The wind picked up as she made her way back to the cabin, and when she got to the yard, she was alarmed to find that the bonfire under the kettle had started to spread into the tall, dry grass and was quickly approaching the house. Miranda had seen the prairies blazing on the journey west, and she felt a rush of fear surge through her like venom from the bite of a giant snake.
Dashing into the house, she snatched up the first blanket she came to and rushed out to battle the fire.
“Landry!” she shrieked, her eyes watering from the smoke by then, her breath coming in coughs and gasps that left her throat raw.
She was barely aware of the approaching riders, or even of Landry, until someone threw her onto the ground and rolled her through the dirt. Only then did she realize that the flames had caught on the hem of her dress.
“Get inside and make sure the baby’s all right!” Landry yelled, rising and pulling her up with him in almost the same motion. She could see that part of the fire had reached the door before it had been snuffed out by her efforts. “Then start pumping water!”
She nodded, fairly choking by then, and rushed in to see that little Isaiah-or-Ezekiel was safe. Indeed, he was cooing and trying to catch his own kicking feet with his fat little hands.
Breathlessly thankful, Miranda murmured a prayer of gratitude, snatched up the water buckets next to the stove, and raced outside again. Landry and the two men helping him—through the smoke Miranda recognized Trey Hargreaves and Doc Parrish—had nearly contained the blaze. When at last the fire was subdued, Landry was so covered in soot that you couldn’t even tell he’d been butchering all day.
Grinning, Trey dragged a blackened sleeve across a forehead that nearly matched it. “Next time I come to call,” he said, directing his words at Landry, “I’d appreciate it if you’d just offer me coffee and water for my horse.”
“Amen,” agreed the Doc, just catching his breath. He looked more like a chimney sweep just then than the town doctor. He wasn’t much of a talker, Doc Parrish, but he knew his business and he was well-liked at Springwater.
“I’ll make the coffee,” Miranda said, still hoarse from the smoke, and went inside.
When she came out again, with the handles of three mugs hooked over two fingers of one hand and the coffeepot in the other, the men were seated side by side on the edge of the horse trough, talking seriously. Miranda wasn’t an eavesdropper, but when she heard Jacob McCaffrey’s name, she stopped to listen and made no effort to hide the fact.
Landry met her gaze, and raised his brimming cup in a gesture that plainly said, “Thank you.”
“I was just telling Landry that Mike Houghton’s back,” Trey said. “Now that the boy’s big enough to work for a living, he’s come to claim him.”
Miranda nearly dropped the coffeepot and splashed her ruined skirts with the grounds. “Toby? But Jacob and June-bug are his family—”
“Be that as it may,” the Doc said grimly, “Mike’s come to claim him.”
Miranda couldn’t move for several long moments, she was so stricken by this news. Toby, found by Rachel Hargreaves in an abandoned camp up in the timber about eighteen months before, when she’d first come to Springwater to teach school, had been taken in by the McCaffreys. Jacob, especially, adored the boy, and he was still on the mend from a bad spell with his heart right after the Doc and Savannah got married. He and June-bug had already lost two sons in the war; it might destroy them to give up Toby as well, when they’d come to think of him as their own, and to love him so dearly. Parting would be even worse for young Toby, who had never known a real family before.
“No,” she whispered.
“There’s nothing anybody can do,” the Doc said, to nobody in particular. He was staring off into space. “Toby’s still too young to decide for himself, and Houghton is his legal father.”
Miranda was full of sorrow and fury. “He’s no kind of a father!” she spouted. “What kind of man goes off and leaves his own boy to starve in the woods?”
“Miranda,” Landry said firmly, but gently, too.
“I’ve got to go to town,” she replied, reaching back, automatically, to untie her apron.
But Landry shook his head. “There’ll be preaching on Sunday, like as not. We’ll speak to the McCaffreys then.”
“But—”
“Miranda.”
She went into the house, turning furiously on one heel, but she wasn’t happy about it. Landry Kildare had his share of gall talking to her like that, when he wasn’t even a real husband. She was slamming kettles onto the stove and filling them with water from the reservoir when she heard the visitors riding away, heard Landry push open the door and step into the house.
