Better Than Gold

by Laurie Alice Eakes

  “He doesn’t need your help right now.” Matt took her buckets.

  Someone else thrust a full pail into her hands. “Pass it along, Lily.” She did.

  “Mary.” Lily turned to the pastor’s wife. “Where is Ben?”

  “With the horses.” Mary patted her shoulder then grasped another bucket.

  “You’re sure?” Lily scanned the scene around her.

  Their line passed water from the well of the blacksmith’s shop next to the livery. She couldn’t see much around the bulk of the smithy shed. Not much more than flames licking up. Shouts, orders from the tone, proved indistinct above clanging pails, roaring flames, and the screams of frightened horses.

  She hoped they were only frightened, not injured.

  “I can’t see anything.” Her voice held a hysterical note, and she took a deep breath to calm herself. “Do you know what is happening?”

  “Started in the roof, I heard,” Matt said. “We’re all too busy trying to keep it from spreading in this wind to pay much attention.”

  “But Ben is uninjured.” Mary slid one more bucket into Lily’s hand.

  Lily took the bucket and the assurance with all the strength she could muster. She must. The town needed every able-bodied person to wet down other buildings and douse the main fire so nothing else caught. She recalled reading about what had happened in Chicago five years earlier. The city burned down—a city with fire equipment, a lake, and a river. The Mississippi was too far away to be of much help. Browning City’s founders hadn’t wanted to be right on the water in case of flood and to protect against river pirates. They should have thought of fire. Buckets seemed inadequate to subdue the flames. Each load of water seemed to enact no more good than a raindrop trying to put out a stove fire.

  “Rain. Lord, we need rain.”

  She didn’t realize she prayed aloud until Mary said, “Amen,” in agreement.

  “We have clouds,” Matt put in. “But not—”

  Cries of protest rang from the livery yard, louder than other shouts, a few words distinguishable.

  “Stop.”

  “You can’t.”

  “Leave it.”

  News rippled down the bucket line. When Lily heard, she wanted to break ranks and go after him, drag him away from the flames, away from danger.

  “It’s the money.” Tears ran down her face like the water dripping down her skirt. “He needs the plow for the contest.”

  “He needs it badly enough to risk his life?” Mary sounded appalled. “I thought he had more sense than that.”

  “He does. I mean, he would. . .” Lily was sobbing. “He thinks if he has more money, I’ll stay here and marry him. It’s not the money. Doesn’t he—”

  Shouts of relief rang from the livery yard.

  “He’s safe out,” someone at the head of the smithy shed called. “But risking his neck for a—”

  A crash and roar of flames and human voices reverberated through the night. A column of sparks soared above the rooftops like upward-shooting stars.

  “It’s gone,” many voices chorused. “Livery’s gone.”

  Ben had just lost his livelihood, his living quarters, and probably everything he owned. Lily wanted to curl into a ball and cry. Yet she was too busy passing buckets of water to succumb to grief or to even think. Her group needed to extinguish the pinpoints of fire landing on the smithy.

  Those pinpoints grew to tongues of flame.

  “Faster on the water!” a man on a ladder shouted. “I need more water.”

  “We need rain,” Mary said.

  And it came; so light at first Lily didn’t notice the extra dampness. Then the drops grew fatter and more frequent until she felt as though someone were pouring pails of water over her. Soon the smell of smoke turned into the stench of charred, wet wood. The last of the fires died in a gasp of steam.

  “Coffee and food back at the church hall,” Pastor Jackson Reeves announced from nearby.

  Lily left the bucket line, knowing she could collect Mrs. Twining’s pails in the morning, and began to hunt for Ben. With the fire out and rain falling, seeing faces grew impossible. She tried to call to him, but her throat was raw.

  She would find him at the hall. He had nowhere else to go unless she found him and told him what she planned.

  Along with dozens of other townsfolk, Lily trudged to the church hall. There, with the stove warming the place and making everyone’s clothes steam, several of the older ladies had prepared coffee and sandwiches. Not realizing she was cold until she began to grow warm, Lily accepted a cup of coffee and located Mrs. Willoughby.

