by Hill, April
By now, though, he knew Eileen a ‘Roon well enough to suspect that whatever she agreed to tonight, under Martha’s spell, could be just as easily withdrawn before dawn tomorrow. It was plain to Griff that, like so many other of Martha’s lost lambs, the girl was responding not to reason, but to Martha’s soft voice, kind words, and gentle touch. Cold, tired, and confused, and with an innocent need to feel loved again, the girl was trying to please a new, desperately needed friend by agreeing with whatever that friend asked of her.
Griff was planning to leave in the morning, right after breakfast. What he was hoping for, and even praying for—as what Martha had always called a Doubting Thomas—was that after a sound night’s sleep in a warm bed with a soft, goose-down pillow and clean sheets, Miss O’Malley would still think it was a good idea to stay on at Rainbow Water—and try to be happy.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The next morning, whenever he could do it without her noticing, Griff found himself watching Eileen A ‘Roon carefully, searching for any sign that she might be about to change her mind at the last minute, refuse to stay with the Goodspeeds, and ruin everything. He knew that Martha was concerned as well, but she was obviously better at hiding her feelings than he was. A few minutes later, when he excused himself from the breakfast table in order to get Jack saddled and ready to leave, Eileen a ‘Roon threw her napkin down, stood up abruptly, and followed him outside.
They were almost to the barn when she stepped in front of him, fixed him with a cool, appraising look, and asked the one question he’d most hoped to avoid answering.
“You’re plannin’ to just ride off and leave me with these folks, right?”
Griff hesitated, searching for the right thing to say, and knowing that whatever he said was going to come out wrong. “I wasn’t going to leave without telling you goodbye, I promise.”
“Well, now, that’s just real goddamned polite of you, ain’t it? I reckon you figured that’s all you needed to do—just give the dumb little kid a pat on the head, then take off runnin’ like a turpentined rabbit.”
Griff sighed. “Not exactly the way I’d put it.”
“Yeah, well how would you put it?”
“I thought that… Well, after last night, when you told Martha you’d like to stay, I figured that…”
“I wasn’t thinkin’ clear last night,” she grumbled, “so I figured to let it go ‘til I had me some sleep, and time to think on it. That Martha’s a real nice lady, and I don’t want to hurt her none.”
“She’s probably the nicest person either of us will ever know,” Griff pointed out, “and she’s the main reason I thought this would be a good place for you. She and Abner have always wanted a girl, and…”
“So, let ‘em hire one,” she snapped. “I ain’t for sale.”
Exasperated, Griff tried to turn the argument around—the way Martha had. “All right then, do you have a better idea?”
“I could go with you,” she suggested, “wherever it is you’re goin’.”
Griff shook his head. “I can’t do that. It could be a long time before I find the right place to settle down. Hard months on the road, in every kind of weather, and—”
“Like I can’t handle any kind o’ weather you throw at me,” she scoffed. “I been rained on, snowed on, half-drowned, and near roasted to death by the sun most o’ my life. If you ride off and leave me here, I’ll end up bein’ some dumb hayseed’s wife, with a passle of runny-nosed kids and nothin’ ahead o’ me when he dies pushing a damned plow but white hair and a busted rockin’ chair.”
He chuckled. “You haven’t even moved in and you’re already a white-haired widow?”
“You can fun with me all you want, Griff Harper, but it’s true, and you know it.”
“You’re wrong. What I do know is that you’ll have a chance at a good life here with Martha and Abner—a clean house to live in, a warm bed, plenty to eat and decent clothes on your back—everything you’ve missed out on all these years. They’ve promised to see to it that you get more schooling, so you can make something of yourself when you’re old enough to be on your own. That’s never easy for a woman out here, and you’re getting a late start. You’re smart, though, and you’ll do just fine. With an education, you can be a lot more than a farmer’s wife.” He grinned. “And if you study hard, and learn some manners, you just might end up living up on Nob Hill after all.”
But when he’d finished painting this rosy picture of her future, Miss O’Malley was still scowling—and silent.
