Wild Cards and Iron Horses (15 page)

Tears began to flood his eyes, threatening to break down any and all barriers he had left.

“I understand your position.” Jake tossed the crowbar onto the table, letting it bounce and clang up against the wall. “I would not put much faith in the sheriff being able to do too much. Here in Prosperity Ridge, we tend to move on action rather than words.” He shook his head. “Easier to deal with a gunshot wound, in other words.”

A figure appeared in the open doorway, much smaller than Morton. Jon let out a sigh of relief as Gil dashed in. The street urchin was breathless and red-faced, collapsing onto his knees in front of them.

“Sheriff’s gone out of town ’til tomorrow. There’s been an attack on one of the way stations, and he’s run out there to see what he can do until the military arrive. Says to take it up with the deputies or just call for the funeral director.” Gil glanced around the room. “Did you kill him?” There was a hopeful lilt to his voice.

Sam let out a sigh, frowning as she released Jon’s hand. “Gil!” She waggled a finger. “I won’t have you talk like that. We do not just kill people, at least not in this household.”

Her father coughed loudly, covering up a laugh with his hand. Jon rubbed his nose, hiding a smile.

Sam shot them both stern looks. It was bad enough having one juvenile under her roof. She didn’t need two. Or three.

Gil looked from one man to the other. “Okay. But I still think someone should beat him up.”

Jon nodded. “I’ll take that under advisement, Mr. President.” He gestured towards the door. “Oh, don’t forget your cakes. They should be just outside the door where I left them.”

The wide-eyed urchin sprinted towards the street, reappearing seconds later with the bundle. “I’d have felt bad for leaving this out for the dogs. Too good for them.”

“Good enough for the likes of an old man?” Her father tilted his head towards the nearby table. “Show me what you’ve picked up…” he winked at Jon, continuing the joke, “…Mr. President.”

The child started to lay out the delicate pastries, announcing the tastes in vivid detail. “This here is stuffed with some sort of jam.”

“You can pay my daughter and pick up your device, sir, while I dine with the President here.” He studied the assorted pastries. “They do look delicious.” Leaving Jon’s side, he walked over to join Gil.

Sam looked down at the brown paper parcel, shaking her head as if waking from a dream. “Oh, yes.

Your brace is repaired.” She went to the half-wrapped bundle and began pulling the paper off. “I intended to come over to Mrs. McGuire’s and meet you there.” The words rushed out like an oil leak. “Of course, then we would have had to come back here and do the fitting. I don’t think Mrs. McGuire would let me go up to your room and allow us to complete our dealings there.” She felt the tingling down her spine, settling in her stomach with a butterfly’s flutter.

Jon got up from the stool, now steady on his feet. Taking his jacket off, he draped it over the stool and began the now-familiar routine of disrobing in front of Samantha, who diverted her eyes, as was proper. A few minutes later, he walked over to the table. Jon leaned over it, his upper body totally bare.

She pulled the last piece of parchment off the metal brace with fumbling fingers. “Do you need my help to adjust…?” The words trailed off as she studied his bare chest, the light furring of dark hair a stark contrast to his fair skin. The trail led down to his bellybutton then lower, dipping into the darkness below his belt buckle. “The brace is very comfortable,” Sam murmured.

Jon leaned into the brace, flipping the clamps that attached it to his upper and lower arm muscles. The strap went across his chest, the well-worn leather pulled tight with the buckle pressing against the red indentation on his skin.

She watched, fully transfixed as he slipped the belt tail through a holder, laying it flush with his chest.

The leather edge flapped against his skin, eventually snuggling safe into place.

He turned to look at her, grinning. “‘Comfortable’? Did you try it on?”

She let out a light hiccup, intently studying a knothole in the tabletop to avoid his gaze. “I felt it was important to see if the device worked as required, specifically the fingers. So I needed to wear it to be sure.” Sam looked up, just slightly, staring at his muscles twitching and shifting in the metal brace.

“Ah.” Jon flexed his fingers, watching the little finger curl and uncurl on command. “As good as new.” He tilted his head to one side, still smiling. “How did you like wearing it?”

