The Ballad of Hattie Taylor Page 11

  Hattie was never quite certain how it happened. One minute she and Moses were horsing around in the water the way they’d done dozens of times. Then the next, as they surged to their feet in the shallows where they’d been pulling themselves along the creek bottom with their hands, they found themselves standing only inches apart. And everything changed.

  Moses suddenly looked different to her. Bigger—even though he’d gained his height years ago. More . . . male. Maybe it had to do with the adult expression in his blue eyes looking down at her. Whatever it was, when he reached out to touch the cloth clinging to her breasts in transparent wrinkles, when he pulled it away from her skin, then watched as the heat of her skin sucked it back into place when he let go, she didn’t slap his hand away. She didn’t yell or blush. She just raised her gaze from where it had been following his fingers’ actions and met his.

  Lifting his hand, he ran a finger down her cheek. Then he kissed her. It was like a Fourth of July explosion. Suddenly, their healthy bodies were pressed together in earnest yearning. Sensations jolted through Hattie at the feel of Moses’ tongue touching hers. She stood on tiptoe and wrapped her arms around his thick neck, pressing herself against him.

  Then self-consciousness struck. The same thought flashed simultaneously through both minds. What are you doing? This is Moses. This is Hattie. Your friend.

  Their lips parted. Hattie’s arms dropped to her sides. Moses loosened his grip on her waist, and they both stepped back. Sheepishness drew identical half smiles on their faces, a tacit recognition this would never happen again. And without speaking they turned toward the shore.

  Where Jake Murdock stood.

  Shock, embarrassment, and shame where none existed before jerked their frames, and the teens stood rooted in place, standing in the creek bed up to their calves in icy, burbling water. Abruptly aware of their lack of clothing.

  Jake, too, stood stock-still, afraid to move. Consumed with rage, his mind echoed with whispers of ribald comments overheard at Mamie’s. The whores murmuring that Moses Marks was the most prodigiously endowed male in all of Mattawa. Maybe in all of Oregon. The lusty laughter as they confided the kid might be an amateur, but he was a gifted one, loaded with raw talent. Had the talented amateur been sharing his gifts with Hattie?

  “Step away from her, boy,” Jake commanded, and his voice sounded as if it hadn’t been used in a century.

  Moses didn’t argue with that voice or the look in Jake’s eyes. He might be ten years younger, four inches taller, and thirty pounds heavier than Jake, but there was the promise of mayhem—and a distinct possibility of death—in Murdock’s eyes should Moses not do exactly as ordered. He stepped away.

  Feeling more exposed with Jake’s eyes on her than she had when Moses plucked at her chemise, Hattie desperately wished she were dressed. She was confused, embarrassed, and mortified right down to her numb toes. Ashamed. The latter emotion infuriated her, and she glared at Jake. She had done nothing to warrant this feeling. All right, maybe it hadn’t been too bright to swim in only a thin chemise instead of the flannel shirt she generally wore. But that was foolishness, not wickedness. Her and Moses’ reaction to finding themselves in such close proximity in a state of undress had been unexpected and unforeseen.

  But they’d silently called a halt to the resulting emotions before anything got out of hand. Knowing Moses had seen her practically naked was awkward—yet it hadn’t seemed dirty until she discovered Jake watching them. Before that, without discussion, they had both known they weren’t willing to sacrifice their long-standing friendship for what was likely only a momentary urge to experiment. It was Jake’s reaction that made everything seem so awful. But who was he to judge them?

  “Get your clothes on, Hattie,” Jake commanded roughly, and the sound of his voice galvanized her into action. She stomped past him to the bushes holding her clothes and struggled into them.

  “I ought to kill you, boy,” she heard him say. “How long has this been going on?”

  Hattie whirled around, buttoning her shirtwaist and stuffing it into the waistband of her skirt. “Leave him be!” she snapped. “We didn’t plan this, Jake; it just happened. And I’ll tell you something else. It didn’t seem nasty until you came along and made it that way!”

  Jake almost sagged with relief, because Hattie would never bother to lie, not even to save her own stubborn hide. But he was still furious at what could have happened. “You think it’s acceptable behavior to parade practically naked in front of a grown man?” he demanded in cold fury, whirling to face her and grateful to see she was finally decently covered.

