All he needed was a simple room. Provided the proprietor could keep her nose to herself. “If you could have one of your boys take the trunk to Mammie Sykes’s, I’d be much obliged.” Ben straightened and dusted off his blue linen sack coat.
The driver waved to a boy at a shoeshine stand in front of Miller’s Dry Goods. The boy sped his cloth into action polishing his elderly customer’s boot at bullet speed and then hurried over.
A mule-drawn wagon rumbled past them. A fellow on horseback and wearing a wide-brimmed hat and chaps followed.
After listening to the driver, the blond, freckled boy, all of ten or eleven years, lifted one end of the trunk and slid it onto his back. “I’ll show you the way, sir.”
“Much obliged.” Ben squinted in the sunlight. He’d worked on tuning out the incessant throb across his temples, but the piercing pain behind his eyeballs was another matter. The sooner he got himself a cool pitcher of water and a decent bed, the better off he’d be. His money belt pressed against his waist. “Could you tell me where the bank is?” He picked up his pace alongside the young man.
“Don’t got one.”
A couple of thousand people in the county and no bank? There’d be no easy solution for what to do with his money.
Livestock mooed from a corral down the street past the livery stable. A harness and blacksmith shop stood across the way. A weathered building with the wordHidespainted on a shingle stretched along the corner. The odor wafted on the breeze.
But the boy turned at the intersection past a clothiers, and…
Ben halted. A druggist. The slender green building called to him. He needed a herbal remedy for his headache, didn’t he? But that wasn’t all he needed. His hand trembled in anticipation. Would it really be the end of the world if he bought a small bottle of laudanum? What if he only took half a dose? Just enough toslack off the worst of the pain and the severe cramps. A half dose every other day, and then he’d work down to a quarter every third day until the tincture was gone. One last bottle. It’d been insane to quit so abruptly. Who knew if his stomach could even function without it?
“Need something, sir?” The boy gazed up at him.
Yes. No. Ben curled his fingers inward and dug his nails into his palms. “I’m wondering if you have heard of the Scott family. Mr. and Mrs. Harold Scott. I believe they have a ranch?—”
“Dead.” The boy lowered the trunk to the ground.
The word reverberated through Ben. “Dead? Both the man and wife?” He gripped a hitching post. Had he come too late?
“Yup. But I just saw Miss Scott a little bit ago.”
“Miss Cora Scott? Where?”
“Down by the land office, and she was fit to be tied.” He wrinkled his nose and pointed at the other end of the main street.
Ben dug in his pocket for a dime. “Take my trunk on to Mammie Sykes’s, and I’ll give you a nickel more next time I see you.”
“Yes, sir.” The boy tipped his cap and hunched over to tug the weight onto his back once more.
Ben’s chest tightened as he strode past a log cabin with a doctor’s shingle and a clapboard attorney-at-law’s office. When had Jeb’s mother died? Would Ben’s coming here last fall have made a difference? According to Jeb, the father had been a difficult man. Jeb’s lack of confidence in the man’s ability to take care of his family was the reason he’d made Ben promise to look after them.
He reached the town square. A two-story brick courthouse loomed solid amongst the scattering log and frame structures. Two ladies—one dressed in drab brown and the other in mourning purple and black—strode by him with polite nods.They’d probably flee to the other side of the street if they heard his Pennsylvania accent.
He halted at the whitewashed building with the large black letters that spelled outLand Locator. Adjusting his hat, he exhaled and ascended the steps.
A middle-aged couple sat by the window, their clothing and faces careworn. The man’s dusty boots beat a steady rhythm against the oak plank floor. The lady fumbled with a small drawstring sack on her lap. A make-shift reticule?
Behind a desk, a young man wearing spectacles and a tweed sack coat looked up from his paperwork. “Can I help you, sir?”
“He can get in line after us.” The middle-aged man shifted a chaw in his cheek.
A female voice echoed down the hallway. “—offering you half of my land. That’s more than fair.”
A male voice replied, the words indiscernible.
“Sir?” The desk clerk peered at Ben over his spectacles.
Ben chewed his lip. “Would that happen to be Miss Scott?”
“I’m afraid so.” The clerk quirked his mouth to the side.
