Blessing Page 3

  “Wasn’t tryin’ to miss out. Was having some fun of my own at a poker table.”

  Uley Kirkland and Aaron Brown’s eyes met.

  He wouldn’t start on this story, they both knew, if he had any earthly inkling that he had a lady back here. “Everybody at the table was talking about Tin Can Laura,” the man up front said. “She don’t wear no stockings, Harris. And for a girl who’s had as hard a life as she has, she sure has a pretty face.”

  From where Uley and Aaron stood, they heard every detail about the stockings. The two of them gazed at each other in silence. “I begin to understand the depth of your problem, Uley.” For years she’d stood around listening to stories like this one without being able to protest.

  He took a deep breath. The timing, from his perspective, was perfect. “You leave me no choice. I’ve got to blackmail you, Miss Uley Kirkland. I’ll tell them all. I’ll tell every single one of them that you’ve had them duped.”

  Uley grabbed the bars with both hands. “You wouldn’t do such a thing.”

  He brought his nose level with hers. “I might. Because I’m desperate enough to do anything.”

  “I would never forgive you.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’m gonna be dead on Wednesday. Doesn’t matter one bit how long you hold a grudge. I won’t be around to enjoy it.”

  She saw he had her backed up into a corner. “You promised me. You’re a liar.”

  “That isn’t the worst of my sins, if you’ll recall. But you’re right. I’ll confess—” he added the rest for emphasis “—ma’am.”

  “Hush up,” she said, lowering her voice. “Somebody might hear you.”

  “Does that mean you’ll do it?”

  She took one long, deep sigh. “What if Mawherter won’t let me in?”

  “He will. Anybody in this town would trust you over me.”

  “You think so?”

  “I do.”

  They stared at each other, the silence ticking away between them. The irony of it struck her again full force. She’d worked years proving herself a trustworthy male in this town, and she was the biggest liar of them all.

  Aaron didn’t let up. Desperation ruled him now. “Get down there, Uley. The stage leaves for St. Elmo in two hours.”

  She collected her wits. She had no choice but to do his bidding. With head held high, she sauntered out to the front office, where Harris and George Willis had their heads together, still discussing the pretty Tin Can Laura, the hurdy-gurdy girl who kept her money stashed in a tin can. Uley walked up Grand Avenue to the Grand Central to tell D. J. Mawherter exactly what she wanted.

  The hotel proprietor didn’t even hesitate before he handed her the key. “You tell Harris Olney somebody’s got to be responsible for that criminal’s room,” he hollered as she started up the stairs. “You tell Harris to bring that man down here to settle up before they hang him Wednesday. I can’t get any gold out of a dead man.”

  She hurried up the steps to the second floor, thinking, If he dies, I’ll be halfway responsible for it.

  No, she argued with herself. Aaron Brown is responsible for it. One hundred percent totally responsible for his choices. Just the way I’m responsible for mine.

  She found the room, unlocked the door and stepped inside. In a tiny room with pine walls and no plaster stood an iron bed, a rickety bureau that looked like someone who should have known better had tried to build it, and a wash-basin. Mr. Aaron Brown’s satchel waited in the corner. She heaved it up and began to unfasten it, feeling more and more uneasy and curious as his private items began to tumble out onto the quilt.

  He owned a beautiful black suit and a bolo tie made of leather and elkhorn. He owned two stiff-as-a-board starched shirts and several pairs of woolen socks. And—oh, goodness—he possessed white drawers just like her pa’s.

  Purposefully she started digging in another area of the satchel.

  She found what he’d sent her for, a box of blue stationery and a quill pen and a little bottle of ink, all tied up in a linen square. She pulled those items out and put everything else back in place. She folded his writing utensils into the cloth to carry them.

  There.

  That had been easy enough.

  She was almost out the door by the time she saw his other belongings atop the bureau.

  He owned a bottle of bay-rum aftershave. She pulled the cork and sniffed it. The scent, keen and exotic, pleased her. She found it difficult imagining anybody as dirty as Aaron Brown ever cleaning up and shaving and splashing on something that smelled this good.

