That was when the third thing happened.
Esteban Vierra opened the door, easy in his skin and grinning.
“Supper’s almost ready,” he said, just as if he’d cooked it himself. Just as though he had every right to be admitting folks to Maddie Chancelor’s kitchen.
* * *
MADDIE, WORKING DILIGENTLY at the stove, took a brief, secret and quite unbecoming satisfaction in the look on Sam’s face as he entered her kitchen, having to pass by Mr. Vierra to do so. He’d received a perfumed letter from a woman that very day, after all. What right did he have to be disgruntled?
She sighed to herself, opening the warming oven to peer in at the biscuits she’d baked earlier. Sam O’Ballivan had plenty of things to be disgruntled about, she reminded herself, and it was vain to assume he cared one whit who her other supper guest was.
Ben and Terran were in the field behind the store, playing some boyish game, and Maddie was glad of that when Sam spoke right up.
“Oralee Pringle showed me a telegram from Bird’s sister a few days ago,” he said, hanging his hat on the peg next to the door, just like Warren used to do when he came visiting. “She isn’t receiving, it seems.”
Mr. Vierra’s smile remained steady. “We didn’t get ten miles before Bird took up with a bearded peddler, old enough to be her papa, bound for other parts. The last time I saw her, she was wearing a yellow cotton dress and waving goodbye from the box of a painted wagon.”
Of course, Maddie had inquired after Bird the moment Mr. Vierra had presented himself at her back door, just under an hour ago, but he’d said only that the girl was “all right.” She felt the back of her neck warm, and stirred the sausage gravy with unnecessary industry.
“Maybe she’ll write,” Sam said, coming up alongside Maddie, all of a sudden, and giving her a start.
“Miss Abigail Blackstone?” Maddie asked tersely. “If I remember correctly, she’s already written.”
The moment the words were out of Maddie’s mouth, she could have stuck her head in the gravy skillet, she was so mortified. Too late, it came to her that Sam meant Bird might write, not the woman who’d sent him a letter from someplace called Stone Creek.
“You noticed her name, did you?” Sam asked, and even though Maddie couldn’t bring herself to look at him, she knew he was smiling that spare smile of his.
“I sort the mail,” she said stiffly, whipping the gravy still harder. “I can’t help noticing the occasional name.”
“I see,” Sam answered.
“Supper’s ready,” Maddie said. “Please call the boys inside, if you wouldn’t mind.”
She didn’t actually hear Sam chuckle, but she felt a sort of subtle vibration in the air, recognized it as amusement and knew its source.
“It would be my pleasure,” he told her, and left her standing there at the stove, wishing she could just evaporate like steam spewing from the spout of the teakettle. Good Lord. Now she’d given him the idea that she cared what letters he got, and she didn’t.
She didn’t.
And so it was that the five of them sat down to supper together—Maddie and Sam, Mr. Vierra, Terran and Ben.
Ben was understandably subdued, and it didn’t escape Maddie that he’d taken the chair closest to Sam’s. Terran did most of the talking, and for once, Maddie was grateful. She had a headache and every time she glanced in Sam’s direction, she wished she could live the last half hour over again.
She sure wouldn’t mention the letter from Miss Abigail Blackstone if she could do that.
“So me and Ben are going to rig up some fishin’ poles,” Terran prattled, his face alight with eagerness. “Then we’ll head straight down to the river and catch us a mess of trout—”
Maddie set her fork down with a bang. “You stay away from that river, Terran Chancelor,” she said fiercely. “You can’t swim a lick!”
Everyone stared at her, even Esteban Vierra.
For the second time that evening, Maddie yearned to disappear.
Sam broke the silence. “I could teach you,” he told Terran solemnly. “To swim, I mean.”
Terran’s eyes glowed again. “Really?”
Sam glanced at Maddie, belatedly uneasy. “If it’s all right with your sister, that is.”
The river was treacherous, and full of swift currents. She didn’t want Terran within a hundred yards of it; even if he learned to swim, he’d be certain to take reckless chances, showing off. If he were to drown—
It didn’t bear thinking about.
