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Claiming Her Legacy

By Linda Goodnight

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Oklahoma Territory, 1890
Papa was dead.
Murdered.
Even with a month passed and green grass already sprouted atop Finn Malone’s lonely mound of red dirt, Willa Malone and her two sisters could scarce take in the desolate truth.
“He was a good papa.” With tears glistening in eyes as blue as cornflowers, Savannah, a blonde vision in a yellow cotton dress, placed a bouquet of wildflowers next to the simple wooden cross.
At twenty, Savannah was the baby of the family, protected, coddled, and educated in the east because of her delicate health. How would a fragile butterfly like Savannah survive for long in a place as wild and lawless as Oklahoma Territory?
“He loved us,” Savannah declared as if trying to make herself believe it.
Willa had her own opinion about Papa’s devotion. If their father had loved them enough, he’d have made provisions for them. If he’d loved them enough, he wouldn’t have gallivanted off to search for gold, leaving three young women to farm a fledgling homestead alone on the Oklahoma prairie.
And he wouldn’t have left them owing a loan they couldn’t repay.
Willa was the oldest. Caring for the family rested on her shoulders. It always had.
At the moment, she didn’t know how to move forward. And there was no going back.
Lord, help them all.
A crow flapped to the bare earth nearby and pecked, his iridescent blackness gleaming in the bright spring sunshine. The air smelled fresh and clear, of yesterday’s rain and windswept prairie grasses. Thick droplets of dew glistened on the meadow surrounding Papa’s grave. Above, in the blackjack tree, a twitter of songbirds serenaded the Irishman who’d loved music.
Swallowing a lump of grief thick enough to choke a horse, Willa turned abruptly and bumped into Mercy, the middle sister with the gift of healing who did not know how to heal herself.
Anger stirred in Willa. At Papa for leaving and dying. At the man who’d taken his life for a pack mule and a pocketful of gold dust. At whatever had broken Mercy’s spirit. Most of all, she was angry with herself for being helpless to change any of it.
“We have work to do,” she said in her no-nonsense voice. “Best get with it.”
With a yank at her heavy brown riding skirt, Willa marched down the incline and away from the ragged rows of wooden crosses denoting the dead of Sweet Clover. In the little more than a year since the settlement had sprung up along this branch of the Cimarron River, death had forged its mark on the settlers and the quiet hillside.
Silent now, the sisters walked as one toward the little farm on the edge of town-a town that had yet to produce much of anything except a handful of hopeful businesses and a weekly mail delivery.
Their farm had produced even less.
A dozen scrawny chickens pecked the ground behind their one-room cabin. The Guernsey cow, udder full and dangling, stood beneath a shade tree and mooed hopefully at their approach.
Here, at least was something to be thankful for. Chickens and a cow bartered from a man returning to his native Virginia after his wife died of childbirth last winter put food on the table. The woman’s grave and that of her child, like Papa’s, testified to the harshness of this new territory.
“I’ll gather the eggs and make custard,” Savannah said with forced enthusiasm. “Won’t that make a grand breakfast?”
What she wasn’t saying was that they had little else to eat but eggs and milk until the early garden began to produce, and no money remained for provisions to tide them over until that happened.
Willa was loath to ask the mercantile owners for more credit. Hank Fleming knew as well as she that the Malone sisters had little in the way of repayment.
In an effort to encourage her sunny sister, though discouragement rode her own shoulders, Willa nodded, her tone kind, if solemn. “You make good custard, Savannah. I’ll get Brownie milked.”
Worrying was not Savannah’s job.
“Would you rather have biscuits and eggs? Or pancakes topped with Brownie’s butter and a whip of fresh cream?”
Mercy shook her head, her smile tender. “Our Michelangelo at the stove.”
“Oh, not me,” Savannah said with all modesty. “Aunt Francis. She was a true artist in the kitchen.”
More than once, Willa wished her youngest sister had stayed in St. Louis. Though aging and not in the best of health themselves, the godly aunt and uncle had welcomed Savannah while she’d attended Miss Pennington’s School for Young Ladies. Theirs was a much better situation than rugged, dangerous Oklahoma Territory for a delicate young woman.
Savannah’s crippled leg and frail disposition were a constant concern to her sisters.
“You should go back to St. Louis. Your aunt Francis would welcome your company.”
