Somebodys business a cla.., p.1
Somebody's Business: A Classic Historical Western Romance Series, page 1
Somebody’s Business
Nickel Hill
Book Three
Irene Bennett Brown
Somebody’s Business
Kindle Edition
Copyright © 2023 (As Revised) Irene Bennett Brown
Wolfpack Publishing
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Las Vegas, Nevada 89183
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, other than brief quotes for reviews.
eBook ISBN 978-1-63977-783-9
Paperback ISBN 978-1-63977-782-2
Contents
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Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
A Look At: The Women of Paragon Springs
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About the Author
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To my faithful readers everywhere
and to my most helpful husband, Bob
Somebody’s Business
One
Despite the gurgling of the flooded, runaway creek in back of the house, it was a beautiful day. Sunshine warmed the cool air and white clouds fluffed in the blue sky. Jocelyn Pladson hastened toward the house with a basket of eggs from the henhouse, her small son, Andy, trotting along at her skirts. She did her best to shake off sadness at thought of the horrible flooding in so much of Kansas this spring, taking lives, destroying homes and businesses. Washing away roads and farmland. Kansas folks would long remember this year nineteen-six, but could be glad it wasn’t so bad as that San Francisco earthquake in April. She’d seen the horror of that in the picture slides on her neighbor, Mabel Goody’s stereoscope and she’d never forget it.
There was talk among neighbors that most of Kansas’s flooding troubles were tapering off which meant they could set about normal life, take up travel again. Clearly, their creek wasn’t quite so full and rampant. First thing, she’d make a trip to town for her talk with her friend Edna Ann Lockhart. Edna was desperate to sell the Skiddy Livery Stable, her husband, Carl, having died so sudden from typhoid that turned into pneumonia. Gone from Edna’s life, gone from running the business. Edna Ann had implored Jocelyn to please buy the whole affair, the livery barn, pens and pastures. Jocelyn could get back into the business of buying and selling mules, which she’d been pretty good at in the past, working with her boss, Whit Hanley. Edna Ann would have the money from the sale to join the only family she had left, in Louisiana. She’d start over there.
Jocelyn grimaced and rubbed her cheek with her free hand, her steps slowing. It was ridiculous for her to own a business. A dress shop or restaurant, maybe. But a livery stable—a woman hostler? Not to mention the absence of money to buy? She stopped in her tracks, thinking.
“What’s the matter, Momma?” Andy asked, his face puckered. He waited.
“Nothing’s the matter, hon, Momma was just thinking.”
“You make funny faces when you’re thinkin’.”
She laughed and kept going. “Yes, I suppose I do.”
Her mind picked up where it left off as she opened the back door and Andy scuttled into the kitchen ahead of her. She couldn’t help being excited, thinking of what owning her own business would be like. Money from the livery and mule sales, if she were running matters profitably—and she would put her shoulder to that end—could help in many ways at Nickel Hill Ranch.
A decision had to be made one way or the other, and soon. Best to keep in mind that she already had endless responsibilities with family here on the ranch, and stop dreaming.
She settled Andy happily at play in the front room with the cardboard barn and carved wood animals she and Pete had made for him. She knelt beside him, ruffled his sandy-colored hair and gave the top of his head a kiss, smiling when he crowed for the toy red rooster in his hand, then sent it chasing after a clucking hen. Pretty clever observation for a three-year-old going on four, she thought, puffed with pride. He was a little farm boy, after all.
Moving about her small kitchen, she stored the eggs in the icebox, taking a second to admire the vanilla custard pudding she’d made for supper before she closed the door to the icebox. She sorted beans and put them to soak for supper on the back of the stove, the teakettle to the front for a cup of tea, her mind as busy as her hands. Wishing now that she hadn’t taken Carl, Edna Ann’s husband, so much for granted the many times she and Pete had used his services at the livery. He’d died so unexpectedly, leaving Edna Ann alone, to grieve and face a mountain of problems.
A few days after Carl Lockhart’s funeral, Edna Ann confided to Jocelyn that her only family left was a much younger sister she’d never met. “She lives in Louisiana with her husband and she’s expecting a baby. We’ve written letters back and forth for years and now she wants me to come. I’d like to meet her, help with her baby.” Grasping Jocelyn’s hand and wiping her eyes with the handkerchief in her other hand, she’d added, “To make it happen, I have to sell the livery. I’ll need the money for such a trip, and to start a new life.”
Jocelyn’s heart ached for her friend practically every day since.
An old friend of Carl’s, a broken-down elderly cowboy, named Prank Morgan, had come to the funeral and stayed to help out by running the livery. He wasn’t able to buy the business, but he was willing to stay on and work for the person who bought it. “I’m desperate,” Edna added, ending the conversation. “Couldn’t you buy it, Jocelyn, please?”
