Blessing Read online

  He stopped the second he heard her. He stopped and turned around.

  She plowed right into him, smashing into his chest with all the force of the moose he’d thought she was.

  At the impact, Aaron wrapped his arms around Uley and stumbled backward into a clump of rosehips. She fell right on top of him.

  “Good grief, Uley,” he said, just lying there looking up at her. His Stetson had come off and was hanging atop one of the protruding rosehip branches. “You’re awful good at knocking me head over heels.”

  “I was trying to answer you.” She was staring right down at his face. “I heard you calling, and I’d just taken this big bite of biscuit, and…” She cast about, searching for her pail. It lay upside down, too, its contents scattered on the ground. “See, there it is. What’s left of my dinner.”

  “I only meant to talk to you. I didn’t mean to cause such a misunderstanding,” he said, a slight grin on his face that made him look totally endearing. “But I thought you were a moose—” he began to chuckle “—and you were after me.”

  “I was calling you.” It had suddenly felt imperative to talk to him. I didn’t see you aim the gun. You only had it out, at the ready.

  “You sounded,” he said, “like a bull moose bugling.”

  She couldn’t help herself. After the seriousness of the morning, it felt like heaven to giggle. Aaron Brown knew exactly what she was, that she was a gal. She felt perfectly comfortable being herself in front of him. “I’d just taken a bite of my biscuit, Mr. Brown. I tried to swallow it, but it wouldn’t do my bidding.” Her giggles turned to outright laughter. “So I ran…through the willows…after you, but…you were running….”

  “Uley,” he said, giving in to laughter, too. “You must be lighter on your feet. I honestly thought you were a big, hulking animal.”

  “What a horrible thing to say about a lady, Mr. Brown.”

  “Isn’t it? If I’d known, I’d have stopped sooner.”

  “But I’m glad you didn’t—” she was clinging to her sides, and it felt glorious “—because laughter is such fun, Mr. Brown. I don’t often do it.”

  He did his best to look askance at her. “I should hope not. Not in this fashion, anyway. I think I would have fared better with the moose.”

  “I think not,” she said, still enjoying herself. “I think you’re much better off that I caught you instead.”

  “Oh really?” He sobered somewhat. And she thought she knew what he must be thinking. The same way that I’m better off because you caught me the other day, as well? He was gazing up at her with his azure eyes in an odd way.

  For some curious reason, as their laughter dwindled, Uley became aware of the length of him in the grass. She matched him span for span, limb for limb. Beside her arm, she saw his arm. His face was so near to hers, she could see the beginnings of his whiskers.

  “You’ve gotten mud on your face,” he told her, somewhat somberly.

  “Have I?”

  “Yes. Right…there.” He reached with one hand and touched her cheek. “You want me to scrub it off?”

  For one instant, she actually wished he would. She wouldn’t admit that, though. Not to him. “No need for that.” She rubbed at her face with the back of her hand. The spot where he’d touched her skin seemed to burn.

  It was time to stand and move away from him, but she didn’t want to. When she’d been this close to him before, they’d both been taken so by surprise that it had been entirely different. This time, it was as if the laughter had tempered them.

  Her breeches leg lay beside his breeches leg. Even though she wore a man’s clothing, she felt every bit the woman inside. The feeling was not unpleasant. In fact, she rather liked the warm curl that had begun inside her.

  “Uley…” Aaron said quietly, gazing up into her eyes as if he were gazing into the sky. Uley’s heart beat a rhythm like the pounding of Ute drums.

  He grasped her upper arm. “This is the craziest thing.”

  “Is it?” This was a man who had blackmailed her, who had threatened to reveal her darkest secret. She’d forgive him almost anything if he’d just keep looking at her like that. Then, perhaps there were things he could forgive her of, as well. “Is it? I don’t know. I’ve never…” She didn’t know exactly how to finish.

  “You haven’t what?”

