Horse With No Name Page 14

  "You will do nothing of the sort until I say so." Merrick raised his voice and pushed his face closer to Julia's. She leaned back instinctively. "Do you mean to tell me that you went to the O'Brien ranch all by yourself? What were you doing there? Talking to Alan Cecil, I expect."

  That he knew all the details of her mission only put Julia's back up further. She raised her voice, telling him to mind his own business. Merrick countered, telling her that the safety of the town's inhabitants was his business.

  "Oy!" A loud voice broke into the argument. "Take this shit outside. You're bothering the animals." Walt appeared and reached past Merrick to take Stanley's reins from Julia. Together he and the horse walked down the aisle toward Stanley's stall. Walt looked over his shoulder. "I mean it. Go outside." He pointed toward the open door.

  Julia whirled on one heel and marched out of the building, kicking up dust with every step. Merrick followed her, and by some silent but mutual agreement they stood in the front yard of the livery and faced off.

  The three livery dogs watched the angry pair for a moment and then slinked away, ears pulled back with concern.

  When the pair stopped and stood facing one another, Julia opened her mouth to speak but Merrick cut her off, waving a finger under her nose. "Do you even know how dangerous it is for you to do something like that? O'Brien has two ex-convicts working for him. And the rest of his crew are not much better, just smarter. They haven't been caught doing something illegal yet. Those men would cut you up and eat you for breakfast without a second thought."

  "And yet, here I am in one piece." Julia held her arms out proclaiming her status as a living person who was not, in fact, anyone's breakfast.

  "Only by God's good grace. What on earth did you expect to accomplish by going out there? Besides taking a chance on getting yourself killed. Or worse."

  Julia started to speak but Merrick held one finger up and didn't let her interrupt. "Someone means you harm. For chrissake, do I have to remind you about the rabbit staked on your front door?"

  He was concerned about her, Julia could see that on his face. It was lined with real worry, not just anger at a woman who was trying to do his job for him. But now he had angered her. She had been frightened by the men at the ranch, and it was only because Cobbs had been with her that she had left the property unscathed, though she was loathe to admit this to herself. She was also disappointed that the trip offered her very little, if any, new information. She wasn't any closer to figuring out who had beaten up Hunter than she'd been the day before. Admitting this to Merrick when he had pushed her so far into a corner was all but impossible for her, despite his genuine concern.

  Forgetting what she had promised Cobbs, Julia said, "I'd do it again in a heartbeat," she flung the words at him, "especially since you're not doing anything about figuring out who beat Hunter up."

  Her words stung Merrick. She saw that immediately. If she had been any less angry she would have felt guilty about it.

  Merrick was still and silent, watching her, taking deep breaths. The pause lengthened and Julia was about to say something else when he finally spoke, his voice quiet. "Are you safe? Did any harm come to you out there?"

  The abrupt change of direction threw Julia. "I'm fine," she said. "There was a nice fellow there named Cobbs. He made sure I was safe."

  Merrick nodded once. "Cobbs is a good man." He thought for a moment. “All right then." He turned and walked away.

  Julia watched him go and for a second, though she didn't know why, she had to fight back tears.

  Stanley's jaw was crunching on something when she found him and Walt in his stall. Walt had removed the horse's tack and was brushing him in long, firm strokes with a dandy brush. Julia leaned against the stall door and watched them for a moment.

  The big Irishman finally spoke. "He's concerned about you, you know."

  "I know."

  "You can be a bit reckless, there, Miss Schoolteacher. What would your Ma think of ya?"

  "She wouldn't be surprised at all." Julia sighed.

  "Always a troublemaker were ya?"

  "According to her, yes."

  "What about yer da?" Walt ran his brush along Stanley's back. The horse's skin quivered slightly.

  "He never really involved himself in disciplining me. We were more intellectual partners. He left the raising to Mother."

  "I'm not sure what much o' that means, since I'm just a stupid Mick, but I do know this. There's no sense torturing Constable Jack Merrick. He's a good man trying to do a tough job."

