Springwater Seasons

by Linda Lael Miller

  Miranda was at once relieved that Houghton didn’t mean to force himself on her, at least not right away, and very frightened of the reception Landry would get when he returned, unsuspecting, almost certainly bringing the boys with him. Eager to get the unwanted visitor as far away from her baby as she could, Miranda spoke firmly. “You go on out and sit down at the table. I’ll be right out to build up the fire.”

  Houghton started toward the gaping doorway—thanks to Landry’s thoroughness, the hinges hadn’t even squeaked when he entered—then paused and turned back to face Miranda. She saw him extend one beefy arm and shake a finger at her, even though she couldn’t make out his features in the dark. “Don’t you try nothin’, either,” he warned. “You come through this here door with, say, a gun in your hand, I’m going to be ready for you, and that man of yours will meet with a sorry mess when he comes in.”

  Miranda felt a chill hand-spring down her spine. She knew he meant what he said; she’d have to find another opportunity to fetch that .44 down from the wardrobe shelf, and she’d have to do it soon, if she wanted to get the better of Mike Houghton. Landry had said it was in a strongbox; did that mean it was locked? Surely, with young boys in the house, and both of them reckless little rascals, it must be. Where, then, was the key? “I just want to wrap up in something warm. There’s a bite in the air.”

  She heard a pistol cock, saw a flash of moonlight on the barrel, icy cold and blue-black. “I don’t want no foolishness,” Houghton growled.

  She nodded, unable, for the moment, to speak. He must have seen, because he grunted and turned to lumber out of the room.

  Miranda paused to draw a deep breath in an effort to calm her racing thoughts and figure out what to do. In the end, there was nothing much she could do, besides put on a wrapper, fix Houghton a meal, and hope to God that Landry wouldn’t stumble in and get himself shot to death, right in front of her and his boys.

  Help me, she prayed, and hurried down the way to her own room to fetch a wrapper she’d seen folded in one of the bureau drawers. The garment had been Caroline’s, of course, and Landry probably wouldn’t appreciate her wearing it, but for now there was no choice. If he didn’t understand, well, she reckoned that was his problem.

  When she reached the cabin’s main room, Houghton had made himself at home, lighting the lamps, settling in Landry’s chair at the table, bold as brass. He was smoking Landry’s pipe, too.

  Miranda calculated her chances of braining him with the fireplace poker before he managed to pick up the big hog-leg of a gun he’d laid beside the kerosene lantern in the center of the table and decided they were unfavorable.

  She went to the stove instead, made a lot of clatter opening doors, stirring embers, stuffing in kindling and chunks of wood. Only when she had a good snapping fire going did she turn to look at Mike Houghton. He ran his gaze over her in a way that made her skin shrink back and quaver against her bones.

  “You said you were hungry,” she reminded him, pretending to a bravery she didn’t really feel. Landry was sure to show up soon, and there was the baby to think about, and the boys. What was she going to do? “What do you want?” she demanded.

  He ran his eyes over her once more, eyes that put her in mind of that old boar hog Landry had shot just the day before yesterday. They had the same black-hearted glint in them, the same evil intentions. “Now that, little lady, just depends on how long that man of yours stays gone. I’ve got business with him, right enough, but I think maybe I might have some with you, too.” He paused, chewing on the stem of Landry’s pipe, filling the air with tobacco smoke and the general stench of his own person. “For now, some hotcakes would do. Bacon, too, if you can scrounge some up, and five or six eggs.”

  Miranda nodded, hands on her hips. “You’ll have your bacon and hotcakes and all. Then you better just ride out, because if my husband finds you here, he’s likely to kill you deader than the Confederacy. You may not have noticed, Mr. Houghton,” she put just the slightest emphasis on the Mr., “but you aren’t welcome at Springwater. Toby is one of us now, and you ought to leave him right where he’s been since you left him.”

  “I listened to the preacher’s sermon this morning,” Houghton said. “I don’t need one from you, too. Just make me them eggs and a stack of hotcakes about that high.” He indicated a sizable height between his two hands. “A pound or two of pork, too. And some coffee. I’ve had me a mite too much whiskey in there at the Brimstone Saloon. Hell of a thing if I was to pass out.”

