Springwater Seasons

by Linda Lael Miller

  “You might want to put that boy on cow’s milk pretty soon,” he said.

  Miranda felt a blush climb her neck, and she was glad to have the bacon and eggs to fool around with. She didn’t have to ask why Landry had suggested weaning the baby, because she knew it was one of two reasons: either he didn’t want to take an infant along to Choteau on their honeymoon trip, or he wanted her breasts for purposes of his own. Both ideas filled her with heat.

  “Miranda?”

  She had to answer, had to say something. “Breakfast is ready,” she told him, and filled a plate for him from the pans on the stove. She herself had no appetite, though she might be ready to eat after the preaching. She’d pack a basket for picnicking under the trees next to the Springwater station, just the way the other wives did.

  He wasn’t going to be put off that easily. “Miranda,” he said again, and more firmly this time.

  She met his gaze. She loved that baby, loved him more than her life, but nursing him was hard, when she had so many other things to do, and there could be no arguing that he was a sturdy little mite, off to a real good start in life. And, even though it would be a wrench to leave Isaiah behind with June-bug or maybe Rachel or Savannah for a few days, she wanted that time with Landry more than a mortal being had the right to want anything. “He’ll need a bottle,” she said.

  Landry grinned. “That’s easy,” he replied. He disappeared into the pantry and, after the sound of much rummaging, came out with a baby bottle in each hand. “They just need washing up. Jamie and Marcus used them when they were little.”

  Miranda nodded and flushed again. “Sit down and eat your breakfast, Landry Kildare,” she said, feeling like a real wife, “before it gets cold.”

  He sat. “Aren’t you going to eat?”

  She shook her head. “I’m not ready to face pig meat just yet,” she admitted frankly.

  Landry chuckled. “Well, you’d better learn to like it, Mrs. Kildare, because you’ve married a hog farmer.”

  “You’ve got horses, and a few cattle, too,” Miranda argued, but good-naturedly, pouring coffee for herself. “I’d rather think of you as a rancher.”

  He gestured toward her unoccupied place at the table, just as good-naturedly. “Get yourself a plate,” he persisted. “I won’t have the town of Springwater saying Landry Kildare has a puny wife.”

  She still wasn’t hungry, but she managed to put away half an egg and some toasted bread, just because she was so pleased at Landry’s teasing attentions. Why, he talked to her the same way Trey talked to Rachel, and the Doc talked to Savannah. If only he could really make room for her, in that stubborn, loyal heart of his, alongside the hollow place Caroline had left behind.

  *

  The dooryard of the Springwater station seemed crowded with buggies and wagons, tethered mules, and horses. Some of the men, Tom Bellweather, Trey Hargreaves, and the Doc, were out front, under the front slant of the roof, handsome in their best clothes. Their expressions were serious, though, and Miranda knew they were talking about Mike Houghton’s return, and the effect his claim on Toby might have on the McCaffreys.

  Miranda was more than anxious to speak with Jacob and June-bug, and see with her own eyes that they were holding up under the strain, but she had Isaiah in her arms and thus waited until Landry had braked the buckboard, secured the reins, and then jumped down and came around the side to help her to the ground.

  While Landry tarried outside with the other men, Miranda hurried inside. As was usual for a Sunday morning, the tables had been moved to one side of the large main room of the station, thus making room for the benches to be lined up before the hearth, pewstyle. Jacob usually stood in front of the fireplace when he was preaching, a habit he’d acquired, he was fond of saying, over the course of a dozen harsh territorial winters.

  There was no sign of him now, although June-bug was standing over by the stove, stirring something, and Rachel and Savannah were close by, doing little keep-busy tasks so they’d have an excuse to hover. Miranda wanted to be a member of that group as much as she wanted anything except Landry’s love, but this was no time to be thinking about what she wanted, so she put it out of her mind.

  Seeing her and the baby June-bug came forward and gently tucked back the blanket. “Would you look at him?” she said, smiling a wan ghost of a smile. “I swear he’s grown just since you and Landry got hitched the other day.”

  Savannah stepped forward. “Could I hold him, Miranda?” she asked softly.

