Mail Order Cowboy (Love Inspired Historical) (7 page)

Milly sighed. “I…I suppose you're right, as always, Josh. Thank you.”

“Anytime,” the old man said. “Is that beans and corn bread cookin' on the stove, Miss Sarah? It's 'bout time fer dinner, ain't it?”

“Yes, and the beans are flavored with the last of the ham,” Sarah said. “Milly, would you please go ring the bell to call Bobby in? I think he was out there cleaning out the chicken coop.”

A
fter the noon meal, Nick and Bobby went out to repair the fence line where the Matthews ranch bordered with Waters's land. Milly busied herself with finishing the wash, while Sarah took down the clothes that had dried, then hung up the newly washed shirts, dresses and sheets as Milly finished scrubbing them.

As they worked, Sarah chattered happily. “I think I'll make pecan pies for the barn raising, Milly. We still have enough pecans from last year. You know how my pecan pies always go quickly at church suppers. Even Mrs. Detwiler praised them at the last one. It's a good thing Mama planted those pecans she brought with her from East Texas when she and Papa moved here, isn't it?” She gestured up at the trees that shaded them now, with their boughs full of ripening pecans.

“Yes,” agreed Milly. “We better hope there's a good crop of them this fall because it may be one of the few things we have to eat. I can't imagine how we're going to keep the men fed without slaughtering the remaining cattle and hens—and then how will we build up the herd
and the flock again? We can't serve the men beans and corn bread every single noon and night.”

Sarah's expression remained serene. “‘Take no thought of what ye shall eat, and what ye shall drink, for your Heavenly Father knows you have need of these things'—isn't that what the Bible says?”

“Yes, but—”

“We have a vegetable garden.” Sarah pointed in the direction of the rectangular patch in the back of the house. “It wasn't too badly trampled during the attack, and I've planted some more peas and beans. Bobby and Nick can help bring in meat. Remember how Papa would hunt deer every now and then, and rabbits and doves? I'm sure Bobby would just love an excuse to go tramping around in the hills and fields instead of doing ranch chores, and I reckon your Nick is a crack shot, too, from being in the army.”

“He's not ‘my' Nick,” Milly said automatically, but her sister just laughed. “I think
he
thinks he is,” Sarah countered. “I just happened to be looking out of the kitchen window when he brought you those flowers. You had your back to me, but I could see his expression. His heart was in his eyes, sister dear.”

Milly let the chemise she'd been washing sink back into the bucket of rinse water. “Sarah, he and I've been acquainted for what, three days? He couldn't possibly know his heart
or
mind in that amount of time. Just look at me,” she said, with a despairing gesture at her damp, worn dress and the loose tendrils of hair that had come undone from the knot of hair at the nape of her neck, which were now plastered to her forehead. “This
is how I looked when he walked over and presented me with those flowers! Not exactly the belle of the ball, am I?”

Sarah just smiled. “It didn't seem to matter to him, from what I saw.”

Milly sighed. “When I pictured a suitor courting me after I placed that ad for the Society, I pictured it so differently! I imagined parties where the applicants got to know all the ladies of the Society…. I'd planned to wear my best dresses and Mama's pearl earbobs, and have my hair done up just so…. I thought you'd be doing those things, too. And then, when an applicant and I decided we might suit one another, we would go on walks, and horseback rides, and picnics, and sitting in church together, and we'd sit on the porch and talk…”

“And then the Comanches attacked,” Sarah said, her eyes warm with sympathy. “But you can still do those things, Milly. And you have Nick right here, where you can get to know him day to day, which will actually give you a lot more time with him than any of the other ladies will probably be able to have with their suitors.”

Milly realized she hadn't considered that, but she wasn't ready to let go of her worry entirely yet. “But they get to prepare for their beau,” Milly pointed out. “Nick came back sooner than I thought he would and saw me like
this,
” she said, pointing at her face and her dress, “with my hair plastered to my forehead, with soapy water splashes on my oldest calico! I'm sure the lovely English girls he's known had milk-and-roses complexions and they surely weren't doing laundry.”

“Then why didn't he marry one of them and stay in England or India?” Sarah countered calmly. “You've
already forgotten he picked you out of the whole group, Milly.”

“Yes, but I had one of my better dresses on then, and my hair wasn't falling down around my ears,” Milly retorted, pushing another loose curl from her face with a wet hand.

