Springwater Seasons

by Linda Lael Miller

  Landry elbowed Gage, and out of the corner of his eye, Gage saw that his friend was grinning.

  CHAPTER

  6

  BY THE TIME Gage and the others got back to Springwater, at around noon the next day, roughly half the party was wishing they’d left Miss Olivia Wilcott Darling behind to freeze to death. The other half just hoped she’d hate the place and move on before the first thaw.

  With some help from Landry, Pres took the two little boys, Tommy and Ben, to his house. That left Miss Darling to deal with. It was ironic as hell, in Gage’s considered opinion, her having a name like that, and more ironic still that she’d turned out to be the very woman who’d bought his house, sight unseen. She meant to stay at the Springwater station until she’d rested up enough to take possession of the place, which she intended to turn into a rooming house—so it fell to Trey to get her to June-bug before somebody lost their head and strangled her.

  Gage was numb with cold and too tired to think. If he’d been a drinking man, he would have taken a shot of whiskey; as it was, he was considering taking up the habit. He left his wornout horse tethered to the hitching rail out in front of the telegraph office and went inside, intending to stand by the stove for a while before moving on to his cubbyhole in the back and collapsing onto the too-short horsehair settee he usually reserved for clients with a tendency to overstay their welcome. He didn’t expect to wake up for the better part of a week.

  Nor did he expect to encounter Miss Jessica Barnes—his intended, he recalled with some surprise—when he stepped over the threshold. He already thought of her as “Jessie,” though he was prudent about using the nickname, her being somewhat of a prickly type.

  She was standing at the telegraph counter with a message in both hands, and it looked as though she might tear the thing right in two, she was holding it so tightly.

  “Bad news?” he asked. Seeing her was better than whiskey.

  She looked up at him, blinked—evidently she’d been so absorbed that she hadn’t heard the door open—and shoved the telegram into the pocket of her cloak. “Nothing that need concern you,” she said, for all the world as if she hadn’t agreed to be his wife just the day before. “Did you find the train?”

  He thrust out a long sigh, hung up his hat, and shrugged out of his sodden coat. There was no sign of C.W., which was just as well, because he wasn’t up to being questioned by him, too. “We found it. Most everybody was killed outright.”

  Jessica went pale, and for a moment he thought he ought to reach out and steady her, but she rallied quickly. “Most everybody?” she asked.

  “A woman survived, and two little boys. Twenty others weren’t so lucky.”

  She looked past him, through the heavy glass in the door. “You just left them all out there?”

  He gave her a level look before moving around her, drawn to the welcoming warmth of the stove. “No. A couple of railroad agents showed up around dawn, with a hired posse. They’re taking the bodies to Missoula.”

  She swallowed. “That’s dreadful. So many people, gone.”

  At least she wasn’t scribbling down details, like a lot of reporters might have done. He nodded, and for the first time the true extent of the tragedy came home to him—maybe he’d been holding it at bay all this time. Now, suddenly, he felt like breaking things. Raging against the impervious forces of life and death, and no matter that it would be futile. He might feel better for doing it.

  Jessica ran the tip of her tongue over her lips—it was an innocent gesture, he was sure—but it set something rusty grinding into motion within him, something long-still and silent. Until he’d caught sight of her for the first time, anyway.

  “I spoke with Mr. Brody yesterday,” she said.

  “I wish I could have been here,” he replied.

  She gave him a look fit to strip paint but, perhaps out of respect for the recently dead, she did not lose her temper. He was disappointed, given that it would have been a pleasant distraction to watch. She was a passionate woman, though she did not seem to realize it. Yet.

  “He told me how much Michael owed you.”

  Gage couldn’t work up anything more than mild irritation; he was just too damn tired. Maybe when he’d rested up, he would get C. W. by his skinny, wattled neck and squeeze till he turned blue, but appealing as the prospect was, it would have to wait. It was all he could do not to keep from stretching out on the floor, right there by the stove, and going to sleep. “Did he, now?” he asked. He had hoped Jessica would drop the subject but, of course, she didn’t.

