by Natalie Dean
“What should I do?” she asked.
“Bring their lunch in,” he replied.
“I should not interrupt their teacher.”
“Better that than let them go hungry, don’t you think? It’s lunchtime. They’ll be hungry.”
He was a vexing man, to be sure. With her head high, she walked purposefully toward the schoolhouse, which was quite an attractive structure with a fresh coat of paint and windows on all sides. Hesitantly, she knocked on the door.
“I’m so very sorry,” she said to the young woman who answered. “I’m here to bring the Boone children their lunches.”
She saw relief in the teacher’s eyes. “Please come in,” the teacher said. “They’re all at their desks, getting ready to eat.”
It was apparent that the four Boone children, although at their desks, were not expecting lunch and she wondered, as she handed out their sandwiches and peppermint sticks, how often they went without food during the day.
The children mumbled their thanks, but the youngest boy, Isaiah, beamed when he spied the peppermint stick. “Candy!” he exclaimed.
“Yes,” she said, pleased by his response. “There is more for later.”
The teacher’s expression showed sympathy as she escorted Sarah to the door. “They’ll be home after two,” she said.
Deputy Harlow helped her into the wagon. “Thank you,” she said, forcing herself to be polite despite her annoyance, “for getting the sandwiches. I shall repay you, of course.”
He waved her hand away. “Forget it. I wasn’t going to let them starve.”
“I forgot the time because I was choosing clothing for them,” she defended herself. “They have only those worn out, shabby garments and the clothing they were wearing for—yesterday.”
Carson had assumed that she had been idling in the store, shopping for pleasure. He was embarrassed to learn that she had been spending the time choosing things for the Boone children, who, it was a fair bet, didn’t get much spent on them from their father.
“I reckon they’ll be pleased,” he said, not quite up to giving her an apology but willing to make amends for his misjudgment.
“I don’t know if they will or not,” she said. “I’ll probably find more frogs in my trunk.”
The laughter with which he greeted this prediction sent a flame of anger coursing through her. “It was not funny! I detest frogs!”
“The kids likely figured that,” he said. “Now if you’d acted like nothing happened, they’d have been curious about what kind of woman you are, and they’d have been intrigued.”
She had not come across the country to pique the curiosity of children, or to fashion a glib response to frogs in her trunk. She had come here to marry and to nurse, and it seemed that she had been foiled in that aim. What was there about her, Sarah wondered, that made her so ill-suited to be a wife? Her first husband, a dissolute gambler who had the ill manners to disappear and then to leave her a widow, and now this sorry episode with a doctor who was no more than a drunkard, and certainly not the sort of man she was going to marry. In fact, from what she had seen of the men of Knox Mills so far, she had come upon nothing to entice her to marriage. Graham Boone was a drunken good-for-nothing who had struck her, and Carson Harlow was an arrogant and infuriating lawman who treated a woman as if she ought to be put in jail herself.
Chapter 7
The children had warily received their presents, except for Isaiah, who was not only excited about the marbles and yo-yo, but pounced upon his new overalls and shirt with zeal. Sarah directed the children to try the garments on so that she could make any alternations that were needed. She was impressed by Herr Wiessen’s judgment; except for taking in the dresses at the shoulders for the older girl, and hemming for the younger, the girls’ clothing was ready to wear. The boys, in their new shirts and overalls, looked like any of the other boys she had seen in the classroom.
“Excellent,” she said. “You look quite impressive.”
“Why did you buy us things?” The older girl wanted to know.
“Well, Lucy,” Sarah said, thankful that Mr. Wiessen had known the children by name, “why shouldn’t I?”
“How do you know my name?” Lucy asked suspiciously.
“Is it a secret?” Sarah wanted to know, all innocence in her voice.
Lucy turned and left the room.
“Don’t fret over Lucy,” advised the older boy, whose name, Sarah knew now, was Erich. “She’s used to being the boss of the house. She took over things when Ma fell sick and now she doesn’t want to stop telling us what to do.”
