The Texas Ranger's Secret (13 page)

Not the tears from laughing too long.

Tears that sprang from an even deeper well. Unbidden. Unrelenting. Scalding upon the tender flesh that had not yet healed beneath his eyes.

He hadn’t spilled them when he’d buried his father beside his dog.

Nor when he learned he was going blind.

Yet here they were. Forming a tide of misery within him in front of God and strangers alike, and he couldn’t control the soul-destroying flood.

For the first time in his life, Gage stood and walked away from someone he meant to help. Willow had to handle this situation on her own.

He was empty.

Void of anything to give.

He had to get out. Away from accepting all he had lost and what he could no longer be.

Willow would have to deal with the ice cream snatchers herself.

Chapter Nine

W
illow watched Gage leave and wondered what had just happened. He’d laughed so hard she’d thought he was going to burst at the seams. Then suddenly he’d looked as if he might be crying. Ollie and Thad hadn’t been
that
funny. At least, she hadn’t thought so, and laughing at the two rascals would only encourage them to do more.

Still, something about his leaving seemed odd. Gage had turned his face away and lit out of the diner as if he were hot on somebody’s trail or he’d forgotten something important. Maybe she needed to go see about him.

“I never seen nobody laugh so hard they cried,” Thaddeus whispered, pushing away his now empty bowl of chocolate. “You reckon Mr. Newcomb had to go blow his nose or something and didn’t want us to watch him do it?”

Ollie looked up from her dessert and laughed. “Yeah, he probably had some big ol’ man boogers, all green and slimy and full of—”

“I think I’m gonna be sick.” Thaddeus’s skin turned ashen.

“Ollie, you’ve said enough.” Willow closed her eyes to the vivid image her niece had brought to mind. She stood, her stomach roiling. She wouldn’t be able to enjoy a single bite of anything, given Ollie’s talent for description. Maybe the little mischief maker should become the writer in the family.

When her eyes opened, Willow spotted a few of the women she wanted to make amends with among the diners. No doubt their glares meant she had won none of their approval in the way she’d handled this first outing with her niece and nephew. Maybe it was a good thing she felt so compelled to check on Gage and try to establish a more cordial acquaintanceship with the ladies later.

“Both of you wipe your faces. We’re going now,” she told the children, motioning for the waitress.

“I’d like to pay our bill, please,” she said when a harried-looking woman with a white apron tied around her homespun dress arrived. Of the three servers in the restaurant, this one looked the busiest and seemed unhappy to be called over
yet
again.

“That’s fourteen scoops of ice cream,” the waitress informed her, checking the order she’d written down. “You sure that’s gonna be all this time?”

“Don’t forget I had a sarsaparilla,” Ollie reminded her, taking a long drink from the crystal goblet sitting in front of her.

“And one sarsaparilla,” the waitress mumbled as she added numbers, then announced, “That’ll be one dollar and five cents.”

“A dollar five!” Ollie grabbed her napkin and wiped the strawberry ice cream from her lips, then threw it atop one of the empty bowls as she scooted back her chair and stood. “Uh-oh. We may have to wash some dishes if Aunt Willow ain’t got that much, Thaddy-Wumpus. You shoulda left that last scoop or two off.”

Thaddeus could do nothing but groan as he moved to Willow’s side. “I think I’m gonna be sick, Aunt Willow. I can’t wash no dishes right now. You got some money, don’t ya?”

The waitress flashed Willow a look of concern, but Willow quickly reassured Thad. “No need to wash dishes. I can pay for this. Let’s walk with the lady to the register, shall we?”

Willow quickly paid the bill, fortunate that the handkerchiefs had not been all that expensive and she still had the first payment meant for Gage in her pocket. They had not yet established what he would charge, but hopefully, it would be less than whatever she had left once she was done here.

“See those four women sitting at the table together in the corner to the right?” Willow nodded toward the women.

The waitress rattled off their names.

They sounded like names that had been on the list she’d given to the merchant. “Yes, them,” Willow said. “How much is their bill altogether?”

After looking through her list of orders, the waitress did some addition, then told Willow the sum.

