Better Than Gold

by Laurie Alice Eakes

  “So it’s a race while drawing a plow.” He took a chair facing her. “Or does one get to use a horse or mule?”

  “No, you pull it yourself.” She picked up the spoon from beside her saucer, moving it about in circles against the pine surface. “It’s a comfortable prize.”

  “A pity I don’t have a plow. I have spent many springs plowing fields. My father and I hired ourselves out when money got tight. I got pretty good at it.”

  “I think it’s a pity ladies aren’t allowed to enter.” She popped out of her chair and headed for the fragrant-smelling coffee. “I helped plow every year, too. Helped drive the mule until I was seventeen.”

  “Was that how old you were when your family lost the farm?” He posed the question in a soft voice.

  She shook her head. “That was the year I lost my family. A fever came through, and they all died. Typhoid. It didn’t kill me, but I was too sick to work. So I lost the farm the next year.”

  “Lily. . .” He started to rise.

  She waved him back down. “I’ll go fill up the ladies’ cups and come right back.” She vanished through the kitchen doorway.

  Ben still saw her in his mind’s eye, a slight figure. Too slight to have worked behind a plow. Too delicate for year after year of battering Iowa wind and rain, snow and sun. Maybe she was made for town life, not the life of a farmer’s wife. Who was he to say she should want a different life from the one she wanted?

  That hidden treasure sure could give her an easier life.

  Winning the prize for the plowing contest seemed more likely a means of gaining extra money.

  If he had a plow.

  He was thinking of how he could borrow one from the farm equipment in the livery, when Lily returned and filled his cup without asking and reseated herself across from him.

  “I think you want to talk to me about something.” She avoided his gaze.

  “I want to know why you’re too busy to talk to me.” He gave her an encouraging smile. She began to make circles with the spoon again. “It’s too embarrassing to say.”

  “May I guess?”

  She shrugged.

  “You don’t like me, but because I’m Deborah Twining’s great-nephew, you don’t want to say so.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “You know that’s not it.”

  “You don’t have time for one more friend.”

  “No one should be that busy.”

  “Hmm.” He tapped a finger against his chin and stared past her shoulder. “You don’t dislike me, and you like lots of friends, so–o–o. . .” He shifted his position and caught her gaze too fast for her to look away. “Maybe you think I like you too much, and you don’t want me to.”

  “I—maybe—yes.”

  And she liked him too much. He read it in the way she tore her gaze from his and darted her glance around the room. Panic. Afraid he would confront her with that, too.

  “I’ll let it go at that, Lily.” He rose, his coffee untouched. “But I’m praying for you and for myself, and I’d like you to give me a chance. Please. At least stop avoiding me when we’re in the same room together. Agreed? It’s just plain hurtful.”

  That was unfair. Ben suspected Lily couldn’t hurt anyone intentionally.

  She rose and held out her hand. “I promise to talk to you when our paths cross. But, Ben, please don’t let that happen too often.”

  “It’ll happen as often as the Lord is willing.” Grinning, he took her hand, squeezed it, and slipped out the back door.

  He whistled all the way to the livery. A man just had to whistle when he knew the lady fast taking hold of his heart wasn’t indifferent to him.

  Still whistling, he entered the livery through the front door and began his nightly rounds of the horses and mule. He passed by the corner with the discarded farm equipment, an area that should be cleaned out to make room for parking at least one buggy inside. He pulled back the tarpaulin and stared at the things with growing excitement.

  The plow was a fine one.

  Since the night wasn’t far advanced, Ben sprinted across town to Mr. Gilchrist’s house. He went to the back door in case the owner was occupied with guests.

  Mr. Gilchrist himself stood at the kitchen stove making pancakes. “Come on in, lad. Hungry?”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “You are now. Sit down and tell me what brings you out in the rain. Nothing serious, I trust.”

  “No, sir. Everything is good, though business was slow today.”

  “Sure, it would be. Sit down. Sit down.”

