung rope.

  As a boy, his mama had read him Snow White. The pretty, dark-haired princess in the fable was so sweet and kind that even the birds and animals recognized her goodness. Bess, with her creamy skin and chestnut brown hair, reminded him of that fairytale princess. So lost in thought was he that Jake never saw the deer meander back into the woods. Never saw Bess turn toward him. Never noticed her head in his direction.

  “Jake Walker, just what do you think you’re doing behind that tree?”

  Her sudden appearance had startled him. He thought he’d hidden himself well, but there was no denying that she had him, dead to rights. He’d pocketed both hands and tried to come up with a reasonable explanation for his presence, but found himself speechless as she crossed both arms over her chest, wicker basket dangling from one wrist.

  “Are you spying on me?”

  “‘Course not,” he’d said.

  “Then…if you followed me because you thought I’d get lost, I’ll have you know I could maneuver these woods blindfolded.”

  Fire and ice, his Bess.

  Your Bess? What in tarnation are you thinking, man!

  Now, as he laid on the cold ground, staring up at the inky sky, the picture of her, standing there, chin up and shoulders back in proud defiance, made him smile. She’s some woman, he told himself. Some fine woman. Feminine and delicate, she made every other female he’d known—and there had been many—seem like boys by comparison. Unlike them, Bess refused to use her feminine wiles to get her way. She did not weep or whine or behave in coy and flirty ways. Instead, she faced life head-on in a straightforward manner. He liked that. Liked it a lot.

  At the thought, his smile faded. Where’s your good sense, you hang-tailed coyote? Bess was sweet as molasses, and the years had made him bitter. She was innocent as a newborn, and he’d been convicted of cold-blooded murder. She believed a little good lived in every being, and life had taught him that the opposite was true. She had a doting father and brothers who thought she’d hung the moon, while the only family he’d ever known were cold in the ground…or cold and abusive. Surrounded by the warm arms of family and friends, she’d learned trust and love. Smothered by anger and bitterness, Jake had learned hate and mistrust.

  They were as different as a mountain lion and a kitten. Even if she had a mind to marry—and how many times have you heard her say she doesn’t—she deserves a man who’s a long sight better than you, Walker Atwood! Besides, if he stayed too long in one place, the marshals would catch up with him, for sure.

  Jake wanted a home. A wife and children. Wanted those things as much as the next man. But thanks to his Uncle Josh’s testimony in court, he’d live out the rest of his days—however few that might be—alone. Long ago, he’d resigned himself to his sorry fate. But it didn’t mean he had to like it.

  He faced his biggest dilemma to date: He’d fallen in love with Bess Beckley, and was powerless to do a blessed thing about it. Because to share a life with her, he’d have to tell her everything, and having Bess know about his black past scared him even more than the prospect of dying at the end of a rope.

  Jake rolled onto his side and tugged the scratchy brown blanket closer to his chin, trying to concentrate on other things. Like chores. The weather. It had worked in the past, and he trusted it to work now.

  The height of the moon told him it would soon be midnight. He’d warned the boys that they’d rise before sunup and head out to repair the east-boundary fences. Practice what you preach, he thought; if you don’t get some shuteye soon, you’re gonna have a powerful grouch on all day.

  He closed his eyes and tried to snooze.

  Jake’s muscles and joints ached from his long, hard day of riding the fences, and despite rawhide gloves, his hands and forearms were scratched and pock-marked from stretching miles of razor-sharp barbed wire and replacing rotting posts. You’re getting soft, he scolded, groaning as he rolled onto his back again.

  Suddenly, he felt as ancient as Bess’s father, though Micah was easily sixty and Jake hadn’t lived thirty years yet.

  Yes, he felt old. Old, and tired, and more alone than he’d ever felt in his life.

  ***

  “You gonna sleep all day?” Matt asked, nudging Jake’s boot with the toe of his own. Jake yawned and blinked. “You better have a pot of coffee boilin’,” he growled, “or you’re gonna pay for that kick.”

  The boy snickered. “Coffee’s been perkin’ for half an hour. Thought for sure the smell of bacon frying would rouse you.”

  Jake levered himself up on one elbow. In the months he’d been at Foggy Bottom, he’d grown quite fond of these two young men. Either could have harbored a grudge against him for getting the job their father should rightfully have given to them. Instead, they’d bluntly admitted they’d accumulated neither the talent nor the wit to run the farm. It seemed they sensed they could learn plenty from Jake…if they’d let him be their teacher. So they followed him, like adoring pups, waiting for whatever scraps of knowledge or advice he tossed their way.