  That, Miranda thought, was too much to hope for. She went to the pantry, returned with the flour and other ingredients she needed. While in the pantry, she nearly tripped over the rag rug on the floor, and hastily smoothed it with one foot. Then she eyed the butcher knives, aligned in a neat row in a handmade rack, as was typical of Landry, but she ruled out the idea of using one against Houghton almost as soon as it came to her mind. He’d shoot her dead before she took the first swipe at that filthy hide of his.

  She stirred the hotcake batter with unusual vigor, her mind going as fast as the spoon in her hand, but achieving a whole lot less.

  “What I don’t see,” Houghton confided to her stiff back, sounding genuinely puzzled, “is why you folks around here think so highly of that boy of mine. He’s just like his mother—and she was no better than she should be. A whore, down New Orleans way. He ever tell you that? He’s got her looks and her crafty mind. Can’t trust him any further than you can throw a mule.”

  Miranda straightened her already-straight spine and turned to glare at the man, the bowl of batter clasped in both arms and propped against her middle. “Why do you insist on taking him away, if you feel that way about him? He’s been happy here. The McCaffreys love him like their own. He goes to school and to church. What could you possibly want with one skinny little boy, when it’s plain you don’t give a hoot or a holler what happens to him and probably never have?” She wasn’t just talking to Mike Houghton, she realized. She was talking to her own father, who had been equally worthless, and absent even when he was in the same room with her.

  “We—I need him to help me with some honest work,” Houghton all but whined. “He might be just a boy, but he can earn a man’s wages.”

  Miranda set the big iron skillet on the stove with a bang and lobbed in some lard from the grease jar Landry kept on top of the warming oven on the stove. “You and I both know he can’t do any such thing,” she snapped. “You want to make him into an outlaw and a saddle-tramp, that’s all.”

  For a moment, she thought she might have gone a step too far. Houghton’s whiskey-reddened face grew even more flushed, and his boarlike eyes narrowed until they were almost gone. “It ain’t none of your concern what I make out of that boy, now is it? He’s mine, and I can do with him what I want.”

  “For God’s sake,” Miranda spat, furious beyond all good sense, “he’s not a mule or a half-starved dog, he’s a boy, a human being with a heart and a soul and a mind, same as everybody else. He belongs to himself and the good Lord, and besides that, you gave up any claim a long time ago when you left him alone in the woods to fend for himself!”

  Somewhat to Miranda’s surprise, Houghton didn’t pick up the pistol and shoot her. He seemed taken aback by her accusation, if only briefly, even anxious to prove himself without guilt. “I meant to get back afore I did,” he said. “I ran into some trouble, that’s all.”

  The sun was beginning to lighten the gloom at the windows. Landry would be home soon. Come quickly, she pleaded silently. Stay away. “What sort of trouble?” she asked, without sympathy. “Jail, maybe?” Houghton looked pained and not a little insulted. “You ain’t very respectful, you know that? I’ve got half a mind to backhand you, teach you a lesson.”

  “You lay a hand on me, and I’ll kill you,” Miranda said. She didn’t know where the words had come from, they just tumbled out of her mouth all on their own, but they were gospel-true, each one.

  Houghton laughed. “You? You ain’t ha
rdly bigger than that boy of mine.” His expression turned to a speculative leer. “But you are a pretty thing, I vow. Right sweet-smellin’. Warm, too, I reckon, and soft in all the right places.”

  Just the thought of Houghton laying hands on her made bile rush into the back of Miranda’s throat, but she wasn’t going to let him know she was scared if she could keep from it. “Here,” she said, and served him a plate of food with a slam of the plate against the tabletop. “Eat and get out.”

  She watched his face while he weighed the urgings of a naturally mean spirit against what was probably an insatiable appetite for food. In the end, to Miranda’s well-hidden relief, he chose the victuals. While Houghton ate, Miranda listened for Landry’s horse and hoped to high heaven she wouldn’t wind up a widow before she ever got a chance to be a real wife.

