Western Christmas Brides

by Lauri Robinson

  Ivan grinned at her. “You need another bottle of ink and new apples.”

  “I—Yes, thank you. Oh, Charlie, I am sorry about your floor. I will scrub it for you tomorrow after school.”

  “No need, missy. All time spill things.”

  “But not ink!” She clasped and unclasped her hands. Ivan watched her bite her lips until they looked like ripe raspberries, then forced his gaze away. He could not let himself think about ripe raspberries. He could not think about a pretty woman with tears spilling onto her lashes, raspberries or no raspberries.

  All at once he wanted to gather her into his arms and protect her from whatever was causing those tears. He stuffed his hands into the back pockets of his jeans, then remembered his ink-stained fingers. Charlie was down on his hands and knees scooping up the spilled parcels and her loose apples and his two loaves of bread.

  He felt completely helpless. He knew what to do when he was straddling a thick spruce log with a double-edged ax in his hands, or feeding it into a muley saw, but the sight of her quivering lips turned him into an idiot with his head in a cloud.

  What was wrong with him?

  Charlie shoved the bread loaves against Ivan’s chest and gave him a wide, knowing grin. “Confucius say, easy to lose brain when belly empty. Heart, too,” the twinkly-eyed man added under his breath.

  “What?”

  “Heart,” Charlie murmured. “You understand?”

  It did not help. No matter how short of breath this pretty blue-eyed girl made him, there was nothing he could do about it. But every inch of his body wanted to follow that enticing backside that was now gently swaying up the stairs into her apartment.

  He shook his thoughts back into coherence. “Charlie, who is lady?”

  “New schoolteacher from East. You like?”

  “I do not know her.” But he did like her. And that was a problem. The last thing he wanted to do was like her.

  He tramped across the street and up the back stairway to his sparsely furnished room over the feed store. His brain was so fuzzy he poured ground oats into the coffee grinder.

  The last thing he needed right now was a pretty schoolteacher with tears like diamonds on her eyelashes who made his groin swell. He had withstood his fellow sawmill workers’ jokes about why he never joined them at the saloon or attended barn dances because there was something else he had to do, something he had worked hard for the last five years to accomplish. He could not let anything get in his way.

  But now he wanted... God in heaven, what did he want? Suddenly he did not know.

  He gritted his teeth, ground up a handful of coffee beans and remembered the advice his Russian grandfather had once given him: when in doubt, do nothing.

  Chapter Five

  By the time Christina started off for the schoolhouse the following morning, she had managed to somewhat shore up her flagging confidence and instill some calming thoughts into her skittery brain. Was teaching always like this, two steps forward and one step back? If that were true, how did students ever get educated?

  She rounded the corner and started toward the grassy school yard. Her satchel, stuffed with the cowbell, notebooks and boxes of chalk, grew heavier with each step. By the time she reached the schoolhouse door, she was short of breath and perspiring in the crisp fall air. Inside she quickly unloaded her lunch and the supplies she had purchased into the empty desk drawers. Then she paced back and forth in front of the open door, trying to calm her nerves.

  Students began collecting in the yard in groups of three or four, except for little Manette Nicolet and the Indian boy, Sammy Greywolf, who stood by themselves off to one side. The other boys congregated in a tight knot near the honeysuckle-swathed outhouse, apparently cooking up some devilment.

  At nine sharp she stepped into the open doorway and rattled the cowbell.

  Twelve startled faces swiveled toward her, but no one moved except for little Manette. Dressed in a starched pink pinafore, the girl practically danced past Christina and took a seat in the first row of desks. The other students began tumbling through the door, laughing and scuffling for seats. The noise level rose.

  * * *

  Her second day of teaching was worse than the first. Every single time she turned her back to write an arithmetic problem on the blackboard, pandemonium erupted. First Kurt Jorgensen tumbled out of his seat onto the floor to the uproarious guffaws of the other boys and the giggles of the girls.