  “I’ve wired St. Louis for my personal funds. They are sending the money to a bank in Choteau. All I have to do is pick it up.”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, Miss Barnes, there is a blizzard brewing out there.” He thrust a hand through his hair. Maybe he’d have that whiskey after all. “Besides that, it’s too late. The documents have already been transferred.” He was being ornery and he knew it, but he was too exhausted to mind his manners.

  She went paler still. “If you have any decency in you, Mr. Calloway, you will accept full payment and surrender control of the Gazette immediately. I, after all, am the rightful owner.”

  “I am the rightful owner,” he pointed out.

  She looked, for a moment, as though she would haul off and slap him. “Are you going to insist that we go through with this farce of a marriage?”

  He smiled. “A deal’s a deal,” he reminded her.

  She turned on one heel and stormed out.

  He should have gone after her, should have apologized, should have said of course he’d give back the newspaper and let her out of their agreement, but he simply didn’t have the stamina. It would all have to wait.

  He slept for two solid days.

  The weather was clear the morning he came around, and cold as a coal-digger’s ass, but everybody knew there was more snow coming. You could smell it, feel it in the air.

  C.W. greeted him somewhat sheepishly when Gage came out of the office in search of hot coffee. “Good to see you up and around, Gage,” he said, and looked away quickly.

  Gage went to the stove, poured a mug full of sludge from the coffeepot, and took a bracing sip. It was so rank he almost spit it out, but his early training in the social graces wouldn’t allow him to do so. “You’ve got a big mouth, C.W.,” he said.

  C.W.’s ears turned red. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Like hell you don’t,” Gage replied, flinging the miserable coffee into the fire, where it sizzled and hissed. “You told Jessica Barnes how much her brother owed me.”

  C.W. swallowed.

  “Didn’t you?” Gage persisted.

  The other man gulped, then nodded. “It was out of my mouth before I knew it, Gage. She just looked at me with those eyes of hers and I turned right into an idiot.” Settled at his table, C.W. began tapping out a message. “I don’t suppose it’ll help much, but I’m sorry.”

  Gage shoved a hand through his hair. He needed a bath, a shave, fresh clothes, and a heaping plate of June-bug McCaffrey’s cooking, in that order. He’d do his thinking afterward.

  Half an hour later, he was sitting in the McCaffreys’ tin washtub, scrubbed clean, and the smell of good Southern food filled the air. Once he’d eaten, he’d go to Jessica and tell her he hadn’t meant what he said about forcing her to marry him. Indeed, he might even tell her that he thought about her a lot and that he had strong feelings for her, and those were facts he’d only recently admitted to himself.

  *

  Jessica came out of the bank in Choteau, her life savings tucked carefully into her handbag, and looked right and left. Just down the street, the Springwater stage was waiting. She didn’t recognize the driver, but no matter. She had the money to pay Gage, and she needed to get back to the babies and the Gazette as soon as possible. She had a complete issue typeset and ready to print, and as soon as she’d fetched the twins back from the general store, where Cornucopia was looking aft
er them, she meant to go to press.

  She glanced up at the sky. It was a clear, icy blue, but there were gray clouds gathering on the horizon. Just looking at them made her shiver.

  She went to the coach, where the driver was already loading her battered satchel into the boot. “Ma’am,” he said, and touched the brim of his hat. “You travelin’ out Springwater way?”

  “Yes,” she nodded, politely, but distantly. “Will the coach be leaving on time?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, and tugged at his hat again. “I’m Jack Arthur, and I’ll be filling in for Guffy today. He’s down with a touch of the ague.” Turning his head, he assessed the sky, just as Jessica had done moments before. “We’ve got a storm comin’ in, ma’am,” he said, when he met her gaze again. “I don’t know as you oughtn’t to stay right here in Choteau. It might be rough going out there.”

  Jessica felt a shiver climb her spine, but she shook her head. She had two children waiting for her, and a newspaper to run. Besides that, she couldn’t afford to spend another night at the roominghouse, let alone several. Paying back Gage Calloway was going to take most of the money she had. “I’d rather go home,” she said.