  He also owned a pocket watch and a Bible. She wondered, as she picked up the Bible and flipped it open, whether he was an Old Testament Christian or a New Testament one. Probably Old Testament, she decided. After all, that was where it said “An eye for an eye.” He was in jail, waiting to hang. She figured he probably hadn’t been listening in Sunday school when his teacher had brought up the Ten Commandments.

  Uley set the Bible down and picked up the watch. She guessed, just from handling the timepiece, that it wasn’t worth much. Feeling only slightly guilty, she clicked it open. To my beloved son Aaron, the inscription read. May your heart always know when it’s time to come home.

  She arranged everything on the bureau just as it had been when she arrived, thinking of her own ma and missing her beyond measure. How wonderful it would be, she decided, to know you had a mother…someone to go home to…no matter how old you were. For a moment, thinking of Mr. Aaron Brown and the awful fate awaiting him, she felt sadness. Rather, she felt sadness for his mother. She imagined hanging was a tragic thing when it happened to the baby you’d once cradled in your arms.

  She gathered the belongings Aaron had requested and closed the door behind her. She walked back down Grand Avenue. Now that she’d seen the suit and the bay rum and the watch, she felt as if she knew him somewhat better. She didn’t stop to wonder at any of it. All her discoveries really proved was that attempted murderers read the Bible and smelled good and had mamas at home who loved them, too.

  Aaron thought he’d go crazy waiting for Uley to get back to the jailhouse. He’d never heard anything so good as the sound of her soft voice in the front office. Harris and Uley came back to his cell together. “Here’s your writing supplies,” the marshal said, eyeing him. “You aren’t going to use that quill pen for a getaway weapon, are you?”

  “No, sir,” Aaron answered with mock respect. “I’m gonna write a letter, Marshal. Do you have any problem with that?”

  The marshal didn’t answer that question. He changed the subject instead. “Mawherter says you’ve got to settle up down at the Grand Central. I’ll take you up there next Tuesday so you can pay him.”

  “That’s real kind.”

  It became increasingly clear the marshal wasn’t of a mind to leave them, so Uley made the only comment she could think of. “You’ve got a nice suit, Mr. Brown. You want me to make sure the undertaker buries you in it?”

  “Doesn’t matter to me any,” he told her, clearly wanting to be free of both of them so that he could begin his last correspondence. “Doesn’t matter what clothes I’m wearing. I won’t be around to see it.”

  Harris Olney waited until Uley left the jailhouse before he went storming back into Aaron’s presence. “You’d better start thinking before you get innocents like Uley Kirkland involved in this,” he growled.

  “I have a letter to write,” Aaron stated calmly. “Uley was the only person I could convince to go down to the Grand Central and get my things.”

  Harris scowled at his prisoner. “I know you’re writing Elizabeth.”

  “I surely am.”

  “I knew it, Brown!” Harris said. “I’ll be glad when Judge Murphy comes over Alpine Pass and I can stop looking at your dirty hide. What’re you going to tell Beth?”

  “The bad news. That I’m going on to eternity and I’m not taking you with me.”

  Harris stomped out, and Aaron could hear him in the office, slamming
drawers and cussing until, finally, the room grew quiet. Aaron Brown stood behind the bars, waiting. He knew what was coming next.

  Harris returned. “No need to involve that kid Kirkland in this anymore,” he said. “I can post that letter for you on the afternoon supply wagon.”

  Aaron stood there and laughed at him. “Sure you will. You’ll post it right into the rubbish bin. Uley’s going to do it. I’m going to make sure this letter stays safe from you.”

  “What kind of a hold do you have over Uley, anyway?” the marshal asked. “How are you getting that kid to take such good care of you?”

  Aaron couldn’t help grinning. He wouldn’t breathe a word to Olney. He’d promised her, after all. “Guess Uley just feels responsible for what’s going to happen to me come Wednesday morning.” He sat down, pen in hand, and started scribbling, and Harris finally left him alone.