  “Kurt was passing a love note to Noralee Ness,” someone yelled.

  Christina stared at them. In the time it had taken to write “18 X 4” on the blackboard, discipline in her classroom had evaporated. Once more she faced the blackboard and heard scuffling and muffled laughter at her back. The instant she turned around, quiet fell. Except for Noralee, who was snuffling into her lacy handkerchief. Christina’s temples began to throb.

  Not one student did the arithmetic problem correctly until Sammy Greywolf’s quiet voice pronounced, “Seventy-two.”

  Christina smiled at the boy. “Your answer is correct, Sammy.”

  That prompted a chorus of jeers from the boys. “Smarty-pants, smarty-pants, your jeans are all baggy and full of ants!” She ignored the noise, and the morning dragged on. By noon she was exhausted and disheartened, and when the hands on the clock finally—finally!—crept forward until they were both straight up, she cut short Kurt Jorgensen’s labored reading of McGuffey’s first primer and dismissed the students for lunch.

  The room emptied, and she sank onto her desk chair and unwrapped her sandwich, but before she could take a bite she heard angry shouts from the school yard. She raced to the window to see what the noise was about.

  All the boys and many of the girls were gathered around someone, shouting taunts. Kurt and Adam occasionally darted through the crowd to land blows on whoever was trapped in the center. She ran to the door and headed clumsily for the crowd as fast as she could force her crippled ankle to move.

  The girls spied her first and scattered, but Kurt and Adam were so intent on inflicting damage on the hapless person they did not see her. The other boys melted away, leaving the two older boys in the center with their unfortunate victim, Sammy Greywolf. Kurt had his arm locked around the boy’s neck, and Adam was stomping on Sammy’s soft-toed moccasins.

  “Stop it!” she shouted. “Stop! Just what do you think you’re doing, ganging up on one boy?”

  “He ain’t a boy,” Kurt yelled. “He’s an Injun.”

  “Shame on you, both of you!”

  Both boys stood before her, their heads drooping. They dug the toes of their boots into the dirt while Sammy Greywolf stood quietly where he had obviously been cornered, his dark eyes defiant.

  She rounded on Kurt and Adam. “I will say this only once,” she said, working to control her voice. “If I ever catch either of you ganging up on anyone or attacking anyone else, anyone else, you will be expelled. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” both boys mumbled in unison.

  Shaking, she moved back into the schoolhouse and shut the door, then threw the rest of her lunch into the wastebasket, put her head down on her desk and burst into tears. What made people attack other people just because they were different? Was it something in human nature? Something handed down from the time of cavemen?

  She sat up and mopped at her wet cheeks. These undisciplined children needed much, much more than arithmetic and spelling lessons.

  * * *

  At midnight Ivan laid his pen aside and closed his eyes. It had been five years since he had laid eyes on Annamarie. Would she even remember what he looked like?

  He knew the years had changed him; shoving logs into the hungry jaws of a muley saw had added muscles to his once-slim frame, but working day and night was wearing him down. He ate too much stale bread and not enough meat,
and at night he dulled his loneliness by reading the books he had brought with him from his father’s library. He hungered to talk to someone, to have a real conversation beyond “That’ll be two dollars for the seed, mister” and “Ready for another log here, Panovsky.”

  He sighed and read over his letter.

  Dearest Anna,

  I miss you very, very much. I am working hard at the sawmill during the day and at the feed store at night to save money for our future. The day draws closer when the house I am building for us will be finished, and soon I can send you the train ticket that will bring you to Oregon so we can be together.

  I know that many years have passed, but please do not be discouraged. We will be together again, I promise.

  Ivan

  He jerked out of the chair and had his hand on the doorknob when he remembered that a cup of coffee at the Smoke River restaurant across the street cost five cents. But if he wanted to see Annamarie before she was another year older, he could not afford to waste a penny. He clenched his jaw and decided he would do without.

