скачать книгу бесплатно
He managed not to laugh at her naivetе. “I think you’ll find that word will get around as if it had wings, Miss Keller. Be very careful. You’re going to find that the way people have treated you is about to change. Don’t trust everything that people say to you.”
She studied him for a long moment and looked as if she were about to ask him how he knew so much. But apparently, after the way he had responded to her other personal question, she decided against it, for she just nodded.
“I’ll do as you suggest,” she said, rising. “Perhaps you would accompany me, Mr. Tucker? The least I could do would be to buy you dinner at the hotel afterward, after the distance you’ve come to inform me of this…this astonishing change in my situation,” she said. She’d have to ask the bank president for an advance of cash in order to pay for the meal, of course, but that shouldn’t be a problem.
Chapter Three
He laughed, but this time it was a mirthless sound that stung her pride. “Miss Keller, you’re a rich woman now, but you still need to be careful of what people will say. Being seen with a stranger—especially being seen dining with me—would not be good for your reputation.”
She hadn’t thought of that, but was determined to persuade him. “If I introduce you—if I explain that you were my father’s friend and came here to inform me of his death—I’m sure no one would think ill of it.”
He shook his head. “That wouldn’t make a difference,” he said. “In fact, it might make things worse. No, you’d do better to pretend we never met—other than yesterday, of course, when I asked for directions. That wasn’t exactly a formal introduction.”
“But what will you do? Where will you go from here?” she asked. She’d wanted to hear more from this man about her father—and, if she were honest with herself, she wanted to spend a little more time in the company of Jude Tucker, though she couldn’t have said why. There was just something about him. Perhaps it was only because he had brought the news that had just changed her life.
For a moment, he looked as if he was going to ask her why she cared enough to ask. Then he said, shrugging, “I don’t know. I’m a fair enough carpenter…. I’ll probably stick around town awhile, do some odd jobs to build up a stake so I can go back out West.”
“It’s honest work,” she murmured.
“It’ll take a long time to earn enough that way.”
“If you’re in that much of a hurry, maybe you should rob the bank,” she suggested tartly.
“The same bank you’re about to go to? Not a very wise suggestion, Miss Keller.”
She stiffened at his teasing. “I’m just going to take these eggs back into the kitchen, and then I must be going,” she said, going to pick up the basket she had left by the gate. “Good day, Mr. Tucker. Thank you for your kindness in coming, and for your honesty in bringing me my father’s legacy.”
“Goodbye, Miss Keller,” he said, donning his hat again and pulling it low, so his eyes were in shadow. “Remember, if you see me around town, we haven’t met.”
His unnecessary reminder, and his failure to acknowledge her thanks, irritated her. “That won’t be a problem,” Delia said, her voice curt.
Tucker had been compassionate in the way he’d informed her of her father’s death, but after that he’d done nothing but make her feel like a gullible innocent. Very well! She had tried to show her gratitude and he’d virtually thrown the offer back in her face—even made her feel that, by offering, she had seemed a little forward.
He was gone when she came back out, and she resolved to put Jude Tucker from her mind. With any luck, she wouldn’t encounter him again, and she could concentrate on the message he had brought, rather than the messenger.
Her father was dead. It was strange, Delia mused as she walked down the road, but after the initial stab of grief, she felt…nothing. Perhaps, since he’d been gone without a word for so long, he had been dead to her anyway. Of course, Delia hoped he hadn’t suffered and that, in the time between the accident and Tucker’s return to the mine, her father had thought to pray.
He had believed in Jesus, Delia remembered. She recalled times he’d listened to her prayers and read her stories from the Bible. But that had been before her mother’s passing, which had set the wanderlust loose in his soul so badly that he couldn’t bide at home and be a father to her.
Delia winced, remembering now how often she’d expressed anger toward her father when talking to her grandpa.
“Delia, darlin’,” she could hear him say in his drawling voice, rusty with age, “it’s plumb understandable and human that you feel that way, but you’d do better to pray for him, for his safety and his quick return. Let’s read that story in the Bible about the Prodigal Son. Maybe your papa will be just like that, and we’ll have a feast to celebrate.”
Surely it was a sin to be angry toward the dead. Her father was no longer capable of coming back to her.
