Rebellion in the Valley (4 page)

Once, twice, three times, he came smashing
down on it, turned the chunk, and repeated the process another five
or six times.

Hailee wanted to visit with him, but she
could see that he was already a busy man today and decided to come
back later on in the day to visit with the man she had come to call
a friend of their family.

She glanced into a few shop windows, not
really shopping, but just taking in all the sights and smells. The
city certainly looked and sounded much different than the mountains
of Rosita! In the mountains, she could hear her own heartbeat and
smell the pine needles after a big rain. The city carried heavy
coal smoke and she smelled liquor on every other man’s breath who
passed by.

Main Street stretched down about eight
buildings on one side of the packed-dirt street and five on the
opposing side; in the business district of Rosita, only a couple of
stores were available for shopping, which wouldn’t have been so
bad, she thought, if it wasn’t for the fact that the town's five
saloons contrasted their shopping choices so drastically. And the
stores in Rosita certainly did not appeal to a young woman. Not
unless she found herself interested in hardware or farming
implements.

Her blue eyes wandered to the farthest end of
the street and saw it littered with horses and donkeys laden down
with huge packages. Manure droppings lay everywhere and she
wondered whose job it was to clean up the streets, because they
were either lacking in their skills or didn't care to tend to their
duties.

Hailee watched an older woman dodging a mess
in the street, maneuvering herself as if she'd done it a hundred
times and it was second nature; Hailee’s hair swayed as she shook
her head, certain she could never live this way and felt sorry for
those who had no other choice but to live in it.

When the wagon pulled up with passengers and
let them off at Cassiday’s hotel, she wondered where the people
came from and what their lives were like; a girl that looked pretty
close to her own age was the last one off the stage wagon and she
looked to Hailee like she’d never been in Canon City before; the
young woman’s eyes scraped over the people’s faces as if she were
looking around to get her bearings or maybe searching for
someone.

Hailee thought about offering her some help
when out of nowhere, Tobias stood in front of her, hands on his
hips and a scowl on his face.

“Oh, no, you don’t, young lady!”

She was taken aback.

“Excuse me?” she asked with a raised
eyebrow.

He lowered his gaze to hers and tried not to
grin.

“You were just about to go over and start
talking to that girl, weren’t you?” he accused with accuracy.

“What are you doing? Just standing in the
shadows, lurking after my every move?” she wanted to know. “Don’t
you find that just a little bit…odd?”

He laughed.

“No, not really. Not when someone cares about
another person and looks after their well-being,” he defended
himself.

Hailee found herself taken aback.

So he did care about her!

The pretty young woman twisted a finger
around a lock of hair and felt her heart soften; the annoyance she
might have felt when Tobias first appeared at her side left her
mind altogether as he explained he'd seen that same girl the
previous night at the saloon.

“Apparently,” Tobias explained, “she came
into town to play the part of some young thing in distress, in need
of financial assistance to get back home to her dear old daddy, who
- according to the ‘damsel in distress’ - is dying of some
mysterious disease.”

Hailee had never heard of a person being so
dishonest!

“I don’t believe you!” she let him know.
“People don’t just go around doing things like that!”

Tobias took a worn leather money case from
his pocket and handed her a quarter.

“Go introduce yourself to her, then. You’ll
be needing this when you feel the urge to donate to her traveling
expenses,” he teased as he plunked the coin in her hand.

Hailee grinned and her fingers wrapped around
the coin. She was off to prove Tobias was just overprotective of
her. Which was a good thing, she told herself as she walked
away.

Only a couple of yards from the girl in the
red hat, she looked back at Tobias, who glued his eyes to her every
step. He grinned and waved her onward.

“Go ahead,” he mouthed.

The girl held one white-gloved hand up to her
eyes as if she were shielding them from the blazing sun while she
took inventory and looked around. At her feet were two pieces of
luggage, expensive-looking paisley print.

The girl smiled when Hailee came near.

