Blue Bonnet (12 page)

Bat licked his lips. It was now or
never. He held the small brown package out to Leta. “I brought the
bonnet in with me. Do me a favor. Put the bonnet on so I can see
how it looks.”

“I'm not sure a woman would like
another woman trying on her gift, before she gets to wear it, but
all right,” she said reluctantly. Leta slipped the bonnet on. She
turned her head one way then the other, proudly modeling her
creation. “The lucky woman you bought this for should be very proud
of it. What do you think?”

“I think that bonnet suits ya to a
tee. It matches yer eyes. I’d like ya to be the lucky lady to keep
and wear that bonnet for me. That is, if ya will have it and
me.”

Leta stopped twisting around and
wobbled on her feet. “What did you just say?”

“Will ya marry me?” Rushed out of
Bat’s mouth.

Leta gasped and took the bonnet
off. She draped it over a rocker. “I'm afraid you've taken me by
surprise. I didn't see this coming.” She paused a moment to take in
what he said.

“Say somethin', Anythin',” Bat
urged. “I'm dyin' here.”

Leta's eyes teared up. “I don’t
see how I could do that to you, Bat, even if I did want to say yes.
Between the store and the house, I have too many debts to marry
anyone.”

Without hesitation, Bat replied,
“I have plenty of money. I’ll pay yer debts. If ya want to stay in
Dead Horse rather than live on the ranch, we can live in yer house.
I don’t mind doing that for ya if ya will have me. It's taken me a
long time to figure out I love ya, Leta. Don’t know for the life of
me, why it took me so long to realize it. Now I know I want to
marry ya no matter what.”

Leta came to him and put her hand
on his cheek. “No matter what? Truth is, I must admit I was a
little quicker than you to realize I love you. I've loved you from
the first time I talked to you, Bat Kayhill. I just didn't have a
clue you felt the same way about me. You've been very good at
hiding your feelings.”

She stepped back behind the
rockers and paced back and forth as Bat's forehead wrinkled in
worry. “That's why your proposal surprises me. I thought you had
another woman in mind to give the bonnet,” Leta said honestly. She
stopped pacing and whirled to face him. “Wait a minute! I think you
owe me an explanation.” She rushed around the rockers and stood in
front of Bat with her hands on her hips. “You said you didn’t know
for sure you loved me until now. So what woman was the bonnet
really for? What happened? Did she turn you down so you decided to
settle for me?”

Bat scrunched his face up. He
hated to admit an answer to that question, but he didn't want her
thinking there was another woman in his life. The more agitated
Leta got with the way she was thinking might just make her turn his
proposal down. “Well --- well ----why did ya have to ask? I feel
like a fool telling ya the truth.”

Leta crossed her arms in front of
her and said, “Go on. You're not getting out of explaining to me,
Bartholomew Kayhill.”

“Ya see, it was like this. The
bonnet was a gift for whoever I found that would marry me. I didn’t
have anyone special in mind until now, but I intended to be
prepared with a gift when I chose a bride that would fit into my
life,” Bat stuttered as he grinned boyishly at her.

Leta gave him a disbelieving
sideways look. “Honestly? That's the truth?” Bat shook his head
yes. Her hand went over her mouth as she stifled a giggle.
“Unbelievable! Aren't you a real caution! You had me make a bonnet
for an imaginary woman?”

“Yip, that's the truth, Ma’am,”
Bat declared.

“Start calling me Leta again, and
I'll say yes. I will marry you, Bat.” She put her arms around his
neck and kissed him to seal the proposal.

That next Sunday after church, Bat
invited his daughters and sister to join Leta and him for lunch at
the hotel. The women in his life knew something was up from the way
Bat was smiling all the time.

At lunch, Bat told them he invited
them to eat with Leta and him for a reason. The two of them wanted
to tell his family he had asked Leta to marry him, and she said
yes.

After he announced they were
getting married, Bat told the story to his girls about Leta making
her own bonnet without knowing it. His daughters looked at Leta
with concern for her.