  *

  Upon reaching Springwater, Landry hurried to fetch Doc Parrish while Jacob took Toby into the station, with some help from Jamie and Marcus. When Landry returned with Pres, they found the boy lying on one of the tables in the main room. June-bug was doing her best to comfort Toby, but it was plain that he was suffering. Little wonder; part of the big bone in the youngster’s thigh was protruding right through the torn fabric of his pants.

  Landry looked away, and swallowed hard once before looking back.

  “Everybody out of the way,” Doc Parrish said, practically as soon as he’d cleared the threshold. Most likely, Landry reflected, nobody had ever accused the man of mincing words.

  Jamie and Marcus were already huddled in a corner, the freckles standing out on their pasty white faces. Landry reckoned he ought to haul them both to the nearest woodshed and raise a few blisters on their backsides—that was what his own pa would have done—but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. It just didn’t seem right to him, beating on another human being, especially ones you loved.

  Jacob and June-bug weren’t about to leave the boy, no matter what the Doc said, and the expressions on their faces made it plain. However, they did make way for him.

  Pres’s voice was remarkably calm as he bent over Toby to examine what had to be the worst break Landry had ever seen. No doubt the Doc had seen worse, though, given that he’d served as a field surgeon in the war. “Looks like you fell off a mountain,” he said cheerfully.

  The boy’s face was pale as death and popping sweat, but he worked up a crooked grin all the same. “Yes, sir,” he said. “I reckon I dropped twenty or thirty feet afore I hit the ground.”

  Pres put the ends of his stethoscope into his ears and listened thoughtfully to Toby’s heart. “Well, that was a damn fool thing to do,” said the Doc. “Now you and I and especially the McCaffreys here are in for a long night.” He let the stethoscope dangle from his neck and popped open his beat-up doctor bag. “You’re in shock,” he continued, still speaking to Toby, although he raised his eyes and met first Jacob’s gaze and then June-bug’s, over the boy’s head. He looked down at Toby again. “That’s why I can’t use ether or chloroform to put you to sleep. I’m going to give you a dose of laudanum, though, and that’ll take the edge off. Once I’ve wrestled that leg bone of yours back where it belongs—and that’s going to hurt like hell, Toby, and there’s no point in telling you otherwise—I’ll sew you up and put on a splint. Long about that time, you ought to be able to swallow some more medicine and have a good, long rest. Fair enough?”

  Young Toby clenched his jaw against pain that was already pretty fierce—had to be right up against the edge of unbearable, in fact—and nodded his head. “Fair enough,” he agreed staunchly. It made Landry’s heart ache, seeing such a little kid suffer like that, no matter that he’d brought the whole thing on himself, with some help from Jamie and Marcus.

  “We’re thankful to you,” Jacob said to Landry. He was still standing at the end of the table where Toby lay, one of the child’s hands pressed between his own. “You’d best be getting those boys of yours home now. Your bride will be watching the road.”

  His bride.

  Miranda hadn’t been far from the forefront of Landry’s mind the whole of the night, for all that had happened. He longed to see with his own eyes that she was all right, to simply be under the same roof with her again. He wondered if the strange mingling of tenderness and almost ferocious desire she stirred in him—he was ready to admit to such feelings, at least in the privacy of his own mind—was the beginning of love. He just didn’t know, since he’d never felt exactly this way before, even with Caroline. By comparison, though, his feelings for Miranda were richer, deeper, and more powerful, the emotions a man held for a woman. Knowing Caroline from his boyhood, he’d loved her as a youth loves his sweetheart, with a certain shallow innocence.

  “You’re sure we won’t be needed,” Landry said. The question came out sounding like a statement instead. He was too wornout to go putting a lot of inflection in his words.

  A corner of Jacob’s mouth lifted slightly in what might have been an inclination toward a smile. “You came in mighty handy tonight, my friend, but I believe it’s Doc here we need now. You go on home. We know where to send if there’s call to do it.”

  Landry nodded a farewell at Jacob, then at June-bug. The Doc was occupied, as he should have been, with Toby’s leg, having already dragged off his coat and pushed up his sleeves. Savannah joined them, began heating water on the stove without even being asked. When Landry turned to summon his sons, they were already on their feet and wearing their jackets.

