Springwater Seasons

by Linda Lael Miller

  Soon, Rachel spotted the two of them, side by side on a sawhorse, Granny with a plateful of fried chicken, potato salad, and pickles in her lap, Christabel chattering earnestly and gesturing with one hand. Rachel smiled and sought out Evangeline, who wanted a look at the inside of the schoolhouse.

  By the time they returned from that, the horse race was about to begin. The course was to cover the stagecoach trail from the station to Willow Creek and back, and everybody was on their honor not to take any shortcuts. The prize was a twenty-dollar gold piece, raised by the entrance fees, and there were seven contestants, including Trey, horses prancing at the rope Jacob had laid across the road to form both the starting line and the finish.

  The rules were announced—no kicking, punching, or spurring of other riders, and no cutting across the meadow. Cursing was allowed, since there were no ladies entered in the race, and spitting was all right, too. If any fights broke out, everybody concerned would get themselves disqualified.

  Having stated all this, Jacob raised his pistol into the air and fired. The racers took off, streaks of man and horseflesh, pounding toward the first bend, raising dust. Rachel was secretly pleased to see that Trey was already in the lead, but it wouldn’t have been diplomatic for the schoolmarm to single out one rider over the others, so she just watched until they’d all disappeared from sight. Toby and the Kildare boys chased across the meadow, to keep the horses in view, all of them yearning, no doubt, for the day when they might ride in such a race as well.

  It was several miles to the creek and back, but the excitement of the spectators was not dimmed by the fact that the horses and their riders would be out of sight for a long time. There weren’t many such gatherings in that isolated place, so this was high adventure for most everyone there, especially the children.

  Nearly forty-five minutes later, the first rider reappeared, far ahead of the others, and Rachel had a hard time keeping herself from jumping up and down when she saw that it was Trey. When he shot across the finish line, his horse barely winded, cheers went up and loud congratulations were offered. Had it been any day but Sunday, Rachel thought, most of the men would probably have adjourned to the Brimstone for a celebratory glass of whiskey.

  Amid the handshakes and back slaps, Trey looked up, found Rachel, and winked. It was an outlandish thing to do, sure to start talk, but she was pleased all the same.

  Through the afternoon, the men played horseshoes and the women gossiped at one of June-bug’s tables, inside the station, while the smaller children napped on various beds and other acceptable surfaces about the place. The older children seemed to have inexhaustible supplies of energy, and played outdoor games that kept them busy until sunset, when the lamps were lit and the food was brought out again. These were the leftovers from dinner, and yet, like the loaves and fishes in the Bible, there was plenty for everybody, with some to spare.

  When the meal ended, the women cleared away and washed the dishes. Each family had brought their own plates, cups, and utensils, as well as something to add to the meal itself. The men moved the tables again, this time out into the dooryard, where a crisp spring breeze was blowing, to make room inside for dancing.

  Zeb Prudham brought out his fiddle and took up a place before the fire, where a cheerful blaze was crackling, making a great show of tuning each string to within a hair of the note. His antics were, Rachel knew, an integral part of the merrymaking, and she enjoyed them wholeheartedly.

  As they had agreed, Trey, who had been keeping his distance since winning the horse race, strode across the room to claim the first dance. As he swept her into his arms, Rachel caught a glimpse of Evangeline’s beaming smile, but her attention was soon firmly fastened on Trey and only Trey. She could not seem to look away from his face, and after a while they might have been alone in that large room, for all the notice they spared for anyone else.

  Rachel was blushing when the song, the sorrowful ballad Lorena, at last came to an end. Being held so close to Trey had had a very strange and flustering effect on her; she felt as though she would surely faint if she didn’t get some fresh air. The whole of her person was a single, thrumming ache, and the blood rushed through her veins to set every nerve to pulsing.

