The Chili Queen by Sandra Dallas Read Free Book Online

side of the frying pan. It sounded like a shot.
    “Well then, he might have been run over by a freight wagon or killed by outlaws—” She stopped because Emma was shaking her head back and forth.
    “No. None of that,” Emma said. “He was there at the depot, all right. I didn’t see him, but he saw me. He left a letter. It wasn’t more than a few minutes ago that I thought to inquire for a message. And there was his dispatch, lying there.” Emma reached into her bag and took out a sheet of cheap paper that was folded in half, then folded again. Miss Roby was written on the outside. Emma straightened the paper, and set it on the table.
    Addie snatched it up and began to read the pencil script to herself, nodding her head at each word as she sounded it out. Then she glanced up at Welcome, who was paying no attention to the skillet. “All right, you can hear it,” Addie told Welcome, and as Emma cringed, Addie read the salutation: “Dear Emma Roby.”
    Addie smoothed the paper on the table and pointed to each word as she pronounced it.
    “You are older than your picture, and I believe you are not a suitable match for a man such as myself.” Addie read each word distinctly, and when she got to the end of the sentence, she looked up at Emma, but Emma was staring stoically at the stove. “I did not bargain for an old maid. I am not cruel but am a coward, so I will leave this with the station man. It is better if you go on back home and forget about
    “Your faithful servant,
    “W.W.”
    Welcome set down a plate of fried eggs and fatty meat in front of Addie, raising an eyebrow. “She’s a mail-order bride,” Addie explained.
    “No such a thing!” Emma said indignantly.
    Addie shrugged. “She’s not a mail-order bride. She just came out here looking for somebody she never met to pick her off the platform at the depot and marry her.”
    Welcome went to the cupboard and came back to the table with a fork, which she handed to Addie. The black woman had big hands. And her feet in their brass-toed brogans were big, too. Once, when a man had gotten rough at The Chili Queen, Addie had called Welcome, who came to the room, holding a frying pan in one hand, slapping it against the palm of the other. The man bolted before Welcome had a chance to use it. Addie wondered how many other men Welcome had taken on. Maybe she’d chunked around her husband when he went after her. The servant had told her she’d been married, but “we abided poorly, so I let him go. He whipped me for any misdemeanor dislikeable. I guess he’s in hell now, if the devil can stand him.” Addie had been a little afraid to ask Welcome if she had dispatched him there.
    “I was to meet a gentleman here to get married. We had corresponded,” Emma explained to Welcome.
    “For no reason you should be sorry you missed out on such a devil on earth,” Welcome said.
    Addie was surprised at the outburst and waved her away. “It’s not your business. Don’t you have chickens to kill?”
    “It’s too dark to kill chickens,” Welcome said. She withdrew into the shadows of the kitchen but didn’t leave. Well, Addie thought, if Emma didn’t mind Welcome listening in, why should she?
    “I didn’t have any place to go. I thought I could stay here. You said I could,” Emma repeated.
    “Ha!” said Welcome. Addie turned to her, but all she could see in the dark corner was Welcome’s white apron.
    “You do take women, don’t you? Your card says, ‘Men taken in,’ but I hoped…” She left the sentence hanging in the air as a question.
    “There isn’t room,” Addie said. “We’re full up.”
    “Let her taken Miss Frankie’s room, but she can’t call me ‘nigger.’ Miss Frankie did, and I told her ‘git.’”
    “That’s my business to put her out,” Addie protested.
    Welcome chuckled in the darkness. “You take Miss Frankie’s room, Miss Addie, and give up yourn to the lady. Since it’s off the kitchen, she won’t be bothered by