Tisha

  So we were quiet, listening as the barking became more and more excited. And finally someone down by the roadhouse yelled out exactly what we wanted to hear: “Wahoo-o-o-o! The dogs say he’s a-comin’!”

  After I let the class go I threw a sweater around my shoulders and went out. The air was flying white and it was colder than it usually was when it snowed. I ran across the road to check the fire in the stable. I always started it in the morning when Mr. Strong was due in, then kept it going all day. After the long, miserable trip his horses had, the least they were entitled to was a warm stable. After I put another log in the stove I filled the feed bags, then ran back to my quarters. There were a lot more dog teams tied up near the roadhouse than usual, I saw. The word was out that prices at the Seattle Fur Exchange were at their highest now and everybody was shipping their catch out.

  Fifteen minutes later everybody including me was waiting outside the post office, stomping around to keep warm.

  Jimmy and the rest of the kids were busy piling up snow at the edge of the settlement. They did it every time Mr. Strong was due in, built a barrier a few feet high just so they could watch Mr. Strong’s horses kick it to pieces when they went through it. Chuck and Ethel were with them, making their contribution. As soon as we heard the jangle of the bells in the distance the kids came running over to the crowd. Ben Norvall leaned down over Chuck. “Been happy staying with the teacher, have ya?”

  Chuck said, “Yiss. Tisha make good grub me.”

  “That’s the way to a man’s heart,” Ben said. His moustache was peppered with snowflakes. “Bet you’ll sure be sorry to go back to that Indian village now.”

  “I no go back,” Chuck said. “I stay here.”

  “Is that so?” Ben looked at me inquiringly, but I pretended not to be paying attention.

  Uncle Arthur was on the other side of me.

  “B’gawd, missis, it was good of ya to take care of the little tykes. I ain’t the marryin’ kind, but if I wuz I’d ask for your hand and take these two to boot.”

  “Then they could all go up to the Indian village and live happily ever after,” I heard Angela say to somebody.

  Jake Harrington came over with Rebekah and Lily. “Howdy, Teacher.”

  “Hello, Mr. Harrington.”

  “How’s my woman doing in school?”

  “Fine.”

  “Hope so.” He smiled. “I can’t get a lick of work out of ’er these days with all the studyin’ she’s doing. Next thing you know she’ll want to go to college.”

  We heard the bells and everybody got quiet. A few minutes later the sled materialized, rocking and tinkling and crunching its way toward us.

  Mr. Strong was standing up looking like a big bear, furred from head to toe, cracking his whip and urging the two horses on. He didn’t have to, they wanted to get here as bad as he did, but it made a good impression on everybody and showed he was on the job. As soon as the horses smashed through the snow barrier the kids had built, they tried to head over to the stable, but Jake Harrington and a couple of other men ran out and shied them back towards the post office. They’d had a rough trip, you could see that. The corners of their mouths dripped blood from where the frozen bit had torn them up and their blankets were hung with icicles. The two of them were just one big cloud of steam.

  There was somebody sitting up front alongside Mr. Strong. As soon as the sled stopped he jumped down and yelled at the men who were crowding forward. “Just hold on, all a you! Lemme get my wife and baby out.”

  It was Elmer, Maggie Carew’s son-in-law. He moved to the back of the sled where somebody was already pushing up the covering canvas from underneath. When he pulled it back, there was Jeannette, swaddled in a cocoon of furs. She started to hand Elmer a little bundle wrapped in blankets, but Maggie was already alongside of him and said, “Give ’er to me!”

  While he helped Jeannette down all the women crowded around Maggie to have a look at the baby. She wouldn’t let them see it though. She headed right over to the roadhouse with it, not even taking a peek herself. If they wanted to see it, they could come over later, she said. She wasn’t about to let it catch its death out there in the cold.

  I got all my mail, then went back to my quarters with Nancy and the children. There was a letter from Lester Henderson, and he didn’t have very cheering news. It wasn’t that he didn’t like my work or think I wasn’t doing a good job. “Your reports are thorough and your pupils seem to be making excellent progress,” he wrote. “Personally, I’m more than satisfied with your work, especially since this is your first year.”

