Lucky Penny Page 6

  David dismounted out front, eyeing a rickety buckboard that sported a For Rent banner fluttering on the sidewalls. Gathering Blue’s reins, he started into the building only to find his path blocked by an elderly fellow in blue denim dungarees held up by purple suspenders that clashed with his bright red shirt.

  “Howdy, stranger,” he said. “How can I hep ya?”

  The man’s drawl told David he harkened from somewhere south of the Mason-Dixon Line. He rested a hand on Blue’s neck. “I need to put my stock up for the night.”

  The man nodded and spat a stream of tobacco juice before rocking back on his bootheels and hooking his thumbs under his suspender straps. A growth of grizzled whiskers lined his jaw. “I got three empty stalls, so ye’ve come to the right place.”

  David inclined his head. “Sounds good. I’ll see to their needs myself, if you don’t mind. My horse has been ridden a long stretch, and the mule has been carrying a load. I’d like to walk them and rub them down before they’re fed or watered.”

  “Happy to accommodate ya.” He smoothed a hand over his ruffled gray hair. “Got me a hitch in my get-along. Hip injury years back. Walkin’ a horse is a trial for me.”

  As the man turned to lead the way, David noted how he swung his right leg out to the side with every step. “Upkeep around here must be taxing for you.”

  “Don’t do much of it,” the proprietor called over his shoulder. “Hired me a young fellar for the heavy work. I run the place during the day, and he takes over at night. In exchange for muckin’ out stalls and handlin’ the rare customer after hours, he gets three squares, the use of a cot in the tack room, and a fair to middlin’ wage.”

  The stalls were better than David had dared to hope. Both were clean, with layers of fresh straw, and the feed troughs held no remnants of hay from prior feedings. No sign of mouse or rat droppings, either. He was equally glad to note that the water buckets had been upended instead of left to sit half filled with stagnant, slimy water.

  Despite the tumbledown condition of the building, David felt compelled to say, “You run a first-rate operation here.”

  “Love horses—mules, too, as far as that goes,” the older man replied. “Yer welcome to check the hay. Ya won’t find no mold or cheat grass. I only buy quality.”

  One devoted horseman recognized another. David knew he would find good fodder. “How much for a measure of oats for my friends? They deserve a treat.”

  “Oats are covered by the fee. Same goes for hay and fresh water.” The man gimped into the adjacent stall to take the load from Lucy’s back while David relieved Blue of the riding gear. The moment her pack was removed, Lucy buckled her front legs and rolled in the clean straw, grunting with pleasure. Glancing over the dividing wall, the livery owner said, “That is one fine-lookin’ blue roan, son. Never seen his like.”

  David chuckled. “His sire is a magnificent black, and I was aiming for a duplicate when I let him cover my blue roan mare. Didn’t happen the way I planned, but I can’t complain about the results.” Stroking Blue’s arched neck, David added, “He is fine.”

  “Breedin’ for color is like tossin’ dice. When you cross a black with a blue roan, the foal’s color can go either way, with the off chance of some other colors poppin’ up.”

  “You know your horses.”

  “I do, and that’s a fact.” Lucy, who had regained her feet, seemed to realize she was being slighted and let loose with a full donkey bray, startling both David and the other man. They both laughed, and the proprietor patted Lucy’s shoulder. “Yer right fine, too, darlin’. Never seen a purdier girl, and ya got grit, to boot. Been a long ride, ain’t it? Yer due for some coddlin’.”

  David liked the way this fellow talked to animals—as if they understood and had feelings. Sad to say, he didn’t see it very often. The tension flowed from his body. Allowing his mount and mule to be at the mercy of a stranger always made him nervous. No need for that tonight. Blue and Lucy would be in good hands.

  As if the livery owner sensed David’s approval, he smiled as he left Lucy’s stall. “Got a round pen out back. Ya can walk ’em both out there. When yer ready for the hay, oats, and water, give me a holler.”

