Lily bit her lower lip. “That would depend,” she said.
Caleb laughed. “On what?”
There was no helping it; Lily had to smile. “On what they are, silly.”
He tossed the saddlebags to Lily, and they nearly knocked her over. “Go ahead, sodbuster. Have a look.”
Feeling self-conscious, Lily opened the flap of one saddlebag and peeked inside. It was bulging with fragrant, tangy oranges, and Lily’s mouth watered at the prospect of such a treat.
In the other saddlebag she found two dime novels, Wilhelmina and the Wild Indians and Evelyn and the Mountain Man, along with a bar of chocolate and two pretty tortoiseshell combs for her hair. “I don#8217;t know what to say,” Lily whispered. She’d never received so many wonderful presents at one time in her life. “Except for thank you, of course.”
Caleb kissed her forehead. “Am I back in your good graces now?”
Lily looked up at him, clutching the saddlebags to her chest. “That depends on whether or not you’ve decided to marry me.”
His jawline tightened, and for one terrible moment Lily was afraid he meant to take back the oranges and the books and the chocolate and the combs. “I’ve decided,” he answered. His voice was so cold that Lily didn’t need to ask what that decision was.
She flung the saddlebags with their cherished contents back into his arms, whirled on one heel, and strode back to the garden plot, where she began hoeing again with a vengeance. She was aware without looking that Caleb had followed her, but she was determined to ignore him.
“I had a letter waiting for me at the fort today when I went to talk with Colonel Tibbet,” he said.
“I’m happy for you,” Lily replied, breaking a clod of dirt into fine grains with a lethal swing of the hoe.
“It’s from my sister Abbie,” Caleb went on, just as though Lily had asked him to elaborate. “She said Sandra went ahead and married her lieutenant.”
Lily swung her hoe again, making no comment. Her eyes stung, and her vision was a little blurred. Next Caleb would say he was going back to Fox Chapel and give her an ultimatum. Go or be left behind.
He sighed. “There was a letter for you, too.”
The words seemed to echo in the warm, sun-brightened air like the blows of the men’s hammers and the rasps of their saws as they worked on Lily’s house. She dropped the hoe unceremoniously and stumbled toward him through the upturned dirt. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she demanded. “Where is this letter? Did you bring it?”
Caleb took a blue envelope from the back pocket of his trousers and held it out.
The letter was postmarked Bolton, Wyoming, and there was no return address. Lily opened it with trembling hands and shook out the single piece of paper inside.
’It was dated only a week before, in a spare but tidy hand, and read,
Dear Miss Chalmers,
Your sister, Caroline Chalmers, lived in our town for some time. About two weeks ago she disappeared from here, and her aunts are quite distressed, as you can well imagine. Should you have word from Miss Caroline, please ask her to write or wire home.
Sincerely,
Mrs. Daniel Pride
Lily crumpled the paper and would have sunk to her knees in the loamy dirt of her potential garden if Caleb hadn’t reached out immediately to steady her.
“What is it, Lily?”
Lily wet her lips. “It’s Caroline—my older sister. She’s—she’s disappeared.”
“>Without a care for the soldiers, who were probably looking on, Caleb swept Lily up into his arms and carried her inside her shadowy cabin. There he set her gently in a chair and, after tossing the saddlebags onto the table, went to the bucket by the stove to ladle cold water into a tin cup. He gave the cup to Lily, and she drank thirstily, with her eyes closed.
Caleb took the letter from her hands and read it. “Maybe there’s a good explanation,” he reasoned.
“I finally found one of them,” Lily mourned, “only to be told that she’s gone away, and no one knows where.”
“She may be back by now, for all you know. Why don’t you write her in care of the Bolton postmaster?”
Lily nodded as hope surged within her again. Caleb was right. If Caroline had left Bolton without telling anyone of her destination, she’d probably had very good reasons. She might even have returned by now.
Glancing about her until she sighted her valise, where she’d tucked her writing paper to keep it from getting wet, Lily started out of her chair only to have Caleb press her back.