  But she had no right to be considering these feelings, she knew. Not with him squiring a sweetheart around Tin Cup.

  “I do not feel free to voice it,” she said. “You are saying this is a crazy thing. It certainly is, having you walking around free after what you’ve been accused of!”

  He grabbed his hat from the bushes and swatted it back and forth against his knee to get rid of the brambles. “How is it that every time I try to talk to you, you get me off the subject? I came to your cabin last night and you got me talking about the underside of a mule. I came to find you today and you get me running through the willows. Will you just stand still and be quiet and let me say what I’ve been trying to say to you all along?”

  “Well,” she said, taking one step toward him and knotting her fists, “I had no idea you had something important to say.”

  “Well, I do.”

  “You could have fooled me.”

  “I’ve got lots of important things to say.”

  “Well, then, say them.”

  “Okay. I will.”

  “Okay.”

  He just stared at her for a moment.

  She stared right back.

  He put his hat on his head. Then he took it off again.

  He clenched it in both hands. “I risked coming to your house last night and you got me all mad and bothered. I risked coming to your house because I wanted to thank you.”

  “What for?” she asked suspiciously.

  “Lots of things. But you make it awful hard for a man to get a word in edgewise.”

  “I guess I didn’t expect thanks from you. Not since I’m the one who sprung on you and landed you in jail in the first place.”

  “But you visited me there.”

  “Because I was afraid you’d tell somebody what you knew.”

  “You brought me my writing supplies.”

  “Because you blackmailed me into doing it.”

  “You posted the letter for me.”

  “Because I thought it was going to be something important. I thought it was going to be a letter confessing your crime to the governor of Colorado.”

  “You made me pasties.”

  “I did. I made you pasties. I’ll accept a thank-you for that.”

  “Thank you, Uley, for the pasties.”

  “You’re welcome, Aaron Brown.”

  “You were most thoughtful in your answers today. You described exactly what you saw.”

  “It was my Christian duty to tell the truth.” The guilt returned to niggle at her. She had lied by not repeating what he’d said when he’d recognized her for a girl. Oh, Father, I’m trying so hard but, in my power, nothing turns out right.

  That was the gist of it right there. She’d given him hope by telling the jury about him not aiming that gun. She hadn’t realized until that very moment how much he’d been depending on her. And he knew she’d been living a charade for years. Like everyone else, he had no reason to trust her. Every good thing she’d ever done for him had come because he’d held something over her.

  “I hadn’t thought of that until he asked it. I never did see you aim the gun. I just saw you draw it.”

  “We were all counting on you remembering exactly what you saw.”

  “You never did aim the gun.”

  “No.”

  “Were you going to?”

  “I don’t know, Uley. It would’ve depended on what happened.” He was just staring at her now, taking in every impish detail of her face, recalling their laughter and the way he’d felt when he found himself stretched out beside her in the marsh grass.

  As he stared at her now, he had one thing on his mind,
and one thing only.

  “I’ve got to ask you a question,” he said.

  “Go ahead. People have been asking me questions all morning.”

  “I could be dying, Uley. They might hang me tomorrow.”

  “I know that.”

  “This could be a dying man’s last request. This might be my last chance to do a little living on this earth before I go on to glory.”

  “That’s what I thought about that letter, too. You keep making requests. I have yet to see the last one.”

  “This is different,” he said. “This is between you and me.”

  “Is it?” The way he looked at her made her feel as if she had a feathery bird flying around in her middle.

  “You know that night when you saw me? The night you saw the gun?”

  “I’m not likely to forget it. Not as long as I live.”

  “Your hat fell off…”

  “I remember it, Mr. Brown.”

  “Your hair…”

  She knew what he wanted then, knew it as surely as if an angel had whispered it in her ear. Her chest constricted. “My hair?”

  “Would you take off your hat?” he whispered to her. “Let me see your hair?”

