In Sixteen Gold Nuggets Tessa's Aunt Martha (actually it was her husband) turned Tessa out of their house at age fifteen. With her gambling husband dead Martha is destitute and hunts up Tessa. Tessa does take her in and because Tessa is marrying Joe Martha begins to manage Tessa's Arrowhead Restaurant. Springton, NE finally gets a part time judge of its own and he is very much attracted to Martha.

Martha's dastardly husband appears on the scene and demands money he says Martha has. Fifteen year old Jed Mulder takes part in trying to collect the money but is captured and adopted by the judge. The confusion of who is Jed's uncle and who has the money plus who was the dead man in Martha's kitchen if not her husband lends to the mystery.

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EXCERPT:

Martha Conradson sighed. It had taken months, August, September and October, to be exact, for her life to finally come into a semblance of order and a kind of pattern she didn’t regret. Careful washing and pressing had saved most of her clothing she hadn’t sold back in St. Louis. Selling some of those clothes, like the striped nainsook, was no hardship. She didn’t need those stripes to make her look taller.

She did keep the blue velvet hat with black veil, blue ribbons and pink roses. The veil had helped disguise her face on more than one occasion while she fled her pursuers. Her heavier winter clothing was rather scarce. Luckily the hooded wool cloak survived the upheaval of her life.

She put her tired and aching feet up on the small footstool Sophie’s husband Charlie had made and Tessa had left behind. I really should replace these old high-buttoned shoes, but they are more comfortable than new ones would be. The restaurant’s cookstove heat felt good as the November wind whistled around the corners of the kitchen and against the windows. On again, off again snow swirled outside the small window. The rag strips she’d stuffed into the cracks around the back door kept out the worst of the cold winter wind howling outside. It was a nuisance to re-stuff around the door after the morning supply of water was brought from the outside well. Charlie Maynard’s promise to pipe water to a kitchen pitcher pump had been delayed by cattle branding, cattle drives and his work on Sophie’s and his house.

Inside the kitchen the aromas of spicy pies and roasting meat were pleasant and familiar. Yeasty bread smells still remained from the baking loaves. She had even gotten used to cooking the occasional venison that came her way from some of the ranchers. She wasn’t fond of antelope, but she did fix it on the rare occasion she was given one all butchered and cut up.

Except for her tired feet, she felt better than she had in a long time. Sophie, Tessa’s longtime friend, and Bets, the sheriff’s wife, had encouraged her in doing the restaurant’s curtains in blue instead of the greens and yellows Tessa had favored. They said it was time for a change, just as Tessa had made changes every four or five years.

It was too bad the cold winds made her lovely blue checked curtains flutter now and then. She had stuffed rag strips around those windows as much out of sight as she could. It did help.

Martha glanced up at the latest painting on the restaurant wall. Her birthday present from Sophie and Charlie put color on the drab wall. A local rancher’s wife did very beautiful watercolors and framed them for hanging. The gold of aspen leaves against dark green pines set off the log cabin with an orange campfire in front.

Sadly it reminded her of the Alderman oil paintings her husband Clarence had sold to replenish his gambling funds. She shrugged off the dreary thought.

Also for her birthday, Sophie, Bets and Aggie, who was married to Hod, the local livery owner, had given her three new blue aprons to wear while working. Hilda, the kitchen helper, had made a small cake and no one pried as to how old she was. Sophie had become a good friend, along with Hilda, the sheriff’s family, Hod and Aggie and their family. She and Sophie were close to being full partners in the restaurant because she was well on her way to buying out Tessa’s half interest in the place. People in Springton were friendly. There were loyal customers who appreciated her good cooking the same as they had Tessa’s.

One great worry from her past was over. She knew Tessa was happy with her husband Joe Gilmore. They corresponded fairly often from their home in Omaha.

No customers were in Tessa’s Arrowhead Restaurant at present. Even the kitchen helper, Hilda, had gone for bacon, more eggs and cabbage for tomorrow’s soup.

Martha slumped down so she could rest her head back on the hard wood of the straight-backed kitchen chair. So much had happened in the last ten months, starting with her husband Clarence’s death. She shivered as she remembered how scared she’d been when she fled the collectors who were after what little money she had left after the bank foreclosed on the only home she’d ever known.

She hoped those awful collectors had given up. They couldn’t get money from a dead man and it wasn’t her gambling debt. She stubbornly refused to consider it her responsibility.

She remembered her arrival in Springton…

That hot August day she had walked up the rough boardwalk toward Tessa’s Arrowhead Restaurant. She’d paused, then walked on by, not having the courage quite yet to confront her estranged niece. The boardwalk had been swept, but the dust of the street puffed up every time a horseman or a wagon went by. She’d brushed travel dust from her black silk suit that was much more appropriate for mourning than for traveling. It had been so many years, almost eighteen, since she had even seen, or had any contact with, Tessa Fenscott.

When Martha had asked at the general store, they told her they only knew a Tessa Alderman, not Fenscott. Martha guessed Tessa had changed to her mother’s maiden name. Now her name was Tessa Gilmore, Mrs. Joseph Gilmore.

Martha shifted on the hard wooden chair. Someday she would sew cushions for the two kitchen chairs. Cold November was a long way from a blistering hot August. She was so thankful to be in where it was at least heated, even though the floors away from the cooking stove often got cold.

Martha sighed and rose to her feet to put another stick of wood in the big cook stove. Cooking was the only thing she knew how to do. She also carried a couple sticks of good oak wood to the round black stove in the dining room. People coming in from the cold appreciated a warm room.

Peering out the front window at the wintry day, she dreaded closing the warm restaurant, facing the block long walk to her cold home and getting a fire started there. She was sure the banked fire in that fireplace had gotten quite low already and there were still several hours to go.