  “My dearest, dearest Beth,” Aaron wrote, beginning his letter. He didn’t have much time, but even so, he paused for a moment. He found joy in finally placing his words upon paper. He rolled the pen between his fingers and then dipped it again into the ink. Ah, he thought. Indeed the pen is mightier than the sword.

  He began to write again.

  I hope this letter reaches you posthaste. It is difficult to write, little one. You see, your Aaron is bound for the promised land, and very soon. I fear that Harris Olney has won out over us at last.

  I know your tearful advice was given in love; however, I could not heed your wise words. You know what I came here to do. I did not succeed. I did succeed in placing myself in a good deal of trouble. I was thwarted in my efforts to capture Olney by a do-gooder who jumped upon me when my six-shooter was pointed directly at Olney’s back. (Yes, believe it, even out here in the lawless gold country, a few do-gooders have found their way.) The only law and order in this place is Harris Olney himself, and a faceless judge who is due to come back and convict me on Tuesday. My demise is scheduled for Wednesday.

  I love you, dear heart. I write this so that you may have an answer to the questions you would have entertained when I did not return. Will there be a potluck supper next Wednesday night? Please have everyone at church pray for me that evening at services, even though I will already be gone.

  Dear heart, break this gently to Mama.

  Thank you for being such a precious and gentle spirit.

  All my love,

  Aaron

  He stopped writing and gazed out the window at the sky. As the hours passed, he found it harder and harder to believe an angel of mercy would come to Tin Cup and snatch him out of his jail cell.

  He turned away from the window.

  He reread the letter, folded it and slipped it inside the fancy blue envelope he knew Elizabeth would recognize in the stack of mail just as soon as it came off the stage at Fort Collins.

  With a flourish, he addressed it to her: Elizabeth Calderwood, Flying S Ranch, Fort Collins, Colorado.

  Chapter Three

  Uley was so mad right now, she wanted to spit in the dirt. All morning long she’d let her head grow bigger by the minute, thinking Aaron Brown was writing some important correspondence about his crime to the governor of Colorado—only to find out he had been wasting his time doing this instead.

  The letter was addressed in the neatest handwriting she’d ever seen from a man, all perfectly drawn, without so much as one blot: Elizabeth Calderwood, Flying S Ranch, Fort Collins, Colorado.

  She wanted to just spit in the dirt.

  Uley decided Aaron Brown would go to his grave next week getting everything he could from her. Uley had heard the marshal offer, in as gentlemanly a way as possible, to post the letter so that Uley wouldn’t be put out of any more time. But Mr. Aaron Brown would have none of it. He’d made her promise, right there in front of the marshal, that she would deliver it herself and wait to see it safely out of town.

  So here she stood, mad enough to hurt something, watching for the supply wagon to head out over Alpine Pass.

  Elizabeth Calderwood. Uley didn’t know why it irked her so that he had taken up her whole day, said it was something important, then posted a letter that must be a gushing goodbye letter to some girl he’d been sparking back home. She thought about the aftershave and the handsome black suit and figured some girl would probably fall for him if she knew him all gussied up and smelling good. Too bad Miss Elizabeth Calderwood couldn’t see him now, all stinking and mean down in that jail, and being held for murder. Uley bet seeing him like that would take the stars out of any woman’s eyes.

  “Yah!” Lester McClain hollered at the mules as he shook the reins and urged his freight team forward.

  “Any snow up there?” somebody called to him as he pulled out of town, headed for the road that disappeared into the pine trees.

  “Nope,” Lester shouted back. “Those drifts at the top are almost gone. The pass is clear all the way to St. Elmo.”

  Uley watched as the horses tugged the wagon loaded with freight and passengers up Washington Avenue…toward the first bend in the road…up into the lush green stand of lodgepole pines that stood sentry at the edge of town.

  There.

  His ridiculous gush letter was gone and on its way.

  Aaron Brown was none of her concern anymore.

  But four days later, just after Lester McClain arrived back in across the 12,154-foot pass with a bag of incoming mail, the sky above Tin Cup turned gray as pewter and the wind started howling down through the gold hills like something alive. By three that afternoon, when snowflakes as big around as tea cozies started falling, everybody figured they were in for one of those late-spring storms that everybody talked about, the kind that caught everybody unawares, the kind of storm that killed things.