“The boys are staying in town tonight,” Landry said. “Toby’s their friend.”
She didn’t turn around, but just went on banging things around. Little Isaiah-or-Ezekiel, far from being frightened, seemed to love the clatter and clang, for he was gurgling away in his basket, happy as a pig in muck.
She stopped. It was a poor choice of images, a pig.
“Miranda, look at me.” His voice was quiet, and contained no kind of threat, but she didn’t like to disobey him when he spoke to her like that.
She looked. He was black from the fire, and his clothes, first bloodied and now burned and soot-covered, would probably never come clean. “What?”
“There’s no point in our going to town ahead of time and adding to the fuss. Jacob and June-bug know we’ll come if they need us, and we’ll see them day after tomorrow, at the preaching.”
It had become rare for Jacob to offer a sermon, though he did on occasion. Landry often took his place, or Tom Bellweather. Since Rachel and Trey Hargreaves’ baby had been born, a little boy called Henry, even the keeper of the Brimstone Saloon had been known to get up, on occasion, and hold forth on the sayings of the Good Book.
Tears sprang, unbidden, to her eyes. She dashed at her cheeks with the back of one hand. “I didn’t mean for the grass to take fire,” she said, because she had to say something to fill the silence, and that was the first thing that came to her mind.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Landry answered, winding a sooty finger in a loose tendril of her hair. “I’d best go and see to the chores. I’ll be in after I’ve cleaned up.”
“I’ll go ahead and start supper, then,” Miranda said, with a sniffle. She was heartbroken for the McCaffreys and for Toby, that hadn’t changed, but Landry was right. It would do no good to go rushing off to town and intrude on a private grief.
On another level, she marveled that he wasn’t blaming her for the fire. Her father would have berated her in a loud voice, maybe even beaten her. After all, they might have lost the house, the barn, everything, because of her carelessness and inexperience, but it seemed Landry had already dismissed the whole matter from his mind.
Landry had merely nodded, acknowledging her statement, and left her to her cooking. Only then did she have time to examine the riot of feelings he’d roused in her, just by touching her hair and speaking gently.
When he returned, nearly an hour later, by the loud old clock on one end of the mantel, Miranda had a meal ready to set out, and she nearly dropped the pot of chicken and dumplings at the sight of him. He was merely clean, she supposed, with his hair washed and combed through with his fingers, and his clothes all tidy, smelling the way he was supposed to smell, and yet the mere sight of him fairly stopped her heart from beating. If he smiled, she didn’t know what she’d do.
He went right ahead and smiled. “Smells good,” he said.
Miranda was so dazed that it took her an unlikely amount of time to reason out that he was talking about supper. She nodded, probably looking downright foolish, and set the pot down on the table with a thump. “You start right in. I just want to see if the baby’s asleep.”
“I’ll wait for you,” he said, mannerly as a prince in a storybook, standing there behind his chair.
It was useless to protest, Miranda f
igured, for the man was as stubborn as could be, though she had to admit he was fair-minded. She looked in on little Isaiah-or-Ezekiel, snoozing away in his basket in her bedroom, and returned to the main room.
Landry was still waiting, and patiently. Only when she sat down did he take his chair. As he had done the night before, he led a short, plain prayer of thanks for the food, and then the meal began.
Miranda wondered what was on his mind. He was always gentlemanly, for a man who didn’t put on a coat and collar except on Sundays, but he hadn’t waited for her to sit down before starting in on last night’s supper. She looked at him curiously, figuring that she probably never would understand him, even if she lived to be as old as Granny Johnson, up there on the mountainside.
“I’ll be another few days getting those hogs cut up and hung,” he said.
Miranda’s stomach rolled. She took a sip from her water cup in hopes of settling herself down a little. “What about them—those heads, out there in the cauldron?” she said, in a nigh-unto-normal tone of voice.
Landry was chewing a mouthful of chicken and dumplings. “I reckon you’ll be able to put the first batch of meat up in jars tomorrow,” he said happily, when he’d swallowed. “I’ll make head cheese from the others.”
