Enchanted Heart (33 page)

“Well, so did I,” Josie said with a nod. She rested the shotgun on the fence rail and then folded her arms beneath her ample bosom before she nodded again and said, “But I got fatter and meaner and damn near wrote my own ticket to hell with my hatred of men.”

Tyree scratched his boot on the ground before he turned scarlet again and admitted, “I know you hate men. But we’re not all the same. If you’d just let me show you…”

“I don’t have time for such foolishness,” Josie scoffed.

“It wasn’t foolish if I wanted you to be jealous of the way I was paying attention to Marty,” Tyree argued with conviction in his scratchy voice. “It was my last resort! After all these years, you never paid attention to me. You never gave me an instant of your time while I did everything I could to make you notice me.”

“All you had to do was tell me your feelings about me, Tyree,” Josie said with a tickle of affection.

Tyree sidled closer to her and whispered timidly, “I love you, Josie Walker.”

“Winters,” she corrected.

“Not for long, if I have anything to do about it,” Tyree replied, jutting his chin out in sudden steadfast pride.

“That’s what I want to hear!” Josie proclaimed with a nod of impressed amusement. “I want a man who can compete with my outrageous arrogance. Keep that attitude up and I might think that you are able to.”

“Well, woman,” Tyree began with a convincingly condescending growl. “If you’ll respect me as a man, I’ll treat you like the lady that you are!”

“I’d like to see that!” Josie exclaimed as she clasped his arm into hers and steered him to the back porch of her house.

Caid shook his head with a low chuckle and slowly stepped away from the couple who seemed to be learning new things about each other. He realized that he had been wrong to attack Tyree, a man who loved Josie so much that he had corrected the wrongs done by her dead husband and then did all he could to get her to notice him (including using another woman to make her jealous), but he wasn’t about to stick around to apologize. Instead, he left them to work out their lives and when he rounded the corner of the boarding house and hurried down the street to the church where he was supposed to meet Marty, he saw the clock tower and realized that he was too late.

Deciding to wait until he could talk to her without fumbling and stumbling like poor Tyree must have been doing, he went back to his hotel to cool off and clean up. He’d never seen a man grovel like Tyree had done and he wasn’t about to look as ridiculous as that poor man. He spent most of the day staring at the marred image in the mirror, a puffed-up caricature of his former face, and admonishing the man who stared back at him for ‘flying off the handle’, as Buck had called it. He had acted impetuously, just as the two Comanche boys had when they had attacked him on Buck’s cabin porch and all he had to show for it was a bruised right eye, a busted lip, and a misaligned jaw. His pride didn’t fare all that well either.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Later that evening, Caid went to look into the window of the boarding house to see if by chance, Marty would appear, but he was disappointed that the house was dark and quiet. He kicked the bottom step and turned to go, but a man’s voice made him look up at the window at Tyree’s head as he stuck it out and asked who was there. A moment later, Josie leaned out and then pulled Tyree back inside. Muffled giggles waned to silence as Caid went away shaking his head, marveling at Love’s ongoing battle with Fate in the never-ending effort to either keep lovers apart or to bring them closer together, depending on which one won. Then, he went to bed and hoped that Love was the victor where he and Marty’s were concerned. Let Fate be damned.

That same evening, Greta and Buck looked at each other over their meal, wondering why Caid had not come to church and why he had not come to their house to see Marty. The day moved to dusk without incident even though the two fully expected Caid to burst through the door of their home to talk to Marty, whom they had invited to stay for lunch and then dinner. But he never came. Buck drove Marty home later that evening and as he was helping her from the surrey, he smiled almost apologetically and told her good-night.

She turned to leave him, knowing that something had happened to make them happy that morning but as the day wore on, their moods changed to sullen and worried. Still confused, she took Buck’s hand to let him guide her to the bottom of the steps, then she turned to ask him the question that had been burning in her heart, “What is it, Buck? Is Greta all right? She didn’t lose the baby, did she?”

“No,” he said quickly. Then he tried to change the subject, “Wasn’t that a fine sermon this morning?”

“I suppose,” she said. Then she admitted, “I didn’t pay much attention to it. And you didn’t either. Why did you keep looking back at the doors?”

“I was expecting someone,” he said quietly.

“Who?” Marty asked with excitement.

“Never mind,” he said, shuffling his feet. “It doesn’t matter. You have a good night, now.”

“Good night, Buck,” Marty said, knowing when to keep pressing this man for answers and when to stop.

“Sleep well, Marty,” he said and turned to go, his forlorn expression making Marty worry all the more.

Whatever was troubling him, she knew that he would not confide in her, so she decided to go to bed. When he was ready to tell her, he would. Or she would get it out of Greta later. One way or the other, she was going to find out what happened today.

She had thought of telling them about the awful experience that she’d had with Tyree at the dance, but their unusual moods made her keep her story to herself. Just thinking about how he had taken advantage of her knowing that she was engaged to another man made her seethe with anger and resentment. She was appalled that a man of his seemingly prominent stature in town would take advantage of a young woman, and an engaged one at that. It just was not decent, she felt, for him to kiss her in the presence of her students, in front of Josie, and in spite of her continuous averting of his advances.

“A perfect gentleman indeed!” Marty growled at the mirror while she unraveled the curls in her hair and thought about the night’s events. “On his best behavior! I’d hate to see him when he’s being a scoundrel!”

She had told him over and over that she was not interested in anything but a platonic relationship with him, but he could not and would not believe her.

That night at the dance, after he had taken liberties with her, she had slapped him soundly on the cheek and had walked away from him. But he had followed her to the bottom of the steps and into the shadows. He had tried again to kiss her. But all the while, he had been looking at the dance floor, which seemed curious to Marty. Finally, while he looked away again, she had raised a knee to his groin and when he’d recoiled in pain, she had fled to Josie, who had met her on the steps of the pavilion with open arms. Josie had guided Marty from the center of town back to the boarding house, but not before she’d huffed her indignation at the man who had stooped in pain.

