Coming Home to Wyoming (Peaceful Valley Series Book 1) (2 page)

Brewer’s Creek wasn’t much to look at, but since it was the only place within fifty miles where the local ranchers could do business, it tried to offer the basic necessities, including a seedy, two-story hotel and a well-stocked general store. After a quick assessment of what the girl was wearing, Griff pointed out the store, and explained that the first thing they needed to do while they were in town was to buy her a new set of clothes, a suggestion she flatly rejected three times in a row. On the fourth try, she finally agreed to take his money, after he assured her that any funds that changed hands wouldn’t be charity, but a straightforward loan, repayable with interest. Even when she’d conceded, though, he had to explain to her what the word, ‘interest’ meant.

Griff had knocked around long enough to know that he was taking a risk. Once Clarinda Isabella Worthington had the “loan proceeds” in her small, grubby hands, the odds were that she’d take off for parts unknown, without bothering to look back—or worry too much about accrued interest. While he could easily afford the loss of the few dollars he’d given her, he disliked being cheated by
anyone
—especially by a smart-mouthed kid he’d gone out of his way to help, in a move he was pretty sure he was going to live to regret. But when she insisted that she could do her shopping alone—and added a sweetly innocent smile—he decided to go ahead and take a chance. There was something about this young woman that appealed to him, and made him trust her—until she proved him wrong.

The girl was obviously smart and gutsy, and her suspicious attitude made it equally clear that she’d had a bad time of it somewhere, or from
somebody.
Even though she wasn’t his responsibility, he didn’t want to just ride away and leave her to survive on her own, either. If a few bucks could help her out, it wouldn’t be the worst way to use some of what he’d put away for the ranch he was planning to buy—when he found it.

“All right, then,” he said, counting out the bills into her waiting hands. “I’ll see that Jack is settled down for the night, then get two rooms at that hotel over there.” Griff pointed across the street, to the only hotel in Brewer’s Creek. He made a point of emphasizing the word ‘two,’ in case she was feeling uneasy about the sleeping arrangements. To his surprise, though, she barely glanced at the hotel before dashing inside the general store.

She called a quick, “Thanks, mister,” as she disappeared through the door.

The livery stable was at the far end of the street, and looked a lot cleaner and more comfortable than the hotel, but he’d promised the girl a room and a bath, so after Jack was fed and rubbed down, Griff walked back and asked the desk clerk for two single rooms—at opposite ends of the hallway, if possible.

“We got four rooms upstairs, mister,” the clerk explained in a bored tone. “You can take the two in the middle that’s vacant—or not. Bath’s down the hall. What’s your pleasure?”

Griff sighed. “I’ll take the two in the middle.”

The clerk pushed the register across the desk. “Good choice. That’ll be six bits a room, and a bath’ll cost you another fifty cents, each—six bits if you use the same tub water. I seen the little lady you rode in with. I figure she oughta clean up real good with a nice, hot bath.”

Griff laid a five-dollar bill on the counter. “Double up on the hot water for the lady. And see that she gets a clean towel.”

The clerk winked. “Gotcha. You know, I purely hate to talkin’ myself out of a night’s rent, but you real sure you’ll be wantin’ more than the
one
room? Save yourself six bits? After a good, long tub soak, that little gal’s gonna be sweet enough to eat—if you take my meanin’.”

Resisting the urge to punch the clerk in the nose, Griff took the two room keys and strode back outside. He was still wondering why the clerk’s lewd remarks had angered him so much, when Clarinda came out of the general store across the street, wearing the same tattered calico dress she’d had on when she went in. She was still barefoot, but carrying a single parcel under her arm.

At that moment, she glanced up and saw him, and dashed across the street, ripping the brown paper from her parcel as she ran.

When she reached the sidewalk where Griff was standing, she slipped one hand in her skirt pocket, and pulled out a handful of crumpled bills and change.

“You give me too much money,” she explained breathlessly, proudly displaying the contents of her package—a pair of well-worn button and lace shoes that had probably once been black, and badly needed cleaning.

“Who’d a thought a person could buy herself a real nice pair o’ shoes like this for just thirty-five cents?”

“I thought you were going to pick out a new dress or two while you were in there, and some… whatever else you needed,” he added, remembering her threadbare underwear.

She shrugged her shoulders. “Don’t need nothin’ else.” She fingered the ripped skirt of the faded calico dress. “After I give this old thing a good scrub, it’ll do me just fine.”

Griff shook his head, and tried to hand the bills back to her. “You may as well keep this, in case you change your mind, and find something else you want—or need.”