“An amazing invention.” The words tumbled out, her internal voice shouting for her to calm down and stop babbling like a young girl on her first social outing. “I would have loved to have seen its construction. I would recommend, however, that you contact the manufacturer and ask if they could provide you with some emergency replacement pieces for the future. Improvisation can only go so far, and while I enjoyed working on you…on it and would do so again in a minute, I think…” She was breathless, her last words coming out in a whisper. Her eyes dropped down to study the knothole again. Surely she had made enough of a fool of herself that he would have nothing else to do with her now.

Jon put his shirt on, shrugging the fabric over his broad shoulders and the brace. “An excellent repair job. And I’ll follow up on your recommendations. They’re preparing to make it available to more people.”

He flinched, fumbling with a button. “A sad reality of armed conflicts is that innovation tends to follow in order to deal with the results of such.” Jon glanced over at her father and Gil, the two eagerly finishing off the last of the tarts. His voice dropped, almost to an intimate whisper. “Have you considered getting an artificial arm for your father?”

Sam took a step back, folding her arms in front of her. This was an old argument with a new opponent. “Father’s too proud for that, at least right now. Besides, it would be too much money.” She shrugged, meeting his gaze head-on. There was no use in mincing her words. “As you may have noticed, out here things are much more expensive than they are on the coast. While we can produce our own food and items to a degree, we still need to import much more than we can make ourselves. Including such luxuries as artificial limbs and the means to fit and maintain them. And everyone wants to make a profit.”

“I have noticed that.” Jon nodded. “I do think you should think about it. The science, the people I have seen in England, they would make his life much more comfortable.” He curled his fingers into a fist, the metal bands pulling the slender digits inward. “But I would understand if he chose not to, for his own reasons and not financial ones. I often wonder about my own decision.”

“Well, I, for one, am glad you decided to keep your hand.” Sam took the crippled right hand and pressed it between her own two warm palms.

Looking up, she saw a matching smile. The deep blue eyes locked with her own for what could have been a minute, an hour…

“This pastry is delicious,” her father roared from the other table. “I’d forgotten how good. We need to order from them more often.”

The shock startled Sam out of her reverie and she moved back a few inches, releasing Jon’s hand. He let out a low sigh at her withdrawal, sending her pulse racing.

“Yes, the bill. The bill.” She went to the other desk and picked up a piece of paper. “We have an itemized bill here for you, Mr. Handleston.” Sam cleared her throat, making one last attempt to be as professional as possible. “I think you’ll find our rates are quite reasonable…” She paused, seeing his wide smile, the softness in his face bringing unbidden tears to her eyes.

“What you’ve done for me is priceless, Miss Weatherly. And I thought I told you to call me ‘Jon’.”

He took the page from her, scanning down the columns. “Everything seems reasonable, more than.” His good hand pushed into one of the waistcoat pockets. “Unfortunately, I don’t have enough on me at the present to pay.” Jon put up a hand. “But I do have an account at the bank, my dear lady. I don’t carry around large wads of cash, no matter my profession.”

“Good idea.” Her father glanced over, a trace of raspberry jam on the edge of his mouth. “Why don’t you accompany him to the bank, my dear, and simply deposit it to our own account? That’ll save an extra trip for everyone.” He nodded to Jon. “I trust you to escort my daughter, sir. At least to the bank,” her father added with a hint of laughter in his eyes.

“And I shall.” Jon bowed slightly, returning the wide smile with interest.

Sam rolled her eyes. When it came to affairs of the heart, her father was about as subtle as a runaway steam engine. After walking into the back room, she emerged with a delicately made shawl, a cream-colored piece of whimsy that somehow fit with her work shirt and her dark blue jeans. The shocked looks when she re-emerged banished all doubt she had about buying the shawl only a few weeks earlier in an impulsive moment.

“Shall I pick up something for later on?” She let out a laugh, seeing the mess the two men/boys had made on the worktable.

One raspberry tart had been cleanly dissected, the fruit scooped out with fingers and spread across most of the daily newspaper, while the chocolate creampuffs had exploded over both faces.

“Uh…maybe not for me.” Her father wiped the edge of his mouth with a finger and licked it clean.

Gil let out a moan, clutching his stomach. “And I think Gil here needs a bit of a lay down.”

