The Milch Bride (22 page)

“Well, I’ll be.” Jackson said as he held a kicking J.D.

Hattie smiled and relaxed. “I think it’s as good as I can
get it. Maybe the next apple pie will taste a little funny with mustard as part
of its ginger, but it will save having to replace all these expensive spices.”

Quickly she smelled and tasted each square then put it in
the appropriate jar. Most were finished eating by the time Hattie joined them
to eat and take J.D. on her lap to feed mashed up beans and potatoes, as well
as crumbled cornbread in milk. While he ate, he happily kicked his legs and
bounced. Jackson reached out a hand to grab one small foot and kicking leg.
“Whoa, fella, easy there.”

J.D. looked up at him and grinned mischievously and kicked
with the other foot. Jackson grabbed the other little foot and held it firmly.

“Slow down, bronco,” he said more firmly and J.D. stopped
and gave him a scowl. Jackson ignored the look and leaned down to whisper to
the boy. “You need to be gentle with the ladies, partner.”

As though he understood, J.D. stopped bouncing and Hattie
finished feeding him and eating her own lunch.

“I think I can finish mending the sofa, then we’ll only have
the office to clean up.”

Jackson nodded. “James is going to have to carve a new leg
and rail, before I can finish the repair of the chair. The porch is done and
the men have the coop back together. If it weren’t for the damaged clothes, and
the lost animals, we’d be back to normal.”

Hattie nodded. The pause on the lost animals made her pause
as well. She missed the big yellow dog, his grin of welcome and bounce of
excitement when he would see her and the baby. There had been no reason to kill
the sweet animal. But there had been no reason for them to shoot Shep, their
old cow dog either. No reason for beating her father, robbing them, raping her.
She shuddered, then straightened. “I think with Rubye’s help, we can use some
of the fabric to make a quilt, especially with the rag bag from James.”

“Have you ever quilted before?”

She laughed and shook her head. “No, but I never repaired a
sofa before or hemmed a dress until last week. With Rubye’s help, I’ll figure
it out.”

Later, Hattie opened the door onto the office. The furniture
was simple: a drop-leaf desk, a big desk chair, and a long book case. An empty,
bare cot sat along one wall, the end legs knocked down. Only the desk had not
been overturned. Unlike her bedroom, which had two, this room had no window.

Hattie left the door open for light. She pulled the mattress
from the broken cot and set J.D. on it. His gown had been shed with its spatters
of beans and applesauce, his bare body reassuringly soft and pink as he rolled,
waving his fat legs in the air until he found a favorite toe to nibble. She
loved the happy noises he made and she babbled along with him. “Let’s set the
furniture straight first.”

She pushed the bookcase back upright and lifted the chair.
She moved the leaf that formed the desk upright and was relieved that it wasn’t
broken and would still fasten. She lowered it again to reveal the clutter of
papers and objects pulled from the tiny cubbyholes inside. She set the inkpot
upright, relieved that it had stayed corked and she wouldn’t have to try to
remove spilled ink. Finally she carefully lifted and moved the frame for the
cot and hollered to James. She left it outside in the sitting area near the
chair so he could see if he could repair it too.

J. D. had abandoned his foot and watched her wrestle the
awkward frame of the cot through the door before rolling over. He sat with his
arms pushing down, his body raised, as though any minute he would push on up
and help her. “Okay, son, what do you think, books next?”

At his complaint, she stepped through the door and returned
minutes later with his pony, cowboy and rattle. He rolled back over and took
the rattle. Eager to wave it and see if it would still make noise, he screeched
loudly when it did. Hattie knelt for a second to kiss his bare belly and check
that his diaper was still dry. “That’s right, you little rattlesnake, shake
that thing.”

He did and she picked up a handful of books to set on the
middle shelf. Tilting the cover to read them in the dim light, she arranged the
books on ranching along the top shelf, sorting them by topic: animal husbandry,
western cattle breeding, crop rotation, and the practical rancher’s handbook.
She wished she had been in this room before, to know what order Jackson had
shelved them before they were dumped on the floor. But the mattress and
laughing baby reminded her why she had not. Before two weeks ago, this had been
Jackson’s quarters and she would never have dared intrude.

On the second shelf, she arranged books that had clearly
been Donna’s. A cookbook, apparently unread, Dr. Padgett’s
Advice for Young
Mothers
, and several other textbooks from the Academy for Young Women in
Dallas. Hattie stepped out to recover the book she had used last night. The
encyclopedia of ladies needlework had dozens of pages that were dog-eared. The
last section on embroidery had a scattering of patterns that had been traced
from the pages, slipped back inside as markers. One was of a beautiful blue
bird in flight.