  Amazing what a difference two hours could make. David had dispensed with the trail grime in a luxurious hot bath, scraped off his whiskers without nicking himself, and put on clean clothes before heading for Glory Ridge’s only restaurant. Lucky for him, it was a good one. The two-inch-thick steak with all the trimmings that he’d just wolfed down had been every bit as tasty as the fare at Roxie Balloux’s. The hotel had proved to be a pleasant surprise, too. His room was spacious, if a little threadbare in spots, and immaculately clean. The window glass had grown cloudy with age, not layers of dirt as he’d first thought. The freshly turned, soft down mattress beckoned to him after days of sleeping on the ground with a saddle for a pillow. All in all, David couldn’t complain.

  After leaving a generous tip, he exited the restaurant, crossed the rickety boardwalk, and stepped out onto the packed-dirt street. A glass of chilled, foaming ale sounded just fine, but first things first. He’d better get this Brianna Paxton business over with. He’d locate the dress shop where she worked as a seamstress in the afternoons and evenings and hope he’d catch her there.

  Well, okay, hope was a little strong. Now that the meeting was upon him, David felt as jumpy as an unbranded calf at roundup time. How should he approach this unknown woman, who might or might not be the mother of his daughter? If the child was his, and he couldn’t recall Brianna, she would have every right to be madder than a bear with a bee up its nose. He just hoped her claws weren’t quite as sharp.

  He’d dressed carefully for the meeting. He didn’t want to look too formal, like some stuck-up city swell. He’d finally settled on a clean pair of tan trousers and the long-sleeved blue shirt Hazel Wright had complimented him on. Thinking of Hazel made him recall how difficult it had been to leave No Name without letting the nature of his journey slip. She’d tried everything to wrangle an explanation out of him, and she’d gotten downright ornery when he refused to give her one. It was a side of her he hadn’t seen before.

  The restaurant was at the end of Main. If he turned left he’d be headed out to commune with prairie dogs and coyotes. Turning right, David set a slow pace and scanned the businesses that lined both sides of the street, looking for anything that resembled a dress shop. When he glimpsed a shine of copper brightness from the corner of his eye, he stopped, focused on the coin that lay in the dirt a few feet ahead of him, and was about to pick it up when a little girl, a whirlwind of pink ribbons and lace, darted in to grab it. David saved them both from a painful collision of heads by jerking back in the nick of time. Her noggin barely missed his nose. He grinned down at her.

  “Well, now,” he said. “I’ve always heard tell that finders are keepers, but nobody ever said what to do when there are two finders.”

  Without picking up the coin, the child straightened and blushed. “I’m sorry, mister. I didn’t know you’d seen it, too.”

  “Well, ma’am,” he said, tipping his hat, “I wouldn’t dream of depriving a lady of anything she wanted that much, so please—”

  David forgot what else he meant to say. Sweet Jesus. The child standing before him was the spitting image of his mother, with the same golden curls, big blue eyes, delicate turned-up nose, and pointy little chin. Her mouth was even shaped like Dory’s, and she had the same deep dimple in her left cheek. David had the queer impression for an instant that everything stopped. His innards felt like they had a few years back when a dun-colored steer had kicked him in the gut during the annual town rodeo. Cold prickles scuttled all over him.

  “Daphne?” His lips formed the name soundlessly. A puzzled look came over the child’s face, and David forced his tongue into action. “Daphne?” he said again, wondering why he made the word sound like a question. There was no question. This child had the Paxton stamp all over her. “Daphne,” he said aga
in on the crest of a sigh, feeling as if all the air in his body rushed out through his mouth.

  Her eyes went wide. Her perfect little mouth popped into an O of astonishment as she peered up at his face. “Papa?” she said incredulously.

  Oh, Lord. Papa. David wasn’t a man to get weepy over every little thing, but his eyes stung as he looked down at the little girl. His. No question about it. His knees went shaky. He felt a mite dizzy. Myriad emotions pummeled him. His throat ached, his chest hurt, and the urge to snatch her up into his arms and never let go was so strong that his fingertips throbbed.