  "I know."

  "Do ya?" Walt came around Stanley's rump and set the brush he'd been using on the top of the half-door. He took a pick out of his back pocket and, bending over beside the horse, lifted up one of his back legs and began cleaning out his hooves. "'Cause you're acting like you don't care about him or anyone else."

  Julia was chastened and her eyes threatened to fill up with tears again. How was it that twice in one evening, two different concerned men felt the need to tell her off? Walt was such a quiet man; he kept his own counsel to an almost painful degree. So for him to be speaking to Julia this way meant he really had strong feelings about the subject. She turned to walk away. "I'll go apologize to him."

  Walt stood up. "Leave him for now. Let him cool off. He's almost as stubborn as you are, so you need to give him a few hours to come down off his anger. He won't hear you otherwise."

  Julia nodded, accepting the advice.

  "So," Walt continued, "after all that fuss, did you find out anything more about Hunter or who beat him?"

  "Not really, no. I get the sense that Cecil is hiding something, but it could just be that he's naturally cagey."

  "Aye. Those men usually have something to hide. It just might not be the thing you think it is."

  "Does O'Brien make a habit of hiring criminals?" Julia's eyes widened with the memory. "Some of those fellows looked like they were born without souls."

  "O'Brien is as cheap a bastard as you'll ever find. He pays his men almost nothing so the only type of drover he attracts are the ones who are desperate and can't get work anywhere else. No self-respecting rancher will hire them."

  "What's Cobbs' story? He seemed like a good apple among the bad."

  Walt finished with Stanley's hooves and came and stood just inside the stall door, his back leaning against one wall of the stall. "Now he's a good guy. But that's just O'Brien's blind luck. Cobbs is Mrs. O'Brien's brother. He's been working on that ranch since day one. He doesn't agree with his brother-in-law's hiring practices, but there's nothing he can do about it. Thanks be to God that the O'Brien's never had any girls."

  "Just boys?"

  "No, sadly, no wee ones a'tall. They weren't blessed with children, but maybe that's for the best. I can't see those men of O'Brien's being a good influence on boys either."

  "Mrs. O'Brien must be quite lonely out there."

  Walt shrugged. The providence of women were a mystery to him.

  He gathered up the brush and comb and opened the stall door. Julia backed away, giving him room. Together they walked toward the tack room at the back of the building. Earl poked his head out of his stall and Walt gave it a rub as he walked by.

  Speaking the word 'lonely' had sparked something in Julia. She would have been embarrassed if she'd known how revealing her next question was. "How long ago did Merrick's wife pass away?"

  "Oh, about a year-and-a-half now." Walt placed the brush and pick in a box on the tack room's work bench.

  "Her name was Charlotte?"

  "Aye. She was a good woman. Quiet. Kind. Refined." Walt leaned against the bench, remembering. "I'm not sure what she was doing with Merrick. She were half his size. And very delicate. She loved pretty things. What she saw in a great galumphing oaf like him, I'll never know." He chuckled softly.

  Julia could see that Walt had cared for Charlotte. "How long did you know her?"

  "Not long. She got sick a few months after I arrived. She got a cold and then
that seemed to get better. But then it came back, worse the second time. Then it went away again. And then just a few weeks later she got the influenza. I think she was weakened by the two previous illnesses and she just didn't have the strength to fight off the next one." Walt crossed his arms across his chest. "Merrick stayed with her day and night, nursing her. Doc Parker was there every day, a course. But sometimes, these things..." he shrugged gently.

  Julia wasn't sure what to say. She wasn't really sure what had caused her to broach this subject. The livery was quiet, just the occasional snort or fart from one of the horses breaking the silence.

  "Well," she finally said, "I suppose I'll go home and feed myself."

  "Good idea," Walt said. "I'm off to Finnegan's for a pint."

  Together they walked to the front of the building. Julia said her goodbyes and walked away, out onto Main Street and left toward her little house. Walt watched her go. He was quiet for another minute, and then said to himself, "Charlotte was a lovely lass but she never got a rise out of him as you do. That's for sure."

