Jodi Thomas - WM 1 (21 page)
Read Jodi Thomas - WM 1 Online
Authors: Texas Rain
He might not be able to handle a horse yet, but he could manage a wagon. The trip would take longer, but it made more sense than staying at the ranch spending his days worrying about his fairy.
All he had to do was come up with a reason to leave, and it had to be something besides mentioning the letters.
By dawn the next morning his plan had a few problems. He’d explained that night at supper that since he’d read all the books on law for the state and he’d been enforcing those laws for ten years, he planned to take one of the wagons to Austin and sit for the state bar exam. All he needed was for a district judge to call together a panel of practicing lawyers who would ask him questions. If he made it past the panel, he could serve a short internship and then begin his own practice. Judge Gates had been trying to talk him into doing just that for several years. Maybe it was time he listened to the old man. Or, Travis thought, used the bar as an excuse to go to Austin.
While his leg healed, he had to do something, and Travis explained that becoming a lawyer would be as good a way to spend his time as sitting on the porch watching the weather.
No one in the family thought his plan sound. They also didn’t hesitate to say so. Sage thought he should wait until spring when the weather would be better. Tobin said if he waited a month then the two horses he had to deliver would be ready and he’d go along. Teagen saw no need for a lawyer in the family. In fact, he pointed out that most of the lawyers he met spent more time trying to break laws rather than uphold them. Travis would only be putting himself in rotten company by passing the bar.
When his siblings saw they were getting nowhere, Sage switched strategies. “If you think you have to go now, and you’re taking a wagon anyway, I might as well go along, too. All of you have said I could go to Austin as soon as I grew up.”
Teagen stood up from the table and tossed his napkin down. “Whatever for?”
Sage jumped and faced him as if they were the same height. “Because I’m tired of waiting around for the perfect man to accidentally fall onto the property. I’m almost nineteen and haven’t even met a man I’d consider marrying, much less one who likes me. Maybe if I go to the capital, I’ll bump into one.”
All three brothers ganged up on her. They shouted all the obvious holes in her plan. She was too young. Austin was a wild town with almost a thousand people. It could snow, or rain, and they’d be stuck by the side of the road. They could be robbed.
Sage faced them all. “I’m not too young. I’m almost an old maid. Teagen, you and Tobin can’t leave the ranch right now, but I could ride along with Travis. If there’s trouble, I could help.” She dared one of them to argue.
Travis opened his mouth, but Duck caught his eye before he could say anything. The kid had been playing with a ball on the stairs, but he now stood facing Travis with a look of terror in his eyes.
Before Travis could say a word, the boy ran toward him. He’d somehow sensed Travis was talking about leaving.
As he did several times a day, Travis leaned and lifted Duck up. Though they’d fed him for weeks, he still weighed nothing. It had taken over a week for the boy to let Travis out of his sight, and now he held to Travis as he had that first night. His little bony arms circled Travis’s neck as if they didn’t plan to ever let go.
Tobin moved closer and whispered, “He’s afraid you’re going to leave him behind.”
The argument about Sage going to Austin was forgotten as they all realized their yelling had frightened Duck.
“He’ll be all right here at the ranch.” Travis said the words, but he didn’t believe them any more than the others did.
“He’ll run,” Tobin warned. “I can feel it. If you’re not here, he’ll run just like he did when the Germans tried to keep him.”
Travis didn’t have to close his eyes to see the cage. The memory of Duck’s small hand gripping the bars would forever stain his mind. He wouldn’t . . . couldn’t . . . allow anyone to chain the boy up, not ever again. He wanted to go help his fairy woman. He wanted to make sure she was safe. But not if it meant seeing Duck locked up somewhere on the ranch. It might be weeks before he could get back, and the progress they’d made with the boy would be forgotten by then.
Teagen stepped closer and cupped the back of the boy’s head. “He might be all right for a few hours without you. We managed to keep him busy while you drove into town, but come nightfall he’d start looking for you.”
Sage agreed. “He’s happy with me most of the time, but now and then I notice him looking around, nervous and on edge until he sees you.”
Travis knew they were right. Duck was content to play around the house, even watching Sage and Martha cook while Travis read in the study. But every night he stayed close, refusing to go to his bed in front of the fireplace until Travis lowered himself into his bunk in the study. Only then would Duck climb beneath his covers and close his eyes.
He awoke to the sound of Travis reaching for his cane every morning. He might stay with Sage in the house for a while, but all of them had noticed the way he watched the door whenever Travis went for a walk.
“In time, he’ll trust all of us,” Tobin added. “But right now you’re his mother duck. You’re the one he needs to be near to feel safe.”
Duck loosened his grip and raised his head. He stared at Travis as if trying to understand what was going on. The boy was smart. Picking up a hundred things a day it seemed. Travis knew he couldn’t understand English, yet he’d sense something was happening and he’d been frightened. How scared would he be if he thought Travis abandoned him.
“If I go with you,” Sage said, “I could watch out for him while you take the test if that’s what you want. And we could check with all the authorities about finding his family. I’d also ride shotgun during the trip. I’m as good a shot as Tobin and a much better campfire cook.”
Travis didn’t like the idea of taking Sage off the ranch, but they couldn’t make her a prisoner here any more than they could cage Duck. When he’d been her age, nothing would have stopped him from leaving. He glanced at his brothers. Though Teagen still frowned, Tobin nodded slightly in understanding.
“If you go,” Travis began, “we leave before dawn and make the Wilson Trading Post by nightfall. They have a second-floor loft for their daughters. You can bunk in with them the first night.”
“And the second?”
“By the afternoon of the second day we’ll be into country where farmhouses are closer together. Any farmer will let us sleep in the barn. By the third night we’ll be at Fort Croghan. From then on we can follow the stage trail into Austin. If we have to stop, we’ll find lodging at the stations, but I can’t promise anything clean.”