  Chapter Six

  After a restorative evening spent making new lesson plans and reminding herself why she had decided that teaching school was something she would be good at, she gave up and stumbled into bed for a fitful night’s sleep. The next morning Christina started off for school with a renewed sense of dedication and six molasses cookies in her lunch bag for fortification. As she drew near the school yard she lifted her head at a sharp sound.

  What on earth? It was only eight o’clock in the morning, far too early for any of her students to arrive. The sound came once again, followed by a thunderous crash. She quickened her pace to see what was going on.

  At first all she could see was dust. Then it slowly settled to reveal a man straddling a felled tree. His back was facing her, his frame almost obscured by thick evergreen branches. He raised an ax and began lopping off limbs, working his way methodically from the thick trunk to the tip, hacking his way through the frothy greenery and tossing it into a pile. Finally he began slicing his ax into the tree itself, cutting the wood up into short lengths. Suddenly he made a half turn toward her and she gasped. It was the man she’d barreled into in the bakery!

  Without looking up, he propped a short length of wood on a flat stump, raised the ax, and with a sharp crack split it neatly in half. Then he began splitting that into woodstove-sized lengths. He stopped to roll the sleeves of his red plaid shirt above his elbows, revealing tanned, muscular arms. That night at the bakery she hadn’t noticed how well built he was; she guessed she’d been too distracted when she’d spilled ink all over Uncle Charlie’s polished wooden floor to notice much of anything. But she remembered him—he was the man with the loaves of bread.

  He hadn’t heard her approach but kept steadily working away, keeping his back to her and his head bent. She noticed his overlong dark hair tended to curl at his neck.

  The ka-chunk sounds continued as she edged past and didn’t cease until she heard the laughter and chatter of her students as they began to arrive. “Oh, man,” Billy Rowell sighed. “Who chopped all that wood? My ma makes my Uncle Hawk do that every Saturday.”

  She couldn’t answer. She realized she had no idea what the man’s name was.

  For the rest of the morning she struggled to focus her thoughts on arithmetic sums and three-syllable spelling words, but the image of the slim dark-haired figure chopping wood in the school yard kept popping into her brain.

  After an extremely disheartening day, she dismissed the class and headed for the sanctity of her room over the bakery and a fortifying cup of tea. On the stairs up to her apartment she paused to find Uncle Charlie gazing up at her, his round face shining. “You help, missy? Must go to train, meet new wife.”

  “Your wife? Really?”

  “From China,” he said proudly. “Brand-new. You sell cookies to customers while I get married?”

  “What, me? I’ve never sold a thing in my life.”

  “Easy to learn,” Charlie assured her. “Count cookies, take money.”

  She hesitated.

  “Give you nice lemon cake,” he entreated.

  That did it. She hungered for something sweet, something indulgent to fortify her for another long evening of making lesson plans. “How long will you be gone?”

  “Not long. Meet train, go to church, get marry. Then come back. Take only one hour.”

  Christina laughed out loud. “Surely you will want to spend more time with your new wife?”

  Incredibly, the smiley round face was suffused with pink. “Plenty time tonight, after bakery close. I cook special supper.”

  He looked so eager she simply couldn’t refuse. “All right, Charlie. I will mind the bakery for an hour. But don’t blame me if your customers are disappointed.”

  “Ah. Maybe two cakes. You choose.”

  The minute he disappeared out the door, Christina positioned herself behind the big glass case of baked goods and prayed that no customers would show up. Through the front window she watched Uncle Charlie hurry down the street past the Golden Partridge saloon toward the train station.

  The entire bakery smelled enticing! She studied the orderly rows of oatmeal, molasses and chocolate cookies. Did she dare filch one? She chose one with a crinkly top and had just bitten off a big mouthful when the bell over the door tinkled. Oh, mercy, a customer!

  Hurriedly she tried to swallow the cookie, but her dry throat refused to cooperate. Stricken, she looked up to see the firewood man in front of her.

