by Carla Kelly
“There is no call for such behavior,” she said, “and don’t you put your ears back like that!”
“His ears are pretty much gone,” Jack said. “How can you tell? Boy howdy, you have a bodyguard.”
Lily gave her bodyguard a little swat on his hinder parts and he slunk away to the corner, facing in and twitching what remained of his tail. Luella burst into laughter, and so did the others. He listened, heard no hysteria, and realized that bruised and battered as it looked, all was well in the Temple of Education. He turned back to Lily.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t come sooner,” he said.
“We’re grateful you came at all.”
He remembered something he had to do. He went to the door, threw it open, drew his .45, squeezed off two shots, and closed the door. Lily had clamped her hands to her ears.
“I told the hands I’d fire two shots if all y’all were all okay,” he explained as he worked his well-padded arm over to reholster the gun. “They’ll be here in a bit to help out. Meanwhile . . .” Jack unlimbered the cloth bag and tucked Madeleine’s undergarments under one arm. He took out the bread and dried apples and handed them to Nick.
Jack understood immediately what had happened in the past twenty-four hours when Nick gave the food to Lily. There was no question who was in charge in that classroom, even through what he imagined was a terrifying ordeal. It was frightening enough in the bunkhouse, and they were all grown men.
Lily set the food on the remaining desk and her students gathered close. “Here now.”
She handed each child a loaf of bread. Jack felt his tears start again when each child broke off a goodly hunk and handed it to Lily. They all ate silently, dipping into the dried apples, no one taking too much at once. These were children who had learned a terrible lesson in a mere twenty-four hours—Luella, for sure. Jack thought the Sansevers already knew the lesson.
Lily ate one of the portions the children had given her, then took another to the corner, where Freak the cat sulked. “Here you are, you little beast,” she said in a most loving tone, setting the bread by his lashing tail. As he listened to her, Jack knew he’d give the earth to have any woman give him such a tender endearment. The thought made him smile, which hurt his cold face.
As the children sat together by the stove, Jack decided to put his arm around Lily’s shoulders whether she wanted him to or not. “I’m impressed,” he said, which sounded so stupid when it came out of his mouth.
She must not have minded. “I’ve never been so frightened in my life.”
She kept shivering, and he remembered Madeleine’s little gift. “Here. Madeleine thinks you might need these.” He handed her the two-piece undergarments, wondering if she would slap him across the chops.
Lily took the underwear with a huge sigh. Her light tan complexion sported two pink spots, so he knew she was embarrassed. She was also unwilling to look this gift horse in the mouth, because she told him to turn around and stand between her and the children, who were concentrating on the food. He did as she said and waited as she pulled on the drawers.
And waited. She tapped him on the shoulder. “Pardon me, but my hands are too cold to unlace my shoes. Could you . . . ?”
He could and did, sitting her down on the remaining desk. He removed his mittens and gloves, and unlaced her shoes. She had well-shaped feet, but her shoes were impractical. He wasn’t sure what he could do about that.
“Here.” She handed him the bottoms, her face even redder. “Just get them started. I’m so cold that I can’t do it.”
That admission was all he needed to snap him back into his foreman duties. He knew he was responsible for everyone on the Bar Dot, because Oliver Buxton just didn’t understand the rules. He pulled the bottoms on Lily without a blush or a qualm, because she was part of his stewardship. The only issue was safety and survival.
He pulled them all the way up over her ridiculous lacy underwear which he could feel, but did not see, because he kept his eyes on a spot on the map of Europe just west of England. She didn’t protest when he felt along her waist until he found the cords, and tied them firmly, but not too tight. He put his hands back where they belonged and helped her tug down her dress.
“That’ll help,” he told her. “You and I are about the same height, and I have another pair I’m not wearing. I’ll give them to you and you’d better keep them on. It’s too cold to risk your legs.” He tucked the flannel top into her overcoat pocket and pulled on his gloves. “You can put it on later.”