Why do I feel so uneasy, even jumpy today? Why did I now suddenly become restless on my way back to the kitchen? More important, why did I think about those two nasty collectors? She didn’t believe in those who predicted the future, but she felt a strange foreboding.

Martha pushed fingers through her hair. She had hacked it off in the hot days of July as a disguise while escaping those bad men. It had grown quite a lot since August. The fall of reddish blonde curls that now lay on her shoulders helped keep her neck warm. The pompadour in front was thick enough for the top of her head, but with the new fashions, her ears got cold. Martha laughed, glad she was inside and toasty warm, as long as she kept her feet raised on the footstool close to the stove.

Restlessness did not let her remain with her feet up. She again paced slowly into the dining area, hands clasped behind her back, gazing out the unfrosted part of the big window.

Outside, a man down the street walked hunched over against the wind. He reminded her of that skinny lad with the collection company. She stepped back from the cold glass of the window.

Collectors. Those horrible men had actually cut off Clarence’s finger. She shivered in remembrance. She glanced around at the gloom in the room. Clouds had covered the sun. It had to be the cold, damp and windy weather that made her suddenly depressed. Earlier she’d felt so happy. Was it a premonition of bad things to come? Will the collectors find me after all this time? Clarence had killed himself to escape their torture. She had no inclination to avoid them that way.

Avoid them she would though. Now she had friends instead of just acquaintances. She felt assured that Sheriff Bill Coble would come to her rescue should any unwelcome visitors arrive.

Almost six months ago, one of the collectors, either the youngster, Jed Mulder, or the older, crueler looking man, with the name of Something-or-other Borke, had seen her while she sought employment as a cook in a town near St. Louis. What if those collectors found Annie, who owned the boarding house on the edge of St. Louis? They would make her tell them about Lizzie here in Springton, where Annie had sent her for safety and possibly to locate Tessa.

Martha frowned, remembering how she had worried for two months that Mulder and Borke would find her at Tessa’s and cause trouble. Survival had come first and thankfully neither of them had located her yet. It was now almost four months ago that the irascible driver had set her portmanteau down on the boardwalk at the Springton Stage Station and walked away to see about his horses. She still didn’t like that ornery stagecoach driver whenever she saw him.

Hilda returned and together they put away the groceries. “I wonder if it will be busy again this weekend,” Hilda said. “Ranches have laid in most of their winter supplies in case they get snowed in. Remember how the store ran out of Mason jars for canning, twice? We’re lucky to have our pantry full of canned goods. We were shore busy for a while.”

“Remember, too, how busy we were when Tessa went to Valentine?” Martha said.

“I remember.” Hilda started bread batter in a huge bowl. She gave Martha a cautious look and Martha wondered what the outspoken woman would say next.

“I remember a few nights I stayed with you when you had nightmares. Did Clarence really commit suicide the way I heard?”

Martha paused to consider whether to reply. Hilda was blunt almost to rudeness sometimes, with some people. Her heart was good and usually sympathetic where she felt it was deserved. Also she was not known as a gossip. Her aged and wrinkled face was serious as she continued her work.

“Two of those collectors came one day. When Clarence couldn’t make his loan payment, they cut off most of his left little finger. Clarence screamed and moaned about it for a week,” Martha said. She shuddered in remembrance. It gave her the willies even now. She continued, “They came again, threatening to cut off another finger, but I gave them my diamond necklace Clarence bought me in Paris. ‘The damn thing is paste,’ Clarence told me afterwards. ‘They’ll be back and cut off two fingers, they said.’ I believed that because the one man sounded and acted really mean. He was so much bigger than Clarence.”

“Would they really do that?” Hilda was hanging on Martha’s every word. Her pale eyes were round. Her hands paused in their dough kneading.

“He was terrified. That night when I went upstairs to bed, he said he was going to his office. That’s on the first floor,” Martha explained. “It was a few hours later when I heard a commotion downstairs. I went to check on the noise and heard a horrible, loud bang. Oh, Hilda, it was awful! He blew his own head off! It was dreadful. I feel sick again.” Martha sat down quickly in a kitchen chair and kept drawing deep breaths, her hands to her face as she rocked back and forth.

Exhaustion hit Martha, almost as bad as her first day in Springton. She thought of the bedroom in the house she and Sophie now shared whenever Sophie had to be in town for her midwifery duties. Martha had moved into Tessa’s old room. Nothing was changed; it seemed as beautiful to her now as it was then. Keep thinking about the small house instead of Clarence. She forced her mind from the tragedy.

Cream-colored wallpaper with huge pink cabbage roses adorned the walls. A cream-colored bedspread covered the big four-poster bed. A cheval mirror, a tiny vanity with small chair and a dresser made up the rest of the small room. Simple large spikes held filled dress hangers on the wall. The commode had a flowered pitcher and bowl with a matching chamber pot.

The past kept creeping up, making her wonder what she could have done differently. Wondering too, if at last, she would be safe from those wretched and frightening collectors. Resigned to the fact nothing could be changed, she stoked the stove with a small piece of wood and pushed a medium-sized coffeepot onto the front griddle, then returned to her chair and stared at the coffeepot, willing it to heat quickly.

“Feel better now?” Hilda asked, after a time. “I figgered you needed to get something out of your system. It’s been peckin’ at yer nature all this time.”

Martha nodded, and slowly rose. She returned to washing dishes. “So many dishes have been washed since then,” she said musingly. “So many pies were made while Tessa testified at that trial in Valentine. But we had a contented time. So many cakes made and Tessa and Joe’s, Sophie and Charlie’s beautiful double wedding. Those were the pleasant memories. I should concentrate on them.”