Chapter Ten
Ten
Why hadn’t he kissed Lizbet when he had the chance, Gabe wondered, as he rode his bay gelding, Shadrach, through the stinging blast of snow practically blinding him and making him shiver, even in his heavy winter coat.
Shadrach was high-stepping, and the going was slow, and Gabe kept right on thinking of Lizbet, how sweet she’d looked, standing there in her bad-weather getup with tears magnifying her impossibly blue eyes.
Carrying her across the street from the general store to Ornetta Parkin’s front gate had been an impulse, and it had stirred him up inside, set things to spinning and tilting every which way.
He’d been unable to catch his breath, at first, or even speak.
Given that he’d already made a damn fool of himself, he should have just gone for broke and kissed Lizbet Fontaine like he meant business. Which he had.
He’d wanted to take Lizbet Fontaine in his arms and kiss her until her toes curled inside those blocky schoolmarm shoes of hers.
The whole thing was intriguing.
Disturbing, too.
He didn’t do things like that, sweeping a woman off her feet, carrying her through deepening snow and then wanting to kiss her.
Even so, he regretted that he’d missed the chance.
Instead of saying something sensible when he set her down, he’d touched her wind-chilled cheek with the back of his hand, inwardly wrestling with the sudden, startling desire he’d felt, and then he’d just turned around and walked away, without saying a word.
Nearing the Jarvis place, where poor Minnie was suffering from a bout of rheumatism, Gabe met the doctor.
Like Gabe, Max Gannon was on horseback. Most likely, his buggy wouldn’t have made it out of Silver Hills, given how deep the snow was.
The men guided their horses in close and still had to shout to be heard over the howling wind.
Gabe yelled to Doc that Pearl was sick, and Doc yelled back that he’d stop at Ornetta’s as soon as he got back to town.
With that, they parted ways, traveling in opposite directions.
It took the better part of an hour to cover the distance between town and home, including the brief chat with the doctor along the way, and Gabe figured he and Shadrach were both about frozen solid.
Gabe’s feet felt numb in his boots.
He put the horse away in the stall next to its partner, Abednego, checked their water and made sure they had plenty of feed. Shadrach got an extra scoop of grain for making the long slog in bad weather.
Gabe stopped to pat Lucy, the old cow who’d stopped giving milk six months before. She was useless, for all practical intents and purposes, but she was also a living creature who’d served his family well for years. He couldn’t bring himself to put the animal down.
For the time being, he meant to go on buying butter and what little milk he used from a neighbor, Susan Henderson.
With his head down, Gabe fought his way from the barn to the house, wondering if he ought to string a rope between the two buildings, give himself something to hold on to as he went back and forth.
There was a blizzard brewing, and ranchers and farmers especially had been known to get lost in their own front yards, suffer frostbite or even freeze to death, depending how their luck ran.
When he let himself into the kitchen, though, Hector yipped and then leaped at Gabe as though he’d never expected to see him again.
Stiff with cold, Gabe took the time to greet the dog properly, then, after Hector had calmed down a little, he shook out his hat over the sink, peeled off his gloves and then his coat.
The fire in the cookstove had gone out, so he built a new one, his motions slow and awkward as his fingers came back to life.
Once the fire was going strong, Gabe brewed some coffee, poured a mugful and sat down at the battered old table to wait out the thawing process.
He realized too late that his boots were caked in snow and muck from the barn, and he’d been messing up the kitchen floor just by sitting there.
His mother would have protested, and so would Bonnie.
Both of them had taken a lot of pride in keeping a clean and tidy house.
Bonnie.
For a long time, he’d been able to picture her bustling around that kitchen, preparing meals, clearing up afterward, all the time telling him about her day, but today her image didn’t come as quickly and clearly as before.
Gabe closed his eyes and braced himself against a wave of guilt.
He’d picked up another woman, square in the middle of town, and carried her across the road. And he’d wanted to kiss her afterward.
Hector whined and rested his muzzle on Gabe’s right thigh.
Gabe opened his eyes, patted the dog’s head.
If it hadn’t been so cold outside, he’d have gone up to visit the grave, told Bonnie he was sorry.
But was he sorry?
No, he was surprised to realize.
No, his only real regret was that he hadn’t followed through and kissed Lizbet soundly, right there in front of God and everybody.
Frustrated with himself, Gabe shoved a hand through his wet hair and swore under his breath.
For a distraction, he stood up and walked over to the sink, kicked off his boots and foot-shoved them beside the back door, where they belonged.
Then he turned his attention to the window above the sink, coffee mug still in his left hand, and watched the snow. It had slackened off a little, though long experience told him that was temporary, and if he wanted to run a line between the house and the barn, he’d better do it right away.
Having made that decision, Gabe put his coat and boots back on, leaving his gloves to dry near the stove, and set out for the barn.
This time, Hector came with him.
While he was searching for the long rope he kept for just this purpose, as had his father and grandfather before him, he came across a forgotten project, one he hadn’t been able to bear looking at after Bonnie and Abigail died.
He could make out the shape under the dusty old tarp covering it, and his throat instantly tightened.
With a trembling hand, Gabe reached out and uncovered the sizable dollhouse he’d been building for Abigail, back when she was still alive and healthy. He’d planned to finish the miniature structure and put it under the tree on Christmas Eve for his little girl to find the next morning.
He swallowed hard, and Hector whimpered again, sensing his sorrow.
And there was still sorrow, you bet there was, but there was something else, too. A certain quiet, slowly expanding joy.