Sitting at the table and blowing at her hot cup of tea, Jocelyn considered that this could be a perfect opportunity to get back into the mule trading business as well as owning the livery. There’d been problems in the past, but she’d enjoyed much of her time with mule herding and selling. Her efforts were profitable for her boss, she’d earned well from the project, too.
Such income now would be blessed welcome. Help to finance needed improvements here at the ranch. Like building on a summer kitchen, which she’d long wanted. They could make repairs to their worn-out old wagon, and to their buckboard. Maybe invest in a fine new buggy and team? Blamed if she wouldn’t love new parlor tables and a piano, too.
In her mind’s eye as she sipped her tea, she viewed the livery operation in detail—the large barn and pens in back of the livery. There was good pasture but she’d need more graze to hold mules she’d buy and want to fatten up between sales. There was more pasturage close-by that could be rented or traded for, she felt sure. Critter as pasture rental payment. Livery services would continue, they’d stable travelers’ horses. Offer buggy, wagon, and horse rental as always. Might have some hay, grain, and corn hauled in from the home place for the livery animals, to add to whatever else might be needed from George Jacobsen’s Feed and Seed Store, down the way from the livery. She set her cup down, smiling to herself.
She suddenly realized that Andy’s noisy play in the other room, seemingly his wooden pig having a grunting argument with the crowing rooster, had ended. How long had he been quiet? She pushed up from the table, started to call out to him, then stopped. Her beloved little boy had likely fallen asleep there on the floor, it wouldn’t be the first time. He was still young enough to be prone to both a morning and afternoon nap. She moved quietly to the other room, saw the scattered toys, but no sign of Andy.
She hurried upstairs to the two bedrooms to see if he’d crawled onto a bed there, or was after a toy he’d left there. No sign of him. “Andy? Andy, where are you? If you’re hiding, come out now to Momma—so I know where you are.” Her breath caught in her chest when she waited and no response. Rushing back downstairs, she tripped on the next to bottom step and nearly fell. Hurrying to the screened back porch, she looked out into the yard toward the creek and her heart froze. He was almost to the flooded banks, a small wooden boat in his hand.
Flinging the screen door open and moving quickly down the steps she called out as quietly but firm as she could, “Andy, wait for me. Come back to Momma now.” The soft churning sound of the creek gripped her heart as she made her way toward him.
He looked at her over his shoulder, then took another few confident steps toward the tumbling creek. Jocelyn moved fast, trembling head to foot, sweating, but calling as calmly as possible, “I have a cookie for you, sweetie.”
Andy hesitated then turned, his smal
Trembling all over, she placed Andy on a chair at the kitchen table. With a shaking hand she poured a cup of milk, brought him two raisin speckled cookies. Carefully, she removed the boat from his small hand and rammed it into her apron pocket. Unable to stand on her feet a minute longer, she took another chair, eyes on her precious child who meant more to her than life itself. Trying to hide her tears, she wiped her face with her apron. He looked at her with worry, and she smiled.
She explained, not for the first time, “You mustn’t go to the crick without an older person with you, Andy, remember?”
“I’m big.” He puffed his chest out to prove it, looked up at her wide-eyed.
“No, you aren’t, you’re just a little boy, and nobody should go near the crick when it’s flooding like it is now. Nobody. It’s very dangerous, Son, no matter how big a person might be. I want you to promise me you’ll stay away from the crick. I want you to always play in a safe place, the front porch or front yard, or in the house with Momma, so that nothing bad happens to you.” She drew him to her chest. “Do you understand?”
“When I’m big as Rommy can I go to the crick?”
Jocelyn sighed. “When the crick is normal, not deep and flooding like it is now, and you’re as big as your brother, Rommy, I think that’d be fine.” Rommy, the young boy she and Pete had taken in and given a home to almost four years ago, was close to seventeen years old now. Six feet tall, lanky, a good-natured, likable young man. His childhood name, Rommy, was now more often than not shortened to Rom.
His father, Chester Treyhern, a widower and suspected cattle thief on the run, hadn’t wanted to give Jocelyn and Pete legal custody of Rommy, as they wanted, but was perfectly willing for them to keep him as part of their family. Rommy was more than happy with the situation and after a year of referring to Jocelyn as ma’am, he now called her simply, ‘Ma’. Pete was still Pete.
Andy, his eyelids drooping sleepily, asked, “Where’s Rom? I want to tell him the crick is bad and I can’t go there. Where’s Papa? I want to tell him.”
“They’re searching the pastures for new baby calves. Helping the Mama cows if they need to. They’ll be bringing the mama cows and their little calves to the barnyard pens tonight and we can go up to see them. Help some of the baby calves learn to suck milk from a bottle if they need us.”
“Okay,” he said sleepily. “Nila will go with us, too, to see the new baby calves?”
