Beautiful Bad Man (11 page)

Mrs. Tindell came straight to the point. “In spite of your best efforts to keep your activities secret, yesterday after church I had to endure the humiliation of Mrs. Grennich telling me what you’ve been doing with all this free time you’ve taken. You know full well I won’t have an employee of mine associated with ruffians of the sort Mr. Van Cleve employs. Did you think you could keep sneaking out with him, ruining yourself and me with you?”

The accusation surprised Norah so much she took half a step back. Mrs. Tindell made it sound as if Norah had been caught meeting Caleb at the hotel.

“I didn’t sneak anywhere. I spend most of my free time with my friend Mrs. Butler. Mr. Sutton only comes to town every two or three weeks, and when he does, we walk through town in broad daylight and visit shops, and he takes me to supper at Tommy’s restaurant where at least a dozen people see us.”

“And where he whistles at you and remarks on your clothing.”

Norah couldn’t suppress a smile at the memory. Caleb’s reaction to the sight of the rose dress had been extravagant and made her feel like a queen. Of course before the evening was over he’d called her stupid and stubborn and said the look on her face would better suit a mule.

Smiling was a mistake. Mrs. Tindell’s expression hardened further. “You lied to me when you said an old friend was only in town for the day and you needed extra time. You led me to believe the friend was female.”

Extra time!
“I know I did not say my friend was female. If you assumed, I’m sorry. Caleb Sutton is an old friend, and he was only in town that day. I met him when my family first came to Hubbell almost fifteen years ago.”

Ignoring that, Mrs. Tindell said, “If you wish to continue your employment here, you won’t see him again.”

Anger blossomed hot and red behind Norah’s eyes. Yes, indeed, an old bat. “My free time is my own, and there’s been much less of it than you promised. You can’t dictate my private life.”

“I can, and I am. My position in this community is important to me.”

“Your husband owns a saloon!”

“Inn-keeping is a respectable profession with a long history behind it.”

Norah opened her mouth to enlighten the woman about those respectable establishments, then snapped it shut. Mrs. Tindell knew full well what her husband did. That was her problem.

“I’ll be gone before the next thirty minutes pass,” Norah said. “I’m sure you can have the last of my wages ready by then.”

“Your salary is by the month. Today is two days short of the end of your month.”

“I don’t believe you’re that stingy, Mrs. Tindell. Everyone else in town does, but I don’t. I’ll pack my things and come back here to see you.”

Upstairs in the small third-floor room that had been hers, Norah threw the gray dress on the narrow bed, along with the silly white cap and baggy apron she disliked almost as much as Caleb did. After changing into one of her own dresses, she repinned her hair and threw immediate necessities into the box she’d brought them in. She’d have to send someone for her trunk.

Mrs. Tindell still sat behind her desk, spine rigid and not touching the back of her chair. When Norah approached, the woman slid a single ten dollar gold piece across the shiny surface.

“If it is as you say, I’d like to think you are right and the rest of the town wrong. Are you firm in your decision? You’ve been a satisfactory employee in other ways.”

“Yes, I am. My private life is my own.”

“Is he worth it?”

Norah laughed out loud. “No. He’s even worse than you think, but he’s — he’s someone who matters in my life.” She searched for the right words to explain her feelings to herself as much as Mrs. Tindell. “I won’t cast him out.”

To her surprise, the older woman nodded. “You left the gray dress in your room, didn’t you? I’ll put it in with your other things. I hope you don’t regret what you’re doing. Good bye, Norah.”

Norah left through the front door, her box of belongings clutched to her chest, her own coat on her back, and Joe’s over her arm.

The brass horse on the door no longer winked at her. She hoped he recovered from her polishing soon and no one else ever robbed him of his personality.

When she reached Becky’s, Becky would fuss and sympathize and help her plan what to do next. In fact she’d get to visit with Becky as much as either of them wanted in the next few days, not just an hour or so after church.

Except Becky and Ethan hadn’t been at church yesterday. Her steps slowed as memory of her last visit with Becky rose.

