Softly Falling

by Carla Kelly

  Of course, it had taken him several years of near starvation and raw deals as he slowly learned the cattle business. He rode a little apart from his crew, remembering those bad days after the war, when former rebels were fair game. It had led to beatings in alleys until he learned to keep his mouth shut.

  He owed part of his hard-earned wisdom to a sheriff who had found him bleeding and hungry in one of those alleys. The man had prodded him with his boot just to make sure he was alive, then picked him up, slung him over his shoulder, and plopped him down on a cot in the jail.

  “No, no, you’re not under arrest,” the lawman had told Jack when he groaned and came around. “It’s cold out and you’re not fit for it. I’ll leave the cell door open. You can leave when you please.”

  Jack felt only gratitude for the warmth. He was unprepared for the bowl of thick stew and two rolls—merciful heaven, two!—that the sheriff left without comment. He ate like a wolf and then slept all night under a blanket. He couldn’t even remember the last time he had slept in an actual building.

  By morning, Jack had sorted himself out and knew this good time couldn’t last forever. He had made his way from the cells to the room where the sheriff sat, playing solitaire. When the man saw him, he folded the cards and leaned back in his chair, the better to take a good look.

  Jack had thanked him for the food and the bed for the night. It was snowing lightly, but he knew he had to leave. Laramie wasn’t running a charity hotel, after all. He started for the door, but the sheriff had stopped him. He scribbled a note, folded it, and handed it to Jack.

  “There’s a ranch two miles west of here, the T Bar, my brother Tom’s place,” the sheriff said. “He’ll put you up and teach you something, if I say so.”

  Jack had thanked him again. Two miles in the snow wouldn’t be pretty, but he had walked much farther for Stonewall Jackson. He had stopped at the door. “If you don’t mind, suh, why’re you doing this?”

  The man had chuckled, sort of like he and Pierre had chuckled at Lily. “Tom and I are from Virginia, but we don’t advertise it. Get rid of that chip on your shoulder. We lost the war, and it’s over.”

  He had leaned across the desk then, looked Jack in the eye, and handed out the foundation of Jack’s Western education. “Lad, you can only make so many bad decisions before they either kill you or you learn something.”

  Jack didn’t reckon that Lily had made too many bad decisions. Maybe it was different for women, because he knew she hadn’t been given a fair shake in life. Still, he hoped she learned something, and quick, because he was finding her more interesting by the day.

  The Indian caught up with him an hour later, as they were trailing LC cattle north to their own range. He looked around. “Too many cattle, and pretty much as thin as ours.”

  Jack nodded and looked where Stretch was pointing. “It’s LC hands,” he said, after they came closer. “Wondered when we’d see them.”

  He recognized the rancher, Mike McMurdy, and loped to his side. The man was full of apology and excuse, something he was famous for, but Jack listened patiently. What he heard chilled him.

  “We’ve been in the saddle for days, and my boys are tired,” the rancher said. “We can’t keep’um from moving south. It’s like they know something.”

  “They do,” Jack said. “You have a big herd of Texas cattle, don’t you?”

  McMurdy nodded and gave a dry laugh. “They all want to go back to the Lone Star State.” He swore long and fluently. “What’s up, Jack?”

  “A winter like we’ve never seen before, and they know it.” He raised both hands when the man started to speak. “I don’t know how they know, but they do!”

  “So they’re going to drift, no matter what?”

  “They are.” Jack hated to say it, hated to give voice to his deep fear, but there it was. “They’re not smart, but they know more’n we do.”

  Again that dry chuckle, followed by increased fluency in words so choice that Jack nearly felt his ears singe.

  “My advice to you is move’um north as best you can. I don’t want your Texas cattle in Bar Dot herds.”

  “We could use fences.”

  “No doubt, but a bit late to save us. G’day to you.”

  They parted company. Jack sat by himself, looking to the northwest where only a few idle clouds drifted by. It was a picture-perfect September, but the cattle milled in little bunches, looking northwest too. At some cow signal, they turned and continued their relentless slog south.

