Unending Devotion

by Jody Hedlund

  But she’d never worried about the boys before. Oren had always been there to scare them away.

  She glanced at the door. He was probably still across the street chatting with a couple of local business owners about the lumber camps in the area. Maybe she shouldn’t have been in such a hurry to get inside and get warmed up. Oren was always warning that her impatience was going to get her into trouble eventually.

  He would come looking for her before too long—of that she had no doubt. She could only pray it was sooner rather than later.

  Connell took a step forward. “Let the girl get back to her business, and we’ll get back to our meal before it gets cold.”

  He wore the usual short woolen mackinaw, a bright red-and-black-plaid coat that many shanty boys wore, allowing them to be better seen in the woods and protected against the many accidents that abounded in the camps.

  He’d unbuttoned the light coat revealing suspenders stretched across a thick cotton shirt. He looked just as rugged as any other shanty boy she’d seen, but from the expectant way the men stared at him, he’d obviously earned their respect.

  Except, of course, the respect of the man still holding her arm.

  Lily gave a rough yank, trying to dislodge herself.

  But Jimmy’s pinch sank through her flesh and reached her bone.

  She gave a yelp of protest.

  Connell took another step forward. “Let go of her, Jimmy. Now.” His voice turned ominous.

  Jimmy jerked her against his armpit into the sour odor of a day’s worth of hard labor. “And if I wanna keep her, what’re you gonna do about it, McCormick?”

  “You know I don’t want any trouble,” Connell said. “But you’re taking this too far.”

  Lily just shook her head. She’d had enough. She wasn’t the type of person to stand around waiting for help. She believed that if you wanted something done, then you better just roll up your sleeves and do it yourself.

  “I don’t take kindly to any of you shanty boys touching me,” she said. “So unless I give you permission, from now on, you’d best keep your hands off me.”

  With the last word, she lifted her boot and brought the heel down on Jimmy’s toes. She ground it hard.

  Like most of the other shanty boys, at the end of a day out in the snow, he’d taken off his wet boots and layers of damp wool socks to let them dry overnight before donning them again for the next day’s work.

  Jimmy cursed, but before he could move, she brought her boot down on his other foot with a smack that rivaled a gun crack.

  This time he howled. And with an angry curse, he shoved her hard, sending her sprawling forward.

  She flailed her arms in a futile effort to steady herself and instead found herself falling against Connell McCormick.

  His arms encircled her, but the momentum of her body caused him to lose his balance. He stumbled backward. “Whoa! Hold steady!”

  Her skirt and legs tangled with his, and they careened toward the rows of dirty damp socks hanging in front of the fireplace. The makeshift clotheslines caught them and for a moment slowed their tumble. But against their full weight, the ropes jerked loose from the nails holding them to the beams.

  In an instant, Lily found herself falling. She twisted and turned among the clotheslines but realized that her thrashing was only lassoing her against Connell.

  In the downward tumble, Connell slammed into a chair near the fireplace. Amidst the tangle of limbs and ropes, she was helpless to do anything but drop into his lap.

  With a thud, she landed against him.

  Several socks hung from his head and covered his face. Dirty socks covered her shoulders and head too. Their stale rotten stench swarmed around her. And for a moment she was conscious only of the fact that she was near to gagging from the odor.

  She tried to lift a hand to move the sock hanging over one of her eyes but found that her arms were pinned to her sides. She tilted her head and then blew sideways at the crusty, yellowed linen. But it wouldn’t budge.

  Again she shook her head—this time more emphatically. Still the offending article wouldn’t fall away.

  Through the wig of socks covering Connell’s head, she could see one of his eyes peeking at her, watching her antics. The corner of his lips twitched with the hint of a smile.

  She could only imagine what she looked like. If it was anything like him, she must look comical.

  As he cocked his head and blew at one of his socks, she couldn’t keep from smiling at the picture they both made, helplessly drenched in dirty socks, trying to remove them with nothing but their breath.