  The bird-like thing fluttered hard in her belly. But she did his bidding, pulling the funny little woven cap off her head and letting stray ribbons of her hair fall down around her cheeks.

  Aaron just stood there staring at it. Her hair was so red, it blazed in the sunlight.

  She stood there before him, allowing him to look, feeling more demure and feminine than she’d ever felt in her life.

  “How long is it?” he asked.

  “Down past my shoulder blades.”

  “Uley…it’s awfully pretty.” He wanted to touch it. He wanted to reach right out with one of his hands and see what it felt like in his fingers.

  “Is it? I don’t often get to see the color of it in daylight. I brush it at night, after we’ve blown out the lanterns.”

  He took one step toward her.

  One step.

  “It’s about the prettiest hair I’ve ever seen.” Gingerly, ever so gingerly, Aaron reached out with one hand. He ran the back of one long finger down a tendril that fell soft against her cheek. It curled slightly…and lay against his flesh soft like petals of larkspur. He wrapped his finger into it, laying the tip of his forefinger against the blush-pink of her cheek. “There,” he whispered as he gazed at her skin.

  He pulled his hand down and met her gaze head on. “Best get out of these willows now,” he said abruptly. “Somebody might come lookin’ for me, I’ve been away so long.”

  Then, before she could say anything more, he was gone.

  John Kincaid kept the courtroom busy that afternoon rehashing old evidence. He called every single one of the men who had testified that morning, asking if any of them, in turn, had seen Aaron Brown aim his gun at Harris Olney. Not a one of them had seen anything.

  The testimony continued for hours, and by four-thirty in the afternoon it was clear that the trial would go on another day. There’d be no hanging until Saturday morning now. And, despite all the talk, nobody really had any idea which way the jury would go.

  Uley walked home that night with her father. She was so hungry she could scarcely stand. She didn’t often miss the noon meal and her stomach had been rumbling for hours. But something else kept rumbling deep down inside her, too, something filled with questions and wonder and maybe a little pain.

  She couldn’t forget the way Aaron Talephas Brown had gazed at her in the willows.

  She couldn’t forget how it had felt to laugh a little with him in the green-smelling grass.

  Why, oh, why had he asked to see her hair again?

  Why, oh, why had he taken it where it lay against her cheek and brushed it once with the backs of his fingers?

  As she sat thinking of it that night, brushing her hair out in the darkness yet again, she found herself so preoccupied that she didn’t even count the brush strokes. Try as she might, she couldn’t understand the small hurt within her heart, the anticipation and remembrance, so deep and fierce they left her breathless.

  Oh, Father. She wanted to trust this man who looked at her in such a puzzling way.

  She figured she didn’t dare.

  Her instincts usually served her well. Tonight they were defying her. The more she thought about him, the madder about things she got.

  He’d pulled a gun even though he hadn’t really aimed it at the marshal.

  He’d blackmailed her into doing his bidding while he was locked behind bars.

  He’d traipsed after her into the willows and had made her feel odd and wonderful things, when Elizabeth Calderwood, who was obviously sweet on him, had come all this way from Fort Collins just to offer her assistance.

  He surely hadn’t meant to follow her into the wilds and make her begin comparing herself with Elizabeth Calderwood.

  Perhaps…perhaps…it was herself she couldn’t trust.

  That thought made Uley madder than ever.

  She hoped they’d hang him fast. Uley didn’t often think of how she missed her mother any longer. The past years had dulled the features of her face in Uley’s memory. But, just now, the presence of her mother came back to her…the feeling of safety…warmth…sheltering love….

  It came to her as if she were peering into her own childhood through the eyes of another. The crinoline skirts. The delicate scent of lavender water. The precious voice saying, “I am sorry you have hurts, Julia….” Because that was what she had always said, and Julia was who Uley had once been. “But learn from them, little one. Do not pump water from the well until you have the handle firmly in hand.”

  As Uley recollected it, the well handle had wrenched away from her of its own volition, smacking her in the left side of the nose and leaving a horrid green bruise that she’d worn for the better part of a week.