She could still be the boss of the house as far as Sarah was concerned. She had no plans to stay here in the role of mother to four children who had shown her nothing but rudeness. Regardless of Deputy Harlow’s reasoning, she intended to prevail upon him to see that Dr. Boone’s jail time was reduced so that he could return to his responsibilities as the father to this brood, and she could find a place to live in town.
The next morning, when the children came to the table for breakfast, all except Lucy wearing their new clothing, Sarah had pancakes and eggs ready for them. Erich had milked the cow and there was fresh milk for them to drink. She had made bread the night before, staying up late to bake it so that it would be ready for them in the morning. Four sandwiches, with strawberry jam liberally spread between the slices of bread, were ready for their lunches. She had bought apples at the store to add to the midday meal.
“Lucy, you don’t like your new dress?” she asked as she poured milk into their cups.
“This dress suits me just fine. Ma made this dress.”
“She did a fine job. The stitches are so tiny that I can’t even see them. My mother was forever telling me to make my stitches smaller.”
Lucy looked up and in her face was an uncertain expression, as if she were not quite sure how to respond to Sarah’s remark.
Sarah was just as unsure. “Did your mother teach you to sew?” she asked gently.
Lucy nodded. Her lower lip trembled.
“Maybe you could show me some of your sewing work?”
Pride battled with apprehension in the girl’s freckled face. She was saved from answering by a knock at the door.
“Who on earth can be calling so early in the morning—"
Deputy Harlow opened the door and stood in the entrance. “Just came by to make sure you varmints were ready for school,” he said. “Now, don’t you two look like you’re ready to go sparking,” he said to the boys. Isaiah grinned; Erich blushed. “And what about you, Miss Boone,” he said to Ruby. “I feel like I should ask you for the next dance, except there’s no music. Lucy?”
She looked up at him, her face defenseless and vulnerable.
“There’s just enough time for you to put that new dress on,” he said gently.
Lucy glanced from him to Sarah, then suddenly, she bolted from the table and raced to the bedroom. Sarah smiled, but Deputy Harlow’s face looked grave.
“Eat up, children,” Sarah said. “You don’t want to be late.”
“Can we have peppermint sticks in our lunch?” Isaiah wanted to know.
“If you eat all your breakfast, you may have them,” she said.
Immediately, the children’s attention went to their food as they began to quickly eat.
When Lucy returned, her hair neatly braided and tied with the red ribbon that Sarah had bought for her, she was wearing the new dress.
“Why, Miss Lucy,” Carson said, taking off his hat and giving her a sweeping bow. “You are a vision!”
Lucy giggled.
“No, she’s not,” Erich said. “She’s just Lucy.”
“Mind my words, the day will come when those young boys in that schoolhouse will grow up and so will Lucy,” Deputy Harlow said, “and you wait and see if they don’t flock around your sisters like flies on a piece of jelly bread.”
“Finish eating,” Sarah said, “you don’t want to be late.”
“Do
n’t forget the peppermint sticks,” Isaiah reminded her.
After the children had been sent on their way, Sarah turned to Deputy Harlow. “If you came here to gloat over my inability to handle the children, I suppose you have been disappointed. We have had a most tranquil morning.”
“I came here to tell you that Boone escaped from jail and he’s left town.”
Sarah stared at him. “What are you saying? Does your jail cell lack a lock?”
“No, ma’am, it doesn’t lack a lock,” he replied testily. What the jail cell had lacked was a deputy who knew what he was doing. When Boone had told Justin Ward last night that he needed to use the privy outside, Justin told him that’s what the chamber pot was for. But Boone insisted that he needed to go outside and Justin, grumbling, had unlocked the jail cell to lead him outside. But Boone had punched Justin, knocking him against the iron bars of the cell. Justin had been left unconscious and Boone had escaped, stealing Justin’s horse and riding out of town in the dead of night. Where he headed to, no one could say.