  It was no secret how much the Parrishes wanted a baby, and everybody knew they hadn’t gotten one started yet, too. That was the way of a small place like Springwater; there weren’t many secrets. Miranda smiled and handed Isaiah over to the other woman. Then she put her arms around June-bug and hugged her tight.

  June-bug, usually so spry and energetic, felt fragile in her arms, as though something had broken down inside her and she just couldn’t get it mended. She clung to Miranda for a long moment, then thrust herself away, with a sniffle and an attempt at a laugh. “Here I am, on the Lord’s day, actin’ like I don’t have a whit of faith,” she said.

  Rachel, still plump from the birth of her own baby, was peering into the basket where her little Henry slept, looking like an angel. She fussed with the blankets. “Where is Jacob?” she asked of June-bug, in a tone so careful that Miranda knew she’d been waiting for a good time to put forward the question.

  “He took a walk down to the springs, him and Toby both,” June-bug answered, and that faraway, misty look was back in her eyes. It crushed Miranda’s heart to see this woman who had been so kind to her feeling so unhappy, and being so brave in the face of it. The McCaffreys had suffered enough, by her reckoning, losing not one but both their own boys on the same battlefield. “Toby’s been talkin’ about runnin’ away, lightin’ out for Mexico or some such nonsense. Jacob’s tryin’ to make him see reason and stay with his daddy, if that’s what it comes down to, but that boy is hard-headed and he’s got ideas of his own.”

  Toby was indeed hard-headed, but he was a good boy, and he’d make a fine man one day, thanks to the McCaffreys. Provided Mike Houghton didn’t turn him into a robber or a drunk, anyhow. He ran with bad companions, Houghton did; everybody knew that.

  “He’ll be all right,” Rachel said, with spirit, but she looked worried all the same. She too had a special interest in Toby, having found him in the woods the way she had and brought him home to Springwater, where she’d been his teacher up until baby Henry came into the world. “He’s one of us. He belongs here.”

  At that, all the women looked at each other, as if seeking assurance that what Rachel said was true. All of them except Savannah, that is, who was gazing down at little Isaiah with her heart shining in her eyes.

  CHAPTER

  5

  MIRANDA’S FIRST SIGHT of Jacob, when he entered the station with a red-eyed, rebellious-looking Toby in tow, left her heart as crackly as an old china plate. He was painfully thin and seemed no more substantial than if he’d had hay for stuffing, like some wind-whipped scarecrow, instead of muscle and bone and vitals. His dark eyes, always so solemn and so kindly, seemed to have sunk deep into his head. Only the determined set of his jaw gave cause for hope—the fight had not gone out of him entirely, then. She was relieved to know that much.

  “Hello, Toby,” Miranda said quietly, and crossed the room to lay a hand on the boy’s thin shoulder. During her time at Springwater station, she’d come to know Toby and to respect him for his diligence and his loyalty to the McCaffreys. He’d be a big man one day, but at twelve, nearly thirteen, he was still more sapling than tree.

  His blue eyes locked with Miranda’s, full of angry misery, and in that moment she wanted to crush him to her and hold him tightly until Mike Houghton gave up and went away. That would have done no good, of course, even if Toby would have stood still for it. “I don’t want to go,” he said.

  Miranda pressed her lips together and looked up at Jacob. His face ech
oed the sorrow she’d seen in Toby’s. Again, it came to her that this trial might be the one that finally broke an otherwise unbreakable man.

  “Where is Mr. Houghton now?” she asked of Jacob, her hand still resting on Toby’s shoulder. He would tolerate little in the way of coddling, she knew, but he permitted her that much.

  Jacob’s voice was a hollow boom, but there was some of the old thunder in it, faint as it was, like the rumble of a storm a-borning on the far horizon. “He’s camped outside of town. Said he’d be by for the preachin’ this mornin’.”

