Cactus Rose Read online

  Cactus Rose

  Samantha Harte

  Copyright

  Diversion Books

  A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008

  New York, NY 10016

  www.DiversionBooks.com

  Copyright © 2015 by Samantha Harte

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For more information, email [email protected]

  First Diversion Books edition August 2015

  ISBN: 978-1-62681-824-8

  Also by Samantha Harte

  Summersea

  Kiss of Gold

  Autumn Blaze

  Snows of Craggmoor

  Vanity Blade

  Angel

  Timberhill

  Sweet Whispers

  Hurricane Sweep

  For David

  With special thanks to Abby Saul for all she has done, Browne & Miller for their support, and Diversion Books for making this novel such a lovely addition to my work.

  One

  Diablo Rock, Arizona Territory

  1871

  Rosie Saladay drove her rickety buckboard wagon into town like a woman gone mad. Tawny dust billowed in furious clouds as she reined in front of Diablo Rock’s finest saloon, a crumbling adobe structure with a leaning porch shaded by a thatch of mesquite branches.

  The day had dawned bright and warm with the promise of nothing but heat and more heat. Now the wind-swept plaza echoed with the rattling thunder of her buckboard’s wheels. The reaching cottonwoods trembled in the haze.

  Grabbing her hammer as she climbed down to the rubble-strewn ground, Rosie drew up her badly dyed black skirts to free her feet. At noon the plaza was nearly deserted. Adobe buildings lined the wide rutted street like drunken companions. Two dusty-looking men craned their necks to peer at her from the shade of a brushy porch awning in front of the assay office across the way. A gangling clerk wearing dark sleeve garters came out of the stone bank. He shielded his eyes and stared.

  Wind caught the streaked black veil covering Rosie’s face, whipping it backward like a flag. Widow, it seemed to signal. The widow’s back.

  Rosie held tight to the paper she had lettered before leaving her place earlier that morning. There was still time to forget this crazy idea, she told herself. She’d had ten teeth-jarring miles to think, but what good did thinking do? What choice did she have? It was this or lose everything Abner had worked years for.

  Holding an extra nail between her lips, she hammered her message to the saloon’s porch post, a pine trunk as dry as her heart. The nail sunk in like a single tooth. She smoothed the paper flat and looked at what she had written—big block letters as crude as if they had been drawn by a child. Better drive in the second nail. No use having the paper tear off and blow away in the wind.

  Satisfied, she threw the hammer into the back of the buckboard, which was piled high with painstakingly woven grass baskets. She marched between the swinging bat-wing doors into the sultry gloom of the saloon. Her shoe heels sounded like gunshots against the warped wooden floorboards. The place was just as Abner described it. The mirror behind the bar had cracked in three places. The bar itself had a substantial layer of dust already. She seized a round-backed chair, dragged it close, and seated herself at the nearest table where she could watch the doorway.

  She felt giddy and slightly sick with anticipation. Decent women didn’t enter saloons, but this was where men came. She needed a man, so this was the place to find one. Reckless, she thought. Crazy. Well, if she had lost her mind, so be it. She wouldn’t sell Abner’s land.

  The saloon was empty except for a man seated under the stairs, in the farthest corner behind her. She twisted around to glare at him. She didn’t care to be watched. He had his chair tipped back against the wall. His dark western style hat covered his face. Oh, he wasn’t watching her. He was sleeping. His boots were crossed at the ankles and propped precariously on the edge of the table. No spurs. No holes in the soles. He didn’t stir. Couldn’t he just get up and leave?

  Hung-over gambler, she concluded, dismissing him from her thoughts.

  The head of a longhorn steer mounted on the wall near the dozing man stared down at her with bulging glass eyes. With a shudder, Rosie turned back to resume her wait. Maybe she needed a sip of whiskey to calm herself. She wondered if whiskey tasted as bad as Abner always claimed.