  “I’ll need to stay with you again,” she told the older lady. “I’ll pay you, of course.”

  “You’re such a sweet girl.” Mrs. Willoughby beamed at her. “You know the best thing for that young man right now is to live with his aunt.”

  “Yes. I think family is where a body ought to be when everything else goes up in smoke.” Lily sipped the bracing coffee. “Have you seen him?”

  Mrs. Willoughby glanced past Lily’s shoulder. “He just walked in.”

  “Thank you.” Lily turned.

  If Ben were not so tall, she never would have seen him for the crowd. As it was, she saw only his face, pale beneath a smudged layer of soot. A bruise marred his right cheekbone. His eyelids drooped, and his jaw looked taut. Too taut for a man given more to smiles than frowns. At that moment, he looked like someone who would never smile again.

  Lily wove her way through the crowd of sooty townsfolk until she reached Ben. “Here.” She gave him her coffee.

  “Thank you.” He took the cup from her.

  His fingers brushed hers. His hand was cold, and he didn’t smile at her.

  “Don’t you want this?” He held up the cup.

  “I don’t need it. I’m going back to Mrs. Twining’s house right now to move my things out.”

  “Out?” Alarm flashed across his face. “But you can’t leave yet.”

  Lily’s heart twisted. “Not out of Browning City. I’m moving out of Mrs. Twining’s house and into Mrs. Willoughby’s so you can stay with family, where you belong.”

  “Oh, Lily. . .”

  His throat worked. He reached out a reddened and blistered hand and laid his palm against her cheek.

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” Lily looked into his eyes, read tenderness replacing the distress, and knew she could never leave his side.

  She didn’t get any sleep that night. After clearing her things out of her room in Mrs. Twining’s house and lugging what she could to Mrs. Willoughby’s, she made the effort to bathe and wash her hair to rid herself of the reek of smoke. By the time she finished with drying her hair before the kitchen stove and making breakfast, she needed to go to work. She wanted to get to work. She had the most important telegram of her career to send.

  Thank you for offer STOP decided to stay in browning city STOP

  ❧

  The path seemed clear to Ben. With everything he owned except for the plow destroyed in the fire, without a livery to manage, with his heart certain Lily loved him, he would leave Browning City and hunt for work in Chicago.

  “But I don’t want you to just stay here and manage a new livery,” Gilchrist protested at Ben’s announcement. “I’d like you to manage my store, too. I think Tom and Eva are about to make a match of it, and I don’t want to appear too much in competition with my son-in-law.” He guffawed.

  Ben nodded. “That would be awkward, but now that the two of you are starting to sell different things, it isn’t so bad.”

  “No, but to tell you the truth, Ben, I would like to tend to my farm, make it pay before I’m too old.”

  The offer tempted Ben. For a moment, his heart felt torn in two different directions—stay with a town he had grown to love and what remained of his family or go to Chicago to be near Lily until he could ask her to marry him. He thought of how much he had prayed about his future and all the incidents leading
to this moment and shook his head.

  “I can’t stay, but I am so honored you trust me after all that’s happened.”

  “You didn’t start that fire.” Gilchrist leaned his hands on the store counter. “Have you talked with the sheriff today?”

  “I’m on my way.”

  Ben wasn’t looking forward to that interview.

  “I thought I’d talk to you first, in case you wished to come with me.”

  “No need. You’re an honest young man. You’ll tell the truth to him just as you did to me.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Ben turned toward the door. “I should get down there.”

  “If he gives you trouble, you send for—ah, here he comes now.”

  Sheriff Dodd stepped onto the boardwalk and yanked open the door. He brought the stench of charring with him, and ashes coated his shoes and lower pant legs.

  “Saw you through the window, Purcell.” Dodd drew his thin brows together. “Thought you were coming to the office first thing this morning.”

  “I had to find decent clothes first, sir.” Ben discovered he had propped his fists on his hips, and he lowered his arms. “I was just on my way.”

  “Humph.”

