Softly Falling (49 page)

“I’ll trust you to spread it when spring comes,” Jack replied. He did have a question for a bona fide husband, and McMurdy was a good sport. “Been wondering, Mac—Lily always has interesting stuff to tell me every night. I can’t ever think of anything I do all day that’s interesting to anyone.”

“Jack, Jack! Just surprise her with some little thing,” McMurdy said. He looked around at the white bleakness that surrounded them and joked, “You know, a little bouquet of rabbit brush, maybe a nice haunch of venison, some perfume from Wisner. Good luck, buddy.”

Jack thought about that on the cold ride home when Preacher and Will were arguing about the merits of canvas pants versus wool ones, and Pierre was keeping his own council, as he usually did.

Before he went into the cookshack, he had a wild tear and scooped up a handful of snow, shaping it into the best snowball ever fashioned by the mind of man. When he opened the door, Lily looked up from the Temple of Education and smiled at him. He smiled back, then lobbed his weapon at the center of her chest.

Nick whooped and Lily gasped. Suddenly unsure of himself, Jack stepped closer to wipe away the evidence of his sudden madness. Her eyes narrowed and he knew he was in trouble.
Thank you, McMurdy
, he thought as her lips curled sideways, which he knew was not a good sign.

To his amazement, she rushed past him out the door and came back in seconds later with an even better snowball. She hurled it at his head, and he had only a moment to applaud her excellent form before the thing exploded by his ear.

“So that’s it?” he said and dashed back outside, returning with another snowy bomb, which landed on her backside.

School was suddenly over for the day as Lily’s little angels ganged up on him. He took the fight outside and they followed. Great gobs of monkey meat, was she teaching these hoodlums to
throw
? He started to laugh and ended up with snow in his mouth.

He wasn’t prepared for Lily’s sneak attack. Someone tapped his shoulder, and he turned around to see a generous handful of yellow snow coming at him. Blamed if he didn’t shriek like a girl, screaming something about not playing fair at all.

To no avail. The yellow snow ended up all over his face, and Lily was laughing so hard she started to choke.

“Oh, poor thing,” he said and took the moment to push a little snow down the neck of her dress. She gasped and sank to her knees, laughing harder.

“I would never push yellow snow in your face,” he said, in an attempt to sound virtuous.

“Just a little food coloring,” she said, unrepentant. “Madeleine squirreled it away. I would never . . . you know.” Her eyes shone now with an unholy glee that suggested she might keep him on his toes. “Well, I might, so watch out.”

The children had trooped inside and his face felt frozen solid. “You have ruined my handsome complexion and noble visage,” he teased. “That sounds like
Ivanhoe
.”

“Impossible,” she retorted and kissed him.

He threw his arms around her, happier than he could ever remember, standing in subzero weather with a wife he didn’t quite know what to do with yet. Maybe McMurdy was on to something. He kissed her back.

“Suppose our lips freeze together,” she said, letting him hold her close, which wasn’t close because he was wearing nearly every item of clothing he owned, and so was she.

“Lily, you’re a knucklehead.”

It must have been the right thing to say, because she kissed him again. “And you’re afraid of a little yellow snow,” she whispered right in his ear. “Big baby.”

Please don’t leave me in the spring
, he thought.
Please, Lily
.

C
HAPTER
45

I
’m failing these people
, Jack thought as he stared at the calendar. February, it said, and nearly over, too, with no change in the weather, no hint of anything except endless snow. While Lily conducted her school on one side of the small-and-getting-smaller-every-day room, he watched his hands playing a listless sort of poker on the other side. Madeleine and Fothering were arguing about something in the kitchen, but they liked to argue. Sure as the world, he would hear laughter soon. He hoped it was soon.

