Chapter 1 - The Woman They Laughed At
The laughter started before Josephine Pickett had both boots on Texas soil.
It rolled across the yard of Ironstone Ranch, loud enough to startle a pair of horses tied beside the bunkhouse and ugly enough that the stagecoach driver looked uncomfortable as he lowered her second trunk into the dust.
Josephine did not look uncomfortable.
She stood beside two battered steamer trunks, a wooden crate packed with iron cookware, and a cast-iron skillet she carried in one hand.
At thirty-four, Josephine had learned that laughter from strangers was usually less dangerous than pity from friends.
She weighed more than three hundred pounds.
People noticed.
People always noticed.
In Arkansas, women had whispered that no respectable man would marry her. In Missouri, a hotel owner had refused to hire her because he said customers would lose their appetites looking at her. On the stagecoach west, one passenger had spent two hundred miles pretending Josephine occupied three seats when she had paid for two.
None of them had mattered.
Neither did the twenty cowhands laughing beside the Ironstone corral.
Josephine adjusted the cuff of her navy broadcloth dress and waited.
A tall man approached from the ranch house.
He was broad through the shoulders, dark-haired, and bearded, with the exhausted expression of somebody who had been fighting bad luck too long.
Harrison Croft.
Owner of Ironstone Ranch.
The man who had advertised for a cook in newspapers from Dallas to Little Rock and promised double wages.
Josephine had expected desperation.
She had not expected fifty thousand acres of cracked Texas ground surrounding buildings that looked as though the wind might carry them away.
Nor had she expected the men.
A skinny young cowboy leaned across the corral fence.
“Boss,” he called, “you brought us a cook or the whole damn cow?”
The yard exploded with laughter.
Josephine heard Harrison inhale.
His hand dropped instinctively toward the gun belt at his hip.
Josephine stepped forward first.
“Which one said that?”
The laughter weakened.
The skinny cowboy raised his hand halfway.
Josephine walked toward him.
She was not fast.
She did not need to be.
Her boots struck the hard earth with slow, deliberate weight until she stood three feet from the fence.
The cowboy’s grin looked considerably less confident up close.
“What’s your name?”
“Judson.”
“Judson what?”
“Judson Pike.”
Josephine looked him over from dusty hat to narrow shoulders.
“Son, with those ribs showing through your shirt, you look like you haven’t seen a decent meal since you left your mother.”
Somebody coughed.
Judson’s grin disappeared.
“You keep flapping those gums,” Josephine continued, “and I’ll make sure you’re the only man on this ranch eating boiled oats while everybody else gets slow-roasted brisket and buttermilk biscuits.”
Nobody laughed now.
Josephine lifted the skillet.
“Kitchen?”
Judson pointed toward the ranch house.
“Much obliged.”
She turned away.
Harrison followed her.
After a few steps he said, “I was about to defend you.”
Josephine kept walking.
“That was kind.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
She finally looked at him.
“But Mr. Croft, if I need a man with a revolver every time somebody comments on my backside, you’ll have to hire another cowboy just to follow me around.”
For the first time since she had arrived, something almost resembling amusement appeared in Harrison’s eyes.
“It’s Harrison.”
“It’s Mr. Croft until I decide whether you’re worth working for.”
The amusement vanished.
Josephine smiled faintly.
“Now show me what passes for a kitchen.”
What passed for a kitchen nearly made her turn around.
There was grease on the stove.
Mold in two sacks of flour.
Three onions had sprouted in a basket.
A smoked ham hung beside a window where flies could reach it.
Someone had stored coffee beside lamp oil.
Josephine slowly removed her gloves.
“Who has been running this place?”
Harrison leaned against the doorway.
“My foreman handles provisions.”
“Then your foreman is trying to kill you.”
“He’s not the cook.”
“He bought the food.”
“That bad?”
Josephine picked up one potato.
It collapsed in her hand.
Harrison winced.
“That bad.”
For the next five hours, Josephine transformed chaos.
She ordered two men to scrub the tables.
She made Judson haul water.
She found beef in the icehouse, onions that could be saved, dried herbs, molasses, apples, bacon, and several pounds of flour that had escaped ruin.
By sunset, something happened at Ironstone Ranch that Harrison Croft had almost forgotten was possible.
The place smelled like home.