  The men of the Bar Dot spent the day with the LC boys, coaxing cattle against their will. Other brands began to show up, and more cowhands. By midafternoon, the herds were finally separated and moving north again, but it was a surly and mean bunch of cattle thwarted in their instincts.

  By the time the shadows changed and stretched, the men had done all they could. Tomorrow the same struggle would begin again. A disgruntled bunch themselves, the Bar Dot men rode south toward stables and food. The satisfaction Jack felt to see their own herds placidly grazing and chewing was short-lived, because he knew cattle were ruled by consensus. When the new Texas herds broke for the southern plains again, as he knew they would, they would sweep all before them.

  He knew he needed a diversion and hoped Lily wasn’t too distracted by her own worries to read another chapter. Funny how a story about knights and the Crusades could take a body out of his own worries. What magic did words play in compelling him to care about Rebecca and the Old Jew?

  It had to be more than that. He enjoyed the way Lily read, her accent so clipped and precise, each word an obedient little soldier. For a few years after he left the South, he had missed the leisurely way words just took their sweet time. The harder he worked and the busier he got, he had less patience for such time wasted. Lily’s accent suited him right down to the ground.

  They rode past the school long after she had adjourned for the day, but the door was open so he dismounted and motioned to the Indian to join him. They walked toward the open door. The grass stirred and Indian leaped back when Freak came at him, hissing. Jack laughed, at the same time glad it was Pierre and not him.

  The Indian clapped his hands and waved his Stetson. Freak backed away before turning around with a vast amount of disdain and vanishing into the cottonwoods.

  “Do you think he scares the kids every morning?” Pierre asked, keeping his voice low as if afraid Freak would hear and respond in his inimitable way.

  “Nope. Looks to me like he was protecting Lily.”

  Pierre gave him a look and stared at the sun. “Sunstroke getting your brain, boss?”

  Jack went inside, where Lily sat at her desk. Her hands were folded and she stared down at them, a woman at her wit’s end. She looked up and he saw all the misery, but no tears this time. Maybe she was a quicker learner than he had been.

  “Chantal and Amelie are so frightened of what Luella might do that they can barely study,” she said. She looked beyond him to the Indian. “Pierre, here are my thumbtacks and my dime.”

  “That’s all I need. I’m going to come back and just sit here by the door, all quiet like.”

  “If this is dangerous, I’d . . . I’d rather you didn’t,” she told him.

  “I’ll be fine. I’m a tough Indian.”

  Jack had to give her credit. With a certain steely resolve that he nearly envied, Lily coached him in sounding out small words. Bat and cat became battle and cattle, and he began to see the possibilities.

  Through it all, Clarence Carteret sat in the rocking chair, watching his daughter with pride. He seemed more at ease, to Jack’s eyes, and Lily said as much, when he finally surrendered to his vices and retired.

  “I think it was an hour this time,” she whispered, and then the worried look returned. “I’m not certain because I don’t have a watch. Maybe I’m just looking for improvement so hard that I’m unrealistic.”

  “It was an hour this time,” he told her, not certain either. He knew she needed good news, a
nd that was enough for him.

  “Chapter thirteen,” she said, taking the book from the shelf by the two photographs.

  She held it, and he knew her heart wasn’t in the tale tonight, so he pointed to the pictures instead, noticing that someone had polished the frames until they shone.

  “Don’t bother with Ivanhoe tonight,” he said, even though he yearned to hear more. “Tell me about your mother. Do you remember her?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said and returned the book to the shelf. She outlined her mother’s figure in the frame. “We left Barbados when I was five. I . . .”

  She stopped as someone tapped on the door, just a light tap, but Jack knew who it was. She opened the door and there was Pierre, grinning and holding up her watch.

  CHAPTER 20

  Lily reached for the timepiece, her heart so full of gratitude and relief that she couldn’t speak. She motioned Pierre inside, but he took her hand and placed the Pink Pearl eraser in her palm, curling her fingers around it.

  Her knees were doing funny things, so Jack led her to the settee and sat her down.

