Rimfire Bride Page 11

  Drew and the boys had been at Rimfire for over a week, and he had allowed the activity of the ranch to wash his soul. The pace of actual ranch work was slowed down in the crisp November air, as many of the hands were let go for the winter. All the horses, except the personal mounts of the cowboys, were turned loose on the open range. That allowed them to forage on the grass that had dried in the late-summer sun and now provided a natural hayrick for the animals that roamed the Badlands. The horses fared better than the cattle, as they were better able to paw through the snow and find the food.

  The cattle required little work during the colder months. Some cowboys were assigned to the line shacks, which were put on a perceived line that would indicate how far the cattle would be allowed to drift. A few of the men did some line riding, looking for any cow or calf that they thought was weak. When they found such an animal, they would bring it back to the home ranch for temporary care, and when it had regained its strength, they would turn it back on the range.

  Occasionally, if the herd began to wander off the open range, and especially if the cows were heading toward an Indian reservation or an area that was largely settled by grangers, cowboys from several ranches would band together to drive the herd back closer to the home ranches.

  During the winter most of the work around the home ranch was in oiling and repairing leather harnesses or saddles, or building outbuildings or corral fences. But the men’s favorite pastime was practicing roping. The cowboys would throw their forty-foot lariats at anything: a set of cow horns put on a sawhorse, a fence post, a stump, a deer that came down to the river for a drink, or, if they were in a particularly playful mood, they’d just lasso each other.

  Drew was watching Toby trying to teach Sam and Benji how to make an overhand knot in a length of rope.

  “Pull it tight,” Toby said after Sam had put the loose end of the rope through a loop. “Now make another one, just below this one, but don’t pull it tight.”

  Sam tried and tried to do as Toby said, but each time he failed. Finally he threw down the rope.

  “I don’t want to do this. I’m not ever gonna learn to throw the silly old rope.” Sam walked away, his head down.

  Drew jumped down off the ledge where he had been sitting and hurried over to his son. “Come on, Sam, let’s saddle up Baldy and Santana and go for a ride. And Benji, you go see Miss Peach. I heard her say she was going to make molasses candy today, and I’ll bet she can use some help.”

  “Oh, goody,” Benji yelled as he started running toward the Carswell cabin.

  “Tell Devlin we’ll be gone a while,” Drew said as he started toward the tack room.

  Drew and Sam rode well over a half hour as they followed the twists of the Little Missouri River. Drew didn’t know where this ride would take him, but he knew he had to talk to his son, and for now he was content to ride in silence. Around one bend in the river, they stopped their horses and watched as a dozen or more bison crossed the shallow river.

  “Look, Daddy,” Sam said with enthusiasm as he pointed out a particularly large animal that was rubbing his head on the bark of a cedar tree. “Do you think he wants to knock the tree down?”

  “No, I think maybe he’s just got an itch.” Drew reached a hand out to Sam.

  “It’s a big itch.”

  “Come on, let’s not bother him while he’s getting a back rub.” Drew turned his horse away from the river. “Let’s go find Abraham Lincoln.”

  “Abraham Lincoln? Daddy, don’t you know he was shot?”

  “But everybody remembers him, and there’s a butte somewhere out here that looks just like him. Or maybe we’ll just find a castle or a turret to climb when the robbers come after us.”

  “Robbers? Are they going to come rob us?”

  “Nah, not if we find a good place to be. That looks like a good one.” Drew pointed to a nearby rock outcropping. “Let’s climb to the top.”

  Dismounting, Drew ground-hobbled both of their horses, then they started climbing. When the two got to the top of the flat plateau, they sat down and looked out over the gorges and jagged hills that made up the rugged landscape. Everywhere the ocher and red scoria was fired by the sun’s rays, and they watched as an eagle rode an air current, coming so close that Drew could have thrown a stone and hit it.

  They were quiet for a long moment, then Sam moved closer to Drew. “Daddy, you won’t leave me, will you?”

  “What do you mean? Of course I won’t leave you.”

  “Mama did.”

