Her Colorado Man (5 page)

“Breakfast isn’t formal,” Henrietta said from where she stood cutting and wrapping a mountain of sandwiches. “Food’s set out on the sideboard in the dining room. Bring your dirty plate in here when you’re finished.”

“Thanks, ma’am.”

Wes joined the Spanglers vying for a spot in line and prepared himself a plate. Enjoying this many hot meals in a row, meals that he hadn’t searched for firewood to cook, was a treat.

“What will you do after you ride with me to school?” John James asked. He had saved a chair next to him at the table.

Wes had figured he could find a job in town, but if he was going to be living here, it seemed he should be working where all the family members worked. “I guess I’ll be looking for a job.”

John James chuckled. “You don’t hafta look. There’s lot of jobs at the brewery. Right, Mama?”

Wes glanced up to find Mariah holding a plate and a mug of coffee while she waited for one of the children to finish eating. Her attire drew his attention. She wore a brown pair of men’s trousers that outlined the shape of her hips and thighs and cinched her narrow waist. Immediately the vision of her shapely limbs and ivory skin entered his thoughts. The sight of her nakedness would never stop taunting him.

“I don’t do the hiring,” she said as though relieved about the fact.

John James’s cousin left and she slid onto a chair across from her son. She was as fresh and pretty as ever, with her skin glowing and her shiny hair knotted on top of her head. He couldn’t help remembering the sight of the wavy tresses flowing across her shoulders, her breasts peeking through filmy fabric.

The ivory skin across her cheekbones took on a pink hue, as though she suspected where his thoughts had traveled.

“Who does the hiring?” Wes asked.

“My father,” she replied. Was that a hint of pleasure he detected in her voice?

She had barely finished her eggs and toast when a bell rang from outside.

“That’s the wagon headed for the brewery.” She took a man’s cap from her hip pocket and settled it over her hair at a jaunty angle. “Your books are beside the front door, John James.”

“Bye, Mama.” He hugged her, then turned to Wes. “We ride to school in the other wagon that’s out front.”

Wes joined the children, who were driven to school by Sylvia.

As they entered the small white schoolhouse, John James introduced him to each youngster they passed. “This is Wesley Burrows, my papa,” he told them proudly.

“Miss Saxton, this is my papa,” he told the woman greeting all the children.

The pleasant-faced woman offered her hand. “Pleased to meet you. I’m Margaret Saxton.”

“Wes Burrows, miss.”

“We’ve heard all about you. John James has been bursting with excitement, awaiting your arrival.”

“I was pretty eager to get here, myself.” He turned to John James. “Be on your best behavior today.”

“Yes, sir.” The boy beamed a smile as he waved goodbye.

Wes exited the schoolhouse and settled his hat on his head. Still on the seat of the wagon, holding the reins, Sylvia waited for him. “Want a ride to the brewery?”

“That where you’re headed?”

“No, I do the shopping for Mama and help Hildy with laundry and chores. But it’s easy enough to drop you off.”

He climbed up. “Seems everybody in the family pretty much has their place, taking care of the house and running the brewery.”

She flicked the reins over the horses’ backs. “If you’re wondering if you’ll fit in, the answer is yes. We all want Mariah to be happy. And she needs her man around to be happy.”

Being referred to as her man was almost uncomfortable, but on a deeper level, he liked it. He sat a little straighter on the hard seat. “I guess it seems odd to a family like this that…that she hasn’t had her husband here all this time.”

“I can’t speak for everyone, but Mama and Annika and I don’t hold it against you that you took off the way you did,” she said. “You’re here now.”

“Everyone has been very kind.”

“Everyone wants what’s best for Mariah—and John James,” she replied.

Wes’s first glimpses of Spangler Brewery held three smokestacks billowing gray plumes into the sky. Drawing closer, he made out the perfectly flat land where several three- and four-story buildings sat in precise arrangement around a courtyard, with smaller buildings between. The tallest brick structure sported a cupola with a weather vane.

“That’s where the offices are,” Sylvia said, pointing
to the building he’d noticed. “Grandfather and Papa are in there.”

She reined the horses to a halt. He thanked her and climbed down with his weight on his good ankle.

