Horse With No Name (19 page)

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 approach 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.