Page 22 of A Convenient Heart
Jack went out onto the boardwalk. Clouds had rolled in, though it wasn’t snowing or raining. He stuffed his hands in his pockets. He’d won a little—not much more than he’d need for a train ticket.
He could go back in there. Something about Pocket Watch had tangled Jack’s emotions. But with a few breaths of cold fresh air, he thought he could try again. Another couple of good pots and he’d be set for two weeks or more.
And he wouldn’t mind lightening Pocket Watch’s pocketbook after his insinuation about Merritt.
Several cowboys moseyed up the boardwalk, heading for the saloon. Jack trailed them inside.
But he quickly saw that the poker table had been abandoned. Jack settled in at the bar, scanning the room…There. Pocket Watch was nearby, partially blocked by two of the cowboys who’d bellied up to the bar. He was talking with another man in a sharp suit.
“It’s a tragedy,” the dark-suited man said. “A real shame.” But his voice sounded gloating. “I would’ve burned down the school myself if I could’ve figured a way to do it without getting caught.”
Jack froze. Who was that, and why was he talking about the school like that?
“Hey, boss!” the barman called out, waving a decanter of a golden-colored liquid, and the man in the sharp suit waved a hand at him.Boss? He might be the owner of the saloon.
He kept talking, unperturbed by the distraction. “Miss Harding has been a thorn in my side for months.”
Pocket Watch fiddled with the squat glass on the table in front of him. “She’s stubborner than an old mule. But the other two coots on the school board love her.”
It clicked then, the connection that had been niggling in the back of Jack’s mind since the man had sat down across the table. This was one of the men who made up the school board. Merritt’s boss. He’d been at the site of the burnt building today.
The cowboy at Jack’s side shifted, and Jack missed the next part of what was said. Then, “…I’d love to have that parcel of land. Doesn’t your cousin work for the land office?”
“Ernie? Yes, he does, but the deed for the school land belongs to the town.”
The school land?
From his vantage point, half hidden behind the cowboy and trying not to give away that he was listening, Jack couldn’t see the saloon owner’s face. But he distinctly heard him say, “Pages can disappear from those record books.”
What a slimy snake. How low would he sink to take away the school?
“The town council won’t allow the town to be without a school for long,” Pocket Watch said. “They’ll rebuild. Somewhere else, maybe, if…ah…something happened to that deed.”
“Think how much of a failure it’d be for her and the other church ladies if I built a saloon right across the street from their church.”
Things began to clear up in Jack’s mind. Merritt had turned her nose up at the saloon when they’d been walking to the restaurant that first night.A thorn in my side for months. It didn’t take much imagination for him to picture Merritt rallying some of the mothers around town to protest the saloons. Cause what trouble she could.
And now this man wanted revenge for the slight.
“It’s not enough,” the saloon owner said, thumping his fist on the table. “I want her fired. Give her a reason to leave town.”
Pocket Watch leaned closer, over the table. “I just played a coupla hands of poker with her mail-order fiancé.”
The saloon owner perked up. “You don’t say.”
“I do say.”
“I wonder what the otherchurch ladies”—the words were spat with contempt—“would think about their prim and proper schoolmarm marrying a man of disrepute.”
Pocket Watch laughed. “There’s probably a paragraph in her teaching contract about maintaining an impeccable reputation.”
Jack’s temper sparked and he left quickly, pushing through the swinging doors and out into the night. He didn’t hang around this time, didn’t look up at the sky.
He was angry at the two men for their plotting—but also at himself.
He should’ve told Merritt the truth from the beginning. He hadn’t thought his presence in town could hurt her, not when he would disappear so quickly. But the man he’d just played cards with had the power to mess with Merritt’s job. Jack’s mind whirled as he tried to come up with a solution. How could he make this problem go away for Merritt?
He thought of those kids, their bright eyes and eagerness to please the teacher they loved so much. He thought about Merritt. About the man who was supposed to have arrived on the train but had taken the coward’s way out.
