Springwater Seasons

by Linda Lael Miller

  “Do sit down,” Rachel said, taking both Savannah’s hands in hers and clasping them warmly. “It is such a treat to have a guest!”

  Trey had already opened the wine bottle and set it on the table, between covered dishes with fragrant steam escaping at their edges. He drew back Savannah’s chair, and then his wife’s. Only when they were both settled, with their napkins in their laps, did he take his own seat. Savannah was secretly amazed at the changes in him, and meant to nettle him a little for his pretty manners, once they were out of Rachel’s hearing. The first time Savannah had met Trey, he’d gotten himself hauled off to the hoosegow for riding his horse right through the front doors of the Two-holer Saloon in Missoula and nearly trampling two Temperance workers there to turn the revelers from their wicked ways. Now, he was almost a gentleman.

  “Trey’s going to start on the foundation for our house tomorrow morning,” Rachel confided, when they were all enjoying the succulent food. There was a flush in her cheeks and a glow in her eyes when she looked at her husband that bespoke tender affection and, at the same time, an almost ungovernable passion. “What a fine thing it will be, to have Emma living with us again. We’ll have a proper kitchen, too, with a proper stove, and a genuine bathing room—”

  Savannah envied Trey’s wife, envied her mightily, and not just for having such a grand house forthcoming. No, it was the prospect of a home that Savannah coveted, a family, a life that might be considered at least remotely normal. Back east, it would have been highly indecorous for a married woman to hold a schoolteacher’s position, and Trey, as a saloon proprietor, would have been assigned a very low social status indeed. Here, though, in the west, where new traditions were taking shape, Trey and Rachel might well be considered respectable.

  Quite a contrast, Savannah thought, with her own future. She, who could expect to be viewed as a prostitute unto the end of her days.

  The injustice of it made her want to weep, but there was no profit in that. She couldn’t go back, after all, couldn’t smooth out the twists and turns in the path she’d trod, nor level the steep decline that had brought her to this time and place and state of affairs. She was what she was, and she’d make the best of it, just as she had always done.

  “I’ll take over here tomorrow,” she said, when the evening was nearly over, referring, of course, to the saloon business downstairs. Trey had done his hitch and more, and deserved the necessary time to dig the foundation for the house he would share with Rachel, Emma, and the other children that were bound to come along sooner or later.

  Sooner, Savannah thought, if she wasn’t misreading that certain ephemeral quality in Rachel’s eyes. She’d seen it before, though mostly in far less pleasant circumstances—her midwife grandmother had taught her what to look for, when they’d both hoped Savannah would follow in her footsteps—and it always meant there was a baby brewing, whether the mother had been so advised or not.

  “Trey will see you safely home,” Rachel said, when the dishes had been cleared and they had sat awhile, sipping coffee. At the door, when Trey was halfway down the outside staircase, she laid a hand to Savannah’s arm and spoke in a soft voice. “I’m so glad you’ve come to Springwater, Savannah. I know we’ll be friends.”

  Not for the first time since her arrival, Savannah felt tears of emotion threaten. She’d acquired numerous male confidants throughout her life, Trey being the best of them, but women tended to dislike and distrust her. She didn’t blame them—surely they could not be expected to invite a saloon woman into their homes for tea parties and quilting bees—but she had suffered for her exclusion. Now, here was Rachel Hargreaves, a schoolteacher, educated and gently raised, wanting to befriend her.

  She sighed inwardly. Rachel might be of a very different opinion, once she’d seen her husband’s business partner in one of her jewel-colored dresses, all of them scandalous by anyone’s reckoning, with her hair done up in beads and feathers and her face painted. No doubt the words of her songs would drift up through the floorboards as well, borne on the tinkling notes of the cheap piano below, naughty tunes, designed to inspire devilment in dry-throated cowboys, and maudlin ones, offering cheap solace to the lonely, the bereaved, the defeated.

  “I would like that,” Savannah said, in parting. “To be your friend, I mean.” She meant it, every word, but even then she held out little hope that it would ever be so.

