Lynna Banning Read online

  “This here’s the front parlor. Set a spell while I rustle up some coffee.”

  Jessamyn opened her mouth to offer help, but the elderly woman bustled out of the room. “Won’t be a minute,” she called from somewhere down the hallway.

  A green velvet sofa beckoned under the lace-curtained front window. Jessamyn settled herself on the cushions and let her gaze wander over the room. A pair of wing-back chairs upholstered in a swirly forest green velvet flanked the sofa. A hand-knit, teal blue shawl had been tossed over the back of one. A Brussels carpet covered all but the outer edges of the polished hardwood floor.

  Stretching her feet toward a low tapestry-covered ottoman in front of the sofa, Jessamyn breathed in the faint scent of lemon oil and baking bread. What a comfortable house, so quiet and blessedly cool after the pounding summer sun outside. She noticed the window shades had been drawn, evidently to keep out the midday heat.

  This wondrous haven of peace actually belonged to her? She could hardly believe it. In all her life she’d never lived in anything other than the house where her mother took in lodgers or—after Mama died—a rented room in Mrs. Dennan’s boardinghouse. And now…

  She squeezed her eyes tight shut, then popped her lids open. No, it wasn’t a dream. All this belonged to her? Not the furnishings, of course—those would be Mrs. Boult’s— but the walls, the roof, the silence! Just think! Here, in Papa’s house—her house—she would never again worry about paying for lodging. Jessamyn snuggled herself deeper into the sofa cushion. Boston it was certainly not, but they’d have to pry her loose with a crowbar to get her to leave now.

  “Here we are, my dear.” Mrs. Boult swept into the room and set an enamelware tray of coffee, fresh sliced bread and thick purple jam on the square oak side table. Jessamyn’s stomach rumbled. She’d skipped breakfast at the hotel, then worked right through lunch. “Oh, Mrs. Boult, that smells simply wonderful! May I?”

  She reached for a small plate, loaded it with two slices of the fragrant bread and added a generous dollop of jam. She settled the plate in her lap. Miss Bennett would not approve, she knew. But Miss Bennett had never scrubbed floors all morning.

  Mrs. Boult handed Jessamyn a steaming mug of coffee. “Call me Cora, my dear. Ever since my Frank died, I’ve not felt comfortable about the ‘Mrs.’ tacked onto my name. My full name’s Cordella, but just Cora will do fine.”

  Jessamyn took a swallow from the mug to wash down the first bite of bread and jam. “Then please, do call me Jessamyn.”

  Cora bobbed her silver-gray head in agreement. “Now, Miss Jessamyn, when were you wantin’ to move in?”

  Jessamyn choked on her coffee. “But where will you go?”

  Cora chuckled. “I got a sister over in Deer Creek been wantin’ me to keep house for her. Might do that. Then again, I might—”

  “Would you stay and keep house for me?” Jessamyn heard herself ask. “As you did for my father?”

  The older woman set her mug down on the table and folded her weathered hands in her lap. “Difference is, Miss Jessamyn, that I didn’t exactly keep house for your pa. More like I kept his house in order, but he really lived down at the news office. Don’t know how he managed, but he did. Truth is, Thad Whittaker paid off my mortgage, bless his heart, but he never took possession. Said he was content to buy the place so’s his daughter would have it someday.”

  Jessamyn’s heart gave an erratic thump.. “Did he say that? Really? He did it for…for me?”

  Cora nodded. “I figure you’ll want to move in soon as you can.”

  “Yes,” Jessamyn said quietly. “I do. I’ve never had a place of my own. But you see, Cora, I’m a working woman, a newspaper editor now.” She shot a quick look at the older woman’s face. “I won’t have time to cook and clean and put up jam and beat the rugs in the spring.”

  “True, I can cook,” Cora ventured.

  “Oh, I can see that—your bread is delicious!” Jessamyn held her breath.

  “Come summer,” the older woman continued, “I usually can tomatoes and beans from the garden out back and make my jams and jellies—that’s huckleberry you’re eatin’ right now. Then in the fall, when the apples and pears come on… Oh, I couldn’t, Miss Jessamyn. You won’t want a stranger in your house.”

  “Cora,” Jessamyn said firmly, “you’re not a stranger. You’re my first friend here in Wildwood Valley. I want you to stay. I want to make a success of Papa’s—I mean, of my newspaper.”