Savannah, lagging behind from the brisk walk, waved away the comment.
“No, Willa, I do not wish to return to St. Louis. I am perfectly content here with my dear sisters.”
Willa slowed her steps to allow the now limping Savannah to catch up. Suddenly, she heard the pound of feet on packed earth.
“Miss Mercy!”
All three women whirled at the shout. Aiden O’Shea, the towheaded son of the livery owner, raced across the bare front yard and huffed to a stop three feet away.
Panting, hands to his thread-bare knees, the spritely child motioned behind him toward the clapboard town. “Miss Mercy, come quick. Some feller’s been shot.”
Green eyes intense, Mercy’s hand went to her heart. “Shot? Where? Let me retrieve my bag.”
Willa touched her sister’s shoulder. “Go with Aiden. I’ll fetch your gear.”
“In the cupboard. Bring my gunshot kit, as well.” Mercy whipped toward the boy. “Where have they taken him?”
“The saloon. Pa said to hurry.” Aiden’s eyes were wide and worried. He glanced toward town and then back to Mercy. “The fella’s bleeding bad. I saw him come ridin’ in. He fell off his horse right smack in the middle of the street.”
“No time to waste then.” With a jerk of her chin toward the buildings in the near distance, Mercy hiked her skirts to the tops of her boots.
Message delivered, the young lad spun on his heels and ran, bare feet eating up the dirt path.
“Take Jasper,” Willa said. The draft horse was docile enough to ride bareback and easy to catch.
In an answering swirl of brown calico and relentless dust unsettled by last night’s rain, Mercy raced toward the horse, hobbled in the grass behind the cabin. In the rush, her bonnet slipped from her head. A pile of glorious cinnamon colored hair gleamed beneath the bright sunshine.
Both of Willa’s sisters were beautiful women. She, on the other hand, was practical and hard working. Fine attributes, her two step-mothers had promised, though the terms had seemed lacking to a young girl hungry for approval.
Willa hurried inside the cabin for the bag containing Mercy’s medicinal herbs, bandages and sewing tools. With the nearest doctor more than twenty-five miles away, folks in Sweet Clover called on Mercy Malone’s natural gift of healing in times of sickness or injury.
Mercy, a far better Christian than Willa could ever be, never asked who was sick or wounded or how far she might have to travel. She simply went. Though at times the personal cost was great, God had given her a gift and Mercy would not let Him down.
Willa often wished she shared her sisters’ steadfast faith. Not that she didn’t believe in the mighty power of God. She did.
She also believed God helped those who helped themselves, even if Savannah insisted no such scripture existed. Willa wouldn’t know about that, never having read a single word of the Holy Bible.
By the time Willa and Savannah arrived in town-a double row of upstart buildings along a wide dirt lane-the injured man was laid out on the gambling table inside the saloon.
As much as any civil woman disliked entering the confines of such an establishment, both the space and the whiskey proved useful in times such as this. Thankfully, the saloon didn’t open until after noon and, other than those who’d carried in the wounded man, only the barkeep and owner were inside clearing away last night’s mess.
Willa sucked in an inadvertent hiss at the stench of stale liquor, unwashed bodies, and most troubling of all, the overpowering scent of perfume, a testament to the unholy truth that more than liquor was sold inside these walls.
Savannah held a handkerchief to her nose and moved toward a straight-backed chair. Willa winced to watch her, the limp more pronounced after the unrelenting rush to the saloon.
Bent over the silent, bleeding man, Mercy was already at work, her face a study in concentration. Her long, gentle fingers moved at breakneck speed.
Two men stood on the opposite side of the table. Willa recognized Jim Woolsey, a goose-necked cowboy with a knack for rope making, but the other man was a stranger.
“Your bag.” Willa scraped another chair closer to her sister’s side. “I’ll set it here. Tell me what to do.”
Mercy’s nod was short and without eye contact. Her focus remained on the injured party. From her sister’s expression and the man’s limp stillness, Willa reckoned the situation was grave.
“Help me remove the shirt,” Mercy said. “I can’t find the exit wound. If there isn’t one…”
No exit wound meant trouble. Willa knew that much about doctoring from the times she’d tried to assist Mercy. Gunshot wounds were as much a fact of life here in lawless Oklahoma Territory as dust and wind. Most recovered. Some didn’t.
