His Prairie Sweetheart

by Erica Vetsch

  “I was very unhappy when I first arrived. Everything was so strange, and you were antagonistic. I was sure I’d made a mistake.” She remembered his doubts about her abilities and her staying power—doubts he still seemed to feel. “I left Raleigh under a bit of a cloud. Nothing illegal or immoral, but it was humiliating all the same. I was jilted at the altar. There I was in my wedding gown, with the attendants, the flowers, the veil, the church full of friends and family, and no groom to be found.”

  Elias’s arm tightened around her.

  “His name was Girard Brandeis. He was from New Orleans, in Raleigh to visit family. We met at the Christmas Eve ball at my home, and I was swept off my feet by his charm. He courted me so persistently. It was hardly any time at all before we were engaged. I was sure he loved me and that we would be happy forever.”

  “Girard of the bookmark and the letter?”

  “I’d forgotten I even had that bookmark with our names on it. The violets were the first flowers Girard ever gave me. I pressed them and glued them to that pasteboard and wrote our names on it. Silly now, I suppose. When I got home from church that day, I threw it in the fire.” A gesture that had given her much satisfaction, even while it made her sad.

  “What happened to Girard?”

  She closed her eyes, waiting for the pain and humiliation to wash over her. But she waited in vain. Where sharp pain and a lingering ache had once been, she felt gratitude now. If Girard hadn’t run out on her, if he had gone through with the wedding, she wouldn’t have flown from home. She wouldn’t have found herself capable of so much more than she’d thought. She wouldn’t have met Elias.

  And she would’ve been married to a man who loved another. Intolerable.

  “At first I thought something terrible must’ve befallen him, that he’d met with some accident on the way to the church. But when Girard’s best man went to his lodgings, the landlord said he’d packed everything up the night before and left on the late train.” She summarized the facts she’d learned about Girard’s first love. “Aunt Carolina forwarded his letter. In it he explained about the other woman and asked for his ring back.”

  “I’d like the chance to teach him some manners.” The hard edge to Elias’s voice made Savannah smile in the dark.

  “If Aunt Carolina is to be believed, she sorted him out quite thoroughly when he came to the house to get his ring.”

  “I think I’d like your aunt Carolina.”

  “You know, I realize now I was more in love with the idea of Girard than with Girard himself. He represented so many things I’d been told were expected of me. Marry well, run a household, have children.” She sighed. “It’s the loss of those things that hurt more than the loss of Girard himself after a while. Now I look at sweet little Ingrid and mourn the loss of those children I’d hoped to have.”

  “What makes you think you won’t have children someday? Or your own house and husband?”

  Savannah shrugged, growing drowsy. “I couldn’t even tell that my own fiancé didn’t love me. Getting jilted smashes a girl’s confidence. In Raleigh, folks were wondering what was wrong with me that my groom would run out on me like that.” She yawned, fighting the waves of sleep rolling over her. “A girl starts to wonder herself.”

  “You’re not in Raleigh now, and there’s nothing wrong with you. That Girard fellow needs his head examined. He missed out when he jilted you.”

  Elias’s voice rumbled against her cheek, and his gruff confidence wrapped around her like a warm blanket.

  Her eyelids drooped, but before sleep claimed her, she savored his words. A bit of hope trickled into her chest. Maybe he was right, and she did have a future that might include a husband and children someday.

  Funny though, how when she tried to picture a husband, it was Elias’s face she saw.

  * * *

  A jilted bride.

  Elias blinked hard and jerked his head to keep himself awake. Savannah slumbered in his arms, and from time to time he took off his glove to touch her cheek, testing for cold. She’d been asleep for about an hour, and all the while he’d rolled her story around in his head.

  Her broken engagement explained the remoteness in her demeanor when she’d first arrived in Snowflake. She’d been hurting and trying not to let it show.

