Joe's Wife. Cheryl St.John

things, too? I mean the things he had on him. His saddlebags?”

      She nodded.

      “You can be certain, then.”

      Meg closed her eyelids briefly, a considerable flame of comfort warming her at his words. “Thank you.” Even if it was a lie, thank you.

      The bell clanged a warning and Edwina plowed her way across the boardwalk, Gwynn behind her. “Meg! What are you doing out here?”

      “I needed a little air, Mother Telford. I feel much better now.” She glanced up at Tye. His deep blue gaze held their secret, and a touch of appreciation. “Much better.”

      “You shouldn’t stand out here alone. The riffraff is lurking along the streets, even in broad daylight.” She handed Meg a paper-wrapped package and towed her away.

      Tye tugged his hat brim back over his eyes and watched them cross the street. Meg lifted her hem and delicately traversed the riveted road. She followed her in-laws into the post office.

      No doubt she’d marry again. Damned shame Joe Telford had died and left her a widow. A woman like that deserved happiness. A husband. Children. She was too young and pretty to spend her life grieving. Some lucky fellow would snap her up before much longer.

      He tried to think of any young unmarried men in town or on the surrounding ranches, but he couldn’t come up with one who’d make a suitable husband for Meg Telford. The war had pared the possibilities down to nothing.

      He discarded the thoughts and headed to the livery for his horse. A good ride would clear his head and prepare him for a long night in the smoke- and perfume-filled saloon. He needed a lot more money than he made there in order to carry out his plans.

      The land office had nothing he could afford until he multiplied his meager savings. And Aspen Grove was makin’ that possibility difficult.

      

      The birthday boy, Forrest, and his older sister, Lilly, had eaten their fill of cake and now led the Shetland pony around the newly green rosebushes in the dooryard. Harley Telford and his younger sister, Wilsie, had spent hours supervising rides on the pony Forrest had named Cinnamon, and now engaged in a bickering game of checkers. After washing and drying the Sunday china, Meg, Edwina and Gwynn joined them on the shaded porch Edwina called a veranda.

      Meg studied the tree-lined street and neighboring houses, feeling sorry for the pony, who would have to spend all but Saturday and Sunday afternoons at the livery stable. Children and animals needed wide-open spaces. She’d been so glad to move to the ranch with Joe. From the very beginning, the hills and fields, the wide sky in all directions had appealed to her dreams of escaping town life. After growing up in a house full of siblings, and helping her father in his accounting business, she’d been eager to have the space and the freedom.

      “Meg, I’ve prepared a room for you,” Edwina said. “You’ll be quite comfortable in the front bedroom that overlooks the street. There are two windows, and it stays quite pleasant even in summer.”

      “Mother, that’s your room,” Wilsie said in surprise.

      “It was our room when your father was alive,” Edwina corrected. “Meg will need the space to keep some of her things she doesn’t want to part with.”

      “That’s generous of you, Mother Telford, but I can’t impose on you.”

      “Nonsense. It’s just Wilsie and I now, since Harley and Gwynn have their own home, and we ramble around in this big old house. Before long Wilsie will marry and leave me, too.”

      “Not unless some prospective husbands show up,” Wilsie said with a petulant pout.

      “I am afraid the war has left us short of eligible young men, my dear,” Edwina sympathized. “In any case, Meg, the house has plenty of room, and it’s high time you gave up your silly notion of staying out there on that patch of dirt in that rustic house and moved in with us.”

      “Mother’s right,” Harley said. “It’s highly improper for you to be living out there with only a couple of ranch hands who should have been put out to pasture long ago. They can’t keep up the work, and neither can you.”

      Meg drew a steadying breath and lifted her chin a notch. “I have Hunt and Aldo, too.”

      “They’re boys,” he scoffed.

      “We’ve done all right so far.”

      “All right? Talk around town is you’ve had to sell Joe’s guns and your silver to pay the help, make the mortgage payments and buy feed. What will you sell next?”

      Meg resented the question because it was time to buy garden seed and another banknote was due, and she’d been pondering the dilemma herself for weeks. She’d learned how to run a business from her father; keeping the books and managing was no problem, but she couldn’t handle the physical work alone.

      Thirty years ago Gus and Purdy had traveled the Chisholm Trail. They knew cattle and they knew horses. They worked hard and were as loyal friends as she’d ever had. But they were old men. The bank-notes came due regular as clockwork, and the stock had to eat. Since Joe’d been gone, she hadn’t been able to cut and rake hay.

      Meg pursed her lips and refused to get angry at Joe for leaving her in this predicament. It wasn’t his fault that the war had broken out and he’d gone and lost his life honorably. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. And that’s what made accepting her situation all the harder. She had no one to blame. No one to get angry at.

      And no one who understood her desire to keep the ranch and hang on to something she knew and loved.

      The ranch had been Joe’s dream. It had become hers, too, and she wasn’t about to let another dream die. She’d sell the furniture if she had to. She’d sell her bed and sleep on the floor. As a last resort she’d sell some stock. But she wouldn’t sell their dream.

      “I’ve started asking around at the bank and the land office, seeing if anyone’s in the market to buy,” Harley said. “Niles can get you a good price for the place.”

      Niles Kestler, junior owner of Aspen Loan and Trust, had been Joe’s best friend since childhood.

      “You can do your own dealings on the stock,” Harley went on. “You’ll get enough money to live on for a good many years.”

      Meg closed her eyes against the Telfords’ manip-, ulations. A good many years. Years of sleeping in the room upstairs, taking her meals with her widowed mother-in-law and passing the days doing needlepoint and volunteer work. The stifling idea horrified her. She’d feel like that Shetland was going to, cooped up in a confining stall.

      Meg’s widowed mother had remarried and moved to Denver several years ago, and her brothers and sisters were married and scattered from Colorado to Illinois. There wasn’t a one of them she’d want to live with or impose upon.

      The whole worry was so unfair. This wasn’t supposed to be happening. She and Joe should have been stocking the Circle T by now, having children and seeing all their plans come to pass.

      “Meg,” Harley said. “You can’t keep the ranch going with no man.”

      “Harley,” Gwynn cautioned her husband gently.

      His words were not a revelation. They were simply a fact Meg had been unwilling to face.

      “Well, it’s the truth,” he said. “And a truth she’d better take to heart before she has nothing left to sell. A woman can’t run a cow ranch alone.”

      Meg strengthened her resolve. Harley was only looking out for her interests. He thought he knew what was best for her. The life he had planned for her would have been best for Gwynn if he hadn’t returned. It would have been best for a good many women.

      But it wasn’t for her, and she knew it. “I appreciate your concern, Harley. Yours too, Mother Telford. But I can’t sell our ranch.”

      They