  Twenty-five

  "What if Alan Cecil didn't do it?"

  "Julia, are you back to that again? Good grief. You're a dog with a bone." Christopher Mitchell closed the Jones' gate behind him with a click and positioned himself between his wife and Julia for the walk home.

  The Mitchells and Julia had been invited to Mayor Billy's house for supper on this Wednesday evening. An invitation from the Joneses was, according to the hosts, the most coveted in town. Their regular guests might see things differently.

  For one thing, Millie Jones was, without question, the worst cook west of the Rocky Mountains. What she couldn't burn, she turned to mush. Her deserts were flavorless, but made up for that by having the consistency of sand. And the jams and jellies that she sent everyone home with were reputed to be used by local furniture makers as glue. The only thing that saved these evenings for everyone was that Mayor Jones poured his whisky liberally and often. Evenings at the Joneses’ were the only time Betty Mitchell ever took a drink.

  The Joneses lived in what was undoubtedly Horse's finest house. In addition to being the town's mayor, Billy Jones was the manager at the local bank. The bank had built him a two-story house on a sloped street a few blocks above town center. From its vantage point the Joneses could survey the entire town right down to the lake. Julia imagined that Millie appreciated this very much, as it was easier than just surveying the town down her nose.

  The guests gathered in the parlor while Millie fussed with the last of the preparations for dinner. She had hired a cook three weeks previously, but he quit in a temper three nights before. "He couldn't take direction," Millie explained to everyone as she bustled off to the kitchen.

  "More likely he couldn't stand constant interference and criticism," Christopher whispered to Julia and Betty under his breath. Julia hid her laugh behind her cordial glass. The tension between Betty and her husband seemed to have eased up a bit in the last couple of days, for which Julia was very grateful.

  The Finnegans were there, Edgar already looking at his pocket watch, loathe to be away from the hotel and restaurant. Caroline, on the other hand, looked like she might move in. She was settled comfortably into one of Billy's wingback chairs and cooed appreciatively when he put a stool under her feet. This was the first time Julia had ever seen Caroline sitting down.

  Roy Meddy and his wife, Esther, were there as well. When Julia and the Mitchells arrived, the Meddys were standing near the parlor’s fireplace, chatting to an extremely tall and wiry man with a shock of red hair that rose off his head like an ocean wave. Meddy glanced toward the door to the room when Julia entered and then looked away again. But he did a double take when his brain processed who he was seeing. Julia gave him a little wave and noticed Mrs. Meddy watching this exchange with hooded eyes.

  Music played in the hallway just outside the parlor door from a brand new disc cylinder box that Billy was very proud of. He was walking Edgar through its specifications and cutting edge technology; showing him the shiny silver-colored discs that somehow made the music. The parlor was a little too warm; Millie always overdid everything. Her meals were overcooked, her clothes were overly ostentatious and overly tight, her voice always seemed to be raised. So in the name of comfort she had laid a fire in the stove in the corner of the room, even though the night didn't really call for it.

  This was Julia's first invitation to the Joneses, something Betty had warned her was coming. The parlor was impressive, with a glass chandelier hanging from the center of the ceiling, burning short, narrow candles. The receptacles that held the candles were light green and shaped like delicate flower petals.

  “That’s Venetian glass,” Millie pointed out when she showed Julia around. “From Venice, Italy.”

  The wallpaper was flecked with something that sparkled in the light and all the furniture had matching flowered upholstery that, even to Julia's undomesticated eye, looked like it must have cost the earth. She had to suppress a child-like urge to wipe something sticky on it.

  Conversation flowed and the guests were just beginning to relax when Millie burst into the room, red and sweaty of face.

  "Dinner is served, everyone. If you will please follow me."

