Softly Falling Page 12

  She could talk to her father of the weather, but what did one say about the constant wind? She had already noted that the food was unvarying: in the evening, soup or stew of pleasing variety, as long as it was beef. Madeleine’s scones—no, biscuits here—were a fluffy delight, and she had discovered a fondness for chokecherry jelly. Hash would follow a day or two of a beef roast, and it was better eaten with ketchup. Nobody complained.

  The Buxtons had their own cook. Lily decided to ask Fothering what the menu in the big house was like. Fothering neé Sam Foster, that is. The thought made her smile.

  “Something amuses you, Lily?” her father asked.

  Lily looked at her father with real delight. Rather than keep his head down over his plate, he had asked her question.

  “I was just thinking how strange it is to have a butler in Wyoming.”

  Clarence Carteret nodded and gave a dry little chuckle, as if he was unused to amusement any more. “Do you know, I have been trying to place his accent, but it escapes me.”

  She yearned to be able to tell her father about the butler’s naughty little secret, but she had promised. “I have wondered too. Should we ask him someday?”

  “When I feel better.”

  It was his usual answer to any of her questions, but at least he had spoken.

  She had stored up her conversation for their house, when she tried to keep her father from the bottle. She had already exhausted her commentary about the two photographs that Jack Sinclair had returned to her. She could talk about cutting the alphabets from brown wrapping paper. And then what? This shell of a man was her father, and she didn’t know what to do with him.

  To her relief, someone knocked on the door and she recognized the knock this time: three firm raps. Jack Sinclair wanted another chapter of Ivanhoe.

  She opened the door and laughed when he held up a steaming cup of coffee. “Last cup of the night. Lily, I’m no tea drinker.”

  He set down the cup and pulled out a packet wrapped in waxed paper. “I should’ve left this with you today when we brought the wood.” He opened the packet and pulled out a little sliver of wood soaked in something that made her nose wrinkle.

  “Splinters soaked in coal oil,” he explained. “When you lay the fire in the morning, put this underneath your kindling and light it with a match.” He rewrapped the packet and laid it on the table.

  “I’ve never started a fire,” she said. “Papa does it here in the house.”

  “Don’t look so serious, Lily! I can teach the teacher a few things. You won’t need a fire for a month or so. There’s time.”

  He just stood there then and glanced toward the bookshelf, waiting for her to ask him to sit down, waiting for another chapter, but too polite to ask. It was a nicety she hadn’t suspected.

  “Have a seat, sir,” she told him. “I was just planning to read to Papa.”

  He made himself comfortable on the settee, and Lily opened to the next chapter. Since Papa had chosen the rocking chair, she sat next to Jack.

  Chapter eight was the joust between the Disinherited Knight and a host of others. Halfway through, Jack put his hand across the page. “They’re tough on horses,” he said, then took his hand away. “But don’t stop reading.”

  When she finished the chapter, Jack objected. “You really can’t stop there, you know,” he said. “Another chapter?”

  To Lily’s chagrin, her father whimpered at Jack’s question. “I really need to go to bed,” he said, his voice plaintive. His little apology was worse. “You know . . . you know how early morning comes around here. G’night.”

  When Clarence veered off toward the lean-to, Jack got up and pointed him to his bedroom door, opening it and standing there until she could see her father sitting on his bed within easy reach of his bottle. She closed her eyes in shame.

  Jack sat down again. “Lily, someone a whole lot wiser than I am told me that everyone is mostly trying to do his best. Or her best, I suppose.”

  “That’s his best?” she asked, incredulous.

  “Could be. Read another chapter.” He smiled at her and nudged her shoulder. “C’mon. You know you want to. Chapter nine.” He put his hands behind his head and closed his eyes, perfectly ready to head back to the jousting field.

  “That’s enough for one night,” she said when the chapter ended. “Don’t argue.”

  He gave her a “who, me?” look, but reached for his coat. And then he was all business again. “Given any thought to Amelie’s predicament?”

