Chapter Five
Five
The early chores were done—feeding the horses and the old cow, Lucy, who no longer gave milk—and turning them out to spend the day grazing in the pasture. Gabe had scattered chicken feed for the hens and made sure the water pans were full, and now he had time on his hands.
Gabe did not like having time on his hands.
It was too easy to start thinking. Remembering.
So he was chopping wood by midmorning, even though he had enough to keep the house warm for several winters, hard ones, too. Blizzards be damned.
He heard the rattle of an approaching rig from beneath the long canopy of cottonwood trees, and Hector dashed in that direction, barking, not because he was any kind of watchdog, but out of pure, simple joy.
That dog loved company, but he had his favorites and his non -favorites, too. The last time Henry Middlebrook had come by in yet another fruitless attempt to buy the farm, Hector had latched on to the old man’s coattail and darn near knocked him over before Gabe called him off.
Now Gabe buried the ax deep into the chopping block and straightened his back, wiped his sweating forehead with a shirtsleeve and waited.
Doc Gannon appeared, driving his buggy, his spritely pinto gelding hitched up and prancing like a show pony.
Doc—Max Gannon, MD—was in his midthirties, a few years older than Gabe, leanly built but strong, too. He’d grown up and gotten his medical education back East, in Maine, and he still had the accent.
Gabe had wondered, more than once, why a man with so much to offer could have ended up in remote Silver Hills, Montana, but he’d never asked. If Doc Gannon wanted to keep his private business private, well, that was something Gabe understood.
Gannon lifted one hand in greeting and touched the brim of his hat.
Gabe didn’t smile—he’d all but forgotten how, to tell the truth—but he wasn’t unhappy to see the other man.
Max Gannon looked after sick or injured folks who couldn’t pay his fee, right alongside those who could, and Gabe had never once seen him use that buggy whip jutting up beside the seat to make his horse hurry.
“Morning,” Doc said, pulling up near the towering woodpile. “You expecting another ice age or something?”
Gabe made a gruff sound—let it pass for a laugh. “I ran out of things to do,” he confessed. “Decided to chop more wood and maybe deliver some to the schoolhouse and the church and maybe Mrs. Parkin’s place. She’s too old for a chore like that, and Pearl’s no great hand at it, either.”
He hadn’t actually planned ahead that far, but as soon as the idea to share all that split pine and kindling occurred to him, he saw that it made sense.
Doc gave an approving nod. “That’s good,” he said.
“What brings you by, Doc?” Gabe asked. “Not that you’re not welcome, or anything like that.”
Doc chuckled. He had very blue eyes, reddish-brown hair and, like Gabe, he was clean-shaven.
In the next moment, the doctor’s face turned serious. “I was out yonder, looking after the Severn kids. They’re little demons, the pack of them, but they’ve been having stomach trouble, according to their mother. Probably because they don’t get enough to eat a lot of the time.”
Of course Gabe knew the Severns; they were neighbors and had been for a long time. Danny Severn, the present head of household, had been a scoundrel and a close friend of Gabe’s brother, Finn’s. They’d stirred up seven kinds of devilment, the two of them, back in their schooldays.
Danny, unlike his salt-of-the-earth ancestors, was a confirmed drunkard, and he’d let a perfectly good farm go to hell.
Ironically, he’d married Sarah Holden, Henry Middlebrook’s pretty, well-spoken great-niece, who’d come out to Montana as a young girl, since her folks had both passed and she’d had no one else to turn to, and once she met up with Danny Severn, it was all over but the shoutin’.
They ran off and got married over in Painted Pony Creek, then came back because Danny’s pa, Zeke, was too old and too stove-up to run the farm anymore.
They’d seemed happy in the beginning, the two of them, and they’d started having babies right and left.
Old Henry, one of the richest men in Montana, was sour on the topic of his favorite nephew’s child, his only living blood relative, and rumor had it that he’d cut her off without a penny, soon as she threw in with Danny.
Life was hard for the Severns now; damned hard. But on the rare occasions when Gabe had encountered Sarah, she’d seemed happy enough, and she was quite generous, too, given how poor she was.
She’d brought baskets of bread and eggs and, once, a cake, after Bonnie and Abigail died. She’d never knocked on the door or left a note; she’d just left the food on the top step and slunk away, across the field toward home.
“I’ll take some meat and spuds over, if the kids are doing without,” Gabe said, with a nod in the direction of his smokehouse, which held too much food for one man and a dog, no question about it.
“I think they’re all right for now,” Doc said, with a sigh. “Sarah told me Ornetta sent out a whole slew of canned goods. Peas and beans and even blackberry jam. Old as she is, she and that granddaughter of hers raise a lot of grub in that patch of dirt back of the house.”
Gabe almost smiled, the way he had almost smiled at Lizbet Fontaine after she’d climbed down from the jitney, but before he’d spotted Henry Middlebrook, circling like a buzzard.
“You meet the new people?” he asked, realizing he hoped for news and wondering why he gave a damn. “Those folks who got off the jitney yesterday?”
