Softly Falling

by Carla Kelly

  “There’s the ranch gate,” Pierre said, pointing to the crossbar on its tall post that leaned a little from the wind but hadn’t toppled. “Wait here.”

  He continued toward Wisner, then stopped and looked toward her. He stared at the snowy ground and gestured to her. When she reached him, he pointed down. “See here, two horses side by side.” He pointed ahead. “Right there. See how they stopped for a while. And then look beyond—one horse following the other.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “Someone ran into a bit of trouble here, and the other one is leading his horse.” He made an elaborate gesture that made Lily smile. “Let’s go to your ranch, Mrs. Sinclair.”

  They rode beneath the crossbar. She looked ahead and saw distinct tracks of two horses. The pounding in her heart began to slow down, as real calm took over, not the kind where she put on a false face to keep the children brave, but serenity she hadn’t felt in months. Jack was there, and he was going to get all the Ivanhoe he wanted.

  She barely glanced at the little house with her father’s improbable wallpaper, knowing that Manuel had spent the winter in the barn with his charges. There was Bismarck in the corral, raising his massive head to the sun, the picture of contentment.

  “What on earth? Pierre, Manuel has knitted Bismarck a blanket!”

  Pierre shook his head. “I have now seen it all.”

  They ducked into the barn, struck by the pungent odor of dung heaped in piles to one side. Manuel sat on a bench facing the sun, knitting and talking to Will Buxton. Lily looked around, determined to remain calm. Pierre dismounted and then helped her down.

  “Where is he?” she asked, not caring that her voice was breaking.

  “Hola, señora,” Manuel said. “You want your man?”

  “Oh my goodness, I do,” she said, not even minding that Will chuckled. “Please, where is he?”

  Manuel pointed with a knitting needle. “One, two, three stalls down. We had to keep him in the dark.”

  She didn’t stop to ask why but ran to the third stall, bathed in shadows. She blinked, accustoming her eyes to the dim light, and there he was, lying under blankets with his hands behind his head. Manuel must have smeared soot under his eyes.

  “Jack?”

  “I thought that was you, Lil. Things’ll be all right now.”

  She sank to her knees beside him and stared at his face. “You can’t see me, can you?” she asked, trying to sound like a woman grown and not a squeaky, frightened girl.

  “I can see your outline. Lean over a bit. That’s better.”

  He puckered up and she kissed him, not minding when the soot transferred to her face. She lay down with her head on his chest.

  His hand rested heavy on her head, and she loved the feeling. “I’ll love you even if you’re blind,” she whispered.

  “It’s temporary, Lil, that’s all,” he told her, then stroked her hair. “Snow glare finally got to me. I couldn’t see anything yesterday, but I can see you up close.”

  Lily sat up and took a good look at his dear face. “Soot?”

  “Yeah. Manuel’s not taking any chances with glare.” He outlined her profile with his finger. “Um, you’ll still love me, even if I’m not blind?”

  She kissed him again.

  “That’s a yes?” he asked, and she thumped him.

  “I saw Bismarck in the yard,” she said, after another sooty kiss.

  “Corral,” he corrected. “I’ll bring you along slow on ranch duties, but do start with corral. We’re going to be a strange enough pair anyway, the British lady of color and the Georgia cracker.”

  She lay down again, ready to spend the day there, but he sat up. “You probably didn’t even notice, but I want you to go take a look at our herd—two heifers. We’re off to a good start. Scram! I’ll keep.”

  Lily stopped at the barn’s entrance, delighted to see two small versions of Bismarck looking back at her. She knelt down to reach them through the fence. The slightly larger one butted against her hand, and she laughed.

  Pierre rested his arms on the top rail, nodding at the little ones. “He did it, Lily. That man of yours is officially the smartest rancher in the territory.”

  Pierre only stayed a few minutes more, then left with Will Buxton. With a smile to Manuel, who bowed from his chair in most courtly fashion, Lily walked back to Jack’s stall and lay down again, sound asleep as soon as she closed her eyes, secure in his arms.

  They were two days in the barn, lulled by the lowing of cattle and even Bismarck, who made a sound similar to a soft purr. In the early morning, she woke to her husband staring at her.