  Oh, heavens! The import of what she’d just said hit her square in the solar plexus. She was now the sole editor and publisher of the Wildwood Times. She alone was responsible for gathering, sifting, writing and disseminating all the Douglas County news to the Wildwood Valley readers. She would be the voice of their conscience, the voice of truth.

  She quailed at the realization. This was much more responsibility than just setting type and cranking the press lever. Those things she could do with ease. She had worked alongside her father in his Boston print shop ever since she could remember, had first learned the alphabet by running her fingers over the raised letters in the type trays.

  But this—operating the newspaper in Wildwood Valley, being the only other publisher in all of Douglas County besides the Umpqua Ensign in Scottsburg—this would take more than mechanical know-how and long hours of work. Taking on the job of editor of the Wildwood Times would require insight and courage, moral fortitude and stamina, and—

  And Cora Boult. Jessamyn rose and clasped both of the older woman’s work-worn hands in her own. “Please stay, Cora,” she whispered. “I’m all alone out here, and I’m going to need help.”

  “Oh, child,” Cora Boult said on a sigh. “I never could resist a young’un with a problem.” She freed one hand and dabbed at her eyes with a corner of her apron. “Besides…” She sniffed in a quick breath. “I don’t get along too good with my sister in Deer Creek.”

  Jessamyn laughed with relief. She could do it! With her father’s training and Cora’s help, the Wildwood Times could be the best newspaper in Douglas County.

  “All them bedrooms upstairs are empty, Miss Jessamyn. Frank and me, we always planned on havin’ a family, but…” Her voice faltered. The plump widow spun on her sensible, high-laced shoes and started for the doorway. “Why don’t we go up and pick out the one you like best? The biggest one has yellow-striped wallpaper. The one next to it has blue and white flowers, and the one down at the end of the hall…”

  Her voice faded from Jessamyn’s consciousness as she followed the older woman up the steep, narrow stairs to the second floor. Her brain whirled with ideas. She’d spend her days at the newspaper office, running down stories and doing interviews. At night she’d sit at her father’s battered oak desk and write her features and weekly editorials. And when she finished she’d come back here, to the home her father had bought for her.

  Papa would be pleased. Somehow she knew this was what he would have wanted. It was what she had longed for all her young years—sharing her life with him. It hurt that he was gone. But if it was the last thing she did, she’d make him proud of her.

  A shiver raced up her spine. Her first story, she decided, would be a feature on Sheriff Ben Kearney and his investigation of her father’s death.

  “Miss Jessamyn?” Cora’s voice rang from somewhere ahead of her. “This here’s what I call the Yellow Room.”

  The housekeeper’s muffled summons jerked her to attention. “Coming, Cora,” she called out.

  Smoothing her skirt, Jessamyn moved toward the open bedroom door at the end of the hallway, her mind already composing her first headline.

  Chapter Three

  The door of Frieder’s Mercantile swung open with a jingle. The bell mounted on the timber frame above Jessamyn’s head hiccuped a second welcome as she closed the wood portal. She paused on the threshold to gaze at the welter of supplies—yard goods, laces, curry combs and bristle brushes, boxed cigars, tobacco canisters, denim shirts and trousers, axes, shovels, eve
n a crosscut saw. The shelves of merchandise reached all the way to the ceiling. Surely they stocked kerosene?

  She inhaled a lungful of the heady air. Sacks of flour and sugar and dried beans lined the walls. A pickle barrel sat next to two wooden chairs flanking the black iron stove. Behind it she glimpsed a glass case with brightly colored penny candies displayed in oversize jars. The store smelled of coffee and sassafras and tobacco.

  A pinafore-clad child of five or six with worn, dusty shoes that looked two sizes too big stretched one hand toward the glass case. “Want a candy,” she wailed as her mother tugged her toward the door.

  “Hush, Alice. Not today. You had too many last week.” The woman nodded at Jessamyn as she swept past.

  “How do you do,” Jessamyn called. “I’m Jessamyn Whittaker, the new editor of the Wildwood Times.”

  The woman turned. A sharp-nosed, tanned face looked out from under a green checked sunbonnet. Jessamyn sent her warmest smile and waited.

