Dorothy Garlock - [Dolan Brothers] (4 page)

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Authors: With Heart

BOOK: Dorothy Garlock - [Dolan Brothers]
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They walked down the darkened street to her car without speaking; then she followed a truck as dilapidated as the car the hijackers had used to block the road. The bed of the truck, without sides, held a piece of machinery lashed down with ropes. A block off Main Street, they left the paving and drove onto a hard-packed road of red clay. Kathleen followed Johnny’s lead and dodged the potholes. He stopped in front of a one-story bungalow with a porch that stretched across the front. A dim light glowed from a lightbulb between the two front doors. Johnny came to her car as she was getting out.
“Do you want to meet Mrs. Ramsey before we unload the car?”
“Are you thinking that I may not want to stay here after I meet her?”
“It isn’t a fancy place.”
“I’m not used to a fancy place. I’m used to a clean place, but I need to know—about Mrs. Ramsey.”
“She’s decent, if that’s what you mean. Adelaide Vernon wouldn’t have recommended her if she wasn’t. She’s a good hardworking lady who hasn’t had an easy time of it.”
Kathleen was keenly aware of the cowboy who stood close beside her on the darkened road. He looked confident and dangerous . . . yet she felt perfectly safe with him.
“I’ll take your word for it.” She walked beside him to the porch. As they stepped upon it, one of the doors was flung open and a small girl rushed out.
“Hi, Johnny? Is that her?”
“Hi, Emily.”
“Emily, for goodness sake!” The woman who came out to take the girl’s hand had snow-white hair and a sun-browned, weathered face. She was short and very plump. “Excuse Emily, miss. She’s excited.”
“She’s pretty, Granny, and she ain’t fat. You said she’d—”
“—Well, aren’t you smart to see that she’s pretty.” The woman pulled the little girl’s head to her side, hugged her to shut her up, and smiled at Kathleen. “Adelaide sent word this morning that you’d be here sometime today.”
“Thank you for the compliment, Emily.” Kathleen smiled at the child, who had suddenly turned shy and hid her face against her grandmother.
“Come in. I’ll show you the room.”
“Mr. Henry was kind enough to show me the way here.”
“Go on into the front room, Johnny.” The top of the woman’s head came to Johnny’s armpit. She indicated the door that she and the girl had come through.
“Thanks, but I’ll wait out here and help Miss Dolan with her things before I go.”
Mrs. Ramsey opened the door and led Kathleen into a room that had the smell of recent cleaning: lye soap, vinegar, and linseed oil. The only furniture was a bed, a dresser, and a wardrobe. The bedcover was a white sheet with a spray of appliquéd flowers in the middle. A colorful rag rug lay beside the bed on the scrubbed wooden floor. Curtains that Kathleen recognized as having been made from white flour sacks and embroidered with yellow-and-green cross-stitch along the hems hung at the windows.
Kathleen glanced around the room, then at the small woman who clutched her granddaughter’s hand. There was an anxious look in her eyes. She hurried to open a door revealing a bathroom with a clawfoot tub, a sink, a toilet with the waterbox near the ceiling, and a door leading to another room.
“The water is . . . a little rusty, but I catch rainwater—” Her words trailed.
“I love to wash my hair in rainwater,” Kathleen said to fill the void. “Do you rent by the week, or by the month?”
“By the week, if that’s all right. Two dollars . . . or four if you want breakfast and supper. Ah . . . nothing fancy, but plain eatin’. We have meat on Wednesdays and Sundays.”
“That’ll be fine.”
“You’re takin’ it?”
“Oh, yes. This is just the kind of place I like.” Kathleen opened her purse and took out one of the ten-dollar bills Johnny had made the hijackers return. “I’ll pay for two weeks.”
The woman’s hand was shaking when she reached for the bill, and Kathleen was sure she saw mist in her eyes.
“But . . . I don’t have change.”
“That’s all right. I’ll owe you two dollars for the third week.”
“I’ll do my best to make you as comfortable as I can.”
“Is she stayin’, Granny?”
“I plan on it, if you want me, Emily.” Kathleen patted the little girl on the head. “Will you help me bring in my things?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You can park your car behind the house if you want to get it out of the road.” Her new landlady’s voice was raspy.
“Thank you, I will.”
Kathleen, Johnny, and Emily made several trips to the car before Johnny carried in her heavy typewriter. He looked around for a place to put it.
“Just set it on the floor. My trunk is coming down on the train. I can use it as a table.”
“I thought a reporter did her writing at the newspaper office.” Johnny divided his glance between her and the near-new machine.
“I do . . . most of it,” she said, not wanting to tell him that she used the typewriter almost every night and most always on Sunday afternoon.
“I have a small table out at my place. I’ll bring it in, if you like.”
“Oh, would you? I’ll buy it from you.”
“I’d have to have fifty or sixty bucks for it.”
“Fifty or sixty—” Her eyes questioned. Then, “Oh, you!” she exclaimed when she saw him trying to keep the grin off his face. “Johnny Henry, you’re a tease.” His smile would give a charging bull pause for reflection, Kathleen thought, and wondered why it was that he was so “at home” here.
“That’s everything out of the car. Do you want me to move it around back?”
“I would appreciate it. I probably won’t use it much. Rawlings is about half the size of Liberal.”
“Be right back.”
When she was alone, Kathleen looked around the room that would be her home for a while. The door leading to the front porch had new screen on the bottom. The one going into the opposite room stood open, and she could see a couch and a library table. The third door led into the bathroom. The rooming house where she’d stayed in Liberal had six boarders, all on the second and third floors, and they shared one bathroom. This was almost like having one all to herself.
She heard Johnny when he came in the back door and paused to talk for a while with Mrs. Ramsey and Emily. She could hear the murmur of their voices but not what they said. She was taking things out of her suitcase and placing them in the drawers when he appeared in the doorway of the connecting room.
“Here are your keys.”
“Thank you.” Her gaze was drawn to his like iron to a magnet. Occasionally, Kathleen was attracted to men, mostly professionals or businessmen who wore suits and ties and were well versed on world affairs. She never expected to be attracted to a cowboy, a young one at that. The dark eyes that looked into hers were deep-set, and even though they gleamed with a friendly light, they looked to be as old as the ages.
“Welcome,” he said after the long silence between them. “I’ll bring in the table the next time I come to town.”
“I feel that I’m imposing. You’ve already done so much.”
“My pleasure.” He slapped his battered hat down on his head. “Good night.”
“’Night, Mr. Henry.”
Kathleen heard the squeak of the screen door and went to the porch. He was going down the walk to his truck.
“Thanks again,” she called.
“Don’t mention it.” His voice came out of the darkness.
He ground the starter several times on the old truck before it started. The lights came on, and it moved on down the street. Kathleen watched until it turned the corner and was out of sight.
• • •
Damn, but she was pretty.
Johnny hadn’t been especially interested in meeting Tom’s niece from up north after Tom had told him that she was a newspaper reporter who had written stories that had been sent out on the wire to the big papers, that she was investing money she had inherited in the Rawlings paper, and that she was bold enough to drive across country by herself. He couldn’t imagine a woman like that needing any help from him.
Well, she had needed him today with the hijackers. He had done what any decent man would have done under the circumstances.
When he had seen her car sitting, still loaded, in front of the
Gazette,
he had stopped before he had given it much thought. If he hadn’t stopped, Paul would have seen to it that she got to Mrs. Ramsey’s. But no, old dumbbell that he was, he had to stick his bill in, take her to Claude’s, help her unload and then further complicate matters by offering her a table for her typewriter. She had been nice, but she probably was uneasy with the feeling that she owed him.
He wasn’t usually uncomfortable around city women, but when he’d first seen Kathleen Dolan he’d been stunned. She was lovely and warm, with a smile that would melt the coldest of hearts. Her hair, and there was plenty of it, was the color of a sunset, her skin creamy white, and those damn freckles— Her looks hadn’t matched the image he’d had of her. He’d thought she’d be more hoity-toity with her education and ability to
buy
into a newspaper. He couldn’t imagine being able to write down things that hundreds, maybe thousands, of people would read.
She was far beyond his reach, and he’d best stop this silly thinking about her and keep his distance. Everyone in town knew he came from Mud Creek trash and they wouldn’t let him forget it. Almost all of them knew him as the offspring of a whore and a redskin. It was true. He had grown up knowing that and also knowing there was nothing he could do about it.
Johnny had made a niche for himself out on the Circle H. In addition, during off-seasons, he made a little money working for the Feds on special jobs. No one around here knew about that, and that’s the way he wanted it. He had been content until two o’clock this afternoon when he had come over the rise and seen the sun shining on a head of bright red hair. The damn woman had disturbed him, had made him want to be with her and want to try to interest and impress her.
“Horse hockey!” Johnny pounded the steering wheel with his fist.
The presence of Kathleen Dolan angered him because suddenly his niche no longer seemed enough for him.

