Mary Connealy (63 page)

“So you’ve done a lot of teaching in your life, Mr. Parrish?” Royce Badje asked.

Parrish watched the banker puff out his chest. The arrogant little man looked as though he thought the world rose and set at his command. Parrish assumed his humble teacher’s voice, even though it was all he could do not to jeer at the pompous little pigeon of a man. “Yes, sir. I’ve been a teacher all my life. After my wife died, I couldn’t stay in Chicago anymore. I decided to go west. I’ve traveled around some and planned to spend the winter in Mosqueros. I wasn’t thinking of finding work here, but the teacher’s job being open seems providential. I’d like to settle and begin a new life.”

Parrish already had the job, but he’d been asked to visit with a few folks after church, and he’d played his part and agreed easily. He’d led everyone to the schoolhouse.

“You’ll have your hands full, Mr. Parrish.” Clay McClellen sat a bit slumped in the undersized school desk. He should have looked ridiculous, but McClellen had watchful eyes. Parrish concealed his contempt even though McClellen was obviously a crude piece of western trash. This whole land was filled with the dregs of humanity as far as Parrish could see. But not by so much as a sideways glance or the least twist of his lips did he reveal his disdain for the coarse clothing or the uncultivated manners.

Sophie McClellen sat next to her husband. This should have been man’s work, but she’d come along and no one had told her to leave. “The last teacher left because the children were unruly. They’ll keep you on your toes.”

The way Mrs. McClellen talked, Parrish knew she spoke of Grace.
So Grace quit, eh?
Did no one in this town even know she’d been fleeing when she left?

“She ran off and got married is what she did,” Badje said, pulling his black greatcoat around him in the cold little schoolroom.

Clay and Sheriff Everett grinned.

Parrish sat up straighter. Grace, married?

McClellen, even though he was amused and sharing a joke with the sheriff, never quite stopped watching. The slovenly cowboy had noticed Parrish’s reaction and narrowed his watchful blue eyes. Parrish forced himself to relax.

Sophie shook her head. “Those Reeves boys will eat her for dinner.”

How had Grace gone into that gap, hidden in a wagon, and ended up married? Parrish considered how a husband would complicate his taking of Grace. His legal claim had just been severed—that was for dead certain.

Parrish’s blood ran as cold as the winter wind. Everything would be more complicated now. He should just ride on. Then he thought of his night dreams and daydreams. He thought of Grace, begging and crying and promising, under the thud of his fists, never to disobey him again.

Parrish closed his eyes for a second and fought for control. He opened his eyes, wiping every expression from his face.

McClellen’s humor had evaporated. “Where is it you say you’ve taught before?”

Parrish was prepared for this question. He produced five letters of recommendation from his pocket. A passing good forger, Parrish had been mindful to carry them with him at all times. Some of them were years old and showed it. Some were fresher. They were written in different kinds of ink on different types of paper. Most were from Chicago, where he’d been careful to use names of people who were dead. One he’d written himself only yesterday, dated for last spring, from a town far enough away that it would be impossible to check the authenticity.

He ruthlessly controlled a smile as he thought of how his former prison warden would feel about having his name listed as a proud school board member, recommending Parrish highly.

“I don’t know anybody in Chicago. And I’ve never heard of this last town. There’s no way to check these letters.” McClellen tossed them to the sheriff with little more than a glance, as if to say they weren’t worth the paper they were printed on.

Parrish saw Mrs. McClellen pick up on her husband’s attitude. Her expression mirrored her spouse’s.

He forced himself to smile. “Well, that’s true enough. If you wish to test me, I’m sure I can pass any exam you have.” He knew he could do it. He’d been a good student. And what he couldn’t do honestly, he could cheat his way through. “That’s the way most teachers are hired, isn’t it? Do you often have someone with any experience take the job?”

McClellen and his wife exchanged looks. McClellen turned back to him. “No, that’s true enough. Miss Calhoun was young.”

Badje said, “The one before her, my wife, was young, too. This was her first job.”

“Well then, gentlemen and lady.” He nodded to McClellen’s wife, the only woman present. “Test me if you like, or perhaps just give me a chance. If you like the way the school is run, you can keep me on. If not…” Parrish shrugged, careful to keep the look of a lamb amid lions.

