Twenty-One

Thursday morning found Elam chopping wood out back of the house. When he and the neighbors had built the house, he’d gladly given in to Gloria’s pleas for a real bathroom, with running water from a cistern, and also a flush toilet. They were the talk of the community.

He could still remember the teasing he’d endured from the men along the hollow that year when he’d devised that contraption. Now both his sisters had bathrooms, and his youngest brother, Delmar, planned to build his own house complete with bathroom. Other neighbors had asked for his help in constructing their own. No more running to the outhouse through the snow or rain for his neighbors. The men of White River Hollow knew how to treat their women.

Elam had found it well-nigh impossible to create the kind of water heater folks had in Eureka Springs, which used electricity, since they had no electricity so far from town. He had, however, managed to devise a wood stove to heat the water pumped into a large cauldron upstairs above the bathroom. One could stand beneath the trickling stream of warm water and have a satisfying wash. He just had to make sure the water didn’t get too hot. It had happened a time or two, and he’d not take the chance again.

This morning his job was to chop enough wood to heat water for the huge iron tub in the bathroom. Keara wanted to give Susanna a bath.

He glanced toward the house, hoping to catch sight of Keara. Since the wedding, he’d had very little time to focus on the marriage part of their friendship—something, of course, that he had not intended to focus on in the beginning. How quickly things changed.

He’d been spending more time alone with his horses this week than he’d expected due to the emergency, so he didn’t know how the days might have gone if not for Susanna’s appearance. On his ride home last night he’d nearly talked himself into greeting Keara with more than that silly pat on the shoulders, though when she’d met him at the door, making it obvious she’d been waiting up for him, his boldness had failed him.

He missed the easy friendship they’d had for so long. That comfortable companionship had been harder to come by since the wedding vows were spoken, and he knew the moment that had happened—the kiss, the flare of wonder. The hope. And then came the crush of guilt at the betrayal in his heart of his wife’s memory for just that moment.

Until then he’d been telling himself that he and Keara would, indeed, have a good partnership, as she had suggested.

He hurled the ax into a log and split it in two with one hit then set both halves up on the stump and split both of them.

This week had been one frantic moment after another. Before the wedding, he’d told himself he could wait until the dust settled to see how he and Keara would be with each other—whether things would be strained or whether they would carry on as before. A couple of times, they’d seem easier, but then back would come that tentativeness about pressing for more because he feared losing what they already had.

He tossed the four chunks of wood onto the pile then placed another log onto the splitting stump.

The dust he’d hoped would settle after the wedding didn’t look like it’d be settling for a while, judging by Susanna’s report.

Still, he couldn’t totally blame Susanna’s appearance for the occasional discomfort between him and Keara this week—partially, but not totally. He could avoid thinking about the subject, but if he was honest with himself, he would have to admit he hadn’t been able to get that wedding kiss out of his mind. It seemed almost like a promise.

Of course, he’d known the comforts of marriage. Why hadn’t he realized that a kiss like that—with a woman like that—would have ignited something inside him?

He could have put his foot down with his sisters and refused the wedding ceremony in Eureka Springs, but until Monday he had never before seen the woman who had come walking down that aisle toward him. There’d been no time to change his thinking before the words were said and their lips met.

For Keara’s sake, whether she’d felt comfortable about it or not—and she obviously had not—she deserved that wedding. For once in her life she needed to feel as if she mattered more than the next necessary thing to be done.

What would Gloria have wanted?

Something Keara told Elam last week continued to echo in his mind. Gloria had wanted him to remarry, to be happy, to not be lonely, to have a partner in life. Hers had been that selfless kind of love, and if he turned it around, he’d have wanted the same for her.

He finished the next log and lifted it onto the woodpile. There would be plenty of hot water for all of them. His family would be clean in the coming days.

He returned to chopping and thinking. Sure, if he’d been the one to die, he would want his loved ones to grieve for him and miss him, but he couldn’t have borne the thought of his darling Gloria and his children continuing in pain and sorrow forever. Not that he liked the thought of her with another man, loving him, sharing his bed, his life—but if it was the right kind of man, a good man, solid and strong and kind, he would want that for her.

Gloria had loved Keara as a sister.

The back door opened and out stepped the blond-haired woman of his thoughts in a pretty green calico work dress, her hair caught up in a loose knot, prepared to give a bath. Was it his imagination that she’d had fewer dust marks on her dresses, cleaner hands, tidier hair this week? And she hadn’t worn her old work trousers one single time.

“You planning to bathe the whole neighborhood today, Elam Jensen?” The teasing lilt in her voice betrayed her mood this morning, and he couldn’t help wondering if a good night’s sleep in his bed—while he slept with the rifle on the sofa downstairs—might have helped her mood. She’d needed the sleep.