  If Julia thought the parlor was fancy, the dining room put it to shame. The room was almost as wide as the house, and had a table that stretched from end to end, that could easily seat twenty. Millie had pulled out all her best china and silverware. As Julia sat down she noticed each silver piece had a crest with a stylized J for Jones. The last time she had seen such custom-made flatware was at her mother's home. Though Mrs. Thom used her set only at Christmas and Easter.

  Julia was distracted all evening and it hadn't even registered with her until halfway through the meal that the gentleman with the buoyant red hair, who was now seated to her right, had been invited specifically as a potential match for her. His name was Theodore Cranna and he 'hailed' (as he put it) from a town on the Atlantic coast of Scotland that Julia immediately forgot the name of, so busy was she thinking about Hunter and her mystery. In addition to his thick red hair, Cranna had a red beard and a complexion that blushed easily and often.

  He passed a china tureen to Julia which she guessed contained mashed potatoes, but couldn't be completely positive based on their appearance and smell.

  "How do you enjoy being the local schoolteacher, Miss Thom?" Cranna asked.

  "I love it," she said, scooping a sticky mass of black-flecked starch onto her plate. "Every day is different. The children are curious and engaged with their learning. And they teach me so much."

  "Really?" Cranna asked, cutting a small piece of the grey meat on his plate. "What do you learn from them?" He sounded genuinely interested, so Julia answered him honestly.

  "They don't make the same kind of assumptions we do," she said after a moment's thought. "They leave their minds open and very often are willing to engage a wider range of possibilities for an answer to a problem."

  "I'm not sure I would give children that much credit."

  "They might surprise you, Mr. Cranna."

  Millie Jones happened to catch the tail end of this conversation and used it as a means to tell the latest story about her ‘genius’ grandson who was destined to be both a famous scientist and one of the future prime ministers of their new country.

  Julia listened with half an ear. Most of her attention was on replaying the afternoon she'd had at O'Brien's ranch and her exchange with Alan Cecil. Was it a flash of recognition in Cecil's eyes she had seen when she showed him the glove? Or was it something else?

  She felt Betty poke her in the ribs.

  "What?" she turned to her friend.

  "Mrs. Jones was just asking you a question."

  Julia turned to her host. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Jones. I didn't hear you."

  "I was just asking," Millie sniffed, registering displeasure at not being the very center of everyone's attention, "if you will take the same liberal a
pproach with your own children as you do with the ones in the school?"

  Julia was slightly taken aback by the question. Because she hadn't been paying attention she wasn't sure of its context. And also, it seemed impertinent. Certainly not dinner table conversation with mixed company. Millie Jones set Julia's teeth on edge at the best of times, and this was definitely not the best of times. She lobbed the question back at her host. "What children of my own?"

  Millie tried smiling but it looked more like a sneer. "Your future children, of course, Miss Thom. I'm aware you're not a mother now." She tittered at Cranna who was very obviously the beneficiary of this topic of conversation.

  Julia was rapidly discovering that in a small town, other people's business was a primary source of occupation and entertainment. This did not sit well with her and yet she hadn't figured out yet how to draw a boundary around what she was unwilling to offer for public consumption without being rude. She also knew, though, that Millie didn't take hints. You had to bang her over the head with a point if you wanted her to get it.

  "I'm not sure there are children in my future, Mrs. Jones. Other than the ones I teach."

  Millie tapped the corners of her mouth with her napkin. "Don't be hard on yourself, Miss Thom," she said. "You'll find a husband one day. Your penchant for riding astride a horse won't offend every man. I'm sure there are some men who might find that kind of..." she searched for a word, "unorthodox and inappropriate behavior charming in some way. Wouldn't you say, Mr. Cranna?"

  Cranna was obviously stunned to be drawn into this sudden sparring match. He spluttered a bit, swiveling his head back and forth, caught between his hostess on his right and his intended match on his left.

  Julia rescued him, "Luckily, men of that sort - the kind who welcome independent thinking and other nonsense - are few and far between, Mrs. Jones. I needn't worry because what I meant was that I'm not sure I want to have children. If I married and had children I'd have to stop teaching, and that doesn't appeal to me."