“Please, Maddie?” Terran implored when the silence stretched taut.
Sam waited respectfully, watching her face, seeing too much.
“It’s too late in the year,” she said at last, and with no little relief. “The water will be cold.”
“Come spring, then?” Terran pressed, anxiously hopeful.
Maddie returned Sam’s steady gaze. By winter’s end, Sam O’Ballivan would be long gone, she thought, and was surprised by the bleak desolation the knowledge stirred in her. “Yes,” she said, hating herself for offering false hope. “You may learn to swim in the spring.”
“I’d like to learn, too,” Ben put in rather timidly. “Pa never did know how. Rex and Landry don’t, neither, and Garrett—” He paused, swallowed painfully. “He used to hold my head under water, down at the pond. Called me a tit-baby when I whooped.”
Sam reached out, ruffled the boy’s hair. “I promise I won’t make you whoop,” he said. Maddie noticed, though Terran and Ben probably didn’t, that he hadn’t said he’d still be around to teach them to swim, once the weather turned warm.
“Would you like more sausage gravy, Mr. Vierra?” Maddie asked, eager to head the conversation in another direction.
It didn’t work. “On the other side of the river,” Vierra said, “boys swim whenever they get the chance.”
Maddie set her jaw.
Sam smiled.
“We’re as tough as any of them,” Terran said, cocky as a banty rooster.
Mr. Vierra grimaced. Pushed back his chair. “I’d better leave,” he said, “before I wear out my welcome. Thank you for a fine supper, Miss Chancelor.”
Maddie nodded, but didn’t speak.
Sam excused himself to follow the other man outside.
“Clear the table,” Maddie told Terran.
“We didn’t have pie yet,” Terran complained.
“Later,” Maddie insisted, and got up to pump water into a kettle, so she could wash the dishes and be done with this interminable evening.
She shouldn’t have invited Sam O’Ballivan to supper. She’d done it on impulse, after he’d told her about hiding behind his mother’s kitchen stove while she was gunned down, and because funerals always made her feel like she ought to do a kindness for somebody.
“Can’t we have pie?” Terran persisted.
Maddie set down the kettle, got two plates, cut a slice of raspberry pie for each of the boys, and sent them upstairs with their desserts. She’d clear the table herself.
Like always.
When Sam came back in after talking to Mr. Vierra, he looked secretive, and there was a fresh-air scent around him that riled Maddie’s nerves. He rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt, reached for a dish towel and immediately set to drying dishes as Maddie washed them.
“It’s a good thing for a boy to learn to swim, Maddie,” he said very quietly when they’d nearly finished the task.
She looked up at him, weighed her words carefully before she let go of them, so there would be no regrets. “Is it? Terran has a wild streak in him. He rushes in where no sensible angel would go. He’ll head straight for deep water as soon as he can dog-paddle.”
Sam raised a hand, as though he might brush away the tendril of hair Maddie felt sticking to her cheek from the steamy job of swabbing the supper dishes. Then he must have thought better of it, for he stopped. “There’s a lot of deep water out there,” he said, “and it isn’t all in the river. Wouldn’t you s
ay it’s better if he knows how to look after himself?”
Maddie bit her lower lip, wondered distractedly what Abigail Blackstone was like. If she was pretty, if she was smart. If she’d cried openly after Sam rode away from Stone Creek, or if she’d held her head high. If she’d ever gotten more than that brief, slanted smile out of him, made him laugh right out loud.
Her eyes burned and her throat tightened. “Next,” she heard herself say, “you’ll want to teach him to shoot.”
“Terran’s growing up, Maddie. Let him be a man.”
She turned away, busied herself putting away knives and forks and spoons. “I’d like to see him get that far,” she said. “By my reckoning, learning to use a gun won’t help his chances.”
Sam laid his hands on her shoulders, gently turned her to face him. “Don’t hold the boy too tightly,” he told her with the tender pragmatism that made him rescue Bird, buy eggs from Hittie Perkins, take in the Donagher pup and God only knew what else. “He’ll run, first chance, if you do.”
