Accidental Family. Lisa Bingham

accident two years back, the man communicated by scrawling notes on whatever scraps of paper he managed to collect. Charles glanced down at a torn half of a weigh slip. According to Smalls’s notation, he was to take a goat from one of the last enclosures. It needed to have one brown ear and one white. Smalls had assured him that the animal was a good milker and would stay warm enough in the lean-to behind Charles’s house.

      “As a newly married man, shouldn’t you be with the little missus?”

      Charles grimaced when he saw Gideon Gault watching him from a pile of feed sacks.

      “You just about scared the life from me,” Charles groused. He’d been gone from Willow too long. All these interruptions to his original errand were taking up too much time. “What are you doing here?”

      “Lydia Tomlinson slipped out of the cook shack. And seeing that you’d left Willow alone, she headed over to your place.”

      Charles couldn’t account for the relief he felt, knowing that Willow hadn’t spent all this time by herself.

      “Shouldn’t you be hauling her back?” Charles grumbled, slipping the catch to the gate free and stepping into the goat enclosure. Immediately, the animals began shifting and bleating, clearly upset by the change in their routine.

      “Not just yet. I don’t want Lydia catching on to the fact that I’ve figured out how she’s been sneaking away from the other guards, now and again.”

      “Then shouldn’t you be watching her?” Charles offered.

      “Oh, I’ve been doing that, too. Through the knothole in that wall over there. There’s no sense freezing my fingers off just because she’s of a mind to play hooky. Besides, I had another man circle around to the side entrance of your place, just in case.”

      Charles stepped into the midst of the milling animals, trying to find a goat with one brown ear and one white one. He’d never realized how many shapes, sizes and colors were possible in goats. There were big ones and little ones, goats with long fur and with closely cropped fur. There were goats with curved horns and some with spikes. But none of them matched Smalls’s description.

      “What are you doing, Charles?” Gideon said with a bemused grin.

      “I’m looking for a goat. A milking goat.”

      “And?”

      “And it’s supposed to have one brown ear and one white.”

      Gideon searched the herd with his keen gaze and finally pointed to the far corner. “It’s over there. Judging by its udders, it won’t be long before it will need to be milked again.”

      “You see a rope anywhere?”

      Gideon disappeared for a moment, then returned with a length of heavy twine. “Will this do?”

      “Yeah.”

      Charles snagged the cord from the Pinkerton, then waded into the sea of goats, keeping his eyes pinned on his target.

      “Hey, Charles. You got a good look at that woman’s body, didn’t you?”

      Charles felt gooseflesh pebble his skin, but he didn’t pause in his pursuit. “Yeah.”

      “Those wounds weren’t an accident.”

      He nearly stumbled. Gault hadn’t offered the words as a question.

      “No. I didn’t think so, either.”

      Chancing a glance at his friend, Charles turned to find Gideon staring at the far wall, his brow furrowed in thought.

      “Who would do that to a woman? It’s barbaric.”

      Charles gave up on his chase as a cold finger of foreboding trailed down his spine. “Yeah.”

      “A person’s got to have a whole lot of anger to do something like that.” Gideon’s thousand-yard stare shifted, and he pinned Charles with a gaze that had the power to burn right through him.

      “You take care of your little ones, you hear? And your wife. I’ve already doubled the guards around the brides until we know for sure what happened. But I can’t do a whole lot for you and Willow without attracting Batchwell’s attention. I’m counting on you to see to it that Willow stays indoors as much as possible. When I can, I’ll have some men watching from afar, but it would be best if you both kept close to home as much as you can.” Gault straightened. “You still got that rifle of yours?”

      “Yes.”

      “Can you shoot?”

      “Yes.”

      Charles didn’t like to advertise his marksmanship, since he preferred to stay as far away from violence as possible. But he’d trained himself to be an expert shot. A body didn’t come to the Territories with the naive idea that the rules of conduct peculiar to Bachelor Bottoms would extend to everyone. It was best for a man to be prepared.

      “You might want to take it out of the cupboard and dust it off.”

      “I’ll do that.”

      Gideon opened his mouth to say something else, but he must have seen a flutter of movement through the knothole, because he suddenly backed away.

      “There she goes again. Good night to you, Charles.”

      “’Night, Gideon.”

      * * *

      As soon as Lydia left, Willow wasted no time. After throwing the bolt home, she hurried to the cupboard, which Charles had referred to as “the larder.”

      There weren’t many choices for their meal. She found a few staples—salt, pepper, sugar, flour—a bag of raisins, another of oats, and a crock of honey. Grasping a pot, she filled it halfway with water, then poured in a measure of oats, a pinch of salt and a handful of raisins. A bowl of porridge wasn’t exactly a gourmet delight, but it would be warm and filling and hearty. Just the thing for a cold winter night.

      Covering the pot with a plate, Willow made a mental note to send for her trunk as soon as she was able. Unlike most of the other mail-order brides, she hadn’t traveled west with crates full of domestic items to set up housekeeping once she’d married. But she hadn’t come to America completely empty-handed, either. She had a set of pots, some dishcloths, a few precious lengths of fabric and her mother’s Blue Willow china.

      How her mother had loved those dishes. There were times when Willow wondered if they were the reason for her own name. They’d been the one thing to survive the host of troubles that had besieged her family: her mother’s death, her father’s accident in the mills and their descent into poverty. When her father had been taken to debtors’ prison, the dishes were meant to be sold. But unbeknownst to Willow, her father had packed them in a trunk and hidden them in one of the caves near their home. It wasn’t until Willow had been sent away to the Good Shepherd Charity School that he’d written to inform her where he’d hidden the china. It was the last letter she’d received before he died. An unwitting dowry for Willow, who had seen becoming a mail-order bride to a widower with ten children as the only means to escape a life of destitution and menial labor. Granted, she would probably be exchanging one form of servitude for another, but at least it would be her choice.

      But now, in an impulsive need to help a friend, all of those plans had gone awry. And who knew what would happen once her lie was exposed?

      Once again, the spot between her shoulder blades seemed to burn with past punishments, but she pushed the sensation away. Since coming to America, she’d already faced obstacles that she might have once thought impossible. She’d learned to tamp down her fear and focus on the end goal—and things were no different now. She would concentrate on Jenny’s children.

      Since dinner was cooking and hot coffee waited in a pot on the stove, she returned to the tufted chair. She drew the basket close to her feet, where it would be warm enough to absorb the heat of the fireplace, but not so near that a stray spark might burn them. Pulling the blanket