“Nope,” she said firmly. “Rules of the road is one thing, like you said. Takin’ charity is somethin’ else. Put that money back in your pocket, in case you meet up with some poor fella who needs it.”

As he returned the cash to his wallet, Griff was smiling. “You’re a surprising young lady, Clarinda Worthington.”

The girl cocked her head with curiosity. “Why surprisin’? I figured you for the kind o’ fella who knows a bunch o’ women. All kinds of ‘em.”

“I’ve known a few,” he conceded, “and not a single one of them ever seemed to mind spending my money.”

“Maybe you been hangin’ around with the wrong sort o’ woman.”

He pointed to the pair of used shoes. “Could be, but I still wish you’d go back and trade these for a brand new pair—that fit right.”

“All them new shoes was a
dollar
!” she cried. “Who the Sam Hill gives a whole dollar for a danged pair of shoes that’ll just go and wear out on you after four or five years, anyway?”

Griff sighed. “More people than you might think. All right, then, if you’re finished shopping, let’s see if there’s a decent place around here where we can have some supper.”

“They got all kinda canned goods over at that mercantile,” she advised. “Beans and corn, and even three or four kinds of potted meat. Fresh crackers, too, and a new barrel of some right nice lookin’ pickles—two for a nickel, the sign said.” She pointed to the livery stable where he’d boarded Jack for the night. “And we could find us a couple o’ hay bales to sit on while we eat. There’s a big old shade tree back there behind that barn. I seen it when we rode in.”

“I was thinking of a restaurant,” he explained, looking up and down the main street for something that resembled a restaurant. When he turned around, again, Clarinda was staring at him.

“You rich, or somethin’, throwin’ away money like it growed on trees?”

“No, Clarinda, I’m not rich, but I can afford to buy us supper.” He grinned. “If you don’t eat too much, that is.”

She giggled. “Well, then, you best go get some o’ them canned goods I was tellin’ you about. I’m hungry enough to eat a couple o’ Missouri mules and a she-goat for dessert. Besides, I never been in no real restaurant. I’ll betcha a place like that wants folks to dress up nice.”

Griff grinned. “Any restaurant in a town like this will probably be happy if we just don’t spit tobacco juice on the floor.”

“You eat in restaurants a lot?”

“Not often now, but when I was at home…”

“So, where’s home?”

“My father and I had a small cattle ranch in Nebraska, until he passed away. I was born there, and went to school there, as well.”

“I reckon that’s a pretty long way from here.”

He nodded. “A few hundred miles closer than San Francisco, probably—headed east, instead of west.”

“So, how far did you get to—in this school you was at?”

“I was in college, for a while—around three years.”

“You been to
college?”
she exclaimed. “And for three whole
years!
I never knowed nobody who went to a college
.
I reckon that’s why you talk so good—with all them big words, and all. Did you get yourself one of them fancy pictures to hang on the wall? The ones with a big gold seal on the bottom. I seen one of ‘em once, in this doctor’s office my ma took me to when I come down with a bad fever.”

He grinned. “If you mean a degree, or a diploma, I wasn’t there long enough. I guess you could say I swapped a diploma for a chance to go looking for excitement and adventure.”

“Did you find it?”

Griff sighed. “A lot more than I wanted to.”

“Sounds kinda dumb to me, just runnin’ off like that, when you coulda’ stuck around and got that paper to prove to folks you been to college. I never been to no real school, with desks and one of them big blackboards, and all. When I was little, my ma taught me my letters, but after she passed on… She give me music lessons, too. I bet you’d think I was lyin’ if I was to tell you that I can play a harp.”

“A
harp
?” he repeated.

“Yep, like in them pretty Sunday school pictures of heaven, only mine was so little you could hold it in your lap. It was my ma’s, really, that she brung over from Ireland, and it looked like it was made outta’ pure gold.”

Griff smiled. “Gold, huh?”

“I reckon you figure I was makin’ it up about me knowin’ how to make music on a gold harp. Well, it’s the truth, and I can prove it. You ever heard of a fella called Adams Moses? Always wore this big white wig on his head, even bein’ a little boy, and all?”

“Do you mean Amadeus
Mozart
?” he asked, after thinking for a few moments.

“That’s him. Ma taught me this real pretty tune this Moses kid made up when he weren’t much more than a little baby. He got real famous, and went around playin’ his tunes for folks, even some kings and queens. I’m just hopin’ I still remember the right notes—next time I come across another gold harp—like the one my ma had.”