  “Welcome to Harrison.” His grin broke free.

  “You know how to make a girl feel right at home.” She wanted to laugh.

  But as he straightened himself in the chair, she became at once conscious of the fact that she was sitting directly in his lap and that the other men in the room were hooting and calling out over her intimate predicament.

  She scrambled to move off him.

  But the ropes had tangled them together, and her efforts only caused her to fall against him again.

  She was not normally a blushing woman, but the growing indecency of her situation was enough to chase away any humor she may have found in the situation and make a chaste woman like herself squirm with embarrassment.

  “I’d appreciate your help,” she said, struggling again to pull her arms free of the rope. “Or do all you oafs make a sport of manhandling women?”

  “All you oafs?” His grin widened. “Are you insinuating that I’m an oaf?”

  “What in the hairy hound is going on here?”

  She jumped at the boom of Oren’s voice and the slam of the door.

  The room turned quiet enough to hear the click-click of Oren pulling down the lever of his rifle. She glanced over her shoulder to the older man, to the fierceness of his drawn eyebrows and the deadly anger in his eyes as he took in her predicament.

  A breeze of relief blew over her hot face. She was safe now—not that she’d been all that worried before. But she counted her blessings that Oren was on her side.

  His heavy boots slapped the floor until he stood over her. With a growl, he lowered the barrel of his rifle and pushed it against Connell’s temple. “Mister, you’re a dead man.”

  Chapter

  2

  The steel pressed hard and cold against Connell’s head. He’d been in plenty of dangerous situations, but this was the first time anyone had ever threatened to blow out his brains.

  The twenty-four-inch-long rifle with its octagon barrel chambered fifteen ready-to-fire cartridges. But at this range, all it would take was one shot and he’d be a dead man.

  “No one touches Lily”— the man jabbed the tip into Connell’s temple, grinding it into his throbbing pulse—“and lives to tell about it.”

  The old man grabbed the rope that entangled them. He grunted and twisted it before finally pulling it free. Then he extended a hand to the woman and hoisted her to her feet. All the while, neither his Winchester nor his murderous eyes shifted so much as a thousandth of an inch from Connell.

  Finally, in all of the shifting, the dirty socks fell away from his head and gave him a clear glimpse of the woman.

  She untangled her skirt and smoothed down the folds of flowery calico, but not before he caught sight of her long knit socks, which strangely enough were striped in parallel rows of bright yellow and orange and green and purple.

  “Now, Oren, there’s no need to kill him.” She patted the man’s arm. “At least not tonight.”

  He muttered under the big mustache that hung over his upper lip but didn’t move the gun.

  “I agree,” Connell said. “And really, I don’t see that there’s ever going to be a need to kill me.”

  “I decide who to kill and when.” Oren jabbed the barrel again, and his finger on the trigger twitched. “And right now I’m in the mood to make someone eat lead.”

  Connell’s mouth went dry. So this was it. He
was going to die.

  He’d already calculated the amount of time he spent in the woods and had given himself a twenty-five percent chance of dying from a lumber-related accident—being crushed by a falling tree or being buried by rolling logs. But a dining room brawl? Over a girl he didn’t know? That had never entered any of his equations.

  The fact was, he wasn’t ready to die. Not yet. Not in the middle of the busiest time of the lumber season. Not when he had so much work to do.

  “I wasn’t doing anything indecent,” he said. “In fact, I was just trying to help her—”

  “And I suppose that’s why your hands were stuck to her like a coon holding a coin.”

  “That’s not true. She fell against me and we toppled into the socks. That’s all.” His focus darted to Vera Heller, still armed with her eighteen-inch-long wooden spoon. “Right, Mrs. Heller?”

  The woman nodded. “Connell McCormick is one of my best boarders and one of the nicest boys in this town. If you wanna shoot somebody, then you take aim at Jimmy Neil over there. That boy is full of trouble.”