  With only a little reluctance to have his boss serve him, Ben sat. Over the hotcakes, he explained about the contest and wanting to borrow the plow.

  “I can practice on days off if the weather ever turns nice. If you say it’s all right for me to use that old plow in the livery.”

  “Use it? Lad, you can have it. I have no use for it. No one has ever wanted to rent it.”

  “Well, thank you, sir. That’s very generous, but not necessary.”

  “Sure it is. I wasn’t making any money on that livery until you came along. You keep it making money, and I’ll be generous.”

  As pleased as Ben was to have the plow given to him, he also recognized the gentle threat in Mr. Gilchrist’s words—if the livery had a bad month or so, Ben could be out of work.

  But the Lord just wouldn’t hold up Ben’s life like that, not for something so silly and unlikely.

  Concern tossed aside, he trotted home through rain that was growing to feel more like ice than water and slipped the key into the lock of his quarters.

  The key didn’t need to turn.

  The door had already been unlocked.

  Eight

  The sound of the closing back door echoing in her ears, Lily propped her elbows on the table and covered her face with her hands. “Lord, I need to leave here. I need to leave here soon.”

  She needed to leave before she fell in love with Ben Purcell.

  If it wasn’t already too late.

  She shivered despite the warmth of the stove behind her. She couldn’t be in love with Ben. It was the most ridiculous notion she had ever had. He wasn’t right for her, with his desire to stay put in this small, poky town, where even hat styles were a year or more out-of-date.

  Yet not so long ago—so short a time ago, she blushed to remember—she’d thought Matt Campbell was right for her. Maybe she simply knew nothing about love.

  That was it. She wasn’t falling for Ben Purcell. She just didn’t understand what her heart wanted—except to leave Browning City.

  The spring bazaar was her biggest hope for earning enough money to seek her fortune in the city. She and some of her friends had rented a booth. Lily intended to sell her handmade lace, the art of which she had learned from her French grandmother. Becky, Eva, and some others intended to sell sweets they made themselves. Lily figured the combination of lace and candy went well together because the children would pull their mothers over to the booth to purchase the treats and the mothers would buy pieces of the lace. On Saturday, they all intended to get together to begin planning how they would decorate the booth and to pore over sweets recipes, possibly even experiment with a few, like the toffee.

  They would meet if the weather cooperated. She’d learned never to count on Iowa weather to behave in March. One could have sunshine and blue skies one day and be planning a picnic. The next, a foot of snow might fall and all activity would come to a halt.

  Listening to the tap, tap, tap of rain against the kitchen window, Lily considered the other offering of an Iowa March—ice.

  She rose from the table and slipped into the parlor. “Ladies, I’m sorry to interrupt, but it sounds as though the rain has turned to sleet.”

  Groans met her announcement.

  “If any of you wishes, I can walk you home.”

  “No, no.”

  “You can’t do that and come back by yourself.”

  “You’re too little to support a woman my size.�
��

  Protest rained as thick as the ice crystals outside. Ignoring the objections, Lily retrieved her coat and hat and returned to the parlor.

  “Take my walking cane, child.” Mrs. Twining held it out to her. “It’ll give you balance if the streets are slippery.”

  “Thank you, ma’am, but what will you do?”

  “Sit here and stay warm.” Mrs. Twining smiled. “And pray you all safely to your doors.”

  None of the ladies lived far away. Glancing over the three of them, Lily chose the frailest appearing of them and offered her arm. She doubted she could hold the other two up if they fell, but at least she would be there to fetch help.

  With much laughter and some genteel shrieks when a foot slipped, the ladies headed through the night. Within a quarter hour, Lily delivered each safely to her door then returned home. Already a glaze of ice coated the wooden front steps. Leaning heavily on Mrs. Twining’s cane, Lily reached the door without incident and stepped into the warmth of the house with a prayer of thanksgiving.

  “It’s treacherous out there.” She returned the cane to Mrs. Twining. “But at least this time of year, we know it won’t last.”

