MB01 - Unending Devotion (2 page)

Lily tramped up the plank step of the hotel and read the bold capital letters painted above the door:
Northern Hotel Est. 1881
. Out of four hotels in Harrison, the Northern was the only one with temperance leanings. She prayed there would be rooms available.

She refused to stay in any establishment that was “wet.” She’d just as soon set up a tent and sleep in the woods before she supported the drinking and carousing that too many of the lumber-town hotels offered. Even if that meant she’d have to freeze to death or face a pack of wolves.

Of course she was more than ready to get out of the sub-freezing temperature. After traveling most of the day from Midland, where they’d left Edith in the capable hands of Molly May and her home for young girls, Lily was stiffer and colder than one of the long icicles hanging from the slanted eaves above her head.

With a determined set of her shoulders, she pushed the door open. A whoosh of warmth greeted her, along with the thick odor of woodsmoke and overcooked beans.

A gush of wind swept into the room with her before she wrangled the door closed. She swiped off her hood and used her teeth to tug snow-crusted mittens from her numb fingers. She stuffed the mittens into her coat pocket, and only then did she realize how silent the room had grown.

Several kerosene lamps hung from the ceiling and cast a smoky dim light over two long tables half filled with big burly men holding forks poised above their tin plates heaped high with beans, fried potatoes, and salt pork. A dozen pairs of eyes were fixed upon her.

She gave them a nod. “Evening.” Then her gaze found what she sought—the proprietor or perhaps his wife—coming through the door from the kitchen carrying a steaming coffeepot in each hand.

“My, my, my. What do we have here?” The husky woman stopped short. Her face was as red as raw beef, likely heated from the six-hole range Lily glimpsed in the kitchen.

“Evening,” Lily said, this time to the woman.

The way everyone was staring at her, she might have believed she was the first young woman they’d ever seen—if she hadn’t known better. The fact was, there were too many women like Edith who lived and worked in the lumber towns. Lily knew she was rare, only in that she wasn’t up on the table dancing in her skimpies.

“I’m checking to see if you have any rooms available for lease.”

“If there aren’t any, don’t you worry,” one of the men said. “I can make a spot for you in mine.”

A chorus of guffaws rounded the tables, but Lily didn’t bother to acknowledge the crude comment. After the past several months of living in various lumber towns, she was used to the depravation of the men.

The big woman ambled to the closest table and thumped the coffeepots down, sloshing some of the dark liquid onto the oilskin table covering that looked like it already had plenty of spills. “Now, boys, you know Mr. Heller and I run a good Christian establishment here. My husband and I won’t put up with any nonsense under this roof.”

“But if the girl needs a bed,” the man continued, “I’m just doing my
Christian
duty by offering to share.”

“You don’t get her in your room,” another man growled. “If anybody gets the girl, it’s gonna be me.”

“I think you’ve just been itching for a fight all day, ain’t you, Jimmy?” The first man pushed back from the table and rose to his feet.

“Boys, now don’t you upset dinner.” Mrs. Heller crossed her thick arms across her grease-splattered apron. “I won’t stand for it.”

But Jimmy was already rising. Before Lily could think to move, he’d come toward her and grabbed her. Within seconds she found herself in a tug-of-war between the two shanty boys.

“Let go of me!” she demanded, but they were too busy yelling at each other to notice.

Mrs. Heller abandoned the coffeepots and charged toward the men. She pulled a thick wooden spoon from her deep apron pocket and wielded it in front of her. “Boys, enough! This is just enough of this nonsense! If you don’t stop, you’ll force me to give you a whoppin’ with my spoon.” But they didn’t pay attention to her either.

For an instant, alarm shattered the usual calmness of Lily’s spirit. Maybe she’d been wrong to disregard Oren’s hesitation when she’d first insisted he take her along during his itinerant picture taking among the lumber camps.

“Those towns are loaded with danger,”
he’d muttered.
“They’re infested with graybacks and deadbeats. And if one doesn’t get you, the other will.”

So far she’d avoided both the lice and any encounters with rowdy men. But there were plenty of shanty boys who had referred to Harrison as “Hell’s Waiting Room.” What if they’d been right?