  She wished she could slow her drumming heart. Her surging blood made it impossible to think. With her teeth set, she watched the eye-stinging sunlight above and below the bat-wing doors. What if no one came in? What if no one wanted—?

  Before she could begin to worry in earnest, two shadows blotted the sunlight pouring through the doorway. Rosie held her breath. Hope and dread mixed together in her belly. I shouldn’t have come!

  The men standing on the saloon’s porch were reading her note, her sign, her… her whatever it was. Her advertisement. She felt her cheeks flame with a wild fear that one of them would laugh. That everyone would laugh. Quickly she pushed back her black veil, adjusted her old bonnet, and smoothed her hair. Her hands were shaking. She hated that she’d had to dye her clothes. They had turned out so badly. The sleeves of her calico shirtwaist still showed tiny blue flowers beneath the thin black vegetable dye. Her blackened skirt just looked dirty.

  A man pushed his way into the saloon.

  Her heart leapt. She shrank back a little.

  He dragged off his hat. “Afternoon, Miz Saladay,” he said, chin-whiskers bobbing with each word.

  “Afternoon, Mr. Rowley,” she said in a voice smaller than she liked.

  Her body felt like it had turned to stone. Not him. He wouldn’t do. How would she tell him no? He worked at the livery stable and smelled of manure.

  “I read that there notice you jes’ nailed up outside there. You serious?”

  “Dead serious,” Rosie bit out. “You interested?” That was not what she meant to say, she thought. She was not that desperate.

  He shook his head and backed away. “Now—uh, no, ma’am. Jes’ curious is all.”

  Another man, poorly dressed, ambled in behind Mr. Rowley and looked at her, squinty-eyed. “Don’t appear you’re offering much,” the second man said. Then he spat into the nearest cuspidor. “How many acres you got?”

  “One acre turned. Pumpkins, gourds. No corn or wheat. Yet. Don’t worry about that. There’s plenty of work. I’ll provide meals. I can dress and roast a deer if you hunt one down. I bake bread, pickle beets, turn a fine hem, patch shirts, and set a broken finger if need be,” she said.

  It sounded like bragging, she thought, or pleading. Not bargaining. Would this man do? She didn’t recognize him. She didn’t like his looks. The toes of his boots were nearly broken across.

  “What kind of work can you do, Mister…?”

  Shaking his head, he backed away, too. “Wouldn’t catch me living outside town with rattlers and Apaches crawling behind every rock.”

  She felt relieved.

  Behind Rosie came the sound of chair legs hitting the floor hard. Her dealings had apparently awakened the gambler. Good. He could be on his way. She would feel better. It was hard enough, doing this crazy thing in front of townsmen she had been acquainted with over the years. It was very nearly impossible to do in front of a stranger.

  She realized four men had come in and were standing at the bar, looking her over in her unbecoming widow’s weeds. She saw speculation in their
smirks, casual insolence in their slouching bodies. It was horrible, putting herself in this position. She should have let herself die out there, alone, instead of putting herself through this humiliation. She wanted to get up and stalk out as fast as she had come in, but she couldn’t make herself move. She had set this in motion. She needed a man. She had to follow through. Abner’s land depended on it.

  She dismissed the slouching man with the beard. Abner used to tell her about him.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Spears,” she said in her most businesslike tone—at least she hoped she sounded businesslike. “You can go back to your drinking. I need a man who will work.”

  Ocie Spears’ expression sagged and soured. “That ain’t all you need, Miz Rosie,” he muttered.

  “It’s Mrs. Saladay to you, Mr. Spears. Don’t make me shoot you for insulting me,” she snapped. “I meant no offense.”

  Ocie turned away. He said to the nearest man, “You can have ’er.” Then he called to the barkeep who was just entering from the back room. “Gi’me a whiskey!”

  A hard rock miner in threadbare overalls came forward. His hands had been battered by years of bone-crushing toil. He had trouble meeting her eyes. When he did meet her eyes, it was as if he knew she would send him on his way, too. He looked played out.