  The night was deliciously cool, and the stars were out in legions, though the moon was but a sliver. Rachel walked rapidly, fluttering one hand in front of her face in lieu of a fan, and wondering what precisely she was going to do. She was wildly, desperately attracted to Trey Hargreaves, that much was obvious, but she couldn’t have made a poorer choice if she’d tried. Men like him didn’t marry and settle down to raise families—Emma had probably been an accident. He might want Rachel—he might want a lot of women—but when the conquest was made, he would tire of her and move on.

  She was thinking these troubling thoughts, and dashing unconsciously at her cheeks with the back of one hand, when she realized she was nearly to the schoolhouse, and someone was behind her. She turned, hoping to see Evangeline, or perhaps one of the McCaffreys, but instead, there was Trey.

  He fell into step beside her. “That was a fine dance, Miss English,” he said. “Thank you for doing me the honor.”

  She turned, fists clenched, and glared up at him. “Why are you doing this?” she cried.

  “Doing what?” he asked, and though he sounded puzzled, she could see by his expression that he knew precisely what she was talking about.

  Rachel sent her arms wheeling out, wide of her body. “Being nice to me!” she snapped. “Just yesterday we were shouting at each other!”

  “I think we’re shouting at each other now,” he pointed out reasonably, but he didn’t raise his voice, and his eyes were full of gentle humor. “Well, you’re shouting,” he clarified.

  They were standing in the middle of what everyone hoped would someday be a street, though at the time it was merely a cattle trail. Rachel shook her finger under his nose. “Maybe I’m not a virgin,” she hissed, “but I am no loose woman!”

  Trey furrowed his brow, but the humor was still dancing in his eyes. “You’re not a virgin?” he echoed. “Teacher! That’s a scandal.”

  Rachel was mortified; she could not believe she’d said such a thing, and yet she had. Heaven help her, she had. Well, maybe that would solve the whole problem. Maybe now that he knew she wasn’t pure and untouched, he wouldn’t want her anymore. Maybe he wouldn’t make her want him.

  He took her shoulders in his hands when she would have turned and fled. “Rachel,” he said, “listen to me. Something important is happening here and we’d damn well better find out what it is before it drives the pair of us crazy.”

  She blinked. She’d expected him to spurn her—most men thought the world ought to contain a perpetual supply of virgins, and only virgins, for them to deflower at their discretion, but it did not seem to bother Trey that she’d been with another man. “We don’t need to know,” she blurted. “What’s happening, I mean. We can just go on, both of us, and pretend nothing has changed.”

  “Maybe you can,” Trey said, frowning and giving her the slightest shake, “but I can’t. I have to know.”

  “But why?”

  “This is why,” he said, and then he hauled her close, bent his head, and covered her mouth with his. Rachel struggled a moment, more against herself than him, and then sagged against him with a murmur of bewildered pleasure. He prodded her lips apart and entered her with his tongue, and the contact was like trying to climb a pole made out of pure lightning. Finally, he held her at arm’s length again, his silvery eyes glittering like shards from a broken moon. “I reckon I have made my point,” he said, somewhat breathlessly.

  Rachel was standing there, trying to will some starch into her knees, one hand splayed across her bosom to keep her heart from beating its way right out of her chest and flying off like a bird. “What are we going to do?” she asked, after a long time.

  “I know what I’d like to do,” Trey said ruefully, thrusting a hand through his hair. “But that’s out
of the question. Fact is, if we don’t get back to that dance right now, there’s bound to be gossip. That’s nothing new for me, but it might be the ruin of you.”

  Rachel knew he was right, though the last thing she wanted was to walk back into that station and face all those people. She was sure Trey’s kiss had set something ablaze inside her that would be visible for miles, let alone in the confines of a fairly crowded room.

  He took her hand, very gently, and slipped it into the crook of his elbow. “Come on, Teacher. There’s only one way to spare your reputation, and that’s to dance with every man who asks you for the rest of the evening.”

  She nodded, sniffled once, and allowed him to escort her back into the station. The light of the lanterns, dim though it was, seemed blinding after the darkness, and the music stopped the instant they crossed the threshold, though that was surely an accident of fate.

