Home to Stavewood (Stavewood Saga Book 3)

by Nanette Kinslow

  “Absolutely.”

  “But your family, they might not like you just bringing home some milkmaid and marrying her!” she gasped.

  “They will love you. Now, are you going to hear me out?”

  “Alright,” she surrendered, her mind racing with the possibilities.

  “Are you listening?” He looked into her eyes.

  “Uh hum,” she mumbled in shock.

  “I need you to help me fit into your father’s milkman uniform and we’ll have to fill it out so I look like him.”

  “Like my father?” Colleen was pulled away from her imaginings of Mark’s family, their faces in shock over her arriving with their son.

  “Just like him. I figure if I can wear his clothes and the scarf to cover my face, we can ride out in the morning as if we are making the deliveries.”

  Mark stood up and began to pace the room. “You need to go over your usual route with me and we need to look as normal as possible. That might mean making a few deliveries as well. Anyone who pays you tomorrow would help as well.”

  He ran his hands through his hair and turned to her. “We’ll ride up to the next closest train station. I think that’s in Ulla. From there we’ll get the train home.

  “We can pack what we need into the milk cans and park it somewhere within walking distance of the station. Any food we bring will help as well. I’ll kill the chickens later and you can cook them up.”

  Colleen began to realize that he was completely serious about his plan. It would mean that she was leaving nearly everything behind. She looked around the room, seeing it in a light she never had before. Colleen suddenly realized that there was nothing to leave behind. Her father lay dead now and if they ate the chickens there would be only the cows. Other than that she owned the clothes on her back and her books, three worn volumes of poetry.

  The girl looked up at him, her chest heaving. She stared at his face and tried to grasp everything he was telling her.

  “Okay?” he asked and squatted down to face her.

  “You’re serious. You want to take me to Stavewood and marry me?”

  “Oh Colleen.” He took her hand and got down on one knee. “I suppose that this is all such a terrible mess. I have done everything wrong. Let me start again.

  “Colleen Muldoon, will you become my wife and accompany me to my home in Minnesota? I promise to love you all my life and I guarantee my family will be thrilled. Please.” He looked down at the floor.

  Colleen began to sob slowly and a gasp caught in her throat. She put her fingertips to her face and took a ragged breath.

  Mark looked up at her expectantly. “Well?”

  “Well?” she parroted.

  “I think this is where you say yes.”

  “Oh, I…” she swallowed. “Oh, um, yes. I guess.”

  “You guess?” Mark looked at her sternly.

  “I’m afraid,” she admitted.

  “Of marrying me?”

  “No. Okay, yes!” Colleen grabbed him around the neck and kissed him enthusiastically.

  Chapter Forty-six

  The Minnesota snow fell in deep layers throughout the night, blanketing the landscape in a silent covering of pure glistening white. No creature stirred as the sun rose, spreading its light across the lawns at Stavewood.

  Timothy Elgerson poured himself a steaming cup of coffee in the big kitchen and opened the door, stepping out onto the back porch as he did nearly every morning. He inhaled deeply, opened his hand and extended out his big palm. He felt the icy flakes land on his skin and wondered what the weather was like in Missouri today. It would be cold, he thought, and a hard dry cold. There would not be beautiful snow.

  Looking out across the yard he began to speak. It had become his morning prayer.

  “Where are you, son? As soon as I can I’m coming to look for you. Where are you?”

  Roland Vancouver gazed out across the meadow, the thick, falling snow obscuring his view of the beautiful countryside. He thought about how he had picked up the deed to the Weintraub ranch just the day before. Now, with the paperwork completed and filed, the ranch belonged to him and Emma. He had many plans for that piece of land. He could see that filly, Strawberry, running the track there, Mark bent over her back as they raced. He didn’t want to imagine years of not knowing what had become of the boy.

  Roland sighed.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Colleen cut the threadbare woolen blanket into small sections in the lamplight early the next morning and placed them against Mark’s back, then tried fitting him into her father’s jacket again. She stuffed his hair into the hat and wrapped the scarf around him, covering most of his face. Her hands shook as she stepped back.

  “Well?” Mark asked. His voice was muffled inside of the wool.

  “If you don’t say a word, no one will know. You just have to grunt, kind of, and nod. No one really speaks to us anyway.”

  Mark nodded and pulled back the scarf.

  “The restaurant is the only place we stop for any length of time, and I do the collection there. They never pay me the full amount but they always give me something.”

  Colleen brought two of the milk cans into the house. They put the food in one and in the other they hid the gun and Colleen’s small books.

  She picked up the letter they had written the night before, which they would deposit in the mail box at the sheriff’s station. It stated that Mr. Muldoon had died on Christmas Eve and was at the house. Colleen had written carefully that she was leaving to live with family in New Orleans and asked the sheriff to sell off the cows and the property and to bury her father. She wrote that she was unable to do it herself. Colleen had no trouble in the wording of the letter, she felt as if she could not bury the man alone. She put the yellowed deed to the farm in an envelope with the letter and slipped it into the pocket of her apron.