Hattie tilted the page toward the lamp light, tracing the
design with a finger as she recognized it from all the gowns and bonnets it had
been embroidered on. The drawing in the book was labeled, “the blue bird of
happiness.”  Beside her, Hattie heard J.D. baby-talking to his toys, shaking
the little red rattle. Softly she whispered into the silent room, “It worked,
Donna, listen to him. You gave him the elusive bluebird of happiness.”

She closed the book lovingly and carefully placed it on
Donna’s shelf. By the time J.D. began to whine and complain, Hattie had
organized and returned all the books, even stacked on the bottom shelf the
copies of Godey’s
Lady Companion
magazine and a stack of farm catalogs
on Jackson’s side. It was difficult, because she wanted to read it all.

She was surprised by the number and variety of novels. At
home, they had only had a Bible, her Mom’s cookbook, and a volume on western
ranch land that had been her father’s favorite reading. Although she had told
Rubye that her mother taught her everything, she realized she had gained a
great deal of information from the old German cookbook that she had read and
reread, looking for traces of her mother in the pages. For a minute she debated
carrying her two books to add to these, but decided she should ask Jackson for
permission first.

Finally, Hattie began stacking the scattered papers onto the
desk. She had managed to gather all from the floor when J.D.’s whine became
full-out crying. She found him sprawled across the mattress, obviously too
tired to sit or roll any longer. He was wet, as she’d expected, and she quickly
took care of him, kissing the tears away, cleaning him and picking up the toys
before settling down in Jackson’s desk chair to nurse him.

In another hour, the men would be back for supper.
Frustrated, she had wanted to finish straightening the study today. As the baby
quieted, he became curious about his new surroundings. She watched him look
around, before snagging a paper off the desk. Delighted with the noise, it took
several minutes before she could wrestle it away and return it to the pile. 
Defeated, she cautiously closed the desk and carried the baby out to the dining
table to finish nursing.

It was two days later before she returned to the study. By
then, she and Rubye had made a pattern and cut most of the pieces for a quilt.
They had argued heatedly for a while, between the patterns of Blue Bonnet or
Lone-Star. James had declared the war had been settled quicker than they were
ever going to agree on a pattern. Rubye had argued that it was known by
everyone that it was bad luck to sleep under a single star quilt. Hattie had
argued that if they were going to do that much work, they ought to use the prettiest
pattern they could find.

They had compromised. Their quilt would have a center, large
sixteen-pointed star, formed from alternating triangles of the dark striped
cotton from her dresses and lighter, brighter scraps from the backs and sleeves
of several of the torn cowhand’s shirts. Apparently, the prettier a man’s
shirt, the more likely it was to be ripped or tattered in a bar-room or
bunkhouse brawl. They would alternate smaller squares of six-pointed stars made
from scraps of her shirts and a single color from each cowboy’s one against the
white from her ripped petticoats, alternating with plain squares of the dark
fabric. The dark squares according to Rubye need to be quilted in the blue
bonnet flower design. Although a single blossom, it looked impossible to Hattie.

It seemed to Hattie that the million little pieces would
never all be cut and organized, let alone sewn together again to make the quilt
top. They were still arguing about whether to back it with a blanket and an old
sheet, Hattie’s idea, or to use one of the new cotton batts and new muslin.

The baby grew heavier in her arms and she left the table,
feeling outnumbered now that James and Rubye seemed to always be together in
every argument. She again left the door to the office open and put the sleepy
baby down on the mattress, making sure his arms were not caught underneath him.
She kissed the warm soft cheek, satisfied that he would sleep for a while, then
moved to the desk. Everything was as she had left it. She opened the drawers on
the bottom side of the desk, removing empty folders that had held the documents
now piled high in the center of the desk. She set them in a row, open to the top
and ready to receive papers.

One was labeled invoices farming, another invoices house, a
third invoices stock. Another group was labeled land records, payroll records,
etc. Satisfied that she was ready, she began with the first paper, the one that
J.D. had wanted to keep and shred the last time she sat here.

Frustrated by the task, she lit the lamp and tried again. It
was the invoice from Thompson’s store. It had the clothes for her and food for
the house – it took her back to that painful day that seemed years ago. The
clothes were now tiny pieces of the soon to be quilt. Hattie put the slip into
the folder marked invoices house and moved on. She quickly decided to shift
everything, putting all the folders away except the three labeled invoices.
Next she moved papers that weren’t invoices to the left side of the desk
unread, those that were invoices she read and filed in the correct folder.
One’s that were like the first bill and had more than one category, she filed
in the folder that had the largest amount of expenditure. When she ran out of
invoices, she took each folder, sorted the papers inside by date, most recent
on top. After removing the remaining empty folders from the drawer, she put the
sorted invoices away, propping them up with a ruler so they wouldn’t fall over
and she would have to sort them again.

