Chapter Twenty
Twenty
Ellie was a nervous wreck as they rode up the hill to Buck’s Creek. She kept fiddling with her skirts, and smoothing her hair, which she wore loose. Diana had washed it for her.
“This is a terrible idea,” she said. “I’m going to arrive and he’s going to throw me headfirst into the creek.” Ellie could imagine it clearly, the rushing waters sending her tumbling down the valley, closing over her head with frigid fatality.
“No, he won’t.” Diana was unperturbed. She held Ellie’s hand in both of hers. “Well, he might,” she amended. “But then he’ll jump in straight after you, to rescue you.”
They were in the middle of a whole train of wagons and horses picking their way through the mulchy mountain woods up to the McBrides’.
Bascom was driving them. He was wearing his uniform, even though he wasn’t on official train business.
He said it was his best suit. He kept glancing sideways to make sure Flora was still safely beside him.
It was a silvery morning, in the early shivery days of December, and thin sunshine spilled through the trees, forming puddles and rills of light on the browning bracken.
“Besides, Junebug’s been planning this to celebrate Morgan and Pip’s return, and she’d kill Beau if he ruined it by being rude to a guest,” Diana assured her. “She’s been so happy they got back before the snows, so everyone in Bitterroot can make it up the hill.”
Ellie took a shaky breath. She’d been back in town for a few days, and she hadn’t seen Beau since he’d stormed out of the cottage. She hadn’t seen any of the McBrides since then either. “Junebug’s decided she likes giving parties then?”
“I’m glad she does,” Nancy told Ellie brightly, from where she sat opposite them in the wagon.
All Junebug’s brides had stayed on. It turned out a town starved of women had plenty of uses for them.
Mr. Langer had employed Nancy at the mercantile, where she’d increased sales merely by standing at the counter.
It turned out miners bought a lot more when they were buying from a pretty girl.
“Junebug’s Christmas dance was the best dance I’ve ever been to. ”
Ellie listened to Nancy describe it with a heavy heart.
While they’d been spinning around under the paper snowflakes, she’d been riding behind Purdy Joe, crying her eyes out.
And now she’d discovered she’d tortured herself, not to mention Beau and Diana, for no good reason.
It was possible that sometimes you could have a little too much imagination.
Behind them, she could see Mrs. Champion and Rigby bouncing along on the buckboard of Rigby’s wagon, a picnic hamper hulking between them.
Ellie felt oddly emotional about seeing them all again.
It was a strange homecoming kind of feeling.
Even though Bitterroot wasn’t her home. Although she guessed maybe it could be now, given Diana had decided to stay.
And if Diana was staying, Ellie supposed she was too.
“Do you think the Ella Jean boys will be coming?” Mabel asked with a giggle. She’d had more than a dozen offers of marriage and was trying to decide which to accept.
“Everyone’s coming,” Bascom said firmly. “No one in these parts would refuse an invitation from Junebug McBride.”
Ellie had spent a lot of time imagining Buck’s Creek, but her imagination hadn’t done it justice.
Not even close. They broke through the treeline into a broad mountain meadow, cradled by towering snow-capped mountains.
The meadow was an ocean of yellow dried grasses, with the daisy-like speckles of late flowering fleabane woven through the shivering sea.
The dried grassheads flicked and danced in the wind.
The eponymous creek, which was really more of a river, flowed through the heart of the valley, shining like a scarred mirror in the sun.
A ramshackle log building crouched on its banks, looking over a curved chokecherry tree, which had dropped all its leaves.
Ellie noted the little fenced graveyard beneath the tree.
Her heart gave a little dip at the sight of the wonky crosses.
That was where Beau’s mother and his sisters were.
He’d dug those graves, Ellie thought, imagining the scene so vividly it seemed like it was playing out directly in front of her eyes.
Upriver, there was another cabin, modest in size, sitting in the shade of the woods like a tired child.
The original cabin. Where once they’d almost starved, and where they regularly got snowed in so deep in winter that they had to dig themselves out.
Between the two buildings was a little cookhouse close to the water, and around the edge of the meadow were other outbuildings: a stable and a barn and Kit’s forge.
And then the big house, a whitewashed farmhouse surrounded by orchard.
Maddy and Kit’s house. The kind of place Beau had said he’d build for his bride, only in place of Maddy’s orchard, he’d plant roses, because his bride had said she liked them.