Willow handed her the money with a generous tip. “That’s for theirs and the rest is for you for being so patient with the children. Please don’t tell the ladies who did this. Just let it be our little secret, all right?”

“Come back anytime,” the waitress said, smiling for the first time since Willow had called her over. She slipped the extra bill into her apron pocket and put the rest into the cash register. “And bring the kids with you, too.”

Willow laughed, thinking maybe she’d made herself welcome with at least one person in High Plains. Now she had only a few hundred more to go.

She needed to check the population sign that hung between the doctor’s office and undertaker’s place of business. It was always good to know exactly how many hurdles one had to jump.

“Hey, look, Aunt Willow.” Ollie yanked on her skirt as they stepped out of the diner and onto the planked sidewalk. She pointed toward the livery. “Looks like Uncle Maddox and them are done. All the horses and chickens are back inside, except for Mr. Newcomb’s. You reckon that’s where he went?”

Surely Gage would have taken his mount with him if he’d gone home, Willow reasoned. But she didn’t exactly know where home was for him. He’d never mentioned staying in the boardinghouse or hotel. Never really said anything much about himself, so far. She needed to find him. Pay him for the tracking lesson today. Find out when he could meet with her for the next one. Time was precious.

“Let’s go see,” she told the children, taking long strides toward the livery. “They must have hitched our horse to the buggy already. One of your uncles might know where Mr. Newcomb went if he’s not there.”

The town clock that hung just beneath the water tower chimed the hour, reminding Willow that the afternoon was passing quicker than she’d assumed and she needed to finish her business in town. Hopefully, she could still give the horses a good brush-down before she had to keep her word about being home before nightfall.

Much to her surprise, when she entered the livery, the horses were all in their stalls, freshly brushed and curried. The buggy had been stripped of the wedding banner and decorations, and the Trumbos had just finished hitching Daisy’s team to it.

“Got it all done for ya,” Maddox said, grabbing his hat and signaling his brothers it was time to call it quits.

Willow started to hand them some money but the giant shook his sandy-colored head. “Newcomb already took care of it. We went ahead and put the stock back in their pens and such, brushed ’em down and fed ’em, even told ’em it was a little extra something from you this morning. At least, that’s what the man said you’d want them to know. Didn’t tell us why. Just said to do it. That right, Newcomb?”

“That’s right.”

Willow craned her neck to see from where the answer had come and noticed Gage tying the reins of the horse she and Ollie had ridden to the back of the buggy.

“Then we’re off,” Maddox said. “Come on, boys, and we’ll stop in and say howdy to Pigeon before we go. Bear said she wanted to hug on us all and give us a few cookies to take home.”

After everyone waved goodbye, Willow returned her attention to Gage. If he had left the diner to hide any pain the tears had inflicted upon his scars, he sure didn’t show any now. Maybe he’d just used the situation as an excuse to leave her to her own devices and see how well she handled the predicament with Ollie and Thad.

As he had when he’d shown no manners in helping her mount.

And when he had not guided her way to town.

He hadn’t actually taught her anything yet. Just waited to see what she already knew.

And she’d known enough to get them here.

Why had she even bothered worrying about him and his possible pain?

Gage Newcomb was no Texas gentleman, and certainly not one to hitch her wagon to for very long. Not even for lessons she needed to learn.

Why she felt so disappointed in him, she didn’t quite understand. It wasn’t as if he had to live up to that old list she used to keep about what she expected in a man she might marry. That had been nothing but a twelve-year-old’s hero-in-hat-and-buckskin list. They barely knew each other and she hadn’t even considered him a possibility for anything other than her tutor.

Had she?

Yet the image of the man she hoped one day might win her heart flashed across her mind. Words that defined him echoed in Willow’s ears as if a deep voice whispered them.
Brave. Honest. Challenging. Code of honor. Knows his worth and appreciates yours.

She rarely allowed herself to think that such a man could ever come into her life. To love her. So she simply told everyone she preferred not to marry.

No man would ever live up to those qualities. She’d set her sights too high. Her would-be hero had been based on everything her grandfather had said
he
had been back in his younger days. She’d learned that was a lie now, or at best, an old man’s embellishment of the truth.