  Elias knew plenty about that. After Britta left, he’d been pretty jaded. She’d led him a merry dance, and he’d fallen hard. At least he hadn’t proposed to her, though he’d been planning on it. He understood what Savannah meant about losing not just the person but the future you’d built up in your mind with them.

  Cap got up and shook his coat, then clicked across the floor, stepping over sleeping children until he came to Elias. Elias used his free hand and ruffled the dog’s ears. The collie sniffed Savannah’s hair where it peeped out from the edge of her hat, and then made a tour of the room. Finally, he threaded his way between the small bodies around the stove and lay down again, his nose resting on Rut’s sleeve.

  The storm raged outside, howling and shaking the building. Elias prayed the snow was piling up along the outside walls. If they got buried in a few feet of fluff, the room would be much easier to heat.

  Easing Savannah down onto her side, he forced himself to get up and move. Cap raised his head, but Elias signaled him to stay put. Walking as quietly as he could, he went to the window. He couldn’t feel his toes inside his boots. His stomach rumbled, reminding him that two bites of an overdone potato weren’t enough to fill a grown man’s stomach.

  Quietly, he put more coal on the fire, banking it a bit higher as the cold crept farther into the room. He worried about the children’s feet and hands. Though they all wore heavy socks and mittens and boots, their blood would slow while they slept. Maybe he should wake them all up for some more dancing and get their blood moving?

  The clock said half past one. The coal was going quicker than he’d hoped. But he could see his breath anywhere in the room more than about five feet from the stove. How he wished he had a couple buffalo robes or horsehide blankets to wrap these children up.

  “Lord,” he whispered, “keep us safe, and help me know what to do and when to do it. Thank you for this shelter, and for bringing me here to help Savannah. She’s been through so much. Help me know the right thing to do about her, too. My head says to be sensible and wait, and my heart says snatch her up before she gets away.”

  He grimaced. He’d been full of himself and his own opinions when Savannah first stepped off that stagecoach. Talking big, talking out of his own hurt, aware that if he didn’t he was in danger of falling in love with another teacher who would decamp as soon as things got difficult.

  But Savannah had proved him wrong. She’d stayed, in spite of the accommodations, the lack of school supplies, the language barrier. In spite of the responsibilities and the cold and the snow.

  And in spite of his best efforts, he’d fallen in love with the schoolteacher, anyway. What was he going to do if she decided to leave after the school year and didn’t come back?

  The long hours of the night stretched out, giving him plenty of time to think. And all the while, the snow continued to fall, the wind continued to blow and the temperatures remained low. At three, feeling cold and lethargic himself, he turned up the lamps and roused everyone.

  “Come on. You have to get up and get moving. It’s too cold in here for you to sleep all night. You’ll freeze.” He shook shoulders and patted hands. “Johann, wake up. We need some marching music.”

  Savannah shook her head, eyelids heavy. “Just let us sleep. It’s too cold to move.”

  “Which is why we have to.” He reached for her hands, pulling her up. “The children will freeze if we don’t get their blood pumping.”

  The children’s needs brought her wider awake, and she began helping him rouse them. “Ingrid, Rut, Margrethe, wake up.”


  Hakon stumbled to his feet, yawning and shivering. “What is it? What’s wrong?” His nose and cheeks were red in the lamplight.

  “We’re going to dance and get warmed up.”

  Johann dug his harmonica out of an inner pocket with his eyes closed. Once all the kids were on their feet, Elias realized they were too stupefied by sleep and cold to follow more than basic orders.

  “No music for now. Kids, line up.” He tugged and guided and prodded them into a smallest-to-tallest line. “Put your hands on the shoulders of the person in front of you.” He had to help some of them. Chastising himself, wishing he’d roused them an hour before, he got them lined up.

  “Now, march. Stomp your feet. Ingrid, follow me.” He held her mittened hand and started around the small open space in a circle, his boots pounding the floorboards.

  “I can’t feel my feet,” Lars complained.

