The Man from Stone Creek

by Linda Lael Miller

  “She makes water in her bloomers,” added another voice.

  “Her papa got hisself hanged for horse thieving.”

  Sam scanned the room. “Enough,” he said quietly.

  The resulting silence was profound.

  He went to where Violet huddled at the far end of the back table and crouched beside her. A tear slid down her cheek and puddled on the slate resting in her lap. Up close, he noticed that her calico dress was faded and thin with wear, and she smelled pungently of urine, wood smoke and general neglect.

  Sam laid a tentative hand on her small, bony back. “When you want to use the outhouse, Violet,” he said, “you don’t have to raise your hand for permission. You just get right up and go.”

  Violet nodded miserably, unable to lift her head. “Mr. Singleton made me wait,” she whispered.

  Sam patted her awkwardly on one small, hunched shoulder and straightened to address the rest of the class. “I will not countenance bullying,” he said. “Ask Mr. Chancelor if you don’t believe me.”

  Terran flushed vividly, keeping his gaze fixed straight ahead, but no one made a sound.

  “Now,” Sam said, “let’s get down to business. How many of you know how to read and write?”

  IT WAS THREE FORTY-FIVE by the big clock on the mercantile wall when Sam O’Ballivan strode in. Maddie felt his presence, even before she stole a glance to confirm it. She drew a deep breath and smiled at Undine Donagher, who had come to town to order ready-made dresses from the catalog.

  There were no other customers; folks tended to stay clear of the store when the Donaghers stopped by, which was often, since they owned the establishment.

  “Maybe this silk would do,” Maddie suggested warmly.

  Undine, the pretty and youthful wife of Mungo Donagher, a grizzled old rancher who probably tallied his land holdings in counties instead of acres, was someone Maddie dreaded rather than welcomed, even though Undine invariably spent a great deal of money when she went on a buying tangent. Because Mungo liked to keep the accounts straight, he made all his purchases like any other customer would.

  Undine turned to look at Sam and her petulant expression went coquettish. Mungo, occupying himself with a display of rifles, seemed to sense the shift of his wife’s attention and turned, frowning, to watch the exchange.

  Undine tugged at her white gloves, with their rows of tiny pearl buttons, and smiled, ignoring her husband. “I don’t believe we’ve met,” she said, and walked right over to Mr. O’Ballivan as if they’d encountered each other at a soiree. “I’d have remembered anybody as handsome as you are.”

  Sam nodded with solemn cordiality, a flush darkening his neck, and took a box from the stack next to the door. “Howdy,” he said, and his gaze skittered to Maddie.

  She realized that her mouth was open, and closed it again, but not quickly enough, she saw, to fool Mr. O’Ballivan. The flicker in his eyes told her he’d registered her disapproval of Undine’s bold behavior and found it amusing.

  Recovering her manners, Maddie said, “Mrs. Donagher, this is Mr. O’Ballivan, the new schoolmaster.”

  Before she could introduce Mungo, he stepped between Undine and Mr. O’Ballivan, extending a work-roughened, pawlike hand in greeting. His manner was one of blustery goodwill, but Maddie wasn’t fooled, and neither, apparently, was Mr. O’Ballivan. A muscle bunched in his jaw even as he shook Mungo’s hand.

  Undine, her flirtation thwarted, pushed out her lower lip and retreated to the counter, where she and Maddie had been poring over the catalog.

  “You look like you might just be able to handle that bunch over to the schoolhouse,” Mungo boomed, apparently determined to keep the conversation going. “One of those whelps is mine. Name’s Ben. He gives you any trouble, you just haul him off to the woodshed and tan his hide.”

  A motion at the window drew Maddie’s eyes, and she saw her brother peering through the glass. When he spotted Sam O’Ballivan, he recoiled visibly and hurried off down the sidewalk.

  “I don’t make much use of the woodshed,” O’Ballivan said.

  Maddie’s temper heated. No, she thought. You just hang innocent children upside down in the well by their feet and scare the life out of them.

  Mungo laughed, fairly rattling the canned goods on the shelves. It was not a friendly sound; Mungo Donagher was not a friendly man. In fact, most people feared him, along with his three older sons, who were, in Maddie’s opinion, little better than criminals. She stayed close to the shotgun when any of them were in the store.