“Take your hands off the young lady.” A stern voice rose above the clatter.

The two men ceased their struggle, and silence fell over the room.

A broad-shouldered muscular man had abandoned his plate and risen from the bench. An unruly lock of blond hair fell across his forehead above dark green eyes. There was something commanding about his expression.

“I don’t think this is any way to treat a guest,” he said, “do you?”

None of the men said anything, but the two holding her made no move to unhand her.

“Connell’s right.” Mrs. Heller huffed. Her face was a shade redder than it had been before—if that were possible. “This one looks like she’s a decent God-fearing girl. And even if she’s not—”

“Oh, you can rest assured that I am,” Lily said quickly, struggling to free her arms from the tight grip of the men.

Mrs. Heller pointed her spoon at the two men. “I’ve a mind to write home to your mamas about your foolishness. And you know as well as I do, my letters would bring those poor women to tears.”

One of the men released her, but the other—Jimmy—just gave a short laugh, revealing a black space where he was missing a top front tooth on one side with only half of a jagged tooth on the other. His fingers dug into her arm, and his smile was hard with the lust she’d seen often enough.

But she’d never worried about the boys before. Oren had always been there to scare them away.

She glanced at the door. He was probably still across the street chatting with a couple of local business owners about the lumber camps in the area. Maybe she shouldn’t have been in such a hurry to get inside and get warmed up. Oren was always warning that her impatience was going to get her into trouble eventually.

He would come looking for her before too long—of that she had no doubt. She could only pray it was sooner rather than later.

Connell took a step forward. “Let the girl get back to her business, and we’ll get back to our meal before it gets cold.”

He wore the usual short woolen mackinaw, a bright red-and-black-plaid coat that many shanty boys wore, allowing them to be better seen in the woods and protected against the many accidents that abounded in the camps.

He’d unbuttoned the light coat revealing suspenders stretched across a thick cotton shirt. He looked just as rugged as any other shanty boy she’d seen, but from the expectant way the men stared at him, he’d obviously earned their respect.

Except, of course, the respect of the man still holding her arm.

Lily gave a rough yank, trying to dislodge herself.

But Jimmy’s pinch sank through her flesh and reached her bone.

She gave a yelp of protest.

Connell took another step forward. “Let go of her, Jimmy. Now.” His voice turned ominous.

Jimmy jerked her against his armpit into the sour odor of a day’s worth of hard labor. “And if I wanna keep her, what’re you gonna do about it, McCormick?”

“You know I don’t want any trouble,” Connell said. “But you’re taking this too far.”

Lily just shook her head. She’d had enough. She wasn’t the type of person to stand around waiting for help. She believed that if you wanted something done, then you better just roll up your sleeves and do it yourself.

“I don’t take kindly to any of you shanty boys touching me,” she said. “So unless I give you permission, from now on, you’d best keep your hands off me.”

With the last word, she lifted her boot and brought the heel down on Jimmy’s toes. She ground it hard.

Like most of the other shanty boys, at the end of a day out in the snow, he’d taken off his wet boots and layers of damp wool socks to let them dry overnight before donning them again for the next day’s work.

Jimmy cursed, but before he could move, she brought her boot down on his other foot with a smack that rivaled a gun crack.

This time he howled. And with an angry curse, he shoved her hard, sending her sprawling forward.

She flailed her arms in a futile effort to steady herself and instead found herself falling against Connell McCormick.

His arms encircled her, but the momentum of her body caused him to lose his balance. He stumbled backward. “Whoa! Hold steady!”

Her skirt and legs tangled with his, and they careened toward the rows of dirty damp socks hanging in front of the fireplace. The makeshift clotheslines caught them and for a moment slowed their tumble. But against their full weight, the ropes jerked loose from the nails holding them to the beams.

In an instant, Lily found herself falling. She twisted and turned among the clotheslines but realized that her thrashing was only lassoing her against Connell.

In the downward tumble, Connell slammed into a chair near the fireplace. Amidst the tangle of limbs and ropes, she was helpless to do anything but drop into his lap.