  “You want us to stay, Toby?” Jamie asked, peering at his friend but carefully avoiding looking at his injured leg. Landry couldn’t really blame his son; it was a nasty sight, all that torn flesh and splintered bone. It was sure to take the Doc a long while to put it all back together the way the Lord had it in the first place.

  “You go on,” Toby answered. “I’ll look for you tomorrow, though.”

  “We’ll be here,” Marcus assured him, from Jamie’s side. Then he glanced up at Landry. “If our pa will let us leave the ranch, anyhow.”

  Landry didn’t make it easy on them. “Fetch the horses,” he said.

  Three-quarters of an hour later, the ranch house was in sight, and Landry felt some surprise to see that the windows were alight. Granted, it was nearly sunup, but in his brief experience, Miranda wasn’t an early riser. He was usually up, with the coffee brewing, before she stirred from the spare room.

  “Pa,” Jamie hissed. He was riding behind Marcus now, on the pony. “Look there, behind Ma’s oak trees.”

  Landry felt his heart flatten out and roll right up into the back of his throat. Sure enough, there in the midst of the trees Caroline had raised from acorns gathered back home in Missouri before they headed west, was an unfamiliar horse, still saddled and grazing. Mike Houghton’s horse, he’d be willing to bet; he didn’t recognize it as belonging to any of the men around Springwater.

  “You suppose he done hurt her, Pa?” Jamie asked. He sounded plaintive.

  “Stay here,” Landry said, drawing his rifle from the scabbard affixed to his saddle and swinging down off the gelding’s back. How the hell had Houghton gotten in, he wondered, as he ran over the situation mentally. He’d bolted the windows himself, and he’d heard the bolt fall into place behind him a few seconds after he’d closed the door to go looking for the boys.

  “Pa,” Marcus insisted. “He’s mean. Toby swears he killed his ma, made her drink poison. He might shoot you.”

  “Do as I told you,” Landry whispered. “Stay put and don’t make any noise.” Just then, one of the horses neighed, and he could only hope Houghton would think it was his own.

  “But, Pa—how you gonna get in there?” Jamie asked. He was beside Landry, that fast, and had caught hold of his sleeve. “He might hurt Miranda—or you—or the baby. You’ve got to sneak up on him.”

  “How the devil am I going to do that?” Landry snapped. He was asking himself and God that question, more than the boy.

  “Through the root cellar,” Jamie said. He gulped
and glanced at Marcus once; obviously, he’d just betrayed a closely guarded secret.

  “I sealed the doors to that root cellar a long time ago,” he said, growing impatient now, anxious to see that Miranda and little Isaiah were safe. He wouldn’t be able to breathe right until he knew they hadn’t been harmed.

  Jamie swallowed again. “Me and Marcus fixed them so we could go in and out that way, without you knowing. I reckon that’s how Houghton got into the house, too.”

  Landry swore under his breath and started to the other side of the cabin in a half crouch. Entering through the old cellar, he could come up into the pantry through a trap door. Soon as he got under the house, he could hear Houghton’s voice overhead.

  “That was a mighty fine breakfast, missus,” he was saying. “Now you come on over here and sit down on my lap.”

  Landry set his jaw and concentrated on lifting the trap door quietly enough to keep from attracting Houghton’s attention and thus getting his head blown off. This was no time to make a mistake.

  “No,” he heard Miranda say firmly. “I made you the food you wanted. Now you just get out of here before my husband comes home and shoots you for a scoundrel.”

  Landry eased the door up, reached through and laid his rifle soundlessly on the pantry floor, then climbed up after it.

  “You ain’t gonna make me turn mean, are you, little lady?” Houghton drawled. “I’d hate to make my point by going in that bedroom, fetching that baby of yours, and—”

  “You touch my child,” Miranda broke in, “you just lay one of your filthy paws on him, and I’ll see you spend a good long time dyin’.”

  Houghton laughed, and his voice took on an oily, cajoling note. Landry’s hands flexed spasmodically around the rifle; he’d never wanted to shoot anybody down in cold blood before that moment, but he was ready to kill this sorry excuse for a man without waiting for another heartbeat to pass. For Miranda’s sake, and the baby’s, he made himself wait, slipped to the doorway of the pantry.