  “Who? How?”

  “I left the thumbtacks behind,” Pierre said. “Couldn’t swipe the whole stash, not after he worked so hard to get it.”

  “He?”

  Pierre turned to the foreman. “Who, how, and he?” he asked, his voice most solemn. “I speak more English than that.”

  The best she could manage was a nervous giggle. Her hands shook until Jack grasped them in his hands, warming them as a side effect.

  While she sat on the settee, her hands held and warmed, Pierre went gracefully to his haunches so he could look in her eyes. “It was a Little Man of the Prairie, a pack rat,” he told her. “I was puzzled until you mentioned tacks. They love shiny things.” He shrugged. “ ’Course, the eraser fooled me. Maybe he wanted a change.”

  “I don’t even begin to understand this,” Lily said. She moved her fingers and Jack released them.

  “Get a lamp. I’ll show you.” Pierre stood up as effortlessly as he had sat down and left the house.

  Lily grabbed the lamp on the table, which Jack kindly took from her because her hands were still shaking.

  “I’d hate to have you start a range fire and make our situation even worse,” he said.

  The schoolroom looked just as she had left it, except that Pierre must have moved one of the stools to the shadows by the door.

  “I just sat there and waited,” he said. “Sure enough.” He pointed to the opposite corner of the room, where Lily had noticed a hole in the floorboard.

  “That’s it?”

  “Yep.”

  Pierre lifted the board and Jack held the lamp closer. “There’s plenty of room for the Little Man, but I pried it up, and the one next to it, so I could take a good look. See?”

  Lily leaned closer.

  “Go ahead and kneel down,” Pierre told her. “He’s long gone, at least for now.”

  “I am not reassured,” she said, and the men laughed. “Very well.”

  Apprehensive at first, not eager to see a rat staring back, she knelt and peered into the opening. In a moment, her natural curiosity took over. “It’s a nest, isn’t it?”

  “Nest, food pantry, treasure room, what you will,” Pierre said. He moved some of the grass and bits of cloth aside. “Look.”

  Lily laughed to see hairpins that she knew were hers. “That little dickens! I repinned my hair during lunch only two days ago, because it was warm. Oh, and look!” She took out a little bell, and another, and rang them.

  “Hawk bells,” Pierre said. “People of my nation put them on their special clothes. Dig around and you’ll probably find some beads.”

  She did, seeing beads of all sizes. And there was the beaded string Stretch had used as a bookmark for Ragged Dick. She took it out. “Do you think . . . Did Sitting Bull . . . ?”

  Both men shook their heads, grinning.

  “So, Miss Lily, your little criminal is a pack rat.” Pierre picked up a shiny nib from a pen. “I think he’s been robbing the Bar Dot blind for years and stashing everything here, where it was quiet. Tell me: Did you find a pebble on your desk where you left your watch?”

  “My goodness, now that you mention it . . .”

  “The Little Men are sociable and they like to trade,” Jack said. “I got two pebbles for a nickel-plated timepiece once.”

  “And there were little bits of grain or grass where the thumbtacks used to be,” she said. “I wish I had thought to mention that to you.”

  “We’d have known right away and spared you some anxiety,” Jack said. Something must have caught his eye because he gently pulled aside more bedding to reveal a cuff link. The gold gleamed dull and real, and Pierre whistled.

  “Looks like he thieved in one of the consortium member’s room,” Jack said. He chuckled and covered it up again. “No loss.”

  Both men looked at her then, and she knew what they were going to ask. Lily shook her head. “No. Other than what we know is ours, we’ll leave the rest here. Don’t kill the Little Man.”

  “That, my dear, is the right answer,” Jack said. “He’s just doing what pack rats do.”

  Lily still held her watch. She pinned it to her shirtwaist and pocketed the eraser. Stretch’s bookmark went back to the business of marking Ragged Dick, but she put the book in her drawer this time.

  “Pierre, could you come to my class tomorrow morning? I’ll return Luella’s dratted eraser and we’ll show them the hole. I’d like you to tell them about pack rats. Could you draw one on the board for me? We’ll turn it into a lesson.”