“Sounds good enough to me,” Badje said. “Any school is better than no school at all.”

Three other school board members nodded. The McClellens didn’t, but they didn’t protest, either.

Parrish shook hands all around with the fools. He wanted to laugh out loud when they told him part of the miserable pay was the same room the former teacher had. He wished Grace would come home and find him there.

Welcome home, Gracie
.

Daddy’s here
.

D
aniel scraped a ditch the width of a tree trunk into the ground to set his biggest logs for a foundation. He glanced back and saw pretty little Grace coming out to help. He turned back to his digging. He was going to make the house big. If he had his druthers, he’d keep building day and night for the rest of his life. It helped to be exhausted.

A bedroom for the twins
.

“You get down from there. Pa doesn’t want us up there.”

Daniel didn’t even turn around when Luke started shrieking. He sounded jealous. Probably Mark had gotten to the top of the woodpile ahead of his brothers.

A bedroom for the triplets
.

Ike and Abe were digging straight toward him. Mark, Luke, and John were fighting over which log was the biggest as they climbed over the tippy stack of lumber. They found one that teetered, and with a whoop of joy, they invented their own seesaw.

It rolled on them, and they had to scramble to get out of the way. Daniel heard Grace gasp.

A bedroom for Grace
.

“Boys, be careful,” she scolded.

The boys climbed around like monkeys, escaping death by a whisper. It was what boys were good at, after all.

Why was she out here?

“If you break a leg, we can’t get out of the canyon to get to the doctor.”

Daniel glanced over his shoulder and saw her with her hands fisted and planted on her slender hips. Hips encased in Abe’s outgrown pants. He needed to get her a dress somehow, a big, loose-fitting dress. He looked long enough to see she had fire in her eyes. A fire that hadn’t been there before the avalanche.

What about being buried alive could spark such a fire in a quiet, prissy woman? Because there was definitely a fire. It burned him hotter every day. He turned, half desperate, back to the trench.

And definitely a bedroom for me
.

“Big. Build it big,” he muttered and dug and dug some more. “I don’t ever want to run across her by accident.”

He worked until he was ready to drop, which was his plan. He and the boys dragged themselves back to the barn. Grace slept curled up in a ball to keep herself warm. She’d asked today about heating water to wash clothes and have baths.

Daniel almost turned back around to dig some more. Instead, he collapsed on the ground with the boys firmly between him and his very own God-approved wife, the one to whom he’d pledged himself.

He fell asleep dreaming about baths. He’d always hated baths. But his dream wasn’t a nightmare, far from it.

He did the chores before first light because he was up and out of the barn early anyway. He made a quick breakfast of steak, eggs, potatoes, biscuits, and milk and was building by the time the sun came up.

“It seems kinda big, Pa,” Abe said, scratching his head and staring at the immense rectangular foundation and all the smaller trenches that split the house up into rooms.

Daniel had to admit the boy was right. And he’d been toying with the idea of adding another couple of rooms. After all, the boys might want their own someday. And besides, if the house was huge, he could keep busy for the rest of his life chopping firewood to warm it. He’d never tried to build an upstairs any fancier than a crawl space in the rafters. He could do that here. That’d take awhile.

“It just looks that way now. Once we get the walls up, it’ll be normal size. Besides, we’re a big family. We need a lot of room.”

“One bedroom for us boys and one for you and Ma oughta be enough,” Ike said dubiously. “There’re a lot more ’n two.”

“Yep, we need two.” Abe looked at the neatly arranged trenches dividing the house up into a kitchen, dining room, sitting room, pantry, and four obvious bedrooms.

“Well, I thought you two could have your own room, without the triplets in it to bother your stuff.”

Ike looked at Abe.

Abe shrugged. “We don’t have any stuff.”

Daniel knew that to be the honest truth. “Well, maybe if we have enough room, we’ll get you some stuff.”

Abe looked intrigued.

Ike looked confused. “We got everything we need now, Pa. ’Cept’n I’d surely like an apple now and then. But the apples won’t take up that much room.”