  However, there may be some difficulty in my placing you in Eagle next year. At this point I can’t say for certain, but please don’t let it concern you. I have any number of other schools I can place you in, and you may rest assured that I’ll do so with pride …

  I knew what that meant. People had written to him about me, and the chances were that the school board in Eagle wouldn’t want me teaching there. I tried not to let it bother me too much, but it did. I wanted to teach in Eagle. It was close by and I knew what it would be like. On top of that Maggie Carew was moving there, and even if she wasn’t crazy about me, she was somebody I knew. I didn’t relish the idea of going to some strange place where I’d have to start all over again.

  After supper, Nancy started to get dressed up to go over to the roadhouse. What with everybody coming in from all over to send out their furs it was kind of an occasion and there was going to be a dance and partying. I had to go over to Mr. Strong’s store to go over all the accounts with him and give him the cash I’d taken in, but I kept putting it off until Nancy was all dressed, then I couldn’t put it off any longer. “I’ll be back soon,” I told her.

  Joe Temple was banging away at the piano when I went by the roadhouse and everybody was singing Yes, Sir! That’s My Baby. I was hoping the store would be empty, but Mr. Vaughn, Harry Dowles and a couple of other men were sitting around the oil-drum stove when I walked in. The place was suffocating with heat and tobacco smoke. Harry Dowles shifted his quid of chewing tobacco and asked me if I was coming over to the roadhouse.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. I didn’t want to drag Chuck and Ethel over there, tonight of all nights.

  “Too bad.” He spat into the big tin can sitting by the stove. “Fred Purdy’s liable to show up.” Harry’s wife was the one who’d taken back the washboiler from me when I threatened to quit if Chuck didn’t stay in the school. Because he and his wife weren’t on speaking terms, they were always asking other people to relay what they wanted to say to each other. Once they trapped me between them, and for over fifteen minutes they drove me crazy repeating to the two of them what they could have told each other in a third of the time. They were both peculiar people, and it made me nervous to be around them. Him more than her. With a pale pudgy face, some missing front teeth, and eyes like little pieces of black coal, he looked like an evil snowman. He was always acting as if he knew something you didn’t, and I thought he was just being smart now, so I didn’t pay him any attention. But then he said, “I’m givin’ you the straight goods, Teacher—ain’t I, Walt?”

  Mr. Strong was leaning over the counter going over some figures. He nailed one of them with his pencil and looked up at me over his glasses. “Fred came in with me,” he said.

  “How come I didn’t see him?”

  “He jumped off at Stonehouse Creek and siwashed it from there.”

  Harry Dowles chuckled. While I went over the accounts with Mr. Strong I knew they were all giving each other know-it-all looks in back of me, but I just pretended I wasn’t any more affected than if I’d just been told it was snowing outside. I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. I kept hoping they’d leave before I talked with Mr. Strong about Chuck and Ethel, but they stayed put. After we finished tallying up I was about to mention it, but Mr. Strong beat me to it.

  “Too bad about Mary Angus,” he said.

  “Yes, it was.”

  “We al
l have to take the sunset trail sometime or other,” somebody said.

  “That’s the truth,” Harry Dowles said.

  “I’ll be bringing the body back to the Indian village,” Mr. Strong said. ‘I won’t be paid for it, but it’s my duty. It was commendable of you to look after the two youngsters.”

  “I didn’t mind at all.”

  “You may bring them over here tonight if you wish. I can give them a couple of sleeping bags. Or if you don’t mind I can pick them up before I leave tomorrow.”

  “You won’t have to do either,” I said. “They’re going to stay with me.”

  He peered at me over his glasses again. “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m going to keep them for a while. I don’t think they ought to go back to the Indian village just yet.”