  The question threw Hattie into a state of confusion. “I . . . I never thought of him as a grown man,” she confessed in a stammer. “He’s always just been my friend, and then—” She glanced over at Moses in confusion. Then, looking back at Jake, she shrugged helplessly. “He’s still my friend.”

  “It won’t happen again, Jake,” Moses said quietly, pinning Jake with a steady gaze.

  Jake recognized sincerity when he saw it, and it was obvious Moses was sincere. It should have calmed him. Somehow, it exacerbated the tension knotting the muscles in the back of his neck instead. “You’re damn right it won’t,” he said with cool finality. “Because you won’t be seeing her anymore.”

  Jake observed the shock dilating Moses’ pupils, but it was Hattie’s response that drained the blood from Jake’s face.

  “You hypocrite,” she said in a bitter little voice, striding over to confront him eye to eye. Her finger punched into Jake’s chest in time to her next words. “You sanctimonious, horrid hypocrite.” Then her arm dropped to her side as she tipped her head back to stare at him.

  “Moses kissed me one time and we both told you it won’t happen again. But don’t you go flattering yourself it’s because of anything you had to say.” She stood toe to toe with him, staring up at him with contemptuous eyes. “It won’t happen because we don’t want to jeopardize our friendship. But who are you to judge, anyway? Moses is free and single, and I’m of marriageable age if that’s what we’re of a mind to do, which we aren’t. If Moses tells you he won’t do something, then he won’t. He’s honorable. He’s not a married man consorting with whores behind his wife’s back!”

  “Hattie!” Moses’ voice was a disappointed reprimand behind her.

  Stunned, Jake didn’t utter a word to defend himself or refute her accusation. He simply stood in front of Hattie, still as stone, feeling sick to his soul. God, how had she found out? This, then, was the reason she had been so cold since the beginning of the month.

  He felt as though he’d swallowed a boulder. Somehow, it was worse having Hattie discover his guilt than if Jane-Ellen had been the one to stand there accusing him. Hattie had always treated him like a hero, and he hadn’t realized until he lost it just how much he’d treasured her unwavering faith in him. Jake tore his eyes away from her contemptuous stare and glanced over at Moses, the sickness he felt showing in his face.

  “I didn’t tell her, Jake. I swear.”

  Jake looked back at Hattie. There was anger in her big, whiskey-colored eyes. But, worse than that, there was disillusionment. He wanted to tell her there were extenuating circumstances. He wanted to assure her he hadn’t wanted it to happen in the first place and it wouldn’t happen again. But he couldn’t. He turned and walked away.

  Moses watched Jake’s back until he disappeared from view. Then he turned to face Hattie. “Well. Do you feel better?” he inquired. “You finally lanced the wound. I’ve watched it fester in you since you saw Jake’s horse blanket at Mamie’s place, but now the poison’s all drained, isn’t it, girl? Do you feel better for it?”

  “No.” Hattie gripped her stomach against a very real pain. She shook her head and discovered with some surprise her legs no longer desired to hold her weight. She sank down on the gravel shore and hugged her knees to her chest. “No, I feel per
fectly horrid.” She looked up at Moses. “I thought I would, Moses. I thought I’d feel perfectly righteous if I ever confronted him with his . . . with his—” She couldn’t think what to call it. “But I guess nothing is ever the way you think it’s going to be, is it? Criminy, I never thought he’d look so lonely and defeated. And I certainly never thought confronting him would make me feel like yesterday’s horse droppings.”

  She looked around the clearing, breathing in the scent of dusty evergreens under a hot noonday sun. Both arms wrapped around her middle, she turned her face to Moses. “Nothing is ever going to be the same now, is it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Studying Moses’ profile as he hunkered at her side staring across the creek, Hattie couldn’t reconcile the feelings observing him created. He was at once familiar and alien. The almost-white blond hair and the thicket of pale eyelashes narrowed against the sun’s glare were the same. He had the same twelve freckles across the bridge of his nose, his eyes were still blue, and the same heavy muscles strained against the rolled-up sleeves of his shirt. Just like yesterday.

