Springwater Seasons

by Linda Lael Miller

  Had things been different, Savannah would have told him what to do with his orders, but this was the exception. Whatever her private views might be regarding Parrish, he was a doctor, and therefore badly needed at the moment. She set the bag down within his easy reach and hurried out to obey.

  The baby, a strapping boy with bunched fists and pumping feet, was delivered less than half an hour later. Parrish cut the cord competently, washed and bundled the infant, and handed him to his breathless, beaming mother.

  “He’s right handsome, isn’t he?” she said.

  Savannah, still struck by the messy splendor of the experience, couldn’t help wondering what would become of the two of them, Miranda and her brand-new baby, alone in a remote place like this, with no money and no prospects. She blinked back uncharacteristic tears and averted her eyes.

  “I told you he’d be big as a mule,” said the doctor, scrubbing his hands at the basin by then. He nodded to Savannah, indicating that he wanted the linens changed on Miranda’s bed, and she proceeded to comply, skillfully managing the task without disturbing mother and baby overmuch.

  He went out then, without another word, and Savannah supposed he’d board the next stagecoach, come the morning, and move on to wherever he’d been headed in the first place. She certainly wouldn’t miss him, but she was grateful that he’d delivered Miranda’s baby, however unwillingly, and she wished him well.

  When both Miranda and the baby were sleeping comfortably, Savannah left the room and asked to be directed to her own chamber, which turned out to be a small nook behind the kitchen stove. Two buckets of hot water awaited her there, along with her few bags, and she undressed behind a scarred folding screen and washed herself from head to foot, then put on fresh clothes, a blue bombazine skirt and white shirtwaist, deceptively prim. Gazing into the small, cracked mirror affixed to the inside wall, she arranged her mass of red-gold hair in a neat cloud around her face, and pinched some color into her wan cheeks. For all her effort, her light blue eyes revealed her weariness, and a lot more besides.

  She made herself leave the tiny room and join Mr. McCaffrey and Dr. Parrish at the table nearest the fireplace. They were drinking coffee and talking in low tones, but when Savannah appeared, they both stood, McCaffrey readily, with the easy, practiced grace of a gentleman, Parrish causing the bench legs to scrape against the floor as he thrust himself to his feet, a moment too late for good manners.

  “Evenin’,” Jacob McCaffrey said. Only then did she notice the fair-haired boy and the beautiful Indian girl playing checkers on the hearth nearby. Both of them looked up at her in mild speculation.

  “Good evening,” Savannah said. She played at being a lady whenever she could, but it was a facade, with no substance behind it, and she suspected everyone else in the room knew that as well as she did, even the children. She’d stepped off the narrow path—or, more properly, been dragged off—a long time before.

  “Toby,” McCaffrey said, in his rumbling, summer-thunder voice, “fetch Miss Rigbey some of them dumplin’s and a little chicken. I reckon she’s hungry by now.”

  Savannah hadn’t eaten since the night before, having left Choteau very early that morning, well before the woman at the rooming house where she’d stayed since her arrival in the territory was willing to serve breakfast, but she found she had no appetite. She shook her head. “I’ll just brew a pot of tea, if that’s all right.”

  The Indian girl scrambled to her feet. “I’ll do that for you,” she said, with cheerful resolution. “You must be my pa’s partner.”

  Savannah smiled, finally realizing that this was Trey’s daughter, the child he had spoken of so often during their long association. “Yes,” she said. “And you’re Emma!”

  Emma nodded. “I don’t think he’s expecting you,” she said. “He got himself married a while back, you know. A year ago last spring.”

  “I had word that he meant to take a wife,” Savannah said, well aware that Parrish and the stationmaster, and probably the boy, too, were watching her with new interest. “I hope they’ll be very happy together.”

  Emma was intent on ladling water into a big kettle with a spout and setting it on to boil. With the easy skill of a grown woman, she built up the fire and adjusted the damper. “They’re happy, all right,” she said. “Pa’s going to build us a big house, the kind you send off for. The boards and windows and things are supposed to get here any day now. Then we’ll all live together, me and Pa and Rachel, like a real family.” Her smile broadened. “We got us a mortgage!”