  Trey took her arm and guided her down the steep wooden steps behind the saloon. Through the thin plank walls, they heard the click of billiard balls and a swell of rough talk. A half dozen cowboys had ridden in, late that afternoon, and Trey had left them in the care of the bartender.

  “I could change my clothes and come back,” Savannah suggested, feeling guilty for leaving so much of the burden on him. He’d built the place, after all, and run it almost single-handedly ever since.

  “Tomorrow’ll be soon enough,” Trey said. There was no moon, just the faintest curved etching against the dark sky, and he carried a kerosene lantern in one hand. “Rachel was glad of your company,” he went on. “She’s been fussing over that pitiful little stove of ours since she closed down the schoolhouse for the day. It’s lonely out here a lot of the time, especially for a woman.”

  “Surely June-bug has been cordial.”

  Trey chuckled. “Miss June-bug is always cordial,” he answered. “She’s busy, though, forever cooking or sweeping or looking after some spindly-legged chick she’s taken under her wing. Rachel’s closest friend, Evangeline Wainwright, lives about ten miles east of town, but they don’t see each other very often, given the distance.”

  Savannah kept pace with the edge of the circle of light cast by Trey’s lantern. “I like your wife, Trey,” she said truthfully. “Rachel is a fine person, bright-minded as anybody I’ve ever come across. But I’m not the sort of woman she’s looking to keep company with. She was only trying to be polite, that’s all.”

  Trey stopped, raised the lantern, and peered down into Savannah’s face. She blinked, bedazzled, in the wash of light.

  “Just what sort of woman do you reckon yourself to be?” he demanded. He didn’t know about the night she’d run off with Burke, thinking they were going to be married and live out a happy succession of golden days and weeks, months and years, as true partners. What a naive little fool she’d been, taking fairy tales for gospel.

  She smiled, touched by his fierce loyalty. He truly liked her. Still, he was a man, and she had always gotten along well with the masculine gender. Until Dr. Prescott Parrish, that is; the two of them struck sparks, metal against metal. If that was “getting along,” that excitement, that quivering rush in the pit of her stomach, it was damn scary. “There is a perception that goes with working in a saloon, Trey. You know that. It’s all right for you—it just makes you a bit of a rogue, but for me it’s a very different matter. I sing in barrooms. I sell whiskey to people who would probably be better off without it.” I was misled by a man I trusted, even looked up to, and my own father turned me out of his house. She sighed. “It’s just assumed that I do other things, too.”

  Trey spat a curse. “If anybody dares to say that, I’ll flatten their nose with the back of a shovel,” he said. He sounded sincere.

  Savannah laughed, though in truth she felt more like weeping, because of what she remembered, and because what she wanted to be was such a far cry from what she was. “That would change nothing at all,” she pointed out. “Come along, Trey—I’ve got to get back to the station. There’ll be talk about you and me soon enough as it is, without our dallying in the dark to lend credence to the gossip.”

  Trey was scowling, but he started walking again, toward the golden squares of light that were the windows of Springwater station. “You suppose Jacob’ll be able to talk that sorry-looking doc into staying?” he asked, when they were almost to the porch.

  Savannah felt the strangest urge to defend Parrish, to say that he was really quite presentable, now that he’d had a bath and a good night’s sleep
, but she stopped herself It wasn’t her task in life to smooth that scoundrel’s way; she had both hands full just looking after her own affairs and, truth to tell, she wasn’t exactly assuring herself an honored place in history.

  “He’ll stay on awhile,” she answered, as they gained the base of the station house steps. “He lost his horse at faro, back in Choteau, and this morning Jacob checkered him out of his money and a stagecoach ticket.”

  “We could use a doctor around here,” Trey allowed. Savannah wondered if he was imagining Rachel, months from then, laboring to bear his child, but of course she wouldn’t have asked for anything. She and Trey were close friends, but not that close.

  “He conducted himself well enough yesterday, when Miranda gave birth,” she said. “He was sober at the time, but who knows how long that will last?” In her mind, she saw the doctor at the Hell-bent Saloon, consuming whiskey like he was feeding a fire in his belly. Or dousing one in his soul.