She had only half-listened to Becky’s happy babble about her brothers coming to town to escort her to the farm for a week because Ethan was going somewhere on railroad business.

As the reality of her situation struck home, Norah sank down on a bench in front of the bakery, glad to put the box down. How could she have forgotten?

She could have agreed with Mrs. Tindell for a few days and made her grand gesture when she had a safe place to stay. Folding her arms over her stomach, she bent forward, holding the ache inside.

She wanted to go home. Maybe she’d have to come back here and find out if Tommy wanted a better cook for his restaurant or if there was other work for someone like her, but right now she wanted to go home and visit Joey and sleep in her own bed and cook on her own stove and wash and mend her own clothes and linens.

A gust of wind blew right through her coat, and she exchanged it for Joe’s. The hotel probably wouldn’t even let a woman on her own stay there, but Mabel Carbury’s description of the place kept Norah from trying to find out. She couldn’t ask slight acquaintances like Ethan’s family for charity. She couldn’t.

The boarding house on the other side of town was respectable. Maybe she could rent a room there until someone who lived near her came to town. If nothing else, Becky’s brothers would bring her back in a week, and they’d take Norah home.

The coins in her pocket already felt lighter, as if they could blow away on the wind. She picked up her box and trudged on.

C
AL BANGED THE
last nail into the grain bin he’d built for Norah Hawkins’ soddy shed, straightened, looked at the thing, and threw the hammer across the yard.

After ripping the burned out buildings on the rise to the west apart, salvaging every piece of wood untouched by flames or only partially consumed, he’d sorted the pile into firewood and building wood and kept busy on projects like the bin.

The problem was why. Why was he fixing and building on someone else’s land, land by all rights he shouldn’t even be standing on? He fetched the hammer from where it had landed, put it away, and headed for the winter-barren fields.

Coming back to Hubbell had been a spur of the moment thing, born of boredom with working as a peacekeeper in a Wichita saloon and vague thoughts of revenge on Henry Sutton. He’d never expected to feel drawn to the land, to begin thinking about settling down, living by the cycles of the earth and growing things.

He’d have never believed he could be comfortable in any sod house, but this one with the muslin wall coverings that made it glow by lamplight and the curtains that showed someone cared was a place without nightmares. The ghosts came, but not so often, and they seemed less and less substantial. When he first moved in, he put the one book he could carry in his saddlebags on the crate by the bed, and since then he’d bought two others and kept them all.

More and more he thought about Norah in town, working half to death to earn ten dollars a month, and saw his own desire for the land and the house as the solution to her problems and his desire. He could pay her the true worth of the place, and she could buy something smaller, close to town.

She could have her goats and enough to live on until she found a decent man. For all he knew goats could provide a living for a woman.

The last time he’d been in town he’d planned to confess to living here and come to an arrangement about rent. To start with she was so pleased about her new dress and looked so pretty, he’d put off serious talk. Then she’d gotten muley the minute he tried to talk to her about the place at all, so things had turned testy for a while. She’d been in no mood to ask him to hold her that night for sure.

He’d been keeping track of the days, knew it was Tuesday. If he started for town now, he could get there with an hour or so of light left. No more dancing around it, he needed to talk to her long and hard.

She’d fuss and call him names, but in the end.... In the end he wasn’t sure what she’d do, but if he wanted to work this land, he needed to own it long before planting season.

Snow flurries swirled around him the last miles to the town, bringing an early night to the prairie and damp cold that settled in his bones. He left the horses at Ogden’s stables and headed for the Royal Flush, wondering if the barkeeper would take a bribe again to let him spend the night in that storeroom upstairs. The man had been incredulous at the thought anyone could sleep through the noise from downstairs and from the whores’ rooms around, but sleeping in a brothel never bothered Cal so long as he could lock the door.

Shouts and whoops from the saloon reached him before he could even see the building. He’d heard quieter Fourth of July celebrations. Pushing through the crowd inside, he saw rows of stacked coins on the bar, the bartender and two of the whores counting more from the huge jar that had held the Tindell bets. A man put two-bits in the jar and wrote his name next to a day on the crude calendars tacked to the walls.

