A Stone Creek Collection Volume 1

by Linda Lael Miller

  “As a woman,” James went on, after finishing the egg and licking the remaining salt off his fat fingers, “you would have a hard time securing a proper mortgage, of course.”

  Maddie seethed inwardly. What he said was regrettably true. Old Charlie Wilcox, who did odd jobs to support his drinking habit, could have borrowed against his signature. “I am aware of that,” she answered.

  “However,” the banker went on, dragging the conversation out and clearly relishing Maddie’s discomfort, “Mrs. Donagher is also very concerned for her stepson’s welfare. Ben has been staying with you, as I understand it.”

  Everybody in town knew she was looking after Ben. Maddie bit down on her lower lip to forestall a rush of imprudent words. She nodded.

  “If you’d be willing to serve as the boy’s guardian until things settle down, Mrs. Donagher is prepared to offer you a very generous allowance toward the purchase price. The net cost to you would be fifteen hundred dollars.”

  Fifteen hundred dollars! It was a fortune. After more than half a decade of scraping by and making do, Maddie hadn’t a tenth of that tucked away.

  “I don’t have that much,” Maddie said. “And I can’t raise it.”

  Mr. James sighed. “Then I guess I will have to place an advertisement in the Tucson Gazette. You may have a few months before we find a buyer.” With that, he turned, headed for the door.

  Maddie stopped him. “Mr. James,” she said.

  He paused, looked back at her, an avaricious glint flashing in his eyes. “Yes?”

  “That will be two cents.”

  “Two cents?”

  “For the egg.”

  He froze, and for a moment Maddie thought he was going to send her down the road right then, for insolence. He had the power, since he managed Mungo’s affairs, to do just that. Instead, though, he reached into the pocket of his vest, walked past Maddie to the counter, where the register stood, and slapped down two gleaming copper pennies.

  Without another word, he crossed back to the door, opened it and went out, closing it smartly behind him.

  Maddie stared after him, watched as he walked by the front window.

  In the distance she heard the familiar rumble of the Wednesday afternoon stagecoach, normally a signal to get ready for a rush of folks wanting to collect their mail or send things out last-minute, but Maddie didn’t move. She couldn’t move.

  “Miss?”

  The voice startled Maddie out of her stupor. She blinked and turned to see the dance hall girls standing close by, one of them holding the catalog they’d been so absorbed in during the interview with Banker James, with her finger marking a place.

  “We want to order this frock on page sixty-three,” the woman said shyly. “We mean to share it. Can we pay when it comes in?”

  Maddie sighed. “Yes,” she said, forcing herself to focus on the printed drawing they showed her. She noted the item number, size and price.

  “Blue gingham,” the quiet one said eagerly.

  Maddie nodded, wondering where these two planned to wear a jointly owned blue gingham frock ordered all the way from Chicago, and promptly deciding that it wasn’t her business. By the time it arrived, she’d probably be gone.

  The bell over the door jingled and Maddie glanced in that direction. The stage was still a ways off, though by the racket it was making, it was getting closer.

  Sam O’Ballivan loomed just that side of the threshold, and he looked agitated, tugging at his shirt collar with one finger. “I need a stagecoach ticket,” he blurted. “And I need it fast.”

  Maddie had just lost everything she’d spent six long, hard years building, and she was testy over it. Besides, she hadn’t seen Mr. O’Ballivan, except from a distance, when he stopped in front of the Rattlesnake Saloon to pat Charlie Wilcox’s horse, since he’d come to supper a week ago, after Garrett Donagher’s funeral.

  “As you can see,” she said, indicating Oralee’s girls with a nod of her head, “I am presently occupied.”

  “This is an emergency,” Sam insisted, and remembered to take off his hat.

  “It’s all right,” one of the young women said. “We’ve got to get back to the Rattlesnake anyhow.”

  Maddie suppressed a sigh. Watched as the pair dashed out of the store, pausing to admire Sam as they went by him. The door slammed on their giggles.

  “I need that ticket,” Sam repeated.

  Maddie moved behind the counter, in a swish of skirts, and got out her ticket book. “I’m not surprised that you’re leaving,” she said. “But I did think you’d take your horse.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Sam said, watching that ticket book as though it meant admission to heaven and he would be turned away without it.

