by AmyFleming
Luc took a minute to guide the horses around a corner. “Don’t worry. You’ll meet plenty of people here,” he said.
“I am sure I will,” she said, her voice quiet.
“There’s a dance hall, the Atherton Pavilion. Every Friday and Saturday night, they have a dance.”
“Do you go there Mr. Branigan?”
“I go, but I don’t do much dancing,” he laughed. “I’m a rancher, girl, not a dancer.”
There were a few minutes of silence while Charlotte took in the town that was to be her new home. A pair of banks on the main street and an old log building with a sign that proclaimed it was the trading post.
“Who was that woman, the woman in red? Why did she say I should forget I met her?”
Luc looked uncomfortable. “Her name is Annie Hamilton. She is...she is...someone a schoolteacher shouldn’t know. That’s just the way it is.”
Suddenly it dawned on Charlotte. “Oh, she’s a...” Charlotte couldn’t say the word.
“Yes, that’s exactly what she is,” Luc agreed.
“She was so considerate. I can’t believe it.”
“Let me show you where the school is,” Luc said, turning a corner.
“Is it near the Dredger place?” Charlotte asked.
“No, it’s on a hill above town. The miners that built this town put it right beside the creek, but it floods every spring. Especially the places set right on the creek bed. The school’s up higher, so it won’t flood. They built the church on the same site later on.”
He pulled up on the horses. The school looked like part of the old Wild West. Two log cabins were joined together by a covered breezeway. Long windows were cut into the log walls on either side of the door. The church sat beyond it.
“This is my first school,” Charlotte whispered to herself. To Luc Branigan she said, “Looks like there are two rooms. Is there another teacher?”
“No,” Luc replied. “The second part is the teacherage. But no one lives there. It’s easier to board the teacher with a family.”
“Why not with some family in town?” she asked.
“Why the teacher always boards at the Dredger place is beyond me, but Dredger is on the school board. He likes to think he runs this town.”
They looped around, took the main road back through town back past the saloon, and past a cemetery. The turnoff to the Dredger place was around a curve in the road. Luc slowed the wagon to make the turn. They were soon lost in the deep forest that encroached on both sides of the trail.
“Wouldn’t want to meet anyone coming the other way,” Luc commented as the team pulled the wagon around a curve.
“It’s sure dark back in the woods like this,” Charlotte said.
“Dredger built his house above his mining claim down on the creek. When the gold finished, he turned to ranching, and he didn’t want to move the house. That’s why he’s back in the bush like this. Likes the quiet, I guess.”
Luc turned his team into a yard. The low built house had a wide porch that extended the whole length of the house. Above the roof of the porch, three windows cut into the roof. There was a red barn in a cluster with some rough log sheds. “Here’s your new place, Miss Fraser.”
Charlotte took a few dollar bills out of her purse and handed them to Luc. “Thank you for bringing me out here. I don’t know what I would have done without your help.”
Luc eyed the money. He folded the bills and slid them into the pocket on Charlotte’s coat. “It wasn’t any problem for me to bring you out here. I enjoyed the company.”
Otto Dredger came out onto the porch of his house. He was holding a rifle. He set it against the railing but made it clear he was ready for anything. “Branigan, what the hell are you doing on my place?” he demanded.
“Easy there, Dredger, I’m doing you a favor. I brought the teacher from town.”
Mr. Dredger looked at Charlotte with interest. “It’s today that you came, was it? I got busy with some work. Well, you’re here now.”
Otto Dredger came over and offered her his arm to climb down from the wagon. “Where are your bags?” he asked.
“My trunk is locked in the station. The stationmaster will send it out tomorrow.”
“Looks like everything is taken care of.”
Charlotte pulled her arm gently away from Mr. Dredger’s grasp. She turned to Luc. “Thanks again for all your help.”
“No problem.” He touched the brim of his hat and favored her with another one of his grins. “Hopefully I’ll see you again.”
