A Stone Creek Collection Volume 1

by Linda Lael Miller

  Gideon watched him out of sight, half-sick with wondering. Then he bent, picked up the letter from the college in Pennsylvania, the only mail to come that day, and tucked it into his shirt pocket.

  Without a fare-thee-well for Rose, he headed for Ruby’s place.

  * * *

  THE YELLOW DOG LAY in the doorway to Mr. Rhodes’s quarters as though guarding them, looking utterly bereft.

  Lark, alone in the house because Mrs. Porter had gone to an all-day meeting at church and Mai Lee was off somewhere with her husband, Hon Sing, set aside the lesson plans she’d been drawing up, in preparation for the week to come, and regarded the animal with compassionate concern.

  “He hasn’t left you—your master, I mean,” she told the dog.

  Pardner, muzzle resting on his forepaws, gave a tiny whimper.

  “Perhaps you’re hungry,” Lark said, getting up from her chair. Mr. Rhodes had given the creature table scraps the night before, with Mrs. Porter’s blessings, and he’d had leftover pancakes and a scrambled egg for breakfast.

  While she certainly didn’t have the run of her landlady’s well-stocked larder, Lark had seen the heel of a ham in the pantry earlier, while seeking the tea canister.

  But perhaps Mai Lee was saving the bit of ham for her hardworking husband. For all Lark knew, it might be the only thing Hon Sing had to eat.

  No, she couldn’t give such a morsel to a dog.

  In the end, she cut a slice of bread and buttered it generously, then tore it into smaller pieces. She was approaching Pardner with this sustenance when the kitchen door suddenly swung open and Mr. Rhodes strode in.

  Pardner gave an explosive bark of jubilance and nearly trampled Lark in his rush to greet his master.

  Mr. Rhodes bent, ruffled the dog’s ears, spoke gently to him and let him out the back door, following in his wake.

  Lark, recognizing a prime opportunity to make herself scarce, stood frozen in the middle of Mrs. Porter’s kitchen floor instead, one hand filled with chunks of buttered bread.

  Mrs. Porter returned before Mr. Rhodes reappeared, her cheeks pink from the cold and religious conviction. Beaming, she untied the wide black ribbons of her Sunday bonnet. “You missed an excellent sermon,” she told Lark. “All about the tortures of eternal damnation.”

  “Sounds delightful,” Lark said mildly and with no trace of sarcasm, depositing Pardner’s refreshments on a chipped saucer and setting it on the floor. Having lived two years under Autry’s roof, she knew the highways and byways of hell, and had no desire to revisit the subject.

  Mrs. Porter removed her woolen cloak and hung it on one of several pegs beside the door. “You really should consider the fate of your immortal soul,” she said.

  The door opened again, and Pardner bounded in, his master behind him.

  “Wouldn’t you say we should all consider the fate of our immortal souls, Mr. Rhodes?” Mrs. Porter inquired, looking for support.

  “Rowdy,” Mr. Rhodes said. He watched Lark as he took off his hat and coat and hung them next to Mrs. Porter’s bonnet and cloak, probably noting the high color that burned in Lark’s cheeks.

  His perusal made her uncomfortable, and yet she could not look away.

  “Yes, indeed,” he told Mrs. Porter, in belated answer to her question. “I’ve run afoul of the devil myself, a time or two.”

  If Lark had said such an outrageous thing, Mrs. Porter would have taken her to task for flippancy. Because Mr. Rhodes—Rowdy—had been the one to say it, she simply twittered.

  It was galling, Lark thought, the way some women pandered to men—especially attractive ones, like the new boarder.

  “You’re personally acquainted with the devil, Mr. Rhodes?” Lark asked archly, when Mrs. Porter went into the pantry for the makings of supper.

  “He’s my pa,” Rowdy answered.

  CHAPTER 3

  ROWDY RARELY LOOKED at Lark Morgan during the Sunday supper of hash, deftly made by Mrs. Porter since it was Mai Lee’s night off, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t aware of her.

  He should have been thinking about his pa or about Gideon or about the meeting with Sam O’Ballivan and Major Blackstone coming up the next morning.

  Instead the mysterious woman sitting directly across the table from him, intermittently pushing her food around on her plate with the tines of her fork and eating as though she was half-starved, filled his mind.

