A Taste of Heaven (2 page)

“No offense intended, ma’am—uh, Mrs. Ross,
but an old cowhand like Ben, set it his ways and all, well, he
didn't seem like the type to marry. Especially to a lady so much
younger than him.”

His remark only reinforced Libby’s
suspicions. Ben Ross had been looking for a nurse, not a wife. And
how could she respond to the shopkeeper’s observation? Admit that
she'd been so desperate to leave her hometown that she'd traveled
over thirteen hundred miles to meet a man who’d duped her? No. She
merely nodded.

“It all happened so suddenlike,” he went on,
“you coming to town and getting married at the sheriff’s office. We
didn’t get to meet you before Ben whisked you back to his place.
Then winter set in, snowing blue murder. Did the weather treat
Ben’s place badly?”

Again, a grim picture of death, dead cattle,
dead horses, dead land—wound tiredly through her mind Libby nodded.
“I don't believe I'd seen another living thing besides my horse
till I got to town.” She thought a sympathetic look crossed the
man's bland face.

Nort Osmer straightened and put out his hand.
“Well, welcome to Heavenly, ma’am. I’m mighty sorry we’re meeting
in sadness, but I hope you’ll be staying on.”

Libby was touched by his simple sentiment,
despite her weariness, and shook hands with him. “Actually, Mr.
Osmer I’m here to buy a stagecoach ticket. Nothing much was left of
Ben’s place, and I can’t live there.”

He nodded understandingly. “To be honest,
ma’am, he never had a lot of luck with that spread. I suppose the
winter was just the last straw, so to speak.” His tone became brisk
and merchantlike. “So, that'll be one ticket to Miles City? The
stage will be here at noon tomorrow. From Miles City, you can catch
the train for wherever you’re bound.”

“Yes, that would be fine.” Just saying the
words made her feel better. And suddenly she realized where she was
headed—home, back to Chicago. She’d left in bitterness and hurt, an
impetuous decision that had cost her far more than she’d gained.
True, she was no longer welcome in the Brandauer home, but surely
her prospects would be better there than in this wilderness.

She opened her bag and brought out five
dollars. She was certain it wouldn’t be enough for a train ticket,
too, but at least she’d be closer to her goal. With the other five
dollars she held, she’d have enough to get a room at the hotel and
buy a couple of meals. “Please take it out of this.”

Nort stared at the gold coin lying on the
counter between them as though it were a nice button she’d offered
for payment. He lifted his eyes to her face. “Mrs. Ross—you’ll need
more than five dollars. A stage ticket to Miles City is a lot more
than that.”

Libby gaped back at him. She hadn’t a clue as
to how much the trip out here had cost. Ben had sent her both train
and stagecoach tickets, and she’d never traveled anywhere in her
twenty-six years till last fall. “B-but I only have ten dollars
total.” She cast about in her mind, trying to think of an
alternative. “Can I buy a ticket to another town?”

“No, ma'am, you can't go anywhere on the
stagecoach for five dollars. Or even ten.”

Libby found her problems to be piling
up quickly. Where could she go? She couldn’t drive back to Ben's
place; night would be falling in another couple of hours. She was
hungry and tired and discouraged. Besides, to return to that tiny,
confining hovel—a shudder ran through her at the very thought. No,
no, no. She couldn't go back there again, not for any reason. If
she did, she’d lose her mind. She'd rather scrub every floor in
Heavenly
twice
than go back
to that place. Her head came up. Work. She needed to find
work.

Libby picked up the gold coin and put it back
in her bag. She took another quick glance around the shop, trying
to decide how to broach the subject of a job. “You must know a lot
about Heavenly, Mr. Osmer. It looks as though I'll be needing to,
that is, maybe I can find work here in town.” She gestured at the
pine counter, feeling very awkward. “Could you use help here in the
store? I don’t have any experience with keeping shop, but I’m
trustworthy and I can learn.”

Nort looked like he’d swallowed one of the
big sourballs in the jar next to his hand. “Well, uh, ma’am, I mean
Mrs. Ross, after the beating we took this winter, things are pretty
quiet. I wish I could help but I don't do enough business here to
pay a clerk. And my wife, well, she wouldn’t—” He stammered a few
more words, until Libby took pity on him.

“Maybe you've heard of other work I could
do?” she asked, struggling to maintain hope. It was a formidable
task. Everything about the last few months had seemed hopeless.

