Springwater Seasons

by Linda Lael Miller

  At first, Rachel spent a great deal of time standing in the bare-dirt dooryard of the schoolhouse, looking across the road at the Brimstone Saloon and fuming at the injustice of it all. The place was not at all what one would expect of a frontier establishment of that nature, neither ramshackle nor rustic, and certainly not weathered. In point of fact, it was downright fancy—whitewashed, with a row of trimmed windows across the second floor. There was grass growing out front, and every day the portly bartender came out, persnickety as an English butler, and picked up any empty bottles and cheroot stubs that might be lying about. It galled Rachel not a little that such an institution should thrive, while the school, the very future of the town and the territory, went begging. It had galled her even more to learn, on her second day in Springwater, that Trey Hargreaves, the man who’d rescued her and the town’s schoolbooks, owned half interest. Furthermore, there were regular brawls at the Brimstone Saloon, and the place drew every reprobate who chanced to be passing by. Not to mention attracting drovers and, with them, their herds of bawling, dust-raising, long-horned cattle.

  Fretting, of course, was a fruitless enterprise, and so in time Rachel decided to ignore Mr. Hargreaves and his business enterprise entirely. She got a list of the six families who would be sending their children to the school come fall, borrowed a retired coach horse from Jacob, and set out to visit each home.

  The Bellweathers, Tom and Sue, lived at the edge of a clearing, some two miles from the schoolhouse, in a well-kept cabin. Their ten-year-old daughter, Kathleen, was a lively, spirited child, plain as the proverbial mud-fence and totally unconcerned by the fact. Rachel liked her straight away.

  Tom was a lean and wiry man, with friendly eyes and coarse black hair that hinted at Indian heritage, while Mrs. Bellweather, Sue, was timid, with a look of bleak bewilderment linking behind her shaky smile. “I don’t see where Kathleen needs fancy schoolin’,” she said, seeing Rachel off at the end of the visit. “She can read some—Tom taught her from the Good Book—and all she’s likely to do is get married and have young’uns anyhow.”

  Rachel had faced this philosophy before, in the East, and it never failed to rankle. Long experience had taught her, however, to look past this ill-founded belief, for there were nearly always deeper reasons for such prejudices. She suspected that, in this instance as in many others, there had been other children in the family once, some older than Kathleen, very possibly, and gone from home, and some younger, and no longer living. The loss of one child, let alone several, usually made a woman more protective of those remaining. No doubt Mrs. Bellweather was simply afraid to let her daughter make the two-mile trek to and from school each day, and Rachel could sympathize.

  Standing beside the borrowed horse, reins in hand, she assessed this earnest and careworn woman with gentleness and respect. “It’s important for Kathleen to learn as much as she can,” Rachel said cautiously. “And to be with other children. Perhaps Mr. Bellweather wouldn’t mind riding with her in the mornings, at least part of the way, and coming to meet her in the afternoons.”

  “There’s no time for such as that,” Mrs. Bellweather scoffed, though mildly. Something—irritation, perhaps—flashed in her eyes, and was quickly quelled. “We’re plain folks, Miss English. We work from sunup to sundown just to keep body and soul together. We need Kathleen right here.”

  Rachel held her ground. “I’ve no doubt that Kathleen is a great help to you. Perhaps, though, for her sake, you’ll find a way to spare her, just during the school term. I promise you, Mrs. Bellweather, that your daughter will have a better life if she attends class regularly for the next few years.”

  “Tom’s set on it,” Mrs. Bellweather confessed, with a long sigh. Then she gestured to a little grove of trees, birches and cottonwoods mostly, some distance from the house. Squinting, Rachel saw what she had half-expected to see—grave markers, tilting wooden crosses set into the ground. “We had two little boys, once,” Kathleen’s mother went on. “They died right after we settled here, of a fever. There was three little girls, too, all of them come after our girl, Kathleen. One of them wandered off one day, her name was Betsey, and got herself drowned in the pond back there in the woods. Little Anna, she fell underfoot when Tom was workin’ with some horses and was trampled afore he could get to her. Then there was Mary Beth. The fever got her, like it did her brothers.” The woman paused, let out a shuddering breath. “Kathleen’s all we got left to us.”