  She hadn’t told him anything about herself. What Rowdy knew, he’d gleaned from Mrs. Porter’s eager chatter.

  Lark was a schoolteacher, never married, popular with her students.

  She’d been in Stone Creek for three months, during which time she’d never sent or received a letter or a telegram, as far as Mrs. Porter could determine. And Mrs. Porter, Rowdy reckoned, could determine plenty.

  Lark Morgan’s clothes gave the lie to a part of her story—they were costly, beyond the means of any schoolmarm Rowdy had ever heard of. He wasn’t convinced, either, that she’d never been married; there was a worldliness about her, as though she’d seen the seamy side of life, but an innocence, too. She’d been a witness to sin, he would have bet, but somehow she’d managed to hold her expensive skirts aside to avoid stepping in it.

  Mentally Rowdy cataloged his other observations.

  She’d dyed her hair—there was a slight dusting of gold at the roots.

  Her dark eyes were luminous with secrets.

  She was unquestionably brave.

  And she was just as surely afraid. Even terrified at times.

  He’d joshed her a little earlier, claiming the devil was his pa, and she’d flinched before she caught herself.

  Could be she was a preacher’s daughter, and the devil was serious business to her. Some folks, Rowdy reckoned, paid so much mind to old Scratch and his doings that they never got past a nodding acquaintance with God.

  Mrs. Porter finished her meal, setting her plate on the floor so Pardner could have at the leftovers, and set about brewing up a pot of coffee. A lot of people didn’t drink the stuff at night—said it kept them awake—but Rowdy thrived on it. Could consume a pot on his own and sleep like a pure-hearted saint until the dawn light pried at his eyelids.

  Lark hesitated, then took a second helping of hash. She was a small thing, with a womanly shape, but Rowdy had seen ranch hands with a lesser appetite. He wondered what kind of hole she was trying to fill up with all that food.

  His own hunger appeased, he excused himself from the table, noting the look of relief that flickered briefly in Lark’s eyes, and scraped what was left of his supper onto Pardner’s plate. When he returned to his chair, the pretty schoolmarm was clearly startled, bristling a little.

  “I’ll clear away the dishes,” Rowdy said to Mrs. Porter, once she’d gotten the coffee started and showed signs of lingering to fuss and fiddle.

  Mrs. Porter looked uncertain.

  “It was a fine supper,” Rowdy told her. “And I’m obliged for it.”

  The landlady’s eyes shone with pleasure. “I am a little weary,” she confessed girlishly, sparing nary a glance for Lark, who seemed torn between tarrying and rushing headlong for the back stairs. “Perhaps I shall retire a little early, leave you and Miss Morgan to get acquainted. Mai Lee and the mister ought to be home soon. I always leave the back door unlocked for them.”

  Lark rankled visibly at the prospect of being alone with him, but she didn’t rise from the table. She’d put down her fork, and her hands were out of sight. Rowdy was pretty sure, from the tense set of her shoulders, that she was gripping the sides of her chair with all ten fingers.

  Rowdy stood, out of deference to the older woman. “A good night to you, Mrs. Porter,” he said, gravely polite. “I’ll wait up for Mai Lee and her man and see that the door is locked before I turn in.”

  Mrs. Porter nodded, flustered, mumbled a good-evening to Lark, and departed, pausing once on the stairs to look back, naked curiosity glittering in her eyes. Like as not, she’d wait in the upper hallwa
y for a spell, eavesdropping.

  Rowdy smiled at the idea. Sat down again.

  Lark stared into her plate.

  “I guess I’ll take Pardner out for a walk,” Rowdy said. “Maybe you’d do me the kindness of keeping us company, Miss Morgan?”

  Lark’s gaze flew to his face. She bit her lower lip, then nodded reluctantly and got to her feet. He’d been right to suppose there was something she was itching to find out, but it was clearly a private matter, and she knew as well as he did that Mrs. Porter had an ear bent in their direction.

  Together they cleared the table, setting the dishes and silverware in the cast-iron sink. Rowdy pushed the coffeepot to the back of the stove, so it wouldn’t boil over while they were out, and watched out of the corner of his eye as Lark took a cloak from the peg by the door and draped it around her shoulders. Pardner, eager for an outing, dashed from Rowdy to Lark to the door, exuberant at his good fortune.