Her jaw went tight. Men. They fought over everything, and expected women to clean up their messes.
Though she’d rather be horsewhipped than deal with bleeding bodies, Willa moved into place to do her sister’s bidding.
Her empty stomach protested. Sweat broke out on her upper lip. Mercy, accustomed to the smell and sight of blood didn’t notice that her oldest sister was about to humiliate the Malone name.
Willa clenched her teeth and swallowed hard. She could do this. Didn’t she wish someone had been there to care for Papa when he’d been shot?
Instead, he’d died in the dirt beside his campfire, alone.
She gulped again, fighting nausea and grief in equal amounts. Careful to breathe through her mouth, she reached for the patient’s shirt buttons. Her outstretched fingers trembled. She clenched her fist, fighting for control.
Someone’s strong presence eased into place beside her. A masculine hand pushed hers aside. “I’ll do this. You ladies shouldn’t even be in here.”
Willa wanted to laugh. Did he know how many times she’d “assisted” her singing Papa home from saloons? She turned her head to tell him so, but the words died on her lips.
The sick stomach fluttered with some new symptom that was not altogether unpleasant. Eyes as blue as Savannah’s, though rimmed in red and full of secrets, gazed at her from a very handsome face. There was something else in that face, too, something that stirred the woman in Willa.
She, an old maid of thirty and a tomboy to boot, considered herself long past experiencing vapors when in the presence of a handsome man.
Perhaps she’d considered wrong.
So shocked was she at the untoward reaction, she forgot to be stubborn and, instead, stepped back.
“Thank you.” With another gulp, this one having nothing to do with the smell of a stranger’s blood and everything to do with the strange buzzing in her own, she muttered, “Mercy, I’m here if needed.”
As she moved away from the sick bed, the handsome man in black vest and trousers took her place and began the swift job of removing the wounded man’s shirt. Willa caught the faintest whiff of some woodsy citrus scent with the underpinnings of whiskey. Or was that the saloon itself? It was hard to tell. Nonetheless she was grateful to stranger. Grateful and disturbed.
The bartender leaned on his broom to watch, but when the procedure took more than a few minutes, he moved on in his white apron, sweeping up last night’s debacle.
Why would a man spend hours of time and all his money in such a place?
She wondered too at the attractive man quietly assisting Mercy.
Sun wrinkles spoked around his eyes. His skin was tanned and his longish black hair neatly combed. Although his linen was pristine white, the shirt looked rumpled as though slept in, and his boots could use a good shine. Not overly tall or overly broad, he, nonetheless, had a presence. A very manly presence.
Goodness! What was wrong with her?
She pressed both palms to her burning cheeks. Who was he anyway?
As if he’d assisted in repairing broken bodies before, the disturbing fellow followed Mercy’s orders precisely and quickly. At one point, he signaled to the barkeep to bring a bottle of whiskey and a glass. The gunshot victim had not regained consciousness and thus, was in no need of pain relief, but Willa reckoned the whiskey was to cleanse the wound.
The stranger poured a shot and tossed the amber liquor down his throat, shuddering once before resuming his role as Mercy’s assistant.
If Mercy noticed she didn’t react. Willa frowned, shocked and disapproving. So, she had smelled whiskey on him.
At nine in the morning?
“He’s lost too much blood,” Mercy said at last. “I don’t think…”
She bent to her patient’s chest and listened. She pressed bloody fingertips to his neck and then to his wrist. Finally, she stepped back with a shake of her head. Her sigh of surrender pierced the silent company with finality.
“Is he dead?” the barkeep asked.
Dead. Such a harsh word. And all too common on the frontier.
“Yes.” Mercy leaned the back of a bloody wrist against her forehead for one long, silent, aching moment, eyes closed. Today she’d battled the grim reaper and lost. She’d take the death hard. She always did.
Savannah made a small noise of distress and turned away from the bloody sight. Willa, too, glanced to one side and fought off a rising sickness.
The heavy, acrid scent of death, violent and needless, rose in the somber silence of mortals facing mortality. Perhaps they pondered their own deaths, for it was mankind’s lot in the end. An appointment with death, though none of them knew the day nor the hour.