“I’d kinda like to have my own ax,” Mark said.

“No ax, Mark, and you know it.” Daniel turned on his son. Stubborn kid. Smart, too. Daniel didn’t want him to start reasoning out bedrooms.

“This is enough digging.” Daniel changed the subject before the boys could count the trenches again and ask about the other bedroom. The one on the far end of the house, as far from the bedroom Daniel had planned for Grace as he could get it.

In fact, he was thinking of putting a door to the outside of the house in that bedroom, and no door to the rest of the house. Maybe he’d be able to sneak in late and leave early and never see her again. He was from a long-living family of men, but he was almost thirty. He could keep up long workdays and full-time sneaking for fifty years or so.

He jabbed his shovel at the tree pile. “Let’s strip the branches off those trees so they’ll line up neat.”

Mark jumped to his feet. Running eagerly to Daniel, he skidded up, slammed into Daniel’s legs, and almost knocked the both of them over. “Let me help, Pa. Let me take a turn with the ax. I’ll be careful. I’m getting on toward six now, and you know I’m smarter ’n every one of the rest of the kids. I’ll be careful.”

“You turned five in November. You’re not getting on toward six. And anyway, you need to be ten. Don’t ask again.” Daniel held Mark’s stubborn gaze. “And don’t you ever let me catch you playing with that ax.”

“Aw right.” Mark kicked the ground with the toe of his boot.

Daniel noticed the top was tearing away, and he could see some of Mark’s sock peeking through the worn leather. And Grace was wearing the pair of boots set aside for the next triplet who needed shoes.

Daniel wondered if he could fetch home a deer and make moccasins tight enough to keep the snow off Mark’s feet. He’d never done much boot making, but he could certainly tan a deer hide. He reckoned he’d put in some time practicing and learn that just as he’d learned everything else—by doing. Plus it’d keep him extra busy.

He and the boys tore into branches. He set Mark, Luke, and John to work dragging the scrub branches away to be saved for firewood and furniture and whatnot. Grace helped.

Daniel noticed that John stayed near her, talked to her, and seemed to side with her when the other boys got too rambunctious.

When they had nearly a mountain of logs stripped, Daniel hitched up his calmest horse to start dragging the trees into place.

“A few more steps, boys.” Daniel waved Mark and Luke ahead. Abe and Ike walked on each end of the log to give a tug if it started plowing too much ground as it slid along.

Grace tagged along, holding John’s hand. Daniel caught himself glancing at those joined hands more than once. He remembered his own ma and how much he’d liked holding her hand when he was a youngster. He couldn’t help being glad for John that he’d found himself a nice mother.

Grace was treating the other boys well, too. She looked the same on the outside, but inside, the fussbudget schoolteacher had changed into a laughing, sweet lady. A very pretty lady. Of course, he’d noticed from the first that she was pretty. Even when she was so grouchy about his boys, he’d been able to see that her hair was a pretty dark blond and her eyes had the shine of pure gold. Her waist was slender and her ankles trim….

He jerked his attention back to the log. “Hold up there, boys. That’s far enough.”

The boys gave him a funny look. He realized they’d already stopped the horse. He wondered how long he’d stood there looking at his bona fide wife. She was his, after all. God and Pastor Roscoe had said it.

“All right, let’s get this log notched. Abe and Ike, come here and I’ll show you how to do it.”

“Pa, can’t I—”

“Forget it, Mark.” Daniel chipped away a squared notch in the top of the log. It was slow, tedious work. He glanced at the vast number of logs he’d cut down and the huge house he planned for his family. Building it would most likely wear him down to the bone.

Good.

With his jaw set in a grim line, he finished the second notch on the first log and said, “Okay, boys, let’s get this log into the trench.”

“Can I help, Daniel?” Grace stepped close, and even bending over to lift the log as he was, he could see her ankles plain as day with those stupid short pants of Abe’s.

“Sure, grab ahold down at that end.” He pointed to the far end of a long, heavy tree without looking up.

She sighed, and he wanted to stand up straight and find out if anything was wrong. He had to fight himself to keep from dropping the log and seeing to her happiness.

Working himself to death was the only way to save his sanity…and her life.