  Lark smiled and leaned to give the dog’s head a tentative pat.

  Something stirred in Rowdy at the sight.

  “Does he have a leash?” Lark asked, as Rowdy crossed the room to stand as close to her as convention allowed, donning his own hat and coat.

  He smiled. A leash? She was from a city, then, and probably a large one, where respectable folks didn’t allow their dogs to run loose. “No, ma’am,” he said. “Pardner sticks pretty close to me, wherever we go. Wouldn’t even chase a rabbit unless I gave him leave, and I never have.”

  Rowdy opened the door, braced himself against the chill of the night air, and went out first, so if there was trouble, he’d be a barrier between it and Lark Morgan.

  Pardner slipped past them both but waited in the yard, turning in a circle or two in his impatience to be gone, until they caught up.

  “Your name isn’t Rowdy Rhodes,” Lark said, in a rush of whispered words, the moment they all reached the wooden sidewalk.

  Pardner proceeded to lift his leg against a lamppost up ahead, while Rowdy adjusted his hat. “And yours isn’t Lark Morgan,” he replied easily.

  Lark reddened slightly under her high cheekbones. Lord, she was a beauty. Wasted as a small-town schoolmarm. She ought to be the queen of some country, he reckoned, or appear on a stage. “Lark is my name,” she argued.

  “Maybe so,” he answered. “But ‘Morgan’ isn’t. You’re running from something—or somebody—aren’t you?”

  She hesitated just long enough to convince Rowdy that his hunch was correct. “Why are you here, Mr. Rhodes?” she asked. “What brings you to a place like Stone Creek?”

  “Business,” he said.

  She stopped, right in the middle of the sidewalk, forcing Rowdy to stop, too, and look back at her. “Am I that business, Mr. Rhodes? If…if someone hired you to find me—”

  “Find you?” Rowdy asked, momentarily baffled. In the next moment it all came clear. “You think I came here looking for you?”

  She gazed at him, at once stricken and defiant. She had the look of a woman fixing to lift her skirts, spin on one dainty heel and run for her life. At the same time, her chin jutted out, bespeaking stubbornness and pride and a fierce desire to mark out some ground for herself and hold it against all comers. “Did you?”

  Rowdy shook his head. “No, ma’am,” he said quietly. “I did not.”

  Lark still didn’t move. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

  “You don’t,” Rowdy answered, keeping a little distance between them, so she wouldn’t spook. “But consider this. If I’d come to Stone Creek to fetch you away, Miss Morgan, you and me and Pardner, we’d be a ways down the trail by now, whether you wanted to go along or not.”

  Her eyes flashed with indignation, but the slackening in her shoulders and the slight lowering of her chin said she was relieved, too. “You are insufferably confident, Mr. Rhodes,” she said.

  He grinned, tugged at the brim of his hat. “Call me Rowdy,” he said. “I don’t commonly answer to ‘Mr. Rhodes.’”

  “I’d wager that you don’t,” Lark said. “Because it isn’t your name. I’m sure of that much, at least.”

  “You’re sure of a lot of things, I reckon,” Rowdy countered. “Miss Morgan.”

  “Very well,” she retorted. “I’ll address you as Rowdy. It probably suits you. You’ve fooled Mrs. Porter with your fine manners and your flattery, that’s obvious, but you do not fool me.”

  “You don’t fool me, either—Lark.” He waited for her to protest his use of her given name—it was a bold familiarity, according to convention—but she didn’t.

  She came to walk at his side, between him and Mrs. Porter’s next-door neighbor’s picket fence. The glow of the streetlamps fell softly over her, catching in her hair, resting in the graceful folds of her cloak, fading as they passed into the pools of darkness in between light posts.

  “Did your mother call you Rowdy?” she asked casually, while Pardner sniffed at a spot on the sidewalk.

  “Yes,” Rowdy said, remembering. Miranda Yarbro had always used his nickname—except when she was angry. On those rare occasions, her lips would tighten, and she’d address him as Robert. When she was proud of him, she’d call him Rob.

  “Bless my boy, Rob,” she’d prayed, beside his bed, every night until he left home with his pa, at fourteen.

  “Make a godly man of him.”

