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Wildwood. Lynna Banning
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“Thank you, Cora. Will you stay and have some with us?”
The older woman shook her head. “I like my chicken hot, thanky. Mine’s warming in the oven, waitin’ for some pan gravy to go with it. Since you’ve got Jeremiah watchin’ over you, I’ll just go along to my supper.”
She bobbed her gray bun and headed toward the door. “Front door’s unlocked. Jes’ walk on in when you finish—” her china blue eyes took in the disassembled press “—whatever it is you’re doin’. Night, Jessamyn.”
Jeremiah politely held the door for her, and Cora bustled off down the board sidewalk, her solid footsteps reverberating against the pine planking.
Jessamyn corked the half-empty bottle of Child’s and wiped her hands on her apron. “Let’s have supper. I’m starving!”
The deputy declined her offer of a chair at her father’s desk. He ate his fried chicken and potato salad standing up, periodically checking up and down the street through the now-sparkling front window. “Mr. Ben’s gone out to the ranch for supper. I got to keep my eye peeled for any trouble in town.”
“Trouble?” Jessamyn spoke over a mouthful of flavorful potato salad. “What kind of trouble?”
“Just Saturday-night kinda trouble, Miss Jessamyn. Ranch hands in town for a little fun, maybe drink too much and bust up somebody’s head. But this here’s Sunday— won’t likely be any shootin’. That’s why the sheriff rides out Sundays to visit his kin.”
“His younger brother and his wife, is that right?” Jessamyn said. “I met his wife at the mercantile this morning.”
“Yes’m. Mr. Carleton and Miss Ella. An’ Miss Alice. There’s a fine-lookin’ child, ‘cept for her eyes.”
Jessamyn glanced up. “What about her eyes? They looked perfectly normal to me.”
Jeremiah hesitated. “Got her daddy’s eyes. Kinda hard and shifty-like sometimes. Got her momma’s nose and mouth, though. Guess she’ll be all right when she grows up some.”
Jessamyn laughed out loud. “Jeremiah, maybe you just don’t like children?”
“Mr. Ben grew up fine, he did,” Jeremiah countered. “Handsomest man I ever did see, even when we was young’uns. His eyes were different from Mr. Carleton’s, even then. ‘Course, they’re sadder now, since the war an’ all.”
Jessamyn came to instant attention. She needed some background on Ben Kearney for the newspaper article she planned to write. Here, standing before her, was a walking, talking firsthand source.
“What about the war, Jeremiah? Tell me about it—about you and the sheriff, I mean. About your experiences.” She bit into her second drumstick and waited as Jeremiah cleared his throat.
The town lay dark and quiet by the time Ben rode in past the livery stable. Crickets sang, their strident voices carrying over the occasional cry of a coyote. Heat rose from the dusty roadbed, the rich smell of honeysuckle and tobacco smoke drifting on the warm night air.
Ben slowed the horse to a walk. Nights like these made his groin ache. He wanted to yell or break something to ease the tension curling inside.
He needed a woman.
He’d settle for whiskey.
The Dixon House hotel and Charlie’s Red Fox glowed like Mississippi paddle-wheelers. The sheriffs office was dark. Jeremiah must be out keeping an eye on things.
He dismounted, tossed the reins over the hitching rail and pushed open the door to his office. Touching a match to the lamp wick, he watched the pool of golden light settle over the cat lazing on his desk. “Move over, Shiloh.” He lifted the boneless animal off the clutter of papers.
More mail. Maybe something that would provide a clue’ to Thad Whittaker’s murder.
And maybe not. So far, he’d run into nothing but dead ends. It shouldn’t be that difficult to figure out who wanted the outspoken editor of the Wildwood Times silenced, but with each batch of new communications, Ben’s investigation turned into a bigger ball of snakes. A corrupt Bureau of Indian Affairs administrator, shady railroad investors trying to outmaneuver each other, cattle rustled from valley ranches, Indians mad enough to smoke a war pipe. Ben ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. The war’s end hadn’t brought peace to the West. Far from it.
He scratched the cat under its chin until a throaty purr rumbled, then turned his rangy frame toward the open doorway. Maybe he’d leave the mail until morning and drop by the hotel for a steak and some of Rita’s baked beans.
Across the street, light glowed inside the newspaper office. He focused on the paned front window opposite him. Then again, maybe he’d just see what Miss Starched Petticoat was up to at this hour.
He lifted his Colt from the hook behind the door, strapped the revolver low on his hip and headed for the Wildwood Times’.
Jeremiah drew in a long breath and blew it out through pursed lips. “Can’t tell you all of it ‘bout the war, Miss Jessamyn. ‘Twouldn’t be fittin’. But some of it I can.” He cocked his head to one side. “Yes’m, some of it I surely can tell you.”
Jessamyn stopped chewing and listened.
“Mr. Ben and me, we went to war together, like I said. I was his aide-de-camp. Mostly I just do for him like his manservant always done in Carolina—wash his shirts, shine up his boots, be sure he takes time to eat. He was awful busy in the war—had near two regiments to command after the other colonel got himself killed. Mr. Ben got his horse shot out from under him twice at Shiloh. Madder’n a hen caught in the creek, he was.” Jeremiah grinned at the memory.
Jessamyn resisted the impulse to reach into the desk drawer for her pencil and writing pad. Rather than interrupt Jeremiah, she’d commit the important parts to memory.
“How did he get that scar on his neck?” she prompted.
The deputy’s grin faded. “He doesn’t like to talk about it much. He took a minié ball. Tore into his chest and mangled him pretty bad up to about here.” He tapped his throat with a chicken bone.
“The surgeon didn’t fix it quite right, and it festered. Woulda been all right cept’n he was captured at Vicksburg and sent to a Northern prison. They had to cut it open to drain it and then sew him up again.”
Horrified, Jessamyn stared at the deputy. “You mean it was a Yankee doctor who—”
Jeremiah nodded. “Fought like a son of a—Oh, ‘scuse me, Miss Jessamyn. Weren’t any use, though. I saw it had to be done. Otherwise, it’d have the gangrene in it.”
Jessamyn’s appetite vanished. “Oh, how awful.”
“Yes’m, it was.”
“You were there, Jeremiah? But why? Surely you could have gone back to your home on the plantation?”
“I stayed,” Jeremiah replied quietly. “The colonel, he tried to get me to leave him when he saw the Yankee boys comin’ over the hill at Vicksburg. I wouldn’t budge, though. So, in the end they took us both.”
“Oh, Jeremiah! How courageous that was!”
The deputy flushed under his tan. “’Tweren’t no such thing, Miss Jessamyn. Ben and me been friends from the cradle, you might say. We grew up together, fishin’ and ridin’—even some schoolin’ afore his pappy sent him off to the academy. Besides, I promised Miss Lorena I’d watch out for him. A body couldn’t refuse Miss Lorena nothin’, so I stuck with him.”
“Miss Lorena?” The question slipped out