“All right then,” he demanded irritably, “maybe it would be better if I took you back to the orphanage. At least you’d have a roof over your head, and—” He stopped without finishing when she gasped.
“That’s just about the meanest thing a person ever said to me,” she cried. “I know you never liked me much, but you ain’t never been just plain mean like that.”
Griff groaned. “I’m not trying to hurt you. I just want you to be safe, and—”
“Safe!” she shouted. “You know damned well why I can’t go back to that place, and I figure you knew it all along—why I run off from that low-down stinkin’ skunk who calls hisself a preacher. I ain’t never goin’ back there, and I swear to God I’ll fill my pockets with rocks and jump in the river if you or anybody else tries to make me! The bastard tried to get my drawers off and stick his thing in me, like he done with ever’ other girl in the place old enough to have tits. And you knew it all along!”
Griff closed his eyes and heaved a deep sigh. “I didn’t know—not for sure, but yes, I suspected something like that.”
“Well, you suspected right, mister, and now you wanna take me back?”
“No, I don’t, and I’m sorry I said what I did. I didn’t mean it. I was just trying to—”
She gave a small, bitter laugh. “Tryin’ to get what you wanted outta me, like ever damned fool man I ever met. And here I was, thinkin’ you was different.”
As badly as he felt about everything that had happened to her, Griff’s frustration at her refusal to accept help was pushing his patience to the breaking point. And being grouped together with the “low-down stinkin’ skunk of a preacher” was the last straw.
“I wish to hell you’d quit thinking that every man you meet is out to hurt you,” he advised, raising his voice, “and that it’s just you against the whole damned world. If you don’t put whatever happened at that hellhole behind you, and start learning to trust people, you’re going to throw away the rest of your life, and end up being a lonely, bitter old woman. And if you let that happen, that miserable excuse for a human being preacher wins, and you lose.”
“That’s a hell of a lot of talk,” she scoffed, “for some fool who don’t know what he’s talkin’ about, and who ain’t even a woman, at that.”
Griff threw up his hands. “Fine then. I’ll go in and tell Martha that you’ve changed your mind. There’s a railway spur around twenty miles from here. I’ll put twenty-five bucks in your hand and put you on a train going east, west, north, south— wherever the hell you want to try your luck. Now, go in and pack. Martha can give you a few things you need to get by until you get to Nob Hill.”
He started back to the house, then turned around again.
“And keep your hands off my horse.”
Martha and Abner, who had been listening to the argument from an open window, met him in the doorway.
“I’ve tried reasoning with her, but she says she won’t stay, and that I can’t make her, and she’s right,” Griff explained. “I’ve told her I’ll take her as far as Powell Junction and put her on the train. At this point, that’s the only thing I can think to do.”
Martha shook her head with disapproval. “When thee’s had children of thy own, Griffin, thee’ll learn that there are times when a wrong-headed child needs a strong, firm hand, and not reason. And even at sixteen, this poor girl is still a child, in need of being cared for and protected. She’s like a little fledgling sparrow, trying to lea
ve the nest before she’s ready—and thee can’t allow her to go off alone.”
At this point, Abner, who had remained by the window, began chuckling. “If thee wants to catch this little sparrow, friend, thee’ll have to move thy ass. It appears she’s stolen thy horse again, and flown away.”
Griff barreled out the front door, and watched from the porch as Jack—without a saddle or bridle—galloped across the Goodspeeds’ north pasture and disappeared into the woods. Eileen a ‘Roon was riding bareback, with a handful of Jack’s mane in one hand, and her bright red hair flying behind her in the morning breeze. On her way, he thought irritably, to Powell Junction—to hop a passing train without bothering to buy a ticket.
He turned to Abner. “It looks like I’m going to need to borrow a horse, Friend Goodspeed. I’ll try not to let her get away with yours, as well.”
Considering the consistently bad run of bad luck he’d enjoyed since he made Eileen a ‘Roon O’Malley’s acquaintance, however, this was about to be Griff’s lucky day.