While Mr. Dredger watched the wagon pull out of the yard, Charlotte took the chance to have a look at him. Otto Dredger was a blond man. His face was narrow and his finely drawn features were framed by a neatly groomed beard and moustache. He looked muscular enough, and he had the round build of a man who ate well. He was wearing a shirt and tie under his vest. “You don’t want to be having anything to do with that boy. He’s trouble, for all his charming ways.”
Mr. Dredger took a pocket watch from the pocket on his vest. “Just in time for dinner.” He grasped her arm firmly and led her up the stairs. “Now come and meet Eliza and the family.”
Chapter Seven
Annie Hamilton poured a glass of sherry for the pastor, Ernest Miles, and put the same amount of water in a glass for herself. It was almost eight o’clock on Tuesday night, the night the ladies’ church group always met. As soon as his wife left for her meeting, the pastor would leave his house and make his way down the alley and up the backstairs to Annie’s place.
Of all her clients, the pastor was her favorite. He was a thoughtful man who liked to relax and enjoy some sherry, forbidden at home, have a little conversation with Annie and then take care of his business. He would be gone within an hour, sure to be home before his wife got back.
The next man to appear on her backstairs was Otto Dredger. Dredger was not here for sex, but for information. He wanted a glass of whiskey, and she had a drink with him. It would steady her nerves. She didn’t want to let him know how much she was afraid of him.
Dredger sipped his drink. He always took a while to get to the point.
“I saw the new schoolteacher came today,” Annie commented.
Dredger did not respond.
“How is Tommy doing?” she asked.
“As well as can be expected. The children will be back in school, now that the new teacher is here. You’ll be able to watch him come and go.” Dredger knew that from the balcony on the second floor of the Men’s Club, Annie could see almost all of the comings and goings in Bandit Creek.
“I want to see Tommy,” she said. “I haven’t seen him in months.” She tried to keep the pleading sound out of her voice. It would only annoy Dredger and make him more likely to refuse her.
Dredger ignored her. “What news did the good pastor have for you today?” Dredger asked. Finally, he was getting to the point of his call.
“Nothing at all. We talked about the Thanksgiving service coming up. I think he likes to practice bits of his sermons on me.”
“Whatever for?”
“Grammar and such, I suppose. He hasn’t forgotten I was the teacher here once.”
“I don’t forget either. I wish you wouldn’t go on reminding me about it so.”
“What do you mean, Otto?”
“You know Annie, I feel responsible for the turns your life has taken. Sometimes it’s just too much for me.”
“I don’t want to talk about it, Otto.”
“Did he say anything more about Eileen McArthur?”
Annie felt guilty. Annie had told Dredger that Eileen had talked to the pastor. The teacher said that Dredger had tried to kiss her. He’d been touching her, and then pressuring her not to tell anyone.
“I told you, Otto. When Eileen told the Pastor that you had been touching her, he didn’t believe her.”
“Are you sure he didn’t believe her?”
“He told her that a good man like you would never harm a woman. He to
ld her she just misunderstood what happened.”
“Okay,” Dredger said. “Let me have another glass of whiskey.” She got out a bottle and filled his glass.
Otto took a few sips of his whiskey. “There’s something I need you to find out.”
She waited. He didn’t say anything more, so she said again, “I want to see Tommy.”
“Annie, I’ve told you. Eliza doesn’t like it when you come out to the ranch. It makes her uncomfortable and she’s going to have another baby any day now. I don’t want her upset.”
Annie bit her lip, helpless. “What do you want, Otto?”
“Next Saturday, when the miners come into town, there’s something you need to find out.”
“What’s that, Otto?”
“I’ve been waiting for Bill Ellis to pay me some money he owes me. I did some work on the road that runs past my place to the Ellis Mine.” Bill Ellis was the one of the owners of the Ellis Mine.
“So?” Annie asked.