  Trey’s face was craggy with shadows in the rising light of his lantern. “He didn’t take so much as a swallow when he came into the Brimstone today. Just sat there, staring at the wall like he could see through it to some other place. I tried to strike up a conversation, but he didn’t have much to say. Just his name, as I recall.”

  Savannah mounted the first step. Through the station’s thick log walls, she could hear Miranda’s baby crying. The sound was lusty and somehow heartening, for all that it was an ordinary thing. “You can go back home now, Trey. I believe I’d like to stay out here for a few minutes and gather in my thoughts.”

  “You’re all right, aren’t you?” Trey sounded genuinely worried, in the way a protective elder brother might have been. “It can take a lot out of a person, that stage trip from Choteau. Why, when Rachel came, the coach nearly turned over in Willow Creek, and I had to go out and fetch her ashore on horseback.”

  Savannah smiled again, clasping a lodge pole hitching rail in her hands and looking up at the black sky, where a few faint stars winked and twinkled. The wind was rising, promising a storm; the portent of lightning was a silent reverberation in the hot air. “I’m just fine, Trey. Go home to your wife.” She’d thanked them both for a pleasant evening, and so did not press the matter of her gratitude. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

  Trey hesitated a moment, then glanced toward the saloon, no doubt thinking of Rachel, awaiting him in their rustic rooms upstairs. It was enough, evidently, to propel him toward home. “Good night,” he said, as he moved away, the lantern light swinging easily at his side.

  “So that’s your partner,” said Prescott Parrish, from the darkness behind her.

  Savannah was so startled that she nearly swallowed her tongue. She turned, one hand to her breast in an unconscious attempt to slow her heartbeat down to a reasonable pace, to see him materialize out of the gloom like some sort of specter. “I despise a sneak, Dr. Parrish,” she snapped, when fury and fear made way for speech. “How dare you lurk in the shadows and eavesdrop on a private conversation?” How dare you have such a frightening effect on me?

  He chuckled and had the out-and-out temerity to stand right beside her, there on the McCaffreys’ porch, one shoulder braced against a supporting pole. “I wasn’t lurking,” he said. “I came around the corner from the barn and heard you discussing me. Naturally, the topic was of interest.”

  Savannah blushed to remember the nature of that conversation, and most of the steam went out of her. “All the same, announcing yourself would have been the gentlemanly thing to do.”

  His teeth flashed white in the darkness. She could see him now, in the light coming from the window behind them, if only as a shadow towering over her. “Ah, but there you have it, Miss Rigbey. I am not a gentleman, and therefore cannot be expected to behave as one.”

  Savannah stood her ground. “On the contrary,” she said, “you were born a gentleman. And if you do not behave as such, it is not for want of training. I think you choose to be obnoxious. You’re angry and you mean to make the world suffer for all your petty grievances.”

  He leaned in very close, and she smelled soap and clean water on his skin, but no hint of whiskey, stale or otherwise. “I do not recall asking for your opinion,” he said pointedly. “But since you gave it so readily, I will reciprocate with my own. You, Miss Rigbey, are no lady. Since I am no gentleman, we ought to suit each other just fine.”

  They just stood there, the two of them, for the longest time. The air seemed awash with liquid lightning, and Savannah’s heart was beating so fast that she feared it would race right out of her throat and leave her behind.

  He reached up, touched her mouth with the tip of an idle index finger. “What’s happening here?” he murmured, and he might have been talking to himself, the mountains, or the moon as much as to Savannah, given his distracted tone.

  His touch seemed to sear her, through and through. She didn’t have an answer, and so didn’t offer one. Nor did she move away, flee into the station as a decent woman would have done.

  At last, and very slowly, like a man making his way through a dream, he took Savannah’s shoulders in his hands, pulled her close, and lowered his mouth to hers for a long, softly tempestuous kiss.

  She supposed she should have struggled—kicked—slapped—something. But she didn’t. She just stood there, letting him kiss her, kissing him back, and enjoying the whole experience. When it was over, and he fairly tore his lips from hers, she might actually have swooned if he hadn’t still been holding on to her shoulders. She had reveled in the exchange, indeed, she wanted more, but she would have died before admitting as much. In point of fact, all she could do was stare up at him, astounded.

