The Man from Stone Creek

by Linda Lael Miller

  Neptune is with us, at the store. M.

  Sam had forgotten Ben’s little dog, and he supposed that was a mercy. He’d have worried about the critter if he’d remembered, and he surely didn’t need another problem to gnaw at in his mind.

  Now, he stood alone in the room behind the schoolroom, with Abigail’s scent faint in the warm, dusty air. He was numb with sorrow and no little guilt. He’d cared so deeply for Abigail that her absence left a carved-out place inside him, but he hadn’t loved her. Not in the way she’d wanted, not the man-woman way she’d loved him. She’d known how he felt, of course. Known he’d have gone ahead and married her, because of the understanding between them, because he was a man of his word, even when it went unspoken.

  Still, it must have tried her spirit sorely, wanting what he couldn’t give.

  Sam rubbed his eyes between a thumb and forefinger and wished he hadn’t left all the whiskey with Vierra. He felt raw, inside and out, and he surely could have used some numbing.

  Because he needed something to do, he brought the copper tub in from the shed, then got a fire going in the stove. He carried in water, put it on to heat and went back to the well for more. The process kept him busy, and when his bath was ready, it was deep, if lukewarm.

  He stripped, got into the tub and scrubbed till his skin was raw.

  Once out of the bath, and wearing clean clothes, he filled a basin, lathered his prickly beard and shaved. By the time he’d dragged the copper tub to the door and dumped it, he felt almost human.

  He wondered if there’d been a telegram from the major yet, or if the old man would just show up on the afternoon stage, or driving a wagon so he could take Abigail home and lay her to rest next to her long-dead mother. Sam would have bet on the latter.

  He’d go along, of course. He couldn’t let the major make a trip like that by himself.

  But there was still the matter of the outlaw gang, and Vierra, lying wounded in that hilltop village in Mexico. There were the schoolkids to think about, too. Violet and the others. He’d come to care about those little rascals, and it didn’t set well, the idea of leaving them.

  And there was Maddie.

  What of Maddie?

  She was a strong, independent woman, and she’d gotten by just fine without his help all these years. She’d coped with the loss of her betrothed, raised her brother and run a thriving business. She didn’t need him.

  Still, when Rex came back to Haven, as he surely would, bent on either killing Mungo with his bare hands or setting him free, all hell was bound to break loose. Maddie and the rest of the townspeople, with no real lawman to protect them, would be vulnerable to Rex and most likely the rest of that murderous bunch, too. Sam was under no delusion that just because he’d only seen five men so far, and knew for a fact that one of them, Landry Donagher, was dead, there weren’t more. He’d seen the dust raised by their horses, out where Vierra was shot.

  The gang had struck in a lot of places, on both sides of the border. A handful of men couldn’t have managed that—the distances were too great. It was a possibility, of course, that he was dealing with more than one outfit, but his gut said different.

  He went out to sit on the back step, waiting for something. Or somebody.

  He didn’t know which.

  When Terran bounded around the corner of the schoolhouse with a covered basket in one hand, Sam wasn’t surprised.

  “Maddie said you must be hungry,” the boy announced, pausing a few feet away and taking Sam’s measure with his eyes. “She sent these vittles.”

  “I’m obliged,” Sam answered.

  Still, Terran kept his distance. “You blamin’ Ben for getting Miss Blackstone drowned?”

  Sam looked toward the horses, watched them for a few moments, then shifted his gaze back to Terran. “No,” he said. “It wasn’t Ben’s fault.”

  “He shouldn’t have been down there by the river,” Terran offered cautiously.

  “No,” Sam agreed quietly. “He shouldn’t have been. But you tell Ben for me that I’ve got no hard feelings.”

  Terran came close enough to hand over the basket, but he still looked wary, and there was a tension in him that troubled Sam, though he couldn’t quite get hold of the reason why. “There’s a whole strawberry pie in there,” the boy said. “We were going to have it for supper.”

  Sam managed a smile. “I guess I’d best save you a piece, then,” he replied. “You can have it right now if you want to.”

  Terran relaxed a little. “Maddie gives stuff away all the time,” he confided.

