Twenty minutes later Higgins was back holding a white-faced Elias Barker by the collar of his jacket.
“Now,” Higgins said as he hauled Elias into the schoolroom. “You need to apologize to all of these good folks for scaring them.”
“It wasn’t only me,” Elias protested.
“The others will apologize when I catch them,” Higgins assured him. “This is your turn.”
Elias muttered, “I’m sorry.”
“There now,” Higgins said as he gave the boy a little shake. “You sit down where you belong and pay attention to your schooling.”
The boy’s face went white. “I can’t. My ma will tan my hide good. I’m not supposed to go to school with—” Elias stopped and swallowed.
The boy didn’t finish his sentence, but he didn’t need to for Jake to know what he’d been going to say. His mother didn’t want him to go to school with Spotted Fawn.
“You leave your mother to me,” Jake said as he started for the door.
“Wait.”
He turned to see Elizabeth walking toward him.
“I’m coming with you,” she said as she came even with him.
Jake liked having Elizabeth at his side as they went to talk to Mrs. Barker. She might be in mourning for another man, but she was standing by him in the ways she could. That had to count for something.
Chapter Thirteen
Mrs. Barker lived in a two-story frame house off the main street in town. Jake wondered if Elizabeth was comparing the woman’s house to the one where they lived. He hoped not. Several loads of lumber had been used in the building of this house; the schoolhouse alone would have taken less than a third of the wood. And there were beveled glass windows in the front of the house that were for decoration alone. It made his house look damp and dark in comparison.
That being said, he didn’t envy the Barkers. Not when he had Elizabeth by his side.
“Oh,” Mrs. Barker said when she opened the door and saw who was there.
A man didn’t need to know anything about elegance to know that the glimpse he had into the foyer of Mrs. Barker’s house was about as fine as any sight he’d see around here. Even the banister on the stairs gleamed with polish.
“May we come inside?” Elizabeth asked.
Jake glanced down at his wife and noticed she wasn’t looking to the inside of Mrs. Barker’s house the way he was. No, Elizabeth was very proper. If he didn’t know better, he would think she was on a social call. She had a polite smile on her face and a voice that sounded very formal.
“It’s not really convenient right now,” Mrs. Barker said as she crossed her arms.
Jake didn’t much like the look of triumph on the older woman’s face.
“It’s about Elias,” Elizabeth continued smoothly, however, as though she hadn’t just been asked to leave.
“If it’s about him going to that school, he won’t be there until it’s a fitting place for children to be.” Mrs. Barker started to close the door.
That was enough, Jake told himself as he put his foot in the door. The time for politeness was over. “Is it fitting that the boy is running around almost getting himself shot?”
Well, that got Mrs. Barker’s attention. She swung the door wide again. “What do you mean?”
“This nonsense has gone on for too long when a boy like Elias is setting off firecrackers to try and scare people. You know as well as I do, there are enough nervous men with guns in this town that the boy could get himself shot pulling stunts like that.”
Mrs. Barker’s face went a little pale. “He’s all right, though, isn’t he?”
Jake nodded. “Higgins ran him down and brought him back to the schoolhouse. Which is where he belongs.”
“The children do need to be in school,” Elizabeth added softly.
Mrs. Barker looked at them for a minute.
“I saw what you did with the schoolroom,” she finally said with a sour twist to her mouth. “All those Christmas decorations.”
“You’re welcome to add some more to what’s there,” Elizabeth said. “The reverend has what’s left of the paint we used. And there’s lots of wall left.”
“I did think you could use some more holly,” Mrs. Barker said.
“Christmas is the time for goodwill,” Elizabeth said. “Children especially always like Christmas. I know you don’t want to ruin it for them. Can’t we wait until after the holiday to sort everything else out?”
Mrs. Barker sighed. “I just want to make this a better town. I know it might not mean much to people like you, but having the railroad come here would make a big difference to most people in this town.”