Maddie wanted to pull away, but she couldn’t seem to work up the will to follow through with it.
Sam tilted his head to one side and his mouth came within a hairbreadth of touching hers. Then he sighed and stepped back.
It was as if Abigail’s shadow had passed between them. Maddie figured she shouldn’t have been disappointed, but she was. Now she’d wonder, for the rest of her days, what it would have been like to be kissed by Sam O’Ballivan.
“School in the morning,” he said. “I’ll say good-night, and thank you kindly for one of the best meals I can remember.”
Why did she want to cry?
Was it because there had been a funeral that day? Because there was a sad, lost little boy upstairs with Terran, right that very minute, with his eldest brother dead and his father in jail for doing murder? Was it because Bird’s folks didn’t want her, and Charlie Wilcox’s poor horse had to stand out in front of the Rattlesnake Saloon, all day, every day, swatting at flies with his skimpy tail?
She shook her head slightly, flinging off the questions. The answer to each and every one of them was yes, and yet the sense of sadness and loss she felt went a lot deeper. It flowed beneath her heart like an underground river.
Sam hesitated, took her chin between his thumb and forefinger. “It’s been a hell of a day,” he said. “Get some sleep, Maddie. The world will go right on turning without your helping it along.”
Maddie opened her mouth, closed it again.
Sam O’Ballivan crossed to the door, took his hat from Warren’s peg and paused on the threshold to put it on.
She waited, expecting something, though she couldn’t think for the life of her what it was.
He nodded and then he was gone.
Maddie stood rooted in front of the sink, staring at the closed door. At some length, she went to turn the lock.
* * *
ALONE IN HIS ROOM behind the schoolhouse, except for the pup, who was curled up on the bed bold as you please, Sam remembered Abigail’s letter. Took it out of his vest pocket, broke the wax seal on the envelope and lifted the flap.
There were at least six pages, and Sam flapped them back and forth a little, trying to dispel some of the rosewater smell.
“This is a hell of a situation,” he told the dog.
Neptune spared him a pitying look and went back to sleep.
Sam laid the pages on the table, walked away from them, went back. He and Abigail had a deal. It wasn’t her doing that he’d met up with Maddie Chancelor, and his thoughts had snagged on her like fleece on a cactus thistle.
He forced himself to read the letter.
“My Dearest Sam,” it began.
He sank into a chair at the table.
By the time you receive this, I’ll be on my way to Haven. Papa says I oughtn’t to come, because you’re busy with important business, and a proper lady doesn’t go chasing off after a man anyhow. I don’t guess the place has a hotel, but I daresay I can find lodgings.
Sam stopped reading. Panic enlarged his throat, and if he’d been wearing a collar, he’d have unfastened it.
“Good God,” he said. “She’s coming here.”
Neptune opened one eye. Evidently he didn’t grasp the gravity of the situation, though he did make a low growling sound that might have been sympathy.
Sam bolted out of his chair to pace and curse.
Once, he even reached for his coat, planning to head right over to the telegraph office, get that sneaky little operator by the throat and make him send off a wire, telling Abigail, in no uncertain terms, not to come.
Problem was, if her letter was to be believed, and Abigail had never told a lie in her life, she could arrive on next Wednesday’s stagecoach.
Damn it all to hell.
He stopped, rubbed the back of his neck. There was only one thing he could do, and that was to send Abigail straight back up north, where she belonged. She’d be put out by that reception, for a certainty, after spending a full week bouncing over dusty roads in a stagecoach, but there was nothing for it. She had cousins up near Phoenix. She could bide a while with them, take some of the strain out of a long trip made for nothing.
“Damn it, Abigail,” he said.
Neptune raised the other eyelid.
Sam pictured himself meeting the coach in front of the mercantile, come Wednesday. He even imagined up a fistful of wildflowers, to make up a little for the return ticket he’d be holding in his other hand.
