by Jo Goodman
“They don’t like anybody except Annalea.” Willa put out the iron skillet and then took plates and cups from the china cupboard and set them on the table. “I have outside chores first,” she said, “but I’ll be back to make breakfast. I wouldn’t mind if you looked for me coming back, maybe had a cup of coffee ready.” When Happy nodded, Willa went to get her boots. She sat down at a right angle to her father to put them on.
Happy folded his arms across his chest and regarded Willa down the length of his nose. “I heard you come in the house last night, and that was after you were already in once. What took you outside?”
Willa did not flinch and she did not look up. She concentrated on getting her left foot in the correct boot. “John Henry.”
“He got out?”
Eyes downcast, she nodded. “I found him nosing around the coop. He made me chase him all the way to the barn. I don’t know what got into him.”
“I’ll be darned. Wonder how he got out.”
“Can’t say.” She elected to pull on the second boot very slowly. “Did you step out last night? Maybe he slipped through the door and you didn’t notice.”
“Except for hearing you, I never stirred. Funny, though, that he was so frisky, leading you on a chase that way. Not like the little fella to do that. I wonder if there’s varmints in the barn.”
“There are always varmints in the barn,” she said dryly. She sat up straight, rolled her shoulders, and finally looked at her father. She lifted her chin in the direction of the stove. “Better check your coffee before it burns.”
Happy did not jump to his feet. He as was slow to unfold his arms and legs as he was to shift his gaze from Willa’s face. “It couldn’t hurt to have a look around the barn today, maybe find what attracted John Henry’s sniffer.”
“Sure,” she said. “I’ll do that.”
Happy turned toward the stove. “I have it in my mind to do it myself.”
Willa stared at her father’s back and said nothing. She had not heard this particular voice from Happy in a very long time, but she recognized it immediately as the one he used when he would entertain no argument.
On her way to the barn, Willa saw Zach leaving the bunkhouse. She waited for him and told him about her plans to ride out to the bottom with Annalea and Israel. He was in agreement that it was time but advised caution when it came to putting a gun in Israel McKenna’s hands.
“The only account we have that the man is a poor shot is his own,” said Zach. “Could be he’s just being modest.”
Or lying, she thought. Israel McKenna was a damn hard one to figure out. Last night he told her about his eight months in prison followed by four more in the Cook County Jail and his release on the day he had been walking along Wabash, but except to say he had not murdered anyone, he offered no explanation for his confinement, and she had not asked. Willa didn’t know if he would have told her, or if he had, if it would have been the truth, but she was more certain just then that she did not want to find out.
“Maybe,” she said in response to Zach’s observation. “I’ll be careful.” They talked guns as they walked. Zach suggested she take Happy’s old Colt .45 that he kept clean but hadn’t pulled the trigger on for years, and plenty of the long ammunition for it. She agreed that they should probably know if the gun could shoot straight. As for the rifle, Zach was in favor of the Remington; she was partial to the Winchester. She decided to take the Winchester and leave behind the weapon that Zach preferred.
“You’re still expecting trouble from Big Bar?” asked Zach. He opened the barn door and let Willa enter first.
“Aren’t you?”
“Well, I guess you don’t ever not expect trouble from them, but it’s crossed my mind that I figured things wrong.”
“Hmm. Does that mean you think I shouldn’t have asked Israel to marry me?”
Zach’s hat tipped cockeyed as he scratched behind his ear. “I’m still puzzling that one out. I expected you’d put that proposal to someone from town. That Knowles fella, for instance, the one that works at the mercantile with his father, or maybe Ben Coldsmith. He’s about your age and a widower. Good-lookin’, too. Not as handsome as Israel, I’ll grant you, but then not every man can look like one of God’s fallen angels.”
Willa laughed out loud at that dead-on description. “Well, he hasn’t said yes.”
“Can’t puzzle that out either. Didn’t take him for a fool.”
“Zach,” she said patiently. “You didn’t say yes.”
He reset his hat on his head and gave her a lopsided grin. “You have to hire smarter hands, Willa. That’s a fact.”
She chucked him lightly on the arm and then walked to Felicity’s stall. She spoke to Zach over her shoulder. “You think you’re smart enough to figure out what Happy’s up to?”
While she made a surreptitious inspection of the barn, primarily in the area where she and Israel had been sitting, then embracing, and then sitting again, she told Zach about Happy being the first one up and dressed for the day in a manner that made her think he had something other than chores on his mind.
“He didn’t tell you anything?” asked Zach.
“I didn’t ask. I figured if he was shaved and cleaned up just because he wanted to be, I shouldn’t call attention to it. It’d seem as if I were suspicious.”
Zach caught her eye and held up a finger in the manner of one addressing a point of order. “Um, I believe that, in fact, you are suspicious.”
“Well, of course I am, but I’m trying to act as if I’m not.”
“Huh,” he said, scratching behind his ear again. “Seems like you’re goin’ at the thing sideways, but then I always did think women like a meandering path.”