“Men!” Josie had spat in the night air as she’d looked back at Tyree who seemed to have pled with her with his mournful eyes. But she had tucked Marty into her arms and had whispered words of indignation at the man who had taken advantage of Marty.

With her new friend there to protect her, Marty felt comfortable enough to sleep, knowing that Tyree Parnell would not dare to come into the boarding house with the shotgun cocked and leaning against the window sill. That night after the dance and Sunday night after church and a day spent with family, she felt safe, almost as safe as she had felt with Caid there to protect her.

But unknown to Marty on that Sunday night while she mentally condemned him, Tyree was sleeping just a few doors away in the arms of the woman who had vowed to hate men for the rest of her life. The shotgun had been tucked away in the closet, the years of hatred had been wiped away by the loving arms of a man who had wanted this, needed this ever since he had seen young Josie Walker trudging into town.

Marty stretched out in her bed and thought of the journey that had brought her here. Images of her friends and Cousin Elsa waving good-bye to her and Greta while the twins perched on the wagon filled with their belongings as they left the little town of Wasserburg, Germany mixed with waves of excitement that coursed through her tiny body while the giant ship carried her across the ocean to Texas.

Split-second images of faces, places and things that had been long forgotten as time-past came flitting back into her mind like fire-flies just before a stormy night. The joys mingled with the pains of growing up on the farm just outside of New Braunfels, hard-working, back-breaking work that even frail Greta dove into as if her life depended upon cultivating a living from that barren Texas dirt. Childhood joys that grew like cornstalks tangling with the sadness of losing a calf, a puppy or a chicken to the harsh, blistering sun or the tornadoes that ripped the land apart like savage demons.

Memories of being a grown woman and wishing that she could just go back to those earlier days that somehow succumbed to tragedy and heartache swirled around her like the river that had threatened to take her with it to oblivion. The losses of her unborn children and then her first husband Elias came rushing back to her like the torrid waves that her future husband had rescued her from. And finally, visions of Caid’s handsome face filled her mind and heart with the simple bliss of knowing that she was loved, that she was in love, blanketed her in a warm and cozy nothingness except that remarkable reflection as she finally drifted off to sleep. Dreams of an enchanted journey that was void of pain, of misery or loss swept her away where she drifted on a lifeboat of love, never pitching in the unforgiving wind, never rocking uncontrollably on devastating waves and never overturning to suck her into the depths of debilitating despair.

****

At nine o’clock on Monday morning, according to the tower and his pocket watch, Caid pushed open the door to the general store. He needed a new suit of clothes because he had already torn and tattered two in his haste to wreak vengeance on someone. But this was not the store owned by Tyree Parnell, for he would never be able to face that man again, even though he knew that the man would not challenge him for a rematch. Instead, he’d found his way to the first store that had been opened in Fredericksburg, a store owned by J. L. Ransleben. He purchased a new pair of pants, a new white shirt and a new pair of boots and was pretty pleased with the image in the full-length mirror in the dressing room, despite the bruises and bumps on his face. Then, he marched over to the public school building to find out if his fears were warranted or if Marty still loved him.

For her, Monday morning was a blissful repeat of the day before where nature was concerned. The trees fluttered with chattering birds and the townspeople seemed to bustle about in a hurry around her as Marty made her way to the school house. She rang the bell, bringing her students into the classroom and then, she began the school day. Occasionally, she would smile and daydream about Caid and her future with him, hoping, no knowing, that hers would be as happy a marriage as Greta’s and Buck’s was.

At noon, she released the children from class and allowed them to go outside for lunch. There was a Spring storm brewing and she wanted them to enjoy the dry day while they could. She remained inside, sitting at her desk and correcting pages of homework, inching the lamp closer to the papers as she hunched over them. She was so engrossed in her reading that she failed to see the shadow that overtook the opened door of the one-room school building.

But she heard the footsteps that came closer to her, ominously echoing throughout the room. Memories of Tyree announcing himself without saying a word as he stepped across the wooden floor of the school room many times before, passed through her mind. Memories of that night at the dance, that stolen kiss, that sick feeling that it had evoked in her, made her more angry than she was that night. She jerked her head up and narrowed her eyes at the menacing figure that came toward her in just a few bounding steps. Then she jumped from her chair, sending it crashing to the floor.

“You keep away from me, Tyree Parnell!” she warned while she backed into the wall behind her and picked up a ruler for protection. “I told you the other night that I didn’t want anything more to do with you. If you lay another hand on me…”

“That’s what I came to hear,” a familiar voice pierced the air. A voice so clear and demanding, as if it conveyed emotions that the man that had spoken them had kept inside for far too long, a voice that told her that he was back to claim the woman who had promised her love for him for eternity.

Marty dropped the ruler and scrambled around the desk to fall into his arms as she exclaimed, “Caid!”

He wrapped his arms around her, winding his fingers into her long braided hair and pressing his lips to hers. With all the emotion that churned inside his body, he transferred his love for her in the kiss that took her breath away. Time unhurriedly drifted like cotton-puff clouds on a soft summer sky while he bathed her in kisses that showed her on no uncertain terms that he was back in her life whether she liked it or not. He belonged to her, not the other way around, as he had, only hours before, had declared to God and everybody when he had busted up the saloon and had put a dent if not a hurtin’ on that giant of a man called Buck.

Truth be told, if she didn’t accept him, love him, like she did before, he might as well go back to that lonesome cabin and let those Comanche braves finish the job on him. Without her, he was nothing. Without Marty, life was not worth living.