  “Certainly,” she replied, all business too. “I’ll ask Madeleine if adjourning school from eleven to one is enough time for the girls to help with the main meal.”

  “That’ll rile Mrs. Buxton,” he said, putting on his Stetson.

  “I’ll tell her that Luella will get that eleven to twelve hour with me, all by herself. It’s what she wants, anyway.”

  “Sounds like a plan, Lily. You’re getting good at plans.”

  He opened the door and his head went back in surprise. Alarmed, Lily wondered what had happened.

  “My goodness, it’s snowing,” she said as she moved closer to stand beside him. “Look how big and beautiful the flakes are!”

  She heard the breath go out of him in a big sigh. “Lily, it’s only the middle of September.”

  She reached out her hand. The snow fell so softly, so lightly, like petals. Already, the ugliness of the ranch was disappearing under a light blanket of white. “It is pretty, and it’ll melt tomorrow, won’t it?”

  “It had better,” he said, his voice grim.

  She could tell he was agitated, so he must not have realized what he was doing then. That’s the only way Lily could account for his hand on her shoulder. She doubted he wanted comfort, because she knew he was a hard man. His hand felt more like protection to her. She may have been the smallest, most unimportant cog in the machinery of the Bar Dot—heavens, Chantal and Amelie were more useful than she was—but it was as though the foreman had added her to his list of responsibilities.

  She looked at the snow with new eyes, then at Jack’s face. His jaw was set and he frowned.

  “It’ll melt. You know it will,” she said.

  He walked away with no good-bye.

  “Chapter ten tomorrow?” she called after him.

  No answer.

  CHAPTER 16

  Jack Sinclair was as good as his word. In the morning he showed her how to lay a fire in the schoolroom stove using the coal oil splinter. Lily had arrived at the school first, mainly so she had time to put another piece of fatback on the rock for Freak. The snow was already melting, so she brushed off what remained and set down the tempting scrap.

  She stood in the doorway, hoping to see the cat. She waited to the end of her patience, then went inside the room and looked around with some satisfaction. She had tacked up the maps yesterday, which hid some of the deficiency in the log walls, and the occasional gaps where she could look out.

  To honor Mrs. Buxton’s strange request, Lily arranged three desks in front for the Sansevers, and one behind for Luella. She didn’t like it, because it reminded her of Miss Tilton’s School.

  She admired the chair that Jack had scrounged for her at the Back Forty. It was by far the most elegant item in the room. For one fanciful moment, she pictured herself with a whip and the chair, defending herself from lions, as she had seen in a visiting circus in Bristol. The solitary lion had been a wheezy old gent who made a single, perfunctory swipe with his paw at the chair before he returned to slumber, to the boos and stamps of the audience.

  Speaking of lions. She went to the door and noted that the fatback was gone. She looked toward the tree line and there he was, observing her out of what she thought was only one eye. Freak glared at her and stalked back into the trees and vanished, camouflaged by the tawny prairie grass.

  “It’s not polite to eat and run,” she called to Freak.

  Lily shook her head at her own folly and decided to let Freak be Freak. She could l
eave some daily tidbit—it could be anything—but expecting any affection in return was beyond the cat’s capacity, obviously.

  “It’s your loss, Freak,” she said. “I know precisely where cats like to be scratched.”

  No answer, and just as well, because Jack Sinclair and his Sansever shadows were halfway to the school, the girls skipping along with all the energy of youth. Pierre Fontaine came, too, moving more slowly because he carried a large bundle.

  Lily watched with interest, stepping back when Pierre came into the classroom and plopped what looked like a buffalo robe over two of the desks. He pointed with his lips and a toss of his head to the wall without maps. “I’ll hang this here,” he explained.

  “Talking to yourself, Lily?” Jack asked.

  “Your hearing is far too acute,” she said, feeling her face grow warm.

  “Huh, nothing cute about the boss,” Indian said.