  Up north, in the part of the valley called Taylor Park, a wide, sagebrush-covered expanse of grazing land, Jason Farley donned his Stetson and started out looking for the cows in his herd that had already dropped their calves. As the wind roared and the temperature dropped, he figured this was going to be the kind of night a new calf wouldn’t survive.

  Down south, Aaron Brown stood at the window in the Tin Cup town jail, looking out at the snowflakes, thinking this was the last snowfall he would ever see. What part of this is Your purpose, Lord? What’s the point of teaching me humility if I’m not going to be around to be humble? And then for some reason, his mind traveled to Miss Uley Kirkland.

  What would it be like, he wondered, to pretend you were a person of a different gender? Why, he wondered, would she do it? Perhaps she concealed some horrible disfigurement somewhere, although Aaron couldn’t imagine where it might be. She looked perfect to him, at least when he overlooked the fact that she was wearing a man’s work pants. She was small, but she was brave, as stout-hearted as anything else that survived in this harsh territory.

  She had certainly bested him.

  Aaron felt, just then, as if he’d come a far, far piece from home. Outside, it snowed harder.

  Up on the gold hill, Dave McNalley stuck his head out of shaft eleven at the Gold Cup. “It’ll be cold tonight,” he told the other miners. “The temperature’s probably dropped thirty degrees since noon.”

  Uley’s pa laid his tools down and glanced over at her. “We best get on down to the house.”

  “You’re right, Sam,” the foreman said. “You two have to travel farther than most of us. You best get out of here.”

  In the middle of the winter, when the temperature dropped twenty degrees during a storm, the snow flew dry and light, a dusting of talcum that shrouded everything. This storm came warm and wet and heavy. The snow pelted Uley and Sam’s faces as they squinted against the wind, driving toward them with stinging chunks of ice that took Uley’s breath away. They bundled up in blankets from the saddle packs. They hadn’t seen fit to bring coats with them this late in the season. The horses, given their head, picked their way down the rocky path. Uley struggled to keep her eyes open. As they came out of the trees and headed across the wetland be
side the creek, their progress turned treacherous.

  The snow whipped sideways against them. They couldn’t see the creek that meandered across their path as the horses plodded forward, the ground beneath their hooves thick with mud and ice.

  When they spoke, the wind sucked their voices away.

  Heads ducked, ears wrapped, they struggled on together, clutching their saddle horns in case one of the horses should stumble. The storm came from all directions at once, straight at them, from across, from above. As they entered town, Uley could barely make out the crude log buildings lining the street. The wind cut against them. The wet snow plastered itself to everything it touched. The horses floundered in drifts clear up to their cinch straps.

  Upstairs, above Ongewach’s Saloon on Washington Avenue, Santa Fe Moll gave her girls their nightly talking-to.

  “Moll,” Wishbone Mabel said, “look at it snowing outside. Nobody’s going to come looking for entertainment tonight. Nobody’s going to be able to find this place tonight.”

  “Won’t do,” Moll said, narrowing her eyebrows and shaking her head at all of them, “when miners start showing up and you’re all sitting around like you ain’t expecting anybody to be here because of the snow. There you are in calico, that will never do. You must look good, be clean, and smell sweet, just like true ladies. Now get going and get into them silk dresses!”

  As they all groaned and moved in the direction of their rooms, Tin Can Laura scanned the place. “Where’s Joe? I don’t see him.”

  “He’s probably downstairs in the kitchen, looking for scraps,” Mabel answered. “He always goes down there this time of night.”

  Laura gathered her skirts and took the steps running. “Hey, Joe! Hey, kitty! Come on up here!”

  Joe, who was due to have kittens just about any day, was the only living thing in the world Laura loved. A saloon patron had given her the calico cat for Christmas back when she’d been a Pitkin girl. Because of Joe, Laura stayed welcome wherever she wanted to go. The mama cat always proved an excellent mouser.