  And he’d taught them plenty since arriving at Foggy Bottom. They’d always been hard-working farm boys, but now they could cut a calf from a herd and hog-tie a heifer with the best of men. When he’d arrived, Matt and Mark could hold their own on horseback, but lately—partly because they tried to mi
mic his style, and partly because they’d developed a heap of self-confidence—they sat taller in their saddles.

  Jake got to his feet and rolled his bedding into a tight cylinder. As he stowed it among his gear, he thought back several weeks, to the conversation he’d had with Micah:

  “I’ve got to thank you for what you’ve done for my boys,” the older man had said. “Since their mama died, I’ve sort of thrown myself into my work; gets my mind off missing Mary.”

  When Micah stared off into space, Jake realized the man wasn’t focusing on the dense pine forest, the contented cattle that grazed in the field beyond it, or the brown-board fences that hugged the property on all sides.

  “I’m afraid I haven’t been much of a father to them. What they know about farming they learned from the hired hands.”

  Jake remembered feeling a mite sorry for the man. But all too soon, pity was replaced by low-burning anger. That day, he’d had a mind to tell Micah that it would have been better for the boys if he’d fessed up about his grief; honest sorrow, he reckoned, would have been easier to bear than the distance Micah had put between himself and his sons.

  But he’d learned long ago that a man seldom spoke what was on his mind, and it was rarer still for him to speak what was in his heart. So he kept silent his opinions, telling himself Micah had been as good a father as he knew how to be. Jake wondered how well he’d have borne up, if he’d lost the love of a woman like Bess. Just a day later, he found a new insight into Micah’s behavior, when he’d stood in Micah’s parlor, staring at the row of silver and brass-and bronze-framed photographs on the mantle.

  His favorite? The tintype of the Beckley clan. In it, Bess and Mary sat on a red velvet settee wearing identical dresses and matching smiles. Behind them, Micah held his dark-bearded chin high, and in front of them, Matt and Mark—like miniature male versions of their mother—stared into the camera’s lens. Just a typical family portrait, folks might say. But Jake knew better, because he’d seen what went unnoticed by most: There, in the shadows behind their children, where they thought no one would notice, Micah and Mary had clasped hands, proof to those who looked closely enough proof of their undying love and genuine affection for one another.

  The photo had entranced him, and he found himself making up excuses to step into the parlor, again and again, if only for a moment, to drink in the sight of true familial warmth. Sometimes, as he waited for sleep to rescue him from the snores and grunts of the bunkhouse, it was that picture, floating in his memory, that helped him drift off to sleep.

  Mark’s sudden appearance beside him startled Jake.

  “What did you do,” the boy asked, “roll over and thump your head on a rock during the night?”

  Jake shook off the last of his daydream and accepted the blue speckled metal mug from the boy’s extended hand. He took a sip of hot coffee and frowned. “What in tarnation are you yammering about, boy?”

  “Didn’t mean to rile you.” Mark shrugged. “You seem a mite addlebrained this morning, is all.”

  Matt elbowed his brother. “Think maybe he’s love-struck, little brother?”

  Mark’s eyes widened as he considered the possibility. “Sure looks that way to me.” The boy drained the last of his own coffee before facing his twin. “And if you call me ‘little brother’ again,” he challenged, grinning, “I’ll stick your nose in the dirt and plow the bottom forty with you! Just ‘cause you were born two minutes before me don’t give you no right to rub my face in it.”

  Matt tossed several pebbles at his brother’s booted feet. “Wipe the ground up…with me? Ha! I’d like to see you try!”

  It was invitation enough, and before Jake could open his mouth to forestall it, the brothers started wrestling in the dust like a couple of rowdy pups. He grinned, and wondered for a moment what it might have been like to grow up with a brother who really gave a hoot what happened to you, instead of coming to age in a house with no kin but the man who despised him. Jake frowned to smother the fury that always rose within him when he thought of Uncle Josh.

  “You boys act more like four than fourteen,” he said, forcing a sternness into his voice that he didn’t feel. “I’ll give you one minute to pack up this gear.”

  The playful jostling came to a grinding halt and their dark-eyed expressions changed from young-boy-happy to young-man-wise. Jake swallowed the lump of guilt that formed in his throat at having caused the abrupt change, and pretended to busy himself by saddling his horse.

  He listened as the twins stashed tin pots and metal plates and utensils into grub sacks and tied them to their saddles. “If we dig in good and hard,” he said as he hung a coil of hemp rope over the saddle horn, “we can get this job finished up today.”

  “Good,” Matt said, brushing dark curls from his eyes. “My belly is cryin’ for some of Bess’s corn biscuits.”

  “And a piece of her deep-dish apple pie,” his twin added.