  “You’re still a bit grainy, but I’d recognize you anywhere,” he whispered, even though Manuel’s snoring thundered through the barn.

  “You’d better,” she said, cuddling closer. He moved closer too, and one thing led to another. By the time Lily finally sat up, looking for her shirts, she was officially Mrs. Sinclair, as her husband reminded her.

  “I doubt this was the wedding morning of your dreams,” he teased, “a half-blind lover in a cow barn, with beans and sauerkraut to eat.”

  “You forgot the peppermints,” she added, which earned her another kiss, almost derailing her plans to get up at all. “No, Miss Tilton would never believe this,” she said later.

  She got up long enough to fetch everlasting beans from Manuel, his expression so kindly, and blessed tortillas, which she had never experienced before. When they finished eating, Lily settled in with a kerosene lantern and starting reading the conclusion to Ivanhoe, chapter forty-three to the end.

  “You found it,” Jack said.

  “I had to,” she said simply.

  By evening, his vision had returned. Lily washed the soot off his face, planning to reapply it in the morning when he had to contend with the sun’s glare on snow as they left. As it was, she had soot all over her face and neck too.

  “Anything you want more’n a bath, Lil, my honeybunch?” her husband asked before he drowsed away into a lover’s coma.

  “The aforementioned bank account, straight hair, and lettuce,” she replied, barely keeping her eyes open. “Leave me alone. I’m tired.”

  “Ah, it begins,” he teased.

  They left in the morning under an overcast sky, which Jack called a relief. He spent a long moment just staring at his little herd, which, in the curious nature of cows, had come to the fence to check him out.

  “You’re the beginning, girls,” he told the cows. “Bismarck, what a lover you are.”

  “For goodness sake!” Lily exclaimed.

  “We’re going to have some lean years, but this is the start of something that will cover the range some day,” he prophesied. “More land would be nice, but we’ll be patient.”

  He smiled at Manuel, sitting and rocking, so calm and placid, probably the way he had spent the whole, solitary winter. He came closer and put out his hand. When Manuel took his hand, Jack turned it over and kissed it. Lily looked away, tears in her eyes.

  “I owe you a debt I can never repay, Manuel,” Jack said.

  “Señor Sinclair, you gave me a home and a job when no one else would,” the Mexican reminded him.

  “Someone did that for me once. He told me to return the favor when I could. See you in a week or so, my friend.”

  As they rode for the Bar Dot, Lily tried to be sly about watching Jack, but he noticed immediately and told her not to worry. “Just a little grainy, that’s all,” he assured her. “I’ll put warm cloths on them when we get home. You’ll see; I’ll be better in two shakes.”

  The melt had begun in earnest. Snow-covered trails of two days ago were running with mud now. The wind worked overtime to reveal burial mounds of cattle, which reduced them both to tears.

  “I hate this,” Jack said as he dabbed at his eyes. “Such a waste, and it never would have happened if folks hadn’t been so greedy.”

  The schoolhouse came into view first. Lily tugged on her horse’s reins and stopp
ed. It was easy enough to open the door, now that most of the snow was gone. Feeling shy for no reason, she peaked inside at bare walls and the one remaining desk in splinters and ready to be shoved into the pot-bellied stove. She leaned against the doorjamb, hoping that someday the good times would outshine the terror of their struggle to stay alive.

  She walked to the corner where the Little Man of the Prairie, a.k.a. the Wyoming Kid, had probably made his last stand. “Are you in there?” she asked. Curious, she carefully pried up the floorboard and took a look. To her amazement, a whiskered pack rat stared back, lean, yes, but alive and irritated. He scolded her in his churring way but did not run. She sighed with relief and replaced the floorboard. Her children would be delighted.

  She stood another moment in the doorway, happy in the knowledge that a temple of education could be found anywhere. She glanced at Jack through the window. So could love.

  “All well?” Jack asked. He looked alert enough to Lily’s watchful eyes, but she knew he needed to lie down soon because he kept squinting.

  Preacher met them at the cookshack door. He took the reins over their protests. “I’ll do this,” he said. “Boss, we’re glad you’re alive.”