“Just sit there a minute,” he ordered quietly, “until you get your breath. Tell me what you want, and I’ll get it.”
“The valise,” Lily answered, and Caleb fetched it for her.
She opened it and pulled out the writing paper, her ink bottle, and the wooden box that contained her pens. While she was preparing to write Caleb emptied his saddlebags in the middle of the table and started toward the door without a word.
Lily stopped him. “Caleb.”
His back stiffened, and he didn’t turn to face her. “What?”
“Thank you for bringing this letter, and these lovely presents.”
“It was nothing,” he said, and he went out, closing the door quietly behind him.
She wrote a short letter to Mrs. Pride, thanking her warmly for her response. She asked the woman to write again if she learned anything new about Caroline’s whereabouts, and she left the envelope unsealed so that she could enclose mailing expenses.
Following that, she wrote to Caroline herself, praying her elder sister was back in Bolton with her “aunts” to receive Lily’s letter. It was a long letter, detailing Lily’s experiences after she’d left the orphan train, her time at Fort Deveraux, and her homestead. She even mentioned Caleb, though she made it sound as though he was just a crotchety neighbor.
After sealing the letter she tucked it into the pocket of her apron with the one directed to Mrs. Pride and went outside to find Wilbur. He was up on the roof of the new place, nailing down shingles.
Caleb, Lily noted, was just mounting his gelding.
She turned to him. “Are you off to the fort?”
“Yes,” he answered, his face revealing no hint of his emotions. “Want to go along?”
Lily thought it would be nice to pay a c on Mrs. Tibbet, but she wasn’t ready to face the other women of the fort just yet. Now that Caleb had moved out here onto the section behind hers, the gossip was probably flying.
She shook her head. “If you’d just mail these letters for me … I have an account at the general store, so they’ll put the postage on my bill.”
Caleb smiled, but his expression showed no humor. He took the envelopes from Lily and tucked them into his shirt pocket. “I’ll bring something back for supper,” he said, and then he rode off.
Lily went back inside the cabin and read the letter from Mrs. Pride all over again. Then she mixed bread batter, set the dough in the sun to rise, and stoked up the fire in her cook stove. By the time the sun was high in the sky she’d made a midday meal of salt pork and fresh bread, and she carried plates out to Wilbur and his men.
They ate with gratifying appetite, and Lily was feeling pleased when she carried the dishes back into the cabin and then went out to hoe again.
She was intent on her work, backing along the row, and it startled her when she suddenly collided with a hard, masculine body. She looked up to see Private Matthews, one of the young men helping to build her house.
“Was there something you wanted?” she asked, shading her eyes from the bright sunshine.
Matthews was taller than Lily by about six inches, and his blue eyes swept over her in a way that could only be called suggestive. “I reckon I want what the major was havin’ yesterday when the bedsprings was creakin’ fit to wake the dead,” he told her.
Lily retreated a step, cheeks flaming. She clasped the hoe handle in white-knuckled fingers. The affront was so brazen and so unexpected that she had no ready idea
how to deal with it.
“Such a saucy little thing,” Private Matthews went on, reaching out to touch Lily’s hair. He only smiled when she flinched away, and after a moment he went on. “I’ll bet you’re a real wildcat.”
Lily held up the hoe in both hands as a warrior might hold a shield. “You just stay back,” she warned, her heels sinking into the loose dirt as she retreated from him.
“What’s the matter, pretty Lily?” the young soldier crooned.
“Get out of here,” Lily managed to choke out. “Get off my land and stay off!”
He advanced on her. “I figure riding you would be worth takin’ a horsewhip across my back. That’s what Judd’s tellin’ everybody. That it was worth all the trouble he got into.”
Lily swallowed, then screamed out, “Wilbur! Help me!”
Matthews spat contemptuously into the dirt and kept right on coming toward her. “You think I can’t handle the corporal, little lady?” He laughed. “Hell, you can just bet it’ll be him against the rest of us.”