  “All the more reason to get moving. Stomp hard.”

  Round and round they went. The older children revived first, letting go of their classmates and marching around on their own. Hakon and Peder began swinging their arms, crossing them and slapping them. Savannah perked up enough to take the littlest girls in tow. When everyone was wide awake and panting with exertion, Johann began to play his harmonica.

  “I can’t believe how you’ve all caught on to dancing the Virginia reel.” Savannah crossed her hands and clasped Elias’s, letting him swing her down the row.

  The song ended, and everyone stilled, breathing fast. The noise inside the school quieted and the storm outside caught their attention. Icy pellets of snow scraped against the siding, and the glass rattled in the panes as gust after gust assaulted the building.

  Eyes grew round and teeth gnawed lips. Ingrid sniffed and blinked hard.

  “Savannah, I think it’s time for that surprise.”

  Rut tugged on Elias’s sleeve. “What surprise?”

  “Wait and see,” he said. “Everyone find your places around the fire. Hakon, help me over here, will you?”

  The young man came to him right away, while the children scrambled over the bench barrier and huddled beside the stove. The fire was a bed of low embers.

  “There is no coal left, ja?” Hakon’s shock of almost white hair pressed against his forehead under his knit cap.

  “Yes, which is why I need help breaking up some of these benches. We’ll burn the leg supports first, then find a way to cut or break the longer pieces for the stove.”

  Savannah went to her desk and dug in one of the drawers, sliding out the candy box. She brought it to him. “These are going to be frozen solid. I’ll need to warm them up by the fire.”

  “Let us get some of these benches broken up.” He flipped one of the long seats and, while Hakon held it down, kicked against the stringer, knocking it out from between the end supports with a thwack. “Go ahead and kick off that end, Hakon.”

  The boy kicked and then twisted the broken board off the nails. Elias did the same with his end, and soon they had a few pieces of wood that would fit into the stove box.

  “Elias, would it be easier to break up the desk drawers?” Savannah asked. “I could empty them out easily enough. And when the storm is over, I’m sure one of the men could make new ones. I’ve never seen so many talented woodworkers as in this settlement.”

  “Good idea.”

  While she emptied the desk, Elias fed the fire. The wood caught quickly, and it would burn quickly, too, faster than the coal. He’d have to be even more sparing with the fuel.

  “What’s the surprise?” Margrethe asked.

  Savannah brought several empty drawers and piled them near the stove. “I have a treat for you. I was going to give it to you tomorrow.” She glanced at the clock. “Actually, it is tomorrow.”

  “What is it?” Ingrid asked. Elias nodded, glad that she was alert and warm enough to both care and ask.

  “It’s called a praline. And it’s just the best bite of candy anywhere.”

  “Candy?” Lars asked.

  “Everyone get settled in, and I’ll give you each a piece. It’s frozen, but you can gnaw on it.” Savannah tugged her mitten off with her teeth and opened the box. “It’s chocolate and caramel and pecan.”

  With round eyes that shone in the flickering firelight, the students accepted the morsels. “While you eat, I’ll tell you about where these came from.”

  Elias settled in, leaning against one of the benches. When she got to him, there was only one candy left in the box. He glanced up at her. “Have you kept one back for yourself?”

  She shook her head. “No, this one’s for you.”

  “Let’s go halves.” Tugging her hand, he brought her down beside him. Around them, the kids warmed their chocolates with their breath, licked them, gnawed off bits, and looked at one another with smiles in their eyes as the flavor of the treat hit their tongues.

  Savannah pushed the box near the stove to thaw the last praline.

  “Miss Cox, tell us about where you lived before here.” Ingrid pillowed her head in Savannah’s lap, sucking on her chocolate, her voice already drowsy.

  As Savannah described her life in North Carolina, the cotton fields, the textile mills, one by one the students finished their chocolate and dropped into sleep.

