A Change of Scenery, page 1
A
Change of Scenery
Book 4
The Cañon City Chronicles
Davalynn Spencer
Wilson Creek Publishing
A Change of Scenery © 2021 by Davalynn Spencer
Wilson Creek Publishing
Print ISBN: 978-1-7350741-1-5
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-7350741-2-2
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without prior permission from the author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.
The characters and events in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual persons or events is coincidental.
Cover design by ebooklaunch.com
Books by Davalynn Spencer
Historical
THE CAÑON CITY CHRONICLES SERIES
Loving the Horseman - Book 1
Straight to My Heart - Book 2
Romancing the Widow - Book 3
The Cañon City Chronicles – Collection books 1-3
THE FRONT RANGE BRIDES SERIES
Mail-Order Misfire - Series Prequel
An Improper Proposal - Book 1
An Unexpected Redemption - Book 2
An Impossible Price – Book 3
Novellas
Snow Angel
Just in Time for Christmas
A High-Country Christmas – two-novella collection
The Snowbound Bride
The Wrangler’s Woman
As You Are
Contemporary
The Miracle Tree
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A
Change of Scenery
Davalynn Spencer
Wilson Creek Publishing
~
For man looketh on the outward appearance,
but the Lord looketh on the heart.
—1 Samuel 16:7
~
Contents
Books by Davalynn Spencer
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Acknowledgments
About the Author
CHAPTER ONE
Cañon City, Colorado
June 5, 1911
The gun shot rooted Ella to the concrete sidewalk.
Chest tight, unable to breathe, she clutched the folded shirt to herself until the truth twisted through her, loosening her muscles and her fear.
It wasn’t gunfire. Not in today’s civilized world of unlikely things moving on their own accord. Things like pictures and carriages.
Air squeezed from her lungs, and her lips parted to aid its escape.
The motorcar passed and she continued on, black leather low-cuts tapping an irregular beat from the Hotel Denton to the corner of Seventh and Main.
At the curb, she paused for another choking contraption in full complaint of its early morning errand. Here to stay, as much as she despised them, at least the automobiles were more easily observed than ridden in. Somewhat.
The dust and her apprehension settled a second time and, stepping into the intersection, she smoothed the recently mended shirt draped over her arm. She’d been early to work every morning since arriving in town three days ago, and she intended to maintain the habit.
Another backfire, another sudden stop.
A horse screamed in the next block. Frozen halfway across the street, Ella watched it rear in its traces. Break free. Bolt down the street with its buggy.
Grounded as surely as the hotel on the corner behind her, she stood unable to move. Someone yelled. Men rushed into the street, shouting and waving their arms. Wild-eyed and panicked, the horse charged straight for her.
A lone rider came up behind the buggy, gaining on the flailing contraption. He leaned low along his horse’s neck, his hat brim plastered back in his speed.
Jockey-like, he passed the runaway. Ella raised her hands to her face—and flew into the air. The wind crushed from her as the rider swung her up against his leg.
Dirt and gravel kicked into her face. Store fronts and people raced past.
Dangling like a trick rider at a Wild West Show, she squeezed her eyes shut against the bizarre parade.
The rider tightened his arm around her waist and leaned to his left.
“Whoa!” His leg flexed beneath her as he held his seat in a racing turn. Hoof beats muffled, and her eyes flew open as his horse charged across a city park. Crowded into the wide turn, the buggy nag slowed on the grassy surface. Its winded gasps warned of collapse.
The rider’s pace slackened to a trot, and Ella’s insides bounced like the empty, rattling buggy behind them. He reined to a jarring stop. “You all right, ma’am?”
She twisted to look up at eyes blue as the sky behind them and creased at the corners. His arm relaxed but didn’t release her.
Grit coated her lips. Her stomach rolled. Oh Lord, no. She was going to be sick.
~
Snatching featherbrained females off the street was not the way Cale Hutton had planned to spend his morning. But some people didn’t have sense enough to get out of the way of a runaway horse.
The gal weighed little more than a sack of flour, though she smelled a sight better. Her short-cropped hair reminded him of a roached-mane filly. She clapped a hand over her mouth and her brown eyes grew dollar-round. Either he’d scared the living daylights out of her, or she was going to—
She heaved behind her hand and her thin shoulders bounced forward.
“You gonna . . .”
She bobbed her head.
He let go of Doc’s reins and gripped her around the waist with both hands. When her feet hit the grass, instead of running off to the nearby bushes, she collapsed. Doc stepped gingerly away just as she let loose.