Carson didn’t bother to mention that while there was some satisfaction in hearing Jack Walker give Justin Ward the dressing down of a lifetime, one fact remained. The children were without a parent. The only person available to look after them was a mail-order bride from Charleston, South Carolina who had come west to marry their father, until she discovered that he was a shiftless drunk.
He watched as her lower lip quivered. Tears welled up in her green eyes. “Noooo. . .,” she moaned. “This cannot be happening.”
Sarah sank into the chair. She was worn out; she had stayed up late last night to make the alternations to the girls’ new dresses, and then she’d risen early to prepare their breakfast and make their lunches. The dishes and cups from breakfast needed to be washed and put away, and she would need to begin preparing the evening meal. It was an endless cycle of work that would have to be done for children that weren’t even hers. She was never going to have her own children. She had been married once, and almost married once, and it was clear that, for some reason, she was destined to be no man’s wife.
Carson sat down in the chair beside her. “You’re doing missionary work here,” he said, trying to comfort her. “It’s just not what you had in mind.”
But how could she explain to this man who was obviously entirely comfortable in the presence of children that she was ill-at-ease around them? She didn’t know what to say or do. Yesterday she had had the new clothing, but what would she do today to placate them when they returned from school? What if they did the same thing with their supper tonight that they had done yesterday with their breakfast? If she had to endure such an ordeal a second time, she would simply leave the cabin and walk into town and stay there until the stagecoach came through again.
Carson was alarmed when Sarah’s response was to bury her face in her arms and sob. Her slender shoulders shook from her sobbing and he didn’t know what to do. He was able to handle her when she was haughty or imperious, but he was at a loss when she was like this.
“Ma’am,” he said, reaching out to touch her shoulder with trepidation. “Ma’am, it’s not as bad as you think.”
Sarah raised her face. Tears streamed down her cheeks. “It’s worse than I could ever have imagined it could be,” she cried out. “I left Charleston to come here. I thought I would be married and doing work that meant something to me. Instead, I’m minding the children of the man I thought I was going to marry, and I have no idea what I’m going to do. That—that—”
Carson’s eyes widened as the dainty and refined Mrs. Baker used an epithet to describe Dr. Boone. It was a word he’d never heard a lady use before.
“He is that, ma’am,” Carson agreed. “And he’s a horse thief besides.”
“I don’t care about the horse. He has left me with these children!”
“Just think how they’re going to feel when they hear what happened,” Carson said. “That’s their Pa, and bad as he might be, he’s the only father they have, and now he’s run out on them. That’s a sight worse than what he did to you. There’s no one now except you to care for the children. I reckon doing the Lord’s work doesn’t always mean doing what you want to do. It means doing what needs to be done. And although you’re not happy about being here, it seems He may have known just where you were needed.”
Chapter 8
Carson wasn’t pleased that Marshal Walker had put him in charge of making sure that the Boone kids were cared for; he hadn’t become a Deputy Marshal so that he could be a part-time nanny. But the kids were good kids and it wasn’t their fault that their mother had died and their father wasn’t up to the task of caring for his own children. Besides, even though she was clearly out of her depth, Sarah Baker was probably trying the best that she could, and it was apparent that she couldn’t do it alone.
This assignment was better than being in the Marshal’s doghouse, which was where Justin Ward found himself after letting Boone escape from jail for falling for what Jack Walker called the oldest trick in the book. Ward, simmering with indignation at Walker’s chastisement and humiliated by what had happened, was keeping a very low profile around the sheriff’s office, showing up exactly on time for his shift and not a moment sooner, and not at all during the daylight hours. Maybe he didn’t need much sleep, as he’d claimed, but he probably also didn’t need to face the scorn of the Marshal for making the mistake of a green lawman, Carson reflected with satisfaction.