  “Does she?” Sam spoke lightly. He lifted the cover of the basket and glanced inside. A jar of Christmas pears floating in red nectar. Ham in a tin. Half a loaf of bread. And the pie.

  “When Violet’s mother got sick, Maddie took groceries right off the shelves for them, knowin’ they couldn’t pay. And she made me take them some of our firewood, too.”

  Sam tore off a chunk of the bread and felt an anticipatory clench of hunger in the pit of his stomach. “When folks have trouble, it’s good to help them out whatever way you can,” he said.

  Terran’s jawline hardened. “Nobody ever helped Maddie and me,” he said. “We’ve had to make it on our own. It’s been that way since we left the orphanage.”

  Sam moved over on the step to make room for Terran. “Sit down, if you’ve a mind to talk awhile,” he said. Then, to sweeten the offer, he added, “I’ll share the pie.”

  Terran hesitated, then perched beside him, but he was ready to bolt. Sam could feel his readiness, coiled inside the boy like a hissing snake stuffed into a matchbox.

  The pie had been cut into eight slices and Terran reached inside the basket to help himself to one of them.

  “Tell me about the orphanage,” Sam said.

  Terran shrugged, already gobbling pie. Between swallows, he answered, “It was like a big school, only you had to stay there all the time. Maddie worked for her keep, so we could be together.”

  Sam felt a pinch in his heart, and it had nothing to do with Abigail or the vast new landscape of sorrow her loss must have opened up for the major once the news reached him. “What became of your folks?”

  “They got a fever and died. After that, it was just Maddie and me. Maddie was too old to live at the orphanage. They’d have turned her out on the streets if she hadn’t begged them for work.”

  It made Sam ache inside to think of Maddie begging for anything, let alone being turned out to make her own way in a harsh world. “Those must have been hard times for both of you,” he said moderately and, having finished the bread, took a piece of strawberry pie. “How’d you wind up in Haven?”

  “Maddie saw an advertisement in a newspaper. She wrote and sent her picture, and Mr. Donagher hired her. Sent us the money to come out here.”

  Sam considered that. Mungo must have figured on snaring himself a pretty new wife, but he hadn’t reckoned on Maddie’s pride and that streak of independence. “It was a brave thing to do, coming so far. Were you scared?”

  Terran’s spine stiffened. “No,” he replied. “I knew Maddie would see to things. Right away, she took up with Warren, anyhow. He was going to build us a house. We’d have been a family, then. Warren and Maddie and me.”

  “You miss him a lot?”

  The boy’s chin trembled. “Yeah. I should have known somebody’d kill him, though. That me and Maddie would be on our own, just like before.”

  Sam lowered his half-eaten slice of pie, waited for his throat to open up again. His eyes burned and he fixed his gaze on Charlie Wilcox’s old horse, just in case he didn’t succeed at keeping them dry. “People die, Terran,” he said hoarsely when he’d caught his breath. “But that doesn’t mean you and Maddie will always be alone.”

  “She says we’re a family already, just the two of us.”

  “I reckon that’s so,” Sam said. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Terran’s face crumple and his thin shoulders began to shake with the effort to contain h
is emotions.

  “Maddie could have got sick, taking care of Mrs. Perkins. She could have died. And then what would have happened to me?”

  Sam waited a long time to answer, struggling with a few emotions of his own. He’d been an orphan himself, after his mother had been killed. Abigail’s mother had died early, too, and that had been a bond between them. He’d gotten his raising from bunkhouse cowboys, working on ranches as a roustabout, and then from the major, who’d taken him in after he signed on to ride for the Stone Creek spread, treated him like a son, sent him away for a stint in the cavalry, and finally made a Ranger out of him. For all he’d been through, he knew he’d been damn lucky.

  “Maddie isn’t going to die anytime soon,” he said. “And even if she did, you’d be looked after.”

  “I wouldn’t go back to that orphanage or any place like it,” Terran said.