 

Chapter Three
“C
ome eat, Miss Dolan. Granny’s made chocolate gravy.” Emily, dressed for school, stood anxiously beside the kitchen door.
“Chocolate gravy?” The thought made Kathleen’s stomach queazy.
“You girls sit down.” Hazel Ramsey opened the oven door and took out a pan of golden brown biscuits. “Do you drink coffee, Miss Dolan?”
“If you have it made. Don’t make it especially for me. I usually drink tea, a taste I acquired from my grandparents in Iowa. I’ll get a box while I’m in town today. I’ll leave some at the office and bring the rest home. I like tea hot when it’s cold and cold when it’s hot.”
“Can I have some?” Emily asked.
“Sure.”
“You don’t drink tea, sugar.”
“I will if Kathleen does.”
“You don’t call grown-ups by their first names,” Mrs. Ramsey chided gently.
Kathleen buttered a biscuit and helped herself to the peach jam. Mrs. Ramsey split a biscuit, placed it on Emily’s plate, and covered it generously with the light brown gravy.
“Don’t you want some?” Emily asked.
“Well . . . I’ve never had chocolate gravy.”
“It’s good.”
“Then I’d better try it. I may be missing something.” Kathleen placed a spoonful of the gravy on a biscuit half and tentatively took a bite. “Humm, it is good. I can’t taste the chocolate at all.”
“Told ya.” Emily glanced at her grandmother and beamed, showing a missing tooth.
Kathleen walked part of the way to town with Emily, who was in the second grade. The little girl cast proud glances up at Kathleen when they met her curious schoolmates and, at one time, reached up and took her hand. She chattered happily about her school activities, making sure the children walking ahead of them were aware that Kathleen was her special friend.
“’Bye, Miss Dolan. See ya tonight,” Emily shouted when they parted.
“’Bye, Emily.” She watched the little girl go slowly down the walk, making no attempt to catch up with the other children.
It was five blocks from Mrs. Ramsey’s to the downtown area. Many heads turned to watch the pretty redhead, not only because she was a stranger in town, but because Kathleen walked with the confident grace of a woman who knew who she was and where she was going. She approached the
Gazette
right at eight o’clock, wishing with all her heart for a cup of tea to help fortify herself for the first day at the
Gazette.
“Good morning.” Adelaide rose from behind the desk as soon as Kathleen walked in.
“Hello. Are you feeling better?”
“Oh, yes. I’m sorry you had such a poor welcome yesterday.”
“I’m glad I was here to carry on. Did I make too big a mess of things?”

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