But what about my prayers, God? I prayed for Papa’s safety and his return, and You let him die in a mine collapse, hundreds of miles away.
“God always hears us, child,” she could hear her grandpa say, as clearly as if he had been right there by her, “but sometimes his answer is no. And sometimes we won’t ever know—this side of Heaven, at least—why that’s so.”
And now that I’m a rich woman, it’s too late for me to help Grandpa with my money. How wonderful it would have been if she could have used some of it to buy him some comfort in his old age. She’d have insisted he move into her new house with her, or if he hadn’t been willing, she could have at least had the tumbledown old parsonage fixed so that its roof no longer leaked and its walls were freshly painted.
He’d probably have insisted she send the money to missionaries in Africa instead, Delia mused, and found her cheeks wet with tears. She could mourn her grandpa, even if she couldn’t feel deep sorrow for her father.
The town of Llano Crossing lay just around a wooded bend from its church and parsonage. Jude Tucker tied his horse among the cottonwoods that lined the curve of the river and followed Delia on foot, keeping his distance among the trees so she wasn’t aware of him. He was pleased to see that true to his instruction, she went straight to the bank without dillydallying to chat with any of the handful of townsfolk who greeted her in passing.
He hadn’t expected Delia Keller to be a beauty. Nothing her father had told him while they worked shoulder to shoulder in the mine, or later, when Will lay dying in the wreckage of that same mine, had prepared Jude for those large green eyes, that slender, slightly long nose, that rosebud of a mouth, all set in a heart-shaped face with a faint sprinkling of freckles. He supposed that when Will had last seen his daughter before heading West, Delia had been at that awkward, coltish stage that many girls go through just before being transformed into beauties.
He doubted that Delia even knew she was pretty. There was something unawakened, unaware in those clear green eyes. Her gaze had been direct when she had invited him to escort her to the bank and to buy him dinner. Perhaps it was because he had just told her of her father’s death, but Jude was used to women who knew how fluttering their eyelashes just so at a man would get them their way.
There was also a total lack of vanity in the ugly high-necked black mourning dress she wore. Maybe the dress was borrowed. He had known women who looked striking in black, but Delia wasn’t one of them. The harsh, flat hue leeched the color from her cheeks—and yet somehow she was still beautiful.
Now that she was wealthy beyond most women’s dreams, though, she could at least improve the quality of her mourning. She could buy dresses in finer fabrics, black mourning jewelry and fetching hats to replace that ugly poke bonnet….
Better clothing, along with her change in status from an impoverished orphan to a wealthy heiress, would draw men like flies. He hoped Delia Keller had some shrewdness to go with her comeliness, or she’d find herself the victim of some smooth-talking fortune-hunter who’d treat her to a whirlwind courtship and then, as her husband, exert sole control over the money her father had wanted to benefit his daughter.
Lord, protect her. Make her as wise as a serpent yet harmless as a dove, as the Good Book says.
Will Keller had suggested that Jude be the one to marry and protect her, right after he had struck it rich. “You should go to Llano Crossing and marry my daughter, Tucker. She’s a sweet girl, my Delia. You’d be good for one another.”
He’d scoffed at Will for saying it. “Will, what does your daughter need with the likes of me? Besides, we’ll probably never meet. You’ll go home one day, now that you’ve made your fortune, and I’ll keep looking for a rich claim of my own.”
“Or a rich widow,” Will had joked, wiping the sweat out of his eyes.
Jude had only shook his head. He was done with widows—especially those who claimed to be widows who really weren’t at all. He’d settle down with a woman someday, he supposed. He wasn’t a good enough man to always resist the clamoring wants of his body forever. But he certainly wasn’t worthy of an innocent girl like Delia, a preacher’s granddaughter. Not after Nora.
“This is extraordinary news, Miss Keller,” Amos Dawson, the bank president, said, laying aside his wire-rimmed spectacles and the certificate Delia had shown him, and crossing his arms over his considerable paunch. “You’re saying you had no idea that your father had amassed such a fortune?”