  “I hope you’re a better man than poor Tom Singleton,” Mungo said. “Those snot-nosed little devils stampeded right over him. Thought he might toughen up, but he didn’t.”

  Maddie glanced at Undine, saw a faint blush rise in the woman’s cheeks and the slightest tightening around the mouth. She wondered about that, but only briefly, because the exchange between Sam O’Ballivan and the patriarch was building up steam.

  “Yes,” O’Ballivan agreed mildly, selecting a cake of yellow soap from those on offer and dropping it into the box in the curve of his left arm, moving on, and then going back for another. This time, he chose the fancy, scented kind, French-milled and wrapped in pretty paper. It cost the earth, and Maddie’s curiosity was piqued again. “I saw the evidence of that yesterday. I’ll need two pounds of coffee, Miss Chancelor. A pound of sugar, too.” He proceeded to add tins of peaches, tomatoes and green beans to his purchases.

  “A man’s got no business teaching if he can’t ride herd on a few brats.” Mungo thundered on. “’Course it’s usually a woman’s job. Teaching school, I mean. My older boys always favored a schoolmarm.”

  I’ll just bet they did, Maddie thought, watching Sam O’Ballivan closely while trying to pretend she’d barely noticed him at all.

  O’Ballivan didn’t answer. Occupied with his shopping, he reached down for a shaving brush, then a razor, then tooth powder. Maddie wondered, as she had from the first moment of their acquaintance, why a man like that would want to spend his days writing on a blackboard in a border town like Haven. He must have felt confined in the schoolhouse, a place hardly big enough to accommodate the width of his shoulders, and his skin was weathered, as if he’d spent much of his life outdoors.

  Maddie knew the salary allotted to the teacher was paltry, since she attended school board meetings, and besides, Mungo was right. Most teachers were female. Mr. Singleton had been an exception, hired after his predecessor eloped with a medicine peddler three weeks into the school term. And now here was Sam O’Ballivan, who looked more like a hired gunslinger than anything else.

  “I guess you didn’t hear me say most teachers are female,” Mungo said, sounding less jovial now as O’Ballivan set the box on the counter and proceeded to examine a large copper washtub hanging on the wall.

  “Oh, I heard you, all right,” he replied, hoisting the tub down from its peg. “It just didn’t seem like the sort of remark that called for an answer.”

  The air fairly crackled.

  Maddie debated whether or not she ought to stipulate that she didn’t sell on credit, since the tub was one of the most expensive items she carried, but she didn’t want to be the next one to speak.

  Meanwhile, Undine had recovered her aplomb. “We’d be honored to have you come to our place for supper, Mr. O’Ballivan,” she said. Mungo turned to glower at her, but she went right on ignoring him.

  Sam set the tub on the counter. “I accept,” he said.

  Mungo seemed taken aback, and Maddie was a little surprised herself. A mite irritated, too, though she couldn’t have said why.

  Undine batted her thick lashes and posed, as if for a daguerreotypist about to take her likeness. “Would tonight be too soon?”

  “Unfortunately,” Sam said, “I have a prior commitment.”

  Undine was the image of sweet disappointment. “Tomorrow, then?”

  “Tomorrow will be fine,” Sam replied.

  Maddie risked a sidelong peek at Mungo, who
looked as if his thick head of white hair might be about to fly upward and stick to the ceiling. Was O’Ballivan such a fool that he didn’t know where he wasn’t welcome? Or was he simply unable to resist Undine Donagher’s undeniable charms?

  “Seven o’clock, then,” Undine chimed, twinkling. “The ranch house is five miles east of here, along the river trail.”

  Sam nodded. “I’ll be there,” he said.

  “Bring Miss Chancelor here along with you,” Mungo added. It wasn’t an invitation. It was an order, thrust into the exchange like a fist.

  Maddie opened her mouth to protest.

  “That’s a fine idea,” Sam replied before she could get a word out.

  Undine’s face fell. Mungo took a hard grip on her elbow and ushered her toward the door. “I’ll send a ranch hand back for the goods we bought,” the rancher announced without turning his head.

  “I was just being neighborly,” Undine was heard to say as Mungo fairly hurled her outside.

