Allie's Moon
Allie’s Moon
by
Alexis Harrington
Copyright © by Alexis Harrington, 2000
Smashwords Edition
This ebook is licensed for your personal
enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to
other people. If you would like to share this book with another
person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you
share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it,
or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return
to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for
respecting the hard work of this author.
CHAPTER ONE
Decker Prairie, Oregon
May 1880
Althea Ford needed a man and she’d walked all
the way to town to find one.
His looks didn’t matter and neither did his
age. But he’d better be good with his hands and possess physical
stamina because she planned to keep him busy from early morning
until sundown.
Coming to town—that was something she tried
to avoid. Decker Prairie was a quiet, slow-moving place. That
tended to give its residents long memories for the rare sensational
event, and curiosity that bordered on rudeness. To hide her
feelings of self-consciousness, she moved along the sidewalk with a
purposeful stride, looking neither right or left. But she was aware
of people staring at her as she passed, and whispering behind their
hands. She knew they had forgotten nothing about the Ford
family.
Worse than being the subject of scrutiny and
gossip was the errand that brought her here today. It wasn’t one
that she looked forward to. In fact, only desperation drove her to
it. It seemed a crime to ruin such a beautiful spring afternoon
with a disagreeable task.
As she rounded the corner, the Liberal Saloon
came into view. Even from here she could smell the warm, yeasty
scent of beer and stale cigar smoke. That a man should waste his
time in a place like that, she thought with her lips pursed. She
lifted her nose a notch. Why, there was one now, just hanging
around outside the door, and a pitiful-looking specimen he was too,
with his slouched shoulders and dog-eared appearance. He probably
smelled as bad as he looked.
Just as she came abreast of him and was about
to step off the sidewalk to give him a wide berth, the man looked
up at her. Their eyes met for breathless instant, and Althea’s
train of thought jumped the track. Leaning against the door jamb
that way, he seemed familiar but she couldn’t place him. Wasn’t
he—she thought he rather resembled Decker Prairie’s former sheriff.
But this couldn’t be him. She swallowed. Surely she would remember
a man with eyes that color—green, like fields of ripe corn stalks.
Intensity burned in them, as if trouble and danger were his
intimates. His gaze swept over her, searching, speculative, but
what he sought she couldn’t guess. It wasn’t like the rude, furtive
looks she got from other people. In fact, he gave no indication of
recognizing her. No man had ever looked at her that way. For a
moment, she thought he might even speak to her, but he didn’t. An
odd thrill of fear and curiosity rushed through her, stiffening her
spine and hurrying her steps. After she passed him, an irresistible
urge made her glance back at him over her shoulder. But he was no
longer watching her, and she felt an unbelievable twinge of
disappointment.
Whatever was she thinking of? she wondered.
With all the trouble she had facing her, why on earth was she
curious about that dirty, ill-kempt man?
Althea tightened her shawl around her
shoulders and sped on to Kincade’s Livery. It was with a different
sort of trepidation that she approached. Stepping from bright
sunlight into large, gloomy enclosures like stables and barns
always made her hands feel a little clammy.
And Cooper Matthews was a man of such low
degree and reputation, some might say that no decent woman should
have any dealings with him. But necessity left her with no
choice.
She lingered in the big doorway, hoping to
spot him without having to actually go in search of him. Without
having to go into this dark, cavernous building. Cooper did odd
jobs around the livery to earn his keep, and this was where he
ought to be. She knew that he lived in a shack behind the stables,
but it would hardly be proper—or safe, in her opinion—to look for
him back there.
Though her trips to Decker Prairie were rare,
Althea had been privy to enough gossip to know that with the
possible exception of his crony Floyd Endicott, no one in town
really liked Cooper. The boy who delivered groceries out to the
Ford place was a busybody who’d told Althea that Cooper was a bully
who drank too much, and that since his youth his cruel streak had
shown itself time and again. Pulling the wings off flies and making
fun of others’ debilities or differences were great sport to
him.
For women, Cooper reputedly had no respect at
all.
Taking one step inside the stables, Althea
peered into the dim interior. The pungent smells of horses and hay
struck her, along with the faint musty odor that seemed to lurk in
all barns. She swallowed and closed her hands into fists, pressing
them to her chest.
“
Mr. Matthews?” she called. “Mr.
Matthews are you here?”
Only soft nickering answered her.
She took another careful step deeper into the
stables. A glance at the rafters overhead made her heart beat
heavily, and she immediately dropped her gaze to the hard-packed
dirt floor. After having worked up the courage and determination to
come in search of him, Althea didn’t know if she could bring
herself to return later if he wasn’t here now. She backed up and
looked over her shoulder to see if he was in the corral. “Mr.
Matth—”
“
Quit your yellin’, lady. I ain’t
deef.”
Althea jumped and turned her head so quickly,
a joint in her neck made a soft popping sound. A wiry man of medium
height emerged from the shadows of the back stalls. He walked with
a cocky nonchalance that made her wish again for some other option.
But there was none.
“
Mr. Matthews,” she repeated. Although
his battered hat hid part of his features, she recognized
him.
“
Yeah, that’s me. What do you
want?”
She felt slightly winded, as if she needed to
take a breath between each word. “I’m Althea Ford. I live on the
north edge of town.”
“
So? Got a horse you want tended or
what?” His voice had a coarse, nasal quality. Bib overalls hung
like a grimy bag on his frame, as though they were never taken off,
never washed. The undershirt beneath might have been white at one
time. Now it was various shades of sweat-stained ecru. In all, he
was filthy and unpleasant and dangerous, even more so than the man
outside the saloon.