In the distance, she heard James and Rubye laughing as they
set the table and put food out for the men. She heard J.D. stir a little and
hurried with her sorting. She found herself studying the plot map of the ranch,
surprised to see how her ranch fit into the curve at the bottom corner of the
ranch, nesting as she had against Jackson the other night. The memory brought
color to her cheeks.

She was sitting there, when she looked up to see Jackson,
standing and staring at her, a knowing grin on his face. J.D. raised his head
and made swimming motions. Jackson lifted him up, accepting the hands grabbing
his cheeks, reaching for his hat. He tilted his head back, making J.D. stretch
to reach him. When he did, Jackson moved his head to kiss the soft exposed
neck. The happy sound of the baby’s laugh filled the room.

Hattie rose, pulled like a magnet to the tall man and
laughing baby. She raised her head for a kiss and J.D. managed to snag the hat.
He was quickly chewing on the dusty brim.

“No, yuck,” she said, pulling the hat away and making a face
at the baby.

He made the face back at her, but grunted and reached for
the hat. Jackson swung it free and flung it back at the mattress.

“What’s Momma been doing, Jackie?”

He walked over to the desk, stared at the plot map, looking
over his shoulder at the shelved books, the drawer barely open, with papers
filed, and the wild stack of papers still to file.

He smiled at Hattie and leaned forward to kiss her again.
“Thank you. But what had that look on your face?” The gruff growl of his voice
made her stomach tighten, her cheeks flush again.

She leaned and pointed to the map, tracing the curve of the
border between the two ranches. Jackson’s voice growled and she looked up to
see his eyes dancing with devilment.

Rubye’s voice called from the open door as she stepped in to
take J.D. “Vittles are served, you folks better hurry if you’re hungry.”

“We’re coming.” Hattie started to scoot around him but he
turned her so her hips were pressed against the bulge in his Levis. Jackson
leaned in and breathed against her ear, “Later, pretty momma.” He left first,
winking at her as he picked up his hat.

Hattie folded and filed the map in the folder marked land,
then stared at the next document. Suddenly, all the joy fled as she read the
deed that changed the title of the ranch from one Harriet Stoddard, daughter
and heir of Tom Stoddard, to the name of Jackson Harper for an amount of money
that made her gasp.

For a moment she thought it might be a mistake. Maybe it was
recent, changed after they married. Texas was like every other state, a woman’s
property became her husband’s upon marriage. But when she checked the date she
saw it was for six months earlier, the day she came to the ranch to be a wet
nurse. All along, all this time, Jackson had already taken over her property.
At that time he had not been contemplating marriage, he had just been grabbing
her land.

Why, why had he called it the Stoddard ranch, let her send
him there to check for her cattle, her pickling crocks, her missing furniture?
Tears filled her eyes.

She sensed when he entered the doorway, waited while he
closed the door and walked over to her.

“What’d you find now?” he asked, his voice still teasing.

But instead of going into his open arms, she shoved the deed
at him and shot out of the seat.

“When were you going to tell me?”

“It’s not what you think. It’s still your land, our land.
You remember, I promised you the taxes as salary, for taking care of J.D. But
when I went to pay them, the amount was huge and overdue. Dawson was going to
foreclose. So I bought the land for the back taxes, for you.”

“With the deed in your name?”

“I planned to deed it back to you when J.D. was weaned.”

She brushed past, swallowing the tears, hearing the words
but not accepting their meaning. Feeling as empty and sad as she had her first
day, she walked out. She walked out to the table to eat and take care of the
baby. Her heart squeezed as the man she loved, the man she’d married, the man
who had brought such joy to her even this morning, while that man walked out of
the door without a look or word for her. Now that his secret was out, was he
done with her?

Hattie swallowed, unsure of what she was swallowing. She
knew from experience that to keep up with J.D. she needed food to make food.
After all, that was her job, she was the milk cow.

Hattie tried to carry her anger with her through the
afternoon but there was the explanation that Jackson had given her and the
feeling that she had been hasty and unfair. There was the rawness still of hurt
as much from the look on his face as in her own heart. If you loved someone,
didn’t you have to trust and believe what they said?

She returned to the office, asked James to remove the
repaired cot and mattress to the bunkhouse, folded the bedding and pillow and
gave them to Rubye to store. After filing the last few pieces of paper, Hattie
swept the floor, dusted the desk and chair and shelves. She checked the desk,
sliding out the center drawer with its well-used pencils and shaved quill pens.
She checked the sides, front and under the top for hidden panels like Jackson
had shown her in the bedroom.