  Yet he wasn’t the same. She wasn’t the same. Everything had changed. Moses wasn’t just her friend anymore. He was a man now, different from the boy of a thousand yesterdays.

  “I’ve never been kissed like that before.” She was silent for an instant; then a wry, self-deprecatory smile tilted one corner of her mouth. “Heck. The truth is, I’ve never been kissed at all.” And I’m gonna keep to myself how much I liked it.

  Moses turned his head, meeting her gaze head-on. He feigned surprise. “What’s this? The girl rumored to have the easiest virtue in all of Mattawa has never been kissed?”

  “Yeah. Kinda funny, isn’t it?”

  “‘Funny’ is not the word I’d use to describe it, Hattie-girl.” Moses hitched his rump over until he was sitting hip to hip with her and draped his arm around her shoulders.

  Hattie let her head droop onto his chest. “I’m sorry I didn’t wear my flannel shirt today.” She tilted her head back to look up into his face. “I guess I’ve been taking you too much for granted lately, haven’t I? But I didn’t mean to start anything. Honest.”

  Tucking his chin into his neck, he smiled down at her. “I know that. I expect we’re both getting too old to run around half-dressed in front of each other.” His smile suddenly stretched into a grin. “You kiss real good, though, for a beginner.”

  “Why, Mo-ses Marks!” She slugged him in the chest and leaped to her feet. Hands on hips, she scowled down at him in mock indignation. “You are a shameless bounder.”

  “Aw, shucks, ma’am. That’s what all the ladies say.”

  “I bet they do,” Hattie murmured to herself, brushing the gravel from her skirt as she trailed him to the path through the woods. “I bet that is precisely what they say.”

  12

  Murdock Ranch

  TUESDAY, JULY 17, 1906

  Hattie had never known time to drag on so long. The passage of time from that horrid day at the creek made poured molasses look like a raging waterfall.

  Fall hadn’t seemed that far away when Augusta first set out for San Francisco. Hattie’s festering disappointment in Jake might have chipped at their relationship, but having righteousness on her side had made time fly. With her new doubts over her right to pass judgment on his actions, however, the days dragged unbearably.

  It didn’t help that Jake wasn’t even around to revile. That at least would have sped up the tempo of her days; she was sure of it. But less than a week after their confrontation, he accepted an increasingly rare case from an old client, and it took him away from the ranch to the county seat. He’d been gone for a little under two weeks now. And she missed him. She was still furious with him, and she still despised his lack of fidelity to Jane-Ellen. Yet, she missed him.

  Dang, she hated to admit it. After all, with Jake out of the way, she was finally free to once again roam the stables and barn. Naturally, she took full advantage of the opportunity. She thoroughly enjoyed having the run of the ranch for the first time this summer, instead of being cooped inside with Jane-Ellen for hours on end. And yet . . .

  Below the surface of her enjoyment lay a restlessness she couldn’t shake, couldn’t soothe, could not control. She found herself watching the ranch road at odd moments, searching for his return. She’d give a bundle to convince herself she was merely anxious for him to get back so she could tell him to go whistle in the wind. Except that hound wouldn’t hunt, as Doc Fielding liked to say. Aside from little social niceties like stretching the truth to save another’s feelings, Hattie had a lifelong habit of not lying. Neither to herself, nor to anyone else. She couldn’t wrap her mind around starting now.

  What Jake did was wrong—dead wrong. And her knowing about his infidelity created a giant rent in the once-golden fabric of high regard she’d long held for him. A rip, moreover, she wasn’t certain could be mended. Yet, the longer he was away, the more Hattie wanted back her old laughing Jake. She wanted back the man who had teased her and rumpled her hair. The man who had listened to her opinions seriously, with every indication her thoughts on an issue mattered. As if they were, perhaps, actually every bit as important as those of the men with whom he conversed.

  She rued the day she and Moses had pedaled down the shortcut past Mamie Parker’s stables. If Hattie had the ability to turn back time, she would have one hundred percent handled things differently. She would’ve taken the long way home that day, as Moses had suggested.