“I wish I could say I had, but Heavenly is
just a little burp of a place and the only work in town for a woman
would be down at the Big Dipper.”

Libby drew a quiet breath. “The Big Dipper is
the saloon?”

He looked apologetic. “Yes, ma’am. Miss
Callie is always looking for ladies, well, that is—” Suddenly, his
attention caught on something beyond Libby’s shoulder. She turned
to see him eyeing the three cowboys outside his window. Then he
looked her over speculatively, his hand at his chin. “Say, now that
you mention it, I just might know of something.”

An apprehensive, uncomfortable feeling
brushed Libby. To be a woman alone in the world, and in a strange
place, was a chancy circumstance at best. But without resources,
she was prey to any number of dangers. A fleeting memory of a warm,
fragrant kitchen flickered through her mind, then it was gone, like
the afterglow image of lightning. Libby glanced at the door,
thinking that perhaps she should leave—while she could.

“Please don’t trouble yourself, Mr. Osmer.
I’m sorry to have taken your time.”

Osmer leaned toward her, both hands on the
counter. “Wait a minute, wait a minute. Can you cook? I mean, do
you think you could cook for a bunch of people?”

She smiled. “Cook? Oh, yes! I have a lot of
experience with that.” For a nice little restaurant, she
envisioned, or maybe at the hotel.

“All right, then. Let’s go talk to those
boys.” He nodded toward the figures on the other side of the
window. “They're with the Lodestar outfit and they’re looking to
replace the cook they run off last week.” He stepped out from
behind the counter.

“Lodestar outfit,” Libby echoed hollowly.
“You mean a ranch?”

“Yes, ma’am. It’s a big spread over near the
Musselshell River, one of the few around here that came through the
winter in passable shape. Tyler Hollins owns the place. He’s due
back tomorrow and if there's no one to put three squares on the
table, well—” Nort lifted his brows expressively. “He won't be too
happy.”

“But, uh—they ran off their last cook?” Libby
found herself being herded toward the door with Nort Osmer's hand
firmly under her elbow.

“Now, don't you fret. They’re good boys, most
of the time, and they need someone to fix them decent meals. No
fancy food, mind you, just lots of it. Cowboying is hard work.”

He opened the door to his shop and stepped
out on the walk. At the sound of the overhead bell, the three glum
men turned. Seeing Libby, once again they yanked off their hats,
and watched her with a kind of mystified fascination.

“I believe I’ve got your problem solved,
boys, but you can thank me later.” He gestured at the three
cowhands and presented them to her. Charlie Ryerson seemed to be
about her age; he was the one with the mustache. Noah Bradley, a
slightly older man, looked like he was made from hard-tanned
leather and bones. Rory Egan had an earnest young face and a light
scattering of freckles.

Nort held a hand out toward Libby. “This here
is Mrs. Libby Ross, Ben’s widow. Old Ben passed away from the
pneumonia.”

There was a murmur of self-conscious how-do
ma’ams.

“Ben Ross is gone?” Noah asked Nort, with
sidelong glances at her. He spoke in a hushed voice, as though he
were in a museum, and Libby was the exhibit

“Ben got hitched?” Charlie asked. “Old
Ben?”

“Yeah, just before the snows commenced. The
winter was pretty hard on their place. Now Mrs. Ross needs a job
for a while and she knows her way around a stove. Ain't that so,
ma’am?”

Libby smiled uncertainly into their curious,
respectful faces. “Before I came to Montana, I cooked for a family
in Chicago.”

After a brief exchange of looks among
themselves, the men’s reticence fell away. Apparently this
information elevated her to a professional status. They drew a bit
closer and all began talking at once, relating a confused but
vehement account of lousy cooking, food poisoning, and the fate of
the “potato-head” responsible for sending them all to the bunkhouse
for two days.

Charlie winced. “Yeah, we was a pitiful
sight, that’s for sure. The only reason someone didn’t shoot that
dadblasted cook is ’cause we was all too puny and weak to get out
of our bunks. It wasn’t much comfort that he got sick, too.”

“See, Mrs. Ross?” Rory spoke up. “We really
need someone to take his place. We’re not faring too good on our
own.”

“What about Mrs. Hollins? Can’t she help with
the cooking?”