  Drew reached out to put his arm around his son. “Mama didn’t leave us, Son. She’s in heaven now, looking down on us.”

  “I wish she was here.” Sam’s sniff told Drew that he was close to crying.

  “So do I, Son, so do I. But sometimes things happen that we don’t like. It’s not our fault they happen, they just do. And when they do happen, we have no choice but to live with it.”

  “What if something happens to you?”

  “Sam, you can’t be afraid. You have to be a brave young man. Think of Benji. Benji looks up to you. If you’re afraid, then Benji will be, too.”

  “Benji doesn’t even remember Mama.”

  “I’m sure that part of him remembers her. He was just so young that it’s hard for him to remember.”

  “Will I ever have a new mama?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Miss Peterson said if you’d get married, I’d have a mama.”

  “What do you think about that?”

  “I don’t want another mama. I want my mama.”

  “But you know that can never be, don’t you?”

  “Yes, sir. I know.”

  “Who knows, Sam? Maybe someday you’ll have another mama. And if you do, why, I’ll bet you could love her, too.”

  “Maybe. But I’ll never love her as much as Mama.”

  “Well, it’s not even something we have to think about now, is it?” Drew stood up, then held his hand down to pull Sam up.

  Sam wrapped both his arms around Drew’s leg. “Promise me you won’t ever leave me like Mama did. Promise me, Daddy.”

  Drew wished he could say more to comfort the poor tormented soul of his son. He reached down to put his hand behind Sam’s head and pulled it against his leg.

  “I promise.”

  As the two rode back to Rimfire, Drew was deep in thought. He had refused to take an interest in any woman who pursued him, especially the ubiquitous Miss Peterson.

  Maybe he should consider taking a wife. Promise me you won’t ever leave me like Mama did. Promise me, Daddy, Sam had said. Drew owed his children some stability, and a woman—a wife—might give them that.

  But who could that person be? The face of a blue-eyed, ash-blond German immigrant came to his mind, and in the same thought, he mouthed a silent prayer. Please don’t let Jana Hartmann be working for Little Casino.

  It was time to get back home.

  Five days later, as Devlin McCarthy drove the spring wagon up to the small clapboard building that served as the depot in Little Missouri, Clem Pittman strolled out to greet them.

  “You folks goin’ east or west?”

  “East,” Drew said, taking their one bag out of the wagon. “Any idea what time the train will get here?”

  “Nope. It’ll be here when it gets here.”

  “All right.” Drew took his watch out of his pocket. “What time is it supposed to be here?”

  “Somewhere around eleven o’clock, I reckon. Depends on how long it takes ’em to get the train turned around at Glendive.”

  “I need tickets back to Bismarck for the two boys and me.”

  “All right, come on in, and I’ll get you fixed right up.”

  “I’ll be gettin’ on back to Rimfire,” Devlin said as he swung the team around. “I’m anxious to get the house done so you and the boys can spend Christmas here.”

  “Thanks, Devlin.” Drew walked over to shake hands with his foreman. “I’m glad I came.” Inside the depot a li
ttle potbellied stove pumped out heat, and both Sam and Benji went over to it, standing close and holding their arms out over it.

  “Be careful you don’t touch the stove,” Drew called over to them.

  “We’ll be careful,” Sam promised.

  Drew bought the tickets, then sat on the single wooden bench that ran along the wall. Cold seeped in through the window, but the stove poured out heat from the front, so that the backside of him was cold while the front side was almost too warm.

  “I’ll have to get the semaphore arm out so’s the engineer knows to stop,” Pittman said. “We don’t have a whole lot of passengers that get on or off here in Little Missouri, so most of the time the train just barrels on through. Oh, it’ll pick up mail when we got some goin’ out, but it don’t even stop for that. I just put the mailbag out on the hook, and the train grabs it as it runs by.”

  “The train just grabs it as it goes by?” Sam asked.

  “Yep. Just like this.” Clem stuck out his arm, then closed his hand and drew his arm back. “It don’t even slow down.”