She paused for several moments, and wiped her eyes. “Anyway, like I told you before, I can read and write, and I’m real good at figures.”

He smiled. “Well, then, Miss Worthington, you can practice your reading on the restaurant menu, and check our bill for mistakes in addition—if we ever get there.”

Clarinda still looked doubtful.

“You’re real sure I look all right?”

“You look lovely,” Griff lied. He pointed to her bare feet. “But you might want to put your shoes on.”

When they had finished supper—an adventure in confusion and chaos Griff would remember for years to come—he escorted Miss Worthington back to the hotel—another first for her, as it turned out.

“I reckon you’re mad at me now,” she suggested as they walked back to the hotel. “The way I carried on, and all… about that woman who brung us our food.”

Griff sighed. “I’m not mad, Clarinda,” he said, lying again for the sixth or seventh time, that day. “But you’re going to have to learn that not everyone who takes money for a service is trying to rob you.”

Clarinda scuffed her toe around in the dust for a moment. “All she done was bring us a couple o’ plates,” she replied sullenly.

“She’s a waitress, and that’s what waitresses
do,
and what they get paid for.”

“All we got was a couple little bitty old pork chops and whatever that mess of green stuff was.”

“It’s called spinach,” Griff explained patiently, “and they tell me it’s very nourishing for a growing girl—like you.”

“
Good!
Tasted just like grass, if you ask me—old wet grass that got cut and left out to rot. I never knew nobody to boil up a bunch o’ rotten grass and then eat it, ‘less they was real poor, or maybe kinda’ touched in the head.”

“Is that why you dumped your dinner in a potted plant?”

“Well, as sure as sugar wasn’t gonna
eat
it,” she grumbled. “My pa always said not to eat nothin’ that smelled like it’d gone off.”

“All right, then,” Griff groaned, “the next time you don’t like something, could you just try to be polite about it, and leave it on your plate?”

She snorted. “Pa woulda’ took a switch to me for somethin’ like that—wastin’ good food.”

With the discussion going in circles, Griff had begun to develop a headache. He would have liked to change the subject, but Clarinda was on the defensive now, and gearing up to do battle over a plate of pork chops and spinach.

“If that waitress gal gets paid money for doin’ what she did, then why’d you get so pissed off when I picked up that money you forgot?”

“I didn’t forget it. The money I left on the table was a tip.”

She gave him a puzzled look. “What’s that?”

Griff tried to explain, and promptly regretted it.

“A tip is a… It’s what they call a gratuity, which is a small amount of money you leave for the waiter, for… well, for waiting on… for bringing your food to the table.”

Clarinda frowned, obviously struggling to understand. “So, what’s a waiter, then? A
fella
who’s a waitress?”

Griff rubbed his temples. “Actually, it’s the other way around. A waitress is a…” he began, and then gave up. “Yes, Clarinda, a waiter is a man
who’s a waitress.”

“Well, you
still
gave her too much money,” she insisted stubbornly.

“No, I didn’t. Our waitress was very pleasant, polite, and…”

“To you, maybe, but she sure as hell wasn’t nice to
me
.”

“She was
being
nice until you called her… what you called her,” Griff observed.

“Well, if you was to ask me, it’s downright peculiar to pay some dumb gal good money just for bein’
nice.
She probably figured you’d give a
real
big tip if she kept shoving her tits in your face like she done. I reckon you was too busy watchin’ the way she was wigglin’ that big caboose of hers to notice how she was lookin’ down her nose at
me
.”

“You know, Clarinda,” Griff said wearily, “I’ve never felt like walloping the daylights out of a woman before, or even a girl like you, but the idea is starting to grow on me. If you’re going to get by in this world—especially in a big city like San Francisco,
someone
needs to teach you how to behave like a lady—or at least half-civilized. So, if you’re looking to get your behind paddled, just keep on acting the way you have since we got here, and I’ll be more than happy to oblige.”

She gave a small, bitter laugh. “Yeah? Well, from what I’ve seen of this
world
, bein’ a lady don’t get you nothin’ but heartache, and some fool man thinkin’ he can do what he wants with you. I could tell you a thing or two about… Anyhow, I’m too old to get a lickin,’ and I don’t need no one to teach me stuff like that. I’ll get by just fine. You just watch and see if I don’t.”

At the front desk of the hotel, Griff asked the clerk to draw a bath for the “lady,” and when they were finally upstairs, he pointed Clarinda toward the bathroom. She went in, and a minute later, popped out in nothing but a small towel, with the astonishing news that the tub was big enough to stretch out in, and “made out of some kinda red, shiny metal.”

