Blessing

The pasties smelled like heaven to Aaron. “Did you make these?”

“Yeah.”

They stood and looked at each other through the bars. He smiled at her, showing his gratitude, and Uley decided she could forget how he’d blackmailed her so he could send that letter. He didn’t look nearly as good as Laura made him out to be, but his eyes were just as blue as the sky on a June day. Uley looked at his eyes the longest time. She decided she liked them.

“What are you staring at now?” But he was staring at her, too.

“You’d better eat those before they get cold.”

He sat down and obliged her, hoping that, if she saw how eagerly he ate, she might come visit and bring food again. “Don’t know why you did this,” he said. “Nobody’s ever brought me food in jail before.”

“You ever been in jail before? Or is this your first time?” She guessed he wasn’t a hardened criminal. Hardened criminals didn’t carry watches from their mothers and bay rum and Bibles.

“Nope. Never until now.” He decided to make conversation with her between chomps. “I’ve heard all sorts of stories in here this week.”

“Yeah. That weather took everybody by surprise.”

“It’s too bad about Jason Farley.”

“They’re gonna bury him up on the Catholic hill. As soon as it thaws and they find his body, that is.” The Tin Cup cemetery had three hills for burying—the Catholic hill, the Protestant hill and Boot Hill.

“You figure I could talk them into burying me on the Protestant hill?” he asked her. The question seemed to come from nowhere, but he’d been thinking about it all night long. “I used to go to church.”

But Uley shook her head. “Nope. It’ll be Boot Hill for you, Aaron Brown. Although they probably wish they could bury you on the Protestant hill. There’s lots more room there. Boot Hill is running over.”

He laid the remainder of the pasty on the cloth napkin. He wasn’t too hungry anymore, come to think about it.

Uley realized she was staring at him. She lowered her gaze to the ground.

Her unconsciously ladylike action made him think of one other story he’d heard this week. “So you and your father rescued Tin Can Laura out in the snowstorm.”

Uley raised her eyes to his again, and this time she was smiling. “She was out looking for her cat. Joe just had kittens yesterday. Laura’s going to give me one. There’s a gray one I’m going to name Storm. I’ve already been over there to pick it out.”

Aaron couldn’t help grinning. So that was where the rumors had come from. When he started laughing, it came out as a belly laugh, pure and simple. “Everybody in town’s saying you’re sweet on her, Uley. Everybody’s saying that’s why you finally set foot into Moll’s place.”

“What?” She gripped the bars, evidently not totally understanding what he was saying. When she finally figured it out, her face turned as pink as the roses he remembered from back home.

He liked it when she blushed. He hated to admit it, even to himself, that was why he’d told her the sordid story in the first place. He’d known what it would do. He’d known she would look all embarrassed and soft and vulnerable, despite her woolen pants and the funny little hat she wore to cover all that hair. He enjoyed exposing her femininity. He liked knowing a secret no one else did.

“Mr. Brown,” she said, sounding every bit the schoolmarm. “You mustn’t let them say that.”

“I don’t have any influence on what they say,” he reminded her. “I’m locked up here in the jailhouse. I just hear everything.”

“If you hear anything else like that,” she said, “don’t tell me about it. I don’t want to know.” She shoved the napkin inside the bucket she’d used to carry the pasties and she turned to depart.

He stood behind the bars, just grinning at her, just grinning at everything. Despite his bleak future, Aaron decided it felt good to have a true young lady to tease, something to occupy his time and amuse him, as he whiled away his last days.

* * *

Uley didn’t know why she bothered being nice to Aaron Brown. The man was a scoundrel, a known criminal bent on having fun with his secret at her expense. A proper man didn’t tell a proper woman such stories. But then, she thought, correcting herself, she wasn’t exactly a proper woman. For one minute, and one minute only, she let herself picture Mr. Aaron Brown. She pictured his twinkling blue eyes as he’d asked her about Laura. She pictured the way his smile had turned up more on one side than on the other as he teased her. This was his appeal, certainly. He was the only person in Tin Cup, Colorado—besides her father—who treated her like what she really was. He was decidedly irksome. And handsome. But not decidedly handsome. Even so, she figured, he would clean up real nice for his funeral.

Just as Uley reached her bay gelding, a shout rose from out in the street. “Supply wagon’s coming in! They’ve got the pass open!”