Lily felt the color seep out of her face. She swung the hoe at the soldier, meaning to scare him, but he smiled as he sidestepped the glistening blade. “You stay away from me,” she warned.
eight=“0em” width=“1em”>Matthews leapt forward suddenly and wrenched the hoe out of Lily’s hands, hurling it aside so that it landed against a large rock with a clatter. He was gripping Lily by the shoulders, trying to force her toward the deep grass on the other side of the garden, when Wilbur rounded the corner of the cabin.
The moment he dragged Matthews off Lily and threw a punch, Lily ran for the house to get the shotgun. She didn’t know Wilbur’s friends very well, for all that they’d been helping her for several days, and she was taking no chances that they shared Private Matthews’s opinion of her. Inside the cabin she snatched up the twelve-gauge shotgun she’d purloined from Caleb’s house, took a shell from the box stored under her bed, and shoved it into the chamber. Having done that, she dropped half a dozen more shells into her pocket and bounded outside again.
The others had gathered to watch the fight, and Lily was relieved to see that Wilbur was more than holding his own. All the same, she kept the shotgun at the ready as the battle progressed, prepared to defend herself and her friend if the need arose.
Finally, Wilbur prevailed. Private Matthews lay in the furrowed dirt of Lily’s garden, his nose and lip bleeding. Sitting astraddle of the man’s hips, Wilbur looked around at his companions. “Anybody else want to try his luck?” he asked.
The men only murmured and shook their heads. Lily’s hands were wet when she allowed the butt of the shotgun to rest on the ground, gripping the barrel in both hands.
“Go on back to work, then,” Wilbur said, wiping blood from his mouth as he stood. He kicked a clod of dirt over Private Matthews’s middle. “As for you, friend, we don’t need your kind of help around here. Ride out.”
After flinging one poisonous look at Lily the private scrambled to his feet and staggered toward his horse, which was tethered, with the others, near the creek.
Lily was shaking when Wilbur came and wrenched the shotgun out of her hands.
“Good God,” he bit out, “don’t ever hold a weapon like that, Lily. You’ll blow your face clean off!”
Lily ran her tongue nervously over her lips and nodded. “Thank you, Wilbur.”
Wilbur watched as his former friend rode off toward the post at top speed. “You might have more trouble with Ethan—he can be a persistent bastard. The major is coming back here, isn’t he?”
Lily nodded again. “I’ll be safe,” she promised.
Wilbur carried the shotgun back inside, refusing to let Lily so much as touch it and, after removing the shell, set it in a corner. “I’ll get back to work now,” he said shyly.
Lily took a chair from the table and carried it out in front of the cabin, setting it down in the full sunshine. “Sit down, Wilbur,” she ordered. “I want to have a look at your face.”
She was bathing his bruises and cuts with a cloth dipped in cold creek water when Caleb rode up. Despite the shading effect of his floppy leather hat, Lily could see that the sight of her tending Wilbur’s wounds didn’t please him.
“What happened?” he demanded.
“There was a fight,” Lily began.
Caleb immediately cut her off. “I think the man can speak for himself. Were you discharged from the army without my knowledge, Corporal?”
Poor Wilbur bounded to his feet, nearly upsetting the basin Lily was holding. He saluted. “No, sir,” he answered earnestly.
Lily suppressed an urge to throw the basinful of water all over Caleb, but she didn’t quite dare. She hadn’t forgotten her experience of the day before, when he’d imprisoned her across his lap and come within an inch of smacking her bare bottom. “Caleb, he was defending me,” she said evenly.
Caleb raked Wilbur with his stern gaze, then barked, “You’re dismissed, Corporal.”
Wilbur saluted again and hastened away.
“I do believe you enjoy bossing people around like that,” Lily accused in an angry whisper. “I’ll have you know that I might have been raped if he hadn’t been here!”
“So that’s why Private Matthews came riding through the gates as if the devil himself were chasing him,” Caleb said, and his eyes narrowed. He started to turn back toward his horse, but Lily stopped him by grasping his arm.
“Did you mail my letters?” she asked softly.
She felt some of the tension and fury drain out of him. “Yes,” he answered, his voice taut as stretched rawhide.
