Page 66 of Native Hawk
Chapter 20
Drew knew in that instant that he’d made the right decision last night. Catalina was going to make a perfect wife. Not only was she lovely on the outside, but she was beautiful inside as well. The fact that she would sacrifice all she’d saved to come to the rescue of a mistreated waif spoke heaps about her nature.
A lump lodged in his throat as he gazed at his beloved bride-to-be. She possessed a will of iron and a heart of gold. He couldn’t ask for a worthier prize.
Now all he had to do was make sure he was deserving of such a prize.
“Was it the man with the broken nose?” he asked Jenny. He remembered the villain from the poker game. “It was, wasn’t it?”
Jenny gulped and nodded.
“Do you know where he went?”
She shook her head.
Cat assured him, “It is not your fight, Drew.” Then she added a small, pointed poke at him. “Especially since you are going to be moving on.”
“Any time a man mistreats a woman, it’s my fight,” he told her. “And about my movin’ on, I’ve been thinkin’ about that.”
“Have you?” Her face she kept carefully neutral, but he could see she was holding her breath.
He wouldn’t say any more about it than that, at least not until he scraped together enough money to buy her a proper wedding ring.
“So where are you headed?” he asked Jenny.
Jenny looked in question at Catalina. “Sacramento?”
Cat nodded.
“That’s good,” he agreed. It was far enough away to be safe. And it was easy to disappear in a big town like Sacramento, where nobody looked too closely into a person’s background. She could, as Cat said, make a new beginning. “What do you need me to do?”
Cat looked askance at the battered girl. “Can you pack your trunks right now?”
“I don’t have a trunk. I don’t have much of anything, to be honest, just this dress and a few sundries.”
“If you hurry,” Catalina said, “you can catch the morning stage to Chico and go from there.
Jenny’s eyes said she was afraid.
Catalina narrowed her gaze. “I will fashion a hat for you so no one will see your face, yes?”
The girl nodded.
Drew felt useless as Catalina made plans for Jenny’s escape. But he had to admire her resourcefulness, especially watching her transform an ordinary basket into a hat.
First, she broke off the basket handle. Then she cut a swath of cloth from the underskirt of the girl’s dress. Placing the basket at an angle atop Jenny’s head, she wrapped the sheer yellow fabric around the basket, pulling part of it down to create a veil of sorts. Then she clipped the purple rose from the front of the girl’s dress, wrapping the ends of the ribbon around the hat to hold it in place.
Satisfied with that, she helped Jenny get dressed, untying the ribbons that normally hitched it up above her knees so that the skirts fell at a respectable length. She retied the outside ribbons at the front and cut off the inside ribbons, weaving them together into an insert, which she basted into the indecently low neckline of the gown.
It was genius.
No wonder Cat wanted to be a clothing designer. She had a real gift for it. If she could do that with odds and ends of cloth, a needle and thread, and her two hands, what could she do with real material and a sewing machine? Her talent made him even more determined to help her get out of The Parlor and buy her the sewing machine she wanted.
Within a matter of minutes, Jenny had gathered her meager belongings. Catalina tried unsuccessfully to pick all the feathers from Jenny’s dress, and then kissed her on both cheeks, bidding her goodbye and good fortune. Then Drew escorted her to The Adams Hotel, where the stage was due to arrive.
Catalina dusted off her hands. At least one problem was solved today. But there was still the feathery mess of her room. And she didn’t even want to think about the carnage downstairs.
At least Drew was still in Paradise, she thought as she secured her petticoat. Finding him gone this morning, she’d feared his lusty behavior last night had been a gesture of farewell.