“Yes,” she murmured, feeling uneasy at his staring. His black beady eyes reminded her of her grandpa’s old rooster—right before the bossy bird tried to peck at her legs. “I—I mean no, I had no idea. We—my grandpa and I—hadn’t heard from him in years, you see. We didn’t even know if he was alive or dead.”
“How did you get hold of this document? Did it come in the mail?”
Delia wanted to say it had, to avoid questions about Jude Tucker, since he had cautioned her not to claim any acquaintance with him. But it would be easy enough for Dawson to check with the gossipy postmaster of the little town, who knew who was receiving mail from where and didn’t mind telling anyone who asked.
“I…That is, the man who had been working for him brought it to me.”
Dawson continued to scrutinize until Delia felt a flush creeping up the scratchy neckline of her dress.
“We’ll have to telegraph the bank in Nevada to verify its authenticity,” he said at last.
Delia felt foolish. The bank couldn’t just assume the certificate was real and start issuing her funds based on it. The document could be a clever fraud.
“I…I assumed as much,” she said, trying to sound like a woman of the world. “Naturally.”
Dawson seemed pleased with her composure. “We’ll do so immediately, I assure you, Miss Keller. I would imagine it will take a few days to obtain an answer—but during that time, I regret that I can’t…that is, the bank cannot act on the basis of this document.”
Delia nodded. “I understand completely,” she said, rising. It wasn’t a problem. She had been poor when she woke up this morning, and she could go on pinching pennies and doing without for a few more days. She only wished she had brought those eggs after all—now she was going to have to walk back to the house and get them or do without sugar in her tea another day.
Dawson rose also. “Assuming this certificate is authentic, Miss Keller, this is very exciting news, isn’t it? Just wait until the word gets out!”
Delia felt a prickle of alarm dance up her spine. He was practically clapping his hands together with glee, as if he wanted to be the first to spread the news. “I hope I can rely on your discretion, Mr. Dawson. I…I wouldn’t want to be the subject of speculation…especially before the certificate has been proved genuine.”
Dawson coughed and took a step back, and his features smoothed out as if an invisible hand had wiped all expression from his face. “Of course not, Miss Keller. Rest assured. But only imagine the possibilities of what you will be able to do with such a sum! The bank will be pleased to be of any assistance to you that you would require.”
“Fine. Please let me know when you’ve received confirmation. Good afternoon, Mr. Dawson.”
She swept out, disturbed at the complete transformation in the way the bank president treated her once he had heard the news. No wonder Grandpa had never had much use for Amos Dawson!
Intent on her thoughts as she pushed open the ornate, heavy door of the bank, she nearly collided with Charles Ladley, the mayor’s son, who was just coming in.
“Why, hello, Miss Delia,” he greeted her, extending a hand to steady her. “I hope everything’s all right? Is there anything I can do for you?”
Delia felt a hidden amusement bubbling up within her at his concerned expression. He must think she was here to ask for a loan!
“Thank you, Charles. Everything is fine,” she said serenely. “It’s kind of you to ask.”
He studied her more closely. “That’s good, that’s good. You would let us know if you needed anything, wouldn’t you?”
Us meant the Ladleys, the pillars of the community.
“Of course I would,” she said. “Tell your mother I said hello.” She smiled and kept moving. It would be interesting to see how this man, on whom she had once pinned all her hopes and dreams, treated her, once he knew she was no longer the poor little church mouse.
Chapter Four
Positioned at a table by the window that faced the bank, Jude was just about to sink his fork into his savory beef stew in the Llano Crossing Hotel dining room when he spied Delia Keller exiting the bank. He straightened, seeing her almost run into the dapper man who then chivalrously kept her from falling. Jude noted, too, how the handsome swell’s hand lingered a moment longer than was strictly proper on Delia’s elbow.
Jude was surprised by the urge he felt to jump out of his seat and dash out the door, shouting a command for the other man to take his hands off Delia Keller. But then she smiled at her rescuer, and Jude ordered himself to remain where he was.
Obviously Delia knew the man who stared down at her so familiarly, so he needn’t interfere. Delia was in no danger, and the richly dressed fellow speaking to her was perhaps the very sort of man she should be associating with from now on.