  Maddie was too frazzled to be relieved, though something stirred in her heart at his words, muffled and sweet. She tapped the end of the pencil impatiently on the countertop. “What is the destination, please?”

  “Flagstaff.” He shoved a hand through his hair, raising his voice a little to be heard over the din of the rapidly approaching team and coach. “One way,” he added anxiously.

  “Who is traveling?” That information wasn’t actually required; Maddie just wanted to know, so she gave the question a businesslike tone.

  A muscle bunched in Sam’s jaw. “Abigail Blackstone,” he said. “She may want to stop off at Phoenix on the way.”

  Maddie didn’t dare meet his eyes; she was afraid he might see curious interest there, along with a glimmer of despicable and totally unfounded exultation. She reached for her official stamp and struck the ticket hard in three places. “Two dollars,” she said.

  Sam thrust the money at her as if it was about to catch fire in his hand. “Damn!” he swore.

  Maddie started. “Is something wrong?”

  “I need flowers,” he told her, and dashed right through the curtain leading to her private kitchen and the back door beyond it.

  Glad her prize peonies weren’t in bloom, Maddie shook her head, put the two dollars into a cigar box reserved for the purpose, and prepared herself for the arrival of the weekly mail.

  And Miss Abigail Blackstone. Who would, it seemed, not be staying long.

  Maddie told herself the pleasure she took in that knowledge was downright unchristian, but it didn’t help.

  The stagecoach rolled up out front, in a billowing rise of dust, and Maddie straightened her hair, smoothed her skirts. She was grateful for Miss Blackstone’s arrival, if only because it gave her something to think about besides Undine’s decision to sell the mercantile out from under her.

  She saw Sam pass the window, a bunch of hastily gathered weeds fairly crushed in one hand.

  Curiosity drew her outside. She was usually too busy to greet the stage, and if anyone took notice and inquired, she would simply say she was eager to get the mail sorted.

  Nobody noticed her presence at all, as it happened, let alone asked why she was there.

  Sam opened the coach door before the driver could even get down from the box, and Maddie quelled the twinge she felt at that. He might be planning to send Miss Blackstone straight back to the high country, but he was eager to set eyes on her, too.

  Silently lamenting the lingering flurry of dust that would soil her dress and settle in her hair, Maddie waited stalwartly, like Charlie Wilcox’s horse.

  Abigail Blackstone, dark-haired and lovely in a lavender traveling suit, unrumpled even after her long journey, flung herself straight into Sam O’Ballivan’s arms.

  Maddie’s heart slipped down her rigid spine.

  Abigail planted a smacking kiss on Sam’s forehead. “You are glad to see me!” she crowed. “Papa said you’d be grumpy as a bear, but here you are, and you brought flowers!”

  Weeds, Maddie thought uncharitably. A tug at her sleeve startled her.

  She looked down into Violet Perkins’s upturned face. The child was wearing the little muslin dress Sam had paid for; Maddie had told her it was a sample a salesman had left be
hind, way last spring. “Miss Oralee Pringle says to come,” Violet said. “Soon as you can. She gave me a whole nickel to bring you word!” She held up the coin to prove the miracle. “See?”

  Maddie smiled, patted the child’s thin little shoulder. “Now what would Miss Oralee Pringle want with me?” she asked, glad of the distraction.

  “She just said come see her, and be quick about it.” Violet’s forehead furrowed with thought. “I reckon I’d better go and ask Ma what to do with this nickel,” she said, and scampered away.

  Without looking at Sam and Miss Blackstone again, without worrying about the mail or the possibility of missing a customer, Maddie turned on her heel and headed for the Rattlesnake Saloon.

  * * *

  ABIGAIL STARED mutely at the stagecoach ticket Sam had placed in her gloved hand. It wounded him, seeing its meaning dawn in her whole countenance, but there was nothing for it. She was a proud woman, and when she met his eyes, he felt her injured confusion like a spear thrust.

  “You’re sending me away?”

  The stage driver, having unloaded the mail bags and left them just inside the door of the mercantile for Maddie to see to, climbed the side of the coach to fetch down Abigail’s belongings.

