He turned as Rooster ran in, nearly slamming the door behind herself. She shivered in Effie’s cape and hurried to warm herself by the fire. “You watered my horse?”
She nodded. Pouty. Had been since his arrival. Was she up to something in his absence? Likely he needed to stay a few days, follow her some. But there was neither hay nor a barn here for Nell. If the nag dropped this winter, he needed it to happen when he was in Omaha.
He pushed down again on the valise lid, stopped, and pulled the coat out. He’d carry it. The hinges of his bag were weak with age and wear.
Rooster snuck up to his side, too close, and he scowled at her nearness. “We need the coat,” she said. She took it from the bed, crossed the room, and hung his property on a nail by the back door.
Smart that one. Too smart. As though she weren’t actually stealing from him, only moving his possession across the room. He thought to grab her by her rooster hair, but Effie’s lethargy stopped him. Rooster at least had sense, wasn’t folding up and quitting because her life carried a bit of hardship. “That one has a brain,” he said to Effie. “You can thank me for getting you a sensible one.”
Rooster faced him. She was at the fire again, slapping her arms. “Why does Mr. Deet have to use Jake for trapping? Their horses can pull the sled.”
“That what’s got into you? Come here.” He’d forgotten he had a bit of business needing tended to. He waited until she’d sheepishly stepped close enough, then used the back of his hand to strike her across the cheek. She stumbled and hit the floor. “Deet paid me a little visit. Said last time they came trapping you got under foot. That animal ain’t yours. Next time you bother Deet things will be a whole lot worse for you. Now git up.”
She did, holding her cheek, her eyes brimming.
“Ox’s got two toes for gripping,” he said. “Better footing on icy river banks. You think an iron-shod horse can get traction on snowy slopes?” She wasn’t looking at him. “A horse needs a bit of grain now and again, but brute that out there can stay alive on scrub.” He paused. “You got something more to say?”
“They don’t love him.” She was close to weeping. “They don’t care if he breaks a leg on the ice. They only care about their horses.”
His eye twitched. Twitched again. Was she sassing him? Loving an animal was weakness. Pure weakness. “You act like a goddamned girl around here, and it’s gonna turn out bad.” His eye ticked, each pulse a tiny explosion of a nerve ending. “I’ve warned you now about causing Deet trouble. Your sniveling little-girl’s ass . . .” He stopped. His father’s voice boomed in his head.
Effie lifted the pump handle. Water gushed into her dishpan. “Bridget, come help me.” When Rooster crossed the room, Effie put herself between Squawk and him. “An Injun lives down the road,” Effie said.
He shook his head in frustration. She also had something in her craw. “The half-breed?” He nearly chuckled at the surprise on her face. His flapping eye slowed a notch. “You think I don’t know what goes on around here? Don’t know about his papoose drowning and his wife getting the hell away? You know what’s good for you, you’ll stay out of his business.”
“He might be one of those who scalped and murdered Pa’s family.”
She and Rooster were a pair of squawks. One falling in love with an animal, the other scared of something ain’t happened in more ’an a quarter century.
“You saying you ain’t safe here? You saying the Lord’s provision ain’t up to your standards? That redskin didn’t come all the way from Minnesota to Nebraska.”
“We done it,” she said. “We come that far.”
She deserved what he’d given Rooster. He wrapped his pen in its square of soft felt, gave the cap on his inkbottle a second hard twist.
His eye was firing like a pistol. How could he impress followers with half his face jigging? He turned, his one steady eye facing Effie. “That Indian shows his face here, shoot him. No white preacher’s wife’s going to swing for shooting an Indian.”
“Maybe Chief is nice.”
Rooster had lifted her mug to speak, the grab of her words trying him. “He ain’t nothing to either of you.”
He put on his hat, turned, and saw motion out the window. He set his belongings back on the table and swung open the door. A man, one-third his age and riding a sleek chestnut mare, was coming down the frozen slope. The horse made Nell look like a graying dog.
“You got men coming down here?” He rounded on Effie. “I’ll see about that.” He stepped out, leaving the door open to the cold; Effie needed to hear loud and clear.