Miranda pushed back her chair, preparatory to rushing for the door. She was no sissy. She’d chopped the heads off chickens before, cleaned and plucked them, too. She’d skinned rabbits for stew and even boiled up a prairie dog once, on the trail from St. Louis, when game had been scarce, but she wasn’t going to eat anything that had been scooped out of some critter’s skull and that was the end of it.
Landry’s eyes were dancing. “It’s tasty stuff,” he teased.
Much as she cared for him, she could have murdered him just then. He looked as mischievous as one of his boys, sitting there, with one side of his mouth twitching that way, all but wriggling his eyebrows. “I’d rather starve.”
“Then I guess you’ve never been hungry,” he answered, and went on eating.
Miranda was finished, but she didn’t leave the table. She just sat there, with her hands folded in her lap, waiting. Waiting—for what, she did not know. The place was quiet without the boys, and the very air itself seemed to hum around her ears. The day had been a long and difficult one, and she was tired, but if anything troubled her, it was the vibrant yet ordinary happiness of just being there, with Landry.
He tilted his head to one side, taking in the ruined skirts of her dress. “You’ll have to cut that up for rags, it looks like,” he commented. Apparently, he was in a mood to talk.
The thought horrified Miranda, even though she knew he was right, and very little of the gown would be salvageable. It was the prettiest of her hand-me-downs, having belonged to Rachel Hargreaves, a bright yellow fabric with eyelet at the neckline and mother-of-pearl buttons. She looked down at it sadly and then gave a brief, reluctant nod of agreement.
He looked sympathetic and, at the same time, he seemed a little amused. No doubt, she looked a sight, in her scorched and sooty clothes. The merriment in his eyes made him seem like a scamp, hardly older than his sons. “Don’t fret,” he said. “We’ll get you something twice as pretty when we go to Choteau.” He frowned thoughtfully, while spearing yet another dumpling from the kettle in the center of the table. It amazed Miranda how much the man could eat, and still be made of nothing but muscle and bone. “You’d look real nice in scarlet, I think, or dark blue.”
The thought of traveling to Choteau cheered Miranda not a little, but she managed to keep her expression prim and matronly, lest he think she was too eager, or even extravagant. “I don’t think proper ladies wear scarlet,” she said.
That time, he did laugh, and she was wounded. Didn’t he think she was a proper lady? She pushed back her chair and would have fled if he hadn’t reached out and caught hold of her wrist when she started past him, on the way to her room.
“Miranda,” he said and, just like that, with a simple tug, he pulled her down onto his lap. “I’m sorry,” he said. His breath was warm on her face.
She was disturbed by the other complex sensations their proximity wrought in her, too, and none of it helped her mood. “Yes,” she hissed, and she could feel her ears throbbing, which meant they were probably red as a rooster’s comb, “I made a mistake. I trusted a man I shouldn’t have trusted. But that doesn’t mean I’m not a decent woman, Landry Kildare!”
He was still smiling, damn him, but the light in his eyes was tender. He laid the tip of one index finger against her mouth to silence her. “Hush,” he said. “I laughed because, all of the sudden, I had a picture of you in my mind, stirring that pot out in the dooryard today, twisted halfway to Texas to keep from looking in and seeing hog eyeballs looking back at you.”
His thighs were hard as tamarack, and so was his chest. His arms, though loosely clasped, nonetheless encircled her. She could barely think. “Maybe you should let me up,” she said lamely.
He sighed. “I know for sure that I should,” he agreed, “but damn if I can make myself do it. We’ll take the stage to Choteau in a week, Miranda. We can stay in a hotel and take all our meals in restaurants, just like we were on a honeymoon. Do you think you’ll be ready by then—to share my bed, I mean?”
She wanted to say she was ready now, but that would only have made him think twice about counting her a lady. Miranda knew almost nothing about the relations between a husband and wife, despite the fact that she’d already borne a child, but she understood that it wasn’t proper to be too eager, even when the man was your honest-to-God, by-the-Good-Book husband. “I—I guess,” she answered miserably. “As long as you don’t smell like pigs.”
