A Cherished Gift Read online

  Suddenly, it felt like too many people might disapprove her accepting Frank’s invitation. Thinking about it made Alice uncomfortable. But what did it matter if other people disapproved? It wasn’t anyone’s business but her own if she chose to engage in a little innocent entertainment while Jake was away.

  Alice led the girls outside just in time to watch Reed Browning load the last of their order into the carriage. “Thank you for loading everything, Reed. Are you enjoying your new job with the Jepsons?”

  “It’s perfect!” Reed exclaimed. He had reddish blond hair that curled around his ears. His smile brightened what had turned into a stressful situation. “I’m learning the mercantile business from the ground up and getting paid for the knowledge. Someday, I’ll start my own business, or be in a position to buy out Mr. and Mrs. Jepson since their son is more interested in medicine than taking over their business.”

  “That’s so exciting!” Alice said. A couple of wagons passed by, making it hard to hear anything except the jangle of the horse harnesses and the clopping of their hooves on the road. “I’m so happy for you.”

  “Guess what the most enjoyable part of my job is?” Reed asked, his blue eyes fairly sparkling in the sunshine.

  “The money?” Alice said.

  “Well, that and delivering people’s orders every other morning. A lot of ladies come into the mercantile in the afternoons and place their orders. They don’t want to deal with taking the bulky items home, so I get paid to roam around the countryside making deliveries. I don’t even mind if there’s snow on the ground and it’s freezing cold. It’s a refreshing way to start my day.”

  “You make your job sound like a great adventure.”

  “It is! Even when it snows. It’s like driving into a painting with pure white snow covering farms, fields, and trees. Sometimes, when the wagon passes underneath a tree, a breeze sends sprinkles of glittering snow down on me. I love to watch the glitters and the stillness of the countryside is invigorating.”

  Alice smiled. “You almost make me want to ride with you on your deliveries.”

  Reed looked into Alice’s eyes and returned her smile. When he spoke, his voice softened. “You’re welcome to ride with me sometime when I’m out delivering your way. I’d be happy to pick you up and take you with me, even if it’s only for an hour or so. I guarantee you’ll be happy you came along.”

  Alice’s heart beat a little faster. She had already accepted an invitation from Frank Baldwin that had upset her sisters. What would they think now if she accepted Reed’s invitation? But she had been so lonely and sad since Jake left for the city. A crisp morning ride sounded like just the thing to cheer her and enliven her day. “I’d love to ride on one of your morning deliveries,” she said.

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  All the way home, Fern and Beth chided Alice about her lack of loyalty.

  “Jake’s only been gone a few weeks, and already you’ve dumped him for two new suitors,” Fern chided.

  “What Jake will think?” Beth added in her best scolding voice.

  “I’m just going to have a little fun with friends,” Alice said, her voice tight. “Frank and Reed are friends. Just friends. I’m still in love with Jake.”

  The rest of the ride home was definitely quieter than the ride into town.

  Alice ran up to her bedroom after helping her mother put away the new supplies and before the baking started. She had to get away from the scolding glares of her sisters. Too many people assumed that she and Jake would marry as soon as his six-month apprenticeship was completed, and that’s what she hoped for too. But why did she have to sit home and wait in the meantime? She wasn’t sure she could endure six months of this loneliness.

  Was she wrong to feel this way? Was she being unfair to Jake? And even though Jake had not returned for a visit yet, he had written to her.

  And now another letter.

  Alice smiled as she thought about the letter and shut her bedroom door. She it out of her pocket, and carefully opened the cream-colored envelope. Then she climbed up on her bed and read.

  Dear Alice,

  It seemed as though your last letter would never get here. When it finally came, I just grabbed it and went straight to my room. There, all by myself, I read it over and over. You are such a dear girl to me.

  Last night a robber visited our boarding house. He made off with ten dollars from one fellow and five dollars from another. From now on I’m keeping a chair propped against the door to my room. It isn’t cause I’m afraid, but if anyone got in my room, I might hurt them.