  “Looks like you’ve been at the fire site,” Gilchrist said.

  “Sure have.” Dodd glared at Ben. “You don’t smoke?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Leave a lantern on?” Dodd persisted.

  “No, sir. And the stove was shut.”

  “Then how did it start?” Dodd’s demand emerged like a challenge.

  Ben took a deep, calming breath. “Sir, the fire started in the hayloft. I was asleep in my quarters in the back.”

  “Everyone saw the roof ablaze first.” Gilchrist sounded as belligerent as the sheriff did. “If Ben had started it out of carelessness, it would have started below.”

  “True. True.” Dodd sighed and mopped his brow. “I just don’t like all these things happening in my town. It was peaceful until he”—he jabbed a finger toward Ben—“came along.”

  “Or other newcomers,” Ben said.

  Dodd and Gilchrist stared at him.

  “Explain what you mean by that,” Dodd commanded.

  Ben explained what he and Lily had worked out about someone wanting to get him out of the livery so they could search it thoroughly for the gold.

  “That’s ridiculous.” Dodd pinched his nostrils as though he smelled something foul.

  “Not as ridiculous as you might think.” Gilchrist rounded the counter and stood beside Ben. “Nearly ten years ago, a young lady tried shoveling up an entire field in search of that gold. Others have done crazy things to get at it.”

  “And a body would need to dismantle the place to find anything hidden there,” Ben added. “If it is there.”

  “Hmm.” Dodd hooked his thumbs into his belt and gazed at the ceiling as though contemplating the best of the garlic and onions hung there. “Are you suggesting somebody burned down that place to find gold?”

  “A man desperate enough for treasure would stop at nothing to get it.” Ben spoke softly so as not to break the sheriff’s thoughtful mood.

  “Hmm.” Dodd scratched his chin. “Who else is new in town and started hearing stories of gold in the livery? Not too many folks move here in the middle of winter.”

  “I don’t know,” Ben admitted. “Lily Reese says that it’s hard to say sometimes because we do get visitors.”

  We, Ben had said. As though he would remain a part of this town.

  “Only three I know of since October.” Gilchrist’s lips thinned. “Tom Bailyn, a spinster lady come to live with her sister on a farm about ten miles away, and Jake Doerfel.”

  “I don’t know of any more, really, when I think on it.” Dodd laid a hand on his belt where most lawmen carried guns.

  He sported a knife in a case and a short, thick club.

  Dodd half faced the door. “Let me think on it, and I’ll come back.”

  He strode from the store.

  Ben turned to Gilchrist. “He didn’t accuse me of burning down the livery to get to the gold that might be there.”

  “He wouldn’t dare. I got him hired. I can get him unhired.”

  “Thank you.”

  Ben didn’t know what else to say.

  “We want you to stay here, lad. And Mrs. Twining sure could use family around in her last years.”

  “I know, but. . .” Ben hesitated then decided this kind man deserved the truth. “Lily has been offered a job in Chicago. I want to find work there and be close by her until I can support a wife.”

  “You have a job here and can support a wife just fine.” Gilchrist’s voice was a growl. “And if she doesn’t love you enough to stay here, she isn’t good enough for you.”

  “But she thinks God wants her to go.”

  “And you? Is it what the Lord wants for you?” Gilchrist gave him a penetrating look. “Or are you thinking of a heart for a woman instead of a heart for the Lord?”

  Ben winced. “I wish I knew, sir. I was so sure I’d found the right place here, but everything points to me going. Lily and I wouldn’t even have a place to live now if we married.”

  “You mean because some fool for gold tried scaring you off or killing you off? That doesn’t sound like God’s message to me, but then I’m not as versed in the Bible as Eva says I should be.”

  A tingle raced up Ben’s spine—excitement, fear, anticipation.

  “God uses anyone,” he said. “Thank you for your wisdom. I’ll think and pray about it.”

  He left the store to wander through the muddy streets of town. Although rain fell in intermittent bursts, he let himself get wet. He needed fresh air and space to think. Praying, he discovered, didn’t work at the moment. No words would come to him any different from those he had spoken to God a thousand times or more. Yes, more.