  “No,” Sam allowed. He’d been on his own a long while at Terran’s age, and he remembered how it was. He’d fallen in with kind companions, but that hadn’t kept him from grieving in his bunk at night. It hadn’t made the shadows any less threatening, or soothed the ache in his midsection when he saw families headed to church of a Sunday morning, sitting cheek by jowl in their wagons, speaking a heart language he didn’t understand.

  “I’m twelve,” Terran went on with staunch bravado. “I reckon I could make my way if I had to.” He didn’t look like he reckoned that at all, but Sam saw no point in calling him on it.

  “You won’t have to,” he said instead. He rested a hand briefly on the boy’s shoulder. “Anything happens to Maddie, you just get on the stage to Flagstaff. From there, you hitch a ride to Stone Creek. That’s my ranch.”

  Terran’s eyes widened. “You’ve got a ranch?”

  Sam nodded.

  “Then what are you doing down here in Haven, teaching school?”

  The question, logical as it was, caught Sam off guard. He could lie with the best of them, but he didn’t like doing it, especially to a boy. “Man’s got to earn a living,” he said.

  Terran studied him suspiciously. “Seems to me ranching would pay better than schoolmastering,” he observed. “Town council couldn’t even get a woman to do it.”

  “There are some things,” Sam replied, stifling a sigh, “that you just have to take at face value.”

  Terran was silent for a long time, wrestling with something inside, Sam figured. In time, he spoke, and startled Sam all over again. “Now that Miss Blackstone’s dead,” he said, “I guess you could marry Maddie. She’s cussed, but most folks would say she’s pretty.”

  “I suppose Maddie would have something to say about that,” Sam said carefully. “A fine woman like your sister could marry anybody she wanted.”

  “She likes you,” Terran said.

  “I like her, too,” Sam answered. “But it’s more complicated than that. Getting married, I mean. Maddie’s got her store, and I’ve got a ranch up north, a long ways from here. One of us would have to give some important ground, if we were going to be together.”

  “Maybe you don’t want her because she ain’t a virgin,” Terran speculated.

  Sam was careful not to react visibly, but it took some real doing. He held his tongue, figuring anything he might say right then would surely come out wrong.

  Terran waited, as though he was letting the announcement sink in. “Warren said so, once. It was the only time I ever heard them argue.”

  It was like a burr in a fresh wound, knowing Maddie had lain with another man, and he had no right to feel the way he did. Sam groped for speech, roused his tongue, which had grown thick and tried to slither into the back of his throat. “It’s a private thing, Terran,” he said. “What happens between a man and a woman.”

  “I never told nobody but you,” Terran replied. “I figured you might be willing to overlook it, but I guess I was wrong.”

  Sam had never even kissed Maddie Chancelor, though he’d wanted to right enough and he’d thought about it a thousand times since they’d met. Even now, in the midst of sorrow, he imagined how it would be, and he was ashamed of the turn his mind took from there.

  “Now you probably figure Maddie for a loose woman.” Terran’s freckled face reddened with obstinate conviction. “She isn’t. Any man who married her would be plain lucky!”

  “I’d have to agree with you there,” Sam said thoughtfully.

  Terran got to his feet. “I guess I’d better get back to the store. Maddie wants me to sweep the sidewalk, and anyhow, I’ve got to keep an eye on Ben, so he doesn’t take off again.”

  Sam nodded. “You tell Maddie I’m obliged for this food,” he said.

  Terran nodded and took his leave.

  THE NEXT MORNING, when Sam got out of bed and looked out the window to see what kind of day it was going to be, he noticed right off that old Dobbin had vanished.

  It didn’t take much to figure out where he’d gone.

  Sam put on his clothes and headed for the Rattlesnake Saloon, on foot.

  Dobbin stood out front, like always, swishing his sparse tail and waiting. Sam’s eyes commenced to burning again, and he was trying to make sense of that when along came Maddie, crossing the street, slant-wise, from the mercantile. She was wearing a blue chambray dress and her hair was plaited, the single heavy braid resting over her right shoulder. She gave Sam a tentative smile and held out her hand to Dobbin, offering a glimmering chunk of rock candy.

  “Poor old horse,” she said.