  * * *

  Ivan closed the door and stopped dead at the sight of the young woman. Then he remembered she was the new teacher. “Where is Charlie?”

  She looked stricken. Her eyes grew even larger and her mouth looked like she was trying to say something, but nothing came out. Instead, she shook her head.

  “No Charlie?”

  Another shake.

  “He come back?”

  She nodded.

  “When?”

  She pointed urgently at her cheek, and after a long pause she swallowed and gasped for air. “Charlie will be back in an hour. He has gone to the train station to meet his new wife.”

  Ivan blinked. “New wife? She’s arrived already?”

  “So he says,” Christina managed. “He left me in charge.”

  “Ah. He leave bread for me, Ivan Panovsky? I live across the street, in room over feed store.”

  She smiled. “My name is Christina Marnell. I’m the new—”

  “Schoolteacher,” he finished. “I know. I stack wood at schoolhouse this morning.”

  “Oh, that was you? I heard the chopping.” She ran her eyes over the bakery case, then the counter where the cash register stood. “What kind of bread was it?”

  “Stale,” he answered flatly.

  “I beg your pardon? Did you say—”

  “Yes, is stale. Charlie give me two loaves every night after work.”

  “Must it be stale bread?”

  Ivan exhaled a long breath. “Yes, is stale bread. Charlie give for free.”

  Her dark eyebrows went up. “Oh,” she said after a long moment. “I see.” She studied his face with penetrating blue eyes. “Well, let me look...”

  All at once he wanted to explain. “I save up for train ticket,” he blurted out. “For my—for someone in New York.”

  He thought a shadow of something—disappointment?—fell across her face.

  “You need not explain, Mr. Panovsky. If you will wait just a minute I will wrap up your bread.” She turned away, snatched up two loaves of bread, which Ivan knew Charlie had baked fresh that morning, and began to bundle them up in brown grocer’s paper.

  He couldn’t utter a word. She must know that wasn’t stale bread, so why had she...?

&n
bsp; “Here you are, Mr—”

  “Ivan.”

  She smiled up at him, her lovely eyes warm and understanding. “I hope you enjoy it.”

  “Thank you. Is very good bread.”

  At that moment Uncle Charlie swept in through the back entrance, looking for all the world like a cat with a surfeit of cream. Christina stifled a grin.

  “New wife very beautiful!” he announced. “I take home extra-big cake.”

  “Congratulations, Charlie,” Christina said quietly.

  The Chinese man peered at the parcel under Ivan’s arm. “You have bread?”

  “Yes,” Ivan acknowledged. “Thank you, Charlie. Also, congratulations. Not every day a man is married.”

  Christina ran up the back stairs, set the kettle on the stove for tea and thought about Charlie’s new bride. Imagine coming halfway around the world to marry someone you’d never laid eyes on before! Charlie was positively beaming with happiness; she wondered if his bride felt the same way.

  But why on earth would she be happy, finding herself all alone in a new country? She sipped her tea and thought about it. Marriage, even to someone you knew well, was a terrible gamble. Both her parents had been dissatisfied, so unhappy that one day Papa had just walked away, and a year later both he and Mama had died.

  Christina had never even considered marrying. Long before she was allowed to wear long skirts she had decided marriage was risky and her life’s work would be teaching, bringing the world of ideas to young minds.

  * * *

  Ivan kept a sharp eye on the window of the second-floor apartment across the street, wishing that the schoolteacher, Christina Marnell, would pull back the curtains so he could see her. Every night she worked at her desk, twisting a strand of her dark hair in concentration or staring absently out the window.

  Tonight was no different. He pulled off two hunks of bread and sliced off some cheese with his pocketknife and stared across the street. He wished he could talk to her. Deep inside he admitted he was lonely. The men at the sawmill and the customers at Stockett’s Feed & Seed didn’t come close to making him feel less alone.