Those men had been looking for something. Hidden money, or
something else of value. She checked the floor, satisfied that there was no
secret floor board hiding hole. Jackson was a rancher. Somewhere there had to
be a safe or hiding place for the money to keep the ranch running. He used the
bank, she knew that he did. But where would he hide the daily money. More
importantly, why had he looked so strange when he saw the empty space at the
back of the closet? What was missing?

All afternoon, the thoughts churned as she stitched tiny
scraps together to form another small star square. She picked the garden,
snapped late beans, put them on for supper. She fed the baby, folded clothes,
settled down to piece a second square. Rubye had gone with James. They had
promised her fish, something she had been longing for. Restlessly, she tended
the baby, then made coleslaw while he played, made and baked cornbread, prepared
pickled beets and eggs.

All the time she wondered how she could have behaved as she
had, then she wondered why she hadn’t been angrier, yelled more. She felt sad,
thinking of how wrong it was of her to not trust him if he were innocent. But
what if he had been conniving, what if he were vile and evil like all men. But
she knew all men weren’t evil. There was her father, and the men on this ranch,
and Jackson. She would apologize, tell him she was sorry. After all, what did
it matter? She was his and so was the land. But that made her even angrier.
What was wrong with the world that a woman had such little value and why wasn’t
she entitled to property of her own?

Her head hurt. She made sure the lid was tilted on the
beans, moved them to the back-eye. After straightening the bedding on the bed,
she stretched out to give J.D. his afternoon feeding. Finally, she put the
sleeping baby in the crib and relaxed into sleep herself.

<><><> 

In town, Jackson stopped at the teller’s desk. “Smith, I
need you to do me a favor.”  He pulled out the deed, laid it on the teller’s
window. “I need to transfer this deed to my wife’s name, and I need it
witnessed and notarized.”

“I’ll need to check with Mr. Dawson.”

“Why would that be? There’s no money involved. I’m just
changing the name on the deed and I need you to witness and notarize it.”

“Well, Mr. Dawson is property assessor. All title transfers
are done and recorded by him. I’ll be happy to come back and notarize your
signature when he calls me back.”

Irritated, Jackson turned to leave.

“I can let you wait in his room,” Smith called after him.

“No thanks. I’ll wait outside.”

Annoyed, Jackson crossed the street as soon as he saw Dawson
coming back from lunch, walking from the big house at the edge of town. He
tried to find a smile to match that of his father-in-law, but it was too
difficult. Scowling, he followed him into the office, barely managing a nod for
the curious clerk.

“What’s troubling you son?” Charles asked.

“We were raided again Sunday. The house was broken into.”

“Anyone hurt, anything stolen? Sunday, why have you waited
so long?”

Jackson waited until they were both seated, facing each
other across the desk. “Why did you send them, Charlie?”

His father-in-law stared at him. “What are you talking
about?”

“They killed some animals, a mare and her foal, a dog. They
wrecked the place but they only tore up Hattie’s things, ripped her clothes to
rags. They damaged things while they looked for something. What were they
looking for Charlie?”

“This is crazy talk, Jackson. I don’t know what you’re
talking about.”

“I came to deed Hattie’s place back to her.”

“Don’t be silly, Jackson. She’s your damn wife. What’s hers
is yours anyway.”

Jackson stared hard at him. “She found the deed, saw the
title change, and was upset. I promised her I’d pay the taxes. Nothing was said
about my taking the property. If legally it’s all the same, then I just need
the title to be in her name.”

Dawson stared at him grimly. “You’re a damn fool. The taxes
will be at her rate, not yours. Why waste money?”

The thought of paying the outrageous taxes stopped Jackson.
“Why would the tax rate be different?”

“It would be a small tract. Small ranches belong to
squatters. The town council ordered that the rate for the small spreads would
be ten times the going rate. You’re a cattleman; you know that small outfits
mean barbwire, closed ranges and hurt cattle. The town wants to keep them out;
the taxes are a legal way to do it.”

Jackson chewed on it for a minute, and then asked. “What
about the Eastman place?”

“Fred Eastman lost that spread, the bank foreclosed, and I
bought it. It’s now part of Dawson range and has the lower rate. Whose side of
this range war are you on?”

“I didn’t know there was a range war.”

“Damn, Jackson, it’s being fought all over the west; Texas
is just part of it. Now you’ve got a squatter for a wife, people are
questioning your ability to think clearly. This nonsense of a title change will
make them figure they’re right.”