  “I wish I could do more for him,” Colleen sobbed hard. She would have liked to have been there to see him put to rest, but she had to accept that she needed to go where there was some hope for a future, a family, a better life. He would have wanted that for her. The more she thought about her situation, the more she realized that without Mark there was no future. Her father had suffered from the pains in his chest for a few years now, and the one visit he did make to the local doctor was not encouraging. The cows were old and the money was never there. It seemed that no matter how hard they worked, the situation never got any better. When his condition worsened Colleen had cut back the deliveries, keeping only the best customers and those closest to home. Recently the situation only deteriorated when they lost two cows and nearly a dozen chickens. Without Mark, Colleen began to think she might not have survived at all.

  Mark held her to him and fought back a sob of his own. He had never met the man in life and he had wanted to badly. He wanted him to know how much he loved Colleen, how hard he would try to make her happy and give her a better life. They had wrapped him carefully, with deep respect and both had said their goodbyes.

  Mark looked around the room. “I think we’re ready. We have to try to follow your routine as closely as possible until we ride out of town. That will be the only time we might look suspicious. We’ll take that back road you told me about and, if you’re right, we should see almost no one.”

  Colleen nodded nervously. The plan that Mark had laid out did not frighten her. They had spent all day and a good part of the night making up the plan and she had drawn several maps into the dirt floor. Mark looked so much like her father in the getup she was sure no one would be the wiser. The trip did not frighten her, but Stavewood certainly did.

  “Tell me again this is what you really want,” Colleen said, looking up into Mark’s eyes. Seeing him in her father’s suit made her feel somewhat more comfortable, but she was worried and on edge.

  “This is what I want. And my family will be fine too, Colleen. They are working people, just like you and your father. They just got rich cutting wood. They will love you, please st
op worrying. If we don’t pull this off now we’ll never get home to Stavewood. You’ll be starving and visiting me in jail. You have to pay attention and stop worrying.”

  She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders.

  “Let’s go,” she announced.

  Colleen hitched up the wagon and loaded the traveling milk tins and then went to fetch Mark from the house.

  “Walk slower, and more bent over,” she whispered close to his ear as they crossed the yard. “And let me help you into the wagon.”

  She helped Mark into the wagon and told him to shake out the reins gently.

  Lem McHerlong watched the wagon pull out from behind the barn. He’d find the gun this time and be waiting when Colleen and her father returned home.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Mark listened to the rattle of the milk cans in the wagon and the wheezing of the old horse clomping along in the crisp morning air. He watched Colleen step down from the wagon repeatedly, lifting heavy cans and straining to lug them to the doorways of their customers. He knew the value of a hard day’s work, but the labor that she went through every day, twice a day, was grueling. When he got her back to Stavewood, he thought, he could put her in the big guest room on the third floor. There was a huge fireplace in there, and a bath. One thing he knew that Rebecca treasured, as a woman, was a nice hot bath. Colleen deserved that and much more. He also wondered what she might accomplish in a kitchen with a larder like the one at home. He heard his stomach growl.

  “They paid,” she muttered under her breath. “All of it.”

  Mark nodded to her.

  “It’s time,” he grumbled through the heavy scarf.

  He led the horse at a steady pace down the side street and shortly they were out of the more populated areas of town. He reached up to expose his face so that he could catch his breath and Colleen stopped him abruptly.

  “Not until we are away from here. Look!” She indicated an approaching coach.

  Mark nodded and replaced the scarf.

  The couple parked the wagon near a farm where the house was not terribly far from the road, in hopes that the farmer would see the horse left there and take him in.

  Colleen stroked the animal’s back and whispered her goodbyes and they walked towards the train station as casually as possible. Colleen was fighting her sobs and Mark’s heart was racing with fear. They walked to where they found a secluded spot and Mark pulled off the milkman’s uniform and stuffed it into a rotting tree trunk. Then he rewrapped the scarf around his face. He wished he could just give it to Colleen to warm her raw hands.

  She bought two tickets, alone, the fare being much higher than she expected and when she returned to Mark’s side he could see her expression was strained.

  “The tickets cost nearly everything,” she sighed.

  Mark had hoped there would be enough that he might wire his father once they had left the area. He knew he would send money immediately and Mark was certain that everyone at home was sick with worry.

  “It’s alright,” he muttered to her. “As long as we can get to Stavewood.”

  They sat upright and rigid on the hard benches of the passenger car waiting for the train to pull out of the station. Colleen had purchased express tickets, as Mark had instructed. Once they left the station there would not be a stop for several hours and they would be miles away.

  Colleen watched Missouri slide away as the big locomotive began to chug out of the station and her eyes filled with tears. She knew little about where she was going, only what Mark had told her. If he was a murderer and had used her to escape she had been quite helpful. She looked up at him as he unwrapped the scarf from his neck and he smiled down at her with relief and affection.

  “We’re going home to Stavewood, Colleen. Say goodbye.” He smiled a smile broader than any she yet had seen on his face.