“But that's the way he saw you first, and first impressions last. Enough of this fretting, Milly,” Sarah said. “Nick will be gone 'til supper. As soon as we finish this laundry, we'll fill the tub and you'll have a nice bath. We'll wash your hair, put it up in papers, and you can put on a nice dress and use some of Mama's rosewater before he comes home. And tomorrow, why don't you take him into town with you—”

“What for? I already sent him for sugar.”

“So you can spend time alone together,” Sarah said, rolling her eyes in exasperation. “Come on, aren't you the brilliant woman who invented the Simpson Creek Society for the Promotion of Marriage? You said something about needing cloth to make Josh and Bobby new shirts, didn't you? And don't you need to check the Society's mailbox? There might be gentlemen wanting to meet the rest of us, you know.”

Sarah's last sentence had been uttered as cheerfully as the rest, but it made Milly realized how self-absorbed she was being. She had started the Society for the betterment of
all
the single ladies, not just herself. Sarah deserved to find a beau just as she had.

“Why are you always so sensible?” Milly said, giving her sister a hug. “I'm sorry I'm such a complainer. And I will go into town tomorrow, with or without Nick. I'll bet that mailbox is chock-full of inquiries from bachelors.”

 

Later, Milly hummed as she set the table for supper. She'd liked what she'd seen when she looked at herself in the cheval glass in the bedroom. The lavender-checked gingham dress showed off her slender waist and complemented her dark hair, which now curled softly around her shoulders. Better yet, the look of anxious fretfulness no longer clouded her eyes.

She
was
the founder and leader of the Simpson Creek Society for the Promotion of Marriage, and Nicholas Brookfield had picked her out from among all the other women. Now if only they were having something more exotic to eat than beans and corn bread for supper!

She heard the sound of horses trotting into the yard but forced herself to keep doing what she had been doing rather than allowing herself to run to the window. A
lady
did not allow herself to appear overeager, she reminded herself, and pretended to be busy rearranging the black-eyed Susans in their improvised vase.

She heard boot heels clomping on the porch. Nick. Would he notice she no longer looked the bedraggled laundress?

“I say, is it too late to provide something for supper?” Nick called through the window.

Milly went to the door and opened it. He was standing there, holding up a glistening stringer of ten bluegills and a sun perch or two. He grinned, clearly very pleased with himself.

“Where on earth did you find those?”

“Bobby and I had a spot of luck at the creek,” he said. “We finished fixing the fence without much ado, and Bobby had stashed a couple of fishing poles and line and
a trowel in that little cave. He's been taking the coffee grounds and dumping them on a patch of dirt under a big tree by the creek. He says it attracts earthworms, and sure enough, we found plenty with a little digging.”

“You should see what a great fisherman Mr. Nick is. He caught twice as many as I did!” Bobby said, his look at Nick full of admiration.

“Oh, I don't know about that,” Nick said modestly. “But it was great fun. Reminded of me of holidays in the Lake District, when I tagged along with my brothers when they'd go fishing. I'm sure I was a terrific nuisance, but Richard, my second eldest brother, always talked Edward, the eldest, into letting me come. There we were, just men, and our sister Violet couldn't make me come to her doll tea parties.” His blue eyes sparkled.

“We could delay dinner a little to include their catch, couldn't we, Sarah?” Milly asked.

“Sure enough,” Sarah agreed. “Assuming you gentlemen wouldn't mind cleaning them, of course.” She went to a drawer and pulled out a pair of knives.

“Aw, Miss Sarah, I hate cleaning fish,” groaned Bobby. “All those scales and guts and fish heads…”

But Nick accepted the knives and clapped Bobby on the shoulder. “Come on, lad, it's a necessary part of being a fisherman.
Ladies
should not have to deal with nasty things like fish heads, nor should they smell of fish. We'll clean them up in a trice, then go wash up while the fish are frying.” He hesitated while Bobby trudged outside and Sarah returned to stirring a pot on the stove, then turned back to Milly. “If I may say so, Miss Milly, you look lovely,” he said simply.

“Yes…you may say so,” she said, feeling a flush of pleasure. He had noticed. “Thank you.”