  Wishing for the impossible was a radical departure from Hattie’s usual approach to life, and had anyone told her weeks ago that ignorance was bliss, she’d have screeched a denial. Now she wasn’t so sure. She sure as shootin’ didn’t care for the situation as it currently stood. And against her better judgment, she longed for a return to her old, uncommonly close relationship with Jake. She hated their new, stiff formality and had no idea how to relate to the man whose hazel eyes were newly cool. His lanky appearance was as familiar to her as her own. Yet he was suddenly a stranger who treated her with impeccable politeness—and not a speck of his old breezy warmth.

  It was all such a dreadful mess. Nothing was the same as it had been a few weeks back. Would it ever be again? She no longer possessed the conviction that it was her God-given right to feel righteous indignation in the matter. That, at least, might have warmed this frigid hole of loneliness carved in her chest. Did she have the right to pass judgment on Jake? She’d thought so, the day after commencement. Heck, she had taken one look at Jake’s horse blanket and saddle—damning proof his horse was in the local bawdy house stable—and felt it as an instinctive right to judge and try him. Her hero turned out to have feet of clay, and she couldn’t have been more disappointed or disillusioned if he’d been her husband instead of Jane-Ellen’s. She had been angrier, in all probability, than Jane-Ellen would be, did she know what Hattie knew.

  She still was. It was disgustingly clear the men of Mattawa were cognizant of Jake’s infidelity. Moses had known, even before that day. Even through her own shock, Hattie had recognized his lack of surprise. And her suffragist heart had rebelled.

  She was not a radical, chain-yourself-to-the-courthouse-pillar suffragette. She was, however, genuinely outraged by the inequality existing between the sexes, and she’d never hesitated to say so or tartly state innumerable examples. The tendency had alienated her from half the people in Mattawa.

  Well, if this wasn’t a prime example of inequality, she didn’t know what was. Not that she would breathe a word of it to anyone, for to do so would shame Jane-Ellen beyond bearing. But, dang, it made her blood boil! A man’s unfaithfulness had the effect of grouping men together to protect one of their own. Boys will be boys and all that rot.

  But just let a woman be unfaithful in the exact same manner as Jacob Murdock, and she would be labeled a whore and forever ostracized. Now, there was equality and
justness for you.

  With that lack of fairness factoring into her reaction, Hattie had taken one look at Jake’s horse blanket at Mamie Parker’s stable that day and made an immediate, instinctive judgment.

  She had judged, tried, and convicted her once hero—and felt perfectly justified in doing so.

  And yet . . . Judge not, the Bible preached.

  It wasn’t a passage Pastor Stone dwelt on at Sunday services, being more of a hellfire-and-brimstone sort of preacher. But Hattie knew her Bible, and that had always struck her as the essence of Christianity. Hadn’t she herself run afoul of unjust judgments, of character assassinations hastily made and too numerous to count? Didn’t she know how it hurt? Still . . .

  Lest ye too be judged. Well, there you were, then. She would never be unfaithful to her husband. So, she could judge away. Which wasn’t actually the point, though, was it?

  Lord, she was confused. As she went over it again and again in her ever-whirling mind, watching for Jake’s return—wishing he would come back to the ranch, wishing he’d stay away indefinitely—what Hattie wished for more than anything was for Aunt Augusta to come home.

  A futile hope, that one, since Augusta’s return wasn’t scheduled until the end of next month, two weeks prior to Hattie’s own departure for normal school. But it would surely be wonderful if, for whatever reason, Aunt Augusta cut her trip short.

  She rarely even had Moses’ company these days to alleviate her grinding loneliness. Ever since that day at the creek, they had seen darn little of each other. Only three times in the past two weeks. Compared to what time she was accustomed to spending with him, it wasn’t much.

  For a while she’d thought a bit of distance between them was just as well. Two of the times they’d managed to spend together were filled with painful awkwardness. She’d always found solace in Moses’ company, but in both of the recent encounters, he’d spent most of the time they were together telling her he really should get going. Hattie didn’t understand what was happening between them. She was used to being unwelcomed by a lot of people. She had never expected to feel that way with Moses, and it hurt. Everything hurt these days.