Blessing. Deborah Bedford

he said, “I did figure on taking Harris Olney with me.”

      She shook her finger at him. “You must promise me, Mr. Brown.”

      When he rose from the cot, she examined his frame. He was lanky and fairly thin. She’d known from grappling with him how he’d tower over her. He reached through the bars and gripped her wrists. “Your secret is safe with me, Miss Kirkland. I will face eternity next Wednesday with your secret well hidden within my bosom. I will die happy to be the only one knowing that the person who apprehended me and upended me in the dirt was a mere slip of a girl.”

      She didn’t know how she felt about promises from somebody who’d pulled a gun to go after a man. But she’d learned enough about the male species to know they’d risk losing everything before they’d risk losing face in front of others. She turned to the other matter at hand. “I am not a slip of a girl,” she said. “I am a woman, Mr. Brown. A full nineteen years of age.”

      “Oh,” he said, taken aback at last. Even so, he didn’t release her wrists. “I do see what you mean.”

      When he eyed her again, she saw him taking into account the nubby sweater she wore, and her woolen knickers, covered with mud from working the mine. She saw him surveying the shock of dusty red-brown curls poking out beneath her apple hat. “You are the most unusual woman of nineteen years I have ever seen.”

      “I’ll thank you to let go of me,” she said, her green eyes remaining level on his own.

      He dropped his hold. “Why are you deceiving everyone, Miss Kirkland? And how are you hiding it so well?”

      She wasn’t about to let him lead her onto this subject. “I came for your solemn vow, Mr. Brown.”

      “You received that last night when you threatened me with your fist.”

      “Very well,” she said, smiling a bit. “We understand each other. Good day, Mr. Brown.”

      Chapter Two

      Well past moonrise, well after Uley’s pa had drawn the curtains and extinguished the oil lamps, Uley removed the dirty woolen cap, dusted it off against her leg and began to pull the pins from her hair. Her hair fell in huge rolls against her shoulders and down her back.

      Uley slipped open the top bureau drawer and extracted the beautiful silver brush that had once belonged to her mother. She began to count brush strokes as she worked the tangles from the strands. Five...six...seven...

      So Aaron Brown wanted to know how she did such a good job of hiding her womanhood, did he?

      Thirteen...fourteen...fifteen...sixteen...

      She supposed that was about the most embarrassing thing of all—that she could hide it so well. Her own body rebelled against her. She was small, just like her ma, her waist barely nipping in. She supposed she’d look more womanly if she had any earthly idea as to how to don a corset.

      Thirty-one...thirty-two...thirty-three...

      Her mother’s name had been Sarah, one of the prettiest names Uley had ever heard. It sounded the same way she remembered her mother, patient and gracious, always ready to break into a song. One of Uley’s only memories was hanging clothes on the line out back of the Ohio house, running through the wet, billowing sheets with her arms outflung while her ma hummed “What Friend We Have in Jesus” through the wooden pins she held between her teeth. It wasn’t easy for a girl to get along in the world without a ma. There were so many questions to be asked that could not be answered by anyone except for a mother. About that first warm stirring in your bosom when a handsome young gentleman let his eyes linger. The proper way to thread the laces through a corset. The only place she might seek answers to these feminine mysteries now was from the hurdy-gurdy girls at Santa Fe Moll’s place. Occasionally Uley passed one of them in the streets, Irish Ann or Tin Can Laura and Big Minnie and Wishbone Mabel. Oh, Uley heard the fellows in the mines talking about these girls, all right!

      She took her frustration out on both hairbrush and hair.

      Seventy-nine...eighty...eighty-one...

      The only other Tin Cup woman Uley knew was Kate Fischer. Aunt Kate, a slave before the Civil War, had escaped her master, leaving a husband and a child behind. Now she ran Aunt Kate’s Hotel and Boardinghouse. Her customers made their own change, because Kate Fischer didn’t know how to count money or weigh gold. She always dressed in simple calico, with a white apron billowing out over her massive chest like a ship’s sail.

      Ninety-seven...ninety-eight...ninety-nine...one hundred.

      Uley stood and slipped the silver hairbrush back into the bureau drawer. She examined herself in the moonlight that filtered through the curtains. Even in the muted glow, she saw glimmers of color in her hair.

      For one brief moment, she let herself dream. She pretended she wore petticoats that swished around her ankles, that her hair remained loose, swinging free. She allowed herself to imagine what it would feel like to get gussied up, strap on delicate undergarments, pinch her cheeks till they were pink. She’d walk right into that jailhouse and say, “See, Mr. Brown? I am not a slip of a girl. I am a woman.”

      She braided her hair, slipped wearily beneath the handworked quilt and hugged her pillow in frustration. Although she tried to reason that she’d made this choice for a selfless reason, deep inside she knew that hadn’t been the case. Five years ago, her father had given her what she wanted, a chance to come with him to the rich goldfields of Colorado, instead of staying in Ohio with her aunt and her prissy cousins. When Aunt Delilah had warned her things might become difficult, Uley hadn’t understood her reasoning. She’d been so innocent at fourteen, so sure of herself, so certain the charade wouldn’t have to continue for long.

      She hadn’t bothered to pray about it the way Reverend Henderson said. She’d been perfectly willing to take this adventure into her own hands. She bunched the pillow tight against her face and stared up at the pine planks above her. Lord, would my life have been different if I had asked You? Hadn’t it been worth everything, she wondered, to stay in Tin Cup with her pa?

      * * *

      It was interesting, Aaron decided as he lay on his cot and examined the patterns in the fresh pine overhead, what a man thought about all night long when he knew he was going on to eternity. He wasn’t thinking of pearly gates and golden streets. His main thought, as he lay there seeing pictures in the pine knots, was to write Beth a letter so that she’d know his fate. He was thinking it was a shame he had to die for Beth to find out that she’d been right.

      At three in the morning, he stood and banged on the metal bars of his cell. “Marshal!” he shouted. “Marshal! I need to write a letter!”

      The man who answered his call was an elderly gentleman Aaron had never seen before. “You hush that racket. You’re going to wake the dead.”

      “I’m going to be the dead,” Aaron said. “This is about the last chance to make noise I’ve got. I need to write a letter.”

      The old guy shook his head. “Can’t help you. Marshal left me in charge here. Don’t have any paper for you to write on, and I can’t leave. How do I know you’re not trying to escape?”

      “I can’t very well escape,” Aaron said dryly. “I’m in a jail cell.”

      “You’re the first one we’ve ever had locked up in here. I’m not about to let you get away.”

      “I have stationery and writing supplies with my belongings at the Grand Central Hotel. If you could just send someone, Mr.—”

      “Pearsall. Ben Pearsall. Can’t do it. Ain’t anybody around to send. You’ll have to find somebody to get your stuff and post it for you tomorrow. The mail only comes in and out on Mondays and Thursdays.”

      Aaron sat down on the creaky cot, defeated once more. Things sure hadn’t gone his way these past few days. He didn’t know anybody in town who he’d trust to go through his room and retrieve his belongings.