  “Same here, friend,” Jack said.

  He put his hand on the doorknob, but Preacher stopped him.

  “Mr. Buxton’s here,” he said, his voice low. “The train came in.”

  CHAPTER 48

  Oliver Buxton looked the same to Lily, the same high color, the same displeasure at everything marring what must have been a handsome face in earlier years. She saw something else. She recognized the look in his eyes as the same look as anyone on the Bar Dot, that sadness of humans who have been tried to the limit. In her case, she knew that time would determine if that sadness was a badge of honor or a curse. With Mr. Buxton, she could not tell.

  He just looked at them, as if mulling what to say. Jack beat him to it.

  “Mr. Buxton, we are so sorry for your loss.”

  Lily took a deep breath, wondering if Mr. Buxton would glare and swear and blame. To her relief, he did not.

  “Sit down, Sinclair,” he said. “You look worse than most of us.”

  “Getting better, though. I wish we had a good report for you.”

  She helped Jack to the nearest bench. He blinked his eyes a few times, then focused them on his employer. Lily glanced to the corner, her school, where the children sat. Luella held what must be her Christmas doll on her lap. The doll’s extra dresses were on Chantal’s lap, and Amelie was already deep into a book that Mr. Buxton must have brought for Luella too. She sniffed and smelled wonderful things from the kitchen. Did the man bring food? She felt her mouth water and swallowed, eager for something better than canned sauerkraut chased by peppermint drops.

  “When will you bury them?” Mr. Buxton asked Jack.

  “As soon as we can. Perhaps tomorrow, if the ground will cooperate,” Jack replied.

  Lily listened for something approaching sorrow in Mr. Buxton’s voice and heard nothing but the brusque tones of the businessman he had always been. She noticed that he had barely glanced at her before looking away. Apparently the sins of the father were going to plague the daughter, she decided. That’s nothing new, she wanted to tell him.

  “Make it happen. I’m taking Luella with me to Cheyenne tomorrow and we’re going to Moline, Illinois, where we came from.”

  At her name, Luella’s head came up. “No, Papa. My friends are here.”

  He barely glanced at her, either. “Tomorrow, Luella, and no argument. There’s nothing here for any of us.”

  “Yes, there is,” Luella said with all the dignity of an eight-year-old. “We learned so much this winter in our school, and I have friends here.”

  You survived here too, Lily thought, suddenly understanding the bond they had formed.

  Mr. Buxton ignored Luella and turned back to the others. “As I was saying before your foreman decided to return—”

  “That’s unnecessary and unkind.” Lily gulped. Had she actually said that? At least she hadn’t raised her voice. Might as well forge ahead. “As I am certain your cousin told you, they went to Wisner to send the telegram that must have brought you here. Jack has been recovering from snow blindness.”

  “With your help?” The sarcasm was unmistakable. He gave her a mocking bow. “Congratulations on your wedding. His idea or yours?”

  Jack leaped to his feet, swayed a little, and righted himself, his face pale. “You have no idea what this winter was like. Don’t bother to fire me. I quit.”

  Mr. Buxton threw back his head and laughed. Lily felt her skin crawl at the sound.

  “That’s precisely why I am here! Sit down. Let’s get this over with.”

  Mr. Buxton directed his attention to the men of the Bar Dot, those stalwarts who had risked their lives all winter trying to round up drifting, confused cattle, the men who had contrived and starved through months of misery, probably while he twiddled his thumbs in the Plainsman Hotel. He glared at them as if daring them to make a move or say one word.

  And then he sighed, and it was an almost-human sound from someone tried almost as hard as they had been. “As you can all imagine, the Cheyenne Land and Cattle Company has been receiving disastrous reports from every corner of the range.”

  “Everyone was hit this bad?” Preacher asked.

  “Everyone, without exception. One of our ranches to the south and west tallied ten beeves alive out of three thousand.”

  “We have two hundred, at last count,” Jack said quietly. “Out of five thousand. And that’s just the ones we know about.”