  Maddie stared after them, confounded.

  Sam O’Ballivan helped himself to a towel, four cotton shirts and a shiny new bucket.

  “This tub costs eight dollars,” Maddie pointed out when she’d had a few moments to recover. “I don’t—”

  Mr. O’Ballivan paused, took a wallet from the inside pocket of his coat and inspected the contents thoughtfully. Even from where she stood, Maddie could see that he had plenty of money, and that made her wonder even more.

  “I think I can cover it,” he concluded, replacing the wallet.

  “Who are you?” Maddie demanded. It was her nature, after all, to be forthright, and she’d held her curiosity in check as long as she could.

  He added three pairs of socks to the pile. “You don’t have much of a memory,” he said. “I believe I’ve already introduced myself.”

  Maddie rounded the counter and advanced, setting her hands on her hips and forcing him to stop and face her. “I guess you didn’t notice that Mungo Donagher doesn’t want you coming to his house for supper.”

  Sam’s mouth quirked again, though he didn’t actually smile. “Now that hurts my feelings,” he said. “The invitation sounded sincere enough to me.”

  Maddie gave an exasperated sigh. “Oh, it was sincere, all right. Undine meant every word of it. It’s Mungo I’m worried about.”

  “Now why would you worry about Mungo or anything else, Miss Chancelor?”

  Maddie knotted her hands in her apron, so she wouldn’t box Sam O’Ballivan’s ears. “You’re new in Haven, and you obviously have the sensibilities of a hitching post, so I’ll tell you,” she said. “Mr. Donagher is a hard man. He’s vengeful and he’s rich, and when folks get on his bad side, they tend to meet with sudden misfortune.”

  “I do appreciate your concern, Miss Chancelor, but I’m not afraid of that old coot. Do you have any storybooks?”

  Maddie blinked. “Storybooks?”

  Sam’s eyes danced. “For kids,” he explained with the sort of patience one usually reserves for an idiot.

  Maddie gestured toward a table in the far corner of the store, followed determinedly when Sam headed in that direction. She was about to pursue the subject of his identity again when she noticed the reverent way he chose and examined a volume of fairy tales. It made her throat tighten.

  “My mother used to read those stories to me,” she said, and then could have bitten off her tongue at the hinge. Mr. O’Ballivan’s gaze came straight to her face, and she felt exposed, as if her memories were no more private than the goods displayed in the window at the front of the store.

  “Did she?” he asked quietly.

  Maddie swallowed, nodded. Looked away.

  Sam caught her chin between his thumb and the curve of his forefinger. His flesh was calloused, giving the lie, yet again, to his being a schoolmaster. He turned her head so she had to meet his eyes.

  His touch made her nerves spark under her skin. She wanted to pull away, but she couldn’t quite make herself do it. In fact, she couldn’t even speak, so she just stood there, like a fool, astounded by her own weakness.

  “How is it that you’re not married, Maddie Chancelor?” Sam asked gravely, and let his hand fall back to his side.

  Maddie moistened her lips. It was a forward question, one he had no right to ask. She was surprised when she heard herself answer. “I was engaged once,” she said softly. “He was killed.”

  She waited for the pain that always came when she merely thought of Warren, let alone mentioned him out loud, but it didn’t come.

  “I’m sorry,” Sam O’Ballivan said solemnly.

  “It’s been five years,” Maddie answered, and was grateful when the bell jingled over the door. She’d been alone with Mr. O’Ballivan, or whoever he was, for much too long.

  ONCE HE’D SETTLED UP his bill and Maddie had promised to send Terran around in a buckboard with the things he’d bought, Sam left the store. The basket Bird had brought him the night before was on the bench on the sidewalk, where he’d left it.

  He’d return it to Oralee Pringle, with his thanks, and ask her about Bird while he was at it. A good part of his mind stayed behind, though, worrying at Maddie Chancelor like an old dog with a soup bone.

  She’d loved a man, five years ago, enough to say she’d marry him.

  Why did it open a hollow place inside him, knowing that? Maddie was a beautiful woman, and she must have had suitors right along. Had she laid her heart in the casket, with her intended, and closed the lid on it for good? And why should it matter to him, anyway, when he was all but promised to the major’s daughter?