Rosemary and beef fat drifted through the yard.
Bread browned inside the oven.
Apple filling bubbled beneath strips of pastry.
Men who had spent weeks complaining about their wages began circling the kitchen like starving wolves.
Josephine stepped onto the porch with a wooden spoon.
“Dinner in ten minutes.”
Nobody laughed.
Ten minutes later, the bell rang.
Twenty men entered the dining room.
Josephine had prepared chuck roast stew thick with gravy, roasted vegetables, enormous trays of biscuits glazed with butter, and two apple pies.
Judson sat near the end.
Josephine put a bowl before him.
He stared.
“What?”
“Nothing, ma’am.”
“Good.”
He took one bite.
His eyes widened.
Around him, the room became strangely quiet.
Not because the food was disappointing.
Because nobody wanted to stop eating long enough to talk.
Harrison tasted the stew.
For one second, his eyes closed.
Josephine noticed.
So did everyone else.
The ranch owner had been carrying himself like a man awaiting execution since she arrived.
Now his shoulders dropped.
Only slightly.
But enough.
Judson swallowed half a biscuit.
“Miss Pickett?”
“Yes?”
“I apologize.”
Several cowboys glanced at him.
He swallowed again.
“For earlier.”
Josephine considered him.
“Apology accepted.”
Judson smiled.
“Can I have another biscuit?”
“No.”
His face fell.
Then Josephine placed three on his plate.
The table erupted in laughter again.
This time Josephine laughed with them.
Later, after the men went outside, Harrison remained seated.
Josephine began gathering bowls.
“You don’t have to clean tonight,” he said.
“Neither do you.”
“I live here.”
“So do I now, apparently.”
Harrison watched her for a moment.
“My last cook lasted six weeks.”
“What happened?”
“He got drunk.”
“That happens.”
“He burned down the chuckwagon.”
Josephine paused.
“That happens less often.”
Another small smile.
Then it disappeared.
Harrison stared through the window toward his pastures.
“Miss Pickett, I should tell you something.”
Josephine waited.
“Ironstone isn’t what it used to be.”
She looked around.
“I had gathered that.”
“We’re in trouble.”
“How much?”
His expression changed.
Most employees would not have asked.
Josephine did.
Harrison folded his hands.
“Bad drought. Cattle prices are down. Bank note comes due before winter. If we lose another herd—”
He stopped.
“You’ll lose the ranch,” Josephine finished.
“Yes.”
She glanced toward the men outside.
“How long have they known?”
“They don’t.”
“They know.”
Harrison frowned.
“Men who believe their wages are safe don’t laugh that loudly at strangers. Those men are scared.”
That silenced him.
Josephine carried dishes toward the kitchen.
At the doorway, Harrison spoke again.
“Why did you come all the way to Texas?”
Josephine stopped.
The true answer was complicated.
Because every respectable hotel east of Oklahoma saw her size before her skill.
Because her mother had died.
Because the boardinghouse Josephine had run with her had been sold.
Because she had spent years turning scraps into meals while other people took credit.
Because at thirty-four she had realized waiting for permission was another way of wasting a life.
Instead she said, “Double wages.”
Harrison laughed softly.
Then someone entered through the back door.
A thickset man with a gray-streaked beard and a worn vest.
His eyes went first to Josephine.
Then to Harrison.
“Stage came, I see.”
Harrison stood.
“Josephine Pickett, this is Gideon Furlong. My foreman.”
Josephine wiped her hands.
“So you buy the provisions.”
Something flickered in Gideon’s face.
“Among other things.”
Josephine smiled pleasantly.
“We need to talk tomorrow.”
“About what?”
She lifted the rotten potato.
“This.”
Gideon stared at it.
Then at her.
And for the first time all evening, Josephine felt something colder than mockery.
Fear.
It vanished quickly.
But she had seen it.
That night, long after Ironstone fell silent, Josephine lay awake in her small upstairs room listening to wind move over the roof.
She thought about Gideon.
About spoiled flour.
About Harrison saying the ranch was dying despite fifty thousand acres and nearly two thousand cattle.
Something did not fit.
And Josephine Pickett had always been very good at finding what did not fit.
By morning, she intended to start with the pantry.
May you like
She had no idea it would lead her directly to the man stealing Ironstone Ranch from the inside.
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