He gestured toward the wood. “I’ll take a load up in a minute.”

She stepped from the house and crossed to the pile. “I can carry it up. I’ve already got the fire going with the kindling. Wouldn’t want it to go out.”

He reached out and took her by the shoulders. “You’ve done enough carrying this week. How’s Susanna’s fever this morning?”

Keara looked up at him, her expression softening to something…else. “Still normal. We may have this thing beat after all. She’s got a constitution as strong as Freda Mae’s.”

“Let’s hope her hooves don’t grow as fast.”

Keara chuckled, her golden-brown eyes lighting again with that humor he’d grown to depend on over the long winter.

“I’ll have the wood upstairs in a minute,” he said. “You take a rest. Have a cup of that sassafras tea you keep making for everyone else.”

As she gave him a final grin and turned back toward the house, he found himself distracted by her small-but-strong form, the curve and movement of her—

“Hello the house!” came a call from beyond the orchard wall just before Keara reached the door. From here, he wasn’t visible, but the voice was recognizable.

Keara stopped and turned. “It’s Pa. I wonder what he’s doing here this morning.”

“He must have news for me, or he wouldn’t have left work to ride all the way out.” Elam leaned the ax against the woodpile.

Keara started back across the yard. “Well then, I’m sure you men will need to talk. I’ll just take a log to keep the fire—”

Elam intercepted her with an arm around her shoulders this time. “You go greet your father. I said I would see to the fire, and that’s what I’m going to do.”

“I’m sure he came to see you.”

“You need to make peace with your father. I’ll talk to him after I carry the wood upstairs.”

She blinked up at him. She didn’t argue, but she didn’t immediately withdraw. Like last night, it was as if his touch stilled her. He guided her toward the side of the house. “It’ll be okay, Keara. Walk around to the front and greet him. His first concern is for you. He won’t be angry with you.”

When they were in sight of her father’s solid form, she hesitated.

Elam tightened his arm around her. “You have forgiven him, haven’t you?” he asked softly.

“I…believe I have,” she said under cover of Brute’s chatter to the horse. “I know I have no ill will toward him, but after these past two years I’m not sure what to expect from him, and the things I said to him on Wednesday—”

“You simply told him the truth, very forcefully. And he’s still the same Brute McBride, he just has a little more humility than he once had. Not much of it,” Elam said, smiling into her upturned face, “but it’ll do.”

He felt her shoulders square and heard her intake of breath. He gave her shoulders a final squeeze and eased her forward, out of his embrace. He watched her go, and he marveled at the change in her these past few days.

Or maybe he was the one who’d changed.

When he returned to the woodpile, he caught a movement in the upstairs window. Britte’s room. He looked up, and for the briefest of moments, he saw his family, Britte and Rolfe…and Gloria, smiling down at him.

Not Gloria, of course. Susanna. But it was enough to give him pause as the curtains closed them away from his sight.

Gloria wouldn’t have wanted him and the children to remain alone, but to replace her in their hearts before a year had passed? And to have awakened this morning with the recall of a dream of a woman with golden-brown eyes instead of blue?

Keara skirted the orchard wall, studying her father as he stood beside his mount, scratching the gelding’s ears, unaware of her presence. He seemed to hesitate as he looked toward the front porch, as if afraid to approach and possibly receive the same welcome he’d received yesterday.

She closed her eyes as she recalled her words, and she hated herself for them. How could she have turned him away like that?

But how could she have known if she could trust him with Susanna’s life? Maybe if she’d asked him, as Elam had, if he was still drinking…but would she have listened?

His continued hesitation told her that Elam was right. Brute McBride had been blessed with a new touch of humility.

He glanced up and caught sight of her at last, and he froze, his eyes widening. “Hello darlin’.”

“Hello Pa.”

He reached up and pulled his hat off his head, and the waves of thick black hair formed a frame around his face. “I don’t reckon you’d care to have a word with your rogue father.”

She took a step toward him, hesitated, then took another, and another until she was rushing toward him and her throat was swelling with tears she didn’t want to shed, but they refused to be held back.

“Oh, Pa,” she cried as she rushed into his open arms and felt him swing her up and around and heard his laughter in her ear and felt the soft brush of whiskers on her face.

“Pa, I’m sorry I—”

“Now, now, none of that.” He lowered her to her feet and then kissed her forehead. “I’m the one to apologize.”

“You did that last time you were here.”

“And you let me know how much you’ve been through. I don’t think there can be enough apologies for that. I’m here to try to make it up to you.” His deep voice sounded solid, reassuring.

