| |
AS SHREWD AS EVAN HAD become at horse trading, negotiating for a wagon was no great problem. Taking the time to test the pair of horses included with the deal took just a bit more time. He drove them down the trail toward the pass for a few miles before turning back to check how they handled streets. One was a bit more mule-headed than he'd prefer, but the price was fair, so he'd make it work.
As he passed along Main Street for the second time, Thomas Baxter flagged him down from in front of his office building. Evan pulled up the team, acknowledging the lawyer with a nod.
“You're just the man I was hoping to speak with today.” Baxter said in an almost breathless tone.
Evan noticed the man's face seemed flushed, his manner uncharacteristically anxious. Evan stepped from the wagon so they could speak eye to eye. “What can I do for you, Thomas?”
“Don't know if you heard that Mrs. Baxter and I are heading out tomorrow.” He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his brow.
“No, I hadn't heard that. Sorry to see you go. Just leaving for the winter or permanent?
“Think it's permanent. We'll see what the mining bigwigs decide over the winter. Even then, I'm not sure I can keep my Amy happy here. She's determined her life is wasting away up here away from proper society. She hasn't given me a moment's rest since the first snowfall.” He wiped his brow again.
“No peace in a house with a quarrelsome woman I've heard.” Evan tugged at the harness securing the equally quarrelsome horse, looking for adjustments that might make him less so.
“So, I've been worrying about our Miss Sommer.”
Evan looked over his shoulder at the lawyer, wondering about the man's use of pronouns. When did she become our Miss Sommer, he thought? “What about?”
“Well, I spoke with her yesterday about staying on here. Told her why I didn't think it was wise financially, not to mention all the other ways. I mean, I respect the woman. She's very reasonable and I know there's nothing more I can say to dissuade her. But, we are leaving, you see. And even though I invited her to go with us, she declined. My wife heard of it and she's been nagging me ever since to speak with her again.”
Evan kept his attention focused on Baxter, imagining the conversation he'd had with Lena, picturing her sitting prim before him and completely unresponsive to the man's appeal.
“I was just hoping you might have more influence with her. Surely, she would listen to you. Nash certainly listened to your advice. Seems he came to you far more than to me over the past two years.”
Pushing his hands into his jacket pockets, he rocked back a bit on his heels. “Well, Thomas, you must know by now that Lena is a determined woman.”
“That and more!” Baxter snorted. “She knows that I'll be advising Nash's sister to sell the property for whatever she can get for it. Lena's made an offer, even though she's not likely to be able to fulfill it if all her tenants move out.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out another handkerchief, carefully unfolding it to reveal the brooch. “She gave me this as a token of her sincere intentions. I don't know what it’s worth, but I knew I had to take it.”
He recognized the brooch immediately. “Keeping that house seems to be more important to her than most anything else, as far as I can see. And I figure a woman's got as much right to a dream as a man. If she chooses to gamble for it, then I have to respect that.”
Baxter seemed to study Evan as though trying to read more into his words. “Are you staying up here this winter? I thought maybe with your brother gone, you might not want to remain here. Saw you with the wagon, here, and was wondering if you were planning to pack up.”
There was likely more to Baxter's innocently phrased question. That would be like him. Most men had more thoughts rolling around in their brain box than they allowed to slip between their lips.
“This is for Naomi and a couple of the girls. I offered to drive them down the mountain.”
“Oh,” Baxter mused. “Sounds just like something you'd do.”
Evan scarcely acknowledged the remark, saying, “I've just been thinking. If you're leaving so soon, would you mind a little company on the trip? We'll add a little more color to the parade, but I'm sure the girls won't bother the sensitivities of the rest of the ladies traveling south.” It was a dig he couldn't resist, giving the man a rueful smile as he said it.
“It's fine with me, Evan. I won't even mention it to Mrs. Baxter. By the time she sees who's following us, it'll be too late for her to object. Well,” he reconsidered, “she'll object, but there won't be anything she can do about it.”
“Thanks. If there's trouble with the weather, it'll be good to have company along.”
Baxter came another step closer to Evan, his voice low. “But are you planning on coming back up the mountain?”
“You mean, do I plan on coming back to look after our Miss Sommer? Yes, I don't want her staying here alone any more than you do.” He couldn't avoid casting a quick glance at the mountain tops as he added, “God willing, the mountain and the snows don't kill me, I'll come back.”
A soft knock came on the door to Ely's office. Buried as he was in the newest stack of papers detailing the mine's production, he scarcely heard it.
“Ely?” Evan stood in the doorway with his hair brushing the top of the frame. “Can I trouble you?”
Taking off his reading glasses, he blinked blearily at Evan. “Ja, of course. Come in.” He waved vaguely across the desk. “There's a chair over there somewhere.”
Evan located the chair. Removing the small stack of papers camped there, he sat holding them on his lap.
“What is it that brings you? No, let me guess, ja? Lena.”
“You never cease to disappoint me with your intuitive nosiness,” Evan said dryly.
“Ah, I am right, ja?”
“Yes. Did you know Thomas Baxter talked to her yesterday?”
“Ja, she told me.”
Evan frowned. “We aren't going to talk her out of this.” Evan said it flatly.
“No.”
“Will you stay?”
“I think the managers stay and that means they will want me too. So, ja, I will stay.”
“That's good.”
“And you? Will you stay?”