The enormous courtyard bustled with activity. Teams of horses pulled loaded wagons toward an open-sided building and four men stood in the shadow of a tall brick clock tower, holding a conversation that involved energetic hand waving. One man beat his hat against his thigh as he spoke.

Wes headed beneath the arched brick entryway, through a set of heavy doors and into a silent lobby.

A
man in a three-piece suit greeted him.

“I’m here to see Friederick Spangler,” Wes told him.

“I’ll let him know you’re here,” the man said and proceeded down a long hallway, giving Wes too much time to wonder what Mariah had told her family about him—rather about her supposed real husband. He might as well plan some fancy dancing if subjects he couldn’t answer came up. He and his “wife” needed to talk more than they had, but that was going to be a challenge.

“Are you Wesley Burrows?” the man called a few minutes later.

“I am.”

“Go right in.” He pointed to a door.

“I was expecting you.” Instead of sitting behind a desk as Wes had expected, Mariah’s father sat on an upholstered chair, a table holding stacks of paper beside him. “Have a seat.”

Wes took a chair across from his. The older man had a narrow face bracketed by neat sideburns laced with gray. He wore trousers and a dun-colored work shirt. “You here for a job?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Know anything about making lager?”

“That I don’t.”

“Drank your share?”

He grinned. “Is that a job requirement?”

Friederick laughed. “No. Just the remark I most often hear from townspeople who apply. Not everyone here is family.” With his elbows on the arms of the chair, he laced his fingers and looked at Wes over his knuckles. “Plenty of us have wondered about you.”

Wes gave him an understanding nod. “That’s normal.”

“Questioned more at first. It was hard to understand how a newly married man with a baby could leave them to fend for themselves while he sought his fortune.”

Wes wasn’t sure what to say. He had no idea how a man could do that, either.

“I know you sent her money,” Friederick said. “Money wasn’t what she needed. She and my grandson have always been well cared for. What she needed was a man at her side. A father for her boy.”

“I know that, sir. That’s what I intend to be. Now.”

“Nothing to say for yourself?”

“What could a man say that would make up for that?” he asked. “I have to prove myself to her now. To
John James. To all of you. A man deserves a chance to do that, doesn’t he?”

“You have six years to make up for,” the man said. “That’s a pretty big job.”

“I believe I can do it, sir.”

Friederick scrutinized him long and hard, taking measure…weighing. “I guess we’ll see.” He lowered his hands. “Don’t hurt them.”

“No, sir.”

Friederick got up and walked to the window. “You realize that just because you’re married to Mariah doesn’t give you special rank here.”

“I expect to earn my way. Always have.”

“You have a lot of catching up to do in order to learn this business. Learning will take extra time and effort. You up to that?”

“I am.”

“Can’t help but notice you have a limp.”

“My leg has healed. I can do a day’s work like any man.”

Friederick turned back to face him. “All right then. I’m sending you to the mash house. My nephew Philo is the superintendent of that building. You’ll answer to him.”

Preparing to leave, Wes stood. “Which building is the mash house?”

Philo Ulrich stood as tall as Wes, but was a whole lot broader across the chest and shoulders. Wes had
noticed him at the party the evening before, but some of the family relationships were still confusing.

“You’re gonna pull your weight just like every other man here,” Philo yelled in front of a dozen men in the high-ceilinged building. Sweat plastered his reddish hair to his forehead. Steam engines, belts and pulleys were so loud that he had to shout to be heard. The smell, like sickly sweet oatmeal, was almost overpowering.

“Mr. Fuermann wants you to have a working knowledge of what goes on here, so today you’re going to watch and learn about starch conversion. Tomorrow I’m starting you out on the heat tanks.”

By Mr. Fuermann, he meant Friederick, Wes figured out, and listened as Philo spouted orders to each man. Wes noticed that though quite a few women were employed at the brewery, the workers in this particular building were all men. It didn’t take long to figure out why. The work was hot and dirty and took a lot of muscle.

By lunchtime, Wes’s head was ready to explode from the smells, the lengthy explanations of tanks and malt-mills. Grist cases and mashing machines shouted at him alongside steaming tanks and chugging engines. The conditions were chaotic to a man used to spending weeks at a time alone in the vast wilderness.