“I think she’ll want to, yes, when she gets home from teaching school, and we’ve all had our supper.” Nila, a distant cousin of hers, was another homeless young person they’d taken to live with them, like family, when the girl was fifteen going on sixteen. Her mother, Flaudie Malone, living in Missouri, had ignored their request to adopt Nila legally, had given no opinion one way or the other. Over time, Nila had gone from calling Jocelyn ‘Mrs. Pladson’ to most times, ‘Jocelyn’ and occasionally ‘Ma’. Jocelyn gave a deep, satisfying sigh. Hardly matters anymore, we couldn’t love both Nila and Rom more if they were our born children.
Nila was close to twenty years old now, just finishing her second-year teaching Gorham School. Three or four days a week in the summer, she waited tables in the hotel dining room in Skiddy. The young woman had wonderful dreams, and would likely fulfill them. Half of every dollar she earned, she saved for the traveling she wanted to do, as a journalist someday, sending back stories for newspapers. When she had any free time, her nose was in a book, studying.
Andy was about to fall from his chair, a raisin on his lip, half a cookie crumbled in his lap, his eyes closed. Jocelyn lifted him gently and carried his warm, limp little body upstairs to his small bed in her and Pete’s room. She tucked him in for a nap with his sock monkey.
She looked down at him with her heart in her throat. He could have drowned today so easily in that awful creek, her precious child lost to her forever. It couldn’t happen. He must grow up, tall and strong like his older brother, Rom, his daddy, Pete. She had to keep a close eye on him, all the time. How could she do that? Why was she even thinking for a minute that she could operate a business with all she had to do at home? Taking care of her family that was so dear to her?
On Saturday, Rom, dusty and sweaty from work in the barn, brought Jocelyn’s mule team and wagon down to the house for her drive to Skiddy. She shooed her foraging chickens, noisily clucking, from the yard and toward the hen house and turned to him. “Thanks, Rom. Nila or I was going to hitch up these mules but glad you went ahead and did it for us.”
She took a moment for her old mule friends, Alice and Zenith. She’d been through a lot with these beloved old mules and they meant the world to her. As she gave Alice a pat, Zenith brayed like a rusty gate opening. Jocelyn gave him a last stroke and turned with a laugh to climb into the wagon.
Rom touched his hat to her. “Ain’t no trouble hitching these mules. I had to come out here to the well and drink me about a gallon of water anyways.”
“Fine then. We’ll be back by suppertime. Take a rest in the shade if you need to, Rom.” He shrugged and headed off toward the well. She called after him, “There’s fresh ginger cookies in the house, get yourself a handful.”
“Splash plenty of that water on yourself, Rom,” Nila called back over her shoulder, teasing.
As they set off, Jocelyn was thinking how much she loved this country, how glad she was that she and Gram had moved here to the Flint Hills from Kansas City years ago. On either side of the road, rolling tallgrass prairie spread as far as the eye could see. Pastures were speckled occasionally with grazing cattle, some long-horned, or wild horses running free. From time to time, a small cluster of ranch buildings showed in the distance. Above it all, an immense blue sky held beautiful cloud arrangements to entertain the eye.
She turned to smile at Nila, on the far side of their wagon seat, and down at Andy tucked between them. For most of the first mile, the young woman and little boy carried on a friendly argument about Andy’s sock monkey. Did he come from darkest Africa, as Nila claimed, or Andy’s bed as he insisted? “He’s not from Aferka!” Andy shouted and doubled up laughing.
“Don’t be too sure,” Nila said with faked seriousness. “I have a book from school that I’ll show you. There are pictures of monkeys climbing trees in Africa and they look exactly like your monkey.”
Andy shook his head and said quietly, “But he’s not from Aferka. I know he’s not.”
“Yes,” Nila answered, giving him a hug. “You’re probably right, Andy. My mistake.”
Jocelyn reflected on the time a few years back when Nila had been sent to live with them. A grave, anxious young girl, plain looking but not unattractive with straw blond hair worn in a coronet of braids. Bright, hazel eyes. Nila’s guilt that her mother had forced her on the Pladsons soon vanished. She enjoyed where she was, worked hard, and in short order became a true member of the family. The time was coming, though, that Nila, full-grown now, would strike out on her own, fulfilling that dream to be a traveling journalist, writing about faraway places that most folks would never have a chance to see. A fine young person, Jocelyn thought, looking again at Nila and smiling to herself.
Pulling her thoughts away to what lay ahead, Jocelyn squared her shoulders and took a deep breath. She’d leave Nila and her small satchel off at the hotel. So far, Nila enjoyed her off and on summer job waiting tables in the hotel’s dining room, spending nights when necessary with another waitress in a small room off the hotel kitchen. That done, she’d continue on to the other end of town to give Edna Ann her decision. Let the poor woman down as gently as she could. It wasn’t going to be easy, and she dreaded this more than anything else she could think of.
