Softly Falling (20 page)

In the morning over breakfast, Jack assured her that the cowhands weren’t playing tricks on the schoolmarm.

“You believe them?” she asked, grasping at straws because she was at her wit’s end over the eraser.

“Completely. They don’t lie,” he said. “Indian—you know, he likes Pierre now—wanted to know if anything else was missing.”

She hadn’t considered that. “I . . . I don’t think so. I’ll take a good look today.” She sighed. “Provided anyone is in my classroom.”

“I can’t vouch for Luella, but the Sansevers will be there. I talked to Madeleine about this, and she is worried.”

“So am I,” Lily said simply.

On their walk to the Buxtons, Lily told her father what had happened. “I don’t know what to do, Papa,” she said. He stopped and looked at the Buxton’s house as though it was the last place on earth he wanted to be.

“You’ll think of something,” he said and gave her a wistful smile. “Your mother was resourceful and you do remind me of her.”

I have enough worries
, she thought. She kissed his cheek, and continued walking that improving half mile that Madame Buxton, the imaginary invalid, had decreed for good health.

She was early, so she looked around the room she had already searched, hoping something would materialize and solve the dilemma of that dratted Pink Pearl eraser. She remembered what Pierre had asked Jack, so she changed her approach, trying to see if something else was missing.

Nothing. She stared at her desk, bare as usual, because her own teachers had instilled in her the virtue of a tidy desk at the end of the day. Something
was
missing, but she couldn’t place it. “Bother it,” she said out loud and opened the long drawer in her desk. There they were. She had planned to tack up the papers on which her students had printed their names so carefully. She reached in the little box of thumbtacks and remembered that she had put four thumbtacks on her desk last night to remind her to put up the papers in the morning.

She stared hard at her desk again, then looked under it, wondering if she had knocked off the little silvery tacks. Nothing again. With a sigh, she took out four more tacks and put up the papers. Amelie Lavinia, named after a favorite aunt. Chantal Celeste, named after another aunt. Nicholas only, because he was born on the feast day of Saint Nicholas, December 6. Luella Lorna, because her grandmamas were Louise and Ella, and Mama liked
Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor
, a book she read “during her anticipation,” as Luella so primly put it.

The day dragged on, and not because there were any accusations this time. Luella had made life immeasurably worse. She had come into the classroom head held high and flounced to her seat. Lily watched as Chantal and Amelie snuck worried glances in her direction as they wondered what had happened at the Buxton house last night.

Luella knew what they were thinking, not so much because she was devious, but because she was smart and understood how the world worked. “I didn’t say a word to anyone last night,” she announced, without looking around. “Maybe I will tonight.”

And that was all: the beginning of a thick, ugly silence that weighed them down. After lunch, Lily attempted some relief by instituting what had always been the best part of her day at Miss Tilton’s.

She took a book from her top drawer, a much-read book, if the wear was any indication, that Stretch had given to her. The cover was of thick cardboard that he must have taped to keep the pages together. She held it up.

“Luella, since you have a little more skill with words, what is the title?”

Luella smiled and smoothed her tightly braided hair, preening with her superiority. She opened her mouth, then frowned. “I can read some of the words.”

“Excellent! Read the ones you can read.”

She squinted, and Lily made a mental note to try to convince her to sit on the front row.

“ ‘Street Life in New York,’ ” she read.

“Very good. It is
Ragged Dick: Or Street Life in New York with the Boot Blacks
,” Lily said.

“I am dubious,” Luella said. “Is
this
an improving work?”

“I doubt it,” Lily replied. “I think it will be fun. Listen, my dears.”

She read one chapter, then two, and the atmosphere in the classroom relaxed. They wanted to protest when she put Stretch’s bookmark with the Indian beads on a rawhide string in place. “More tomorrow. Now it’s time for ciphering. I’ll write these on the board and you copy them on your slates.”

She wrote rapidly, beginning simply, because everyone knew so little about numbers, including Luella. When she finished, sat down, and said “Begin,” the students applied themselves diligently. “Five minutes,” she said, then unpinned her watch and set it on the desk, resolving to ask around tonight at supper for an alarm clock.

She stopped them at five minutes, pleased with the results. Luella had finished all but three, and Anna and Amelie followed with all but four. She looked at Nick’s slate, pleased to see he had finished them all, and they were correct.

Encouraged, she wrote more numbers on the board, with the same results. Nick raised his hand. “Can you put three numbers instead of two numbers?”

She did. After a few minutes, Luella put down her slate pencil, her expression put-upon and abused. The Sansever girls shook their heads. Nick held up his slate with a flourish and she saw the pride in his eyes.

“Well done, Nick,” she said quietly. “How did you do this?”

“I lined up some knives and forks from the kitchen last night and figured it out.”

She told Jack and her father that night about Nick’s accomplishment. Jack nodded, pride in his eyes as if Nick were his own boy. Her father smiled. “Train him well, Lily, and I’ll let him tote the numbers for Mr. Buxton,” he said. It was the gentlest of teases, but it touched her heart.