“Step one,” Tobias whispered out loud,
leaning up against the men’s barber pole.

The girl and Hailee appeared to exchange
conversation, but Hailee gave no indication anything out of the
ordinary came from the other young lady, from the way she carried
herself. She even shook the girl’s hand before parting ways with
her.

“Well, what happened?” he wanted to know.

Hailee looked up into his eyes and shook her
head.

“You were right. I asked her if she was new
in town, and that's when she started telling me a story about how
she'd been on her way home and got robbed; apparently, she is now
trying to find work along the way to fund her wagon fare back to
her family.”

She yanked down on her bonnet strings,
untying and retying them as she added, “So I asked her if her
father was still sick.”

Tobias let out a shout of surprise and
slapped his open palm on his leg.

“You did not!”

“I most certainly did! And when she opened
her mouth like some pond fish, I asked her if she could see a tall,
handsome man in front of the barber shop. She nodded, so I told her
that was my husband, and he overheard her story last night in the
saloon.”

Hailee stalled, looking Tobias straight in
the eye while she shifted her weight from one foot to the other and
added, “I might have also told her that you were the sheriff’s
nephew.”

He cocked his head to one side and
chuckled.

“It just gets better and better with you,
doesn’t it?”

She began walking toward the entrance of the
restaurant across the dirt-covered street, knowing the man of her
affections would follow. He did.

“She wants to assure the sheriff of her
departure on the next train out of town and offered to never return
back to these parts,” Hailee offered as the last bite of her
encounter with the stranger.

Still laughing when they sat down in the
restaurant, he ordered two tall sweet teas.

Hailee removed her bonnet and allowed her
hair to fall down about her shoulders; how he wished what she said
was true, that he really was hers to call husband!

She found his eyes full of concern and asked
him what he was thinking about.

Tobias shook his head.

“Nothing. I was just wondering what might
have happened to you if that girl had of taken advantage of your
generosity. Bruce has always taught you to be that way, to give of
yourself. You’ve been a good student and learned well, but Hailee,”
he warned her in a more serious tone, “you really have to be
careful. Especially here,” he tapped on the table, “in town. She
might have taken every cent you had in your handbag and you would
have never seen her again. Or worse. She might have hurt you.”

She heard his voice crackle at that last
thought, and catching it himself; he cleared his throat in attempts
to cover it up and took a long gulp of his tea.

“Thank you. For lurking in the shadows, I
mean,” she half-way teased. “Have you been doing that for very
long?”

He leaned a little bit closer to her and
allowed his eyes to lock with hers when he inquired, “Today or in
general?”

Before she could even allow her heart to
resume its beating, Hailee’s attention diverted to a couple
outside, strolling cozily along the walkway.

With a nod of her head in that direction, she
inquired of Tobias, “Have you ever known a girl like that?”

He shrugged, shook his head.

“No. You’ve known me for how long now? Have
you ever known me to be in love?”

Her young heart skipped a
beat when he said the words,
in
love
.

The palms of her hands began to perspire and
tremble, so she kept them hidden under the table.

Changing the subject, he returned his focus
back to the pretty girl sitting across from him.

“So…now I’m related to the sheriff, huh?”

She blushed, sat up taller and answered, “And
maybe someone else, too.”

“Yeah. Caught that.”

They sat still, eyes locked and hearts
beating.

When he felt a measure of composure creep
back into his head, he swallowed hard and lowered his eyes, sipped
the tea. He was afraid to look back up.

What had he just started here?

He knew it could not possibly go anywhere,
but good Lord, this woman wanted him just as much as he wanted
her.

Hailee sniffed and he looked up to tears
swelling up in her eyes.

“No, oh, no! Hailee, no...”

She wiped the red and white checkerboard
napkin across her eyes, sopping the tears up before they could fall
and add even more ebarrasssment to the situation.

“I’ve made a fool out of myself, haven’t I?
Here I’ve been pining away for something that clearly doesn’t
belong to me anyway.”