“The railroad won’t mean anything if we don’t find a way to get along better,” Jake said. “Towns have split over things like this.”
Mrs. Barker was quiet for another minute then she looked over at Elizabeth. “I suppose you’re right. We can settle everything after Christmas. I’m sure no railroad representative will be out traveling this close to the holiday, anyway.”
“Would you mind coming over and telling your son that?” Jake asked. “He can let his friends know and, my guess is, they’ll all be back in school this afternoon.”
Mrs. Barker nodded. “I’ll be over as soon as I get my hat.”
“We’ll see you there,” Jake said as he took Elizabeth’s arm. He didn’t figure there was any need for her to be looking inside Mrs. Barker’s house any longer than necessary. If he wasn’t mistaken there was a window in the foyer that did nothing but look into another room. Who had so much money they could buy a glass window when they didn’t even need to keep out any rain?
But Elizabeth must not have seen the window.
“She listened to us,” Elizabeth said in amazement as she let Jake lead her down the steps of the Barker house. “I didn’t think she’d listen to anyone.”
“She cares about her son,” Jake said.
“Well, of course, I can see that,” Elizabeth said as they kept walking back to the schoolhouse.
“She’s not giving up, you know,” Jake added. “She just doesn’t want to fight the children over Christmas.”
Elizabeth knew how the woman felt. Every child deserved a happy Christmas.
The schoolhouse was noisy and crowded by the end of the day. Since so few of the children had been there in the morning, the reverend suggested Elizabeth and Virginia repeat what they’d said earlier about the pageant. By that time Elias was already rather loudly declaring that it was a dumb idea and Higgins was giving him his grizzly roar as a reminder to be polite—or, at least, silent.
“I still don’t want to be no angel,” Elias muttered, looking up at Higgins. “And nobody can make me be one, either.”
Higgins snorted. “I can see that, boy. Only a fool would think you could behave well enough to pass for an angel. I’m just trying to get you to quiet down so people don’t take you for something else entirely.”
Elizabeth stepped closer to the man and the boy. She hadn’t fully explained the pageant, but she didn’t want any of the other children hearing the quarrel right now to follow Elias’s lead. “If you don’t want to be an angel, you can be something else then.”
“Like what?”
Elizabeth looked to Virginia for help. “Ah, you could be a shepherd—”
“Nah, I don’t want to be a shepherd, either. Sheep are dumb. Besides, I have a horse. Shepherds don’t have horses.”
“Well, then,” Virginia said as she looked around the schoolroom. “Maybe you could be a star.”
“Like in the sky?” Elias asked, obviously thinking about the idea.
“Even bigger and brighter than the ones you see in the sky now,” Elizabeth said. “The Christmas star was a special star. Kings—remember ‘We three kings from Orient are’? Well, these kings followed the star because it brought them to the Christ Child.”
“So the star gets to tell the important people how to find things?” Elias asked. “Like a map for hidden treasure.”<
br />
“In a way.” Elizabeth paused. “I guess you could say Jesus was a hidden treasure at first because no one knew where he was.”
“Good,” Elias said. “Could I ride my horse when I’m a star? He’s a bay so he’s kind of yellow.”
“The pageant is inside. You know you can’t ride your horse.”
Several children rode horses to school each day and there were several posts at the side of the school where they could tie them.
Elias grinned. “It doesn’t hurt to try. That’s what my dad always says. If a man’s got a good horse, he can do anything.”
Elizabeth grinned back. “Even your dad knows a horse can’t come inside the schoolhouse.”
“I suppose.”
Elizabeth decided Elias wasn’t as much of a problem as she had thought. She looked at all the children. “We’re going to have a wonderful Christmas. We’ll enact the story of the birth of Jesus, we’ll sing songs, we’ll have—” She looked over at Virginia for help.
“We’re hoping to have a tree, too,” Virginia announced with delight. “You children would love to have a tree to decorate, wouldn’t you? The school has to look like Christmas for our pageant.”