* * *
The ride to Beech Bottom also took a meandering path, but the steep angle of the descent made it the safer route coming and going. Willa knew Felicity could negotiate the more direct trail because she had done it before, but then they had been trying to rescue a calf that had wandered away from her mama and was frozen with fear on a narrow ledge of rock. There was no urgency now and unlikely to be any. The cows had been herded out of the bottom before the first snow so they would not be trapped without sufficient food or water, or worse, killed in an avalanche.
Willa was satisfied that Israel and Annalea and their mounts could manage the route she had chosen. She only felt the occasional need to glance back and make sure they were following. Annalea was the caboose of their little train, a position she insisted upon because she believed that Israel might need guidance from time to time, and she could do that better if she were behind him. Not only did Israel not take issue with Annalea’s assessment, but he accepted it with equanimity.
If Willa had thought Annalea would not get wind of it, she would have told Israel that she liked him for it, then again, Annalea’s sole purpose on this ride was so there would be nothing to get wind of.
Israel was agreeable to riding out when Willa suggested it to him after breakfast, and he was amenable when she told him there would be target practice, and he was patently amused when he learned Annalea would be joining them.
“Chaperone?” he had asked.
Willa was not surprised he had seen right through her ploy but a little surprised that he had called her on it. No matter what he said, he was not afraid of her. A faint smile lifted one corner of her mouth as she reflected on it. At least he had not called her a coward, and she was fairly certain that applied.
The day was unusually warm for the middle of January, and the bowl-like nature of the bottom circulated a gentle eddy of wind but protected them from gusts. The trail was mostly dry, pockmarked where small rocks had been kicked up and overturned. There were patches of ice that Willa steered Felicity around and warned the others about.
When they reached the wide flat of the bottomland, Willa chose a site close to the spring. Water spi
lled steadily from an underground source and into a pool that was not completely iced over, although the hard glaze was creeping from the edges to the center. She dismounted and saw Israel was still in the saddle, looking around, eyeing the small, shrubby trees that formed a thicket along the circular edge of the clearing. There were taller trees of the same variety beyond the thicket, some of them twenty, twenty-five feet tall with glossy, rich brown bark and slender, drooping branches.
“Water birch,” she told him.
He turned to her. “Ah. So it’s called Beech Bottom because . . .”
Annalea swung down from her horse. “Because my granddaddy Obie named it before he got down here to see what was what. That’s what Pa told me. Obie had the naming of everything on Pancake land.”
There was no mistaking the pride in Annalea’s voice. Hearing it made Willa smile. She told Israel, “Grandpa Obie said the land spoke to him, and he never changed his story and he never changed the name of anything, no matter that the facts did not support it.”
“Like Pancake Valley not being a valley,” said Israel.
“You noticed,” Willa said dryly. “Yes, like that.”
Chuckling, Israel dismounted. He landed lightly and patted Galahad on the neck. Over his shoulder, he asked Willa, “What’s next?”
Willa directed the activity. Annalea was charged with finding a satisfactory location for the two coffee cans she had strung together and looped around her saddle horn. She wasted no time skirting the edge of the pool and heading into the thicket. While she crashed around in the brush, Israel took the reins for all three mounts and, as Willa instructed, took them to a place where he could not possibly shoot one of them. When she looked up from loading her gun, he was still walking.
“You don’t have to go that far,” she called to him. “I thought you’d figured out that I am not always serious.”
He stopped, turned. “And I thought you’d figured out that sometimes I am.” He led the horses another thirty feet and hitched them to a tree. By the time he walked back to Willa, Annalea had reappeared from the thicket dragging the dead trunk of a birch behind her. The rope with the coffee cans attached was slung around her neck so the cans banged and bounced against her as she pulled. “What is she doing?” he asked Willa.
“Give her a moment.”
Annalea dropped the log when it was completely clear of the thicket and then rolled it toward the pool, stopping a few feet from the edge. She stood back, critically regarding its placement, straightened it, and then took the rope from around her neck and cut it with her pocketknife. She set a coffee can on each end of the log, balancing them carefully, and backed away. When neither can toppled, she spun around to face Willa, arms akimbo. “How’s that?”
“Very good, now get over here.”
“Maybe she should wait by the horses,” said Israel.
“You cannot be that bad of a shot.”
Israel shrugged.
When Annalea came around and stood beside them, Willa told her to find a place to spread out a blanket and work on lessons from her fifth year primer. “You remembered to bring it, didn’t you?”
Annalea thrust out her lower lip. “You’re truly going to make me do lessons?”
Willa did not deign to answer. She merely lifted an eyebrow and Annalea slunk off toward the horses to get her bedroll and books from her saddlebag. Watching her go, Willa shook her head. “I’m going to have to send her back to school in Jupiter in the spring. She wants no part of it, but I worry that I’m not giving enough attention to her studies. Happy promised to help out, but you can imagine how that is. It’s still mostly when he feels like it, not when she needs it. Zach does not have time, and Cutter says he doesn’t read or do sums as well as Annalea.”
Israel accepted the Colt she held out to him by the ivory grip. “Why haven’t you asked me?”
It struck Willa then that she had never considered it. “I don’t know. Maybe because I didn’t know if you were going to stay through the winter.” That explanation seemed inadequate, and she felt heat rising in her face as he stared at her.