  Rachel wanted nothing so much as to put her arms around the other woman and weep with her, weep because life could be so hard, so brutally hard. She’d learned for herself, though, that the shedding of tears was a waste, and besides that, Mrs. Bellweather had little enough besides her dignity. She wasn’t likely to welcome a display of pity. “While she’s with me,” Rachel said, “I’ll take care of her.”

  “I reckon that has to be good enough, the way Tom feels on the matter,” Mrs. Bellweather answered, resigned. “But I’m still agin the whole idea. I don’t mind tellin’ you that much.”

  There wasn’t a lot Rachel could say in response to that; she thanked Sue Bellweather for the tea and hospitality, said she looked forward to seeing Kathleen at school on the last Monday in August, and mounted Jacob’s old horse to ride off.

  By then, it was mid-morning, and Rachel, having breakfasted early with June-bug and Jacob, was hungry. She waited until she was out of sight of the Bellweather place before ferreting through her saddlebags for the fried egg sandwich she’d made before leaving the station. She consumed half of it in a few distracted bites, put the rest away, and rode on, musing over the directions Jacob had given her when she set out.

  She would visit the Kildare place, a small ranch owned by a widower, who had, according to the list June-bug had made out, two sons, Jamie, eight, and Marcus Aurelius, age ten. She was still smiling over Marcus’s lofty name as she guided the horse up a steep sidehill and into the woods. A good part of her mind remained with little Kathleen Bellweather and the burdens being the only surviving child had placed on her. Due to these distractions, she was upon the makeshift camp before she even suspected that it was there.

  A fire burned in a circle of stones, and there was a wheelless Conestoga wagon, with a rough lean-to woven of branches beside it. Rachel was just about to call out, announcing her presence and apologizing for the intrusion, if the inhabitants proved unfriendly, when a small, freckled face peered around the back end of the wagon.

  “Who are you?” the child demanded. A boy, Rachel saw, nine or ten at most, with straight fair hair that continually fell into his eyes, bare feet, and rags for clothing.

  “My name is Rachel English,” Rachel answered, climbing down from the horse and feeling the corresponding sting in the balls of her feet. She walked most places, and though she was a competent rider, she was not used to the saddle. “What’s yours?”

  “You’d better git before my pa comes back,” the boy warned.

  Rachel looked around at the small, forlorn camp, which showed little or no sign of an adult presence. There seemed to be no food, and there was no livestock, either. “Tell me your name, and then we’ll talk about your father,” she said, making no move to mount up and ride away.

  “Toby,” the boy spat. “Toby Houghton. You happy now?”

  Rachel merely smiled, for she saw through Toby’s bravado. He was small, he was hungry, he was alone, and he was afraid.

  “My pa’s gonna be back any day now,” Toby insisted. “Any minute, mostly likely.”

  Rachel nodded sagely. “I see. How long has he been away?”

  Toby dragged fine white teeth over his lower lip while he considered his reply; his blue eyes were sharp and slightly narrowed as he studied Rachel. She added intelligence to her assessment. “A long while, I reckon,” he admitted, at great length. “But he’s comin’ back. I know he is.”

  “When was the last time you had something to eat, Toby?” Rachel asked, careful to keep the pity she couldn’t help feeling out of her v
oice and her expression.

  “I shot me a squirrel just yesterday,” he said. He was as grubby an urchin as Rachel had ever laid eyes on, and she felt a deep and immediate connection with him. They had something in common, the two of them—they were both essentially alone in the world, strong people set on making a place for themselves. His father had abandoned him, and his mother was probably dead. Rachel’s family had been splintered—her three brothers permanently divided by the war and scattered all over the world by then, her parents long since gone on to whatever reward awaited them, worn out by their struggles to keep a struggling farm in the black.

  Rachel turned and raised the flap on her saddlebags, taking out the other half of her sandwich, still wrapped in one of June-bug’s cloth napkins, and offered it in silence.

  Toby withstood the temptation as long as he could, but in the end pride gave way to hunger, and he darted forward, snatched the food out of her hand, and gobbled it down with a desperation that would have brought tears to Rachel’s eyes, if she’d allowed them leave.