Ellie. Ellie had said she liked them.
Diana squeezed her hand. Ellie squeezed back, holding on for dear life, feeling like she just might float away on a wave of feeling.
He’d been going to propose to her. Her. Ellie Neale. Not beautiful Diana, not Nancy or Mabel or Kate or Frances or Flora. Beau McBride had fallen in love with Wallpaper Ellie, who might not be so wallpapery after all.
“Ahoy!” Junebug McBride came plunging through the dried meadowgrass towards them, sending chaff dancing in her wake. “Welcome to Buck’s Creek!” Her dog yapped gleefully, invisible in the deep grass. “You can set up camp anywhere you like!”
Ellie couldn’t see Beau, no matter where she looked.
There was a cookout set up in the lee of the stable, the fire leaping cheerfully, and poles with paper lanterns ringed the picnic area and a makeshift dance space of scythed grass, ready for darkness to fall.
Delectable barbecue smells drifted in the air.
She could see Kit and Morgan and Jonah; and Maddy and Pip and Pip’s grandmother Martha were traversing the slope down to the cookout, carrying baskets of supplies. But no Beau.
“Diana,” Ellie said, taking it all in, as though she was in a dream. “I have to tell you something.”
“Yes, honey?”
“I don’t want to live in Bitterroot with you,” she blurted. She felt tears prickle. “I love you more than anyone in the whole wide world, but I can’t live with you anymore.”
Diana laughed. “I figured.” She patted Ellie’s hand. “We have to grow up sometime.” She gave Ellie a fierce kiss. “And I’ll only be four and a bit hours away.”
Ellie watched as Diana slid from the wagon. “Diana!”
Diana turned, smiling.
Ellie took a deep breath. “I need you to know that even if you didn’t like it, I’d still do it…”
Diana nodded. “And I need you to know that I’m happy if you’re happy.” She blew Ellie a kiss, and then grabbed a picnic blanket and headed out into the ocean of meadow grass.
She found him on the porch of the trading post. He was sitting in a rocking chair with his feet up on the railing, staring at the bright water tumbling by.
The scent of water was heady on the cold breeze; it made Ellie’s heart race.
Or maybe that was just him. He did tend to have that effect on her.
Beau was deep in thought, looking more like a Bourbon prince than ever, his soulful dark gaze a million miles away.
But not so far away that he didn’t hear her coming.
Ellie shivered as his liquid dark eyes caught her fast.
“You came,” he said, his voice rough.
She felt terrible hearing the uncertainty in his voice. Ellie bit her lip and crept up the stairs to the porch. “I heard there was a party,” she said nervously.
“Thought you didn’t like parties.” He turned back to the river.
He was going to punish her. Ellie lifted her chin.
She could take a little punishment. But only because she had a good imagination and had thoroughly envisioned what it had been like for him.
Not that it had been a picnic for her either, but she assumed she’d have plenty of time to describe it to him, in vivid detail.
Then they could agree that they’d both had a perfectly horrid, terrible time of it. And none of it was exactly her fault.
“I’ve never really been to a party, so I wouldn’t know if I like them or not,” she said, easing herself into the rocking chair next to him.
She tried to put her feet up too but her legs were too short to reach the rail.
She shuffled the chair closer and from the corner of her eye she saw his lips twitch.
“But I do like the look of all the food. And someone once told me I was a good dancer.”
“I never said good.”
“You said three-legged elks could be quite graceful.”
He covered his mouth with his knuckles. She presumed to hide his smile.
“You know I thought you were a good letter writer,” she said, finally managing to get her feet up next to his. She crossed her ankles.
He gave her a disgruntled look. “I am.”
She shook her head. “I thought so. But then I got here and realized you didn’t even begin to do this place justice.”
He snorted.
“You never told me that your creek was actually a river. You’d need a boat to cross that thing.”
“Yeah, well, you never told me it was you who went sniffing roses up at the Hill, not Diana. Or that you wrote all those letters, not her.”
Oh. He knew. “She was there too,” Ellie protested weakly. “I’m sure she gave an occasional sniff.”
“You lied to me.”
“I didn’t. I told the truth. I just didn’t sign my name to it.” Her heart was pounding.
Beau rubbed his face, looking careworn. “My brother wants me to marry you. He’s got his shotgun up there at the stable, and the pastor ready. I thought I’d better warn you.”
Ellie’s feet went thudding off the rail. “He what?”