  Until you have the handle firmly in hand.

  Uley felt as if nothing in her life were firmly in hand at the moment.

  Oh, Father. I don’t even know what to ask for. If he’s a guilty man, surely You’d want justice wrought. But, underneath, it seems he has a caring soul.

  It took Uley the longest time to fall asleep that night. She kept picturing her mother and pretending that her mother could explain the odd, uncertain ways of men to her. And, as she did finally drift off, she dreamed of a handsome man and blue eyes with as much fire in them as gold nuggets. A man who had touched her hair with one callused but gentle hand.

  Santa Fe Moll opened the door of Ongewach’s and frowned at Uley. “We ain’t open this time of the mornin’, boy. The girls work late.”

  “I’m not here for that, Moll,” Uley said. “I just need to talk to Laura.”

  “Just need to talk, huh?” Moll fisted her green silk robe tighter around her arms and winked. “Maybe you wanna talk to me.”

  “No, ma’am. I need to talk to my friend only.”

  When Moll smiled, Uley could see remnants of tobacco leaves stuck all over her teeth. It was everything she could do not to step back three paces. “You know I don’t allow my girls to give out their favors for free. You expect me to believe you’d only be talking? Everybody in town knows you’re in love with that gal. If I let you up there, I expect to have my half of the money from Laura by lunchtime. Better yet, come back tonight. That’s when things’ll be in full swing around here.”

  “My pa won’t let me come at night. I just need to ask her a question.”

  Indeed, Uley would never come around this place when business was going on. All the way over here, she’d been considering what it meant to come to such a place as this. But she wouldn’t let fear or a sense of convention keep her from what needed to be done.

  “Nope.”

  “Please.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Laura’s my friend.”

  “And she’s my upstairs girl.”

  “A gal’s allowed to have friends, isn’t s
he?”

  “Any friends Tin Can Laura has cost two dollars an hour. And half of that goes to me.”

  “Seems like Laura’s locked up just as tight as Aaron Brown was for hanging a man.”

  “There’s different kinds of jails,” Moll said, pulling a wad of tobacco out of a pouch and stuffing it into her cheek. “You oughta know that by now, boy.”

  Yes, Uley knew it. Oh, how well she knew it.

  As Moll talked on and on about her profits, Uley noticed one bare foot descend the log steps. Two bare feet. Next came the hand-stitched, uneven hem of a flannel nightgown.

  Laura tiptoed up behind Santa Fe Moll.

  “I feed that gal. I give her a warm place to sleep and clothes to keep her dressed. Not just any clothes. Pretty things. Dresses the likes of which you could only find in Denver. I ain’t lettin’ anybody play around with what belongs to me. I’ve already lost money because of you. She could have sold that cat for at least twenty-five dollars. That would have given me twelve-fifty. But I’m figurin’ I’ll get it all back from you some other way. That is, seein’ as how you’re standing on my doorstep.”

  “Would you tell her I came looking for her?”

  “Oh, no, boy. You come back tonight and wait your turn in line. You’ll git plenty of time with her, same as everybody else.”

  “I just need to talk.”

  “Talkin’ll be two dollars an hour, same as everything else.”

  Things sure did stay difficult, Uley decided as she watched Laura sneak back up the stairs again. There wasn’t anything else she could do. She backed out of the doorway and away from Moll’s tobacco-tainted breath.

  “We’ll see you this evening, son,” the older woman said victoriously.

  “No,” Uley said. “You won’t.”

  “Hey, Uley,” came a voice from an upstairs window. “Don’t turn around. I’m up here.”

  “I wouldn’t think of turning around,” Uley said. “She might charge me two dollars for it.”

  “I’ll be down at the livery stable in an hour. Charles Ongewach is gonna pick up Moll’s new carriage. I told him I’d go along and drive his wagon back. Can you come over there?”