“While I set the girls to working on their letters, I put up more numbers and timed him,” she said as her own enthusiasm grew. “They were just small numbers, you know, just one plus three plus eight, but he finished in less than two minutes.”

She touched the place on her shirtwaist where she pinned her watch and looked down in dismay. “I left my watch in the classroom,” she said. She sucked in her breath. “I’ve got to run.”

The night air was chilly, and she could see her breath, but Lily didn’t bother with her shawl. She ran from the house, and Jack followed.

“Slow down. Ground’s uneven,” he said as a preliminary to taking her hand.

Please, please, please let it be there
, she thought as she hurried the healthy half mile to the empty school.

She knew she should have grabbed the table lamp before she ran from her house, but there was enough moonlight to show her a bare desk. Even
Ragged Dick
was gone. No. She dropped to her knees as Jack watched and found the book on the floor in front of her desk. She sat back, dismayed. The little bead bookmark was nowhere in sight.

She could barely keep back the tears, but she had cried all over the foreman last night, and she didn’t intend to do that again in her lifetime. Deep breath. “Jack, ask your hands again. Someone is giving us grief and I don’t know why.”

C
HAPTER
19

J
ack went even further at breakfast. He stood up in the dining hall and announced to his hands, the Sansevers, Lily, and her father that someone was playing a mean trick on the schoolmarm and it had to stop.

“She’s lost her watch now, and that little beaded bookmark of yours, Stretch,” he said.

Stretch shook his head in disgust. “I paid a whole dollar for that cuz somebody told me it belonged to Sitting Bull.”

Pierre laughed. “The Lakota will tell a white man anything.”

Stretch glared at him.

“And four thumbtacks yesterday,” Lily added, remembering. “I can’t have this. How can I know when we should change from reading to ciphering, or learning our letters? I need my watch. Oh, please.”

All she saw were puzzled looks. Almost all. Pierre was regarding her with a frown, his lips pursed.

“Do you know something?” she asked point-blank.

“I might,” he told her. He glanced at Jack, and the two men nodded.

In her anxiety, Lily wanted to pluck at his sleeve and hop up and down, but she was twenty-five years old and that would never do. She hated that her distress showed on her face, but she could see her one road off the Bar Dot dribbling away. Mr. Buxton would fire Madeleine over an eraser and the Sansevers would go heaven knows where. Luella would reign supreme, and Mrs. Buxton would probably veto the teacher. She had thought to make something of herself in Wyoming Territory, but all she was making of herself was a fool.

Pierre must have seen it all on her face because he patted her shoulder. “You worry too much. Do something for me.”

“Anything, if you can help me,” she pleaded.

“Leave some more thumbtacks on your desk tonight.”

“What?” she asked, mystified.

“And maybe a dime, if you have one.”

That was about all the money she had. Lily nodded, past even wondering what on earth the Indian was going to do.

“Don’t take too much of her money,” Jack said, his voice lighthearted. Drat the man, but he was impervious to her upcoming ruin. “If you do, she won’t even be able to buy half a plate of chop suey from Wing Li.”

The two men chuckled. She tried to scrunch up her eyes, but it was too late. Lily felt the tears slide down her cheeks. She wasn’t sure if she cried from fear or anger or helplessness or even sorrow that nothing was going to go right for her. She was her father’s daughter.

She turned away, but they had seen her tears. She stood there in silence, listening to the clatter of crockery in the kitchen, where Madeleine was hard at work, even though her world might be crumbling around her too.
I am giving up too soon
, Lily thought, embarrassed, as she listened to the sound of a woman with everything to lose, working.
Pierre Fontaine is trying to help me and I am giving up. Shame on me
.

She took a deep breath and left the dining hall, not stopping for her father. She walked in silence up the hill, determined to teach.

“We shouldn’t have laughed at her, boss,” Pierre said.

“No. She’s a little finely drawn right now,” Jack agreed.

“Do you think she’ll leave out them tacks and maybe a dime? Gotta have bait.”

“She’ll do it.” Jack felt the heat rise from his neck and wished he had the Indian’s dark complexion. “I should have said something. She’s going to worry all day.”

Pierre shook his head. “Nah, she isn’t. I think she’s mostly just angry at us now. That’ll keep her going.” He pointed with his lips toward the kitchen. “That’s the worried one. Maybe I should tell her what I’m going to do.”

“You just want more coffee with a half pound of sugar in it. It beats all how much sugar you Indians crave.”

“That too.” He tipped his hat to Jack. “See ya on the range. Same place?”

“Yep. Too many LC beeves hanging around. Time to move’um back, if McMurdy and his boys won’t come get them.”

Lily did look angry, Jack decided as he watched her walk up the slope, her shoulders set and her stride more purposeful than usual. She had a pleasant sway to her hips that he probably could have watched a little longer, except that the boys were getting ready to ride, and he couldn’t afford the luxury of standing there mooning over a pretty lady who probably would have thrashed him into next Thursday because he had laughed at her predicament.
Time to toughen up, missy
, he thought.
Tears won’t cut it
.