“You are?”

“That I am.”

“What about your job?”

“I’ve talked to Herman. He knows what I’m doing. The sheriff and I’ve had ol’ Pete at the telegraph office busier than a coon in a henhouse.”

Keara stared at her pa, yet again amazed by his ability to make friends everywhere he went, even in jail. “You’ve got help from the sheriff?”

“Of course,” he said, as if that were a silly question. “Sheriff got word back from Cassville that US Marshal Driscoll Frey never arrived with his prisoner.”

Keara grasped her father’s arm. “That man still has Timothy Skerit?”

“I don’t know, darlin’. Elam told me Frey was planning to stay the night in Seligman, so they might not have even made it to Cassville yet, but you can bet Thomas Skerit has already lit out after his son. Telegraph’s a wonderful thing. We may hear before the end of the day if the boy’s been found and if he’s safe.”

“What else have you heard from the telegraph office?”

“We got quick word about Frey from the US Marshal’s office out of Philadelphia, where he was headquartered until a few months ago.”

“He really is rogue, isn’t he?”

“Just like your ol’ pa, only this’n’s truly a nasty piece of work, not a loveable fella like me. The sheriff had Pete run down Marshal Albertson, who’s been through Eureka Springs a few times and is friends with the mayor. Albertson hails from Philadelphia, and he remembers Frey, even filed a formal complaint about him when he saw too many of Frey’s prisoners shot or beat half senseless for no good reason.

Keara gasped. “What if he’s hurt Timothy?”

Pa shook his head. “Don’t know. Albertson said the man has cold eyes. Of course, he couldn’t say much else over the telegraph. It’d take too many words. I’d like to have a talk with him someday.”

“There was something about him I didn’t like, Pa. He was polite and all, but it was as if his politeness was a skin he could crawl out of anytime he wanted. He told Elam he was keeping Timothy out of the way of a big arrest as a favor to a friend.”

Pa shook his head. “There wasn’t any arrest, and a man like him wouldn’t be a true friend to anybody. I’ve seen the like. Last time I saw one like Frey,” Pa said, looking down at her, “was the night I was cheated out of the farm.”

“Rod Snyder?”

“The cheatin’ dog-eared—”

“You shouldn’t’ve been betting.”

“I know. I do. It won’t happen again.”

“You don’t have anything left to bet.” She paused. “You do still have Duchess, don’t you?”

He gave her an innocent look. “Who’s that?”

“Pa!”

He winked at her, eyes twinkling. Elam was right, her father had developed only a little humility.

“She’s safely hidden back deep in Tilley Holler where few folks ever wander due to snakes and wildcats. I rode her there myself before sunup this morning, where the Tilleys are treating her like the royalty she is. They loaned me this gelding with a nasty temper.” He gestured toward his borrowed mount.

“Elam said Timothy Skerit got into a skirmish with a gang of men. Have you seen those men today?”

Pa put his arm over Keara’s shoulders and walked with her toward the front porch. “Not meetin’ at the saloon anymore, but I know where they are meeting. Soon as I got back from taking Duchess to her deep holler keep and checked for news with the sheriff and had a long talk with Herman and other stalwart friends, I wandered the streets until I spotted a couple of the men I recognized. I followed them out of town. Guess where they went.”

“I don’t know, Pa. Did you get any sleep at all last night?”

“Slept like a baby from the time Elam left until I had to take Duchess away. Then after I followed those men to their new meetin’ place, I had to get out here and warn you.”

“About what?”

“Those men are meetin’ at the farm.”

“You mean our home?”

“That’s right.” His eyes darkened. “Couldn’t get close enough to hear what the meetin’ was about, but I reckon Timothy Skerit did, and that’s why he got into that skirmish with them. They’re up to no good, you can be sure of that. Too bad Timothy didn’t see fit to tell the sheriff what he heard, but he and his pa were distracted when they saw me in the jail cell.”

“You mean, that’s why they were there and could testify for you?”

Pa nodded. “That’s right. They wouldn’t’ve known I was even there if Timothy hadn’t been brought in on charges of misconduct. As if that young man was a troublemaker.”

“Elam followed a couple of men along the cow path from the road to our farm last night,” Keara said. “But there’s a dog there.”

“I heard that same dog this morning. We may need to doctor up a few pieces of meat from the butcher’s shop to quiet the hound.”

Keara told her father what Elam had overheard from Snyder and his cohort last night. “Do you think the sheriff could call a couple of real US marshals in to stop these men?”

“From what? We don’t have anything to show them.” He stepped up onto the porch with her and patted her back. “But I mean to find out.”

Keara wanted to cry with relief. Her pa was back.