Josie

Eighteen Months Later

“That bridge is holding up well,” Josie remarked, watching from the eastern porch as a large freight wagon rumbled over the freshly build bridge that now spanned the ford.

“As much lumber as we used it had better,” Tom grumbled in his deep rasp, where he sat behind her.

A silver boom had hit the Castle Mountains in grand fashion, drawing prospectors and ore wagons to the Carroll Trail. The freight route ran straight through the Slade ford. The east porch, off the new addition, overlooked it, and Josie was fond of taking her meals out there and watching.

The addition and porch had been part of Tom’s wedding present to Josie, and that made her love the porch even more. He’d had it finished in time for their wedding that spring, and while Paul and Virgil had stood witness for them at the church, Ray, Delgado and the widow Sefton had decorated the outside walls of the edition and porch. The Haskells had helped cooked a wedding feast, and for the first time in far too long, families had gathered to celebrate each other.

“That the mail?” Tom asked at length, drawing Josie back to herself.

“Two letters, one from the territorial governor’s office, the other to me.”

“What’s the governed have to say?”

Josie opened it, letting her eyes scan the formally worded letter.

“Pardee’s trial ended in conviction. The Musselshell Land & Livestock Company has been officially dissolved. They’ll be auctioning the remaining cattle, but those of us who helped overwinter them will have first rights of refusal.”

She looked over at her husband.

“We’d better have a look before we let good stock go cheaply.”

“And whose fortune will we be using for that purchase?” Tom snorted, but his prod was teasing, rather than critical.

They’d done fairly for themselves over the winter, but with the new hands hired on to help manage the larger herd, they didn’t have a lot to spare.

“Me, presuming my first month’s lease clears as expected.” She smiled at his raised brows. “All the papers covering Pardee’s downfall, a prospector from Butte wired to inquire about the schoolteacher with a claim she wasn’t looking to homestead herself.”

She moved to sit in the rocking chair opposite Tom.

“I got the message when I was in town last week, and sent one back, describing the cabin and named my price for a mineral lease. I offered him lower than the going rate, but with the stipulation that I get a five percent stake in whatever he finds. A formal agreement to be signed at the courthouse.”

Josie smiled at the possibilities.

“He arrived in town early this week, walked my claim and looked at the little cabin we built, with Delgado and me, while you and Paul were out with the herd. And he signed the contract yesterday, with the understanding that the first month’s lease be wired to my account by the end of the week.”

Tom considered everything she’d said.

“Does this make you a mining baroness?”

“I don’t know about that, but it does make me a woman with an income, and a husband who can stop worrying about the price of cattle.”

“I wasn’t worrying,” Tom scowled.

“You’re a terrible liar, Tom Slade,” Josie laughed.

Movement caught her eye, drawing her attention to the river where Ray and Paul stood along the bank, long fishing rods moving with methodical sweeps. Paul had taught Ray to fish earlier that spring, just as Virgil had taught Paul as a young man. Now father and son often absconded down to the rivers edge.

The circular symmetry of it was echoed all around Josie, and she took comfort in those patterns. She’d come to sell a dead man’s land, and had ended up finding her own new life instead.

“I’m going to ride to the ridge,” Tom said, standing.

“Watch out for gopher holes,” Josie waved him off with a smile.

He liked to ride up to the ridge where Paul’s wife was buried, and sit looking out over the valley. Josie rode with him often, but not up to the ridge. That was Tom’s place. He’d be back, and she’d be on the porch waiting, watching the sky change colors over Cray Mountains as the sun set in the west.

Tom always came back, now, and Josie was always waiting for him.

***

“After you rode to the ridge, I realized there was a back to that letter from the territorial governor.” Josie took up Tom’s empty supper plate, sliding it down into the wash water, and retrieving the coffee pot from the stove.

“What’d it say?” He offered up his cup, a slightly untrusting expression on his face.

Josie poured his coffee, and then some for herself, setting the pot on a cloth beside them.

“Petrie was convicted alongside Pardee. He’d apparently been backdating mineral filings, and obstructing public records by hiding them, or allowing others to tamper with them. He was Pardee’s man from the off.”

“And you outwitted him from the moment you arrived.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Josie began, but her husband raised one strong hand to cut her off.

“He underestimated you, Pardee underestimated you, I underestimated you. And you went right along without arguing us, just sticking to your own guns in your own way. I would, indeed, say you outwitted Petrie. Just by being yourself.”

She felt herself flush at his approval. Tom Slade was not much for compliments, but when he gave them, he meant them.

“The letter to me, from someone we didn’t know? It was from a widow in Bozeman, asking for advice about legal papers she didn’t understand.”

Tom considered that, sipping his coffee.

“I reckon we can get to Bozeman after most of the calves have dropped and before anything needs to be done for the summer. I don’t want you going alone, but I’ll behave and make myself scarce while you do what you need.”

He wouldn’t ask for more explanation, and that was one reason Josie loved him. She looked to the door, where the satchel she’d carried off the stage eighteen months back still hung. The letter was tucked inside it, as if already prepared for the journey.

A widow whose husband’s cattle operation had been seized by a rail company under terms she did not understand had written asking Josie if she would be willing to look at them. She’d read in the papers, and how a widowed schoolteacher in the Musselshell had brought down Chester Pardee and his operation. She wasn’t interested in taking down a railroad, only in getting what she was due.

The money from her lease with the Butte prospector meant Josie didn’t have to charge anything just to help another widow make her way in the world. And because her husband understood her, she didn’t have to explain why she wanted to.

It was not the life she’d expected to have, not the way in which she’d expected to end up here, and not the future she’d ever imagined. But it was the one she’d helped build with her own hands, and it sure felt like the one she was meant to be living.

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