  Arthur nodded. “Yes, ma’am,” he said and, with one more wary glance at the sky, helped her aboard the coach. Soon they were traveling toward Springwater, moving at a brisk pace, and if the inside of the stage was a little cold, well, Jessica wasn’t about to complain. She just pulled her cloak around her a little more tightly and sat back on the hard, uncomfortable seat, resigned to a long, difficult trip.

  During the ride she thought of the train wreck. It seemed as vivid in her mind as if she’d actually witnessed it, complete with all its horrors. She’d written a long and thoughtful article before leaving Springwater, having gotten by wire from the railroad’s head office in Missoula a list of those killed, and the story, along with a few minor items of strictly local interest, would make up her first issue of the Gazette.

  In point of fact, next week’s issue was already taking shape in her mind. She would print the first installment of the serial Emma Hargreaves was writing under a pen name, along with notice of the quilting bee in the home of Mrs. Trey Hargreaves the last week of the month, and June-bug McCaffrey’s recipe for sweet potato pie. In a town like Springwater, you had to make do with whatever news you could scrape up.

  Jessica felt a wrench when she thought of the babies. They’d looked like little golden-haired cherubs, lying there in their padded apple boxes on the counter at the general store, their lashes brushing their round little cheeks. At some point, she had come to love them fiercely, and she knew it was forever. Raising them would not be easy, but then, worthwhile pursuits seldom were.

  Why, the mere thought of those children renewed her determination to overcome every obstacle, every setback, every heartbreak. She would build a life, for the babies and for herself. One thing was for sure: she didn’t need Gage Calloway.

  So why, she wondered, did this triumph lose a little of its glow when her mind turned, inevitably, to him? It was almost as if she were disappointed, which was plain silly.

  Back at the Springwater station, June-bug McCaffrey had bid her farewell with a worried look and a hug. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea for you to take to the road when the weather’s like this,” the older woman had fretted. “Why, yesterday when Guffy came through, it took us an hour just to thaw him out!”

  Jessica wanted to pour her heart out to June-bug, tell her all her most secret hopes and dreams. Maybe she’d be able to make sense out of the tangle of feelings that had their beginning in Gage Calloway.

  A frigid wind rattled the blind covering the stagecoach window, and Jessica moved it aside to peer out. Snow was coming down so hard that she could barely see, and she wondered, with sudden and piercing fear, how the driver could keep the rig on the road in such weather.

  For the first time, she wished she hadn’t been the only passenger traveling to Springwater that day. She would have taken some consolation from having another soul to talk with.

  The disaster struck suddenly, as disasters generally do—before Jessica even had time to wonder what was happening, she’d been flung against the far wall of the stage, and with enough force to leave her dazed and aching all over. The wind was howling so loudly that she couldn’t hear the horses or the driver. Snow blew through the broken door of the stage, stinging like a shower of sparks, and she realized with a sick feeling that the rig was half overturned. Struggling to the door and peering out, she caught a glimpse of one spinning wheel before the storm swallowed up even that.

  She shrank, shivering, back into the questionable shelter of the coach.

  Perhaps it was minutes later, perhaps it was hours, but the driver appeared in the chasm, his face bloodied, his hat gone. “I’ll try to make it to the station and fetch back some help,” he shouted. “You’d best stay here!”

  Jessica wanted to go with him, wanted more than anything in the world not to be left in that bleak place, but she could see the sense in his argument, even then. The coach provided at least some shelter, inadequate though it was, and venturing out into that storm, even on horseback, was a monumental risk.

  “What about the mules?” she hollered back.

  “I let ’em go, except for old Squirrely, him bein’ the best of the lot!” yelled the driver. “Leastways they’ve got half a chance that way, sorry critters that they are. You stay right here, now! You go wanderin’ off somewheres, and you’ll be a goner for sure!”

  Jessica nodded, too cold and too shaken to carry on such a demanding conversation, and settled back to wait.