Althea did her best to look him in the face
while she spoke, but it was difficult. She saw a cold, intimidating
appraisal in his dark eyes that made her chest feel tight. “I have
a house—” She drew another breath. “That is, I need a lot of work
done around my house. The roof leaks and my kitchen garden hasn’t
been planted yet. The gutters are overflowing and the whole place
needs painting. I hoped you might—I was wondering if you’d be
interested in the job.”
He scrutinized her with a suspicious gaze.
“Yeah? How much are you payin’?”
“
I’ll give you good wages if the work
is completed to my satisfaction.”
Finally a glimmer of recognition crossed his
long face, and he hooked his thumbs in the suspenders of his
overalls. “Oh, yeah, I heard about you. You’re one of them crazy
Ford women, ain’tcha? Your mama strung herself up.”
Althea swallowed against the lump beginning
to form in her throat but said nothing.
“
You’ve been goin’ around town, beggin’
to hire someone. Since you’re here, I guess you ain’t found any
takers. Huh, nobody wants to work for a persnickety woman. I’d just
as soon do chores for those old Pratt women.”
Decker Prairie talked as much about Mary and
Louise Pratt as they did the Fords. A pair of cantankerous,
demanding old crones, Mary and Louise Pratt were sisters-in-law who
lived in town and didn’t have one good word to say about anything
or anyone. So disagreeable were they that children were warned the
Pratts would “get them” if they misbehaved.
Begging? Persnickety! She felt her face color
hotly. “If you mean that I want an honest day’s labor for the money
I’m paying—”
“
Sounds more like slave labor to hear
tell at the Liberal Saloon. Last spring Heck Germaine had to paint
your damned fence twice before you’d pay him. And Floyd Endicott
had a try at it before that, and you didn’t pay him at
all.”
Feeling obliged to defend herself, she
replied, “I asked Hector Germaine to put two coats of paint on the
fence so that it would weather well. As for Mr. Endicott, no, I
would not give good money to someone who left the barn door open
and spent the day napping under my pear tree.”
Cooper shook his arrow-shaped head. “I don’t
like takin’ orders from a woman anytime, but a picky one—hell,
lady, for all that you’re a tolerable-lookin’ female” —he leaned
over slightly and shot a stream of tobacco juice into the dirt,
barely missing her skirts—“you just don’t know your place. I guess
you ain’t found a man willin’ to teach it to you, neither.”
Althea’s face flamed hotter. She had never
suffered so many insults in the space of five minutes. She’d done
nothing to warrant them, and she could not bear to stand here and
take them any longer. “I see I’ve made a mistake,” she replied
coolly and turned to walk away.
“
Yeah, with them other boys you did,”
he agreed, obviously misunderstanding her. “I’ll do the work, but
we’re gonna get a few things straight.”
Astounded, she stopped in her tracks and
faced him. He dragged his gray-brown sleeve across his mouth. The
man’s insolent self-assurance nearly took her breath. But the
malevolence she saw in his face made her bite back the hot reply
that sprang to her mind. Oh, what a stupid thing to do, coming here
to talk to him. Stupid. She felt defenseless and knew that he
sensed it, the way a vicious dog smelled fear.
“
No, thank you, Mr. Matthews. I’m no
longer interested.”
He raked her with those cold narrow eyes
again, considering her slender form in a way that was both profane
and derisive at the same time. Finally, a cruel smirk split his
face, revealing oddly tiny, tobacco-stained teeth. “Y’ain’t, huh?
Are you gonna climb up to the roof to patch it? Steer the plow
yourself?”
Althea took a deep breath and forced back the
tears she felt gathering under her eyelids. How could this
obnoxious, rude man who smelled of stale beer, horse manure, and
old sweat make her cry? He was no one to her. Less than no one.
But he was right about one thing—over the
past few weeks she had asked every available man in town before
she’d come here. And she’d heard as many excuses as a dog had fleas
why they couldn’t do the job. Though no one had come out and said
so, their meaning was plain enough: they didn’t want to work for
her. And her advertisements at Wickwire’s General Merchandise and
the Decker Prairie Grange had gone unanswered. Despite that, she
would walk away from Cooper Matthews this minute if she could.
Then in her memory rose the picture of all
the basins and pans she’d had to put out during the winter and
spring rains to catch the drips. Night and day, the steady
plink-plink could be heard throughout the house.
The roof had to be fixed this year. It leaked
over almost every room, and mildew was sure to follow. The gutters
were sprouting weeds. The paint was peeling off the house in
blistered sheets. The garden had to be planted. She might be able
to do that much if she had just a little help. But there was no
one.
“
All right, then, Mr. Matthews,” she
resolved, regaining control of herself and, she hoped, the
situation. “I’ll pay you ten cents an hour plus the cost of
supplies. I’d like you to get started after lunch.”
He rubbed his stubbled jaw with a dirty hand
and grinned again. “We’ll see about all that too, now, won’t
we?”
~~*~*~*~~
In the end, the handyman had demanded and
gotten the outrageous wage of thirteen cents an hour, plus his
meals. He also announced that he would start in the morning, not
that afternoon. There was no point in protesting—he had Althea over
a barrel and he knew it.
After a brief stop at Wickwire’s to get a
little gift for Olivia, Althea trudged the mile back home, feeling
like a mouse worn out by its struggle with a dirty feral cat. Her
reclusive life had not prepared her to deal with men like Cooper
Matthews. In fact, it hadn’t prepared her to deal with men much at
all.