  Except it did last. In the morning, Lily woke to an eerie stillness punctuated by the occasional crack of a branch breaking under its load of frozen water. She wondered how she would get to work across the slick landscape. Knowing that doing so would take more time than usual, she hurried to dress and prepare a small breakfast.

  She was setting a tray of coffee and toast out to carry into Mrs. Twining when someone pounded on the back door.

  “Miss Lily?” Toby stood on the other side of the door, shivering. “The lines are down. There aren’t any messages getting through in either direction.”

  “So should I go into the office or not?” Lily backed away from the door so Toby could step into the kitchen.

  “No, ma’am. Theo says to stay home.” Toby glanced at the coffeepot. “May I—”

  “Of course. Let me deliver this tray to Mrs. Twining first.”

  And take a few minutes to compose myself.

  She wanted to cry. At least one day of missed wages. If damage to the wires was bad enough, she would miss more than one day of work.

  Once again, she calculated her savings flagging.

  She also saw days of boredom ahead. Going anywhere just wasn’t safe with inches of ice coating the roads. Broken tree branches fell and struck people down. Wagons lost traction and careened into walkways. Feet slipped out from beneath a body, and the fall broke even the sturdiest legs.

  She had to stay home and resign herself to no one calling.

  When snow began to fall at noon, she accepted yet more time off work and confinement to the house with Mrs. Twining.

  Not that Mrs. Twining was poor company. Lily never tired of hearing the older woman’s tales of her early years as a society miss in Philadelphia, how she had fallen for adventurous Mr. Twining and how they had begun their trek west.

  “We headed to Michigan first. Then things got too crowded around Detroit, so we moved down into southern Illinois. But Iowa was getting civilized enough for folks to settle and prosper, so we acquired land here and finished raising our children.”

  “My family did much the same.” Lily slipped her hook through a loop of fine, white thread. “But you must have wanted people closer together. I mean, you helped found Browning City.”

  “We hoped to make this a stage stop so we didn’t have to travel so far for goods. It worked, and now we have the train depot and a telegraph.”

  “But you chose to live in town after it was built up a bit.”

  “Yes, we did. After our son. . .” Mrs. Twining swallowed. “After our son died, we couldn’t keep up with the farm, so we moved into town and bought the livery from the sale of the land.”

  “I’m sorry you had to give up your homestead.” Lily bent over her lace making. “But I’m glad you’re here.”

  “I am, too.” Mrs. Twining’s voice held a gentle smile. “I wouldn’t have your company if we hadn’t. Shall I read some scripture to you while you work?”

  “Please.”

  Lily thought about her declaration to Mrs. Twining and Ben weeks ago about reading her Bible more. She hadn’t done it much. She knew too many of the verses she might run across, things like not storing up riches and not worrying about the future. So easy for persons who knew what their lives would be to claim that was right. But since her family died, her life had felt unsettled, temporary, poised for the next leap to somewhere else.

  She feared Mrs. Twining might choose one of those passages. Instead, she read from the Psalms, chapters of rejoicing in the Lord’s love and goodness.

  The afternoon wore on. Snowflakes the size of two-bit pieces fell from the sky in an endless barrage. At dusk, the wind kicked up, drifting the snow against trees, fences, and the back door.

  Lily had to push with all her strength to open the door so she could fetch more firewood. Wind caught her hat and sent it sailing into the darkness then tore her hair from its pins and flung it across her face in heavy, wet strands.

  “I hate this place!” She cried the words into the night, where she knew no one could hear her. “I want to run away.”

  The kitchen door slammed behind her. She staggered to the woodpile and grabbed up as many logs as she could hold. Fighting the wind like a beast caught in a locomotive’s cowcatcher, she stumbled back to the door and reached for the handle with near-frozen fingers.

  Another hand reached it first.

  “Let me help you,” Ben Purcell shouted over the blizzard’s roar.