It seemed as if everywhere Uley looked, she saw people racing up Grand Avenue to meet the wagon. Here it came, winding its way down through the lodgepole pines, its wheels clattering over the rocks in the road. Nine days had gone by since the wagon had last brought supplies and mail from the outside world. Uley ran, too, wanting to see everything coming in from St. Elmo. As the team pulled to a halt in front of the town hall, she heard a murmur pass through the crowd. “Murphy’s on that wagon. We’ll have a trial tomorrow, for sure.”

Judge Murphy. She’d forgotten all about Judge Murphy. Her stomach felt as if it had dipped down to her toes. Tomorrow would come Aaron Brown’s trial. The next day would come his hanging.

Uley wondered if she should run back and tell him. But she halted where she stood. The muttering and swearing in the streets stopped. Instead, every man surrounding the wagon started whispering.

“Well, I’ll be...”

“What on earth is that?”

“Don’t believe it. Just plum don’t believe it.”

The first thing Uley saw coming out of the wagon was a skirt the same color as Aaron Brown’s eyes, all fluffed out and as big around as a tepee. The next thing she saw was an extended arm, the hand covered by a delicate white-laced glove.

Every man in the street took his hat off. Every one, that is except Uley, of course.

“Well, I’ll be,” somebody whispered next to her. “I ain’t seen a gal like that since I left Nebraska.”

The woman alighted, holding her skirts just high enough to keep them from dragging in the slush. She looked just like a picture from Uley’s one tattered, hidden copy of Gordon’s, which her Aunt Delilah had mailed to her from Ohio. The woman’s skin glowed as white and smooth as a porcelain pitcher. Her thick golden ringlets clenched together like a fistful of cattails and gathered in a blue bow high on the back of her head. As McClain lowered her bandbox to the ground, at least twenty men moved forward to help her.

What would it be like to wear a dress like that? Uley thought. It made her waist look so tiny, Uley didn’t know how she could even take air into her lungs. Great folds of cloth hung in full loops against the small of her back.

“Hello,” the woman said, in a light, melodic voice, tilting her head like a little bird at the group of men standing mesmerized in the mud. She was so pretty she even took Uley’s breath away. “My name is Elizabeth Calderwood. Could one of you gentlemen direct me to a lawyer’s office? I’ve come to hire someone to defend Mr. Aaron Brown.”

Chapter Four

So this was Elizabeth Calderwood—in the flesh! So this was the gal who’d gotten the blue, perfectly penned goodbye letter Mr. Aaron Brown had been so desperate to get out of Tin Cup!

Uley stood right smack in the middle of the road, one hand clenched around her horses’ reins, watching the men of Tin Cup compete over the new arrival the way a hungry dog would over a bone. Charlie Hastings took it upon himself to step forward and direct Miss Calderwood up Washington Avenue toward the Pacific Hotel. There she went, her skirts dipping back and forth like a chiming school bell, her head held high, with all those yellow curls hanging down her back like bedsprings.

If Elizabeth Calderwood knew she was leading a parade up the street, she took no notice of it. Every man there, every single one of them, followed her.

Elizabeth Calderwood stepped into the Pacific Hotel and, as the little front room filled with awestruck men, made her way to the desk. Pacific Hotel, the handcarved sign read. Frank Emerson, Proprietor. First-Class in Every Respect.

“I’d like to pay for a room for two weeks, Mr. Emerson,” she said in a voice so light and high she might have been singing.

She could have paid for a room for two years, so many men pulled gold pouches out of their pockets to help.

“No, but thank you, gentlemen.” She waved them away, holding aloft one tiny gloved hand and acting as if she attracted this much attention each day of her life. “I’m perfectly able to pay my own expenses.”

Five men volunteered to carry her one trunk up the stairs to the room Emerson assigned her. The remainder of the throng milled about in the tiny lobby, waiting for her to descend the stairs.

When she did, she flounced out into the street again. Everyone else clomped right along behind her. She marched past the sign reading J. C. Theobald, The Cobbler, and into the building marked Otto Violet, Attorney-at-Law and Notary Public, Tin Cup, Colorado. Twenty minutes later, she emerged. She opened the lace parasol she carried and twirled it high over her head, striding purposefully toward the Grand Central Hotel. Mawherter’s eyes about popped out of his head when he saw what came prancing in through his front door. “Good day, sir,” she said. “I’m here to pay off Mr. Brown’s bill.”

“The name’s Mawherter. D. J. Mawherter. At—at your service, ma’am.”