She accepted all this attention and wisdom in the spirit in which he offered it, which eased his heart. She looked him in the eyes and said simply, “Thank you.” Her eyes showed how desperately tired she was, how depleted, from a test that not all would have passed.
She ate another hunk of bread. She held another out to him and he took it, hungry too. “Do we wait for the others?” she asked.
They were both sitting on the last desk now. He leaned closer and spoke in her ear. “Stretch never made it to the bunkhouse. I sent Preacher and Will to haul more firewood to the cookshack, and Pierre to look for Stretch.”
“Lost?” she asked, her eyes wide. “Oh, I hope not. It was a dreadful storm.”
“He was in the horse barn to muck out the stalls. I hope he stayed there.”
She leaned close this time. “Nick wanted to take his sisters and leave,” she whispered. “I was almost tempted because I didn’t know what to do.” She shuddered, which gave him a perfect excuse to put his arm around her again.
“You did everything right in here.”
“I had help,” she told him simply, and looked toward Amelie. “She refused to leave and told him to do as I said.”
“Amelie?” he asked, surprised and speaking louder than he intended. Amelie heard her name and looked his way, kind and charitable in her silent way. He blew her a kiss, and she blushed.
“She was forceful and he listened,” Lily whispered. “I do not intend to ever underestimate her.”
And I will never underestimate you, he thought. This first blizzard could have ended so badly for the Temple of Education, but it did not. He had long thought of himself as the most capable person on the Bar Dot, with Pierre running him a close second. Now there was a third.
She looked around and sighed. “Now our lovely classroom is gone.”
Jack was prepared to tell her firmly, if he needed to, that there would be no more school in a building that was too far from the main ranch quarters. She beat him to it, which relieved his heart. As much as he didn’t mind meting out bad news when warranted to his cowhands, he had no wish to disappoint someone as fine as Lily Carteret.
“We can’t continue here,” she said. “I won’t have the children so far from help. Will you think of something else?”
He nodded and stood up, then held out his hand for her. “Most certainly. Right now, up you get. We need this last desk turned into firewood. You or me, Nick?”
Nick took the hatchet and began his destruction of the last desk. He chopped clumsily, his hands stiff with cold. Disappointment on his face, Nick handed the hatchet to Jack, who finished the job. He was liberal with the wood in the stove, and soon the room was nearly bearable. The children seemed to relax. In a few minutes, Chantal came to Lily and whispered in her ear. Lily nodded and the two of them went to a corner of the room. He watched, curious, then looked away when Lily spread her skirts and Chantal went behind her.
“We solved this problem early in the storm,” Lily said, with no embarrassment.
When Chantal finished, it was Amelie’s turn, and then Luella’s. “What do you do?” Jack whispered to Nick, who was also looking away.
“Just open the door a crack and let fly,” the boy said. “It’s easier for us men.”
Jack chuckled. When everyone was back near the stove, Lily asked her students to sing “Sur le Pont,” for their rescuer. He applauded when they finished, and he remained an appreciative audience as they sang “Silent Night” and
“O Come All Ye Faithful.”
“We learned several songs last night,” Lily explained. “I am already planning a Christmas party.” She looked toward the window that was a solid block of ice. “Who knew that it would look like Christmas on October 2?” She gave him a solemn look. “You knew.”
An hour passed and another. As Jack began to wonder if he should have been more frugal with that final desk, someone banged on the door. Informing him that it was her turn to be the door monitor, Luella opened the door and ushered in Preacher and Will, bundled to their eyebrows and snow covered.
“Need a little help with your classroom, Miss Carteret?” Preacher teased.
Lily was sitting cross-legged with her students on Pierre’s winter count, which Jack knew had saved their lives, that and the wisdom to burn the desks. “They’re a rowdy lot,” she teased back, which made her students look at each other and grin. Chantal lay with her head on Lily’s thigh, and Luella sat close on her other side.