  Jimmy had already backed up to the stairway, and at Vera’s words, he spun and took the steps two at a time, disappearing like he usually did whenever it was time to take responsibility for his actions.

  Oren’s finger stroked the trigger.

  Connell swallowed hard. Did he dare make a move for his knife? The hard leather of the scabbard rested underneath his shirt against his ribs, so close and yet so far away.

  “I think you’ve taught him his lesson, Oren.” The young lady pushed the barrel away from Connell’s face. “I don’t think he’ll manhandle me again.”

  When she gave him a “so-there” look and then raised her chin, a spark of self-pride flamed to life in his gut. His mam had always made sure he knew how to treat a girl, but this was obviously no ordinary girl.

  “If anyone was doing the manhandling, it was you.” Connell rubbed the sore spot on his forehead. “I didn’t ask you to sit on my lap.”

  Her eyes widened, revealing a woodsy brown that was as dark and rich as fine-grained walnut. The color matched the thick curls that had come loose from the knitted hat covering her head.

  Oren stood back, tucked his gun under his arm, and tapped his black derby up. His eyebrows followed suit.

  The girl opened her mouth to speak but then clamped it shut, apparently at a loss for words.

  A wisp of satisfaction curled through Connell. After the way she’d let the old man humiliate him, he didn’t mind letting her squirm for a minute.

  But only for a minute.

  Mam’s training was ingrained too deeply to wish the girl ill will for more than that. He shoved himself out of the chair and straightened his aching back.

  “Look,” he said, plucking a last dirty sock from his shoulder. “Can we start over? I’m Connell McCormick.”

  She hesitated and then tilted her head at him. “And I’m Miss Young.”

  “I sure hope you’ll forgive me if I’ve caused you any . . . discomfort.”

  Surprise flitted across her elegant, doelike features. “Well now. With that polite apology, how could I refuse to forgive you?”

  He gave her a smile and waited. The polite thing for her to do was offer her own apology and perhaps even a thank-you for his attempts to save her from Jimmy Neil.

  But she only returned the smile, one that curved her lovely full lips in perfect symmetry but didn’t make it into the depths of her eyes.

  She took a step back and thrust a hand into her coat pocket.

  “Just make sure you don’t lay even the tip of your pinkie on Lily again,” Oren said, having the decency to look Connell in the eyes and nod at him. If the old man hadn’t been so stooped, Connell guessed he’d add another three—if not four—inches to his height. Oren was gruff all right, but there was also something in his expression and about his fierce protectiveness of the young woman that Connell liked.

  As if Oren hadn’t scared the other men in the room enough already, he turned abruptly and swept the barrel of his gun across the wide eyes that stared at him. “And if any of you other shanty boys so much as thinks about touching Lily, I’ll see it in your eyes and come hunt you down. Then I’ll shoot you full of holes and feed you to the wolves.”

  Lily patted the man’s arm and laughed, the sweet ring full of affection. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  Oren grumbled under his mustache. His gaze swept hungrily over the table and the plates of untouched food.

  “Mrs. Heller, we’ll need two rooms,” Lily said, “and the use of your cellar for a darkroom, if it’s available.”

  “Then you’re planning on taking pictures while you’re here?” Vera asked the question that was on the tip of Connell’s tongue.

  “That we are, among other things,” Lily said cheerfully.

  Oren snorted and shook his head. Then he plopped himself down on the nearest bench and growled at Mrs. Heller. “How about serving me a meal before the food gets cold enough to grow legs and walk itself out the door?”

  Connell made quick work of restringing the sock line and then situated himself back at his spot at the far table in the corner, where he could usually eat in solitude and work on recording and computing the day’s figures in his ledgers. His books lay open and his pen was dry, with a half-inch ink splotch on the page where he’d dropped the pen and tossed his spectacles.

  He stabbed the tip of his knife into a slab of salted pork. The greasy gravy had already cooled and congealed. For several seconds he twirled the meat and stared at it. The minute Lily Young had walked into the door he’d forgotten his hunger.