“Heard about them.” Doc paused, shook his head, readjusted his hat, which was sweat stained and dusty.
“That’s all. Word around town is, Henry’s gone and made some kind of investment deal with a fellow from St. Louis.
Has a fancy wife, this stranger, two young children and a pretty stepdaughter of twenty or thereabouts. Spunky, from what I’m told.”
At the mention of Lizbet Fontaine, Gabe felt the bottom of his stomach give way like a trapdoor falling open, swinging on its hinges.
Henry Middlebrook wanted a wife—everybody in that part of the state knew that—but the decent women he’d courted wouldn’t have him, once he’d shown his true colors, for all his money and his grand house.
The one woman who would have married him in a heartbeat—his housekeeper, Ruth Harriman—evidently didn’t meet his lofty standards.
Too lowly and too old, that seemed to be his opinion of the widow Harriman. She was a servant and she was well into middle age, though still a lot younger than Middlebrook himself.
Gabe turned his head, spat.
“Trouble coming,” the doctor said. “I can smell it.”
Gabe agreed. He allowed himself to picture Lizbet Fontaine and wanted to saddle one of the horses, ride to town and rescue her from that greedy old son of a bitch before he could pull the wool over her eyes.
He shook his head, aware all of a sudden that she might not need rescuing, and rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. It felt gritty, as well as moist.
No, he’d leave Miss Fontaine be, unless she asked for his help. Brief as their encounter had been, Gabe had quickly realized she was capable of taking care of herself.
Up to a point, anyhow.
If the day warmed up a little, later on, he’d head for the creek, peel off his clothes, wade in and empty a bucket or two over his head.
Despite the fact that he was sweating, though, there was a sharp snap in the air, a sure sign that summer was gone and autumn was at the gate.
It was that chill, along with his dislike for idleness, that had inspired him to chop wood he didn’t need.
Other folks did, though, and he’d hitch up the buckboard and take them some, once he’d cooled off and cleaned up. He’d have an excuse for returning to town when he’d just been there the day before and done what he’d needed to do.
He wanted to visit a few places, see and talk to a few people. Get the feel of nothing in particular and everything in general. Though in a way he didn’t need to do that, because deep down he knew Doc Gannon was right.
Trouble wasn’t just on the way; it had already arrived.
“Guess I’d better get back to town,” the doctor said. “Jemima Tokey is due to have her little one anytime now.”
Gabe nodded, anxious, now that he’d made up his mind, to wash up a little, change his shirt, hitch up the buckboard and load it with wood.
He’d make his first delivery at Ornetta’s place, even though she seemed to disapprove of him, albeit with a certain politeness.
She stared at him in church most Sundays, probably because he sat on the last bench, his back to the wall beside the door, never bowing his head for prayer or singing along when the ancient organ huffed out hymns.
He couldn’t bring himself to tell her, or his friend, the blacksmith and stand-in preacher, John Avery, that he wouldn’t have shown up at all if he hadn’t thought his being there might help Bonnie and Abigail somehow, make it easier for them to settle in up there in Heaven.
Or maybe it was for a more selfish reason. Maybe he really wanted to make sure he could join them, when his own time came, because he wanted to be wherever they were.
For the time being, showing up on a Sunday morning and tossing a quarter into the collection plate was the best he could do, and if God was as good as John said, well, He’d understand.
Now Gabe waved a farewell to Doc as he drove away.
By then, he’d decided he wouldn’t go to the creek after all; suddenly, he was in too much of a hurry for that. Instead, he’d sponge himself off in the house, put on clean duds and get to loading wood.
Thus decided, he went inside, heated some water on the kitchen stove and poured it into a basin. He took off his dirty shirt, washed his upper body with soap strong enough to take the hide off a buffalo, dried himself off with a thin towel and fetched himself a clean shirt from upstairs.
It was wrinkled, that shirt, and stiff enough to stand up on its own, but it had been laundered and hung out to dry in the fresh air, and it smelled good.
He made sure of that.
Next, he rounded up the horses—they were enjoying their pasture time and didn’t come when he whistled for them. At least not the first time.
Soon enough, though, the buckboard was creaking under a load of split firewood, dried and seasoned, and the horses were hitched up and straining at the rigging.
Gabe usually didn’t take Hector to town with him, for many reasons, but that day, the dog looked so hopeful, Gabe just couldn’t leave him behind.
“Come on,” he said, making room on the wagon seat.
Delighted, Hector made one of his grand leaps, and Gabe caught him, held him steady until he was settled.
This dog.
Gabe’s throat tightened a little, picturing the Hector of three years back.
A puppy then, the dog had settled himself on Bonnie and Abigail’s grave whenever Gabe visited.
He’d made a sad, whimpering sound when Gabe wept and, at night, when he forced himself to lie down in the bed he’d shared with Bonnie, the dog had climbed up, settled himself as close to Gabe’s back as he could get and stayed there until morning.
After swallowing hard, Gabe brought the reins down on the horses’ backs with a light slap, just hard enough to get their attention, and headed back to town.