The children were nodding and Elizabeth agreed. She’d love to have the inside of this room shining with Christmas cheer.
Mrs. Barker hadn’t arrived yet to paint more decorations on the Miles City side of the wall, but Elizabeth intended to offer to help her when she showed up. And if they were going to decorate more, they should have a tree.
None of the children had any reservations about having a Christmas tree. Almost all of them had heard about making ornaments even if they hadn’t made any themselves.
“We’ll ask the men to help us find a tree,” Elizabeth said. “I’m sure whatever they find will do nicely. After all, the important thing is the joy we take in Christmas.”
With that triumphant remark, Elizabeth and Virginia decided to let the children get back to their lessons. The two women walked out of the schoolhouse and stood on the steps.
“Well, at least they seem to like Christmas,” Virginia said wearily. “I never knew a classroom of children could be so hard to manage.”
“They’ll do better when we start practicing,” Elizabeth said as she put her hands on her back and stretched. She was a little sore from all of that scrubbing and painting yesterday. Her muscles weren’t used to working after she’d lain in her tent for almost two weeks, doing nothing.
“We’ll start in on the trees tomorrow,” Virginia said. “I better get to Colter’s place and start playing the piano.”
Elizabeth nodded. She had things to do at home, as well.
Jake took Elizabeth and the baby home in the wagon and then rode off to go see Wells.
Two hours later, Elizabeth sat down in the rocking chair by the fire. Her hair was falling down and her clothes were all wet. She’d just finished washing that black mourning dress and she’d rather scrub the old canvas on her tent before she took her washboard to the dress again. The wet wool was heavy and it smelled bad.
Added to that she had made the mistake of using water that was hotter than she thought it was. The black dye turned her rinse water gray almost immediately. She’d had to wring the water out of the dress before she draped it over a chair that she’d placed close enough to the wood-stove so the dress would hopefully dry before tomorrow.
As odd as it was, Elizabeth admitted, she had an immense feeling of relief as she worked on that dress. She wanted to wear mourning. She wasn’t ready to move on with her life and the dress helped her show that to everyone. It marked where she was. Somehow the dress slowed everything down so her feelings were once again equal with her life.
She would know who she was when she started wearing that dress. A wound needed a scab before it could heal properly and that dress was her scab.
Elizabeth sat and rocked for a few more minutes before she stood up and walked back to the stove. While the dress had been soaking earlier, she had started to bring in her canned goods from the lean-to and stack them against the far wall in the cabin. All of those jars of canned vegetables and preserves reminded her of who she was, as well. She was a strong woman who could provide for herself. She’d survive her mourning.
While she was bringing in the jars, she also brought in the red yarn and slipped it into her satchel that she kept at the foot of the bed. She had decided to use the red yarn to knit Christmas scarves for the baby and Spotted Fawn. The older girl took such delight in her hair ribbons she would surely like a bright red scarf to wear around her neck. And babies always liked bright colors.
She hadn’t thought about what to get Jake for a present, but she planned to ask Annabelle’s advice. She was almost certain the other woman was getting Higgins a Christmas present so she’d probably given the matter some thought.
Elizabeth almost envied Annabelle. The other woman seemed to accept things better than she did.
Elizabeth was not naive. She knew women often had to marry quickly to survive out here in the West. A man and a gun were almost necessary. But she did not want to be one of those women who married from necessity. She and Jake had an agreement that would be in place until spring, but she already knew he would let her stay and become a real wife to him if that’s what she decided to do.
But she didn’t want it to be that way. She wanted to be chosen. Oh, Jake had chosen her after a fashion. But he had been thinking of his nieces and not of himself. He would have married her no matter who she was. And he was much too kind to do anything but throw himself into their bargain.