  He crossed the street, weaving his way between horses and wagons, and strode along the wooden sidewalk toward the Rattlesnake. The tinny strains of an out-of-tune piano spilled over the swinging doors and he paused outside, trying to shake off his melancholy mood.

  An old, swaybacked horse stood at the water trough, square in front of the saloon, a little apart from the others, reins hanging loose. He was spotted, and his ribs showed.

  Sam paused to pat him. “You look about as sorrowful as I feel,” he said.

  “You brought the basket back.”

  Sam turned his head, saw that Bird had stepped out of the saloon to stand on the sidewalk. In the light of day, she looked even younger than she had the night before. She wore a red dress that showed her legs and too much bosom, and her face was freshly painted.

  “I’m obliged,” he said, still stroking the horse. “That was the best supper I’ve had in a long time.”

  Bird smiled and took the basket. “I guess you meant to thank Oralee,” she said. “She’s gone to Tucson. Won’t be back until tomorrow sometime.”

  Sam nodded.

  Bird lingered. “That’s Dobbin,” she said, indicating the horse. “He’s a pitiful old fella, isn’t he? Belongs to Charlie Wilcox. Stands out here, patient as the saints, all day every day, waiting for Charlie to finish swilling whiskey and ride him on home. Charlie’d never get back to that shack of his if it wasn’t for Dobbin.”

  Sam felt a pang of sympathy for the horse. Wished he could put him out to pasture, with Dionysus, come summer, and let him eat his fill of good grass.

  He stepped away from Dobbin, stood looking down at Bird.

  “You gonna ask me how old I am again?” she asked, smiling up into his face.

  “I’d like to,” he said, “but I reckon I’d be wasting my breath.”

  “I’m seventeen,” she told him.

  More like fifteen, he thought, sorrier for her than he was for the horse. “How did you end up working in a place like the Rattlesnake Saloon?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “Just makin’ my way in the world,” she replied without a trace of self-pity. “We’ve all got to do that, don’t we?”

  “I guess we do,” Sam agreed. “Don’t you have any folks?”

  “Just a sister,” Bird said. “She’s married, and I was a trial to her, so she showed me the road. You comin’ inside?”

  Sam sho
ok his head, pondering. He’d never had a sister, but if he had, he wouldn’t have turned her out, whether she was a trial to him or not.

  Bird looked crestfallen. “How come you don’t like me?” she blurted. “Most men take to me right away.”

  “I like you fine,” Sam said. “That’s the problem.”

  She went from crestfallen to confused. “I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t imagine you do.” On impulse, he reached out, took her hand, squeezed it lightly. “If you ever need help, Bird, you come to me.”

  She smiled sadly. “It’s too late for that,” she said. Then, carrying the basket, she turned and hurried back into the saloon.

  Sam stared after her for a few bleak moments, patted Dobbin again, then headed back toward the schoolhouse.

  One of these days he was going to stop wanting to save worn-out horses and misguided girls and a whole lot of other things. It would be pure, blessed relief when that day came.

  CHAPTER

  THREE

  SAM WAS OUT BACK of the schoolhouse, splitting wood for the fire, when Terran rolled up at the reins of an ancient buckboard, drawn by two sorry-looking horses, one mud-brown, the other a pink-eyed pinto. Their hooves wanted trimming, he reflected, lodging the ax in the chopping block and dusting his hands together. If he’d had his hasp handy, he’d have undertaken the job right then and there.

  Terran, perched on the seat, drew up the team, set the brake lever with a deft motion of one foot, and jumped to the ground. Sam’s copper tub gleamed in the bed of the wagon, catching the last fierce rays of the setting sun.

  The boy rounded the buckboard, lowered the tailgate with a creak of hinges, and scrambled in to haul the boxes to the rear, where Sam was waiting to claim them.

  “Too bad you ain’t a lady,” Terran remarked, admiring the tub. “You could give Violet Perkins a sudsing.”

  Sam hoisted the box containing his coffee, sugar, canned goods and toiletries. “There are worse things,” he observed, “than smelling bad.”

  “That depends,” Terran replied, sliding back another box, “on whether or not you’re downwind from her.”