  His dark eyes glittered in the thin light. Somewhere in the distance, thunder boomed, and the horizon seemed to tilt at a wild angle as lightning flashed. If she hadn’t known better, Savannah would have sworn she’d just kissed the devil himself.

  He smiled at her, almost insolently, then turned and walked off into the night, whistling under his breath.

  Savannah took a few moments to breathe deeply, in the hope of calming her heart and letting the blush in her cheeks fade a little, then went inside the station. Jacob and June-bug were seated in their rocking chairs, facing the evening fire, June-bug holding the newborn baby gently in her arms.

  “There you are,” she said, in a quiet voice that held music even when she wasn’t singing. “Did Trey walk you home?”

  Savannah summoned up a smile as she set down the now-empty basket and removed her shawl. Inside, she was trembling, and she could still feel Parrish’s mouth on hers, at once conquering and surrendering. Forceful, yet totally unlike the way Burke had kissed her. “Yes, he did. Rachel is a lovely woman, and quite a good cook.”

  June-bug nodded and crooned something to the sleeping infant. “She’s made all the difference in the world to Trey, and to Emma, too. I suppose she’s all excited about that new house of hers.”

  Jacob ruminated on his wife’s remark for a few moments, then joined in the conversation. “I didn’t figure they’d get it here before spring. Maybe they oughtn’t to get their hopes up, Rachel and Trey.”

  “Nonsense,” June-bug said, in a tone of mild reproach. “Seattle isn’t that far. Those freight wagons will be here any day now. Just you wait and see.”

  Jacob’s response was typically good-natured and dry as sun-bleached bones. “I hope you’re right, Miss June-bug,” he said. “I surely do.”

  Thunder sounded again, closer now, and June-bug raised worried eyes to the ceiling. “You ought to fetch the doc inside, Jacob. He’s liable to catch his death, sleepin’ out yonder in the barn on a night like this.”

  Jacob might have smiled; it would have been hard to tell, even in good light. “Never you mind,” he said. “Never you mind. Young Dr. Parrish is right where he ought to be.”

  CHAPTER

  4

  IT WAS STILL EARLY—the air was chilly as the inside of a springhouse in January and the sky was pe
arl-gray, shot with a watery apricot, above the lacework tangle of evergreens and deciduous trees rimming the horizon. There was a carpet of pine needles and last year’s leaves on the ground. Jacob, riding beside Pres’s borrowed mare on a fractious old mule he called Nero, pointed out a faint curl of smoke higher up in the foothills, amidst the gray-white trunks of birches and alders.

  “That would be Granny’s place, there yonder,” he said. “Leastways we know she’s up and around and has her cookin’ fire built.”

  Pres rubbed the back of his neck and refrained from comment.

  “There’s one thing I ought to warn you about, before we get there,” Jacob allowed, after chewing on the thought for a while.

  “What would that be?” Pres asked, with deliberate mildness. His patience was short, maybe because laying off whiskey had left his insides raw and empty, with no more substance than a rotted log eaten through by bugs. Maybe because he was being haunted by thoughts of Savannah Rigbey, sure as Hamlet was haunted by his father’s ghost. His temples seemed to be trying to reach across his brain and fuse themselves into a single throbbing pulse, and his stomach had shriveled to a dry shell. Had there been anything in it, he’d have long since heaved up the lot.

  “Granny’s likely to shoot at us,” Jacob replied, with no more inflection than if he’d been saying she enjoyed chasing fireflies with a fruit jar in one hand. “Her eyesight ain’t too good, and until she recognizes me and old Nero here, she’s liable to be unfriendly.”

  Pres gave a short bark of a laugh, a sound utterly without humor. “Wonderful.”

  “No cause to worry,” Jacob assured him. “She won’t aim to kill.”

  Sure enough, in the next second, a shotgun blast rent the sky, sending birds flapping and squawking from the trees and small animals skittering through the underbrush.