He had followed the trail of hoof prints no more than a half-mile into the woods when Jack came out of a copse of pine trees at a leisurely walk, stopping every few feet to graze, and without his kidnapper. Griff dismounted, checked him over quickly, and found no injuries, or traces of blood. The only thing left to do now, was to find the thief, and decide how to reward her second attempt at rustling in less than twenty-four hours.
On foot, and leading both horses, Griff moved deeper into the heavy pine forest, watching for broken branches or twigs, fresh footprints, or any sign that the runaway had come this way.
A hundred yards farther on, he found what he was looking for.
With her skirts tucked up to her waist, and carrying her battered shoes, Eileen a’ Roon was trying to cross the stream for which Rainbow Water had been named—a deep-running, pebble-bottomed creek known for its fat, hungry trout, and strong current. She had gotten close to halfway across the deeper water by stepping from one large, moss-covered rock to the next—a difficult passage even in a pair of trousers, and with both hands free. Carrying yards of sopping wet fabric around her waist, and only one arm for balance, her journey to the opposite side had been doomed from the beginning. Griff tied the horses to a sapling, made himself comfortable on a large rock, and waited for the inevitable dunking.
He didn’t have to wait long. Two giant steps later, the girl’s bare foot slipped on the moss, and she toppled backward into the creek. She was floundering in three feet of icy water, trying to retrieve her shoes before they drifted away, when Griff got up from his rock, and waded in after her.
Even with her head underwater, though, Miss O’Malley wasn’t ready to surrender. When he tried hauling her out of the current and onto her feet, she whirled around and whacked him in the jaw, then scrambled away, just out of his reach—and tumbled backward, into the water again. Griff grabbed the back of her collar and pulled her all the way back to where she’d started, bumping her backside on the rocks at every step.
“Get your hands off me!” she screeched. “I don’t need no damned help, and you ain’t takin’ me back to that fuckin’ house, or anywhere else I don’t feel like goin’!”
“Wrong,” Griff said firmly, dumping her on the muddy creek bank. “I’m taking you back, and you’re going to stay. You’re going to go to school. You’re going to learn to read and write better than you do now. You’re going to learn to talk without saying ain’t, and without cussing. You’re going to start behaving like a lady, even if you never get to be one. You’re going to learn the names of every goddamned president—in order—and the names of all the states, and the continents, and the oceans, too. And if I get one single letter from the Goodspeeds telling me that you’re giving them trouble, I swear I’ll come back here from wherever I am, and set your stubborn backside on goddamned fire—three times a day if I have to!”
“Yeah?” she growled. “And what’s to keep me from runnin’ off again, when you ain’t around to stop me?”
Griff shook his head. “Do you know what the word, incentive means?”
“Never heard it, but I reckon I know where you can put it, and all them other fancy words of yours. You can stick it up your damned—”
The final two words of the ancient insult were drowned out by the sound of Griff’s broad palm impacting the seat of Miss O’Malley’s drenched drawers. A few seconds after that first swat, the drawers had vanished—yanked down and tossed aside to go bobbing down the creek in the swift current. Meanwhile, Griff had seated himself on the same large rock and dragged the two-time horse thief across his knee, screaming in protest, and bare from her waist to her muddy toes.
The bank of the creek was littered with dead branches and driftwood, making Griff’s search for the perfect spanking weapon quick, easy, and with no risk of losing his firm hold on the victim—who was now doing everything she could to bite him.
He settled for a foot-long section of torn birch—flat, smooth on one side, yet still “nubby” enough to leave a very satisfying pattern on a soft, naked bottom. If Griff had any lingering doubts about the propriety of delivering a bare-bottomed spanking to a very young woman he’d only known for a few days, his uneasiness vanished when she sank her small white teeth into his lower leg.
And besides, he told himself, it was Martha—an acknowledged authority on child rearing—who had recommended exactly this course of action.