  Guilt ambushed him. He reckoned the good Lord had attempted to answer that gentle woman’s prayer, but he, Rowdy, hadn’t cooperated.

  “Where do you hail from, Mr.—Rowdy?”

  Grateful for the reprieve from his regrets, Rowdy smiled. “A farm in Iowa,” he said. “Where do you hail from, Lark?”

  She didn’t reply right away.

  “Fair is fair,” Rowdy prompted. “You asked me a question and I gave you an answer.”

  “St. Louis,” she said. “I grew up in St. Louis.”

  And you’ve been a lot of places since, Rowdy thought, but he kept the observation to himself. After all, he’d covered considerable territory himself, in the years between here and that faraway farm.

  Pardner trotted back to them. Nuzzled Rowdy’s hand, then Lark’s.

  To his surprise she gave a soft laugh.

  “You are a dear,” she said fondly.

  Rowdy was both amused and disturbed to realize he wished she’d been talking to him instead of the dog.

  * * *

  LARK WATCHED from the steps of the schoolhouse that Monday morning as Maddie O’Ballivan, carrying her infant son in one arm and steering his reluctant older brother, Terran, forward with the other, marched through the gate. Ben Blackstone, the major’s adopted child, followed glumly, his blond hair shining in the morning sunlight.

  Behind the little procession sat a wagon with two familiar horses tied behind. It had been the sound of its approach that had caused Lark to interrupt the second-grade reading lesson and come out to investigate.

  Class had begun an hour earlier, promptly at eight o’clock.

  Lark had missed Ben and Terran right away, when she’d taken the daily attendance, and hoped they were merely late. It was a long ride in from the large cattle ranch Sam and Major Blackstone ran in partnership, and for all that those worthy men must have deemed the journey safe, there were perils that could befall a pair of youths along the way.

  Wolves, driven down out of the hills by hunger, for one.

  Outlaws and drifters for another.

  “Go inside, both of you,” Maddie told the boys, when she reached the base of the steps. Samuel, the baby, had begun to fuss inside his thick blanket, and Maddie bounced him a little, smiling up at Lark when Terran and Ben had slipped past her, on either side, to take their seats in the schoolroom.

  “Rascals,” Maddie said, shaking her head and smiling a little. “They were planning to spend the day riding in the hills—I guess they didn’t figure on Sam and the major heading into town for a meeting half an hour after they left, and me following behind in the buckboard, meaning to lay in suppl
ies at the mercantile.”

  Maddie was a pretty woman, probably near to Lark’s own age, with thick chestnut hair tending to unruliness and eyes almost exactly the same color as fine brandy. Until the winter before, according to Mrs. Porter, Maddie had run a general store and post office in a wild place down south called Haven. She’d married Sam O’Ballivan after the whole town burned to the ground, and borne him a son last summer. Lark’s landlady claimed the ranger’s bride could render notes from a spinet that would make an angel weep, but she’d politely refused to play on Sunday mornings at Stone Creek Congregational. Said it was too far to travel, and she had her own ways of honoring the Lord ‘s Day.

  Lark liked Maddie O’Ballivan, though they were little more than acquaintances, but she also envied her—envied her home, her obviously happy marriage and her children. Once, she’d fully expected to have all those things, too.

  What a naive little twit she’d been, with a head full of silly dreams and foolish hopes.

  “No harm done,” Lark said quietly, smiling back at Maddie. “I’ll give them each an essay to write.”

  Maddie laughed, a rich, quiet sound born of some profound and private joy, patting the baby with a gloved hand as she looked up at Lark, her eyes kind but thoughtful. “You’re cold, standing out here. I’ll just untie Ben and Terran’s horses, so they’ll have a way home after school, and be on about my business.”

  “I’ll send the boys out to do that,” Lark said, hugging herself against the chill. She hated to see Maddie go—she’d been lonely with only Mrs. Porter and Mai Lee for friends—but she had work to do, and she was shivering.

  “Miss Morgan?” Maddie said, when Lark turned to summon Terran and Ben to see to their horses.

  “Please,” Lark replied shyly, turning back. “Call me Lark.”

  “I will,” Maddie said, pleased. “And of course you’ll call me Maddie. I was wondering if you might like to join Sam and me for supper on Friday evening. You could ride out to the ranch with the boys, after school’s out, or Sam could come and get you in the wagon.”