  Miranda’s hackles rose at that; there was a thing or two she wanted to say to Toby’s so-called father, but she knew it would be a waste of breath. Some people were just so mean and greedy that nothing would shame them into behaving like they should. She’d had a father like that herself; only reason he’d kept her around after her ma died was so he’d have somebody to do the cooking and the wash. The sad truth was, Houghton was sure to tire of Toby at some point and turn him out, just as her pa had done, only he’d likely do it someplace far from Springwater and the McCaffreys. With all these thoughts showing plain in her eyes, she was sure, as she ruffled the boy’s fair hair, that she felt him tremble under her hand.

  Folks began to arrive in earnest after that, and soon everyone had taken their places on the benches facing the hearth in the main room of the station. Jacob, unable to preach for some time, stood shaky but proud before his small congregation, and offered up a ringing prayer to get things started. The day being warm and fair for October, the door stood open, and when Mike Houghton stepped over the threshold, he seemed to bring a spine-stinging winter wind right along with him.

  Everyone turned in mid-hymn, having sensed his presence, and one by one the various voices fell away, until there was nothing left of sound but for the slow, insolent clapping of Houghton’s beefy hands.

  He was a brute, brawny as a stagecoach mule, fairly filling that doorway, and Miranda suspected folks would hardly have been more taken aback to see the devil himself standing there. He wore a dirty leather vest over a colorless shirt, threadbare trousers with that, and scuffed boots, run down at the heel and in sore need of mending. His hat looked like he’d left it in the road for a month or two.

  “Come in,” Jacob greeted him, as he would have done any other man, “and join us in worshiping the Lord.”

  Houghton ambled inside, without bothering to remove his hat, and out of the corner of her eye, Miranda saw Landry’s jawline tighten as he watched the other man’s entrance. For all that her husband was in most respects a stranger to her, she knew this was not a good sign.

  “Polecat!” somebody cried out, and Miranda realized it was Granny Johnson who’d spoken up. She might have smiled if the situation hadn’t been so delicate. The old woman was likely to say whatever came to her mind, and wouldn’t spare the horses. Saint Paul himself probably couldn’t have talked her into taking back what she’d said, so no one made the effort.

  “Now, that ain’t no kind of Christian welcome,” Mike Houghton said, taking off his hat at last, revealing a head of thinning, oily hair and a freckled pate. Clutching the hat to his chest in a mocking show of respect for everyone present, he took in the assemblage arrayed on either side of the narrow aisle between the rows of benches.

  Miranda sought Toby with her eyes—he’d been seated next to June-bug the last time she’d seen him, with Marcus and Jamie at his other side, looking as fiercely defiant as their young friend—but there was no sign of him now. Her stepsons, she noted, with a sense of slow but heightening alarm, were gone, too. Another sidelong glance at her husband revealed that he’d noticed the absence as well, whether or not he’d felt called upon to comment.

  Jacob, meanwhile, left his post in front of the fireplace and came forward to meet Houghton. “Sit down, brother, and join us in raising our prayers and songs of praise. Your business here will wait.”

  “I came to get my boy.” Houghton looked around, as though Jacob hadn’t spoken at all. “Where’s he got to?” He returned his gaze to the man before him. “If you’ve hid him someplace, Preacher, you’d best tell me where, so I don’t have to do anything to upset these good folks.”

  At this, moving almost as one, Landry, Tom Bellweather, Trey Hargreaves, Scully Wainwright, and Doc Parrish all left their various places in the congregation, found their way to the front of the room, and aligned themselves behind Jacob. Although she feared violence—she’d never seen anything good come of it, not one time—Miranda was prouder than ever, in that moment, that Landry was her husband. Even if he was so in the legal respect only.

  Houghton paused and rubbed his chin with one hand, assuming an injured expression, as though he’d come in expecting hospitality and been illused instead. “I just want my boy,” he said. He sounded pitiful that time, and if she hadn’t known the true facts, Miranda might actually have felt sorry for him.

  Jacob searched the room with genuine concern, clearly looking for Toby, and June-bug, hands clenched tightly in her lap, turned from her customary seat on the bench up front and did the same. A murmur arose from the congregation as other people began to realize that young Houghton really had vanished, and only the five men aligned behind Jacob remained as they were, watchful and ready to fight, be it the Sabbath Day or not.

  “He was here when I started the prayer,” Jacob said quietly. He met Houghton’s gaze and did not flinch or look away. “We’ll find him soon as the service is over.”