 

The fish, which Sarah had rolled in a batter of egg, corn bread and her own secret blend of spices before frying them, were devoured down to the delicate spine and rib bones.

“That was delicious. Thanks for catching them, gentlemen,” Milly praised, giving Bobby an especially approving smile because it had been his idea.

Bobby beamed. “You're welcome, Miss Milly. And tomorrow night we're havin' venison,” he proclaimed. “Me an' Mr. Nick are gonna go up in them hills and get that ol' buck I missed last fall when me an' Uncle Josh last went huntin'.” He seemed to have no doubt that Nick's presence would guarantee success.

“You are? Uh…it would be wonderful to have some venison hanging in the smokehouse,” Milly said, keeping her tone even. She didn't want to betray her disappointment that Nick would be out hunting when she had hoped to be going into town with him. It was much more important to let him provide meat that could feed the household many times than to have Nick's company for a jaunt into town she could easily do by herself, or postpone. “Well, good luck, then.”

“That ol' buck is a wily one,” Josh warned. “He didn't get that eight-point rack makin' foolish mistakes. You ever been huntin', Mr. Nick?”

Nick nodded. “Indeed, I have—red deer in the Scottish highlands—they're bigger than your American deer—and tigers in Bengal.”

“Tigers?”
Bobby crowed enthusiastically. “Boy howdy, Mr. Nick! Did you kill 'em?”

“One of them,” Nick said. “The rajah's son got the other. A pair of them had been plaguing a village, eating their livestock, as well as one unlucky old man whom they caught out after dark on a path that led from one village to another.”

“Oh dear,” Milly murmured with a shudder as she imagined it. “Man-eating tigers?”

“And you weren't even afeared?” Bobby asked, his eyes glowing with hero worship. “I reckon you're 'bout the bravest man I ever did know, Mr. Nick!”

Nick looked embarrassed. “Of course I was afraid. My heart was pounding like a trip-hammer. But we couldn't let them go on killing people, could we? The honor of the Empire was at stake.” He winked at Milly.

“I heard tell of a cougar like that 'round here,” Josh put in. “Once they get the taste fer human flesh, they don't want to go back to jackrabbits and such…”

“Oh, please! I'll have nightmares!” Sarah murmured faintly.

“Don't you worry, Miss Sarah, that ol' cougar's long gone,” Josh assured her. “And that buck sure ain't no man-eater.”

“Nick, we could go tonight and camp out and everything—that would be the best way,” Bobby told him eagerly. “Then we'd be right out there at dawn, ready to shoot.”

“And leave these ladies unguarded at night? I don't think that would be a good idea, lad. We can leave just before first light, but not until.”

Bobby's face fell. “Aw, there's not gonna be no Comanche attackin' durin' the new moon,” he protested.

“B'sides, I'm here,” Josh added. “I ain't sleepin' very well these nights anyways—I might as well sit up with a rifle.”

Milly saw Nick hesitate, clearly loath to dismiss the old cowboy's ability to protect the sisters as he always had.

“But how quickly could you raise that rifle and shoot with your injured shoulders, Josh? For example…
right now!
” Lightning-fast, Nick drew an imaginary pistol and leveled it at Josh, and everyone watched as Josh pantomimed raising a rifle, wincing with obvious pain as he did so.

“I…I see what you mean,” Josh admitted, his shoulders sagging. “I reckon I ain't quite up to it yet.”

“Yes, it's temporary,” Nick confirmed. “You'll be back to fighting trim before very long. But that brings up a good point, Miss Milly, Miss Sarah. You need more hands around here.”

Milly's gaze flew from Josh to Nick. “More hands? Are you leaving after all, then?”

He shook his head. “No, not as long as you need me,” he said. “But I think it would be wise to have someone on watch during the night, to keep an eye on the livestock, to make sure the Indians aren't creeping up on the house.”

“But…but how would we pay them, even if we could feed them?” Milly asked. “Assuming there were any men available, which there aren't, Nick. Cowboys are usually unmarried men, and we started the Society
because there
aren't
any of those around Simpson Creek.”

Nick rubbed his chin. “I—we—didn't want it to be the first thing we told you, but when we went to repair the fence, we found the carcass of another cow.”

Alarm lit both Milly's and Sarah's faces. “Could it have been an animal? We were speaking of cougars,” Sarah said, with a visible effort to be calm.