“That must have been difficult to
say the least, trying to figure out whether to make a narrow or
wide bill,” Tessie said, looking at her father like he was a
simpleton.

“How did you know if you should
use narrow or wide ties?” Ethel asked, amazed that Leta even took
the order.

“Well, it was rather a puzzle as
to how to style the bonnet. I didn't know who the woman was that
was getting it,” Leta said.

Tessie shook her head at her
father.

Ethel did some loud tongue
clicking before she asked, “Did you know about the bonnet, Aunt
Billie?”

“Yes, I knew he ordered a bonnet,
but it was only recently he decided whom to give it to. I'm glad
Leta knows the story. I was afraid your father wasn't going to tell
her the truth, because of what she'd think of him. She might always
have gone through life wondering who the other woman was,” Billie
said, patting Leta's hand in sympathy.

For just a split second, Bat
regretted asking Leta to marry him. He already had three pushy
women in his family. Right now they were siding with Leta. He
wasn't sure he needed another female to outnumber him.

“Everything worked out all right.
Now that I have a new, pretty bonnet I'm going to wear it when I
get married,” Leta declared.

“When is the wedding? Have you set
a date?” Tessie asked.

Leta chuckled. “Not quite. The
wedding will be as soon as I make a dress to match the bonnet. I
have to warn all my customers I'm making this dress a priority. But
not to worry, I can sew fast when I want to.”

“Leta, are you going to be lucky
enough to match the bonnet to some material in your store at this
late date?” Billie asked.

“No luck involved, Billie. I
figured Bat didn't know if the woman in his life had a dress in her
wardrobe that would go with the bonnet. I laid the blue bolt back
that I cut the bonnet from, figuring the woman Bat gave that bonnet
to would be needing a dress to match. I just didn't know it was
going to be me.” Leta winked at Bat.

Suddenly, he was sorry he had the
least bit of hesitation about adding Leta to the family. “Good
thinking on your part, Leta. Didn't I tell you, Billie, that Leta
was a smart woman,” Bat declared.

Once they were married, Leta made
life easy for Bat. She sold the shop and her house in Dead Horse so
she could live on the ranch with him. She used the property sales
money to pay off her debts.

Before Leta moved to the ranch she
informed her customers if they wanted her to sew for them, they
would have to come to Bat's ranch to make orders and for
fittings.

That solved Bat's worry that the
woman he choose would have to spend time at home alone when he was
on the range. Leta would have plenty of female company.

Not long after they married, Bat
and Leta, wearing her new blue bonnet, rode in the ranch buckboard
to town to get supplies. He didn't care one bit what the old
gossips in Dead Horse thought about him, but he saw Mrs. Borders,
Mrs. Petermier and Mrs. Huntman with their heads together when Leta
and he drove down Main Street. They smiled warmly at the new bride
and nodded their approval at Bat for choosing Leta as the woman to
receive the bonnet he paid her to make.

Most of all, the town talkers were
pleased to have the mystery of the blue bonnet solved to their
satisfaction. It crossed Bat's mind to wonder what the old gossips
would have done or said to him if he hadn't picked Leta for his
wife. He would have had to move out of town for sure.

Bat had one more surprise coming
when Mother Nature knocked on the next spring's door at the ranch.
Bat became a father for the third time, and this time he had that
son he needed so that he could pass his ranch on.

For once, Billie was so proud of
her new nephew she didn't rub it in to the father too much that he
hadn't wanted to marry a woman that could bear children.

For the rest of his life, Bat knew
for sure he made a good choice when he picked Leta Mays to be his
wife. A warm, friendly woman, Leta presided over their home with
gracious kindliness and was loved by all his family and their
friends. Best of all, Leta gave him a son, Bartholomew Junior, to
run the Bar BK ranch.

About The Author

Fay Risner lives in Iowa with her
husband on an acreage. However, she spent her early years in the
Missouri Ozarks and was raised with westerns as her reading
material. Her parents enjoyed books by all the well known western
authors of their time, and they passed the books and their love of
westerns on to their children.

Readers will find this book is
reader friendly. It is written in larger font which makes it easy
and fast to read.

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