Her kind of hero simply didn’t exist.

“Y’all about ready to head out?” Gage finally moved around from the back and approached her. “You need to finish up whatever else you have to do and be on your way now.”

His face looked carved from stone. Unreadable. Sullen.

What was he angry about? And at whom was his anger directed? The children? No, he’d laughed at them. The Trumbos? His wave to them seemed friendly enough. Her? What could she have possibly done wrong to deserve such a sour-looking expression?

She wished he weren’t right about the lack of time. She’d go hunt up some other capable local willing to show her the way Texans did things well.

“Tell you what, Mr. Newcomb. If you’re still interested in earning that money we talked about, show up at the ranch around ten in the morning and I’ll be ready and waiting for you. In fact—” Willow reached into her pocket and grabbed the rest of the funds she had with her “—here’s a payment for today. I’ll pay you by the lesson, since I haven’t made up my mind how many I’ll require.”

He shook his head and didn’t reach for the money. “Keep it. Wait till I’ve earned it. Then you can pay me what I ask. I didn’t teach you anything today. You just showed me what you’ve already got.”

At least he’s honest
, Willow thought, slipping the money back into her pocket.

“Oh, and next time, be sure and remember to hitch or hobble your horse when you mean for him to wait for you,” Gage said as his midnight gaze challenged hers. “It’s a long walk back wherever you go without him.”

Willow started to object, wondering why he was spoiling for a fight. Then she remembered. She’d tried so hard to be helpful by picking up the plank for Maddox and his brothers that she hadn’t even thought about tying off her horse. She would have been left afoot.

Not so tragic here in town. But if she, or her character, ever did that on the trail, Ketchum would become a greater laughingstock than she’d made of him already.

Yes, Gage Newcomb was right and honest to a fault.

Maybe she needed to reevaluate just how much of that she wanted in her depiction of Ketchum...or even in her real-life hero one day.

“Tomorrow at ten, then,” she said, neither admitting nor denying that she had made a greenhorn’s mistake in not securing the horse’s reins earlier. Dealing with horses was something she was supposed to already be good at.

“Make it dawn. Or just before,” Gage countered. “Out where the wedding was held.”

“The children may have to come with me,” she said. She and Snow had not yet discussed the schedule her sister planned in regard to taking turns watching Ollie and Thaddeus. The children might have to tag along for some of the lessons, and Willow wasn’t sure she wanted that to happen.

“I’m guessing you won’t have to worry about that this time.” Gage offered her a hand up into the buggy.

“Oh?” She accepted his help and placed her palm in one of his as his other hand clutched her waist and boosted her up and into the seat.

The sound of retching echoed from just outside the livery.

Ollie stuck her head around the door. “Aunt Willow? Uh... Thad just threw up some brown-and-purple lumpy stuff all over his Sunday shoes. You ought to see it. Must have been some of that... Uh-oh...gotta go.”

She disappeared suddenly and her little hand gripped the side of the door. From the sound of it, two unfortunate souls were losing their overabundance of desserts.

Gage extended Willow a hand back down from the buggy and she accepted it.

“You grab a bucket and head to the trough.” He pointed to one of the stalls. “I’ll find something to wash their faces with.”

“Deal,” Willow agreed, hoping this was the last time trouble visited her at the livery. Even if she managed to get the children cleaned up and settled down enough to endure the jostling ride home, she was never going to hear the end of it when Snow learned what had made them sick.

* * *

As the first edges of twilight stretched purple fingers along the eastern horizon, Gage reined the buggy to a halt in front of Daisy’s barn. It had taken half an hour or more to make the fifteen-minute trip from town because he’d had to stop along the way and let the children relieve their sour stomachs over the sides of the buggy. He’d have to clean up the buggy once they were safely in their beds and before he headed back.

Despite his offer to take them to the doctor before leaving town, Willow had insisted they head straight for Daisy’s instead. She’d been certain the doctor would only confirm that Ollie and Thad had eaten too much and nothing but a long night’s rest would provide the cure.