  “I think you’d better come to town with me,” she said, when the brief frenzy was over and Toby was fit to listen. “Just until your pa gets back, I mean.” God knew where she would put the child—she could hardly promise the McCaffreys’ hospitality, without even consulting them—but she couldn’t just leave him there, either.

  Perhaps he might find a place at the Wainwright ranch with Scully and Evangeline and earn his keep helping out with the chores, she thought. If Evangeline had said it once, she’d said it a hundred times, and always with that special, joyous exuberance Scully had brought to her life—there was no end to the work on that place. Spring, summer, winter and fall, day and night, there was always something needing to be done.

  Toby looked eager, but at the same time, troubled. “What if my pa don’t know where I got off to?” he worried aloud.

  “He’ll know,” Rachel said evenly. He’d know a few other things as well, this irresponsible, vanished man, when she got through pinning back his ears for him. “Get your clothes, Toby. We’re going to town.”

  He hesitated, then went back to the dilapidated wagon, crawled inside, and came out again a few minutes later with a small bundle. He waited, gentleman-fashion, until Rachel was mounted, then put his foot in the stirrup and clasped her hand so she could pull him up behind her. His skinny arms rested gingerly around her waist.

  “My pa’s gonna be real mad,” he warned.

  “Don’t worry about your pa,” Rachel replied. “I’ll deal with him when the time comes.”

  Half an hour later, they were at Springwater, approaching the station. To Rachel’s consternation, Mr. Hargreaves was there, one shoulder braced against the frame of the open door, a match stick between his teeth. Guffy O’Hagan was sitting on the step, ready and waiting for the next stage to come in. When it arrived, he would help Jacob exchange the team of horses or mules for a fresh one, then take over for the other driver.

  “Who do we have here?” Jacob asked, with one of his slow grins, coming around the corner of the station and seeing Toby slide to the ground, clutching his bundled belongings. Jacob’s sleeves were pushed up and his clothes were dirty; it was plain that he’d been working in the stables out back. The stage line owned some forty horses, and caring for them required a lot of hard effort.

  The boy stood stiffly, his head tilted way back so he could look Jacob in the face. Toby introduced himself.

  “Well, howdy,” Jacob said, shaking the lad’s hand. His eyes met Rachel’s, questioning. “Why don’t you go on inside and tell my wife—her name’s Miss June-bug—that I said to feed you as much as you can hold?”

  Toby took to the offer and went inside, casting tentative, cautious glances at Trey and Guffy as he passed them. It was almost as if he expected one of them to reach out and grab him, drag him back, send him packing. Most of his life, Rachel suspected with a pang, Toby Houghton had been unwelcome wherever he went.

  “Where did you find that poor little mite?” Jacob inquired of Rachel, his voice quiet. His rugged, time-worn face was full of compassion and some old and private grief.

  “He was alone in a little camp, not far from the Bellweather place,” Rachel said. She was still standing beside the horse, reins in hand, and when Trey came toward her and Jacob, her heartbeat picked up speed, a development that pleased her not at all.

  “That would be Mike Houghton’s boy,” Trey said. “There’s never been a man more useless than Mike is.”

  “That’s so,” Jacob agreed, in his taciturn way. It was a damning statement, coming from him, for in the short time Rachel had known the McCaffreys, she’d learned that they were warmhearted people, inclined to think well of their neighbors, even when they didn’t approve of their actions. Trey Hargreaves, with his half-interest in the Brimstone Saloon, was a prime example. They spoke highly of him, and evidently made him welcome whenever he chose to come calling.

  “Toby swears his father will be back for him,” Rachel said, but with little conviction. Even as she uttered the words, she knew it wasn’t going to happen, at least, not anytime soon. Houghton had forsaken his son, simply left him to fend for himself, in a wilderness that had been the breaking of many a full grown man, and strong ones, at that.

  “I reckon Miss June-bug would like a lad to feed and fuss over,” Jacob mused, gazing toward the house now, with a faraway expression in his deep brown eyes. “She’s missed our own boys something fierce. We both have.”

  Rachel knew a little about Will and Wesley McCaffrey, both of whom had fallen at Chattanooga, again because Evangeline had written her about them. Like most of the other soldiers, on both sides of the conflict, they had been far too young to go off to the fighting, leaving families and sweethearts and unfinished lives behind them.