The birch branch proved itself to be an even better weapon than he thought, with the first resounding smack across Eileen a ‘Roon’s chilled backside drawing a yelp of surprise from her, followed by a wail of outrage and a couple of profane insults—which, of course, called for a few additional smacks, followed by a few more wails, etc. etc. In just under a minute, by Griff’s reckoning, Miss O’Malley’s well-spanked ass was covered in red splotches and stripes from mid-buttock to knee.
But while she had wailed long and loud in protest, it didn’t escape Griff’s notice that she hadn’t shed a single tear—or an apology for running away, biting him, or for stealing his horse.
When he allowed her to stand up, she turned her back and began straightening her dripping skirts as well as she could, an unusual bit of modesty that Griff knew wasn’t just for his sake. She was too proud to have Martha and Abner know what had happened. And while it was still too early to know for certain that she wouldn’t try to run away again, Griff had a strong feeling that she was ready, at last, to stay put. He couldn’t have explained why he felt that way, unless it had something to do with her sense of honor. Halfway through the whipping, he had asked that very question: “Will you at least promise to stay here long enough to finish school?” The only reply had been a nod and a small grunt, but to Griff, and hopefully to her, it sounded something like a promise.
* * *
When they returned to the house, cold and wet, Martha asked him to stay for one more night, an offer he was grateful to accept. And the following morning, when Eileen a ‘Roon seemed quietly resigned to her situation, he started down to the barn with a sense of having had a weight lifted form his shoulders. He still wasn’t totally convinced that he was completely out of the woods just yet, though, and a moment later, he realized that once again, Eileen a ‘Roon had followed him from the house, silent, but clearly still angry.
He saddled Jack quickly, hoping to say a quick goodbye and make a dignified departure before something else went wrong. She watched his preparations without saying anything, until he touched her shoulder and tried to say goodbye—and used entirely the wrong words.
“You take care of yourself, Eileen a’Roon. I’ll miss you, but maybe we’ll meet up again, someday, when you’ve all grown up.”
“You just better hope we don’t,” she snarled. “If you’re so hell-bent on goin’, just go, damn it. And don’t never come back neither. See if I care!”
So, Griff rode away, feeling a little better because she appeared to be more angry than sad about his leaving. He knew instinctively that he
should just keep riding, and not look back, but when he did, she was sitting on a bale of hay, sobbing.
* * *
Six weeks after leaving Rainbow Water, Griff rode down into a wide green valley he’d never seen before, and knew in an instant that he’d finally found what he wanted. Two days later, he walked out of the county land office holding the deed to a hundred and fifty acres of softly rolling pastureland with a wide, meandering creek that ran right down the middle, and another twenty-five acres of straight, standing timber. There was a level three acres to build a house and a couple of barns, and just behind where the house would be, a tiny grove of gnarled trees heavy with small green crabapples. He didn’t have to think twice before deciding to call the place Crabapple Valley.
CHAPTER NINE
Four years later, the ranch in Crabapple Valley was up and running, and even turning a small profit. Griff had hired several cowhands the first year, one of whom took off with one of the ranch’s best mares two days after he showed up for work, and three of whom were still there, and Griff hoped they would stay on forever. His first year, he’d taken in a stray mongrel he called Amos, the ugliest dog he’d even seen, and the best cattle dog he’d ever had. It took another week to discover that Amos’s idea of entertainment after a twenty-hour work day was to spend the remaining four hours running the local coyotes ragged. Within one short week, they began scouting the place to be sure he wasn’t around before making a try at the hen house, or stalking a wandering calf.
Over the first three years after he left Eileen a ‘Roon in the care of the Goodspeeds, he’d sent money every month to help with her keep, and written fairly regularly to her as well. In her first letter to him, though, she had made no secret of the fact that she still hadn’t forgiven him for dumping her there, that she would never forgive him even if she lived to be two hundred years old, and that she now wanted to be called Elyn, because it was her pa’s pet name for her, and because she was getting damned sick and tired of telling people how to spell Eeileen a’Roon. In the next few letters, though, “Elyn” began to concede—one small step at a time—that Martha and Abner were treating her wonderfully, and were beginning to feel almost like her real parents.