  He wanted a place where he belonged, a place for roots. Part of those roots should be a wife, children, and family. Yet God didn’t seem to want him to have both.

  No matter how hard he worked in the city, he could never earn enough to have the kind of home and land he could have here in Browning City, especially if he took Gilchrist’s offer after all. If he won the plowing contest, too, he could buy the land before someone else snatched it up.

  But he couldn’t have these things and Lily, too. Indeed, nothing guaranteed he could have Lily at all.

  “Everyone and everything I love gets taken from me.” Words burst from him at the edge of town. “Just like Lily.”

  The earlier tearing of his heart seemed complete. A hollow space lay inside. He had tried to fill it with working hard with Pa, then making a home in Browning City, then the prospect of finding gold, and then the possibility of winning prize money, purchasing land, and winning Lily’s heart.

  Lily tried to banish her emptiness with noise and activity. He’d told her to fill it with the Lord, yet he hadn’t truly done that himself. He yearned for solid things as much as she longed for crowds. He claimed he sought the Lord’s direction, but he went in his own.

  “Lord, I need Your forgiveness for my willfulness. Thy will be done, not mine.”

  He didn’t know what else to pray, so he turned back toward town. Sheriff Dodd would want to talk with him again soon. He needed to see about getting some of his things replaced and tend to the livery horses in their temporary quarters at the blacksmith’s. He would talk to Great-Aunt Deborah, too. She was his relation and possessed a godly spirit and kind heart. She would have advice for him.

  Seeing Dodd ahead of him, Ben lengthened his stride and caught up with the lawman. “Have you come up with a plan?”

  Dodd jumped. “Don’t sneak up on a body like that.” He faced Ben. “I was looking for you. I do have a plan. Some of us will stand guard over the livery and see if anyone comes to search the ashes.”

  “Not tonight.”

  Ben wanted to talk to Great-Aunt Deborah, and standing guard would prevent him doing so if he needed
to be there at dusk.

  “Yep, tonight.”

  “But the ashes will still be hot inside.”

  “All the more reason to stand guard. Stop any fires from starting again.”

  With the heavy rain that began in the afternoon, no fire had a chance. But Ben, Matt, and the sheriff hid in strategic locations around the site of the livery.

  They got nothing during the vigil except cold and wet. Ben woke late the next day, sneezing and chilled. He let Great-Aunt Deborah cosset him through the morning, but as idleness made him uneasy, he prepared for another night’s vigil.

  “You shouldn’t go out there again,” Great-Aunt Deborah advised over dinner. “You haven’t seen Lily since the fire.”

  Ben began to clear the table of dishes. “This has to be done and can’t wait.”

  “Talking to Lily shouldn’t wait, either.”

  Ben’s stomach clenched. “So she did decide to go?”

  “That’s not for me to discuss with you.” Great-Aunt Deborah compressed her lips, but her eyes twinkled.

  Her reaction bemusing him, Ben said good night and left the house.

  For the first three hours of a blessedly warm and dry night, nothing stirred in the ashes except the wind. Then the crunch of a footfall on the gravel of the stable yard alerted Ben to an intruder approaching. Ben stood motionless beneath the overhang of the blacksmith shop roof. Motionless and poised for action. Stars and a three-quarter moon illuminated the site enough for him to make out a shadow slipping to the edge of the burned timbers and walls.

  Careful not to make any noise, Ben closed in on the man. From the corner of his eye, he caught movement indicating that Dodd moved in on the intruder, too.

  “Now!” Dodd shouted.

  He and Ben grabbed the man’s arms.

  “Yieeee!” He shrieked like an angry cat and lashed out with his feet.

  “Don’t move,” Dodd commanded. “You’re under arrest for trespassing and likely burning down the livery.”

  “No, no,” squeaked Jake Doerfel. “I’m getting a story.”

  “In the middle of the night?”

  For once, Ben appreciated the lawman’s sarcasm.

  “You could’ve gotten all the story you liked when you helped fight this blaze you started.”