Joe's Wife. Cheryl St.John
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Edwina turned her attention to her grandchildren.
The subject was not forgotten. Meg would hear about it each time they were together. Nothing short of a miracle would keep them from chipping away at her until she conceded. And she wasn’t willing to do that.
But Harley was right. She thought about it as she drove her wagon and team home before dark. She couldn’t keep the ranch going without a man.
Someone to shoulder the workload. Someone strong and capable and willing to put in the long hours and backbreaking work required. Someone she didn’t have to pay.
Meg almost smiled at that one. Where would she ever get an able-bodied man willing to work without. pay? She could barely keep Gus and Purdy and two young hands fed, and she paid them only a meager salary.
The man she was imagining sounded like a husband. A man to take on responsibilities and have a stake in the ranch’s success.
A year hadn’t passed since Joe’s death. Since the war, many widows had already married again to provide for themselves and their children. Meg didn’t have children, which she saw as a mixed blessing. It would have been comforting to have something of Joe left behind. But she wouldn’t have wanted the added burden of raising and feeding them alone.
Ranch was a glamorous word for ten thousand acres of grass, several holding pens and barns and the modest house she glimpsed as she topped a rise, but the sight gave her the same warm sense of accomplishment and belonging it always did.
Joe’s mother had been chagrined over the fact that Joe had concentrated on the stock and the outbuildings before building an acceptable home.
But Joe’d convinced her that all they’d needed was a place to cook and sleep while they got the ranch on its feet. A more stately house was something they could build in the future. With affection, Meg studied the corrals, the barn and efficient house where she lived. She and Joe had spent their wedding night in the tiny bedroom. They’d eaten their first meals as man and wife in the long kitchen. They’d planned and dreamed as they walked the land, and lastly they had prayed beside the back door before he’d gone off to fight.
So much of Joe was in this ranch. They would have to drag Meg off this land. If finding another man was. what it took to keep it, she’d do it. Nothing would stand in the way of her keeping the Circle T. Nothing.
Chapter Two
Tye woke to the weekday sounds of horses’ hooves and clattering wagons on the street below his second-story window at Yetta Banks’s boardinghouse. The dry scent of dust filtered through the open window of his rented room. In the distance the ring of the blacksmith’s hammer punctuated the light tap at his door.
The knock came again, assuring him he’d actually heard it. He sat up in surprise. “Hold on.”
He threw his legs over the side of the bed, immediately grimacing at the pain that shot through his thigh. Awkwardly stepping into his pants, he wondered who’d be calling. The only townspeople who spoke to him were the regulars at the Pair-A-Dice, whom he doubted would be up this early, Jed Wheeler himself, the Reverend Baker and Tye’s landlady.
Pulling on a rumpled Calcutta shirt and leaving the laces loose, he ran a hand through his hair and squinted at his dark-whiskered cheeks in the mirror before opening the door.
A young boy stood in the hall, threadbare knees in his trousers, his cap askew. “Message for you, mister.”
Tye stared at the envelope. “For me? You sure it’s for Tye Hatcher?”
“Yes, sir.” The boy thrust it forward with an important flourish.
Tye accepted the envelope with a frown. “Here, wait up.”
He found a nickel on the stand beside his bed and flipped it to the boy, ignoring the fact that he’d regret it later.
“Thanks, mister.”
Tye closed the door and tore open the envelope. Unfolding a piece of paper, he read the words scrawled in black ink.
Hatch, I need to see you. I’m at Rosa Casals’s s house.
Lottie
He had wondered if Lottie still lived in Aspen Grove. No one spoke of her, and since he hadn’t seen her in the time he’d been there, he’d assumed—or hoped, for her sake—that she had found a husband and settled down.
Rosa Casals and Lottie Prescott had both been saloon girls at the Pair-A-Dice before the war. He and Lottie had enjoyed a satisfactory relationship, nothing serious, but something that took the edge off the loneliness.
Tye shaved and dressed in his good clean shirt. He needed a haircut, but he was saving every penny. He’d discovered years ago that the custom of eating three times a day was merely a habit that could be modified, too.
Tye added his wide-brimmed hat to his ensemble. A morning exercise usually took the stiffness out of his leg, so he determinedly walked to the house on the edge of town where Rosa had grown up with an aging father.
Like most of the houses he’d seen on his travels home, the outside needed a coat of paint, a new fence and several boards replaced on the porch.
Tye rapped on the door and waited, hat in hand.
The door opened, and Rosa Casals smiled a familiar smile, one front tooth overlapping the other and giving her a girlish look, even though silver had appeared at her temples. “Hatch,” she greeted him. “Come in.”
He glanced at the street behind him. “You sure it’s all right?”
She grabbed his wrist and pulled him forward.
“It’s a little late to be concerned about my reputation,” she said teasingly, taking his hat and hanging it on a rack in the hallway. She waved him into a neat parlor that smelled sharply of lemon wax and candles.
Tye met her round, brown-eyed gaze and smiled. Rosa had always been fun-loving and impetuous. Working in the saloons hadn’t been conducive to finding a decent husband, however. “Are you still working somewhere?” he asked out of curiosity.
“Nah. Papa, the old coot, died three years back and left me enough to live comfortably. He was such a penny-pinching old miser. I never had a decent dress or a cent to spend on myself the whole time I was growing up. Then I find out the skinflint was hoarding it all those years.”
Tye glanced around. “I had a note from Lottie.”
Rosa’s face grew serious. “I know. I sent the boy for you.”
“She’s here?”
“Yes. She’s been with me for a little over a year now. She wants to see you, Hatch.”
“Okay.”
“She’s not well.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
“Consumption. Doc says he’s done all he can.”
And she wanted to see him? “Oh.”
“Ever since we heard that you were back in Aspen Grove, she’s been wanting you to visit. She has some good weeks and some bad weeks, and this is one of her better times, so we decided to send for you now.”
Tye stood waiting, uncomfortable, but unwilling to turn aside a friend’s request.
“Come with me,” she said. “I’ll take you to her room.”
He followed her down a hallway where several candles flickered, though the day was bright, and he soon realized they were meant to dispel the cloying smell of the sickroom.
Rosa swept into the room ahead of him. A frail, strawberry-haired woman rested against a bolster of pillows on a lofty four-poster bed. Tye had to step close before he recognized