He laughed again, actually threw back his head and shouted with it, but that time, she didn’t take offense. Heaven only knew how long he would have held her there, perched on his lap and feeling all her vital organs melt, one by one, into a hot puddle deep inside her, if little Isaiah-or-Ezekiel hadn’t let out a wail when he did.
Landry put his hands on Miranda’s waist and lifted her to her feet, and she made for the bedroom, lickety-split. When she returned, after nursing the baby and holding him until he went back to sleep, she was surprised to find Landry at the sink, drying the last of the supper dishes.
She had never seen a man do that, and the sight made her mouth fall open. She closed it right away, but not quickly enough to keep Landry from seeing how startled she was.
He chuckled and shook his head. “There’s plenty of hot water in the reservoir,” he said. “If you’d like to take a bath, I mean.”
Miranda swallowed. Either he was insulting her again, or he was trying to drive her crazy. It was hard to tell which one. She might have broke right down and cried with confusion, if she hadn’t had just a shred of pride left. “Kind of you to offer,” she said, though she didn’t know whether that was the truth or not.
“I’ll carry the tub into the spare room for you,” he said, “or you can bathe out here, in front of the fire.”
“Where will you be all this time?” she wanted to know. She might have been a lot of things, but immodest wasn’t one of them.
His face cracked into a grin, but he made a creditable effort at looking serious. “In my room,” he said. “I like to read a little while before I turn down the lights.”
Miranda closed her eyes for an instant. She could imagine him in that room, in that big, Landry-scented bed, only too well. And after the trip to Choteau, she’d be sharing it with him, unless he found her wanting in some way. “All right, then,” she said, agreeing to the bath and a whole lot more, if you wanted to know the plain truth.
Fortunately, Landry didn’t pursue the matter. He just brought the tub in from one of the sheds, set it in front of the hearth, and began filling it with water. It was still steaming when he set out a towel and a bar of soap and left her to herself. She was out of her clothes and into that bath quicker than quick, and sunk right down to her chin. It was blissful, and she le
t out a long breath in sheer appreciation, but soon enough she got bored, idling in the middle of what served as a parlor, wearing nothing but soap suds and a washtub, and finished up her bath. Climbing out, she wrapped herself in Landry’s towel—she hadn’t thought to fetch a nightgown—and tiptoed toward her room.
As she passed, the line of light underneath his door faded to darkness.
CHAPTER
4
NEEDLESS TO SAY, Miranda was surprised to run into the big boar the next morning, when she carried out a bucketful of scraps to feed the yearling pigs. She’d thought he was in the jars and crocks she’d been sealing with hot wax since just after breakfast or, at the very least, hanging in the smokehouse along with several of his lady friends.
Instead, he was on the loose, facing Miranda on the path, snorting ominously and pawing at the ground with one front hoof, just like a bull. In fact, he looked big as a bull to Miranda at that moment. He was as dangerous as he was ugly, a quarter ton of sorry pork, with a mean spirit and a made-up mind.
Shakily, Miranda tossed the scraps to the ground, pail and all. There were barely four feet between her and the boar by then, and though he snuffled the offering of stale bread, potato peelings, eggshells, coffee grounds, and the like, it didn’t hold his interest long. He raised that massive head again right away and fixed his little eyes on her.
“L-Landry,” she called, in an almost musical tone, as though being real polite would somehow keep the pig from charging and tearing her apart with razorsharp teeth.
“Don’t move,” Landry advised, from a few feet behind her. She was so relieved at his presence that she nearly fainted dead away, but in the next instant, the boar charged, with a horrifying, squeal-like bellow. The whole universe seemed to slow down; Miranda heard a rifle being cocked, then the loud report of a gunshot. The beast fell, inches shy of where she stood, its head a bloody pulp, already drawing flies.
Miranda got messages from a hundred parts of herself, body and soul, and all in the space of a heartbeat. Someone cowering in a rear corner of her brain was screaming in shrill terror, and it was only by the grace of God and good muscle tone that she held on to the contents of her bladder. Her stomach bounced between her throat and her hip bones, unsure where to settle.
Springwater Seasons Page 27