However, despite the fact that the encounter had taken no more than a minute at most, Jude couldn’t quash the primitive stab of jealousy that arrowed through him as he saw Delia gift the man with a warm wave of farewell. Involuntarily his hand clenched into a fist as he watched the other man linger to eye the gentle sway of Delia’s hips as she walked down the street away from the bank.
“Care for more coffee, sir?” purred a voice near his ear, and he looked up to see the waitress standing there, steaming pot in hand. She was pretty in a commonplace way, but she grinned as if they were old friends. “I’m Polly. New in town, ain’t ya?” She batted darkened lashes at him and he smelled traces of a cheap floral perfume.
“Thanks,” he said, deliberately ignoring her inquiry and not giving his name in return. In a small town like this she would already know that he was a stranger, anyway. He extended his cup, his gaze returning to the view out the window. Once his coffee had been refreshed, however, the waitress showed no signs of leaving.
“Who’s that fancy gent standing at the bank door?” he asked, the more to keep her from asking him any further personal questions than from a real desire to know.
She put a hand above her eyes to shade them against the glare, then peered through the dusty glass, squinting. For a moment Jude thought she might actually be too nearsighted to answer him. But then she leaned down again.
“Why, that’s Charles Ladley, the mayor’s son,” she said, sighing. “He sure is a good-looking fella. Wish he’d smile at me like that, though I doubt it’ll do that Keller girl any good neither.”
“What do you mean?” Jude kept his voice casual. He knew it was none of his business, but he couldn’t seem to keep himself from asking.
Polly gave an elaborate shrug. “Birds of a feather flock together, they say, and the Ladleys have always been as rich as King Midas. The preacher’s granddaughter—Delia Keller, that’s who he was talkin’ to—don’t have two pennies to rub together. ’Specially now that Reverend McKinney’s gone and died. Wouldn’t be surprised if she don’t have to come here and work ’longside a’ me.” There was a trace of satisfaction in her tone as she turned back to Jude.
If only you knew, Jude thought. With Delia’s status about to change radically, she and the mayor’s son would now be on equal footing. Any impediments to a relationship between them were about to melt like icicles in a Texas summer.
Aloud, he said, “Miss Polly, I’m sure the right man is out there, just looking for you. And when you find each other,” he added, trying to sound encouraging, “he’ll be so perfect for you, you’ll be glad you didn’t waste your time with that fellow.” He kept his eyes on Ladley, who was finally entering the bank.
The waitress’s eyes brightened. Jude realized that if he wanted her to go away soon and leave him to his thoughts, he’d said exactly the wrong thing.
“My, that’s an awfully sweet thing for you to say, in spite a’ bein’ a stranger an’ all that,” she gushed in that suggestive voice that wasn’t nearly as inviting as she apparently thought it was. She glanced quickly over her shoulder in an obvious effort to make sure the hotel owner wasn’t watching, then leaned closer. “Where did you say you was from?”
“I didn’t say,” he said, his gaze swinging back to the window, hoping she got the hint.
But Polly was nothing if not tenacious. “You plannin’ on stayin’ ’round these parts? I have to work till seven, but after that I could show you around the town.”
That would take all of about five minutes, he thought. “Thank you, Miss Polly, but I—”
“Or we could go to the church social next Saturday night,” she interrupted. “I know about everyone in Llano Crossing, so that’d be a real nice way to meet folks….”
He felt a twinge of pity for the girl. He hadn’t even given her his name, and here she was laying out the welcome mat. He held up a hand, knowing he had to stem her flow of eagerness. “Miss Polly, much as I appreciate your kindness, I’m not sure what my plans are just yet. I’m not planning on staying long in Llano Crossing, nice as it is. I’m either going to be riding along tomorrow or doing some odd jobs for a while before I head back West.”
Polly’s face fell and her overbright eyes dimmed. “Sure. I understand—just wanted to be neighborly, that’s all. Will you have some peach pie for dessert?”
Jude shook his head and asked her how much he owed. He would have liked some pie, but he thought it best to leave so the waitress could regain her composure. He left her an extra ten cents in addition to the dollar he owed for the meal.
Striding back into the early afternoon sunlight, Jude pondered his options. He could go to the saloon, he supposed.