  Jake would have settled for a glance at her pretty face. But he stanched that mood before it could start. “Saddle up, boys, and let’s head out. We’re burnin’ daylight.”

  They’d been riding for all of fifteen minutes when Matt spotted two riders on the horizon. “Who do you suppose that could be all the way out here?”

  Jake stared hard at the spot where Matt pointed. Just as he caught sight of the distant silhouettes, one of the riders turned, and sunlight winked from something metal on his shirt. Jake’s blood ran cold and his heart beat hard. The shiny thing, no doubt, was a badge. And it belonged, no doubt, to a U.S. Marshall. So they’ve tracked you down again, he thought miserably.

  Neither man seemed to have spotted Jake and the boys yet, however. If the three of them headed back to Foggy Bottom at a fast clip, maybe the marshals would never know he’d been in Freeland at all….

  Just then, Matt smacked his horse’s rump and thundered toward the marshals.

  “Are you out of your mind?” Jake hollered.

  “I’m aim to find out who’s cuttin’ through our property without permission…an’ why,” the boy shouted over his shoulder.

  Jake spurred his own horse into action, yelling as he went. “That field is full of mole holes. Your horse is sure to—“

  The warning came a heartbeat too late. Matt’s horse went down, pitching the boy head over heels. He landed with a quiet thump on a grassy knoll.

  “Ohmigosh,” Mark said, his voice a childlike whisper. “That’s just the way Ma died….”

  Bess had told Jake about the night Mary’s horse bucked, overturning her wagon as she rode home after delivering the Thomas baby. The agonized tone in Mark’s voice made Jake’s heart ache.

  In seconds, Mark and Jake were at Matt’s side. They quickly dismounted and inspected the damage: The boy lay unconscious, his right leg bent at an awkward angle beside him, his right arm twisted beneath him.

  “Looks like he busted himself up pretty good,” Mark said, voice trembling.

  Jake was far more concerned with the huge bump on the boy’s forehead. “Get the canteen,” he ordered, “and fetch my saddle bag.”

  As the boy ran for the supplies, Jake scanned the horizon once more. The commotion must not have attracted the marshals’ attention, for they were heading in the opposite direction now.

  Like soldiers, most U.S. Marshals could splint broken bones and tie tourniquets with the best of medics. As Jake saw it, he had two choices: Make tracks and don’t look back, or see to it that Matt got the help he needed.

  Run, and avoid the gallows.

  Stay, and save Matt’s life.

  Jake, still kneeling beside the boy’s broken body, bowed his head.

  Then he unholstered his pistol, and fired a single shot into the air.

  Chapter Four

  “Trouble?” the biggest man asked as he reined in his beast.

  “Boy’s horse threw him,” Jake explained, pulling his hat low to hide his face from the marshal’s view.

  Both men stared down at Matt’s twisted body
. “Good Lord Almighty,” the first one said. “I ain’t never set a broken bone a-fore.” He looked at his buddy. “How ‘bout you, Richie?”

  Richie shook his head. “Nope.” He met Jake’s eyes. “Guess that’s what you was hopin’ when you fired that shot, eh?”

  Jake nodded.

  Only after the men dismounted did Jake realize they weren’t U.S. Marshals at all, but two of Freeland’s border farmers. And what he’d thought had been a silver star badge was, instead, the cinch of the smaller man’s black four-in-hand tie.

  Relief flooded Jake’s veins and he exhaled the breath he’d been holding since he made the decision to put Matt’s welfare ahead of his own.

  The first man held out a big, calloused hand. “Name’s Luke. Luke Elliot,” he said. “Sorry to make your acquaintance this-a way.”

  He pumped the man’s arm. “Jake Walker. This is Mark.” Jake then gestured to Matt, who lay motionless on the ground, “and Matthew Beckley.”

  For what seemed like an eternity, no one spoke. Finally, Mark broke the endless silence. “So what’re we gonna do about Matt, fellers?”

  Richie and Luke rubbed their bearded chins. “Well, we might-could help you whack down a couple of those saplings over yonder,” Richie said, nodding toward a thicket. “Wrap some blankets ‘round ‘em nice an’ tight, and they’ll make a right passable litter.”

  Jake placed a hand on Mark’s shoulder. “Stay here with your brother,” he instructed, handing him the canteen and a neckerchief. “Dribble a bit of water on his lips from time to time.”

  Mark immediately fell to his knees and began drizzling water over Matt’s forehead and cheeks. “Hey, there, big brother,” he said, his voice quaking slightly, “you’d better wake up and start thinkin’ up some good excuses, ‘cause when Bess sees that nasty rip in your britches, she’s gonna give you the worst tongue lashin’ of your life….”