“He keeps telling me he’ll pay me when they bring the gold in from the mine. He’s been paying the miners, but he hasn’t brought any gold into town all summer or fall.”
“What do you need to know?”
“When are they bringing the gold in? Then I can meet up with Bill and get him to pay me back.”
Annie couldn’t understand how Dredger could expect her to get this information. “Bill Ellis doesn’t come up here. What do you want me to do, ask every miner who comes in, when is your boss bringing his gold into town? That’s ridiculous.”
“Ridiculous?” he repeated her word.
She knew she needed to watch the tone of her voice. She shook her head. “That’s not what I meant to say.”
“Fine,” he said. “Ask them when they’ll be closing up for the winter. If I know when they close down, I’ll have a pretty good guess that’s when they’ll be bringing the gold shipment in.”
“I don’t like this, Otto. What if those miners get suspicious when I’m asking questions?”
“You give them too much credit, Annie. Just do it and I’ll see what I can do about arranging for you to see Tommy.”
“Really?” she asked.
“Listen to me, Annie, my girl. On Saturday night, you find out from those miners when the mine is closing down. Come out to the ranch Sunday morning and let me know. And you can see the boy. Come while Eliza is at church and she’ll never know.”
After Dredger was gone, Annie went out on her balcony to look at the sky. The stars were shimmering and she felt the burn of the whiskey in her throat. She remembered another evening. She’d had stars in her eyes back then, but the taste of the whiskey was the same. A few tears made a track across her cheeks. It bothered her how easily Dredger could manipulate her. Still, she would see Tommy.
*****
Luc Branigan never bothered to come up the back way. He came up through the Powder Horn Saloon and through the doorway cut between the two buildings. Annie came in off the balcony. Try as she might, every time she saw him, she had the same old feelings. The same old regrets for the girl she had been and the mistakes she had made.
“Dredger was here,” he said. His hands were tight on her arms.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You’ve been crying. Why do you let him come up here?”
It broke her heart to see the disapproval in his eyes. “Who I see is none of your business. What are you doing here, Luc?”
“I wanted to see you. See how you’re doing.” He looked at her hard. “This is no life for you, Annie.”
“I don’t know why you bother coming here, Luc. I’ve told you, your money’s no good here.”
“Did you ever think I may care about you, Annie?”
“No, Luc, I don’t.” He had cared about her once, but then she had betrayed them both. She would never forget the look in his eyes when he learned about her and Dredger. Dredger, her mistake.
“Yes, Annie, I do. I care about you and I hate to see you living like this.”
“That’s why I saw you driving all over the countryside with Eileen McArthur. That’s why I see you with the new teacher.”
“Hell, Annie, you introduced her to me.”
“Yes, well, Luc. That should be a sign to you. I just don’t care.”
Chapter Eight
“Mr. Jack, you have to leave now. We’re having school today.” Charlotte shook the man awake. He smelled of alcohol and a half empty bottle of whiskey rolled on the floor under a desk.
The last thing Charlotte had expected to find in her schoolroom was an old drunk, but Tommy Dredger told her Jack slept there sometimes when it got cold. Once awake, he was a friendly drunk. He got to his feet and left her alone with Tommy in the classroom.
Charlotte sent Tommy outside to play, picked up the whiskey bottle and set it on her desk.
Charlotte looked around her classroom. Her classroom, her very first. There was a blackboard along two sides of the room. Along the north wall was a row of windows that faced the mountains, away from the town. All those years of her childhood, playing school. This didn’t feel very much different. She might be a real teacher now, but she couldn’t help herself. She held out her arms and twirled around the front of the classroom. She picked up the chalk and wrote her name, Miss Fraser, on the blackboard. It was her very first school.
The wooden desks were set in careful rows and the teacher’s desk was at the front of the room. Charlotte sat down to sort through it.
The items on the desk were aligned just so and Charlotte thought it looked as if no one had touched Eileen McArthur’s things since she left.