The three cowboys shuffled and stammered
before Nort said, “There ain't no Mrs. Hollins, ma’am.”

“Well, but
—
” Libby knew she couldn’t be picky, but neither
was she certain that working for a bunch of cowboys on an isolated
ranch was the best choice she could make. And she hated the idea of
leaving this scrap of civilization to return to the loneliness of
the grasslands.

“Mr. Bradley, is it far to your ranch?” It
was hard to tell, since he was so weathered, but Libby could have
sworn the lanky man blushed. “Aw, shoot, ma’am, my pa was Mr.
Bradley. You can call me Noah. And the Lodestar’s about five or six
miles that way.” He pointed back over his shoulder toward the
northwest.

Five or six miles wasn’t nearly as bad as
fifteen. And the job was a means to her eventual escape. “Well . .
.” she wavered.

“Mr. Hollins is gonna have a flat-out
conniption if he comes back and there’s no cook,” Charlie put in.
Libby could barely see his mouth move for the luxuriant brush on
his upper lip. “Ma’am, we’re powerful sorry to hear about Ben, but
we’d be much obliged if you'd help us out.”

She looked around at the three expectant
faces, then back at Nort Osmer. The shopkeeper nodded his
approval.

“I guess we'll be doing each other a favor,”
she pondered, more to herself than to them. “You need someone to
cook for you, and I certainly need the work. I don't know how long
I'll—” But with this implied acceptance, the rest of her words were
drowned in the wild whoops from her new coworkers.

“Come on, Ma’am, we’ve got to get back to the
Lodestar. We’ve got hungry men to feed. Is that your buckboard over
there?” Not waiting for her answer, Charlie took her by the elbow
with great enthusiasm, practically lifting her feet from the plank
sidewalk with each step. “Rory, you ride on ahead and tell Joe
we're having supper tonight. Noah, tie your horse to the back of
Mrs. Ross's wagon, and climb up there to drive it,” he
directed.

Before Libby knew it, she was perched on her
wagon seat again, where she'd spent the hardest part of the long
day. Now, though, Noah sat next to her and took her roan's lines.
She had just enough time to wave good-bye to Nort Osmer before the
wagon lurched forward and pulled away from his store.

She must have lost her mind, she thought, to
be traipsing off into the wilderness again with three men she’d
just met, based on the endorsement of a dry goods clerk whom she’d
also just met. Tyler Hollins—what was he like, the owner of the
Lodestar ranch? And how would he react when he found a strange
woman in his kitchen?

In a moment, the tall, funny buildings of
Heavenly were receding behind her. And once more, Libby, with a
dozen questions in her mind, found herself heading for an unknown
destination and a future that was a complete mystery to her.

Libby shifted on the hard seat, gripping its
edge as the buckboard bounced along. Charlie Ryerson led the little
contingent. He was the Lodestar's top hand, he'd informed her with
a bit of a swagger. Noah sat next to Libby, handling the reins
expertly. Overhead the clouds were closing in, and chill gusts
ruffled the short buffalo grass growing on either side of the road.
She hoped they reached shelter before it started raining.

In her view, it seemed like days ago that
she’d set out for Heavenly instead of just this morning. The months
of nursing Ben in the confinement of his cabin had been enervating
and unpleasant, but not always as physically demanding as the tasks
she’d had to perform in the last two days. She tightened her grip
on the edge of the seat as the vehicle jounced over a rock.

“Is the ranch much farther, Mr. Brad—um,
Noah?”

“We’ll be coming to the Lodestar in another
mile ma'am.”

That was a relief, Libby thought. “Tell me
about your ranch,” she said to the leathery cowhand. “Mr. Osmer
said it’s a big place.”

Noah raised his voice to be heard over the
jingle of bridle and horses’ hooves. “Well, ma’am, the Lodestar’s
got about five thousand acres, and about thirty thousand head of
cattle grazing on open rangeland. Leastways, we did till this
winter. We figure we lost more than three-quarters of the
herd.”

Five thousand acres, Libby marveled. She
didn't know much about vast land measurements like that, but it had
to be a lot. And they still had what—about seven thousand cattle?
Ben Ross had begun the winter with two hundred cattle, and his
ranch consisted of three hundred acres.

“It must take several men to run a place that
big,” she said.

“Yes’m, there's nigh on to twenny of us
helpin’ out.”