Cale coughed and looked away. Some things were best done in private, but the gal didn’t seem to care at the moment. He rode to a shade tree where the runaway stood quivering, then dismounted. His legs wobbled as if he’d been the one to cheat death and not that willow of a woman. He pulled in a lung-full and tugged at his shirt front, then checked the buggy’s harness and lines, making sure nothing had torn loose.
Daring a glance over the horse’s back, he found the gal still kneeling in the grass, a piece of clothing wadded up beside her.
Guess he’d be heaving too after a stunt like that, now that he thought about it. Though he’d once seen his sister Grace do nearly the same thing on purpose.
Several men rounded the corner at a run and made for the park, one apparently the buggy owner.
“I can’t . . . thank you . . . enough.” The gent stopped before him and braced his hands on his knees as he sucked wind. “She can’t . . . tolerate those . . . confounded devil wagons . . . when they start shooting like dadblasted fireworks.”
“There ought to be a law,” another fella offered, wiping his brow with a handkerchief and settling his derby.
Cale pried his hat off and reshaped the brim. There ought to be a law against buggy drivers not carrying a buggy stake. “Next time, leave the halter on her with a lead rope and tie her to the hitching rail. If she jerks it out of the ground, at least it’ll slow her down.” He set his hat. “Or you could carry a hitch weight.”
The owner, still a might sallow, offered a weak handshake.
Cale gathered Doc’s reins and returned to the woman. He stopped a respectable distance away, figuring she might need help back to wherever she was headed. She wasn’t from around these parts, that was for sure. Not in that getup. Her boy’s haircut said she was likely from the East and made her own mind up about most things.
He huffed out a breath and shook his head. Beat all he’d ever seen.
Circling around to stand before her, he offered a hand.
She gathered the crumpled shirt, gripped his fingers with surprising strength, and pulled herself up quicker than he’d expected.
As soon as she straightened, she let go. “Thank y—”
Her leg buckled.
He reached for her again. “No wonder you didn’t get out of the way. You shouldn’t have been out in the street without help. Or a cane—”
She jerked her arm free and fired from eyes as deep and dark as a cannon barrel. “I am not an invalid.”
Snake-bit, he stepped back at her venom. “I didn’t say you were. Just that—”
“I know what you said. There is not one thing wrong with my hearing.” She tossed her head and a forelock fell across her eyes. She pushed it aside.
He studied her a minute—the way she stood all stiff, tilted to her left. She hadn’t foul
He’d always considered himself a Christian man, but it suited him fine if that was the way she wanted things. He stepped up on Doc and turned for Main Street, tipping his hat in her direction. “You’re welcome.”
CHAPTER TWO
Ella focused her stare to a pinpoint on the cowboy’s vested back, determined to bore a hole through him. How dare he tell her how to cross the street.
The sensation of his iron grip still belted her waist, and her hand shook as she fumbled in her jacket pocket for biscuits the hotel’s cook had given her. Two of them, now flattened like pancakes.
She hadn’t been atop a horse in a year and a half. With a shake of her head, she shoved the biscuits back in her pocket and took a tentative step forward. The man had not even offered to help her back to the studio. As if she would have accepted his help anyway.
He saved your life.
Guilt, these days, had acquired a voice remarkably similar to her dear Nana’s.
All right. He had saved her life. She plucked an ornery grass stem from her stockings. He’d also insulted her. And who was to say that she might not have side-stepped the charging horse and buggy had he not been in her way?
She imagined Nana Elizabeth’s eyes rolling heavenward at such ingratitude, and an uninvited image imposed itself—her own trampled body in the street, buggy-wheel tracks marring her rose-colored suit.
Three men approached, one with a bowler in his hand and regret on his face.
“Miss . . .”
“Canaday.”
“Miss Canaday, please, may I offer you a ride back to town?” The bowler indicated the buggy, horse twitching in the traces. “I do apologize for any injury or danger resulting from my mare’s nervous condition.”
Nervous indeed. But not as much as Ella would be if she accepted his offer. Though her walk to the studio was blocks farther now than usual, she couldn’t trust that animal to remain calm at the next choking automobile, and it seemed more of them crowded the street now than before.
“Thank you, but no. I believe I’ll walk.” She gave a polite smile and angled away, her limp more pronounced than ever. As it turned out, she was the one who suffered the searing burn of someone staring a hole in her back.
Rounding the corner at Main Street, she ducked away from her audience and leaned against the store front. She couldn’t stop trembling, whether from anger or fear she didn’t know. So much for a change of scenery and observing the rumored West before it vanished. Perhaps she should have stayed in Chicago on the Canaday estate and filled her days with tatting and china painting and tea with spinsters whose ranks she would soon enough join.