“We were just biding our time until more knights in shining armor arrived,” she said. “It appears that our wish is granted, gentlemen. Do help us tidy things.”
Jack couldn’t help smiling. Lily had that effect on the average cowhand, and probably vagabonds and rustlers, for all he knew. They all looked at her expectantly.
Lily clasped her hands in front of her and took a deep breath. “My dears, it seems that we must close the Bar Dot School.”
Amelie burst into tears. Jack had wondered when the sum of two terrifying days would sink in, and here it was before him. He shouldn’t have worried. Lily wrapped Amelie in a fierce embrace and held her. She looked over the child’s head to her other students, who looked equally solemn, with Chantal sniffing back tears.
“My darlings, here is the wonderful thing about schools: they don’t disappear just because the building does! We’ll take the school with us.” She kissed Amelie’s cheek. In true Gallic fashion, the child turned her other cheek toward Lily, who laughed and kissed that one too. “Now then, let us gather our books and slates and whatever papers we have. Preacher, will you roll up our maps?”
Everyone did as she said. Soon there was a small pile on the winter count, the painted surface showing, now that the furry side had done its duty and kept the children alive. Lily stuffed the chalk in her coat pocket and walked slowly around the room, near tears herself. Jack tried to see it through her eyes, a magic place where children learned. He vaguely remembered his Georgia childhood, planting cotton, chopping cotton, and getting beaten for mistaking weeds for the tender plants. Black and white, bond and free, they hoed through humid summers where the air was heavy enough to drink, then harvested, dragging huge burlap sacks behind.
There had been no Temple of Education for him. As he watched more favored children carry books and slates down the dirt track toward the Methodist school, he had told himself that learning was for sissies, even as he yearned to walk with them. His envy showed only once, and his father had beaten him for that too. He hadn’t understood that beating then, but he did now: his father had wanted to learn as much as his oldest son.
He watched as Preacher and Will bundled up the buffalo robe and tied it with what looked like a canvas rope, knotted over and over, that they had found just outside the door.
Lily stood beside him. “We ripped up our own winter counts and tied them together to make a rope. Nick and I bound ourselves together and went for wood.”
“I can find more canvas,” he told her, grateful all over again at the common sense and courage of the woman beside him.
She nodded. “I hated to do that, but we had to survive.”
Will surprised him by shouldering the heavy bundle without being asked. Maybe there was hope for such a useless cowhand, after all.
Still the children stood in the nearly empty room.
“You can set up shop again in a corner of the dining hall,” he told them, which brought smiles, but not for long.
“We can’t just leave the Wyoming Kid,” Luella said.
“The what?” he asked, amused.
“We named our pack rat the Wyoming Kid,” Lily explained. “Oh, dear.”
No one moved. Without a word, Lily put the rest of her loaf of bread and the remaining dried apples by the Little Man of the Prairie’s hole.
“That’s not enough for a whole winter,” Luella said mournfully.
Lily took her hand. “We’ll have to trust that The Kid is wise and capable and tough.” She gave Luella’s hand in hers a little shake. “Like you, my child. We have to leave now.”
“What about Freak?” Jack said.
“Francis,” Lily told him.
The cat sat near the barely warm stove, watching them. Lily held out her hand—Jack had given her his too-large mittens—and spoke softly. “Francis, I have to close the door.”
“He can’t understand you,” Luella said.
The cat was still no fool. He looked at them all with vast disdain and made his way slowly toward Lily.
“He’ll do you damage,” Jack warned as she picked up the feral stray who had taken refuge in the Temple of Education.
“No, he won’t,” she contradicted. “We kept each other warm last night. There now, Francis. Be a good cat.” She settled the bedraggled veteran of many winters along her arm and tucked him close to her side. He growled deep in his throat, which only made her say, “Oh, you.” Jack closed the door and they started down the slope, walking past dead cattle, snow-covered and anchored to frozen ground, killed by their frantic efforts to breathe.