Cal bit back a curse. Tindell’s Queen of Hearts must be empty tonight.

“Who won?” he said, figuring someone close enough to hear him would be eager to answer.

Sure enough. “Them fellers up at the front table there. Eight of them, can you believe it?”

Of course he could believe it. There’d been a dozen names on some of the days.

“They passed a hundred and fifty dollars in the count already.”

“So Mrs. Tindell got tired of her after all.”

“Nobody knows for sure. Yesterday Tindell wouldn’t admit she’s gone. He spent the night at the Queen, and we figured he and the missus had words. He liked that gal, you know.”

“So what happened to Mrs. Hawkins?”

His informant shrugged a beefy shoulder. “I don’t know. Went home to kin I guess.”

No, she didn’t. Cal pushed his way back out to the street. She’d go to that friend of hers. He’d walked her there the day he’d made her shop and could find it again.

The little house sat quiet and dark as the night fell around it. He knocked on the door. No answer. Knocked again.

“If someone doesn’t answer a knock like that, they’re not home!” A small, white-haired woman stood on the porch of the next house holding a broom as if she considered that protection.

“They have to be home.”

“Well, they’re not. She’s visiting her family, and he’s off on the railroad.”

Cal said a word that had the woman and her broom off that porch and back in her house instantly.

Norah couldn’t be in the hotel. She’d better not be in that damn hotel, but she’d better be someplace safe.

She wasn’t in the hotel, but a nervous desk clerk pointed him at the boarding house on the east end of town.

The woman at the boarding house wasn’t as brave as the one with the broom. She spoke to him through a crack in the door. He considered telling her how a shoulder against the wood would break her nose and black her eyes, considered showing her, but that was just temper. No Mrs. Hawkins at the boarding house.

He tried Tindell’s saloon. The man wasn’t there. No one who was knew where Mrs. Hawkins had gone. He gave serious thought to forcing his way into the Tindell house. Scaring the old lady held a certain appeal. Getting arrested didn’t.

If Norah had found a ride out to the farm, he should have passed her on the road today. Frustrated and angry, worried and not wanting to admit it, Cal returned to the Royal Flush to wait until the bartender finished counting quarters and could concentrate on a bribe.

T
HE WIND STRENGTHENED
to gale force overnight, covering water troughs with ice inches thick and sending thoughts of spring into hiding. Streaky gray clouds hid the sun and spit small, dry snowflakes that bounced off Norah’s face and Joe’s coat as she walked from the boarding house to the center of town.

She sat in front of Lawson’s store, hunched against the cold, and stared steadily at the empty street, waiting. As time passed, at least a dozen figures appeared and disappeared, darting from one warm building to another, but no wagon driven by someone who would give her a ride home came down the street. No wagons at all.

One more figure appeared, leaving the saloon of all places at this unlikely hour. She recognized Caleb from the way he pulled his hat down against the wind, the way he moved — and the way he started across the street when he saw her.

Maybe he had planned to see her this afternoon. Today was Wednesday, she realized with some surprise, but she didn’t want to see him, didn’t want to admit failure to him.

“What are you doing sitting here like that?”

“I’m waiting to see someone who lives out near me who can give me a ride home, and I want to be alone.”

He ignored what she wanted of course. She refused to look at him when he dropped down to sit on the walk beside her, his long legs stretching straight out into the street. “I heard what happened when I got to town last night. I looked for you, but I couldn’t find you.”

“I forgot Becky is staying with her folks this week. I forgot and had to stay at the boarding house. It’s very nice, but they made me.... They don’t let rooms for just a night.”

“I asked there. Some woman named Pollard said no Mrs. Hawkins.”

“Oh. She’s the proprietor. She shouldn’t have done that. She should let me decide who to see.”

He didn’t need to know about her problems with the owner of the boarding house. “So you spent the night in the saloon with all the men celebrating whoever won the bet?” Why did that thought bother her so much?