  “Can I, boss?”

  “Sure. We’ll just be pushing back the Quarter Circle cattle that we pushed back yesterday. You’ll have more fun here.” He looked around the room. “We’d all have more fun here, because I really think Miss Carteret is a teacher.” He gave her a look that she knew she would remember. “It just took a plan to tease that out.”

  Maybe it’ll be a very good lesson, Lily thought the next morning as she prepared for school. “I wonder, Luella, if you are up for an apology?” she murmured.

  She had taken the time last night, after Jack and Pierre returned her home, to walk back to the Buxtons, knock quietly on the door, and speak to Fothering, who sighed with relief. At her request, he promised not to say anything to Luella.

  As she walked her father to work and continued up the hill, Lily couldn’t help patting her little watch, grateful it wasn’t gone forever. She carried an alarm clock that Fothering had loaned her. It was far too large for even an ambitious pack rat like theirs to stuff down any hole.

  School began in the usual way with Luella looking more glum than typical. Lily wanted to think that her accusation and the resulting disruption to the classroom was preying on the girl’s mind, but who knew the mind of a child, especially one used to being the center of attention? She sucked in her breath and looked down at her desk as a new idea pelted like a bit of hail. Or maybe a child wanting attention she didn’t get at home.

  Lily was writing short words on the board for her students to copy when Pierre Fontaine knocked on the open door. She was pleased to notice that he had shaved and his braided hair flowed free this time. Maybe he had even washed it for the special occasion when he would be the teacher.

  “Children, you might have noticed that I have my watch back.” Lily reached in her desk and took out the Pink Pearl, handing it to an open-mouthed Luella. “Mr. Fontaine solved our mystery and found the thief. Sir?”

  The Indian was no showman. He walked to the corner of the room. He motioned to the students, who clustered around him. When he pulled back the two boards, everyone said, “Ahhh.”

  The nest was unoccupied, which made Lily wonder if the Little Man had abandoned his cache. Just as interested as she had been last night, she watched as Pierre told her students about pack rats: their habits, their nests, and their little lives as tidy citizens of the mountains and plains, and occasional burglars.
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  “He means no harm, but he loves shiny things,” Pierre explained as he took out the rat’s treasures, from thumbtacks to the one gold cuff link, to bits of metal that might have gleamed and tempted him or an ancestor years ago. He replaced them and sitting on the floor with her students sitting around him, he answered their questions.

  Nick had a question for Lily. “Are . . . are we just going to leave him there?”

  “What do you children think?” she asked in return. “He’s only doing what Little Men do.”

  Nick looked at his sisters and Luella and everyone nodded. “Maybe we could just leave him alone.” His eyes showed his concern. “Mr. Fontaine, will he come back?”

  “I believe he will, if he feels you mean no harm,” the Indian replied.

  “We could test that by leaving something for him, couldn’t we, Miss Carteret?” Nick asked.

  They all looked at her and she couldn’t help her laughter. After all, she was no professional, and what good were stern looks and solemnity? “I won’t use my watch for bait.”

  They laughed. “I can, um, acquire a thimble,” Luella offered. She smiled for the first time in a long time. Her braids were so tight that her eyes seemed to disappear. “I’ll be the one purloining.”

  “I’ll leave that to your conscience,” Lily teased in turn. “We have more thumbtacks.”

  The children nodded. Chantal leaned against Pierre’s arm and looked up at him. “Does the Little Man sleep through the winter?”

  “No, he does not,” Pierre told her. “If you could find seeds and grasses, he would hide those away too.” He touched Chantal’s head and stood up. “And I should go to work.” He nodded to Lily. “After I draw the Little Man on your dark-painted wall.”

  Without any urging, the children returned to their places and watched as Pierre drew on the blackboard a rodent with large ears that had as much body as fluffy tail. Lily gulped, not certain she wanted a rat roaming under the floor in her classroom. A glance at the interest on all the children’s faces told her that, yes, she did.