  Sam signaled him with one hand and the man paused, puzzled, shook his head and stepped back to the ground.

  “Sam?” Abigail prompted.

  “You shouldn’t have come here,” Sam told her. He took her arm and led her a little way apart. “I’m working, Abigail, and besides, there’s no fitting place for you to stay. You’ve got to turn right around and head back home. Now. Today.”

  Abigail, resilient as tempered steel, recovered her normal unassailable dignity. She lengthened her spine and tugged at the tops of her dusty traveling gloves. “You,” she said, “are always working. And you’ve never minded before when I paid an unexpected visit. What, exactly, is different now?”

  Sam had been aware of Maddie’s presence, seen her walk away out of the corner of his eye, and wondered where she was headed. Not that Maddie Chancelor had anything to do with the subject at hand.

  “There’s been a killing, for one thing,” Sam replied, forcing himself to concentrate. “A man named Mungo Donagher shot his eldest son to death.”

  Abigail blinked. “That’s terrible,” she said. Then, after a deep, measured breath, she added, “There’s something more, Sam. Something you’re not telling me. What is it?”

  He thought of the map Vierra had given him that night in the graveyard in Refugio. Even then, as he and Abigail stood yammering on the sidewalk, there was a train rolling north, loaded with Mexican gold and unsuspecting passengers. If Vierra’s information was sound, the outlaw gang would probably be waiting in ambush at the railroad trestle, and that was two days south of where he was, all of it hard riding.

  “There’s a lot I’m not telling you,” Sam rasped, “because I can’t tell you.”

  She pondered him, her wide-set eyes wise and watchful, her cheekbones flushed with color beneath a layer of trail grime. “You know you can trust me, Sam O’Ballivan,” she said.

  He sighed. “It’s not a matter of trusting you. I have to leave town, right away, and I don’t know when I’ll be back. You’d be on your own.”

  “What about the children? Your students?”

  “I’ll just have to shut the school down until I get back.” The stagecoach driver was checking his team, making sure the harnesses didn’t rub anywhere. He must have seen the ticket, now crumpled in Abigail’s right hand, because there was an air of lingering about him. Sam sensed the man’s growing impatience and understood it. He had a route to cover and a station to reach before sundown.

  Abigail smiled. “Or you could let me take over,” she suggested, showing no signs of boarding that stagecoach. She’d gone to normal school, unlike Sam, who’d gotten the bulk his education from borrowed books, so it wasn’t an empty threat. With Abigail, no threat was ever empty.

  “How would I explain that? And where would you stay?”

  “We’ll simply make up some story,” she said with growing eagerness. There were faint blue shadows under her eyes, and that worried Sam. For all her adventurous spirit, Abigail was delicate. “And I can stay wherever you’re staying now. Surely you have a room somewhere.”

  A flush pulsed in Sam’s neck. “It wouldn’t be proper.”

  “Since when do you worry about what’s proper?” Abigail countered, still smiling. Sam decided he’d liked it better when she was indignant.

  “Since everything depends on my being the schoolmaster,” he said.

  “All aboard for Tucson!” the driver called hopefully. There were no other takers, so that meant Abigail, and she wasn’t paying a lick of attention.

  “You just said you were leaving,” Abigail reasoned, “so it’s not as if we’d be sharing your quarters.”

  Sam suppressed an urge to yank off his hat, fling it down on the board sidewalk and stomp on it in pure frustration. “Abigail,” he said, “get on the stage.”

  Abigail folded her arms, but not before she tore the stagecoach ticket into tiny little pieces and flung it into the slowly settling dust. “No,” she said flatly.

  “Abigail—”

  “You are not my husband, and therefore you have no authority over me. I choose to stay, and that’s what I’m going to do!”

  The driver shrugged, unloaded Abigail’s trunk and valise, climbed into the box and took up the reins. Sam winced as the man wrenched at the brake lever.

  He was desperate. “Damn it, Abigail—”

  Abigail waved a cheerful farewell to the driver.

  The stagecoach lurched into noisy motion.

  She reached for a valise, and Sam took it from her, none too politely. He grabbed up the trunk with his other hand and stormed off toward the schoolhouse, leaving Abigail to follow if she chose. Which, of course, she damn well did.