Nick stared at the mounds. The wind had picked up as evening approached, uncovering some of the cattle. Chantal cried out in fright, so Preacher swooped her up and settled her on his shoulders. “Eyes ahead,” he told her. “You’re safe.”
Jack came last, his eyes open for stragglers. They slipped and slid toward the ranch buildings, all of them looking puny and ready to collapse, and this was only the first storm.
Fothering was watching for them as they came close to the Buxton house, bearing its heavy weight of snow on the roof. He met them at what used to be the picket fence, but which was now just another mound of snow.
Jack felt no surprise at Luella’s reluctance to turn loose of Lily’s hand. “We have to hurry inside,” Fothering told her, his eyes kind. “Your mother is hungry for the sight of you.”
As if to emphasize his words, Mrs. Buxton began to wail from her upstairs bedroom, Chantal and Amelie looked at each other in alarm, then in sympathy at Luella.
“We’ll have school again quite soon,” Lily said in a soothing voice. She waved to Luella as the child turned around to watch her.
“I’d hate to live there,” Jack muttered to Lily.
“Surely it isn’t all that terrible,” Lily replied, but he heard no conviction in her low voice.
Pierre joined them as they passed the horse barn. He shook his head at Jack. No Stretch.
They trudged to the cookshack. Like thirsty horses heading toward the water trough, Amelie and Nick broke into a run. Chantal started to clamber down from Preacher’s shoulders, so he helped her. The kitchen door opened and with cries of delight, Madeleine welcomed in her little brood. Her arms around her little ones, she raised one hand to gesture them all toward her. Preacher and Will started in her direction.
Might as well broach the matter with Lily right now, especially as she was looking at the other buildings, trying to discern which one was the house she shared with Clarence Carteret. He took her arm when she started toward what he knew was an old tack shed, and not her house.
“Lily, it’s too far to your house from the rest of the buildings.”
“Yes, but I . . .”
“I’ve already moved into the bunkhouse. You and your father will be in my old place. It’s closer and I won’t have an argument.”
From the look of exhaustion on her face, an argument was the last thing Lily seemed to be entertaining. She nodded. “All I want to do is sleep.”
“Did y
ou stay up all night, feeding the fire?”
She nodded again. “Mostly I want to be warm. Will I have to wait until spring for that?”
“I fear so,” he told her. This was no woman to lie to.
“Very well. I do need to my clothes, and there’s Ivanhoe.”
Jack took Lily’s hand. “We haven’t had time to shovel, so just be careful.”
Silent, they crossed the open space between the horse barn and the old tack shed to the Carteret’s place. Jack whistled softly under his breath. The first blizzard of 1886 had caved in the tack shed’s feeble roof. “That was the first building here in ’69, so Mr. Buxton claims,” he said.
He tugged on Lily’s hand because he could see she was flagging. “Tell you what,” he started, “how about you just tell me what you want and I’ll go ahead and . . .”
He had turned to talk to her, kept walking, and staggered sideways into a small mound of snow. He dragged her down with him, and they both foundered against what felt like a log at first, but which a horrible feeling told him it wasn’t. He let go of Lily and pawed into the mound.
He should have waited until Lily had her clothes and was safe in the cookshack before investigating. A few more swipes of snow, and there lay Stretch.
CHAPTER 33
Jack knew he was no gentleman, but the gentleman in him tried to thrust Lily behind him to spare her the sight of his cowhand from Connecticut, mouth ajar in a twisted scream, his frozen hands clutching his open shirt, as if to rip it off.
They both stared down at the dead man. Lily started to breathe faster and faster. Jack took her gently by the neck and gave her a little shake. “Deep breaths, Lily,” he ordered, and she obeyed.
He was almost afraid to look at the woman who was even now trying to burrow into his armpit, which was no easy task, because he was wearing nearly everything warm that he owned. He looked into her eyes, and she continued to amaze him. Behind the obvious fear was something he had not expected—compassion, and it seemed to be directed at him and not the frozen man.