With a heavy-hearted exhale, Mercy spoke to the two men hovering near the gaming table. “Gentlemen, I’d be grateful if one of you would inform Mr. Whitaker. Perhaps he can find time from his barbering duties to prepare a coffin. Ask if he’ll take the man’s horse in exchange for his usual fees.”
“The big gray outside is a fine animal, Miss Mercy. Whitaker will take her, all right.” Boots shuffled as cowboy Jim donned his hat. With a respectful nod to the ladies, he turned to leave.
The disturbing stranger said nothing, though he accompanied Jim out the door. In spite of her better judgment, Willa followed him with her gaze. He was hatless, and his hair, black as a raven’s wing, gleamed in the morning sun.
There was something unsettling about the man, something more than the shot of whiskey at nine in the morning and the ridiculous feminine flutter he’d caused beneath her breastbone.
In his well-made vest and black trousers, he was neither cowboy nor farmer.
A mystery. That’s what he was, though why she should think of him at all was the greater mystery still.
A passel of town folk who had gathered outside the saloon closed in around the cowboy and the mystery man. Through the window glass she heard voices rise and fall in question.
An unexplained death stirred fear in the hearts of peaceful settlers.
Behind the bar, glasses clinked as they were washed and shelved for the day ahead. Feet shuffled. Conversation returned.
Strange how a man could die before their very eyes, and after a moment’s curiosity, people returned to business as if nothing had occurred.
A man’s life is like grass that withers quickly and is soon forgotten. Didn’t the Good Book say that somewhere?
“He’s with God now,” Savannah said quietly, her hands folded as if she’d been in prayer. Likely, she had been and the fact that Willa had not even thought of praying shamed her a little.
Still, any man who’d been shot in the back had probably done something to deserve it.
“Is there any identification on him? If he has family…”
Even with a telegraph office in a nearby town, weeks had passed before they’d heard about their father’s death. Families deserved to know what had happened to their loved one before a wagon rumbled up to their door with a wooden coffin in back.
She reached for the deceased’s bloody, battered leather vest lying on a nearby chair.
“He looks familiar.” Savannah rose to peer intently at the dead man. “Mercy, look at his face. I think we know him from somewhere.”
“I was so busy seeing to his wound…,” Mercy said.
The ashen face, peaceful now in death, did look familiar, but Willa couldn’t place him.
“Maybe something in here will identify him.”
Inside the vest pocket, Willa found a few coins, a letter from someone in Illinois, and a tarnished pocket watch.
She handed the letter to Savannah. “Read this. Look for a name or a place of residence.”
Savannah took the letter without comment. Willa’s sisters knew her secret shame. They could read. She couldn’t.
The failing didn’t have a thing to do with lack of teaching. Savannah’s mother, their father’s third and final wife, had tried for two years, but Willa had been too stupid to learn.
As a child she’d wondered if her ignorance had driven her last stepmother to run away. That, and trying to deal with a sick and crippled baby in a harsh land so different from her genteel Georgia upbringing.
“What else is in there?” Mercy gently covered the dead man’s face with a towel provided by the barkeep.
“A wad of papers.” Willa unfolded the printed sheets. “Well, look at this.” Even a dunce who couldn’t read recognized the documents. “Wanted posters.”
“I remember him now,” Mercy said. “He’s the bounty hunter, Mr. Smith.”
Though Willa doubted the lawman’s real name was Smith, she too recognized him as the bounty hunter who’d come through Sweet Clover a few weeks ago with a promise of bringing Finn Malone’s murderer to justice.
Now even that small hope of retribution was gone, bled to death in the Red Diamond Saloon in Oklahoma Territory. Papa’s death would go unpunished.
Mercy rifled through the posters until she found the face she sought. “Here he is. The scoundrel who murdered Papa.”
All three sisters stared down at the drawing of the outlaw.
Charlie Bangs, the cowardly snake who’d murdered her father. Cold, beady eyes, dark, unkempt hair and a droopy handlebar mustache.
Hatred curled in the pit of Willa’s stomach. She’d never forget that face as long as she lived. Charlie Bangs deserved to die.
According to the prospector who’d brought him home, Papa had befriended the man who’d taken his life. He had even shared his camp and grub. Unlike his cynical daughter, Finn Malone believed the best of people.
His friendly nature had gotten him killed.
Oblivious to the dried blood staining her fingers, Mercy smoothed the poster flat. “Would you look at this? A thousand dollar reward. No wonder men take to the bounty trails.”