  “Then you are to be congratulated,” Mr. Buxton snapped. “Three weeks ago, the Cheyenne Land and Cattle Company dissolved itself.”

  Lily looked at the others and saw no surprise on anyone’s face. She saw tired, hungry men, weak from a winter that would have killed Mr. Buxton.

  “That’s it then,” Jack said.

  “As of now, you are all unemployed. What assets remaining to the company are to pay you off. You have a week to vacate.”

  “Merciful saints defend us!” Madeleine had been standing in the door between the dining room and kitchen. She burst into tears.

  “Stop it!” Mr. Buxton demanded.

  Fothering put his arm around her shoulder and led her back into the kitchen.

  “I have your wages here.” He pulled a ledger from his briefcase and opened it to the Bar Dot page. “You were last paid at the end of August. The amount here is from September through the end of April. Look it over and initial it.”

  Silent, the men took turns at the ledger, no one bothering to even glance at Mr. Buxton. Jack took the book last and added his initials. He pointed to the blank space under his name and wrote in Lily Sinclair. “You owe Lily two hundred dollars for the school.”

  Mr. Buxton shook his head. “That was a deal my wife cut, not me. Besides, her scoundrel of a father owes the company two thousand dollars.”

  “There is no company now. Pay her the two hundred dollars,” Jack said in his foreman’s voice, even though he was foreman of nothing. “She did everything she was asked to do. Ask your own daughter. Don’t be so small, Buxton. Just for once.”

  Silence settled over the room, the kind of silence charged with electrical currents. Lily could hear Mr. Buxton’s heavy breathing. To her ears, he didn’t sound like a well man. Pierre took out the knife he always wore at the small of his back and gave it a thoughtful appraisal.

  “Very well, if I must,” Mr. Buxton said finally, the fight gone out of him. “Line up, people, and let’s get this over with.”

  He pulled a canvas sack from the briefcase and doled out back wages that didn’t even begin to cover a winter like this one. His face registered no sympathy when Madeleine stood before him, her hand trembling.

  “Where are we to go?” she asked.

  “That is not my concern,” Mr. Buxton said. “Next?”

  Fothering followed her. Silent, he took hi
s salary, then stepped back, as if for a better look. “You, sir, are a reprehensible lizard with no feelings,” he said in his best butler’s voice. He turned on his heel and escorted his weeping co-chef into the kitchen and closed the door.

  Lily took her money. He set it on the table and pushed it toward her as if he didn’t want to run the risk of actually touching her hand. “Thank you, sir,” she said, because she meant it. She had discovered this winter that she was a teacher, a friend, and a surrogate mother to a lonely child. “Please see that Luella gets into a good school in Moline. She is bright and clever and very much a leader.” Lily smiled. “She could probably even teach you a thing or two about leadership. For that matter, so could Jack. He’s the reason we’re still alive here.”

  The others nodded, and she saw smiles on tired faces.

  “Well, hip hip hooray,” Mr. Buxton said, sounding remarkably childish. The smiles widened. He closed his briefcase with a snap. “I’m going to Wisner to spend the night.” He looked around at the room where they had stayed alive. “This place disgusts me. I’ll take the morning train to Cheyenne. Come, Luella.”

  His daughter shook her head. “I belong here.”

  “With these haggard, smelly people?” he said. “Come with me!”

  “We’ll get her to the train in the morning,” Jack assured his former employer.

  “Wait a moment, Cousin Oliver.”

  Will Buxton had been silent through the whole dismal, humiliating business. He sat down next to his cousin and gave him an appraisal both long and thorough. This was not the Will Buxton who had begun the winter, Lily knew. This Will Buxton had been tested and proved, his assurance almost equal to Jack’s. Will, you’ve been studying a master all winter, haven’t you? she thought, pleased.

  “I want to buy eight thousand acres of the Bar Dot.”

  Mr. Buxton laughed, with no mirth even remotely in sight. “You do? Ask Jack how we wore out the land and ruined it with overgrazing. And you want that?”

  “The land just needs some kindness, fences, and fewer cattle,” Will said. He looked at Jack, his real boss. “Yeah, it’ll take a while, but I have the time. What do you say, Jack?”