She began to push herself away from the
table, but Tobias grabbed her hand and begged her to stay right
where she was.

“Don’t make me beg you, Hailee. Please sit
back down.”

She did.

Tobias began to sweat.

“Look. I guess I have to tell you something,
Hailee; I’ve been keepin’ this to myself but it looks like I’ve got
no other choice now, but to confess myself to you,” he began with a
nervous hand raking through his dark brown mop. “Have you ever
looked at something real nice, real expensive, and wanted it real
bad? You knew you wouldn’t ever have it, but you still wanted it?
Do you know what that’s like?” he asked in an almost whisper.

“I suppose everyone has had that feeling at
one time or another.”

He shifted his weight in the chair and
lowered his gaze toward the table, twisted his napkin as he tried
to find the right words.

“Hailee, you’re the thing I can’t have, as
much as I’ve wanted it…wanted you. For one thing, if your Pa ever
found out that I looked at you like this, he’d have me packing
faster than I could blink. Can’t say that I’d blame him. Just look
at me.”

Hailee tilted her head to one side and
whispered across the table, “Tobias, I have looked at you! I have
looked at you every day for the last year and a half, and nobody
else. I was afraid I could never have you!”

Their eyes met, an understanding growing
between them.

“So now what? We can’t exactly go to your Pa
- “

She let out a quiet giggle and nodded her
head. “He is a bit protective, isn’t he? He loves me, Tobias; I’m
all he has now, with Mamma gone,” she explained. “We don’t have to
say anything right away. But -,“ she stopped herself short.

Tobias gave her a curious glance. “What?”

She shook her head and blushed again. “I just
don’t know how long I can keep it a secret. Knowing how you feel,
every time I look at you, it will be different.”

He blew out a long breath and leaned back in
his chair, ran his hand back through his hair.

“What am I thinking?” he asked himself out
loud.

It was just about then when Bruce walked up
to the table.

“Yes, just what are you thinking here?” he
inquired.

Tobias sat up straight at the sound of
Bruce’s voice and with eyes wide open, found himself staring into
the face of the one man he was most afraid of at that moment in
time.

Hailee reached up and grabbed her father’s
arm.

“Daddy, Tobias was just telling me when we
get back home, he might want to repair that old bunk house on the
back of the property. You know, the one that's been on the verge of
falling since forever; he was nervous to ask for your permission,
but I told him we never use it anyway, and you haven’t even been
near it for the longest time.“

Bruce grinned and held his hands out in front
of his body.

“Consider it all yours! I never even look at
it, myself, and nobody else has given it any thought. What are you
going to do with it?” he asked as he looked around for another
chair to pull up to the table.

“Uh, well,” he stammered, shooting Hailee a
look of deep appreciation for saving his hide. “I haven’t really
thought about it for very long, and that’s the truth. But now that
you say I can have it, I’ll let you know what I come up with.”

“Take your time, I plan on having you around
the ranch for a long time to come, Tobias,” Bruce told him with a
nod of his head and a wave of his hand to the food server.

P

Once the three returned to the matter of
discussion, which was filling their shopping lists, Hailee
remembered she still had not spoken to Gus yet and would need to
make a special trip into the general store for a few pieces of
candy; he was especially fond of jellybeans.

Her father praised Gus’ skills to many people
in the valley, since he made most of the horseshoes the ranch hands
used. He even made some of the things Richard used in his
kitchen.

A tired-looking Gus was found wiping his face
down with a wet cloth and sitting on an old tree stump he’d
fashioned into a sitting chair when Hailee entered his blacksmith
area.

He looked up from behind the rag and a toothy
smile emerged.

“Well, if it ain’t Miss Johnson!” he blurt
out, getting up on his feet. “I’d surely like to give you a big
squeeze,” he began, glancing down at his filthy apron and
dungarees. “But you wouldn’t much appreciate me for that right now!
So how have you and your father been? I didn’t even know you were
in town.”