Sam nodded. “There’s some baking soda in the cupboard if you need to mix something up.” Turning to Jon, she gestured towards the door. “The bank should be open for another hour or two, but we should hurry.”

“Take your time coming home,” her father called after them. “Maybe stop for a cup of tea or something. No rush.”

Sam scowled at him as she closed the door behind them. She was surprised Jon hadn’t already headed for the hills, with this sort of suggesting going on.

“Quite the matchmaker, isn’t he?” He dug into the pockets of his jacket, pulled out the black gloves and tugged them over his hands. “It just makes it easier to move around in public. Less questions,” he said with a sheepish smile, seeing Sam’s questioning look. “Saves me from making explanations. After the tenth or twentieth time it gets rather annoying.” A coughing fit had him bent over for a minute, spitting dark phlegm into the street. He wiped his mouth with the back of one glove. “I’m sorry.”

“You’ll get used to it.” Sam gave a wistful smile. “They say that they’re going to build some filters to put onto the smokestacks.”

He looked up at the blue sky straining to poke holes in the dark mesh tossed over the town. “Be better off with less smokestacks.”

“Excellent point.” She led him across the street, taking his good left arm. “In case you missed the obvious hints, my father would like me to spend more time outside of the workshop and expose myself to courting.”

“Well, I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask if you wanted to be exposed.” Jon grinned as they made their way along the wooden sidewalks.

“I guess he’s just thinking of my future, but the age where a woman was defined by the marriage she was either sold or roped into has passed.” She looked upwards at the light grey smog. “Marriage has been used too often as a way to control women.”

“Well, that’s a rather dismal view of the institution.” Jon pointed at the distant bank columns, the white and grey stone a stark contrast to the other buildings and an eternal symbol of financial institutions around the world. Within only a few minutes of turning back towards the train station and the hub of Prosperity Ridge, the buildings had changed from the wooden semi-permanent structures to older, more stable creations of brick and stone. “That is the bank, I assume.”

Sam nodded. “Your skills of deduction are excellent, sir.” Glancing back and forth along the now-crowded street, she led him up to the doors, expertly sidestepping piles of horse manure and deep ruts filled with water, left by wheels of both wagons and horseless carriages. “This particular institution holds the mortgage on a number of shops, including our own.”

“Mortgages?” Jon frowned. “I thought that the city was…well, I assumed.”

Sam paused, trying to find the right words without resorting to cursing. “Many businesses were enticed out here to the frontier with the promise of low mortgages, not free land. The free land, what there is of it after the Indian Free Nation was set up, is only available to settlers willing to homestead more than a hundred miles from any official settlement.”

“Ah.” Jon pulled the large brass handle on the metal and wood door and held it open for her. “I see.

That would put a bit of a damper on the settlers, I think.”

“And a blight on the heads of the businessmen who want to get out of the cities and build new lives, ending up in debt up to their eyeballs and then some.” Sam brushed by him. “The low rates are endurable, but the high cost of living makes up for it by far.” She waved a hand at the outside world before it disappeared behind the thick oak door that swung shut with an ominous thud. “But it’s the frontier, and people want to be here.”

“Yes. Yes, they do.” Jon stepped to the end of the line of people. Letting out a sigh, he turned to Sam.

“Looks like a bit of a wait.” He rocked on his heels for a minute before speaking. “So, how did your family end up out here?”

“Mother wanted to get out of the city. I was barely old enough to remember her and our original train trip out here.” She glanced around the crowded floor, keeping her voice low. There was no use adding to the gossip express that ran through the Ridge. Her mere presence with a man would be enough to fuel that engine for a week or more. “Her health. Thought that heading for the wide-open fields would help her asthma. The doctors were undecided, but my parents saw the advertisements for the brave new frontier and agreed to make the trip.”

“Ah.” Jon fiddled with his right hand, curling and uncurling his fist. That had potential to be an annoying habit if he kept it up, Sam decided. He kept a tight grip on her arm, tucking his own into his side rather possessively. She leaned in, letting him take more and more of her weight despite her previous announcement about independent women. The shawl drifted slightly from one shoulder, falling onto her forearm. If there was to be gossip, it might as well be worth the while. Given the topic of conversation, she needed a bit of support. It’d been years since she’d thought about her mother and the circumstances that brought her to this place.