A whistle blew from the courtyard, and the men paused in their tasks. Machines went blessedly silent and conversations sprang up. Wes followed the workers
across the courtyard to an open-sided building. The sandwiches Henrietta had wrapped were sitting out, along with metal tubs of apples and a cask of beer with a spigot.

As couples, families and friends sought out each other, he noticed that Philo paired off with Mariah’s cousin Hildy to eat.

After picking up his food, Wes spotted Mariah and approached her hesitantly. She still wore her cap, and there were smears that looked like grease across the back of her trousers. He sure didn’t mind the way she looked in those trousers. Did she have any idea of how she drew attention to one of her best features by wearing them?

She turned and met his appraisal. There was no way she could know what he was thinking, but she drew her brows together as though she had. Jerking her gaze to the onlookers, she motioned for him to join her at a table near the back.

A quick search of the room showed that most eyes were indeed upon them. With appreciation, he watched her seat herself and then sat across from her. His ankle had been aching for the last hour, so he propped it on the bench beside him and unwrapped his sandwich.

Mariah picked up her sandwich. “Where did he assign you?”

“The mash house. The smell takes some getting used to.”

Her gaze flickered to his, then across the room,
where it settled briefly on Hildy and Philo before moving away.

“They’re married, Hildy and Philo?” he asked.

She nodded. “The smell will change. During the boil, once the hop is added, the mash takes on a sweeter floral aroma.”

He absorbed that information. “I thought Hildy stayed at the house with your mother.”

“She brings lunch.”

“I never knew there was so much that went into making beer.”

“Bottom-fermented lagering is an art,” she replied. “Grandfather is rather old for the brewmaster title, but my mother is his oldest child, and my oldest uncle was killed several years ago. The title rightfully belongs to my uncle Patrick, but he’s happy to let Grandfather continue.”

“The difference is obvious,” he said, “from what I’m used to being served.”

“About all that’s sold throughout the upper states and Canada is ale or top-fermented lager,” she told him. “We’re working to infiltrate markets dominated by whiskey, cider and Americanized English ale. Now that we have machinery, we can produce faster and create a better product.”

“Why better?”

“More uniform, I should have said.” She drank from her mug. “This is a very good year for us,” she continued.

“Why is that?”

“Last winter was warm. Made ice scarce and expensive for a lot of the major breweries that don’t have icehouses. We’ve been using ice machines for about eight years. The Exposition is the best opportunity we’ve ever had to present our product to the country.”

For the second time, she’d been drawn into affable conversation because it involved the brewery, and Wes filed away the information. She reminded him of the enterprising women who lived and worked in Alaska. There weren’t many, but those few who had started their own businesses were smart and capable, and some of them even wore trousers.

None he’d seen had ever looked as good in their trousers as Mariah did, however. The building seemed a lot warmer than it had when they’d entered.

The whistle blew again, and she rolled up the paper wrapping from her lunch and stood. “You done?”

He finished his beer, grateful for the cool liquid. “Thanks for sitting with me, ma’am.”

She walked ahead of him and they threaded their way into one of the lines moving outside. “I didn’t have any choice.”

She cut away and headed for one of the other buildings.

Wes took a deep breath and walked toward the mash house.

The next few days followed pretty much the same pattern. He told John James goodbye at the front of the house and then hopped on the back of a wagon heading
for the brewery. For ten hours—with a break for lunch—Philo tested Wes’s mettle, and Wes determinedly worked to prove himself.

Of an evening, he sat beside John James and across from Mariah at the supper table, learning what it was like to be part of the chattering, laughing family that pulsed around him.

Mariah’s mother often sought him out in the uncanny way she had about her. She would tilt her head and moments later, walk right up beside him.

One evening as they joined others by the fire, Henrietta laid her hand on his shoulder, and then took his hand. “Your husband is in pain,” she told Mariah a few minutes later.

“I’m all right, Mrs. Fuermann.”

“I can call the doctor for you,” the woman told him.

He shrugged. “There’s nothing he can do except give me something for the pain. My leg is healing on its own.”