  “That’s funny,” Sam said. “I’m goin’ to watch that.”

  “Oh, it won’t do it today because it’ll be stopping to let you folks board, so I’ll just hand the mail on up to the express messenger.”

  “Can I watch you put out the thing that tells the engineer to stop?”

  “Sure, come along.”

  “Can I watch, too?” Benji asked.

  Pittman looked over at Drew, and Drew nodded, so the two boys went outside with the station agent.

  Drew watched through the window as the boys followed Clem. Again, he found himself thinking of Jana Hartmann. Would she like his new house? For some reason, he had been unable to get her out of his mind since the day he and Sam had gone for their ride.

  As he sat here now, he visualized the look on her face, the gleam in her eyes, the purse of her lips as he held her close to him on election night. He was just about to kiss her, and he was almost certain she would have offered no resistance. More than that, he believed she would have been a willing participant.

  He wished he had kissed her. He had not wanted to kiss any other woman since Addie died. Two years.

  That was a long time for a healthy thirty-year-old man to go without the comfort of a woman. It wasn’t natural for a man his age not to have a woman to do for him, care for him, and, he admitted to himself, share a bed with him.

  How would Jana be in that department? He believed that if he had kissed Jana, he would have known a lot more about her. He was of the opinion that you could learn a lot about a woman just by kissing her.

  But whom was he kidding? Except for Addie, he had kissed few and had lain with no other woman. But now, just the thought of Jana Hartmann’s looking at him expectantly caused a stirring in the front of his pants.

  Clem and the two boys came back into the depot then.

  “Daddy, I’m the one that’s going to stop the train!” Sam said excitedly.

  “How are you going to do that?”

  “Mr. Pittman let me pull the lever, and this red board just popped out and it’s sticking way out so the engineer will see it. Mr. Pittman says it’s me that’s going to make the engineer stop the train.”

  “You are indeed,” Pittman said with a chuckle. At that precise moment, they heard a distant whistle, and Pittman took out his watch to look at it. “And, just in time, as it turns out. The train is a little early today.”

  As the train came closer, Drew, Sam, and Benji came out onto the platform and stood there, watching it approach. Black smoke curled up from the stack, and white, almost luminescent steam gushed from the actuating cylinders just before the driver wheels.

  “Do you think he will see my signal?” Sam asked.

  The train began to slow noticeably.

  “He sees it all right,” Drew said. “See, he’s slowing down.”

  The train pulled into the station, the engine so powerful and heavy that Drew could feel the vibration. The fireman was leaning out the window of the engine cab, and he waved at the two boys.

  “He’s not stopping!” Sam said, his voice reflecting his concern.

  “Yes, he is, he just needs to get far enough so that the cars are lined up with us,” Drew explained.

  With a hiss of air from the brakes, and the screech of metal on metal as the brake shoes were applied against the wheels, the train came to a halt. It sat there for a moment, then the conductor stepped down. As the train was stopped, Pittman took the mailbag out to the express car and handed it up to the messenger.

  “Board!” the conductor called.

  “That’s us, boys. Let’s get aboard,” Drew said.

  NINE

  The meeting of the Ladies’ Christian Union will be called to order,” Linda Steward said as she banged the table with a small wooden gavel. “I, first of all, want to thank all of you women who made the New England supper such a success. And I am very proud to announce that the net receipts were ninety dollars.”

  This news was met with a round of applause from everyone present.

  “But that is all the money we have in our treasury, and we must think of other fund-raisers so that we can continue to pay our rent for this fine building.”

  “We could start charging admission for any of the gentlemen who come to listen to the reading,” Bessie McNeil said.

  “No, that can’t be,” Fern Watson said. “This is a free reading room provided for the purpose of affording young gentlemen and strangers in Bismarck a place to spend a pleasant evening. We can’t ask them to pay to come here.”

  “We could ask Reverend Jackson to read some more Dickens for us. He is especially good. The last time he brought women from his church to sing, and that was excellent entertainment,” Bessie said.

