back.”
“And,” O’Neil added, “that they’ll do their courtin’ on their own terms. With the women they choose.”
Marcus nodded. Obviously, all this group needed was leadership. It was as true here as it was in his lumber mill all day long.
“Won’t work.” With a terse snap of his wrist, Jack Murphy finished wiping down the bar and flicked the wet cloth into the corner bucket. He spread his hands on the newly clean surface and leaned forward. “Adam Crabtree won’t take personal advertisements from anybody but the matchmaker’s private courier. Nobody knows who that is.”
“Lord,” the tanner groused. “She’s got us sewn up tighter than Copeland’s hold on his wallet.”
Chortles abounded as heads turned toward Marcus. He laughed, too, as agreeable to the joke as anyone else. It was true that he kept a firm grasp on his money. He’d worked hard for it. There was no crime in wanting to secure a good future.
Especially after the things he’d gone through to get there.
All the same, Marcus wasn’t so far off the mark that he couldn’t appreciate the humor in a man who accounted for every last pine shaving at the lumber mill. A man who couldn’t resist locking the door of his house when his neighbors did not. A man who’d stocked his pantry with enough tinned peaches, Arbuckle’s coffee and bags of dried beans to last until he turned gray, and who never finished a meal without tucking away a portion of it for later…just in case.
A man like him.
“I’d say we’ve got the clue we need, then,” he said, thinking back on what had been said about the matchmaker’s personal advertisements—and the Pioneer Press editor’s involvement in them. The man was known to be a radical thinker, espousing all sorts of eccentric ideas. “It sounds to me as though Adam Crabtree must be involved somehow.”
“Or his daughters!” someone piped up. “Those three are something else, again. Why, that Sarah Crabtree knows just about everyone in town, seeing as how she teaches all our children down at the schoolhouse. I’d say she’d have some definite ideas about who should be matched up.”
“Now, hold on,” interrupted Daniel McCabe, standing up so that his intimidating bulk loomed over the speaker. “I know Sarah, and there’s no way in hell she—”
“You’re right!” O’Neil said, breaking in before Daniel could finish. “There’s something ’spicious about those Crabtree sisters. All three of ’em spinsters and busybodies are privy to half the town’s secrets, between ’em. ’Specially that Grace Crabtree, with all her highfalutin ‘ladies’ clubs’ and such. She must know every old biddy in Morrow Creek.”
The men around him nodded vigorously. The buzz of conversation rose louder, enlivened by this new development. Jack Murphy weighed in with his opinion on Grace Crabtree, and Daniel McCabe rose again in defense of her sister Sarah. Talk turned to the third and youngest sister, Molly Crabtree. Amidst it all, Marcus worked on the ledgers and finished his beans and ale. Absentmindedly, he wrapped the remaining half of brown bread in his handkerchief and tucked the bundle into his coat pocket.
Suddenly, the tanner’s voice came again: “You’re a thinking kind of man, Copeland. How ’bout that for a plan?”
Marcus blinked, unable to recall the multiple directions the conversation had taken after his suggestion that Adam Crabtree might be linked to the mysterious matchmaker.
“Yeah, Copeland. You’re the one who thought up this idea,” O’Neil said. “’Tis only fair you take on Molly.”
“Molly?”
“Molly Crabtree,” O’Neil explained. Inexplicably, his face reddened, as though the mere mention of the woman’s name brought a blush to his face. Curious. “You must’ve seen her. Her little bakery shop—”
Titters erupted throughout the room, and were quickly stifled.
“—is just down the street from your place.”
Marcus squinted, trying to recall what lay on the path between his modest house and the lumber mill he’d put into operation only two short years ago. He envisioned nothing. Most days, his walk to his office was filled with thoughts of the day to come—work crews to be assigned, timber to be felled, shipments to be hauled to the railway. He wasn’t some kind of lay-about, with time to gawk at the scenery he passed.
“I don’t recall seeing her,” he said. “I don’t have time to—”
“Come on, Copeland,” someone called from near the bar. “You must’ve seen her.”
“She’s a female.” More laughter. “Remember those?”
“About so high—” one of the billiards players who frequented the newly opened saloon held his hand at chest height. “—with a fancy hat, a sweet swoosh of skirts, and a very important difference in the fit of her shirtwaist.”
Everyone laughed. Irritated, Marcus slapped the second of his ledgers closed. He knew what a woman was! Hell, he’d done his share of warming up the long nights with someone soft and biddable and more than able to fill out the ‘fit of her shirtwaist.’ Granted, he hadn’t had time for any of that for a while now…but that didn’t mean he needed his friends and neighbors making him look the fool.
“Maybe we can draw a picture,” teased the mercantile owner, “so Marcus here can locate the lady and find out if she’s the matchmaker or not.”
Ahh. So that was what the ‘taking on’ referred to by O’Neil was. The Morrow Creek Men’s Club expected him to find a way to discover if the bakery-owning Crabtree sister was the matchmaker. Marcus frowned, raising his hand to forestall further discussion.
It didn’t work.
“A picture! That’s what he needs.” Agreement was reached quickly. Jack Murphy winked and produced a finger’s width of chalk from behind the bar, then tossed it to the man most likely to be able to render a recognizable likeness—Deputy Winston, from the sheriff’s office. Hunkering down beside a nearby table, Winston examined the scarred wood surface, wearing the same expression he did while indulging in his favorite hobby: copying the images from the jailhouse’s collection of wanted posters.
He drew. In no time flat, he straightened, revealing a bumpy, chalky likeness of a woman wearing a frothy dress, disproportionately huge bosoms, and an even huger bonnet. “There you go, Copeland. Have at ’er.”
Tight featured, Marcus stood. For one long, silent moment, he stared down at the bawdy caricature. “Very well,” he said at last. “I’ll find out if Miss Crabtree is the matchmaker.”
“And stop her!”
“Of course.”
“Then we’re all in agreement,” Jack said from his place at the bar. “We find this matchmaker, we find whatever it takes to prove that she’s behind the shenanigans, and we stop her. Marcus with Miss Molly, Daniel with Miss Sarah, and me—” he hesitated, seeming pained by the announcement “—with Miss Grace. All members in agreement?”
“Hell, yes!” cried the men. Hooting, stamping, clanking their glasses together in glee, they fell into clumps of four or five men each, ready to celebrate the impending downfall of the meddlesome matchmaker who had wrecked their peaceable lives.
“One more thing,” Marcus said, raising his voice to be heard over the din. “The next man who treats a woman’s likeness and reputation this way—” he thumped the chalk drawing on the table, bringing his gaze to bear on the roomful of men “—will have me to answer to.”
A hush fell over the celebrants. Quickly the deputy stepped forward and rubbed away the image with his shirtsleeve. “Sorry,” he muttered. “No offense meant, Copeland. I thought you didn’t even know the gal.”
“I don’t.” But I will soon. Marcus slung his suit coat