  Sam looked away, blinked, and looked back. “I wish there was some way to tell him Charlie’s gone,” he said to Maddie when he trusted the words to come out steady.

  Dobbin took the rock candy from Maddie’s palm and chomped.

  “I wonder if it would do any good,” Maddie said quietly. “Knowing, I mean.”

  Sam looked toward the undertaker’s place. Abigail was there, waiting to be taken home and buried, and all the knowing in the world wouldn’t change that. “Jesus,” he said on a ragged breath. “I wish she hadn’t come here in the first place.”

  Maddie withdrew her palm, now that Dobbin was through with the rock candy, and laid it lightly on Sam’s arm. “It isn’t your fault, Sam.”

  He met her eyes, but it was an unaccountably hard thing to do. “Isn’t it?”

  She didn’t answer.

  Sam thrust a hand through his hair. “Guess I’ll stop by the telegraph office to see if there’s been any word from Abigail’s pa. After that, I’ll ring the school bell. You tell Terran and Ben I mean for them to learn something today, and to fetch Violet on their way there.”

  Maddie smiled, softly and sadly, but the sight of it soothed something in Sam, warmed him a little. “I’ll tell them,” she said. And only then did she lift her hand from his sleeve. She patted Dobbin once more, then turned and headed back across the street.

  Sam came up dry at the telegraph office, so he went back to the saloon, told Dobbin he was leaving and he ought to follow, and the horse heeded him.

  When the two of them got back to the schoolhouse, Sam gave both animals a pan of grain, scooped from the sack in the shed, and made good on his word to Maddie, hauling on the bell rope until the peals seemed to echo off the farthest hills.

  The major showed up at noon, when the kids were in the schoolyard, working off a morning of pent-up energy. He was driving a wagon, with a plain rosewood coffin in the back, and his grizzled, craggy old face was a mask of stalwart mourning.

  Sam approached, nodded his greeting, since all of a sudden, he was too choked up to speak. The children went still and silent behind him, like a storm wind suddenly dissipated.

  “Where is she?” the major asked.

  “I’ll take you there,” Sam said, about to turn and tell the children that school was dismissed for the day.

  The old man stopped him with a stout, “No.”

  Sam moved a step nearer. “It’s a long way back to the ranch,” he said quietly. “You’ll require company.”

  “We�
��re only going as far as Phoenix in this wagon,” the major answered with a decisive shake of his head. “Catch a train north from there.” He paused, cleared his throat. His eyes, hollow with despair, never left Sam’s face. “She brought some things with her. I’d be obliged if you’d fetch them out here so I can get my daughter and make for home.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Sam sent Terran and Ben inside for Abigail’s trunk and handbag.

  “I ought to go with you,” Sam insisted.

  “You ought to stay right here and finish what you started,” the major countered firmly.

  There would be a funeral, and even though he dreaded it more than anything in the world, Sam couldn’t imagine not attending. Abigail had been his closest friend. “I want to pay my respects.”

  “Time enough for that when your work is done.”

  “Don’t you want to know how it happened?”

  “I got a long telegram from a Miss Chancelor. I don’t need any more explanations. All I want is to take my daughter back to the ranch, where she belongs.”

  Terran and Ben returned, lugging the heavy trunk between them. Violet brought the handbag.

  Sam took the trunk from the boys and hoisted it into the back of the wagon, alongside the varnished coffin, most likely procured in Phoenix, along with the two-horse team and the wagon.

  Meanwhile, Ben scrambled up into the box, on the side opposite the major, pale with some private determination.

  “She died savin’ me,” the boy said solemnly. “It’s my doing that she’s dead.”

  Sam went around to stand behind Ben, meaning to lift him down to the ground.

  “Who do you belong to?” the major demanded in a booming voice.

  A shudder went through Ben’s small frame, but he didn’t push away and run, like a lot of kids would have done. “Nobody in particular,” Ben said. “My pa’s in jail for killin’ my brother Garrett.” The boy didn’t know he’d lost a second brother, Landry, because Sam hadn’t found a way to tell him. “I’ve been livin’ with Miss Maddie and Terran, over at the general store, but I don’t imagine they can keep me long.”