  “No,” Mrs. Watson said again. “Many of these young men can’t read, and this is their only opportunity to hear classic literature.”

  “Speaking of classics, I would like to see a melodrama that, even though it was written some time ago, has just become very popular in Europe,” Clara Hollenbaugh said.

  “A melodrama? Yes, that’s a good idea. That may be something we could use to raise money. What is this play called?”

  “Menschenhass und Reue. I have a copy,” Clara said excitedly.

  “Well, Clara, that’s wonderful that you think it’s so good, but some of us may have a problem with it. We don’t all speak German like you do,” Della Peterson said.

  “In English I think it’s called The Stranger, even though the translation is Misanthropy and Repentance. I suppose we could get the English version.”

  “If we need it to raise money, we don’t have time for that,” Linda Steward said. “Can you translate it for us?”

  Clara blushed. “I—I don’t think . . .”

  “I know who we can get to do it,” Fern Watson said. “Jana Hartmann.”

  “Jana Hartmann? You mean that woman who displays herself so shamelessly in your husband’s window? And then I hear she works in the Custer Saloon at night. I don’t think that’s the kind of woman we want affiliated with the Ladies’ Christian Union,” Della Peterson said.

  “Do you think she’s smart enough to handle the daunting task of translating a major literary work?” Linda Steward asked.

  “There is absolutely nothing shameless about Miss Hartmann, neither in her work for my husband nor in helping to serve meals in the hotel. And she is probably more educated than any of us here. She has a degree from a Christian college in Illinois. I daresay that few among us have that much education,” Fern Watson said.

  “Fern, are you sure she has a degree? Or did she just tell you that? I hardly believe a college-educated woman would clear tables in a saloon,” Della said.

  “Well, we’ll find out if she’s lying,” Linda Steward said. “Fern, you have an opportunity to see her. Will you ask her to do this for us? If the play is as interesting as Clara says it is, maybe Mr. Whitney will let us put on a local prod
uction at the Opera House.”

  Jana was surprised when Mrs. Watson came to the store specifically to see her, and when she asked Jana to translate a German play that was published more than eighty years ago, Jana was even more astonished. She had never read the playwright, August von Kotzebue, but she was pleased to have something stimulating to do. The novelty of her sitting in the window was beginning to wear off, and painting endless bowls of fruit or arrangements of flowers was getting boring.

  She picked up the script and began to read through it rather quickly, silently thanking Sister Mary Kathleen for insisting that she learn to read German when she was in grammar school. When she was finished, she stepped out of the window in search of Mrs. Watson.

  “Are you sure the ladies of the Christian Union want to put on this play?”

  “Oh, yes,” Fern Watson said. “Clara Hollenbaugh says it’s a wonderful melodrama that’s all the rave in Europe. Can you translate it for us?”

  “Yes, I can do it, if you’re sure that’s what you want.”

  “Good, I’ll tell Mrs. Steward, and she can pass the word around that you are who you say you are. Can you finish before Thanksgiving?”

  “I don’t think that will be a problem.” Jana was puzzled by what Mrs. Watson had said: you are who you say you are. What did that mean? She hadn’t spoken to anyone except the customers she had seen in the store or the patrons who came into the saloon, or to Frank Allen and Drew Malone.

  Drew Malone. He could certainly be a cast member of this play. A play that was all about adultery. Except in this play the woman was the adulterer.

  Jana took a pencil and wrote the words Misanthropy and Repentance across the top of the first page.

  Misanthropy. That was a word she could take to heart. Not that she hated anyone, but she certainly did distrust certain people, and the number one candidate was Drew Malone. She would have let him kiss her the night of the election if he hadn’t been interrupted by Frank Allen, and then Frank told her about Elfrieda and his children.

  Elfrieda was a name that surely stuck in the memory, and when she heard Mr. Watson call out to someone with that name, she left the window to see what this Elfrieda looked like. A large woman at least twice Jana’s age, she had come in to buy a seal hat. Jana was sure this was not Mrs. Malone. Maybe Mrs. Malone was the misanthrope because of her flirtatious husband.