  Waves of tiredness washed over Elias, and he fought to keep his eyes open. Somebody had to stay awake and feed the fire. It was the last thing he remembered as he nodded off.

  Chapter Sixteen

  For hours Savannah paced between the windows, silently swinging her arms when her hands grew too cold, keeping watch over the sleeping students and poking broken bits of wood into the fire from time to time.

  The windows were black squares, and the light from the lamps, which she’d turned down to conserve kerosene, penetrated only far enough into the night to show the vicious swirl of deadly snow fighting to get inside.

  Would this nightmare ever end? And when it did, what then?

  At last, pale gray light began to filter through the glass. One could hardly call it daylight, more like “less dark.” Maybe it was the optimism that comes with morning, but she thought the wind might be dying down a bit. Between gusts, she could make out the dark form of the animal shed to the west of the school.

  She started when Elias put his hands on her shoulders, standing behind her. “You should’ve woken me. I shouldn’t have fallen asleep.”

  Savannah wanted to turn her cheek and rest it against the back of his glove, to draw strength from his presence and comfort from his touch. What would she have done if he hadn’t shown up yesterday? Right now she and the children would be lost on the prairie.

  “You needed your sleep. The storm seems to be waning.”

  He kept his hands on her shoulders as he looked out over her head. “Or it’s in a lull. Now might be a good time to go check on the horses.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “No, I’ll take Hakon. I don’t want the children left in here with no adult if something should delay us.”

  She grabbed his hand. “You will be careful?”

  “I will.” For a moment, he rested his cheek against her hair, then he was gone, quietly rousing Hakon and slipping out into the foyer.

  Savannah stayed by the window, watching their dark forms struggle through the drifts, losing sight of them when gusts of snow blew up.

  The rest of the kids still slept, and she prayed they would for a good long time. The longer they slept, the less time they would have to be hungry and fearful. She fed the last broken drawer into the stove and held her hands to the warmth, flexing her aching fingers. Elias’s father had told her she would probably always be more sensitive to the cold since the frostbite incident, and so far, he was proving all too depressingly right. All night her hands had ached and tingled. St
ill, she had much for which to be thankful. Everyone had survived the night.

  She prayed the same could be said for the citizens of Snowflake.

  Her heart was on tenterhooks until she heard Elias and Hakon in the entry, kicking the snow from their boots as quietly as possible. When they came in, they were shivering and caked in snow, with only their eyes showing between their hats and mufflers.

  “Come to the fire,” she whispered. “Give me your wraps, and I’ll go shake them out while you thaw.” After helping them unbutton coats and unwrap scarves, she ushered them to the stove and opened its door to let out billows of heat. She slipped into the entryway with their heavy garments, the icy cold of the unheated room slicing through her, making her gasp.

  When she returned, some of the children were pushing themselves upright, rubbing their eyes and yawning. The clock showed it was a little after eight. She gave the coats and gloves to Elias and Hakon and went to blow out the lamps.

  When Elias was warmed enough to speak, he shrugged back into his coat and drew Savannah toward the front of the schoolroom. “It’s bitter out there, and the wind is kicking up again. All the horses are fine. Cold and hungry, but we managed to drag more hay into the shed for them. There’s a huge drift in front of the opening that is blocking the wind, but it made it a challenge to get the feed inside. I couldn’t have done it without Hakon. That kid has no idea how strong he is.”

  “So there’s no sign of the storm letting up?”

  “Not so far.” Elias scrubbed his hands down his face, his palms rasping on his beard. “We’ll have to keep the kids busy and warm without overexerting them and making them even hungrier than they need to be. Is there anything left to eat?”

  She shook her head, and her stomach grumbled. “Just the one praline. You fell asleep before it thawed.”

  “Save it for now.”

  They passed the longest day Savannah could ever remember. For a while they sang and played games, but eventually the cold and hunger got to everyone and they wound up sitting on the floor around the fire, doing and saying nothing.