  “Hello, Miss Whittaker.” The woman extended a thin, work-worn hand. “Ella Kearney’s my name. This is my daughter, Alice. Come away from that case, Alice, and say hello to the lady.”

  “’Lo,” the child whispered, still eyeing the fat glass jars in the candy display. “D’you like ginger drops?”

  “Why, yes, I suppose I do.”

  “Mr. Frieder has lots and lots of—”

  “Come along, Alice. I’ve got bread rising.”

  “Mrs. Kearney, wait! I don’t mean to pry, but is your husband Ben Kearney, the sheriff?”

  “No. Ben’s a fine man, but I’m married to his brother, Carl. We live on the Double K, the Kearney brothers’ spread, about four miles north of town. Cattle ranch. Some horses, but mostly beeves. Ben lives in town.”

  “I see.” An irrepressible bubble of curiosity rose in Jessamyn’s chest. Ben Kearney evidently preferred life as a lawman rather than a rancher. She wondered why. And, she wondered with an odd flicker of interest, was he not married? Her experience as a newspaper reporter told her to file this question away for later reference.

  Ella Kearney yanked her daughter toward the door. “Good morning to you, Miss Whittaker.”

  The bell jangled as the pair stepped out onto the board sidewalk. Alice cast a wistful backward glance at the candy case just as the door swung shut.

  A broad, smiling man appeared behind the counter, good will beaming from his shiny face. “What can I do for you, ma’am? Maybe like some ginger drops? Young Miss Alice is usually my best customer, but this afternoon her mama too busy.”

  “I’m Jessamyn Whittaker, and I need some kerosene to clean the printing press at the newspaper office.”

  “Ah! You are the Miss Whittaker who comes from the East? I am Otto Frieder. My wife, Anna-Marie, is in the back. You wait.” He disappeared, then emerged from behind a curtained doorway with a plump, dimpled woman of about thirty in tow. “Anna-Marie,” he said with obvious pride.

  The woman extended both hands past her distended abdomen and squeezed Jessamyn’s fingers. “We are so happy you come to Wildwood Valley.”

  “I—Thank you, Mrs. Frieder.”

  “We are much sorry about your father.”

  “Thank you again.”

  Anna-Marie immediately curved her palms over her belly. “Baby comes in just a few weeks,” she said with a shy smile. “Our first.”

  Jessamyn looked into the round blue eyes of the woman facing her. How happy she looked. How eager for life. In just a few years the storekeeper’s wife would have three or four young ones hanging on to her skirts, and then she would look exhausted. Worn out, like Mama.

  “About the kerosene, Mr. Frieder.”

  “Ah, yes.” Otto turned toward the back of the store where oak barrels lined one wall. “Kerosene…kerosene,” he muttered. “Cigars…cartridges…nails…no kerosene. We just run out. Shipment is again late.”

  “I will also need newsprint and ink for the paper.”

  Otto sighed. “That I must order from Chicago—will take two, maybe three weeks.”

  “Three weeks!”

  “Maybe four, even. Come by train to Omaha, then by wagon over the mountains.”

  Four weeks! Jessamyn groaned. That was a whole month! How could she publish a newspaper without ink and newsprint? If she was frugal, her father’s supply might last for one edition, but it would have to be a very short press run.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Whittaker. Your papa, he was always running out of supplies. ‘Otto,’ he would say to me. ‘I need more ink, more newsprint.’ He kept on printing his paper, though. I never could figure how he did it.”

  Anna-Marie made sympathetic clucking sounds.

  Jessamyn’s spirits plummeted. Getting out her first issue would be more of a challenge than she’d thought.

  Otto patted her hand. “I will get your supplies for you. There is else you need?”

  “What? Oh, no, thank you, Mr. Frieder.” She tried to keep her disappointment from showing in her voice. No ink. No newsprint. No kerosene. How had her father managed?

  Otto gestured to his wife. Anna-Marie made her way to the candy case, dug a tin scoop into a fat glass jar and poured the contents into a small brown paper sack. She handed it over the countertop. “No charge,” the young woman whispered.

  Jessamyn smiled her thanks at the couple. Her mind churning, she left the store, snapped opened her parasol and stepped out into the late-afternoon sun. Deep in thought, she popped a candy into her mouth.