  I found a new pal since I’ve been here, and the past couple of weeks he has taken me all over Boise in his buggy. We sure had a lot of fun! We went up on a big hill where we could look out over the city. Boy was it beautiful. He told me about his girlfriend, and I told him about a very sweet girl who means everything to me. This Thursday we are going to a dance place, but I’m sure none of the girls in Boise can dance as well as you.

  Please answer soon. Every day when I get back to the boarding house, I check the credenza where the landlady puts our mail. I’m always hoping to find a sweet-smelling letter from you.

  Love,

  Jake

  “Hmm . . .,” Alice mumbled as she pursed her lips and held Jake’s letter out in front of her. “So Jake and his friend are going to a dance place in Boise. Surely he doesn’t expect me to sit home while he dances away in the big city.”

  2

  Two weeks later, Jake Weston hurried into the cigar scented newspaper office, a wide grin on his face. He’d grown up helping his father run the Clover Creek Weekly, but now he loved working for his uncle at one of the bigger daily newspapers in Boise. Jake walked straight to his Uncle Lyman and handed him the rough draft for an ad he’d secured for the newspaper. After three arduous weeks of going door to door trying to sell business ads, Jake finally had his first ad. And it was a nice income-producing ad from the most prominent men’s clothing store in town.

  The ad featured men’s suits for twelve dollars and fancy vests for two dollars and twenty-five cents. It was accompanied by a rough sketch of two men; one wearing a suit and the other wearing trousers with a shirt and fashionable vest.

  “Excellent, Jake! I knew you could sell ads as well as write copy. The newspaper business is in your blood!” Mr. Weston, or Lyman, as his uncle preferred to be called, was a portly man with balding hair. He was teaching Jake every aspect of a daily newspaper. On Jake’s second day on the job, Lyman had sent him out to the electric company to write an article about why the city lights had been turned off. Jake had headlined his article, Ridenbaugh Ditch Frozen Over. The article stated that there wouldn’t be any more electricity until the ditch thawed.

  “Thanks, Unc . . . I mean Lyman.” It was hard for Jake to drop the word uncle when he addressed his father’s brother. His parents were country people with high standards who had taught him and his younger brother to use the more formal address for their aunts and uncles.

  “I knew you would get the drift of how to sell ads,” Lyman said. “Just keep that winning smile on your face when you approach people. A pleasant, confident attitude is all it takes to win customers. And a newspaper can’t run without ads to pay the expenses.”

  Jake’s chest swelled at Lyman’s praise. He was ready to do whatever his uncle asked of him. He didn’t earn more money with the new ad, but the praise alone was worth his effort. Besides, Jake knew that word of his success would filter back to his father and that made him want to go out and round up ten more ads.

  Jake blinked when he realized that his uncle was still addressing him.

  “This afternoon I want you to go to the telephone company to see what they plan to do about their wires and poles. Now that the weather’s warming, the power poles are inclining toward the ground. People are starting to complain about wires hanging down.”

  “Sure thing,” Jake said, his clear blue eyes glowing. His love of working for th
e bigger newspaper in Boise multiplied every time his uncle praised him. Lyman was a demanding employer, but he was fair. He gave the best assignments to the reporters that had been with him the longest, but those reporters often took Jake along to train him and show him the way around town.

  Jake was painstakingly learning to use the recently purchased typewriter. He could still write an article faster by hand, but he practiced on the typewriter whenever it was available. The new machine had become so popular with the reporting staff that it wasn’t available very often.

  The assignments Jake disliked the most, and the ones he was given most often, were for the Local News. The Local News column was a bunch of gossip as far as Jake was concerned. He found it tedious to endure interviews with ladies that went on and on about who attended their social events and what they wore. It was much more interesting to write local news about someone who had recently sold their cow or who was getting their land ready for planting.