Carson was puzzled by the Marshal’s concern for the kids, but it wasn’t a question he felt that he could ask. Benjamin Graves didn’t have to ask; Jack had already told him.
“Something changes a man when he has a child,” Jack said to Benjamin. The two of them were by themselves in the office. Carson was making rounds of the town and the jail cell was empty. “I’d always heard that, but I didn’t realize how true it is until it happened to me. It’ll happen to you as well.”
“I think a bounder like Boone ought to be horsewhipped for the way he neglects his children,” Benjamin answered. “I felt that way before Mary-Lee told me we were going to be parents. I always felt sorry for Mrs. Boone. She’d show up every Sunday for church with those kids as neat and clean as she could make them. For all his talk of preaching, Boone was never with them.”
“He’s a charlatan,” Jack agreed. “The bottle took hold of him and won’t let go and whatever he used to be back East is long gone. He’s not a doctor and he’s not a missionary now; he’s a drunkard. Miss Baker is in a bad way. I know it’s wrong to expect her to look after those children, but for now, what else is she going to be doing?”
“She’s a pretty woman—oh, and it’s not Miss Baker. She’s a widow. Carson told me.”
“A widow? She doesn’t look old enough to have been married before. She sure hasn’t had much luck in marriage, has she?”
“No, but she’ll catch the attention of someone here. There aren’t enough women in town, and the men have a quick eye for a pretty gal.”
“If they get a chance to see her. She’s not going to be doing much in the way of attracting attention while she’s looking after four kids. From what Carson tells me, she’s not used to kids. I hear she bought a lot of canned food at the general store when she went shopping. That tells me she’s not much good at cooking. A man expects his wife to put food on the table.”
Benjamin grinned. “Now, Jack, you know as well as I do that a man doesn’t think about his stomach until after he’s married. By the time he notices that the bacon is burned and the potatoes are lumpy, it’ll be too late and there will be a ring on her finger.”
The men laughed and returned to the reports from Fort Worth. It was plain that the soldiers were concerned about the Comanche activity to the north, and they wanted all the law enforcement officers in the region to be aware that trouble could be brewing. The Comanche had suffered from the latest smallpox outbreak and had lost many to the disease; according to the military, they blamed the white settlers and wanted reve
nge.
“We suffered from it too,” Benjamin said. “It didn’t just strike the Comanche.”
“I suppose it’s hard for them to understand that. They didn’t have the disease until the white people came west. And then, once gold was discovered in California, more people came and the diseases came with them. I’m grateful we’ve been spared from a cholera outbreak. I’ve sent Carson to go around to make sure that he doesn’t spot anything contaminating the creeks and streams. I wish we knew what causes these things. Someday, I reckon we will. But for now—"
“For now, we have the Comanche to worry about. Anything new on that runaway slave?”
Jack shook his head. “Carson is going to visit the freed black folks in East Knox Mills and ask around.”
“They’re not going to tell him if a runaway is with them.”
“No, but we can say we’re obeying the law and doing our job. And it is our job, even if neither you nor I care for it. I say that if a slave manages to run away and find his freedom, let him stay free. But that’s not what the government of Texas says.”
“I wish that when we’d gotten rid of Lance Townsend, we’d managed to rid ourselves of the other ones as well. They’re the loudest mouths in the state government, and in Washington, clamoring for slavery to be extended into the new territories.”
“One varmint at a time,” Jack said. “Keeping an eye on old Abel is key. We kept his man out of the mayor’s office; that’s a victory for the town. The voters will have to do their part when it’s time for the next elections. In the meantime, we just do our jobs. That’s what we’re paid to do.”
As Jack had predicted, the freed black community in East Knox Mills denied that a runaway had joined the community. Carson found the people to be polite and reserved. He spoke with Preacher Elijah Shepherd, a commanding man with a resounding voice and a forthright manner who seemed to be a leader in the community. The clergyman said that his people kept to themselves and stayed out of trouble.