With a thud, she landed against him.

Several socks hung from his head and covered his face. Dirty socks covered her shoulders and head too. Their stale rotten stench swarmed around her. And for a moment she was conscious only of the fact that she was near to gagging from the odor.

She tried to lift a hand to move the sock hanging over one of her eyes but found that her arms were pinned to her sides. She tilted her head and then blew sideways at the crusty, yellowed linen. But it wouldn’t budge.

Again she shook her head—this time more emphatically. Still the offending article wouldn’t fall away.

Through the wig of socks covering Connell’s head, she could see one of his eyes peeking at her, watching her antics. The corner of his lips twitched with the hint of a smile.

She could only imagine what she looked like. If it was anything like him, she must look comical.

As he cocked his head and blew at one of his socks, she couldn’t keep from smiling at the picture they both made, helplessly drenched in dirty socks, trying to remove them with nothing but their breath.

“Welcome to Harrison.” His grin broke free.

“You know how to make a girl feel right at home.” She wanted to laugh.

But as he straightened himself in the chair, she became at once conscious of the fact that she was sitting directly in his lap and that the other men in the room were hooting and calling out over her intimate predicament.

She scrambled to move off him.

But the ropes had tangled them together, and her efforts only caused her to fall against him again.

She was not normally a blushing woman, but the growing indecency of her situation was enough to chase away any humor she may have found in the situation and make a chaste woman like herself squirm with embarrassment.

“I’d appreciate your help,” she said, struggling again to pull her arms free of the rope. “Or do all you oafs make a sport of manhandling women?”

“
All you oafs
?” His grin widened. “Are you insinuating that I’m an
oaf
?”

“What in the hairy hound is going on here?”

She jumped at the boom of Oren’s voice and the slam of the door.

The room turned quiet enough to hear the
click-click
of Oren pulling down the lever of his rifle. She glanced over her shoulder to the older man, to the fierceness of his drawn eyebrows and the deadly anger in his eyes as he took in her predicament.

A breeze of relief blew over her hot face. She was safe now—not that she’d been all that worried before. But she counted her blessings that Oren was on her side.

His heavy boots slapped the floor until he stood over her. With a growl, he lowered the barrel of his rifle and pushed it against Connell’s temple. “Mister, you’re a dead man.”

Chapter
2

T
he steel pressed hard and cold against Connell’s head. He’d been in plenty of dangerous situations, but this was the first time anyone had ever threatened to blow out his brains.

The twenty-four-inch-long rifle with its octagon barrel chambered fifteen ready-to-fire cartridges. But at this range, all it would take was one shot and he’d be a dead man.

“No one touches Lily”— the man jabbed the tip into Connell’s temple, grinding it into his throbbing pulse—“and lives to tell about it.”

The old man grabbed the rope that entangled them. He grunted and twisted it before finally pulling it free. Then he extended a hand to the woman and hoisted her to her feet. All the while, neither his Winchester nor his murderous eyes shifted so much as a thousandth of an inch from Connell.

Finally, in all of the shifting, the dirty socks fell away from his head and gave him a clear glimpse of the woman.

She untangled her skirt and smoothed down the folds of flowery calico, but not before he caught sight of her long knit socks, which strangely enough were striped in parallel rows of bright yellow and orange and green and purple.

“Now, Oren, there’s no need to kill him.” She patted the man’s arm. “At least not tonight.”

He muttered under the big mustache that hung over his upper lip but didn’t move the gun.

“I agree,” Connell said. “And really, I don’t see that there’s
ever
going to be a need to kill me.”

“I decide who to kill and when.” Oren jabbed the barrel again, and his finger on the trigger twitched. “And right now I’m in the mood to make someone eat lead.”

Connell’s mouth went dry. So this was it. He was going to die.

He’d already calculated the amount of time he spent in the woods and had given himself a twenty-five percent chance of dying from a lumber-related accident—being crushed by a falling tree or being buried by rolling logs. But a dining room brawl? Over a girl he didn’t know? That had never entered any of his equations.