  For a long time, he and Houghton just stood there, staring at each other, like an archangel and a demon come face-to-face over the same broken and straying soul, both of them set to lay claim. Then, remarkably, Toby’s long-absent father sat himself down, right up front. Sue Bellweather moved over to make room for him, but stiffly. The brim of her Sunday bonnet hid her face, but Miranda didn’t need to see to know the other woman’s countenance was not one of welcome.

  The hymn went unsung, and Jacob started right in on the preaching, but folks were mostly interested in what Mike Houghton might do, so nobody paid much attention. Landry and the others remained where they were, throughout the whole remainder of the sermon—a well-planned and pointed message about the love between Abraham and Isaac.

  Miranda kept looking for her mischievous stepsons, but they were just as gone as Toby, and she knew, as Landry surely did, that Jamie and Marcus had spirited the Houghton boy away. Heaven only knew where they might have hidden him; they were as footloose as prairie savages, those boys—when they weren’t in church, at school, or directly under Landry’s eye—and they knew the terrain for literally miles around. They could probably hide out until the first snow, maybe longer, and stay unfound as long as they considered necessary.

  At one and the same time, Miranda feared for their safety and wished them Godspeed. They might be going about it all wrong, but their motives couldn’t be faulted—they were trying to protect their friend. Watching Landry’s stiff face, she wondered what he was thinking, if indeed he might not know precisely where his sons—and Toby—had gone.

  “I’ll have the law down on the whole lot of you,” Houghton threatened, rising to his feet. He was sweating under the arms and blotted his beaded forehead on the sleeve of his shirt. He swayed, stabbing a fat index finger in Jacob’s direction, and Miranda realized he was drunk. “I want my boy, and I want him now. You bring him on out here, Preacher, or you’ll be sorry.”

  Jacob hardly seemed intimidated, though he was a much older man than Houghton, and at a physical disadvantage, too, despite his own significant size, because of his recent illness. His gaunt face was flushed, and his eyes seemed to blaze with righteous fury, and it seemed to Miranda that he stood taller in those moments than he had in a long while. “Sit yourself down, brother,” he told Houghton, and when he seemed a bit unsteady on his feet, and Trey and Landry stepped forward to grasp his elbows in an offer of support, he shrugged them off. “I believe we ought to sing another hymn before we leave off worshipin’.”

>   Houghton hesitated, cast an assessing glance around the room, perhaps to see if he had any supporters in the crowd, and then, amazingly, sank back to his bench.

  Miranda thought she’d never heard a congregation sing with such spirit before, but then, she’d had few enough opportunities to attend church in the years since her mother’s passing. Her father was not a religious man.

  Finally, however, the service was truly over, and the women of the community gathered around June-bug, patting and smiling and embracing Mrs. McCaffrey and then one another, as women will do in times of difficulty. They included Miranda in their circle as though she had always been one of them, and that warmed her through and through. Rachel even went so far as to remark that marriage seemed to agree with Miranda, as well as with Landry, and June-bug, though fitful and distracted, allowed as how she had not seen Landry look so hearty in all the time she’d known him.

  Mike Houghton, meanwhile, had been shepherded outside by the men, and although the occasional raised voice pierced the chinked log walls of the station, Jacob’s and Houghton’s being the most easily recognized, the brawl Miranda had half-expected did not come.

  In time, Landry came in to collect her and baby Isaiah. After taking the infant from the large basket he’d shared with Rachel and Trey’s Henry, Miranda kissed June-bug on the cheek and made her promise that she’d send word if she had a need of company. Only when she was seated in the wagon beside Landry, and well away from the church, did Miranda speak of the three missing boys.

  “Do you know where they are?” she asked.

  Landry considered. “They could be any one of a thousand places,” he said, with a sigh. “I’ve let them run wild since Caroline passed on, and this is what comes of it.”

  On impulse, Miranda linked her arm loosely through his. True, he had spoken of Caroline, but that was to be expected, given that he’d been married to the woman and fathered two children by her. There was a tense moment, but Landry did not pull away. “But Toby is with them?” Miranda asked.