“What did you bring for supper?” Lily didn’t really care what the answer was; she only wanted to give Caleb a chance to get his temper under control before he went chasing off to the fort and did something he’d later have cause to regret.
He sighed and walked away to untie a burlap bag from the horn of his saddle. He handed the bag to Lily, a muscle working in his jaw, and gazed toward Wilbur and the others. They were making very good progress on the house; in another few days Lily would be able to move in.
“Judd Ingram’s on his way to Yuma,” Caleb said. He paused to sigh. “Maybe I should have made an example of him.”
“That would have been wrong,” Lily responded quietly, “and you know it.” All of a sudden the burlap bag in her hands started to squawk and bulge wildly. “What is this?”
Caleb’s good humor was apparently restored. “It’s a chicken, sodbuster. After you chop off his head, gut him, and pluck out all his feathers, he’ll fry up real nice.”
Lily felt her lunch boil up into her throat. She’d fed plenty of chickens in her time, and certainly fried a few, but Rupert had usually been the one to kill them. “He looks delicious,” she said in a small voice.
Caleb, who had been about to lead his horse back to his grazing place, stopped in midstride and grinned at her.
Not for another three sections of land would Lily have let him know she dreaded the task. “Was there something you wanted?” she asked a little stiffly.
He shrugged. “Just a chicken dinner.”
After squaring her shoulders and giving Caleb a look that clearly said he wouldn’t be welcome in her cabin once supper was over, Lily turned and marched stoically off to the chopping block.
There she let the rooster out of the bag. He gave a loud squawk and tried to fly away, and it took Lily at least five minutes to tackle him and wrestle his head onto the block. When she’d done that and was holding the doomed bird by the base of his neck, she took the ax into her right hand and swung.
When the awful job was done Lily’s skin was slick with perspiration. The rooster’s head was staring up at her from the block, while his body flapped around at her feet. Although she’d seen this phenomenon many times before, that day it took away her appetite.
Finally the contentious bird gave up the ghost and collapsed. Lily separated him from his insides with a knife and, nose wrinkled, carried the filthy, feathery c
arcass around to the front of the cabin.
Someone—probably Caleb—had thoughtfully set a large kettle on the stove to boil, and it was still bubbling when Lily carried it outside. She plunged the rooster’s motionless body into the hot water, then quickly pulled it out again. Her eyes narrowed, her nose crinkling, she began the laborious job of plucking feathers.
The smell was almost too odious to be endured, and by the time Lily had finally denuded the bird, and fried him, and set him on the table with mashed potatoes and gravy and some of Mrs. Tibbet’s canned peas, all she wanted was a walk in the fresh air. Caleb, Wilbur, and the others ate with zest, not even noticing when she left.
Presently, long after Lily had returned from her walk, Wilbur and the others went back to the fort. She sat brooding on the apple crate that served as a step, her chin in her hands.
Caleb edged around her and stepped down from the high threshold. “Of course,” he said, as though they’d been carrying on a conversation for some minutes, “if you lived in Fox Chapel, you wouldn’t have to pluck chickens. You’d have servants to take care of things like that.”
Lily knew she still smelled of wet feathers. “I’d settle for a hot bath,” she said wistfully.
Twilight had fallen, and the horses—Caleb’s gelding and Lily’s Dancer—were snuffling contentedly by the creek.
“Fill some buckets at the creek and heat the water,” Caleb said offhandedly. He was looking up at the first stars, popping out here and there like silver fireflies, near enough to touch.
Lily didn’t move. She was too tired to prepare a bath, and it was all she could do not to cry. She’d come so close to making contact with one of her sisters, then lost her again, and she’d nearly been raped. All in all, it hadn’t been a very good day.
Caleb went back inside the cabin and returned a moment later with one of the oranges he’d brought her from Tylerville. He peeled it with deft strokes of his pocket knife.
“Here,” he said when he’d finished, handing the fruit to Lily. “You need to eat something.”
Lily accepted the orange and broke it into juicy sections. The brisk taste restored her a little, and she even offered a piece to Caleb.
Lily and the Major Page 29