Rooster appeared behind him, sneaky as she’d been coming for his coat, her cheek red and swelling from the lesson he’d taught her. “It’s the school teacher,” she said.
“How you know that?” Was it guilt shining in her eyes? Or just fear of him? “I hear you been sniffing around that school, I’ll lock you in the shed a week.”
The rider finished the descent, his horse’s ears high, its nostrils puffing steam. “Good morning, sir.” He tipped his hat and began to draw a leg over his saddle. “You must be Rev. Jackdaw.”
“What you want?”
The leg eased back over. “I’m headmaster of the school. I’ve come to talk about your daughter attending.”
“Ain’t no daughter here. You’re looking at an orphan I’m housing.”
He squinted at Rooster. “An orphan, you say?”
“That’s right.” He let the information sink in. “What use would this here orphan be to me, her head filled with book learning?”
The man leaned forward in the saddle. “Rooster?” White teeth showing. “She’s likely to amount to more with a proper education.”
“What sort of new-fangled nonsense is that?” He was glad for the new coat and tugged his hat down more to the right over his bad eye. “Just what is it she’s supposed to amount to? I’m carrying the expense of feeding her. This one here,” he thumped Rooster’s head through her wrapping, “ain’t in need of schooling.”
“If she were to attend, she might become a school teacher herself one day.”
“Hell, she’s Irish. You think you’re going to teach her to run a school?”
“Irish? Well.” He looked back up the slope and to the road. “I wondered about that.”
“I’m going to be a doctor,” Bridget said.
Rev. Jackdaw snorted. She was talking nonsense in front of this man. Giving the im-pression she wasn’t being raised proper. Wasn’t being taught to respect her elders. “No man’s ever going to let a woman doctor him. You know how to cook, clean out piss buckets, that’ll be all the education you need.”
The schoolteacher grinned. The conversation had turned comical to him. “An education might help her avoid the perils you fight against in the city. Aren’t them ‘ladies’ mostly Irish?”
“Whoredom? You know about my work?” His reputation was spreading. “I’ll kill her myself ’fore I let her ruin a man.”
“Well, suit yourself, sir. I came out to be sure of your wishes.”
Rooster spun around and vanished back in the lodge. Slammed the door again. Fucking girl! His father’s voice once again thundering in his head. The flash of a boot toe aimed for his groin.
Bridget dropped back against the door and slapped her hands over her ears. She wouldn’t listen to one more word. She’d hurried out to see the teacher who’d opened a school window for her to hear better, even winked at her. And did the same every afternoon she crept below his window for an hour or two. She’d trusted he came to tell Rev. Jackdaw she needed to be in school. She’d trusted he came on her behalf, and he could convince Rev. Jackdaw to let her attend school. He was a teacher, which made him the smartest man in Bleaksville. He knew all the right words to say. She’d believed he liked her. But she’d seen something in his eyes when Rev. Jackdaw said she was an orphan. Something again when Rev. Jackdaw said she was Irish.
She socked her stomach. She wanted to run back out, jump off the porch, pul
l off his stupid mustache and poke his horse with a sharp stick and scream it away. She looked to Effie. “They laughed at me.”
Effie nodded, but so slight Bridget wasn’t sure.
“They laughed at me.” Her fists balled. “I’m eleven. They can’t decide my whole life.”
She couldn’t go back to the school now. Not even to sit outside beneath a window. The schoolteacher had lied to her, pretending to care, pretending to believe having girls at school was as important as having boys. He was a L-I-A-R. He’d only ridden his horse down so he could pretend he cared. He didn’t believe she fit in his school.
She’d bust open if she didn’t make the crushing, crashing feelings go away. She looked at the inkbottle on the table. Stealing would help. She raced to grab it up.
Effie’s breath sucked in. “Put that down. He’ll whip you!”
Bridget agreed. Taking the bottle would be too obvious. She slapped open the journal. The pages, full of scrawling script, parted in the middle of the book with thick stitching running down the center. She tore out a page and saw the ragged edge left behind and had to take that half of the sheet too. Not enough. Another rip and its opposite half. Four ragged pages in her hand.