  Mr. Vaughn made a snorting noise and Harry Dowles spat. He must have missed the tin can because I heard the squirt sizzle against the stove. “Kinda got your hands full as it is, don’t ya, Teacher?” he asked.

  Mr. Strong frowned at him. “I’m having a conversation with this lady, Mr. Dowles. I’d be pleased if you wouldn’t interrupt.” He turned back to me. “Madam, I’m sure your intentions are good, but those children belong among their own people.”

  “I want to keep them with me, Mr. Strong.”

  “I believe that you are all of nineteen years old—”

  “No, I’m twenty now.”

  “Since you have not reached the age of consent, I don’t see how you are entitled to take charge of children that do not belong to you.”

  “I already spoke with Joe Temple about it. He said it’s all right with him.”

  “For how long do you intend to keep them?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I asked you a simple question because I am afraid you are on the verge of making a grievous error. How long do you intend to keep them?”

  “For quite some time.”

  “Quite some time,” Mr. Vaughn mimicked. “Jesus Christ.” He got up without another word, took his parka from the wall and walked out. He’d be headed for the roadhouse to tell everybody. The others stayed put.

  “I’d suggest, madam, that you bring those two children here tonight.”

  “I’ve pretty well made up my mind.”

  “I would be doing you a service if I were to go over to your quarters right now and take them forcibly.”

  “And I’ll help you out,” Harry Dowles said.

  “I don’t think you’d do something like that, Mr. Strong,” I said. I was pretty upset by now, scared he’d do it. He shook his head a little and his mouth tightened up. “Goodnight, madam,” he said finally.

  I walked out shaking. I’d wanted to stop at the roadhouse and see Maggie’s granddaughter, but with Mr. Vaughn inside spreading the good news about Chuck and Ethel, I wasn’t about to.

  Nancy asked me right away how it had gone and I told her what Mr. Strong had said.

  “Well, if he did come over for ’em he’d have plenty of help. You want me to stay?”

  “No. You go on and have a good time. I’m not worried,” I lied. I didn’t mention the news about Fred.

  After she left I played tic-tac-toe with Chuck for a while, then after he and Ethel were in bed I sat down to write to Mr. Henderson. I told him that if he could manage it I’d prefer to teach in Eagle, but that if he couldn’t I’d take another school. I also wrote him about Chuck and Ethel, explaining who they were. “I’ll be keeping them with me at least until June,” I wrote, “and I have the feeling you’ll be getting some letters about them from people.” I tried to kid about it to take the edge off a little.

  Ethel, the little girl, sleeps with Nancy and me, so between the three of us and the potatoes you might say I have about the most crowded bed in the Forty Mile. It will be emptying out a little pretty soon, though. We’re getting low on potatoes.

  While I was addressing the envelope there were quick footsteps on the porch and the door was flung open. I was scared out of my wits, thinking it was a bunch from the roadhouse come to take the kids, but it was Nancy. She had tears in her eyes and a big red welt on her cheek. Maggie Carew was right in back of her, fuming mad. She hadn’t even bothered to put on a shawl. “Just what the hell are you up to now!” she yelled before I had a chance to say anything.

  “What happened?”

  “What does it look like?” Maggie said. “She nearly got her head knocked off on account a you.”

  “The kids are asleep, Mrs. Carew.”

  I brought the lamp into the schoolroom and we closed the door behind us. “Are you crazy?” Maggie hissed at me.

  “What happened?”

  “She sassed Angela and Angela walloped her one and it’s all your goddamned fault.”

  “It isn’t her fault,” Nancy said. “Nobody asked Angela to hit me and if you’d of just let me alone—”

  “She’d of really given it to ya, so shut up.” She turned to me. “Are you keepin’ those kids?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Carew—”

  “I don’t want to hear any blabber. All I wanna hear is that those kids are goin’ outta here. Otherwise there’s gonna be hell to pay.”

  “Mrs. Carew—”

  She wouldn’t let me talk. “Do you have any idea what you’re doing? You got half the people in this place thinkin’ you’re nuts and the other half ready to lynch ya.”