  “Acute, as in sharp,” Lily replied. She threw up her hands. “All right! You caught me talking to Freak, who snatches food and doesn’t hang around for conversation.”

  Indian’s lips twitched. “At least Jack don’t have chewed off ears and one eye. Not yet, anyhows.”

  He and Jack spread out the buffalo robe and turned it over, exposing a spiral of pictures. She could make out single figures, and horses, and what looked like fire and guns.

  “Oh, my,” Lily said. “What is this?”

  “Waniyetu wowapi,” Indian said and looked at Jack.

  “We call’um winter counts. Where do you want it, Indian? Help us out, girls.”

  Amelie and Chantal obliged by pushing over a desk so Indian could stand on it. He had strung a small length of rope through two holes in the robe. Jack handed him a nail, he pounded into the wall. He pounded in another one, until he was satisfied they would hold the weight of the robe.

  “The Indians around here tell yearly time from winter to winter,” Jack said as Indian jumped down. “What is it? One event for each year?”

  “Yes,” Indian said. He pointed to the center of the spiral, and what looked like a child with a white horse. “There is a tiyospaye, the counter, you would say, who decides what is the most important happening.”

  “A boy and a horse, Pierre?” Lily asked, enchanted by the simplicity and beauty of the artwork on her ugly wall.

  “A white horse. Very special, very rare,” he replied and gave Jack a meaningful look. “I like that you call me Pierre.”

  “It’s your name.”

  “Remember that, boss,” he said to Jack, and it sounded like no suggestion.

  Lily traced the horse with her finger, then turned to Pierre. “Are you the winter count keeper now?”

  The Indian shrugged. “My great-grandfather started this, then my mother’s father. He died at the Greasy Grass, so it came to me because I didn’t go to the rez. No one wants to keep track of anything on the rez.”

  Lily looked at the final drawing, a lone buffalo, but thin. “Is this the count for this year?” she asked.

  “Last year. I only saw one buffalo on the plain where many used to roam. I have not decided on this year yet because we have not reached winter. When I decide, I will come to your classroom and paint it. Would you mind?”

  “We’ll be honored to keep your winter count at the Bar Dot School,” Lily said.

  “Is that what we are?” Chantal asked.

  “I believe so.” Lily touched both girls on the shoulder. “If you could find an old board around here, and maybe some black paint, I could print that on the board. You could paint it, and maybe we could get Pierre here to nail it over the door.”

  The girls looked at Pierre, their eyes eager. Pierre nodded. “Let’s go find an old board.”

  Jack waved them off and he looked at the winter count. “Hope you don’t mind, but once Ind . . . Pierre gets an idea, he runs with it.”

  “It’s wonderful, and it’s giving me an idea. Could you get me some muslin or canvas?”

  “Sure. What for?”

  “My students could make their own winter counts.”

  “Bravo, Lily,” he replied. Then he pointed to the packet of coal oil-soaked slivers on her desk. “First things first, though.”

  He laid an economical fire in the potbelly stove, using a balled-up bit of wrapping paper left over from yesterday’s alphabet, followed by the coal oil sliver and then a little tent of kindling. Next came a larger tepee of medium-sized wood, followed by a log. He struck a match on the stove and set it by the paper and sliver. In a matter of seconds the fire caught. He stood to open the damper in the stovepipe, then closed the door.

  “I’ll tell Nick to keep the fire going for you. He can empty the ashes too.”

  He stood there and looked around the room, as though assessing it for solidity. He tapped the window and shook his head. “Don’t like these gaps in the logs. And a south-facing window. Who ever thought that was smart?” he murmured, as though talking to himself.

  “I don’t understand,” Lily said.

  He tapped the window a little harder this time, as if holding it responsible for failure. “You can’t see the blizzards coming from the northwest. Do me a favor. If it’s a cloudy day, just go outside now and then and look to the north.”

  The potbellied stove had begun to heat the room, but Lily rubbed her arms from a sudden chill. “Then what?”