  Rachel was saved from replying by the distant sound of an approaching stagecoach, driver shouting and cursing, harness fittings jingling, hooves pounding on hard-packed ground. Guffy bolted eagerly to his feet and Trey caught hold of Rachel’s arm and pulled her out of harm’s way, the elderly horse naturally following.

  “Best to stand aside,” Trey said.

  Rachel met his eyes squarely. “No doubt you know Toby’s father quite well. He would be the sort to frequent a saloon, wouldn’t her?”

  A small muscle flexed and unflexed in Trey’s jaw, just above the long scar. “That was unworthy, Miss English,” he said tautly. “My saloon is a place of business, not a den of iniquity, and I’ll thank you to remember that.”

  “Nothing good can come of whiskey drinking and carousing, Mr. Hargreaves,” Rachel responded, in chilly tones, but she’d lost some of her sense of conviction. As far as she knew, there was no gambling at the Brimstone Saloon, and certainly no trading in flesh. On the other hand, with a name like that place had, it was probably only a matter of time before sin and depravation broke out on every front.

  Hargreaves leaned in closer and spoke in a hoarse whisper. “I hope you won’t let your blue-nosed, back-East disapproval of me spill over onto my daughter, Miss English, because if you do, you and I will have words. Loud ones.”

  Rachel stared at him, amazed. “You have a daughter?”

  He smiled. “I’m quite capable of making babies,” he said. He paused, plainly enjoying Rachel’s reaction to that forthright statement. “Her name is Emma, she’s just about to turn twelve, and right now she’s staying with the Wainwrights. She’ll be back any day, though, soon as the baby is born and the missus is up and around again, I suppose, and she’ll want to meet you. She’s been real excited ever since she learned you were coming to Springwater, Emma has, and I do hope, Teacher, that you will not disappoint her.”

  Rachel was flabbergasted, and not a little troubled by the knowledge that if Trey Hargreaves had a daughter, he probably had a wife, too. She didn’t want him to have a wife, though she couldn’t have explained why, even to herself. “Mrs. Hargreaves?” she inquired, in what she hoped was an ordinary tone. “Where is she?
”

  “Dead,” Trey answered flatly. His face had gone hard all of the sudden, and he turned without another word and walked away, toward the Brimstone Saloon, leaving Rachel to stare mutely after him.

  In the meantime, the stagecoach had arrived, disgorging a flock of hungry passers-through, and Miss June-bug was busy inside the station, serving fried chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, and corn fritters. Toby sat at one end of the table nearest the cookstove, eating with both hands, while the passengers scattered themselves about the room, probably as glad of a few solitary minutes as they were of a hot, nourishing meal. As Rachel well knew, the inside of a coach could be a cramped and most uncomfortable place, where some loquacious travelers had been known to hold forth on every sort of subject for mile after mile.

  “You be wanting that old horse again today?” Jacob asked, at her elbow, coming over the threshold with hat in hand. He gave a half smile, seeing Toby tucking into his food.

  “I suppose it’s too late to get to the Kildares’ and back before sundown,” Rachel mused.

  “That it is,” Jacob agreed. “Best save that errand for tomorrow, unless you’re a hand with a shootin’ iron.” His expression didn’t change, but the light in his eyes might have been mirth; it had the sunny effect of a broad, mischievous grin.

  Rachel laughed. “I ride well enough,” she answered, “but I don’t shoot. I’ll stay right here and try to persuade Miss June-bug to let me help her with the washing up.”

  “She might just give in,” Jacob speculated, watching his wife bustle happily between the tables with a large blue-enamel coffeepot in hand. “Knowin’ her, she’s probably already worked out where to get some clothes for that boy and how to wrassle him into a bathtub. That’ll occupy her for the better part of the night, I reckon.”

  “Is there a place to buy clothing?” Rachel asked, puzzled. As far as she knew, there wasn’t a store in miles.

  “My June-bug is a wonder with a needle and thread, and every time the peddler comes through, she buys a bolt of cloth. Time that boy gets up in the morning, she’ll have made him trousers and a shirt, sort of like them elves in that fairy tale about the shoemaker.”