  Jacob, ever the gentleman, presented himself immediately and offered a big hand to Rachel “May I have the honor of this dance, Miss English?” he asked.

  Rachel could have kissed him, for as Jacob went, so went the general populace of Springwater and the surrounding environs. She took his hand, nodded, and let him whirl her into a lively reel. Soon, the floor was a-spin with dancers and she lost sight of Trey entirely. Evangeline passed her, in Scully’s arms, and even Granny Johnson was kicking up her heels with one of the mountain men. The girls, Emma and Abigail, Kathleen and Christabel, danced with each other, while the boys stood on the sidelines, looking stubbornly terrified. No doubt they feared being dragged into the fray by that most dreaded of creatures, a girl.

  By the end of the evening, when folks began to gather up children and picnic baskets and start for home, it seemed that everyone had forgotten how the new schoolmarm had gone outside alone with the owner of the Brimstone Saloon, thereby committing an impropriety that would have gotten a lot of teachers dismissed from their jobs. Everyone had forgotten, that is, except for the new schoolmarm herself.

  CHAPTER

  7

  A WEEK AFTER THE DANCE, Rachel was at the schoolhouse, rearranging the few things there were to rearrange. Emma and Christabel had been helping out all morning, but she had sent them down to the station on an errand, only moments before, when the ground began to tremble and a horrendous roar shook the walls.

  Cattle, Rachel realized—apparently, she had been so engrossed in her efforts at organization that she hadn’t heard them approaching. Now, the herd thundered into town, accompanied by whooping cowboys firing pistols into the air. Furious, she hurried across the room and flung open the door.

  The cacophony was rivaled only by the dust, which veiled the sky and sent gritty gusts of wind rolling over her. The time Rachel had spent outside earlier, teetering on an upturned crate while she washed windows, was all for naught.

  Emma and Christabel.

  The realization that the children might well have stumbled straight into the melee seized Rachel suddenly, forced the very breath from her lungs. Dashing toward the street, she searched for them, frantic with fear, but she could see nothing, but for the surreal, shadow-like shapes of cattle and horses and cowboys.

  She screamed the girls’ names, but could barely hear her own voice over the din.

  The herd, already frightened and confused, proceeded to panic, and became a great, swirling knot of hoof and horn, virtually filling the small settlement from one end to the other.

  Again, Rachel cried out, but by that time she was coughing. Gaining the road, she plunged into the center of the madness, desperate to find the children before they were run down or gored. She felt the heat and brawny substance of the beasts, smelled their rough, dusty hides. She struggled to stay on her feet, but soon enough she was down, surrounded, smothered, blinded.

  This was how it would end, then, she thought, with what struck her as a ludicrous sense of equanimity. She would be trampled to death. So much for the old dream of dying in her sleep, ancient of days.

  In the next instant, however, she glimpsed a hand reaching down toward her, and out of pure instinct, she reached back. With a wrench so fearsome that she thought her shoulder had been dislocated, she was pulled upward, and found herself on the back of a horse, Trey’s horse, specifically, with Trey at the reins, furious and covered in yellow-brown dust.

  “The girls!” she gasped, when the shock of being alive subsided a little, looking wildly about, seeing nothing but dirt and cattle and cowboys.

  “They’re all right,” Trey yelled back, over the uproar, expertly guiding the horse through what seemed to Rachel like a medieval battle.

  Soon, they were safe in the dooryard of the station. Two sheepish cowboys rode in behind them, but Rachel had eyes only for Christabel and Emma, who were standing at the edge of the road, faces pale and solemn with alarm. Thank God, Rachel thought, thank God. They’d been here all the time, the girls had, with the McCaffreys to look after them.

  “We’re mighty sorry about the boys carryin’ on the way they have,” one of the drovers said, to the general assembly, with a tug at the brim of his hat.

  Trey’s jawline looked as cold, hard, and smooth as creek stone; Rachel wanted to stay just where she was, safe in the circle of his arms, but of course that couldn’t happen. He leaned down and set her carefully on the ground, directing his words to the man who had spoken, probably the trail boss.