“If I can get back across the pass, yes.”
“Where are you going?” Ely looked concerned.
“Naomi needs some help to get down with a few of the girls. I offered to drive them.” He carelessly dipped his shoulder, as though it were a drive to the church social across town, not up and down a pass that had taken the life of his brother.
“Does Lena know?”
“I haven't been back to the house. Been helping Naomi load some things onto the wagon.”
“She will not be pleased with this news.”
“I have to, Ely.”
Ely sat back, pulling the pipe from a plate atop a stack of papers and reaching into his pocket for the packet of tobacco. “Then you must.”
“There's something else. You know the books, the four volumes of Ivanhoe?”
“Ja.”
“Lena says that they are valuable. Do you have any idea how much they might bring?”
Ely shook his head. “I do not know much about such things. Old violins, ja, I know something. I would think much depends on finding a buyer.”
Evan scooted forward on his chair, catching a file that slipped from the stack as he did. “Lena spoke of a bookstore in Hailey. A man there deals in old books and first editions.”
The pipe at last lit, Ely sucked in a breath of warm smoke. “Why is this important now?”
“Lena gave Baxter her brooch. Did you know that?”
“No, I did not. It belonged to the family with the little girl which died, ja?” He cocked an eyebrow. “Why would she do that?”
“He said that she gave it to him as a down payment.”
Ely nodded, his eyebrows now knit together. “I see.”
“I want to know if I can sell the books. Use the money to make a greater down payment on the house and ask Baxter to return the brooch to me.” He waited to read Ely’s reaction.
“It might work.” Ely stared through the smoke cloud, eyes narrowing. “But this was a precious gift from your mother, ja? Are you certain you wish to do this?”
Evan hesitated no longer than a heartbeat. “Yes.”
Carrick, Donal, Ely, and Lena stared at Evan with a range of expressions from disbelief to admiration, as Evan explained his intentions to drive Naomi out of Sawtooth.
“It is a good thing you do, Evan.” Ely, aware of the plan, could say little more.
Donal leaned forward, his young face animated with interest. “You're driving all those pretty gals by yourself? Heck, why didn't they ask me?”
Carrick snorted. “You'd be the least likely fellow for that. Besides, this won't be any kind of pleasure trip. I surely wouldn't want to be up there with the sky as broody as it’s been these last few days. I'd say you're a bit off your head to do it. Maybe if you were just going, but coming back? What's the chances of that?”
Evan scowled at Carrick. Carrick apparently caught the look and then the reason behind it. His eyes flickered to Lena's white face and back to Evan's. “But, then again, you are the best at handling a team of horses. None better, in fact.” He threw a look at his brother. “Haven't I said that a hundred times. Look at that Evan! Have you ever seen anyone so knowledgeable with horses?” Into it now, he took his praise a little too far as he added, enthusiastically, “Why you could outrun an avalanche with a good team under your control!”
The scowl turned to a glare, louder than any words of warning. Carrick slumped, murmuring, “Sorry.”
Donal, distracted, suddenly elbowed Carrick. “If Evan can go all the way to Hailey and still plan on coming back, we could sure make it to Stanley. We could leave next week stake us a claim, set up camp, nestle in all cozy and be ahead of the crowd coming in the spring!”
His comment made nearly as much impact as Evan's. Ely and Evan exchanged glances before even gauging the effect on Lena.
Carrick, quicker of wit than his brother, now appeared fully aware of the unspoken tension in the room. He gave his brother a narrow-eyed glare that stopped him cold. Donal, mouth agape, looked across the table at Lena. Her face was no longer visible, head lowered, staring at her hands.
“Well,” Carrick started, his gaze shifting nervously from Lena's slumped shoulders to Evan's furious glare. “Think I'll be turning in. I'll see you in the morning, I expect.”
“But I haven't finished my pie.” Donal whined until Carrick pinched his ear and gave him a look that brooked no argument.
“I'll just sit by the fire for a while. Think I could use a smoke.” Ely carried his plate to the sink and slipped from the room.
“Lena...” Evan started.
“No, Evan, don't.” Lena took a shaky breath, and rose to her feet gathering the dishes still scattered about the table.
“But I want to explain,” Evan tried again.
She stopped, the dishes all but forgotten, and met his eyes. “Evan, you're doing what makes you who you are. You don't need to explain. This is what you do, care for people in need. Just like you've cared for me when I've been in need, and cared for Jessie and Daniel, and Vicki, and who knows how many others before I ever met you.”
“It isn't what you might think.”
“Evan, I know that what you're doing for Naomi is done out of the purest form of friendship. Donal's a boy with a boy's perspective on women. I know that this is a good and selfless act of love.”
In that moment, she witnessed a sudden transformation in Evan's face, something unexplainable. In some strange and wonderful way, she felt he was really looking at her for the first time, not as an object of pity or someone in need of rescue. She wanted that look to stay in his eyes forever. She wanted not to be the one needing, as much as the one to be needed.
He reached out and took her hand, not as gently as he had before, but almost as though he were a drowning man reaching out for rescue. She looked at his hand enveloping hers with his warmth, the cold fear that had at first gripped her upon hearing his news, dispelled.
“I'm coming back. I promise.”
Lena knew it was a promise he had no control to keep. Out of compassion and perhaps something more, he had given it as a gift. She gave him back the gift of her smile. “Do, Evan. Do come back.”