Otto Dredger had told Charlotte that Eileen McArthur had simply left town one day. She had only been at the school since the beginning of September and everyone thought she must have been unhappy.
Charlotte looked for the attendance book on the desk. This might be Charlotte’s classroom now but it felt like a shrine to Miss McArthur with her things in the desk and her drawings on the wall.
Charlotte found a notebook filled with writing and began to read it -- notes for each grade and each child in the grade. It was already past nine o’clock but the notes were going to be so helpful. She felt like she was getting to know her students by reading them over. Charlotte caught a whiff of perfume and felt the presence of Eileen McArthur in the room watching over her.
It was time for school to start. Charlotte remembered the whiskey bottle Mr. Jack had left behind him. She picked it up and jammed it behind some books in the bookcase at the back of the room. A letter fluttered to the floor. Charlotte looked behind the book and found a little gold locket. She wanted to have a better look at the locket and the letter but there was no time and she stuck them in her pocket.
Charlotte went outside and rang the bell. The children lined up in two rows, one on the boys side and one on the girls side, and filed into the school. They sat at their desks looking expectantly at her.
According to Eileen’s journal, Dylan Branigan was the not oldest boy in school but he was the one most likely to get in trouble. Better get him busy right away. “Dylan, please go out and put up the flag.”
She followed Dylan outside. Luc Branigan hardly looked old enough to have a ten-year-old son. “Is Luc Branigan your father, Dylan?” she asked.
“No, Miss Fraser. Luc’s my brother. My dad died, back when I was five.”
The children all watched through the window as Dylan raised the flag. Charlotte was surprised to see that when Dylan went back inside, he took the seat right beside Tommy Dredger.
Charlotte started the morning with the Pledge of Allegiance. The children faced the flag at the front of the class. Even the little ones knew to put their hands over their hearts. They began to recite:
“I pledge allegiance to my flag and to the republic for which it stands: one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all.”
“Take your seats, children. When I read your name out, I want you to stand up and tell me what gra
de you are in.”
At lunchtime, when the students were out playing, Charlotte went through the teacher’s desk. All of Eileen’s teaching materials were there. It was all so odd. Why wouldn’t she have taken her things with her? No one had told Charlotte very much about Miss McArthur and Charlotte wondered what had happened to her.
Tucked away at the back of the drawer was a little brass box. Of course, this was where Eileen would have kept her private things. There was a framed picture of an elegant looking young woman beside a man in a suit. Someone had taken the black and white picture and lightly painted it to add color to the faces and the clothes.
The woman was dressed in a navy blue coat with a matching dress. On her head, she wore an elegant blue hat trimmed with white flowers. She was holding a small bouquet of white flowers. Beside her was a man in a black suit. It was taken outside of a church and looked as if it might have been a wedding picture.
If this was a picture of Eileen, it couldn’t be a wedding picture, of course, because Eileen was a teacher. Married women were never hired on as teachers, instead they were expected to stay home and take care of their husband and family. Maybe Eileen was married once and was now a widow.
There was also bundle of letters. Charlotte didn’t untie the ribbon that bound them together. The letters reminded her of the one she had jammed in her pocket this morning.
Charlotte took the letter and the locket out of her pocket. She examined the locket, very pretty with a fine gold chain. Obviously, Eileen McArthur had been a woman of some means. The locket was worth a lot more than could be expected on the salary of a schoolteacher. This Eileen McArthur was a bit of a mystery. Then to leave like that. It didn’t make sense. Charlotte opened the locket. Inside was the picture of a young girl. Charlotte wondered who she was. Not the woman in the picture outside the church.
The letter was sealed and stamped, all ready to mail. It was addressed to Neill McArthur. He must be a relative of Miss McArthur’s. Brother or maybe her father. Was he waiting to hear from her? Perhaps she was telling him where she was going. Charlotte thought for a moment about opening the letter. It might solve the mystery of where Eileen McArthur had gone.