  But, no. If he touched her, he might frighten her. He looked down into those clear blue eyes, now fixed on his face. Waves of sickening shame swelled inside him, crowding his heart until it felt as if it might burst through his rib cage. Dear Lord, what have I done? This was without question his daughter, and he’d failed miserably to do right by her. David half expected lightning to flash from the sky and strike him dead, for surely siring a child and abandoning her was high on God’s list of reprehensible acts. He had no memory whatsoever of having been intimate with this child’s mother, but the family resemblance was too marked to refute.

  Snippets of Daphne’s letters to him swirled in his mind—her plea for money to have just one new dress, her reference to sometimes eating food from trash barrels, and her repeated pleas for him to come visit her. She’d been without a father all her life, she’d suffered for it, and it was no one’s fault but his. In that moment, he made a solemn vow to himself that she would never want for anything again.

  David tried to speak, but his voice failed him. Just as well. He hadn’t a clue what he was going to say. He just stared at her, taking in every detail. She was all-over beautiful in her pretty pink dress, patterned with rosebuds of a darker hue and trimmed with ribbon and lace. Her tiny feet were encased in brand-new patent leather slippers. A silk bow, tied pertly at the top of her blond head, fluttered in the breeze.

  Just then, her corn-silk curls shifted to expose the side of her neck. Below her ear was a tiny strawberry splotch, the Paxton birthmark, passed down from his mother’s side of the family for generations. If he’d had any lingering doubts, seeing that mark erased them. Practically every child in his family was born with that mark. David’s skin had darkened over time from exposure to the sun, but his mark was still visible. There was no mistake. His blood flowed in this child’s veins.

  David sank down onto one knee, which brought him close to eye level with the girl. “Well, well,” he finally managed to push out. “What an auspicious moment this is.” He fetched the penny and held it up before her cute, freckled little nose. “And, by gum, we found us a lucky penny, to boot. That’s a good omen. Don’t you think?”

  Her eyes went sparkly, and her mouth trembled as she said, “Does auspish—um—that big word you just said—does that mean you’re my papa?”

  David figured his abandonment of this child was already a count against him in heaven. He wouldn’t add to the wrongs he’d committed by lying to her. “I am,” he whispered, his voice gone gravelly with emotion. “I am, or my name isn’t David Paxton.”

  Daphne blinked and nodded. “Oh.” Seeming suddenly shy, she jerked her gaze from David’s and eyed the upheld coin. “I didn’t know a penny was lucky.”

  David collected his composure, swallowed hard to steady his voice, and replied, “You’ve never heard about lucky pennies? Darlin’, this is the luckiest penny either of us will ever run across in our lifetimes. It brought us smack-dab together, didn’t it?”

  The dimple flashed in her cheek, putting David so much in mind of his ma that he blinked away tears again. Dory would be wild with joy to know that she had another granddaughter. And, oh, that gap where the child had lost two front teeth was so darned cute he wanted to grin. Before he could, a sense of loss swamped him. His ma had saved all her children’s baby teeth. His own were pasted to a tattered page in a scrapbook entitled David. What had happened to Daphne’s? Losing those first few teeth was a huge occasion in a kid’s life. Had she worked the first one loose with her tongue? Or had she bitten into an apple? David could well remember standing with a string tied around his first loose tooth, the other end of the twine attached to a doorknob. He’d quivered in his knickers because Ace and Joseph kept saying, “Slam the door, David. Don’t be a pansy ass.”

  “It did, for certain,” Daphne replied.

  David was jerked back to the moment but couldn’t remember what they’d been talking about.

  “We almost bumped heads over that penny!” she exclaimed. “You should be very glad we didn’t.” With a giggle, she added, “Mama says my head is harder than a rock.”

  David laughed. “Well, you came by that from me, I reckon. I’ve been told many a time that I’ve got solid rock between my ears.”

  He rested his weight on his bootheel, dimly aware that there was no traffic on the street and grateful for it. He had to clear his throat before he went on. “Most times, the saying about pennies goes like this. ‘Find a penny, pick it up, and all the day, you’ll have good luck.’ And I can tell you from personal experience that it’s true. Any old penny can be lucky if you find it and pick it up, but in a case like that, it’s only lucky for a day.” He touched the shimmery coin to the tip of her nose. “This is no ordinary lucky penny, though.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “Nope,” David assured her. “This one is the luckiest of all pennies because you and I found it together.” He turned the coin so it would catch the fading sunlight. “See that? It’s even winking at us. We’ve got ourselves a treasure, for sure.”