Effie’s stifled moans sounded as if she’d slapped both hands over her mouth. “You’ll get yourself killed.” She hurried across the room and dropped to her knees in front of the bed. Pretending prayer. “Run.” Her voice a sharp whisper. “Run out the back.”
The latch lifted on the front door. The hinges squeaked. Rev. Jackdaw was inside, pausing, likely looking at Effie.
The pages in Bridget’s hand shook. Nera, Nera.
“Green and gung-ho that one.” Rev. Jackdaw strutted forward, his steps full of hard boot heels and purpose. “Made a damned fool of hisself. Coming here, acting like I don’t know my own business.”
Dr. Chase’s book lay on the table, its black covers worn. Bridget stuffed the journal sheets between pages and slammed the book closed.
Rev. Jackdaw towered over her, his eyes going from her face to the book she’d slammed shut and pressed closed with both hands. “What’s gotten into you?”
Effie let out a mumbling string of words that sounded like “Our dear Lord.” Or “We’re dead, Lord.”
Rev. Jackdaw glanced at her on her knees again and frowned. He pulled Dr. Chase’s book from beneath Bridget’s hands and shook it in her face. “Anything you need to know about doctoring is right here.”
“Yes, sir.” She lifted her hands slowly, tugged gently on the book he held fast. The corner of a journal page peeked out the bottom, “Yes, sir,” she repeated. She tugged again, her hands shaking, and when he let go, she hugged the book to her chest.
Bridget led Jake through the snow toward Old Mag. Rev. Jackdaw’s coat hung to her ankles and rubbed the top of her too-tight shoes. Animal tracks ran in all directions through the trees and across the path. Deer, fox, squirrel. She looked for anything green poking up through the snow, both for Jake to eat and to take back to the lodge. If Effie had something happy inside, she might feel better. Grandma Teegan always brought ivy and holly in during winter to keep the croft cheery.
“Effie’s never been in the trees,” she told Jake. That wasn’t the scariest thing she needed to tell him. Effie was quitting inside. Step one to something bad happening.
At Old Mag, she crawled over one arm and stared down at the snow-covered spot where she’d drawn her map. She had drawn it for safety and holding the day together, but it wasn’t working.
“Hey.”
She jumped at seeing Pete riding down the path on Mr. Thayer’s wide plow horse. Since Mae’s death, she’d seen him ride back and forth from Bleaksville on the nag. Going in mornings and coming home late in the afternoons. She imagined that without Mae to tend, Mr. Thayer had insisted he work. Atop the horse no sleeker or faster looking than Jake, Pete sat bundled in his coat and hat and looked plain handsome. His lips tipped up enough to say he liked riding, and he liked her seeing him do so.
He’d come from the direction of Chief ’s. She’d never seen him in Deet’s trees, but of course he knew about the path. He’d used the trail with his mother when they gathered wood.
“What are you doing here?”
“What you doing?”
She shrugged, then cringed as his gaze moved from the rags wrapped around her head to the man-coat with its sleeves hanging six inches too long. Was he thinking how poor she looked?
He nodded in the direction of the lodge. “Mrs. Jackdaw home? I have a message for her.”
“I could tell her.”
“It’s business.”
Effie was likely sleeping and wouldn’t want to be woken up, but Pete needed her. “Follow me.” She started back, leading the way with Jake beside her. She wouldn’t hurry, her feet pinched in her shoes, and if Pete didn’t believe her capable of relaying a simple message, she’d take her sweet time.
Opening the lodge door, she looked first to how the fire had burned down in her absence and then to Effie in bed, curled beneath the Never Forget quilt.
“Pete’s here.” She waited for Effie’s eyes to open. “Pete needs to talk to you.”
Effie sat up looking confused and still half-asleep. “Pete?”
“He’s outside.”
Bridget opened the door and listened as Effie in her wrinkled dress, hugged herself against the cold. “Pete, has something happened?”
“A rocker’s come for you.” He kept to his horse. “Two days ago. You don’t fetch it, the chair becomes property of the railroad.”
Bridget’s chest warmed. She was Pete’s friend; Effie wasn’t. Pete wanted to deliver the message himself because it was bossy. Effie hadn’t accepted Mae’s loaf; she told them they couldn’t collect wood; and when Pete stood with his black eye and his hat in his hand, Effie refused to help him dress his mother for burial.