February. He stared at the word, wondering why no one ever pronounced the R after the B. The longer he stared at February, the stranger it looked.
I’m losing my mind
, he thought. He watched Lily, enjoying her economy of motion, and the way she went from child to child, touching them on the shoulder, complimenting them on work well done, encouraging them. He knew her effort came at a high cost, because he lay awake at night, long after everyone else was asleep, and heard her tears.

He wanted more than anything to gather her close, ask her what was wrong, and resolve somehow to make it better. He felt inadequate to the task, certain that when winter finally ended, he would have no job, no Bismarck, no cows and calves, and no Lily. He knew her to be sane and sensible, and no woman so formed would see any future with a man who had nothing to offer. He had started over in 1865, but it was 1886 now, and he felt too old and sour to begin again from scratch.

He stood up and stretched, pulled on his coat, and left without a word, miserable because all he really craved was a half hour alone with Lily. He wanted a few minutes of her time with no one else around. He wanted the impossible, and so he just walked, wishing he could be like the south-facing cattle that had started toward remembered warmth, somewhere down along the Red River in Texas. Dumb creatures . . . they had tried, at least. He knew that when the snow melted, their carcasses would stretch like a carpet for miles.

He turned back to look at the cookshack, their final retreat in the struggle to stay alive. The clutter of sheds found on any ranch were gone now, either stacked in smaller pieces by the cookshack, waiting to be burned, or already long-forgotten smoke. At least when the spring came and Mr. Buxton came back to admonish and scold, the place would look tidier.

He stood there, hands on his hips, just looking at the door, wishing Lily would open it.

I would give the earth for five minutes alone with Jack
, Lily thought.
I’m not even sure what I would say, but oh, just to be two people instead of nine! I’m failing this man.

“Go on, Lily.”

She looked around, startled, at Pierre, who was holding up her coat. She let him help her into her coat, then layer on the mufflers, a knit cap that had been Stretch’s, and someone’s mittens. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she whispered to Pierre.

“Yes, you do,” he whispered back and gave her a little push to the door. “It’s not really a crime to want your husband.”

To her relief, Jack hadn’t gone far, and he was watching the cookshack. She floundered through the snow, with no idea what to say. Everything seemed so complicated. Maybe she didn’t need to say anything.

Silent, he crooked out his arm and she tucked hers through his. They started walking toward the almost-forgotten schoolhouse. It looked so far away, so small to hold a temple of education.

“Lily, you’re a good teacher,” he said finally.

“You’re a good foreman,” she said, feeling foolish, but wanting to say that because it was true. “You’ve taken care of us and you don’t complain.”

“What do you want more than anything?”

She couldn’t help herself. “I already told you I wanted straight hair and a bank account.”

He laughed and hugged her shoulder as they struggled through the snow. “Silly! Right now.”

“A bath, then a bowl of lettuce.” She hesitated, knowing she could keep up the silliness—even though she did want a bowl of lettuce in the worst way—or not waste this rare time, not in twenty below weather. “I just want to walk with you. Wh . . . what about you?”

“Doing exactly what we’re doing.” He stopped. “I’ve heard you crying at night.”

She leaned her forehead against his coat. “I try to be so quiet.” She looked up. “You’re supposed to be asleep.”

There was such a look in his eyes then. She knew if she lived to be ninety, she would have no better example of constancy than the man she had married to preserve his ranch, if worse came to worse. “You don’t take your duty lightly.”

“I do not. I’m failing everyone.”

What do I say to someone so conscientious?
she thought. He was such a far cry from the man she cried about at night, wondering how he could have deserted her, when things were going better.
Maybe I just say that. Why not? Things couldn’t be worse
.

“I wouldn’t know for certain—what do I know about this winter—but Mr. Sinclair, there are little people all over Wyoming, and . . . and that territory farther north . . .”

“Montana?” he supplied, with just a touch of amusement in his voice.

“Yes, that place—people just like us, trying to stay alive, whose plans were scotched.” Where was she going with this? Why wasn’t her mind as sharp as usual? “I don’t know where that was headed, except that you’re not failing me, so stop it, or I’ll get all squinty-eyed.”