  “What’ll we do with it?” she asked, her voice touched with awe.

  “We’ll keep it safe for future use. You hold on to it for now.” He tucked it into her hand. “Whenever we get in a pickle or have a powerful hankering for something important, we’ll make a wish on this penny, and sure as shootin’, it will come true.”

  Daphne pushed the coin back at him. “You’d better keep it, then. I’ve got a sweet tooth, and when I find pennies, I spend them on candy at the general store. I might spend our magic one by accident.”

  David accepted the coin and tucked it into his shirt pocket, where he never carried change. “You’re right. We can’t risk spending it accidentally. I’ll drill a hole in it so we can thread a length of chain or leather through it. That way, we can wear it as a necklace, and we’ll both always know it’s our special penny. Deal?”

  Daphne nodded and thrust out her small hand to shake on it. As David enfolded her tiny fingers in his, his heart panged. Somehow the handclasp turned into a hug, tentative at first, but then becoming fierce on both their parts. David had to gentle his hold for fear of hurting her. She locked her thin arms around his neck, flattened her small self against him, and whispered, “I thought you’d never come, Papa. I prayed and prayed, but it never happened. I thought maybe—” Her body jerked. “I thought maybe you didn’t love me enough to come so far.”

  David felt as if he’d just guzzled a pint of lye water, his esophagus paining him as if it were on fire. He couldn’t answer the child right away. When he finally regained his voice, it sounded like a blade scraping over sandpaper. “Oh, honey, no. How could any papa fail to love a sweet little girl like you? I didn’t come sooner because I never got your letters. They got sidetracked at the Denver post office, and I didn’t get them until a month or so ago.”

  “Was that when you sent me the money for new dresses?”

  David turned his face against her golden curls and inhaled her sweet scent. When he thought of all the years he’d missed, of all the hugs he’d never experienced, he felt half sick. He deserved to be kicked from here to San Francisco. “Yes, little miss, that was when.”

  She drew back to turn a full circle in front of him. “You sent so much that Mama made me three, plus a plain frock for after school. I also got two pairs of shoes, underclothes, and a winter cape and muff! Used to, the other girls wouldn’t play with me
and poked fun at my clothes. Now Mama says I outshine them all.”

  “I’ll just bet you do.” Looking at her, David could honestly say he’d never clapped eyes on a prettier child. “That is a mighty fine dress.”

  “Do you like it? I picked the yardage, and Mama chose the trim. Then she stayed up one whole night making it for me. I found a picture in a fashion periodical, and she made my dress look just like it.”

  David wondered if all six-year-olds said things like periodical. His daughter was either uncommonly smart or she’d been reared up hearing big words. He made a great show of admiring the frock. “It’s gorgeous. Your mama is a fine seamstress.”

  “She’s the very best.” Daphne hugged her waist and beamed a smile. “Most times, I have to change into my new play dress after school, but today is special.”

  “It is?”

  She beamed a smile at him. “It’s May Day.”

  Out on the trail, David had lost track of time. “By Jove, I guess you’re right. It is May Day, isn’t it?”

  “Yes! And my school is doing a recital tonight at the community church to celebrate. Only two girls in my class were selected to do a solo recitation, and I’m one of them. That’s how come I’m still wearing my special school dress. I need to look very nice.”

  She did one more turn, so proud of her finery that it nearly broke David’s heart. This was his daughter, for Christ’s sake. She should have a wardrobe stuffed with pretty dresses.

  She stopped twirling to say, “Mama is going to be so surprised to see you!”

  David figured that was probably an understatement. He had come unannounced, after all. Brianna had obviously intended her thank-you note to end their acquaintance, if you could even call it that. Imagining her possible reaction—so far as he knew, she might be a shrew—David decided their meeting should take place outside of Daphne’s earshot. He pushed to his feet, fished in his trouser pocket, and placed some coins in the child’s hand. Her eyes went as round as the quarter she held on her upturned palm.