“Granny’s rocker?” Effie asked. “That means . . .” Her hair hung over her cheeks, but she made no effort to push it back. “Can’t anyone bring it out? I don’t have a wagon.”
Pete straightened, making himself taller. “The railroad delivers as far as the depot. Going on a week now. Ain’t your family sent word?” He lingered a few seconds more, turned his horse, and touched his heels to the animal’s flanks.
“Pete,” Effie called and waited as he pulled up and looked back. “I’m sorry about your ma.”
He kicked the horse’s flanks again. “Jackdaw wanted the chair sent to his room in Omaha. But no one’s paid for that.”
Bridget closed the door because Effie continued staring after Pete as if not making sense of what he told her. And not feeling winter blow inside.
“Granny’s rocker,” Effie finally whispered. “Granny’s dead.” She sank onto the bed, her face slowly falling and her eyes filling. “What could have happened? She was old, her mind, but she wasn’t sick.” She stared at the fire. “Her mind, but she wasn’t sick.”
Bridget watched Effie’s tears but didn’t know what to say.
“Not a line of post.” Effie’s face twisted. “Rev. Jackdaw knew. He wanted to take the chair, not even telling me it came.”
“We should go right now,” Bridget said. “You lost your granny; you can’t lose your chair too.”
“We can’t carry it that far.”
“Jake can.”
Bridget shivered as Effie began to change dresses, letting the one she wore slide down over her hips and stepping free in her graying slip. Her collar and shoulder bones were beginning to look like ledges mice could run along. Grandma Teegan’s body had looked the same way.
When Effie took the stained green silk from its peg, they both jumped to see a mouse drop and scurry away. Tiny new holes ran along the hem.
Bridget had never used the lasso Rev. Jackdaw tied in the rope, but this was different; she’d never taken Jake into town. She slipped it over his head knowing that even with the weight he’d lost, she wouldn’t be strong enough to hold him back if something on Mai
n Street spooked him. The length of the rope was too heavy to carry, and she let it drop and drag for fifteen paces behind. She stayed at Jake’s head where she could talk to him. Hopefully, her voice along with the feel of the rope dragging behind would be enough to keep Jake from running off.
They walked first in a snowy runnel made by horses, then after passing Chief ’s—Effie’s eyes down—they walked in wagon wheel tracks.
Effie didn’t speak, but Bridget heard her sniffing and thought how much she missed Grandma Teegan. Someday, maybe she’d see her again, but Effie knew she’d never see her granny again.
Crossing Nettle Creek, Bridget tugged and coaxed Jake, and step by step he obeyed. The schoolyard was empty, and she hoped the headmaster looked out a window and saw her. She didn’t know how, but she’d prove girls could be doctors.
Effie scrubbed her teary face with her hands. “I don’t want people looking at me. Go down a side street.”
Pete wasn’t at the small stationhouse. A man Bridget had never seen, along with Mr. Thayer, carried out the rocker, one man on each arm. Effie didn’t watch either. She stood silently while they hoisted the chair and used the long rope and strapped the rocker to Jake’s side. She didn’t notice how Mr. Thayer kept glancing at her—Bridget did. A tobacco-stained streak ran down from Mr. Thayer’s bottom lip and deep into the wiry bush of his beard. He’d given Pete a black eye, and just like Effie, he hadn’t helped Pete dress his mother for her funeral.
They finished looping and knotting. The rocker hung off Jake’s side looking like a throne Effie could climb onto and ride all the way home.
The aproned man wished them a good day and went back inside. Mr. Thayer lingered. He looked at Effie. “You don’t come into town much.”
She studied her shoes. “When I need things.”
Tobacco juice squirted from Mr. Thayer’s mouth. He’d turned his head, but the spittle made Bridget nearly gag. A bead of dark saliva curled over his lower lip and disappeared in the brown trail. “You staying for the eating and dancing?”
Effie grabbed one of the chair’s rockers as though the ground beneath her feet had suddenly slipped. “Dancing?”
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