“Put ice on it,” she told Mariah. “And then you heat a bag of rice. That will feel good and help him sleep. Have you been sleeping well?”

“Just fine, ma’am.”

“I don’t think so. I think you’re tired.” And to Mariah she said, “Take your husband upstairs now.”

Mariah stood. “Head upstairs, John James.”

Her son carefully piled his wooden horses in their canvas bag. “Come on, boy,” he said unnecessarily to the dog he’d named Felix. The critter followed him everywhere.

She glanced at Wes. “You two go ahead. I’ll be right up.”

“Did you see my horse that looks like an army horse?” John James asked as they climbed the stairs.

Wes took each step with caution so as not to bend his ankle at a painful angle. “You’ll have to show it to me up close,” he replied.

With Felix at his heels, John James ran ahead into his mother’s room. Wes followed more slowly. The child knelt on the rug and took his horses from the bag—right where Wes normally made his pallet for the night. Wes eased onto the plushly upholstered chair and listened as John James told him about each horse.

Minutes later, Mariah joined them, softly closing the door behind her. She glanced from her son to Wes and then at the bed. She set her mouth in a line of displeasure, but she set down the knotted dishtowel she held on the night table, pulled back the covers on the near side of the bed and propped several pillows. “Come lie down,” she told him.

He took off his boots, then limped to the bed and made himself comfortable on the soft mattress.

She placed another pillow near the end and instructed him to rest his foot on it.

He did so, and she retrieved the dishtowel, which it turned out was filled with ice, and held it above his leg. She paused. “Where, exactly?”

Wes hiked up his pant leg and rolled down his wool stocking so she could see the scars.

“It’s swollen,” she said with surprise.

“Not bad.”

She arranged the cold pack on his leg.

“Thank you, ma’am.”

She avoided his gaze. “You don’t have to call me ma’am.”

“Tell us a story, Papa,” John James begged, climbing onto the foot of the bed. “Please?”

Mariah reached into a small brocade satchel and took out some kind of stitchery, then sat on the rocking chair near the bed.

“Is that needlepoint?” Wes asked.

“Embroidery. I’m making a quilt for my cousin’s baby.”

“Hildy?” he asked. It took a lot of doing, but he was trying to remember names and relationships.

A frown lined her forehead for only a second before she said, “Hildy has no children. Faye is expecting a new one.”

“A new brother or sister for Paul and Emma,” he said, proud that he’d made the correct family connection.

The ice did feel good on his leg, and he was able to relax a little. He considered a story for John James. “One winter there was so much snow north of Skagway that it drifted twenty feet and more in some places up toward the Yukon. I wouldn’t risk my dogs and neither would the other carriers, so we waited for a melt.

“The mail piled up so high that we had to build
frames for canvas tents and then guard the bags at night.”

“Why did you have to guard a bunch o’ letters?”

“Newspapers are more valuable than jewels to people hungry to hear what’s going on in the world and want news from back home. And sometimes there’s money in the letters. Dishonest people don’t care who the mail is addressed to if they want it badly enough.”

“Did Yuri help you guard the mail?”

“I pitched my tent nearby, and the dogs were tied beside it,” he answered. “News came about one postmaster who couldn’t take the stress of all the mail piling up and the unhappy customers. He set fire to the pile.”

“Did all the mail burn?” John James asked.

“Nah. The citizens caught the postmaster, put out the fire and ran him out of town.” His ankle was numb and aching from the cold. “Can I take this off now?”

Mariah got up and removed the ice pack. “I have the hot one warming,” she said and left the room.

A few minutes later she returned with a bulging sock.

“That’s rice?” he asked.

She placed it on his ankle. “Yes.”

“It’s sure hard.”

She blinked and looked from him to his leg. “Well, it’s not cooked.”

“Oh.”

She laughed then, a surprising burst of sound that made him feel foolish, but warmed him all the same.

“I had no idea,” he said. “I’ve never heard of this.”

“Your mother never gave you a sock filled with rice for a stomachache?” she asked.

“Never knew my mother,” he replied.

Her expression turned solemn and she cast that skeptical blue gaze on him. “She died?”

“I don’t know.”

She returned to her chair and picked up her embroidery, but didn’t look at it.