  This time she let me talk. “Mrs. Carew, I’m doing what I think is right. If those two kids were white nobody would think twice about my keeping them here.”

  “If they were white they wouldn’t be here! Look, I’m try’na tell you somethin’ for your own good. You keep those kids and you’re askin’ for it. Goin’ daffy over that half-breed was bad enough, but this takes the cake. Do you realize you’re lousin’ up your whole future?”

  “I’m not worried about it.”

  “Well you better. You better worry about a lot of things from here on in. There’s talk over to the roadhouse about some a them comin’ over here and takin’ those kids whether you like it or not.”

  That did it. I saw red. I was so mad that if I’d had a lightning bolt I’d have thrown it at that roadhouse and everybody in it. “I’ll be right back,” I said.

  I went into the cache and put a box by the wall. Getting up on it, I felt around for the nickel-plated revolver, my hand finally closing around the holster. It was freezing cold, and if I hadn’t been so mad I’d have realized I was in for a shock.

  “What are you gonna do with that?” Maggie said when I marched back into the schoolroom.

  “If I have to I’m going to use it.” I took the revolver out of its holster. “I’m going to keep this out until I go to sleep tonight, and when I go to sleep I’m going to put it under my pillow. Please do me a favor. You tell anybody at that roadhouse who has a mind to set foot in here and take those children from me that if they try to, so help me God I’ll shoot ’em. I will shoot them dead.”

  “You’d be crazy enough, wouldn’t you”?

  “You are absolutely right.”

  “I’ll tell ’em. But I’ll tell you one thing too. Maybe you don’t know it, but I been stickin’ my neck out for you. Come spring I’m leavin’ here for Eagle as you well know and buyin’ the Adkins’s roadhouse there. That Adkins woman is on the school board and she wrote me to find out if you were as crazy as she’s been hearin’. Well, I wrote her back, sayin’ you were just a cheechako and didn’t know the ropes, but that you were a damn good teacher and if she could swing it, to see that the school board didn’t turn you down. She came back to me and said she’d do it. Well, I’m gonna tell you here and now that I’m about to change my mind and tell her you’re as crazy as a bedbug and that compared to you that Mrs. Rooney is a patron saint. Now are those kids leavin’ here tomorrow or ain’t they?”

  “They’re staying with me.”

  “Then that’s the blow that killed Father. I wash my hands of the whole thing. I’ll tell you one more thing, young lady
. This ain’t over yet—not by a long shot. As for you, dummox,” she said to Nancy before she left, “you stay out of Angela’s way.”

  As soon as she was out the door I let out the yelp I’d been holding in and rushed over to the stove. Throwing open the door, I shoved the revolver in as far as I could without burning my hand.

  Nancy was wide-eyed. “What’s wrong!”

  “It’s stuck to my hand.”

  I kept hopping around in front of that stove as if I had to go to the outhouse. A few seconds later the metal warmed up enough. I dropped the revolver on the table with a sigh of relief and started blowing on my hand.

  “What’d you hold onto it for?” Nancy said.

  “Just to make a point.”

  My hand was all right. A couple of blisters, that was all. I asked Nancy what happened between her and Angela.

  “Aah,” she sneered, “Angela was saying things about you, about how you and Fred carried on and that he’d probably lived with you a couple of times. She said she had a good mind to come over here and wipe the floor with you and feed Chuck and Ethel to her dogs. I told ’er she oughtta mind her own business and she walloped me.”

  “We better stay out of her way.”

  “I’m not afraid of ’er.

  “I am.”

  “You heard about Fred bein’ back, I guess,” Nancy said a little later.

  “Yeah.”

  “I guess they musta given him a real bad time.”

  “I’ll bet they did.”

  We didn’t sleep too well that night. Every time I heard somebody go by I expected them to come charging in. But nobody bothered us.

  XIX

  “Cargo,” I said to the children I was giving a spelling test to the next morning. “The riverboat carried a cargo of provisions and supplies.”