  “They’re welcome in my saloon,” he said evenly, his silver eyes glinting bright as knife-blades in the sun. “All the same, they damn near killed somebody. You’ve got a quarter of an hour to settle those jackals down and get the cattle out into the countryside before I get my rifle and start shooting. I won’t be too choosy about what I aim at, I warn you.”

  Nobody doubted that he meant exactly what he was saying, especially Rachel. He was as outraged a man as she’d ever seen, and for the first time since she’d met him, she realized that he was indeed capable of following through with just such a threat.

  It chilled her, knowing that. She stared at him, stunned, and he must have sensed that she was watching him, because he met her eyes squarely, and the truth passed, unspoken, between them.

  June-bug came forward, tsk-tsking, while Jacob took a steadying hold on Rachel’s arm, for which she was infinitely grateful. As the reality of what had so nearly happened struck her for the second time, her knees turned to water and she probably would have collapsed without her friend’s support.

  Trey glanced at his daughter, then Rachel again, and reined his horse away, toward the Brimstone. Rachel stood, leaning against Jacob and watching him go. Something broke inside her, a dam of some sort, behind which she’d hidden all her most private and troublesome emotions. Her sorrow over Langdon and her guilt because she could not save her heart for him after all, her long-suppressed yearnings for a husband and a home and children of her own, her ill-advised but unquestionable love for one particular, impossible man. A man who carried a terrible secret. Spinning like flotsam in the onslaught, she turned to Jacob, laid her head on his shoulder, and wept inconsolably.

  He just stood there, God bless him, steady as a tree, holding her with one arm and patting her back with the other hand. “Here now,” he said, over and over again, “here now.” And somehow, it was infinitely comforting, that simple, meaningless phrase.

  Within an hour, everyone was composed again—June-bug had taken the girls in hand, soothing and reassuring them in her cheerful fashion, and Rachel had retreated to her room long enough for a sponge bath and a change of clothing. She brushed the dust from her hair, put it back into its customary loose chignon, and marched herself out into the center of things again. She’d feared that if she stayed in that room too long, she might just crawl under the bed and refuse to come out.

  “Those tears,” June-bug asked gently, pouring tea the instant Rachel reappeared, “what were they all about?” There was no sign of Jacob or Toby, and Emma and Christabel were in the latter’s small room, talking excitedly.

  Rachel sighed
and let her shoulders slump. “I think you could guess,” she replied.

  “You’re in love with Trey Hargreaves,” June-bug said, “and you don’t think there’s any hope of things workin’ out for the two of you.”

  Rachel nodded and sagged onto a bench at the table, heartily grateful for the steaming cupful of fresh tea set before her. She felt strangely fragile, she who had been so strong all her life, so independent, and dangerously near another useless fit of crying. “I’ve been lying to myself,” she confessed miserably. “Saying I didn’t need anyone else. But I do, June-bug—I do. I need the wrong man.”

  June-bug sat down across from her and poured a cup of tea for herself, adding two lumps of coarse sugar and a dollop of milk before she spoke. “Maybe Trey ain’t the wrong man. That ever occur to you? Maybe he’s the right one, put by for you back when the stars was set in their places.”

  Rachel felt a surge of affection for this dear friend, who spoke in so homey a fashion and was so very wise. She would have liked for June-bug to be right, but she still had grave doubts. “It won’t work. I can’t live over a saloon—and not because I’m too fancy and think too highly of myself, either. It’s because I don’t believe such places are good for people. I know without even asking that Trey won’t give up his interest in the Brimstone, any more than I’m willing to stop teaching. How can problems like that ever be solved?”

  June-bug shrugged, looking placidly confident, and took a sip of her tea. “I reckon you and Trey would have to decide on the solutions between yourselves. Folks have worked through a lot worse, I can tell you that much.”

  “It seems impossible.”

  “So do lots of other things that get done every day.”

  Rachel sighed. “I’m confused,” she admitted. “I had the distinct impression that you didn’t approve of Trey Hargreaves.”