  Savannah laid a hand on the girl’s shoulder and smiled gently. “You must miss living with your father,” she said.

  Emma looked up at her with shining eyes. “I don’t mind staying here. Me and Toby, we play checkers most all the time, and do our schoolwork together. Besides, I see my pa every day, and Rachel’s our teacher—she’s my stepmother, but I have to call her ‘Mrs. Hargreaves’ at school—so I don’t get lonesome for her, either.” She lowered her voice confidentially. “Except sometimes late at night, when I can’t get to sleep.”

  The men had gone back to their quiet talk, making Savannah feel less self-conscious. “I’m sure it won’t be long,” she said to Emma, “until you’re all together again in your big new house.”

  Emma’s brow crumpled with concern. “That lady in there was screaming a lot, while she was having her baby. It must have hurt something powerful.”

  Savannah saw no point in lying. “That’s so,” she admitted. “But it’s over now, and she’s got the child to show for her pains.” For all the good that would do a scrap of a girl, alone and penniless in the wilds of Montana Territory, she added to herself.

  “Miss Rachel—I think she’s going to have a baby, too,” Emma said, in that same confidential undertone. “I don’t reckon me or my pa could stand seeing her hurt like that, though.”

  Savannah gave the child a gentle squeeze around the shoulders. “Don’t you fret,” she said. “It’s a natural thing. Your stepmother will be just fine, and so will the rest of you.” She couldn’t imagine what made her speak with such authority, given her utter lack of experience with such matters, except that she liked Trey’s daughter and didn’t want her to worry.

  “You’d better have yourself some of these chicken and dumplings,” Emma said wisely, lifting the lid of a cast-iron pot and peering inside. “Jacob made them, but they aren’t halfways bad.”

  Savannah laughed, more relaxed than before. “Maybe I’m a little hungry after all,” she admitted, and soon she was seated at one of the tables, far from the men, consuming a plateful of food. When she’d washed her dish and utensils and put them away, she went in to check on Miranda and the baby.

  The girl was awake, admiring her little son, and her eyes shone with a queer mingling of pride and sorrow when she looked at Savannah. “He’s the image of his daddy, Jack Worgan.”

  Savannah drew a deep breath and let it out slowly, searching for words. In her line of work, she’d heard just about every story there was, and she figured that Worgan was either dead, married, or just plain gone. She had a personal rule against prying, so all she said was “That’s nice.”

  Tears pooled along Miranda’s lower lashes. “I don’t have the first idea what we’re going to do, my baby and me. I been asking God for help right along, but there sure hasn’t been any clap of thunder nor burning bush.”

  Had she been a religious woman, which she wasn’t, Savannah might have pointed out that some folks would construe the stagecoach’s coming along when it had as an answer to prayer. The same might have been said of Dr. Parrish’s help, too, slow as he’d been to give it, and of the waiting shelter and safety of Springwater station. “We’ll think of something,” she said, and it was bravado, pure and simple, for Savannah knew full well just how limited a woman’s choices really were.

  There was teaching, and even if that appointment hadn’t been held by Trey’s wife, Rachel, Miranda clearly wasn’t qualified. There was marriage—pr
ospects seemed a bit scant, Springwater being smack in the middle of the wilderness—or household service, which wasn’t so different from being a wife, except that a body could expect to be paid for her drudgery. No grand houses around, either, in need of servants. The last choice was whoring, in all its many forms. That was how most people saw Savannah’s way of earning a living, as a form of prostitution, even though she’d never in her life slept with a man for money.

  “I can work hard as any man,” Miranda said anxiously. “If somebody’ll just give me half the chance—”

  Savannah looked away. She could have offered the girl a job of work herself, entertaining the men at the Brimstone Saloon—but of course that would be no favor. And what would become of the child, growing up in such a place? She forced herself to meet Miranda’s gaze again. “Let me make a crib for that baby of yours,” she said. Then she removed a drawer from the bureau, set it carefully across the seats of two straight-backed chairs, and padded the inside with a blanket. That done, she gently took the sleeping infant from Miranda’s arms and laid him down in the improvised cradle. “What are you going to call him?” she asked, hoping, for a reason she couldn’t explain, that it wouldn’t be “Jack,” after his absent father.