  * * *

  MADDIE STOOD OUT in front of the Rattlesnake Saloon, petting Charlie Wilcox’s horse and trying to summon up the courage to march through those swinging doors and find out what Oralee Pringle had to say.

  There were few secrets in Haven, and folks were out and about. They’d know the minute she stepped over Oralee’s threshold, and they’d have plenty to say about it over their supper tables that night. She could go around back, but that would only intrigue them more.

  The stagecoach passed, with a clatter of horses’ hooves, a squeak of ungreased wheels and the inevitable cloud of choking dust. Maddie didn’t turn around to see if Abigail Blackstone was inside it, but she hoped, with an unflattering intensity, that she was.

  She took a deep breath and a step toward the saloon entrance. What did she have to lose? Undine meant to sell the mercantile, and once that happened, Maddie wouldn’t have to worry about her reputation, because she and Terran would be packing up and leaving.

  Oralee’s plump face appeared like a painted moon above the hinged doors. “Come on in,” she said, and there was a note of challenge in her voice. She’d registered Maddie’s trepidation and the dare was implicit in her shrewd little eyes.

  Maddie let out the breath she’d been holding in a determined whoosh and approached.

  Oralee smiled, ever so slightly, and stepped back to let her pass into that cool, shadowy space where the floor was covered with sawdust. A scattering of drifters and local no-accounts looked up at Maddie’s appearance, and the piano player raised his fingers off the keys and stared. Dance hall girls wavered, faceless, in the gloom at the edges of the room, their dresses like thin washes of watercolor.

  Maddie wanted to bolt, but she didn’t.

  “We can talk in my office,” Oralee said. She paused to survey the clientele. “Back to your drinkin’, you nosy bastards,” she ordered, and to a man, they all retreated into their beer mugs and whiskey glasses. The piano player spun back to the keys and resumed his bawdy repertoire, and the dancing girls came to life.

  Oralee proceeded, with all the pur
pose of a paddle-wheeler traveling downriver, making for an open door at the back of the room. Maddie, having come this far, gulped down the last of her misgivings and sailed in the other woman’s expansive wake.

  To Maddie’s surprise, Oralee’s private enclave was no cluttered burrow, littered with the detritus of sin. It was more like a parlor, graciously appointed, with elegantly painted glass lamps and fine furniture upholstered in pale green silk. The desk was ornate, and probably French, with decorative china panels, and a quill pen stood at the ready, beside a gold-filigreed inkwell. The floor was of highly polished wood—no trace of sawdust here—and the pictures on the walls were well-executed depictions of fox hunts, sleeping dogs and pink-cheeked children in hoop skirts and velvet knee pants.

  The place gave Maddie an odd, disjointed sensation, as though she’d stepped out of one world and into another, totally unexpected one.

  “Sit down,” Oralee said, taking her place behind the desk.

  Maddie hesitated, then took one of the silk-upholstered chairs. She folded her hands in her lap, lifted her chin. And waited circumspectly. When it finally occurred to her that Oralee might have heard about the sale of the mercantile, and was about to offer her a job at the Rattlesnake, she bristled inwardly and kept her face impassive.

  “I hear Undine Donagher’s itchin’ to get out of the storekeepin’ business,” Oralee said.

  Maddie remembered that two of the girls from the Rattlesnake had been present when Banker James relayed Undine’s offer. They must have carried the news straight back to Oralee. “Yes,” Maddie said stiffly, braced for whatever might come next.

  “And you turned down the chance to buy the place.” Oralee paused thoughtfully, then fixed Maddie with another penetrating stare. “The store’s a goin’ concern. Only one between here and Tucson.”

  “I’m well aware of that,” Maddie said.

  “You’ve done a pretty good job runnin’ it,” Oralee allowed, with no trace of admiration. “Couldn’t have been easy, fendin’ off Mungo Donagher and those rascal boys of his all that time.”

  Maddie didn’t answer. Her heart pounded and indignant tears burned in her throat and behind her eyes. She had herself and Terran to support, and she’d do whatever she had to do, but she hadn’t reached the place where she was willing to sell her body, and it stung her pride that Oralee or anyone else thought she had.