  “Sorry,” she said more gently to him. “I need someone younger.”

  She sensed the movement of the gambler behind her as he rose to his feet. The hair prickled on the back of her neck. He must think her pathetically desperate. Well, she guessed she was desperate. What was the use in hiding it?

  She heard his footsteps closing in, strong, purposeful footsteps in long strides. Not staggering. He walked by her without a glance and pushed his way past the gathering men at the doorway. As he went outside into the sunshine she let her breath out slowly. She felt let down, somehow.

  Good, she thought even so. Forget about him. Good riddance. She watched the bat-wing doors swinging. He was gone.

  Then she noticed the storekeeper, Milt Brummit, watching her from within the crowd gathering at the door. Her stomach tightened. When had he come in?

  He looked aghast at her. His eyes showed disbelief. His wiry brown beard was as unattractive and unkempt as ever. Abner used to call him Bear Brummit. Abner had a nickname for just about everybody. Bear—Milt—had always been a difficult man to deal with, always stingy in his bartering, always suspicious and argumentative. Hard calculating eyes. The story was his wife left him. Anyway, she disappeared from town one day. Nobody dared to question it. Even Milt’s sons left town the moment they were old enough. He was a man bitter as bile. Nobody liked him, and neither did she.

  To ignore him, Rosie turned her eyes to scan the sunburned, weathered faces gawking at her from around the room. There were perhaps fifteen men now, sizing her up like prospective buyers at an auction.

  This is the craziest thing I’ve ever done. She didn’t see a single man who would do. What had she expected? She began to lose hope.

  Don’t come near me, Milt, she thought. She didn’t know how she would turn him away. He was a widower more eligible to marry her than anyone in town. Who would buy her baskets if she rejected him in front of all these men? She’d starve for sure.

  Outside in the blazing morning sunlight, Del Grant took off his hat. Longing for a hot bath and a shave, he scratched his stubbled jaw. What was that young widow up to in there? Was she trying to hire a ranch hand? Kind of a strange way to go about it. He was glad he didn’t need the work. He was no cowboy.

  He saw a half dozen townsmen gathered around a piece of paper nailed to the porch post.

  “Hers?” he asked, nodding toward the paper. He sauntered closer.

  Several men turned suspicious eyes toward him, a stranger in town. They all nodded yes.

  Husband wanted.

  Apply inside.

  Must be decent, honest, hardworking,

  and good with a gun.

  No conjugal rights.

  Oh, really? Del thought with a slight chuckle. Husband wanted? No conjugal rights? He poked the nearest man who was starting toward the saloon’s doorway. He looked like a smithy’s apprentice.

  “What’s conjugal mean?” Del asked, wondering if any of the men knew.

  The apprentice shook his head and shrugged bashfully. “Buried her husband no more ’n a week ago. Found him dead out there somewheres, folks say. She’s gone plumb crazy, I say. She knows there ain’t a man in town that’ll have her. Excepting maybe Milt there. He been a widower long enough he’d take on any kind of female what eats cactus three times a day.”

  Eating cactus… what did that mean? That she was the prickly sort, kind of sharp-tongued and not fit to live with?

  Del heard murmurs and snickers all around from men who were twitching with curiosity to see the crazy widow lady sitting inside. He leaned in closer and whispered, “It means no boots under her bed.”

  The brawny apprentice frowned.

  Del nodded his head. “That’s what it means. No husbandly rights.”

  Looking surprised, then faintly disillusioned, the apprentice began whispering to the miners, clerks, and teamsters waiting to crowd into the saloon. One by one the men looked back at Del and then to each other. In moments they all ambled away as if remembering important appointments elsewhere.

  “Too many hours in the sun, that one,” one man said, glancing back at the saloon’s doorway where the widow was visible inside. “Crazy as a twice-dead gopher.”

  “I don’t care if there is gold out there,” another said. “I’m not tying in with that.”