  What would she do now? Papa had managed some way, but how? Jessamyn sucked on the gingery-tasting sweet and racked her brain. She was a Whittaker, she reminded herself. Like Papa. She wasn’t beaten yet. After all, a Whittaker never gave up.

  But how could she clean the press? With her tongue she turned the gingery-tasting sweet over and over as she thought about the problem facing her.

  First she’d need a substitute for kerosene. She rolled the candy drop around inside her mouth with the tip of her tongue. The sharp flavor surprised her, hot and sweet like spices and pepper mixed up together. It made her mouth burn. Her lips felt warm and sticky, as if she’d been sipping…

  “Spirits!” she blurted aloud. She could clean the press with alcohol!

  Where, she wondered as she marched along the board walkway, could she get alcohol?

  Across the street the plunking of a tinny piano drifted out the open front door of Charlie’s Red Fox Saloon. Jessamyn halted midstride.

  A saloon served alcohol, didn’t it?

  She set her uplifted shoe down with a resounding thump and stepped off the walk into the street. With one hand she hitched her skirt up out of the dust and with the other tilted the parasol against the slanting sunlight. Head up, shoulders squared, she headed straight for the Red Fox.

  The piano player’s spirited rendition of “The Girl I Left Behind Me” broke off the instant Jessamyn stepped past the swinging doors.

  “Goshamighty,” a hushed male voice spoke into the silence. “A lady!”

  Jessamyn lowered her parasol and gazed about the dim room. The place reeked of cigar smoke. The pungent scent of beer and strong spirits reminded her of the brewery a block from the Boston Herald office.

  She moved with care among the rough wooden tables clustered with card players and cowhands with tanned faces and sweat-stained hats. Ignoring the hostile faces turning in her direction, she advanced to the polished oak bar.

  The bartender, a pudgy, red-faced man with a soiled towel tucked in his belt, regarded her in silence for a full minute. Finally he signaled the piano player to resume and stepped toward her. He swiped the grimy cloth across the counter.

  “Don’t allow women in here, miss.”

  Jessamyn quailed at his tone. Summoning her courage, she straightened her back and spoke over the noise of the piano. “Oh, yes, you do. The sheriff told me about your fancy ladies-—that is the term? They are women, are they not?”

  The bartender coughed. “Well, ma’am,” he began in a stra
ngled voice, “women, maybe, but not—”

  Jessamyn looked him straight in the eye. “Then just think of me as a customer. Not as a woman.”

  “Kinda hard to do, seein’ as how you’re all fit out with them ladyfied duds.”

  What did he say? Oh, he meant her clothes. Good heavens, didn’t anyone out here speak understandable English? Working to keep her voice calm, she replied, “Then shall I remove them?”

  The man’s eyes popped. “No indeed, ma’am! I got enough trouble with Sheriff Kearney as it is. Now you just git along outta here. This ain’t no place—”

  “Hold up there, Charlie,” a gentle, slightly raspy voice interrupted.

  Jessamyn turned to face a stocky, muscular-looking man with limp, sun-lightened brown hair and skin tanned to the color of coffee diluted with a dollop of cream. Keen brown eyes looked steadily into hers from under the drooping brim of a shapeless brown felt hat.

  “You refusin’ service to the lady?”

  “Shore am, Jeremiah. An’ no deputy’s gonna tell me differ’nt.”

  The deputy lifted the shotgun he carried. “Well, now,” he said without raising his voice. “Law says it’s illegal to steal horses.” He clunked the gun down onto the bar top. “Also illegal to serve rotgut whiskey or—” he cast an eye about the room, glanced from the stairs to the bartender and back again “—run a sportin’ house.”

  He leaned both arms on the bar and laced his blunt fingers together. Jessamyn watched the back of one hand graze his gun stock.

  “Dammit to hell, Jeremiah. Why don’t you mind yer own business.” The bartender slapped down his rag and swore again under his breath.

  “Law is my business, Charlie. Now, I suggest you give the lady what she asked for.”

  “Oh, hell’s bells. First it’s serve that Indian-loving sheriff, then it’s serve his Johnny Reb of a deputy and now it’s serve the lady. Dammit, back in Abilene—”

  Jeremiah unlaced his fingers.

  Charlie snatched up the bar rag. “Okay, Jeremiah. Okay.” He glanced at Jessamyn. “Just tell me what you want, ma’am, and then git.”