He thought of Frankie, Lizbet’s kid sister, and her small brother.
He’d seen them a few days before, standing in front of the general store, gazing through the frosted window at a display of toys—dolls, wagons, sleds, building blocks—all the enticements of childhood Christmases.
They’d seemed so wistful, the pair of them, that Gabe, in town to fetch his mail, had felt a pang in the area of his heart.
Now, there in his kitchen, Gabe pictured Frankie playing with the elaborate dollhouse he’d built, moving the small pieces of furniture he’d carved, the rugs and curtains Bonnie had stitched together.
Gabe knew Lizbet was low on money, if she had any at all—it hadn’t been a stretch to figure that out. Practically everybody in town knew she’d been looking for work for weeks, visiting the same places over and over again and being turned away each time.
A muscle tightened in Gabe’s jaw as he thought of her stepfather, and how he’d abandoned her and the little ones in an unfamiliar town, probably with little or no money; Ornetta had told him a thing or two about William Keller, and he hadn’t liked what he’d heard.
No doubt Keller had wanted to punish her for refusing to marry old man Middlebrook.
Something about a deal going sour, Ornetta said, and though that was just a rumor, Sam Ernshaw, one of Ornetta’s boarders, had mentioned a financial fiasco in passing, and he might have been in a position to know.
After all, the man worked for Middlebrook, right there in the bank.
It was the town’s only bank, in fact, which was why Gabe and several other people, including his best friend, John Avery, rode over to Painted Pony Creek to make their deposits and withdrawals in another establishment.
John earned next to nothing preaching, but he was the only blacksmith for miles around, which meant he did a lot of business.
Buoyed by the thought of making a child happy, Gabe sighed covered the dollhouse up again.
It was a while ’til Christmas; maybe he’d finish it—wash it down, give it a coat of paint, maybe block off a few more tiny rooms and carve more furniture.
A thing like that ought to be giving someone joy, not wasting away in a barn, and Gabe had worked hard on it.
He’d make sure there was something for the boy, too. A wagon, maybe. Or a sled.
The decision made, Gabe gathered the rope from its hook on the wall, looped it around one bare hand and told Hector, “Let’s get this done before it gets dark.”
The job was an awkward one—the chill in his hands made him fumble quite a bit—but after roughly half an hour, during which the storm was rapidly gathering momentum, it was done. The rope stretched taut, waist-high, from the barn to the house, securely tied at both ends.
Gabe looked in on the chickens—they were huddled together in their sturdy coop and clucking a lot after they spotted Hector in the doorway, but otherwise they were doing fine, like the horses and the cow.
Back in the house, Gabe built the fire up again, wrangled some pots and pans from the cupboards next to the sink and fried up a hefty meal of ham and eggs. Like always, he shared the bounty with Hector, who clearly appreciated the gesture.
After he’d eaten and put the kitchen to rights again, Gabe lit an oil lamp—it was still fairly early, but the storm was swallowing up whatever light there was—and sat back down at the table to read the mail he’d ridden into town to fetch.
Of all things, there was a letter from Henry Middlebrook, which surprised him. Nobody reading it would have suspected that the greedy old codger had ever butted heads with Gabe.
It was friendly, that letter, to the point of being smarmy.
Henry wanted to buy the mineral rights to the Whitfield farm—old news—and commence mining for silver. He offered to compensate Gabe handsomely, in addition to the purchase, should his crews strike paydirt.
Gabe sighed and set the letter aside.
He didn’t want his land stripped and gouged and gutted, and although he wasn’t a rich man by any means, Gabe had no real interest in building wealth. Furthermore, even if he had been willing to make such an agreement, he wouldn’t have chosen Middlebrook to be on the receiving end.
He had all the money he needed, and some put away against hard times.
The house was livable—he’d put on a new roof over the summer—and the barn was as solid as old Noah’s ark, and he had no call, or desire, to wear fancy clothes like old Henry.
Nor did he want an automobile, unlike practically everybody else he knew. They were loud, and too much trouble in the bargain, always breaking down alongside the road or flinging up dirt and mud from all four wheels.
Feeling particularly lonely, now that the chores were done and the dishes had been washed and put back in their places and he had nothing much to keep himself occupied, he turned his attention back to the mail again.
He found several advertisements for farming equipment and the like, none of which interested him, a statement from his bank—and a letter from his younger brother, Finn.
There was no return address, but the envelope was postmarked Seattle and dated nearly two weeks back.
Gabe was at once pleased and wary.
He and Finn weren’t exactly estranged, but they weren’t close like a lot of other brothers, either. Not anymore.
Though good-natured, Finn had been three kinds of a hell-raiser growing up, and he’d caused their parents—and Gabe himself—plenty of trouble.
When their parents died, Finn hadn’t come home. He’d collected his share of the inheritance, by mail, and all but thrown away his share of the farm.
If Finn had grieved over losing their mother and father, he’d never given any indication of it. And worse, as far as Gabe was concerned, he hadn’t even responded when Gabe wrote to tell him that Bonnie and Abigail were gone.
With all that in mind, Gabe took his time opening the letter—it was one page, written in Finn’s familiar cramped hand, slanting to the left—and the brief message made Gabe want to crumple the thing and toss it into the fire.
I’m coming home, Finn had scrawled. We have a lot of things to iron out, you and me.
Well, Gabe thought, with a mixture of hope and irritation, you’re right about that much anyway.