Sage whirled around. “It doesn’t matter.”
Tobin laughed. “You say that now, but wait until you feel the bite of a bedbug or a roach crawling across the bridge of your nose while you sleep.”
Sage made a face. “I don’t care. I have to pack. I’ll take a small bag for the trip and Father’s old trunk to hold all the clothes I’ll buy in Austin. Imagine, I’ll get to eat at a café and walk Congress Avenue and shop in stores that carry more than three dresses. I might even find one of those ladies’ shops where they make a dress just for me.”
As she disappeared, Tobin leaned closer to Travis. “You’re taking a monster, you know that, don’t you? She’s had her money building up from the profits of the ranch for the past eighteen years. She can buy half of Austin if she takes a mind to.”
Travis nodded. “I have a feeling we’d never make it back on horseback. Lucky we’ll have the wagon.”
“Are you sure you’re up to the journey?”
Travis wasn’t about to let his brothers see his doubt. “It’s time, and, much as I hate to admit it, Sage will be a lot of help. This leg will never get any stronger unless I start testing it.”
The next morning with enough food to last a week and several buffalo hides to sleep on if needed, Sage, Travis, and the boy left for Austin. Teagen and Tobin rode with them as far as the bridge.
Travis knew he should be thinking about the half-baked plan he’d invented as a reason for the journey, but finding his fairy woman was all that weighed on his thoughts. He’d read the last lines of her letter so many times he could say the words with his eyes closed.
Once he was in Austin, he could always say he couldn’t find a judge willing to test him or let him intern. Or he could even say he’d changed his mind. Or, maybe, he might try for it. At worst, being a lawyer might help him be a better Ranger once he healed enough to ride.
He smiled. It didn’t matter what happened as long as he found his fairy. The need to see her had developed into an ache in the center of his chest. He told himself that if he saw her, faced her once more, he’d stop thinking about her. He’d discover there was nothing magical about her. She was just a woman, nothing more.
The only problem was, he knew he was lying.
CHAPTER 17
“RAINEY, DEAR,” DOTTIE DAVIS WHISPERED ACROSS the dining table. “Will you help me move something after supper?”
“I’d be glad to,” Rainey answered and went back to eating. She’d learned the rules of the boardinghouse well. No one, except the two German ladies, talked while Mrs. Vivian was in the room. Probably because the others had also discovered that anything they said in front of the boardinghouse owner would be twisted and handed back to them at a later date.
Rainey’s first-day comment about not looking for a husband had been turned to “This young lady has no interest in men or in the respectable bond of marriage.” Rainey was sure the Widow Davis’s concern for her being out late the other night while baking had been twisted and repeated to Rainey as “The widow frets over you as if you had no sense at all.”
Mrs. Vivian was a master at turning a phrase slightly to change the meaning entirely.
Because the three old maid sisters talked constantly about their shop, which was being built now that the materials had arrived, Mrs. Vivian referred to them as boastful-in-triplicate.
So all the women living at the Askew House ate in silence when Mrs. Vivian was in the room and whispered when she disappeared behind the swinging door that lead to the kitchen. In a strange way, it bonded them together. They whispered and stifled giggles when they talked like children playing games.
The stout little woman, Margaret Ann Mathis, who considered herself the leader of the boarders, had gone to San Antonio, leaving one place at the table empty. Mrs. Vivian had agreed to hold her room for a week at half the board fee, but no one seemed to know for sure if Margaret would be returning.
“Wear your coat,” Dottie Davis whispered the next time she got a chance. “We’re going out.”
“But Mrs. Vivian locks the door at nine.”
“Don’t worry, I know another way out and in.”
Rainey giggled. She felt like they were planning a prison break.
“Slip down to my room after nine. There is no sense going until she’s in bed. The danger will be getting out and back into this house, so if you change your mind, I’d understand.”
Rainey knew, as they all did, the rules of the house. If they were caught, they’d be kicked out. Though, with the three sisters leaving within the month for their apartment over their new store and the German coming after his family tomorrow, Mrs. Vivian might find her house empty if she did make Rainey and the widow leave.
“I’ll be there.” Rainey smiled at the widow. Over midnight tea and coffee the two had become friends. They often played poker with the kitchen’s dried beans and laughed the next night when their winnings were served at dinner.
Mrs. Vivian came in to collect the serving plates, and they were silent for the remainder of the meal.
Rainey vanished up to her third-floor hideaway and read all three of her letters from Travis while she waited. He’d written about the law, about the boy, and finally about himself. She read her favorite line one more time.
Sometimes, when I think of you, it is more like I’m remembering a dream than something that truly happened. Then I think of how you felt against me. How soft you were. How warm. I know that you had to have been real, for not even imagination could create such perfection.
Rainey laughed. She could never imagine her Ranger saying such things to her. But he’d written them . . . he’d written them to her. And that was enough.
Leaning back on her bed, she forced herself to return to the real world, knowing that he would always be a part of her daydreams.
She hadn’t baked pies today. In fact she hadn’t even gone to the mercantile. Though Pearl and Owen always welcomed her, Rainey knew they needed time alone. So, on days she didn’t bake she tried to stay away, not even dropping by to do her books. Today had been cold and cloudy, forcing her inside with nothing to do. She’d sat in the drawing room for a while. The sisters were already taking orders for dresses, and some of the richest women in Austin were calling. Rainey enjoyed the chatter, but in the end she’d spent most of the day sleeping in her tiny room. There, all alone, she could pretend that someday she’d have a life with Travis. She knew he’d never marry someone he considered to be a thief, but there was no harm in pretending.
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