  Colleen took his hand and kissed the back of it, holding her lips there for a moment, pressing back all of her fears.

  “It will be a better life, Colleen. I promise you that.” He lifted his hand and kissed hers, then took the scarf and wrapped it around both of their hands together. “You’ll see. You’ll never want to leave.”

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Timothy Elgerson paced between his study and the office he had built for his son at the estate. Rebecca was gaining back her strength and the daily telegrams he exchanged with the Barite sheriff still brought him no news. He felt compelled to return to Missouri even if it was only to find his son’s body. At supper he would bring up the subject, he decided. He would set a time frame. Travel there, he thought, stay for a certain amount of time, and then return. This time he would go see the families that lived in the hills. It might be risky, but there might be some information. He knew it would be difficult for that grieving father who believed his son had killed his daughter, but he was grieving as well. Perhaps if he could find the real killer, the girl’s father would cooperate with him.

  He could hire men, he thought, dozens of men to comb the woods until they found Mark. Even if he had to bring his son home the way Samuel Evens had come back then at least he would know.

  Timothy decided that many of his thoughts were not suitable dinner conversation and took the stairs two at a time up to the master bedroom. He would discuss it with Rebecca privately and then begin arrangements to leave.

  She sat at her dressing table gazing into the mirror, and when he entered the room and stood awkwardly she knew exactly what was on his mind.

  “I feel much better today. I’m so glad you came home to spend some time with me,” she began. “But, it’s time for you to go finish looking, I know.”

  Timothy sighed and sat on the bed, his shoulders sagging.

  “I can’t stay, and I can’t go. What’s the use? I can’t look for him from here, but I did everything I could while I was down there. What else can I do?” He looked up to the ceiling, his face twisted in pain.

  “Do you want to go?” Rebecca turned on the bench and watched him anguishing.

  “I don’t know.” He rubbed his face with his hands. “I could just go all that way for nothing. Maybe I’ll never find him.” It was the first time that he had said anything aloud that sounded like giving up hope.

  Rebecca wished with all of her heart that she had some answer, that there was something, anything she could say to ease his pain. She was so caught herself between hoping and wanting Mark home but then maybe having to accept the terrible possibility that he was gone. She knew her husband well, and she was certain that while he was in Missouri he had done everything he could to find his son.

  “What would we tell Louisa?” Timothy looked at her with pain in his eyes. “She’s so sure he’s going to come home. She’s so young. I don’t even know how I would begin to tell her.”

  Rebecca crossed the room and sat on the bed beside her husband and placed her hand on his wide shoulder.

  “There’s nothing we need to say to her about it today,” she suggested and clung to his arm.

  Chapter Fifty

  Once the fear of being caught while trying to escape Barite began to fade, Mark became increasingly anxious to get home and Colleen grew apprehensive about meeting Mark’s family.

  The miles seemed endless as they rolled through dreary winter landscapes, frozen waterways and deserted stations. A group of lawmen boarded the train once, sitting across from the couple and setting them on edge for nearly fifty miles, but they paid no attention to Mark and Colleen and left the train without incident.

  Mark was exhausted, certainly not completely healed from his injuries and the monotonous traveling left Colleen feeling drained and fatigued. When the food ran out in the middle of the second day both of them grew listless and suffered from headaches.

  Mark studied the schedule in the station during a rest stop. He took the few pennies they had left and purchased two apples. The fruit was leathery and partially dehydrated and the two of them ate it ravenously on the evening of the last leg of their tr
ip.

  “In the morning we’ll be home. We’ll get there in time for breakfast. We can have that maple syrup I told you about. We’ll eat all we want. We can sit in the kitchen all day and eat whatever we can hold. You’ll see, Colleen. You’ll see.”

  Colleen looked up at his haggard expression and touched his cheek. The dark hollows beneath his eyes worried her.

  “How will we get to your house from the station? There’s no more money.”

  “We can walk.”

  “Walk? You look like you’re about to fall over and I’m not sure I’m much better.” Colleen thought her insides were gnawing through her and she felt lightheaded and strange.

  “It’s just a little ways.” Mark put his arm around her shoulder and closed his eyes. Colleen finished the last bites of her apple and let her head fall back against his shoulder. In a few hours they would be there and another adventure would begin.

  The whistle blew and Colleen’s eyes flew open.

  “Ellllgeeerrrrsoooonnn Milllls!” the porter called out.

  He said it, Colleen thought. The name. Elgerson. It was real.

  “Mark!” She shook her companion and he opened his eyes slowly.

  “We’re here,” she choked. “Elgerson Mills, just like you said.”

  Mark lifted his head groggily and looked out of the hazy window. He was sure he was dreaming and he rubbed his eyes with his fists.

  Colleen stood up and tugged at his arm. He staggered to his feet and it was clear to her that he was not doing well.

  “We’re almost there.” She led him off the train and supported him on the platform. The brisk air of the winter morning hit them and Mark shook his head.