She could spend the rest of her life with him and not know if he really wanted to be with her. Or she with him. She didn’t want to risk that. She had learned with Matthew that it was very hard to live with a man she could not please. If she really got married again, she wanted the man to want to be with her. She didn’t want to be some compromise he had made in life.
Besides, it would be good for her soul to grieve. She had lain in her tent, frozen in her anger at God, and now that she was out of her tent, she felt adrift. It’s not that she’d forgiven God. She’d just kept going because there was nothing else to do.
She wasn’t praying, not the way Jake did. He prayed as though God were his friend. When she started to pray lately the words stuck in her throat. She’d worn out her anger and it no longer felt as white-hot as it had. It had not gone away, though. It had just changed form into something cold and heavy and uncomfortable. In fact, it was very similar to that old mourning dress.
Just thinking of the dress reminded Elizabeth she should go turn the chair by the stove a little. She’d have to keep moving that chair all night if she expected the whole dress to be dry by tomorrow.
Well, supper would be coming before tomorrow, Elizabeth told herself as she stood up. She’d set some beans to soaking last night and they were ready to be cooked. She’d like to put a small jar of her tomatoes in with the beans. If she also chopped up another one of the onions Annabelle had given her, she’d have a good soup.
She’d noticed Jake liked his food spiced up with onions and maybe some black pepper flakes. She’d make him some corn bread, too. She had to admit she liked cooking for the man. Maybe it was because he never seemed to just assume there would be food on his plate as Matthew had done.
She shook her head. Is that what her days would be like, always comparing one man to the other? Surely, her heart should give her peace eventually.
Chapter Fourteen
The next day, Jake drove Elizabeth and the girls into town before it was full light. The frost was growing heavier each morning and he figured it would be good to get a stack of wood for the schoolhouse before the snows started. The reverend wasn’t looking well enough to be out in the winter cutting firewood himself, anyway.
Besides, Jake felt like chopping wood today. He was trying to avoid looking at that mourning dress of Elizabeth’s, but it was hard not to see it. He wondered if he was supposed to stop speaking
to her while she was in this mourning of hers. It was a peculiar feeling to have his wife acting like a widow.
He knew right then that he had a problem. He needed to stop thinking of Elizabeth as his wife. They’d said their vows, but they’d only made a commitment until spring. He shook his head. He didn’t know what to do with the mess he’d made of things. He never should have offered to let her go, but then she might never have agreed to stay.
He looked over at her and Elizabeth pulled her shawl more closely around her. She was moving away from him already.
Elizabeth could sense Jake was looking at her, but she didn’t look up to meet his eyes. He hadn’t said anything about the mourning dress even though she’d put it on for the first time to wear today. She’d taken a hot iron to it first, but it still looked a little rumpled. And it was itchy.
She knew it was unattractive. It was probably a good thing Matthew wasn’t alive to see the dress; he would have made her tear it up for rags. Men could be so particular about things.
She quickly glanced sideways at Jake. “It’s just for a season—the dress.”
Jake grunted.
She was glad he didn’t ask her how long the season would last. She wasn’t sure what she would say. She had some things she wanted to finish with Matthew and she wasn’t even sure what they were.
At least the brown shawl she wore covered most of her dress. She had unpacked the shawl yesterday; it was a thick winter one she’d used when she did her heavy work back in Kansas. She hadn’t needed it on the journey and, when the fevers started, it had been easier to use a blanket. When she had lifted it out of its box she could almost still smell the dye she’d put into it early last fall. She’d boiled black walnut husks with a few late-season marigolds and the shawl had turned out a rich golden brown. She was grateful to have it now.
The schoolhouse was chilly when they all arrived. Spotted Fawn had been sitting in the back of the wagon with the baby so she was the last one to climb down from the wagon and go inside the schoolroom. No one else was there yet. Jake had said he wanted them to get there early so they could start fires in the two stoves so the reverend wouldn’t need to do it before classes started.
Calico Christmas at Dry Creek Page 16