“Copper,” Griff explained, smiling.

With Clarinda safely soaking off the grime in her very first real bathtub, Griff wandered back down to the lobby to ask about the stagecoach service, only to discover that the stage line no longer stopped at Brewer’s Creek. Not enough paying customers, the clerk explained. The unwelcome news left Griff with a dilemma—what to do about, or
with,
his annoying companion. He had hoped to learn that she had family somewhere, put her on the earliest stage headed there, and go on with what he’d been doing before she dropped out of a crabapple tree, and into his life.

When he went back upstairs and opened the door to his room, Clarinda was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the sagging mattress, eating an apple she had stolen from the restaurant. (He had offered to pay for the apple, but the proprietor had waved him away, shouting something to the effect,
“Just take the fucking thing and get outta my place! And don’t came back!”
Which meant they’d have to find their breakfast somewhere else. She was wearing nothing but another small towel, which didn’t
begin
to cover what it needed to. He stopped in his tracks, turned his back quickly, and slammed the door.

“What the devil are you doing here?” he demanded. “Your room is next door.”

She tossed the half-eaten apple core through the open window and licked her fingers. “I told that woman who kept bringin’ all that hot water you must’a made a mistake. Why in tarnation would you let that fella downstairs sell you
two
rooms when this one’s big enough for the both of us, and then some?”

Griff sighed. “That’s not the way it’s done, Clarinda. If you’re too old to be spanked, you’re also too old to be sharing a room with a man who’s not your husband. Get your clothes on, now, and go on back to your own room.”

She shook her head. “Can’t,” she said, with a wide yawn. She pointed to the foot of the bed, where her faded blue calico dress and a pair of patched muslin drawers were draped across the footboard, sopping wet, dripping, and making a puddle on the floor. She had hung the remains of her petticoat and what had once been a sleeveless shift on the room’s only chair. “I scrubbed ever’ stitch I had on real good. Coulda’ done a better job with a bar of yellow soap and a washboard, but I sure as sugar had me lots o’ hot water.”

Irritated now, and more than ready for bed, Griff rummaged through his saddle bags and tossed his last clean shirt onto the mattress next to her. “Put that on, and go on to bed,” he ordered wearily.

“I ain’t dim-witted, you know,” she grumbled. “I know it ain’t right to get in a fella’s bed when you ain’t married to him, but I figured you’d just keep on one side, and me on the other, so our butts wouldn’t be touchin’—like we was just real good friends, or somethin’.”

Griff shook his head, and pointed to the door.

Clarinda climbed off the bed, dropped her damp towel on the floor, and reached for the shirt, exposing herself from head to toe, and causing an exasperated Griff to slap his forehead. “Not
here!
”

“You always this grouchy come bedtime?” she inquired, rolling her eyes as she slipped her thin, bare arms into the long sleeves. With the shirt still unbuttoned, she spun around to inspect herself in the mirror, offering what
may
have been an intentional view to Griff, as well.

“Looks like I mighta shrunk some in all that hot water,” she observed cheerfully. The hem of the shirt came to her knees, and the sleeves were at least twelve inches too long. Griff tried not to notice that as slender as she was, she still filled out the rest of his shirt pretty well. She rolled the sleeves up to her elbows and turned to face him. “All the fellas in your family this tall?”

“Please go on to bed,” Griff said wearily. “Tomorrow’s likely to be a long day, and first thing in the morning, we’ve got a couple of decisions to make.”

“You’re fixin’ to get rid o’ me, ain’t cha?”

Griff rubbed his temples again. “There’s no such word as ‘ain’t’, Clarinda.”

“There ain’t?”

“No. And I can promise you that the sort of people who live in places like Nob Hill don’t go around saying ain’t, or ain’t cha, or gotcha, or…”

She shrugged. “It ain’t like… It
isn’t
like I don’t know how to talk right,” she replied, obviously hurt by what he’d said. “I been taught better, but…”

“Never mind. I shouldn’t have said what I did,” he apologized. “It was unkind, and I’m sorry. I guess I’m tireder than I thought.”

“I betcha there ain’t such a word as ‘tireder,’ come to that,” she remarked coolly, adding a wide yawn. “Well, I reckon it’s about time I turned in. You sleep good now, you hear? And watch out for bedbugs. I seen about a dozen of ‘em, already.”

When the door finally closed, Griff dropped onto the bed without bothering to undress. Bedbugs or not, he was asleep by the time his head hit the pillow.