The Woman From Somewhere

Chapter 1

A young man got off the train in Stockton, carrying only a carpetbag, and for a moment stood on the platform, looking around. He didn't know anyone around him. Sighing nervously, he walked to a very tall, thin man who looked like the station manager – at least had the white shirt and cap that made him look like a station manager. Speaking quietly, the young man said, "Excuse me, sir."

The station manager looked up from his clipboard. "How can I help you, son?"

"I'm looking for a man here in Stockton named Barkley," the young man said. "He's a lawyer."

"Uh, yes, Jarrod Barkley," the station manager said and pointed. "His office is right down the street on the right."

"Thank you," the young man said. He walked briskly in that direction the station manager indicated.

The young man found the office without any trouble, by the shingle hanging near the door and the name on the big window on the second floor. He went inside the building, nervous about the reception he would be getting here. Inside was a stair, a hallway, and another door – a double one – with another shingle hanging in the hallway. He stopped to knock but paused when he heard voices inside, yelling at each other.

"If you don't sue McAllister, I'll find a lawyer who will!"

"Nick, you can't go around suing people just because they don't agree with your idea of the property line. You need a survey, and that's gonna take time!"

"Then quit wasting it and go get it!"

"I will as soon as I can get this other mess you've handed me off my desk!"

"What mess? That contract is fine and dandy just the way it is."

"What about the arbitration clause?"

"What 'arbitration'?"

"Arbitration! Arbitration! Sign this, and you will be signing away any right you have to sue if the deal goes wrong! You'll be agreeing to let an arbitrator handle everything, and the way that arbitrator is to be chosen stinks!"

"Aaah!"

The young man heard heavy footsteps approaching and suddenly the left side of the door was pulled open. A big man in black with an unhappy face looked startled to see him there. The young man remembered Nick Barkley, but could tell Nick did not remember him.

"I'd like to see Mr. Barkley," the young man said.

"Please come in," Jarrod's voice, sounding weary but like it was trying not to be, came from inside the room.

Nick stood aside and motioned the young man in, but he did not leave, curious now as to who this was.

Jarrod was standing beside his desk. He looked at the young man, who was taking his hat off and tucking it under his arm. He looked vaguely familiar – and then very familiar.

The young man smiled and said, "Hello, Dakota."

"My God, Danny Mathews!" Jarrod said. For a moment he was just stunned, but then he reached out his hand to him, and a somewhat baffled smile came over him.

Danny Mathews took the hand of the man he knew as just Dakota.

"Let me look at you!" Jarrod said, taking a step back. Danny was much taller than Jarrod remembered and heavier, and his voice had deepened an entire octave, but Jarrod would have known him anywhere. His smile grew bigger and genuine. "Boy, you are a man now! Nick, I don't know if you remember this young man – "

"No, I don't," Nick said, but he extended a hand that Danny took.

"Danny and his mother and grandmother took care of me up near Rockville a couple years ago, when I got hurt and lost myself for a week or so," Jarrod said.

Nick remembered that. He didn't like remembering it, but he did remember it. "Nice to see you again, Danny," Nick said.

Danny turned toward Jarrod and said, "Dakota – oh, I'm sorry, I've been telling myself all the way here to remember to call you Mr. Barkley."

Jarrod shook his head. "It's Dakota to you, Danny. It always will be."

"Thanks," Danny said. To Danny, it was more than a name. It was an acknowledgement that to Jarrod Barkley, his time as Dakota – a name Danny had given him – was still important to him. "I need your help."

"Sit down," Jarrod said.

Nick said, "I'll see you at home."

Jarrod nodded as Nick went out the door and closed it behind him.

Danny sat down in the chair in front of Jarrod's desk, and Jarrod sat on the edge of his desk. "What do you need help with, Danny? Is it your mother or grandmother?"

Danny hung his head. "Grandma passed away only a week after you left. She wouldn't get that arm wound seen by a doctor, and it got infected."

"Oh, I'm sorry."

Danny shrugged. "She was stubborn. It went the way she wanted it to."

"How about your mother?"

Danny looked down at his hands again. "She's been slipping too, Dakota."

Jarrod remembered his last words with Libby. He made her promise she would never stop looking for a good life, but now it looked like she might not have found it. "How so, Danny?"

"We left Stone Creek and moved to a little place across the river from Sacramento. We got together a down payment on a little house and a little land with the money Ma got from Mr. Cameron in Rockville. Ma took a job in a mercantile in town and I took a job with a blacksmith and we got a loan for the rest of the price of the house," Danny explained. "We made ends meet for a while, but then the smithy died and I didn't know enough how to do it to take over the business or have enough money to buy it. His family sold it to someone who brought his own son in and I was out of a job."

"When did this happen?" Jarrod asked.

"About six months ago. The only steady work I could find was at one of the liveries, and it didn't pay as well. I've done odd jobs around town to make more money, and Ma took on some sewing work to earn a little more, but we're falling behind on the bills. Ma's boss at the mercantile, he's been real understanding and cut the prices on what we need there just so we can get by, but the man who has the mortgage on the house has started to threaten to foreclose. And Ma is just about at the end of her rope."

"Have you gotten her a lawyer?"

"I've tried to get her to get one but we can't pay what they're asking. Dakota – I was hoping maybe you'd help us out, come up and talk to Ma and see if we can get things more settled. I have money, but not a lot. And Ma respected you, you know. Just by being there I think you can get help her get her courage built back up. She's just about to go down, it's so bad."

Respected? Yes, but loved, too, and that was the sticky issue, then and now. It was tough when someone loved you but you didn't feel the same way. At the time he was with the Mathews family, he was struggling mightily with himself, with memory loss caused when he was knocked off his horse. There wasn't any room for love, just for confusion about himself and anger for what was happening with the local ranchers trying to run off the people who were helping him. Just thinking about all that right now was making Jarrod flash back to that time and feel as disjointed as he had felt then.

On the other hand, the woman had taken him in when he was utterly lost. He had never repaid her for that, just left her and Danny, and that still stuck in him a bit too. Didn't he owe it to her to at least try to talk to her? Didn't he owe it to Danny to at least try to help him put his mother and their lives back together?

But back to the first hand – "You know, it's kind of complicated between me and your mother, Danny."

"I know," Danny said. "I was just a kid, but I saw it then, and I sure understand now that I'm older. I know what I'm asking is awkward, but Dakota, I just don't know what else to do. I don't know who else to turn to."

That tore the heart out of Jarrod, but it also made him understand what his responsibility now was. He couldn't turn Danny down. He couldn't live with himself knowing he didn't at least try to help that family that had helped him when he needed it so desperately.

Jarrod stood up. "There won't be another train to Sacramento until tomorrow morning. You can stay over at our ranch tonight and we'll head north in the morning."

Danny got up, picking his carpetbag up off the floor beside him. "I really appreciate this, Dakota. I can't pay you right this minute - "

Jarrod waved him off. "You and your mother paid me a long time ago, Danny. But I still consider you a client, so we won't talk about any of this in front of anyone else, not even my family, all right?"

Danny nodded.

Jarrod said, "Let's get my horse at the livery and get you a mount and head on home. You'll feel better after you get a good meal in you, and we've got the best cook west of the divide."

Jarrod fetched his hat from behind his desk, then put his arm around Danny and steered him out the door.