He laughed then, more of a chuckle because it was too cold to do anything out here, much less solve problems better dealt with in quiet rooms. “Can’t have that. Squinty-eyed always worries me.”

“I think we’re all just doing the best we can, Jack. Don’t be a silly pup.”

“Silly pup?
Really?
”

“That’s what we say in Bristol.”

They had started up the small hill that led to the school, but the snow had drifted totally over one side of the building. She stopped, remembering the terror, feeling the weight of responsibility because she had been the woman in charge during that first blizzard. She suddenly had a tiny grasp of the weight of Jack’s stewardship, and it humbled her.

She turned around and they started back down, which made them both sigh at the same time, which only meant another chuckle from the foreman.

“Two silly pups,” he said. “Why are you crying at night, Lily?”

“My father. How could he treat me this way?”

“You relieve me,” Jack said. “I figured you were sick at heart over the wedding, and strapping you down because I want a legacy, if the worst happens.”

She stopped again and poked his chest. “
You’re
the one who assured me I could run a ranch, and I started to believe you! That’s my problem: I listen to smooth-talking men.”

“That’s it, Lil,” he said with a shake of his head.

“Lil?” she asked, pleased with a nickname.

“Yeah. I’ve been wanting to call you that. It’s your special name from me.”

My goodness, this was no time to tear up, not with such cold. She struggled against tears, then gave up and just leaned against this stalwart man who was worming his way into her heart, whether he knew it or not. “Thanks,” she said, her voice barely audible, even to her own ears.

“You’re welcome, Lil,” he said, just as softly.

By the time they were back at the door of the cookshack, she had a plan. “Jack, I’m going to declare a school holiday. We are going to read out loud for as long as we want. Fothering and I can take turns, and Will, and I’ll make you read, too, because you’re better than you think.”

He smiled at her compliment but reminded her they were rationing the books.

“Not any more. I’m tired of rationing. I want an abundance of something, and all we have a lot of is time and words. If we have to start over, so what?”

“Great idea, Lil.”

They began in the morning, after the men tended the horses, and after a late breakfast of beans and onions. Everyone jumbled together with blankets around their shoulders, Jack insisting she sit in front of him with his blankets covering them both. Her lovely students piled close like puppies.

“Everyone settled?” she asked, then laughed as she leaned back against her husband’s comforting bulk. “As settled as we’re going to be. We’ll begin in honor of Stretch and read through his last year’s
Farmer’s Almanac
.”

She started with the ads on the inside cover, from Columbia Bicycles to Baker’s Breakfast Cocoa, which led to a lively discussion on the merits of chocolate. In her most dulcet tones, which made even Pierre grin from ear to ear, she read, “ ‘It is delicious, nourishing, strengthening, easily digested . . .”

“Better’n beans,” Preacher chimed in, which meant that Luella had to throw her pillow at him, which led to a pillow fight before order was restored.

“All right now, you miscreants, behave,” Lily said. “ ‘. . . easily digested, and admirably adapted for invalids as well as for people in health.’ ”

There followed another discussion about where the inmates of the Bar Dot fell in terms of general health. They decided on semi-invalid, and carried out through the title page. “ ‘The Old Farmer’s Almanac,’ ” Lily read, “ ‘calculated on a new and improved plan, for the year of our Lord 1886.’ ”

A plan. Lily felt Jack sigh, and she had to swallow a few times when he kissed the top of her head. She turned the page and cleared her throat. “ ‘Eclipses for the year 1886. There will be two eclipses this year, both of the sun…’ ”

They read for two solid weeks, arguing the merits of Baker’s Breakfast Cocoa again, because it made everyone laugh. Amelie read the paragraph called Children’s Reading, repeating twice the admonition to “ ‘Have good books about the house, and no others. Read them yourselves and talk them over.’ ”