  “I want to give him a good, solid, Bible name,” Miranda said, settling into the fluffy feather mattress with a yawn. “Isaiah, maybe. Or Ezekiel.”

  Savannah smiled. “Shall I bring you a plate? Mr. McCaffrey made chicken and dumplings.”

  Miranda shook her head and yawned again. “No, thanks, ma’am,” she said. “More than anything, I want to sleep a spell.”

  “A good idea,” Savannah agreed gently, and start’ ed toward the door.

  “Wait,” Miranda said quickly, and with a note of soft urgency in her voice.

  Savannah stopped. The room was filled with twilight now; soon, it would be pitch dark. She expected the girl to ask for a lantern.

  “I’m grateful,” Miranda said. “To you and to the doc and to that stagecoach driver, too. I guess me and little Isaiah or Ezekiel would be in a grievous plight by now, if it weren’t for you folks.”

  Savannah merely nodded, not trusting herself to speak, and slipped out, closing the door softly behind her.

  “You look mighty sorrowful,” Mr. McCaffrey remarked, when she turned to find him leaning against the mantel of the big fireplace, drawing on a pipe. There was no sign of the children or, for that matter, of Dr. Parrish. No doubt he’d already struck out for the Brimstone Saloon, there to spend whatever money he might have left on liquor and games of chance.

  “I’m worried about Miranda,” she admitted, though not until she was well away from the doorway leading to the hall, lest the girl should overhear. “She’s got no folks to look after her, no man either.”

  “I kinda figured that,” McCaffrey remarked. “I’ve got an idea my June-bug will be able to come up with a solution or two, though. She has a way of makin’ places for lost sheep. You may have noticed we’ve got a stray or two around here already.”

  Savannah sagged onto one of the benches and rested her elbows on the tabletop, propping her chin in her palms. “Emma and the boy—Toby?”

  “I wouldn’t consider Emma a stray, exactly. Her papa loves her somethin’ fierce. But Toby, now, he was alone in the world, for all practical intents and purposes, until we took him in. And then there’s Christabel—die’s with June-bug, lookin’ after Granny. She’s got one lame foot, Christabel has, and a heart that’s bigger than she is. Anyhow, I don’t imagine Miss Miranda and her baby will be that much more trouble.”

  “You mean, you’ll just let them stay here, indefinitely?”

  “I don’t see what else we can do. Wouldn’t be right nor proper to turn them out, after all.”

  Savannah dashed at her eyes with the back of one hand, much heartened by the man’s kindness. She hadn’t seen much of that kind of charity in her own travels, had almost given up hope that it existed. “Thank you, Mr. McCaffrey,” she said, with a sniffle. She was just tired, she reasoned to herself, that was all. She’d long since corralled and tamed all her emotions—it was safer not to care too much about anything or anyone.

  “Jacob,” he corrected her, with the slightest shadow of a smile. She hadn’t known him long, but it was clear that when Jacob smiled, it was an occasion in itself.

  She put out her hand, as though they were meeting for the first time. “Savannah, then,” she insisted, and sniffled again.

  He set the pipe on the mantel and came to sit down across the table from her. “You don’t look much like a saloon-keepin’ woman,” he observed. “More like a schoolmarm, or the lady of a big, fancy house.”

  Coming from anyone else, the remark might have stung, but Savannah knew Jacob was merely curious. Although she suspected he could be stern when the situation called for it, his was a benign and gentle spirit. She heaved a sigh. “My story is a long one, Jacob, and it’s complicated. I’m not sure I’m ready to tell it just yet.”

  “That’s fine,” Jacob answered easily. The station door opened just then, spilling a shadowy chill across the smooth plank floor. “We all got our secrets.”

  Dr. Parrish came in, looking sober if no neater than before. He pushed the door closed behind him. What secrets, Savannah wondered, what scandals and sorrows, had made him what he was?