  “If you see a big cloud moving fast, you grab the kids and run to the Buxtons, because it’s closest.”

  “And if I don’t look in time?”

  “Stay where you are. I’ll come and get you.”

  He said it with confidence and that capability she already suspected everyone on the Bar Dot took for granted. But there was a worry line between his eyes that she hadn’t noticed before, at least, not before the surprise of last night’s snow.

  “Chapter ten tonight,” she said, wanting to change the subject, because he was starting to frighten her.

  “We’ll see,” he replied, which wasn’t the answer she wanted, not with the uneasy feeling that had started in her heart and seemed to spiral out like a winter count. “I’m going out with all the hands today for some more firewood. They hate it, so I’d better go along. We’ll see about tonight. Close the damper on that stove and it’ll go out. It’s getting too warm.”

  He touched his hand to his forehead, then put on his hat and left without another word. She stood in the door, enjoying her vantage point of the Bar Dot, wishing she could see it through Jack Sinclair’s eyes. Cattle grazed everywhere. Jack had said there were too many.

  She recalled the garrulous old rip who had sat next to her across Nebraska. Most people had at least asked her permission to sit, but he just plopped himself down. Maybe it was a perquisite of old age. She had tried to lose herself in her book, but he was having none of that. As the Union Pacific swayed from side to side and clacked along, he described “them early days out here, missy,” the ones where the buffler grass was as tall as his horse’s underbelly.

  She looked around now, seeing grass cropped into nothing. Swirls of dust rose fitfully, then died. She tried to imagine the place in winter and had no point of reference. Winter in Bristol was a genteel matter, mostly more rain than usual that brought out the musty odor of wet wool on small children and the scent of burning leaves. When it did snow, the flakes seemed to toss about in the wind briefly and then settled on the grass, more picturesque than inconvenient.

  The old fellow on the train had eventually worn himself out with words and slumbered all the way to the Grand Island Depot, where he woke when the conductor shook him and stomped off. Lily wished now she had asked him about winter.

  CHAPTER 17

  School began in the snow on Monday morning. This is not a bad omen, she told herself as she opened the door and took a deep breath, and another. She was no expert, but the snow had probably been falling most of the night. Looking around to make sure she was unobserved, Lily scooped up a handful and packed it into a ball. She threw it hard against t
he never-used hitching post in their yard and let out a cry of triumph when it connected and splattered, setting an observational crow scattering, with harsh words of his own.

  “Splendid, daughter.”

  She turned around to see her father in the doorway, pulling on his gloves.

  “My throwing skills will keep us safe from marauders and road agents as long as there is snow,” she teased back, delighted at his interest.

  He came down the step toward her and offered his arm, as he had done lately. He had managed forty-five minutes in the front room last night, which had made Jack Sinclair whisper, “Bravo, suh,” when he finally retired.

  Sinclair must have been on her father’s mind, too, as they strolled through the ankle-deep snow to the cookshack. “I don’t think Jack will be delighted, however. I’ve certainly never seen the snow this early.”

  The foreman sat by himself in the dining hall, his lips on the coffee cup, his elbows on the table, the picture of discontent. Lily watched how he roused himself when Chantal came to him shyly, holding a bowl of mush. “You’re a gracious lady,” he said to her. “Is that a new bow in your hair?”

  She twirled around so he could get the full effect. “Excellent in every way,” he praised her. “Where did you come by such a bow?”

  She moved closer, but Lily could still hear her. “Amelie told me you bought it when you went to town.”

  “I believe I did,” he said. “I asked Mr. Watkins if he had a bow for a little girl starting school today.”

  At least you didn’t get it from the faro dealer, Lily thought, amused.

  “Miss Carteret, are you wearing anything new today since it is the first day of school?” Chantal asked.

  “As a matter of fact, I am, but I shan’t show you,” she said.

  “Please, Miss Carteret,” Chantal begged.