  *

  “She’ll stay in Choteau,” Jacob said quietly, aligning the checker pieces for another game while Gage paced the length of the hearth, about as agitated as he’d ever been over anything. “Miss Barnes might be headstrong, but she ain’t stupid.”

  Gage went to the nearest window and glared out, watching as the snowflakes came down thicker and faster. Fifteen inches had fallen since morning, by his measurements. “No,” he agreed. “She isn’t stupid. But she’ll try to come back because of the babies and that damned newspaper. Damn it, if Guffy decides to make today’s run, she’ll be aboard the stage for sure!”

  “Maybe Guffy will stay in town,” Jacob reflected, but he was beginning to sound uncertain.

  “In the five years I’ve lived in this town,” Gage argued, “I’ve never known that Irishman to miss a day’s work. I’m telling you, Jacob, the two of them are going to freeze to death out there somewhere, right along with eight of your mules.”

  Jacob sighed, lifted the checkerboard off the table, and let the pieces slide back into their box. “And you figure the smart thing to do would be to ride out there and freeze to death with them.”

  Gage started pacing again. “I’ll go crazy if I don’t make sure she’s—they’re all right.”

  Jacob replied with one of those rare smiles of his. “So you’ve finally found her, have you? I don’t mind sayin’, it’s about time. June-bug and I, we were beginnin’ to despair of you.”

  “What the devil are you talking about?” Gage demanded, even though he knew. God help him, he knew.

  “You’re in love with the gal,” Jacob said. “Soon as I heard you’d milked a cow for her, right in front of God and everybody, I suspected as much.”

  Gage muttered a swear word. The hell of it was, Jacob was right. He just hadn’t been ready to admit it aloud until now.

  “Isn’t this what you’ve been wantin’? Somebody to care about? Somebody to go home to of a night?”

  Gage’s mind had left Springwater ahead of him, and taken his heart right along with it, and he was scrabbling to catch up. “I don’t have time to talk about this,” he said, heading for the door. “I’ve got to find her.”

  He slammed out the door and strode through the dense snowfall toward the barn. Then he remembered his coat, and went back to fetch it.

  “Don’t you say one damn word
,” he warned when Jacob shook his head.

  Fifteen minutes later, he set out to find the Springwater stage. His horse was opposed to the idea, and they had hard words before the matter was settled to Gage’s satisfaction.

  A few times, he wasn’t sure of his direction, and after an hour he was wearing a bandanna over his face like a bandit, in hopes that he wouldn’t lose his nose to frostbite. As he rode, he wondered how it was possible for a man to come to care so deeply for a woman that he’d risk his life for her—not to mention a perfectly good horse—in just a couple of days’ time. After wrestling with the question for a while longer, he decided it didn’t matter how it happened, or why. It was so, and that was that, and he’d just have to figure a way to deal with the situation.

  He doubted that Miss Barnes even liked him, though he’d felt a charge pass between them on more than one occasion, and he knew she’d felt it too; even so, she probably would have died before she confessed to bearing him any tender sentiments.

  He could no longer tell whether it was night or day when at long last he came upon the stagecoach, a mile this side of Willow Creek and lying on its side. Somebody had unhitched the mules, and they’d headed for the timber, but there was no sign of either O’Hagan or Miss Jessica Barnes.

  For the first time since he was eight years old and standing at the foot of his mother’s deathbed, Gage Calloway uttered a prayer. He didn’t figure even God could hear it, though, the way the wind was screaming, driving snow into his flesh like little spikes. Half blinded, he urged the balking horse forward. The new snow was soft, but the layer beneath was sharp enough to cut flesh.

  Then he saw her. She looked out the stage window, her face like a flicker of light in the white gloom, and called out to him. Fearing that he was seeing her ghost, he spurred the anxious horse in a vain effort to get it to move faster.

  Finally, after a long struggle with the forces of an angry wind, he reached the side of the coach, bent, and pulled the door open. Jessica crawled and scrambled up to him, flinging her arms around his neck. She was soaked to the skin.