In the war, he’d spent time in taverns with some of his men—too much time—between the horrendous campaigns that had led to too many lost and shattered lives. Nothing good had ever happened to him, or anyone else as far as he could see, anywhere near such a place. He’d met Nora, after all, as he was coming out of a tavern in Virginia, his judgment clouded with whiskey.
Stop thinking about her. It’s over. You have to learn from it and go on.
Resist the devil, and he will flee from you, the Scriptures promised. All very well, but if he wasn’t going to seek out a card game, what was he going to do with himself?
The smartest thing, he mused, would be to get his horse, Shiloh, out of the livery stable and ride west out of Llano Crossing. He could stop when he felt tired, sleep under the stars and live off the land between here and Nevada. He wouldn’t have to feel responsible for watching over Delia Keller as she navigated her new life of comfort and ease. It looked like there was an even chance the mayor’s son would be more than willing to take over that responsibility.
But didn’t he have a moral obligation to his dead friend, Will Keller, to make sure his orphaned daughter was going to be all right, even if he wasn’t going to marry Delia?
In any case, it was a waste of money to leave Llano Crossing today when he was paid through tonight at the hotel. Tomorrow he needed to have a plan, but tomorrow was soon enough. In the meantime, Shiloh was standing idle in his stall in the livery stable, no doubt eating his head off the unaccustomed rich grain and hay. Maybe the best thing to do was take the stallion on a run over the hills around Llano Crossing. They’d return in the evening, tired but content, and hopefully the silver buckskin’s mile-devouring gallop would have left Jude Tucker’s demons far behind.
Within fifteen minutes, Shiloh was saddled and showing his heels to the little town. For the rest of the afternoon and into the early evening, Jude and his mount explored the rolling limestone-and-cedar-studded hills, climbing until the Llano River showed as little more than a winding silver ribbon next to a collection of matchstick buildings of the town. Hawks soared overhead, taking advantage of the updrafts. Mockingbirds and crows darted among the mesquite trees and cedars, and occasionally he spied a roadrunner, darting here and there in search of the insects and snakes on which it fed.
Occasionally he spied a ranch house with outbuildings and a corral, and he knew he ought to stop and inquire if the owner needed another hand, but he felt no strong compulsion. He was enjoying the solitude and the opportunity it gave him to think.
The sun was warm on his back. He remembered, as he paused to let Shiloh drink from a cottonwood-shaded creek, how he had once used such solitary rides to gain inspiration for his sermons. It all seemed like a hundred years ago.
In those carefree days, he’d had no bigger concerns than planning next Sunday’s service and wondering and praying about when the Lord was going to provide him with a wife. Every man needed a wife, but a bachelor-preacher surely had more need than most, so as to keep his concentration on the Lord’s work. Fully half a dozen unmarried misses plus a widow or two decorated his front pew every Sunday morning, smiling up at him, but none of them had seemed quite right for him. Surely the Lord would shine a special light on the woman who was meant to be his wife, wouldn’t He? But as yet, no such illumination had been provided.
Then the shadow of war had cast itself across the land, and Jude sensed this wasn’t the time to be marrying and leaving a wife behind, her belly perhaps swelling with his child, a woman who might become a widow. The Lord was calling him to serve as one of His representatives in the army. There was time enough to think about marrying when the war was over, when—if—he resumed his position at the Mount Mulberry Church. A lot could happen during a war, he’d known, but as it turned out, he hadn’t guessed the half of it.
And then the war, and the things he’d done during the war, had changed him so completely that there seemed to be no point in even trying to return to Mount Mulberry and its church. He wasn’t fit to be its or anyone else’s pastor anymore.
With twilight drawing on, Jude and Shiloh had descended the hills and rejoined the road back to town. Jude had been humming “Tenting Tonight,” an old Civil War tune, when a shot rang out in the distance, echoing among the hills. The stallion stopped stock-still, his ears pricked forward. He gave a snort and then whinnied as if responding to a call.
Jude stopped humming, listening, too, and then he heard it—the faint cry of a man somewhere off the road among the dense mesquite and cedar. He urged his stallion off the road, navigating carefully among the cacti, the shrubs and the low trees, and after a few moments, he found the old man.
He was sitting alone on a limestone boulder, cradling his right arm, his floppy-brimmed hat shading his features.