What he couldn’t get clear in his mind was Abigail’s face, and that took him aback. He’d known her since he was a boy, not much bigger than Terran and Ben.
How could he have forgotten what she looked like?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
IN SMALL TOWNS like Haven, death come in threes, clearly delineated because everybody knows everybody else, and with Garrett Donagher laid to rest and the shock of Mungo’s confession subsiding, folks were uneasy. They began to murmur that a new round had begun.
Maddie heard the grim speculations, since the mercantile was the place where people congregated to exchange theories and gossip, but she was too distracted to give the matter any real credence. She had a business to look after, as well as an extra and very troubled youngster, and the weather had turned unseasonably warm, even for the southerly part of the Territory. The grass was dry, and everybody worried about wildfires.
Terran mentioned the swimming lessons Sam had promised him first thing every morning, last thing every night, and whenever he got the opportunity in between.
On Wednesday afternoon, with the stagecoach due in any minute and her young brother hectoring to go down to the river with a fishing pole, a drifter left the front door ajar, and flies bumbled in to buzz around the dry goods, bounce off the lid of the pickle barrel and whir at Maddie’s ears. There was a strange, tremulous weight in the air—when would it rain?—and then Banker James put in an unexpected appearance.
She’d known something was about to happen. Well, here it was.
“Afternoon, Maddie,” he said. The store was empty, except for two of Oralee Pringle’s “girls” huddled in a far corner of the room and poring over a catalog, while she perched at the top of a ladder, dusting the tins of peas, green beans, corned beef and peaches that most people put up at home, during the harvest and at butchering time. She saved tables and lower shelves for things that sold better, staples like flour, sugar and salt, rope and nails, boots and cigars and dime novels.
Maddie made sure she wouldn’t catch a foot in the hem of her dress and climbed down with careful dignity. “I’ll have the books ready for examination on the first of the month,” she said. “That’s our regular day—”
Mr. James put up a pale and uncalloused hand. “I’m sure they’re in good order,” he said with unusual kindness. “They always are.”
Maddie’s heart, already skittering, lurched. She set aside the feather duster and wrung her hands once before she caught herself. With men like Elias James, one did no
t show weakness. “Then you must be expecting a letter.” She glanced at the clock. “The stage should come in pretty soon.”
James allowed himself a very slight, unnerving smile. “I’ve come about the store,” he said.
Maddie’s knees wobbled. She’d saved a reasonable sum of money, since she’d been hired to run the mercantile, but it wouldn’t last long if she and Terran had to start over in a new place. Food and lodgings would gobble it up in no time, and then what would she do? This job had literally been a godsend, but such positions were rare, especially for a woman.
“Mrs. Donagher wishes to sell the establishment,” Banker James announced, his gaze narrowed and speculative. “With Mungo in jail, and those two grown boys of his nowhere to be found, she’s getting nervous. Wants an income, over and above what the ranch brings in. And, of course, she needs to hire a lawyer for her husband.”
“But the store provides an income,” Maddie said, trying not to look fretful and failing miserably. Dear God. It had been bad enough, being at Mungo’s mercy. Being at Undine’s would be beyond bearing.
James approached the counter, lifted the lid off a crock full of hard-boiled eggs and helped himself to one. “Mrs. Donagher and I have a proposition for you,” he said, picking up the saltshaker and sprinkling liberally before taking a thoughtful bite. He made Maddie wait while he nibbled, every nerve in her body trilling with suspense.
To keep from going mad with tension, she went behind the counter, took up a pencil stub, and wrote, “E. James. One egg. 2 cents” on a scrap of paper.
“Mrs. Donagher would, of course, prefer a cash settlement, rather than a mortgage,” the banker went on presently. He had the advantage, and he intended to press it.
Maddie felt heat rise under the high, prim collar of her second-best calico dress. “That’s quite impossible,” she said evenly. Mentally she was already packing her and Terran’s personal belongings, such as they were, loading them into the battered wagon they had come to Haven in nearly six years before. Wondering if her decrepit horses could pull the rig even as far as Tucson without collapsing from old age.
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