  CHAPTER

  2

  THE FLICKERING LIGHT of the evening fire made Savannah Rigbey look more like a ministering angel than what Pres knew her to be—a saloon-keeper and quite possibly something a whole lot: less respectable. She’d handled herself admirably well during the delivery earlier—it had been untidy work, though tame compared with what he was used to—and he’d noticed her pallor and the grimly determined set of her chin and shoulders. Every time the girl, Miranda, had screamed, she’d flinched, as though feeling an echo of the pain in her own body.

  Now, coming upon her unexpectedly, in the main room of the stagecoach station, he thought she seemed smaller than before, more fragile. And, somehow, lit from within.

  “Evenin’,” said McCaffrey, sparing him a nod.

  Pres thrust splayed fingers through his hair and then inclined his head in response to the other man’s sparse greeting. He wasn’t drunk, though the inside of his head still felt scraped and hollow from the last bout of elbow-bending in Choteau, but all of the sudden he was aware of his seedy appearance in a way that had not troubled him for a very long time. He yearned for a bath, a shave, fresh clothes, and a place in polite company.

  “Didn’t see where you had any baggage to speak of, Doc,” McCaffrey observed, while Savannah just sat there, at one of the long tables, watching Pres in silent speculation. “You just passin’ through, or meaning to light right here at Springwater? Town’s growin’. Folks have bought land for a newspaper office and a general store, and the Territorial Governor has promised to appoint a U.S. Marshal to keep the peace. We could use a doctor, too.”

  Pres had just come from the spring that gave the place its name; he’d gone for a walk after seeing to the girl and her baby, to stretch his legs and calm his nerves. As far as he was concerned, Springwater didn’t qualify as a town, with just a stagecoach station, a schoolhouse and a saloon to call its own, but he saw no point in saying so. He broke the trance that had held him in place, just inside the doorway, and shook his head, proceeding toward the cookstove at the far end of the room.

  “I’m moving on with the next stage,” he said, taking an enamel mug from a shelf and filling it with strong black coffee from a pot on the back of the range. He’d know the place he was meant to wind up when he got to it and, once there, he expected to settle in and drink himself to death, swamped by his own demons. Matter of fact, he’d been slowly killing himself for a long time, and most days it seemed he was succeeding.

  Turning around, mug in hand and raised halfway to his mouth, he caught Savannah looking at him, though her expression was unreadable in that light. She glanced away quickly, if not quickly enou
gh. “I’m not the sort of doctor you need, anyway,” he felt obliged to add. An odd thing in itself, that inclination to expand on the matter of his general insufficiency, as he’d long since decided that his life, his preferences, and his problems were nobody’s business but his own.

  McCaffrey arched a dark, bushy eyebrow. “We ain’t real choosy, to tell you the truth,” he said. “If you’re better with horses than people, that’s all right, too.”

  Pres laughed at that, and the response was so unpracticed, so unfamiliar, that it came out as a sort of rasp. This time, he saw a quick, glittering flash of annoyance in Savannah’s eyes; it pleased him to know he’d nettled her, if only a little, though he wasn’t sure why. “I am—or was—a surgeon,” he said, drawn into the circle of firelight, almost against his will. He took a seat across the table from Savannah, while Jacob McCaffrey remained standing, one elbow raised and braced against the pinewood mantel.

  Savannah spoke at last. “You ‘were’ a surgeon?” she asked; her voice was soft, but not pitying. “What happened?”

  He saw it all again, the blood, the mangled limbs and scattered parts, heard the canon fire and the shrieks. Worst of all, he heard the pleas, for mercy, for death, for an end to the pain. The pleas he couldn’t grant. Some of the coffee spilled over as he set the mug down. “The war,” he ground out. “The war happened.”

  “We lost two sons at Chattanooga,” McCaffrey said. “Will and Wesley were their names. Twins.” He paused, and his voice seemed to come from long ago and far away. “They were good boys. Friend of ours saw them fall, one and then the other. They were born together, and they died together. I guess that’s fittin’, but it like to have broke their mother’s heart, and I don’t believe I’ll ever put the grievin’ entirely behind me, either.” The big man sighed and then returned to himself. For him, Pres knew, the story constituted an oration. “I reckon they’re buried in unmarked graves, but at least they’re in Tennessee.”