  So, she was protecting a gold claim, Del thought. She would need more than a husband to stay safe in this country. He felt a little worried about her, though, a widow alone, a pretty young thing in ugly dyed black clothes at the mercy of every pitfall a raw-boned scarcely settled territory could throw at a human person.

  When Del pushed back through the swinging doors, the widow still sat at her table. The saloon had emptied. There was the unmistakable air of despair around her.

  She lifted her eyes to him. Sky blue eyes.

  “What did you say to them all?” she asked, her cheeks red, her expression stricken.

  He felt more than sorry for her suddenly. Had he cost her a husband? She had a nice face, he thought, considering it was framed in so much black veil that she looked half dead. Those big eyes. Fine bone structure to the face. Beautifully shaped mouth. Why did she feel she had to hire a husband anyway? Didn’t she have any pride? Out west there were ten men to every woman. Twenty, sometimes. A hundred in some places. Just to see that soft brown hair of hers would strike ardor in the heart of any man who saw her. In a little town like this, there had probably been a dozen men wanting her even when she was married. Why not go up to Tucson for a better selection? What kind of woman did a thing like this?

  Del leaned against the bar.

  Don’t get caught up, he reminded himself. He had a job to do.

  At the barkeep’s inquiring glance, Del shook his head. The last thing he needed was to start drinking at noon. His eyeballs ached. His stomach felt sour. He’d had enough skull varnish the night before to last him a month. He didn’t know what had come over him. He never did when he got the itch to drink. When he hit a new town with a month’s pay in his pocket, always intending to head east, he always went off his feed. He’d promise himself, just one whiskey. Then he’d spy the nearest card game. Spendthrift, his father always said of him. Drunkard. Wastrel.

  Yep, Del thought, his mood darkening as he tried to wipe those tired old thoughts from his mind. I am all that, and more.

  “I saw your sign out there,” he said to the widow. “Can anybody apply?”

  He watched those pretty lips tighten. Her cheeks got redder. Those big blue eyes stared at him. Something like heat lightning went through his veins.

  She was lots prettier than he had first thought. Parched-looking and unhappy, maybe, but the curve of her cheek was still attractive.
The desert hadn’t claimed that yet. And the way she held her chin out. He admired that. She had courage. He squirmed and shifted to the other foot.

  Women had looked him over in the past, he thought, but never quite like that. He didn’t look that bad, did he? He wished he hadn’t come inside. He had business to attend to. Newfound money to spend. A job to do.

  But he didn’t move.

  He took off his hat and studied it. It was still relatively clean. Not much rain to stain it in this country. Good quality hat maker. Nice braided leather band. Tooled silver concho in front. One of his favorites.

  Then he pinned the widow with an expression that had scared off more than a few troublemakers in the past five years. He saw her shrink back. He saw the barely noticeable tremor at the corner of her mouth. She isn’t so tough, he thought, softening inside toward her. Poor thing. Alone there. He understood being alone.

  “Whoever you pick, does he get to inherit your place if you keel over in the hot sun some afternoon?” he asked in that same challenging tone. “No?”

  She was shaking her head, frightened but steadfast.

  “So, let me see if I understand you right. No conjugal rights. No inheritance. There must be some kind of payment for an honest day’s work. Yes?”

  “Uh, yes. Payment.” Her eyes were as wide as the sky. She looked uncertain.

  Del’s lips tightened over his teeth. She didn’t have any money. At least not the kind he was used to.

  She was probably destitute. She was so darned desperate she was hiring herself a husband as her very last hope of survival. He watched her watch him. He felt like a hawk watching a trembling ground squirrel, and then suddenly, horribly, understanding washed through him like acid.

  Oh, damn! He realized who she was. Oh, this is bad. This is really bad.

  The widow.

  He assumed she would be old.

  He straightened. He was about to leave, fast, straight out, like a gunshot. Get the hell away quick before—