  He opened the door. She toppled inside, dropping logs and gasping for breath. A moment later, he entered with more logs and his own bare head white with snow.

  She wanted to hug him. She hadn’t felt like hugging a man ever in her life. But the sight of Ben, tall and broad shouldered, sturdy and full of life, sent such a wave of joy through her that she knew she should run as fast and as far away from him as she could.

  Except she couldn’t run anywhere. The weather held her captive.

  Ben’s gaze held her captive.

  “You—you shouldn’t have come out in this,” she said through a dry throat.

  “I couldn’t leave you ladies on your own once the storm grew worse.” He set his load of logs in the wood box and stooped to gather up the ones she had dropped. “I think if I hadn’t come along, you’d be in Kansas by now.”

  “Missouri.”

  “Hmm?”

  “The wind is from the north. It would send me to Missouri.”

  “Right.” He laughed up at her.

  Lily wrapped her arms around herself.

  She fell the rest of the way in love with Ben Purcell.

  ❧

  She couldn’t fall out of love with him while he stayed around for the rest of the storm.

  “You ladies need someone to fetch and carry for you. It’s too bad for either of you to go outside.” He made his pronouncement with such authority that even his great-aunt didn’t argue with him.

  So he fixed himself a pallet on the kitchen floor and kept the stove supplied with wood. When Mrs. Twining and Lily woke the following morning, they found the house warm and breakfast nearly ready.

  “Whatever your father did wrong in dragging you around the country,” Mrs. Twining told Ben, “he did right when he taught you your manners.”

  “He said Momma would want me to have them.” Ben smiled. “ ‘Never disrespect a lady of any age or station’ was what he told me from the time I was small.”

  “How is the weather?” Lily changed the subject with an abruptness she knew was rude. She had to. She couldn’t tolerate an image of Ben as a small boy with curly dark hair that would forever be unruly and blue eyes that sparkled with mischief. The picture reminded her of children, marriage, life stranded in Iowa because her heart proved to be a foolish instrument.

  “The snow is letting up, and the wind has died.” Ben studied
her face. “Do you need to get to the station?”

  “Not if the lines are still down.” She stood and began to gather the dishes. “Perhaps we should go out and see if anyone needs help.”

  Anything not to be confined in the same house with him.

  “I did that all day yesterday.” Ben lifted a pan of water to heat for dish washing. “Mrs. Willoughby, Miss Hansen, and Mrs. Longerbeam all have plenty of wood and supplies. I believe the others all have family, so I’m here to take care of mine.”

  “I’m not. . .” Lily stopped herself.

  “Of course you’re family.” Mrs. Twining caught hold of Lily’s hand as she reached for an empty coffee cup.

  “Thank you.” Lily didn’t want to hurt the older woman by denying the truth of her words. “I’d better be a good girl and do my chores.”

  “I’ll help.” Ben picked up a tea towel.

  While Mrs. Twining read to them, they washed up the breakfast dishes. After they finished with that, he insisted on helping Lily with peeling potatoes and carrots for a stew and kneading the bread dough. He brought in more wood, swept the floor, and always stayed far too close to her.

  If I don’t get away, Lord, Lily prayed when she managed a few private moments in her room, I will simply burst. I’ll come apart like a dropped cup and be useless.

  She parted the curtain to see if maybe she could hike over to Becky’s house. All those children would make the hours fly past. But the wind had begun to howl and toss broken limbs about like leaves.

  She smelled the bread baking and returned to the kitchen to assure herself it wasn’t burning. It wasn’t. Out of excuses for staying away, she joined Ben and Mrs. Twining in the parlor.

  “We could play charades,” Ben suggested.

  “No fun with only three people.” Lily shuddered. “I am no actress.”

  “Well,” Mrs. Twining said. “We can play word-guessing games. I think up an object, and you ask questions to try to figure it out.”

  “Pa and I used to play this.” Ben settled back on the sofa. “It passed hours on the road. You can say only yes or no to the questions.”