Page 45 of Short-Straw Bride

The big man held his arms out from his sides in a gesture of conciliation, but he made no move to leave. “I didn’t read no sign.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that you’re trespassing.”

The younger fellow, just a boy, really—he looked about the same age as Neill—backed a step away from Jim, his eyes wary. “Let’s go, Pa. Mr. Winston was wrong. They don’t want our help.”

“That’s cuz they don’t know what we’re offerin’ yet.” The man’s face gave nothing away, but Meredith could feel the challenge hanging in the air.

“The only offer I’m interested in is the one where you offer to leave my land.” Travis waved his gun in the direction of the road.

Meredith lifted a hand to Travis’s shoulder. Her touch was light, yet he flinched as if she’d burned him. “Travis. Please. I know this m—”

“Strangers aren’t welcome here,” her husband ground out, cutting off her explanation. But the others heard.

Moses Jackson peered past Travis, and when his eyes landed on her, his composure fell away. “Miss Meri? That you?”

She smiled and stepped out from behind her husband. An answering smile began to crease Moses’s face when Travis shoved her back behind him. In an instant, the black man’s good humor vanished and the hands that had hung harmless at his sides balled into fists—giant fists that looked like they could fell a tree.

“You here against your will, Miss Meri?”

Jim and Travis both tensed, and Meredith’s stomach plummeted to her toes. Merciful heavens. If Moses started swinging those fists, Travis was bound to be the first target. And if one of the guns went off? Well, it didn’t bear thinking about.

Just as she had with Sadie earlier, Meredith dodged around her husband’s protective stance and dashed directly into the line of fire.

Travis immediately raised his rifle barrel into the air, but the look he shot her felt just like a bullet tearing through the flesh near her heart. She prayed he’d forgive her once she’d explained. There was nothing to do now, though, but brazen her way through.

“Travis Archer, may I present Mr. Moses Jackson? Mr. Jackson built the freedmen’s schoolhouse a mile west of Beaver Valley, where my father taught for several years.” Meredith watched Travis’s face for signs of softening, but his jaw remained as clenched as ever as he stared down the large black man. She turned to Moses only to find his face equally implacable. “Moses, Travis is my husband. I am here quite willingly.”

Finally, Moses surrendered the staring battle to glance at Meredith. He relaxed his fists, and a hint of a smile played about the corners of his mouth. “Your man ain’t the friendly sort, is he, Miss Meri.”

She laughed, her nerves getting the better of her. “Not at first. But he can be a trusted ally once you get to know him.” Meredith peeked back at her husband. He still looked none too pleased, but his eyes were no longer shooting bullets at her. It was a start.

Travis tipped his rifle barrel onto his shoulder, pointing it harmlessly away from the visitors, but his right hand continued gripping the stock in a way that would allow instant readiness should the occasion call for it.

“Why’d you come, Jackson?”

“Lookin’ for work. Heard ya had a barn what needed rebuilding.”

“I’ve got three brothers.” Travis jerked his chin in Jim’s direction. “That one’s even a carpenter. We’ll manage the task.”

Moses crossed his arms over his chest. “Before the next rain comes?” The question hovered for a moment, everyone knowing the answer. “My boy’s good with a hammer, and I’ve built just about everything there is what has walls and a roof. With us working for you, you can cut yer building time in half.”

Travis’s jaw worked back and forth.

“We need a place to store what’s left of the hay,” Jim stated with flat practicality as he shifted his rifle, pointing it toward the ground.

Travis made no outward show that he’d heard his brother, but Meredith sensed the battle inside him. The hay would mold if rain came before they got a roof on the barn, and in Texas, the weather was harder to predict than a hummingbird’s flight path. It could hold off for a month or a storm could roll in tomorrow. But having strangers on Archer land went against everything Travis had clung to since his father died.

“I can’t pay in cash money.”

Meredith held her breath. He was bending.

“I’d work for provisions, foodstuffs to see me and mine through the winter.”

Travis frowned. “I can’t spare much. We’ve already laid in provisions for the winter and won’t receive more until spring. We hadn’t planned on needing extra for barter.”

Meredith considered offering to go to town should they run low on supplies, but figured she’d pushed her husband far enough for one day. Perhaps discretion would be the better part of valor in this instance. Her gaze seesawed back to Moses, praying he’d not refuse. Travis needed his help whether he admitted it or not. And not just with the barn. He needed a connection with the outside world, with someone other than that dreadful Seth Winston, someone who could help him see that reaching out to others was as important as protecting one’s own.

Moses uncrossed his arms. “I’ll accept whatever you think fair.”