  The articles Jake really wanted to work on were stories about train wrecks, bank robberies, and fights at the local bars. The only time he got involved with those assignments was when he went along with one of the seasoned reporters. His uncle was talking about sending one of the experienced reporters to St. Louis to write about the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. The exposition, or the St. Louis World’s Fair as it was also called, would celebrate the one-hundred-year anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase.

  After talking to his uncle, Jake walked over to the desk he shared with Dusty Mecham, a reporter who had been with the newspaper for over five years. Dusty, a fashionably dressed young man in his mid-thirties, had just walked in. He took off his suit coat and hung it on a peg, along with his hat. Then he stood near the window pulling down on his brightly colored vest.

  “Congratulations,” Dusty said, talking around an unlit cigar. “I hear you picked up your first ad.”

  Jake pushed his dark hair out of his eyes and sat down. “I’m getting the hang of talking to people, thanks to watching you. You have a talent for talking with people, getting them to open up about news situations or open their wallets to pay for ads.” Jake also considered Dusty a true friend because he had taken Jake out on the town weekends and evenings for the past few weeks. Those outings had really helped when Jake had been crushed with homesickness for his family and for Alice.

  “Yeah, stick with me, kid. I’ll teach you the ropes of this business, and more.” Dusty wiggled his brows and sat down. He took out a pocketknife and cut the end of his cigar. After striking a match, he held it under the cigar, spinning the cigar until there was a bit of an orange glow.

  Jake watched, transfixed, as Dusty finally put the cigar in his mouth and puffed four or five times, causing thick white smoke to fill the air between them. Dusty finally sat back in his chair and lowered his voice. “I don’t intend to stick with the newspaper business forever you know. I have bigger plans, and maybe . . . I’ll let you in on them someday.”

  Suddenly Jake noticed the latest edition of the Clover Creek Weekly on the desk. His father’s newspaper came in on the train every week, and Dusty had apparently picked it up in the mail room and thrown it on their desk.

  “Hey, thanks for bringing in my pa’s paper,” Jake said, grabbing the four-page newspaper and immediately settling into his chair. He placed his feet on the desk as he had seen Dusty do from time to time and opened the paper. Even though Jake loved the prestige of being a big city newspaper man, it had been hard to leave home, and he looked forward to reading every item about his hometown. In addition to what was printed in the paper, Milton, Jake’s younger brother by two years, often handwrote or drew interesting tidbits to go along with the printed word.

  Jake had no sooner started to read than he vaulted to his feet, his chair flipping over with a loud crash! He shook the newspaper in front of him and yelled, “What’s that louse doing with my girl?”

  The tap, tap, tap of the typewriter across the room ceased and all eyes focused on Jake.

  “Sorry,” Jake said, looking around sheepishly at the people in the office. He picked up his chair and plopped down on it.

  “Woman troubles?” Dusty asked, chuckling low in his throat. A smile lingered on one side of his face. He took another drag on his cigar as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened and waited.

  “Listen to this,” Jake hissed through clenched teeth. He shoved his hair off his forehead and began to read from the Clover Creek Weekly’s Local News section. “Thursday morning Mr. Reed Browning’s sleigh hit a hidden boulder due to our last snowstorm. The jolt pitched both Mr. Browning and his passenger out of the sleigh while they were delivering goods for Jepson’s Mercantile. The jolt left Mr. Browning with a sore wrist and a black eye. His passenger, Miss Alice Gardner, escaped without injury. Fortunately for Mr. Browning, all the mercantile supplies had been delivered and the couple were on their return trip to town.”

  “Perhaps you need to find a new girl,” Dusty said, puffing out another wisp of cigar smoke. He took a moment to pull a rag from a bottom desk drawer, and wiped off the snow and mud that had splashed onto his new lace-up boots. “If my girl doesn’t hurry and return from back east, I may be looking for a new girl myself.”

  Jake ran a hand through his hair again, his eyes still wide and glaring at the newspaper. Milton, his younger brother, had penned a comment next to the article and Jake read it out loud. “Tongues are wagging.”

