Olivia grabbed his sleeve. “You ready to come back inside? We’ll finish our discussion later after the guests leave. Go on a stroll beneath the full moon.” She practically purred.
He touched his finger to his thumb, where a trace of stickiness from the brown bottle lingered.
If he stayed, the liquid serpent would engulf him. “I’m sorry.”
CHAPTER 2
March 1866
Near Weatherford, Parker County, TX
Cora Scott snatched the jug from the dark corner of the near-empty smokehouse and threw it out the door as hard as she could. It cracked against the water trough and rolled across the gravel. Not good enough. Fists at her sides, she stomped over, yanked it up, and smashed it against the metal trough. Pottery shards flew.
Four months, and she was still finding traces of the habit which had taken her father’s life. Taken him from her long before he drew his last breath.
Her father had started drinking with a vengeance seven years ago when her younger sister, Amy, died of diphtheria. Grief and drink had hollowed out the man she once knew. Then, when her brother Mitchell died raiding the Yankees near Vicksburg in the summer of 1863, her father had crawled farther into the jug and never came out. If only her mother could have outlasted him, the relief and freedom would have probably added twenty yearsonto her life. If and when Cora married, it would be to a man who was nothing like her father.
Cora stared at the empty prairie that stretched toward the canyons. Grasses that should be filled with cattle. Her mother had loved this land. So had her father once, and her brothers too. She would not abandon it.
A red-tailed hawk circled in the distance.
A tug on her sleeve. She turned.
Not quite as tall as her shoulder, Charlie stared up at her, his light-copper skin belying the fact that her father’s gray eyes stared out from his face. “I saddled Sandy.”
“Thank you.” She handed the boy the small sack of chittlins she’d retrieved from the smokehouse. “You can add these to the pot of beans cooking over the hearth. I’ll be back before sunset.”
“I should come too.” He puffed out his chest.
“Not today. You finish making furrows in the garden so we can get the planting started.” She ruffled his smooth, dark hair.
“I want to go with you.” He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his patched trousers and trudged along beside her as she headed for the well-chinked log stable. “It’s too far for you to go on your own.”
She quirked her mouth to the side and smiled down at him. Already acting like the little man. “I’ll tell you what. You run grab Pa’s rifle. I’ll take it with me, and I promise to be home before dark, but going to see Mr. Coffin is something I’ve got to do on my own.”
Charlie spit on the brown dirt at their feet. “That’s what I think of him.”
“Me too.” Her smile faded. She could don her best dress, smile, and bat her eyes at the man. She’d rather go hungry than stoop to flirting with vermin. But it wasn’t hungry they were talking about. It was losing their land. “You’d best fetch the riflewhile I fill my canteen from the well. I want to be home in plenty of time to finish fixing supper.”
He hurried to the porch while she filled her canteen and turned to her sorrel Quarter Horse, Sandy, tied to the corral gate. The mare had been a gift from Jeb. Was he still among the land of the living? It’d been almost a year since the war had ended. Surely, he’d be home by now if he’d made it through. Home? She scoffed. This had stopped being his home a year before the war. Jeb had no idea Pa was dead. Didn’t even know about Charlie.
She loosed the lead rope from the weathered pole. Sandy nickered, and Cora rubbed the mare’s neck, her fingers trailing through the blond mane.
If Jeb were here, he’d find a way to keep Mr. Coffin’s grubby fingers off their home. Pa probably wasn’t sober when he’d put the deed up as surety for his gambling debt, a debt he’d never spoken a word about. She had no idea of it until Mr. Coffin rode out here in his fancy suit and fringed buggy to deliver the news shortly after she and Charlie moved back from town.
Charlie stepped alongside her as she stuck her left foot into the stirrup and heaved herself into the side saddle.
“Here you go.” Charlie handed the Enfield rifle up to her. “Is it for the Comanche or Mr. Coffin?”
“I hope it’s not for anybody.” Seven miles to town, and she wouldn’t draw an easy breath until she made it to the outskirts of Weatherford. But she’d not let fear hold her hostage, not after being in town for almost four years, listening to her father say, “Someday we’ll move back to the ranch, someday we’ll fix the place up, someday this and that...” Well, someday had come a month after he passed.
Ben smoothed his hand over his sweat-dampened hair and donned his felt slouch hat, with its dented crown. Weatherford at last. Five days by railway from Philadelphia to Cairo, Illinois, and then another five on a steamboat down the Mississippi to New Orleans, followed by a steamer across the Gulf to Galveston, train to Houston, and a stage beyond Dallas to Weatherford. It felt as if he ought to be all the way to California by now, instead of the Texas frontier.
“Good day, Mr. McKenzie. See you around town.” Dressed in plaid, the drummer who’d spilled one story after another for the last two days scurried out of the stage with his case of tonics for sale. “Stop by the saloon, and I’ll buy you a drink.”
Last place Ben needed to go. “Good day, to you, sir.” Ben edged down the step and braced himself against the stagecoach door. His stomach twisted worse than a shirt having every last drop wrung out of it by a skilled washerwoman. Twenty-one days and twelve hours without his medicine. If he had any sense, he would have holed up in a hotel in Cairo or New Orleans until the worst had passed. But he had a promise to keep.
The stagecoach driver with his rumpled hat and rawhide vest dumped a trunk at Ben’s feet. Flakes of dried mud crumbled beneath the weight. “Where’d you like this carried, Mr. McKenzie? You see that two-story fancy building down the street there with its columns and wrap-around porch? That’s the Carson and Lewis House, finest hotel in Weatherford.” He chewed on a cigar stub. “But if you’re looking for something a little less pricey, there’s Mammie Sykes’s place at the end of town. Mighty good cookin’, and she rents rooms besides.”