“Papa’s life was worth more than that!” Savannah exclaimed hotly.
“Indeed,” Mercy said, “but a thousand dollars is still a great deal of money, Savannah. Enough to pay off Papa’s bank loan with plenty left over to order that sewing machine you’ve been mooning over in the Sears Roebuck catalog.”
“I wasn’t mooning. The machine is a thing of great use. I could sew for the ladies of the community as well as for us.”
Willa didn’t think many in their fledgling settlement had an extra penny to spend on tailored yard goods, but Savannah needed her dreams. She was a good hand with a needle and took in mending here and there. The pay wasn’t much. Certainly not enough to repay the bank loan.
Finn Malone in his great rush toward the gold fields had borrowed against their land claim for a grubstake. Now that he was gone and the dab of gold with him, she and her sisters must either repay the loan or find themselves on the streets.
A step on the stairs drew her attention to a blurry-eyed woman with the dregs of last night’s rouge smearing her cheeks. At Willa’s glance, the saloon girl quickly receded into the dark confines of the stairwell.
With a shudder, Willa said, “Bounty hunting beats working upstairs for Madame Frenchy.”
“Willa Malone!” Mercy’s eyes widened. “We could never do such a thing.”
“Maybe that’s what the girls upstairs thought too at one time. We need money, and there’s hardly any way for a woman to survive out here unless she has a man to support her.”
The admission galled her.
“I could marry Mr. Baggley,” Savannah said, but the dread in her eyes cut Willa to the bone.
“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re not marrying that old goat to put food on the table.” Homer was sixty if he was a day and only washed once a year if the creek was high and warm.
Worse still, he had the manners of a billy goat, blatantly making his attentions clear one afternoon in the mercantile for the whole town to hear. As long as Savannah could cook and “bear him a passel of young ‘uns,” as he put it, he didn’t care one whit if she was “gimpy”.
“He is rather repulsive,” Savannah admitted. “But I’ll marry him if I must.”
Willa’s jaw hardened. “You won’t.”
Doubt gnawed around the edges of her mind. What if they had no choice? What if her baby sister was forced to marry a rich old man who had only one thing on his mind?
Marriages of convenience were not that unusual for women alone, but how different were they from Madame Frenchy’s girls?
Willa shuddered, fingering the wanted poster. She’d do about anything to keep her sister from being sold off like a brood mare. Savannah was a beautiful, educated Christian woman. Any man worth marrying would love her for those wonderful qualities and ignore her damaged leg.
But no such man was pounding on the door.
Mercy, too, was beautiful and smart. Willa’s thoughts skittered to a halt. Something untoward had happened to Mercy, something that had changed her view of marriage and family.
They were three women in a territory brimming with males and not a one of them could attract a suitable husband.
Unlike other ladies, the Malone sisters could not depend upon a man for help. Their future would be up to them and the Good Lord.
A tomboy out of necessity, Willa had never had a beau and never expected to at this great age, though she’d once cherished such romantic hopes.
The thought of the handsome stranger circled around in her head like a pleasant dream. Pleasant, yes, but too much trouble. Whiskey at nine in the morning?
Then there was Papa, always looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and full of wanderlust without a bit of sense for money. The fact that he’d come west for the ‘89 Land Run and then promptly headed for the rumored gold discovery was proof of that.
Men, in general, did not impress.
The Malone sisters were on their own.
Mercy’s doctoring was usually repaid with jars of jam or a slab of meat. Rarely a coin crossed her palm. Savannah had her mending.
Willa, as usual, felt useless. She’d tried hiring out to farmers. She could plow and plant and work cattle as well as any man, but her offers were refused. After all, she was naught but a woman.
She took heart that in a few years’ time the homestead would supply their needs.
They didn’t have a few years. The bank loan hung over their heads like a noose.
Her gaze fell to the wanted poster.
Suddenly, a new resolve came over Willa. A chance to finally and forever have a home of her own that no one could take away. A chance to revenge her father’s death.
“I’m going after him.”
“What? Who?” Two furrows appeared between Mercy’s sleek, ginger eyebrows. “Whatever are you talking about, Willa?”
“Him. Charlie Bangs.” She stabbed a finger against the outlaw’s handlebar mustache. “I’m going after Papa’s murderer.”

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