“Maybe because you didn’t want me in your house,” he said quietly.
Willa shook her head hard enough for her braid to swing forward over her shoulder. “No,” she said firmly. “That’s not it. You’ve been in the house.”
“Kitchen table in,” he said. “I didn’t know about the piano in the front room, remember?”
“Well, Cutter and Zach don’t traipse through the house either. You work for me. You have living quarters.”
“Are you listening to yourself, Wilhelmina? You asked me to marry you, and I don’t know the color of your goddamn couch.”
She flinched, blinked, and drew in a sharp breath. After a moment, she spoke, but softly, not trusting herself to manage her temper above a whisper. “Maybe you should give me back the gun.” She held out her hand.
“Gladly.” He placed the Colt squarely in her palm, put distance between them by retreating a step, and rubbed the back of his neck.
Frowning, Willa stared first at the gun, then at Israel. “You don’t want to do this, do you? I think you just picked a fight with me to get out of it.”
Israel did not look away, and he also did not deny it.
“Well, damn,” she said under her breath.
He made a noise at the back of his throat.
Annalea looked over the top of her primer and yelled, “Is someone gonna shoot or are you two just gonna keep on jawin’?”
Willa sighed deeply. “Gonna. Jawin’. Do you see why I am worried she will grow up stupid as a stump?”
“She might think it’s more important to learn to shoot,” he said after a moment. “She can see you set a lot of store by it.”
His comment put Willa’s attention back on the Colt. “I do. I hadn’t realized how much, but you’re right. I do. It’s important for me to know that she can protect herself.”
“Could you? Protect yourself, I mean. At her age?”
“I knew how to shoot,” she said a shade defiantly.
Israel’s blue-gray eyes narrowed when she looked up. “I didn’t ask if you could shoot. I asked if you could protect yourself. It’s not quite the same.”
Willa felt herself go from hot to cold. Very cold. If there were any color left in her face, she would have been surprised to learn of it. She had lots of thoughts but no reply, and because it seemed prudent to do something, she began to lower her hand holding the gun.
“Hey!” Annalea shouted out again. “What about the shooting? Isn’t someone gonna shoot?”
Israel caught Willa by the wrist and took the gun from her. “It’s loaded?”
“Yes.”
And because she spoke so softly, he checked it anyway. “All right. Stand off to the side.” When she didn’t move, he did, taking a position four feet to the left of her. He raised the Colt, held it steady, and squinted as he studied the targets. They were about two yards apart, one yellow, one green, both with bold, black lettering. “Yellow one,” he said, and fired.
When the sound of the shot died away, the yellow can was still nicely balanced on the log.
Willa said calmly, “That was high, I think. And a little to the left.”
Annalea hollered, “You missed!”
“Thank you,” he said under his breath. To Willa, he said, “Green.” His eyes narrowed on the target and he squeezed the trigger.
“Still high,” she said.
He lowered the gun. “Well, I didn’t hit the horses.” He held out the Colt to her, shrugging when she didn’t take it. “I suppose you want me to practice, but I’m telling you, it’s mostly a waste of ammunition. I shot a buck once when I was hunting with my father, but it was not a kill shot, and Quill had to do the merciful thing and finish it for me. I never shot a squirrel, a pheasant, or a rabbit. Now I can add that
coffee cans are safe.” He added mildly, “Although I understand they’re not good eating.”
A slender, rueful smile touched Willa’s mouth. “No, not good eating. Would you mind taking aim at the yellow can again? You don’t have to shoot. I want to see something.”
Israel obliged her, raising the gun as though drawing from the hip. His eyes shifted sideways when Willa stepped closer.
“No,” she said. “Keep looking at the can as if you were sighting it.”
He did, eyes narrowing in concentration until she put a hand on his and told him to lower the gun. This time when he looked at her, her head was angled in a thoughtful pose. “What?” he asked. “My grip? The way I stand?”
She shook her head and took the gun from him, holstering it. “None of that. It’s the way you look at a thing when it’s distant from you. Have you owned a pair of spectacles in the past?” Willa could not recall that she had ever been on the receiving end of such dismissive regard. He might as well have sneered at her. “I suppose not,” she said.
“I don’t need them.”
“Uh-huh.” She pointed to the yellow can because the black block lettering was clearer than it was on the green one. “Read what’s stamped on the yellow can.”
Israel did not turn his head to look at the can. “Coffee,” he said. “It says coffee.”
She raised an eyebrow. “That’s what you want to do? Read what it says, Israel.”
Sighing heavily, he turned, squinted, and said, “Coffee.”
Willa said, “Finch’s Best. The word ‘coffee’ is on the other side. Do you want to try the green can? I’ll give you that it’s more difficult at this distance.”
Israel shifted his attention to the opposite end of the log. “Cortana.”
“It’s Cortana, all right, but that’s not the side that’s facing us. It reads ‘coffee.’”
Israel gave her a sour look. “Trickery. I thought that would be beneath you.”
She shrugged. “Can you even see the cans clearly?”
“I can see them just fine.”