  And now, he was ashamed to admit, he was much more interested in studying the vibrant Lily Young than doing anything else.

  She’d slept too late. From the sliver of light between the thin curtains, Lily could see that morning was already chasing away the darkness of the long winter night.

  Hurriedly, she tucked the last of her unruly curls into a knot.

  She hadn’t gotten used to the long winter nights of central Michigan, where the light disappeared at five in the evening and didn’t show itself again until about eight the next morning. Even long after the rooster crowed, the skies were usually cloudy and dark, making it seem that night lingered forever.

  If only the sun could break through the dismal covering more often.

  She shivered and crossed the frigid unheated room to the window. She yanked open the curtains, letting in the dull light, longing for the bright sunshine that could warm her soul, if not her body. Oren claimed that it took a couple of winters for Easterners to grow thicker skin and adjust to northern winters. But after two years, her skin was apparently still as thin as the day she’d arrived from New York.

  With her fingernail, she scratched a circle in the frosted pane and caught a glimpse of Main Street, mostly deserted. She didn’t doubt the shanty boys were already hard at work. They didn’t spare a single second of daylight in their quest to strip the earth of its treasures—namely white pine trees.

  At the clomping of horse hooves on the hard-packed snow and the whistle of a distant train, Lily spun away from the window and crossed the room. Oren had probably been awake for several hours and was hard at work setting up his makeshift darkroom in the cellar.

  And here she’d been, snug under heavy quilts, lazing the day away. She stepped over the pile of her discarded clothes and the grain-seed sack that held the rest of her earthly possessions. The contents spilled out of the bag, the result of her hurried attempt at her morning toilet in the freezing room.

  The glint of silver stopped her, and she reached for the oval picture frame among the folds of her wearing apparel. She held the miniature portrait to her mouth, huffed a breath of warm air onto the cold glass, and with the edge of her sleeve, wiped away the smudges.

  In the dim light, she glanced around the small room. A chair with blue-chipped paint sat in one corner. Two pegs on the whitewashed wall awaited her cloth
es. Next to the sagging twin bed was a square bedside table holding a dusty lantern.

  She stepped to the table, wiped off a layer of grime, and then gently set the frame on the clean spot, angling it so the picture faced the room.

  Folding her arms across her chest, she stepped back and inspected her one attempt at making the room into the home it would become for the next several weeks. The silver frame was spotted with corrosion, but it outlined the dear faces of her mother and father. It was the portrait they’d had taken on their wedding day and was the only tangible reminder of the family she’d once had.

  Lately, every time she looked at the picture, her parents’ unsmiling faces seemed to accuse her of losing Daisy, of not doing everything she could to take care of her little sister, of not keeping her safe enough.

  “I’m sorry,” Lily whispered to the picture, her breath coming out in a white cloud. “I’m doing my best to find her. And once I have her, I promise I won’t ever lose her again.”

  She swallowed the sudden lump in her throat. Her parents had every right to blame her. When the orphanage had told them they were getting too old to stay, she’d pushed Daisy to go with the Wretchams. She’d thought Daisy would be happy there, that she’d have a good life with a big loving family on a farm until she and Daisy could find a way to make a home of their own.

  Lily had gone to Bay City with Oren, hoping to earn enough money to eventually afford a place. She hadn’t known then that the grumpy old man and his sick wife would be two of the kindest people she would ever meet.

  She’d faithfully written letters to Daisy, and Oren had even taken her to visit her sister on two different occasions. She’d always known Daisy wasn’t happy, but she’d just assumed it would take time to adjust.

  She’d never expected Daisy would run away. Until she’d received Daisy’s last letter in October.

  By then it had been too late. When she’d arrived at the Wretchams’, Daisy had been long gone.

  Lily gave one last nod at her parents’ portrait. “I’m getting closer to finding her.”