  Milton had also drawn two stick-figure ladies whose heads were bent together as if in lively conversation.

  “Oh, no!” Jake exclaimed as he read another article from the Local News. This one also had an aside from Milton. Jake read the article to Dusty. “Young people of Clover Creek enjoyed the motion picture show, The Great Train Robbery, and the dance on Saturday night. Frank Baldwin, who runs the new bakery with his father, furnished pastries for the dance. He and his guest, Miss Alice Gardner, appeared to enjoy themselves serving pastries and hot chocolate throughout the evening when they weren’t dancing.”

  Jake’s mouth hung open. Then he narrowed his eyes and glared at his brother’s hand-written comment. “Someone’s sweet-talking your girl!” This was followed by two stick-figures in dance pose with steam swirling up from pies on either side of them.

  Dusty looked at the article and snorted. He placed his thumbs in his vest pockets. “Sounds like this runt is after your girl too,” he said. “You should definitely find a new girl right here in Boise.”

  “I don’t want a new girl,” Jake moaned. “And this guy’s no runt. He’s a foot taller than me and has forearms that knead bread dough all day.”

  “Girls are a dime a dozen,” Dusty said.

  “Not this girl.” Jake’s voice was almost a quiver.

  Dusty smirked. “I’ll introduce you to some girls this weekend, and you’ll soon forget all about Miss Alice Gartner.”

  “Gardner,” Jake said.

  “Gartner, Gardner, who’s to care.”

  “I care.” Jake leaned his elbows on the desk, his head on his hands. When he spoke, his words were subdued. “I don’t want those blockheads back home making a play for my girl. I’m miles away and can’t do a thing about it.”

  Dusty sat on the edge of the desk, his left hand sliding into his vest pocket, his right hand pointing his cigar at Jake. “Well, if she means that much to you, you’ve confided in the right man. I’m an expert at winning the ladies. It’ll take a little time and money on your part, but I promise you, this sweet little girl of yours won’t want any of those hometown boys if you follow my plan.”

  “Oh yeah?” Jake said, raising his head. “I’m listening.”

  3

  The following Monday, Alice wore her warmest coat and gloves to once again join Reed on his delivery route. The weather had warmed some, but the mornings were chilly. Alice walked away from two disgruntled younger sisters but paid them no heed. She was simply joining a friend for a breath of fresh air after being cooped up in the house for days. Reed helpe
d her into the wagon which was weighted down with orders from the mercantile. Warm bricks wrapped in heavy quilts took the chill from Alice’s legs and feet.

  “Thank you for inviting me to ride with you again,” Alice said as Reed started the horses down the lane. She drew in a breath of crisp morning air and marveled at the blue sky. “I love being outside in the mornings. I wondered if the Jepsons would object to my accompanying you after our first outing made it into the newspaper.”

  Reed laughed, his hand touching the skin around his faded black eye. “Mrs. Jepson pitched a fit, carrying on about propriety. But Mr. Jepson said he didn’t see any reason why I shouldn’t have company while making my rounds, as long as I got my work done.”

  “That’s Mr. Jepson for you,” Alice said, adjusting her winter hat to keep the sun’s glare out of her eyes. Except for the jingle of harnesses and their quiet conversation, the snow-covered countryside lay silent. “Mr. Jepson’s ever the easygoing person who likes to make other people comfortable. That’s why his mercantile is so popular.” Alice wasn’t surprised about Mrs. Jepson scolding Reed. She wondered if it might have more to do with the woman being friends with Jake’s mother than with propriety. A lot of propriety that people back east and some older people clung to was difficult to maintain in the rugged west.

  Neither of them spoke for a while except to point out a herd of antelope, a fox, and a rabbit scampering through the snow. They waved when a family passed them, heading into town. An abundance of wagon wheels had made the road passable, but they had to skirt around several sections of mud. They were always invited inside a farmhouse to warm up with a cup of coffee after making a delivery, but it wasn’t until the last stop that they accepted the invitation.