Her now-empty stomach rolled, and a moan escaped. She’d completely humiliated herself in that cowboy’s presence. Not only had he seen her weakened condition, but he’d also seen her sick. She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the brick, pressing a hand to her midsection until her insides settled. At lease she had no call to face him ever again.
The ache in her leg spread downward from thigh to calf, but she waited for passersby to do just that before kneading her fisted knuckles into the scarred thigh muscle. The building that supported her housed a grocer, one of three she had seen in town so far, advertising locally grown vegetables and fruit in season. A shame that early June was not the season for that fruit.
Jed Barr’s gabardine shirt looked as if it had been run through a wringer. She inspected it for tears but found only wrinkles, which could be remedied provided she had the time. She pushed off the wall and peered ahead for her destination, though it was completely out of sight. The Hotel Denton rose two blocks from where she stood, and the Selig Polyscope studio was three blocks beyond that. By the time she arrived, she would be even sorer—and sorely late—providing yet another arrow for the leading lady’s artillery.
Nearing the Denton’s stately four stories, she wanted nothing more than to stumble upstairs and into a hot bath, but she pressed on. Urgency tempted her to hurry, but she took her route slowly, accommodating her leg by strolling rather than rushing.
A baker’s enticing aromas wafted into the morning, as did a spicy concoction from the Ceylon Tea Store’s open door. The small town preened beneath her perusal, boasting a millinery and ladies’ clothing store, the Cañon City Record newspaper office, two drug stores—one with a soda fountain—as well as a hardware store, paint store, and a church.
The walk had dissipated most of her tension and loosened her tight nerves. Her leg, however, was another matter.
She stopped at the corner of Fourth and Main, looked both ways for signs of nervous horses or cacophonous motorcars, and then successfully crossed the street for her final stretch to the studio.
The dignified Raynolds Bank peered down as she passed, but she focused on resisting her leg’s painful throbbing and almost missed a visitor waiting at the studio—the very horse that had carried her to safety. In a manner of speaking.
Her neck prickled at the fresh memory of a man’s iron-like grip and pillared leg that together served as what really carried her from certain death, or at least further maiming. Pushing away those troublesome sensations of the cowboy’s powerful presence, she considered his equally powerful mount that waited calmly in front of the studio, reins dangling to the dirt.
He was a beauty with his fiery coat and fine head, two qualities she had failed to appreciate while flying down Main Street.
She cushioned her approach with a soft greeting. “Hello, you handsome fellow. And thank you for coming to my rescue earlier.”
The horse flicked an ear and nuzzled her jacket pocket.
She angled her right hip away, but rubbed the animal’s velvety nose, careful to keep her fingers from its supple lip. “Sorry, but they might be all I’ll have time to eat today.”
Dark eyes regarded her with a calm and understanding gaze. She leaned into the strong body still overly warm from its run. A good brushing and a bag of oats were what he needed. She drank in the familiar scent of horse, leather, and sweat, not surprised that it still held the power to console and depress her at the same time.
“You truly are a beauty.”
He dropped his head and rumbled a deep-chested thank-you.
“I prefer handsome.”
The bass tones jerked her around to the cowboy shadowed in a notch of the building. Unbalanced by the sudden move, she tilted against the horse’s shoulder, embarrassed by her awkwardness and peeved by a man who would not make himself known immediately. So much for never seeing him again.
The horse stood solid. Its owner moved toward her slowly, as if he didn’t trust her and hadn’t recently yanked her from the ground in as daring a stunt as any Jed Barr and Mabel Steinway staged. His expression was guarded and hardened, lacking the concern that had earlier drawn his brows together and kept her clutched in his protective hold. No staged scene, that. No director or cameraman, costumes or makeup.
A chill fluttered through her like winged truth, and her breath caught at the enormity of what she had been so quick to dismiss simply because she believed he thought her an invalid.
She straightened and faced him squarely. “Thank you for your assistance earlier today. What you did was quite . . .” Heroic? “My comments were less than appreciative. Please forgive me.”
His eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly, and his head turned a degree in that way that people did when doubting what they perceived.
She deserved that.
Standing so close to him without the wind tearing against her, she detected an earthy scent similar to his horse, minus the sweat. More like hay and sunshine, not at all in keeping with his previous manner. But if manners were in question, hers had been less than exemplary. “I am Ella Canaday.”
“Cale Hutton.” He touched his hat brim with his left hand in a perfectly natural and unaffected way. Jed Barr could learn a thing or two.
He extended his other hand, and she accepted it, not in the least surprised by his strong grip. Azure eyes had a similar hold. Creased at the edges but clear as the morning, they took her in with unpretentious candor.
