Boy Blue (Boxcar Boys #2)

1. Wolfe

wolfe

There was a blizzard approaching from the west, so I drove into the town of Hysham along the frontage road, zipping over the railroad crossing, just ahead of a giant, three-engine freight train, which had paused on the rails, chuffing, impatient to get going.

There was a kid dicking around by the tracks and two more on top of a boxcar as the wind picked up and the snow started coming down, but I didn’t pay them much mind.

I had to get to the market to get supplies for the storm and head back to Diamond Willow, the cabin I had purchased the previous March.

I had arrived in Montana at the tail end of the previous winter, which had been hard enough for a newcomer like me. Spring and summer had been easy. And now, a blizzard? It was only October.

That was fine. I’d be prepared, food wise.

I had a generator, two oil lamps, canned food, and dried food.

I had wood for the fire. I had water in jugs in case the pipes froze.

What I didn’t have was fresh milk and butter and eggs.

Beef and fresh vegetables for a stew. And donuts.

Cake donuts were my favorite. They were made fresh every day by the market’s baker, and they always ran out.

As I trundled my truck up the street to the market, I passed the feed and grain, now owned by a man named Morgan Malone, a sad sack if I ever saw one.

Sure, he’d been in an accident and walked with a cane, and his aunt had died, but he was alive, wasn’t he?

He was free. He could sell up and move any time he wanted, but all he’d done at his aunt’s funeral was glower, as if every person in town was there just to spit at his feet.

There was no saving someone who looked at life like that.

I parked in the small parking lot of Hysham Market and made my way inside as cold snowflakes sifted down the collar of my parka.

I’d left it unzipped because I ran warm and didn’t think the snow would hit so quickly.

I figured I had about an hour to shop and get home before the temperature dropped and the drifts started piling up, and the wind began to howl.

Once at the cabin, I could hunker down, attend to my orders. Then, after my chores were done, I could build a fire to sit in front of and enjoy my tea and cake donuts, all well deserved.

The market was crowded; everybody was getting ready for sub-zero temperatures and piles of snow. Near the apples, Ambrose and his pals had surrounded Morgan Malone and were talking animatedly to him, probably about supplies he needed for the blizzard.

Morgan glared at them, working his jaw like a bouncer eagerly awaiting his opportunity to bust some heads.

What an ass. Ambrose, Neville, and Maurice were invaluable.

They’d given me great advice the previous March about how to survive in Montana.

Where to buy wood. About saving water in jugs even though I had a well and a cistern because just-in-case.

About how ice hanging from the eaves looked pretty, but that it could pull at the roofline and weaken it.

Take out a shovel and knock those pretty things down!

I was obedient and did as they suggested, and I survived my first winter just fine. Now a new winter approached, with an early blizzard coming in, and I was prepared. Well, I would be soon, once I was done at the market.

The three older gentlemen also been widely curious about my history, but I left it vague, pointing them in the direction of my leatherwork apprenticeship with a gentleman by the name of Ricky Patterson who, in one short season, had given me a life skill that no one could take from me.

Neville, the quietest of the bunch, had even given me my first sale: An order to take his grandfather’s brass belt buckle and make a leather belt with it—the grandfather, as I soon learned, who had driven cattle in the last, great days of the Goodnight-Loving Trail out of Southern Colorado.

I charged him twenty-five dollars. He tipped me ten and seemed well pleased with the results.

Word got around, and I soon had a little business going fixing harnesses and saddles and bridles.

Fixing straps for purses. Creating leather wristlets.

Re-braiding whips. Making a braided hatband.

Making lanyards for the church bazaar and other community drives.

Business had picked up over the summer but had slowed down at the first nip in the air.

My last sale had been in early September, when I received a call from Mr. Tate, who owned a great deal of land in Wyoming and who, near as I could figure, knew everyone who knew anyone.

I’d been recommended to him by Gus Odell, a rancher who lived in town and who’d received some livestock from Mr. Tate—a horse by the name of Honey.

Gus wanted to help me, and so made the connection between us. I was currently working on two saddles and two bridles for Mr. Tate, but had been stymied by a back order of supplies from the feed and grain.

Mr. Tate, in addition to a ranch-style retreat, also ran a prison rehab. Well, had run. The program was over now, and the place the ex-cons had created out of the wilderness with pretty much their bare hands was now a kind of adult sleep-away camp, with rustic beds going for five-hundred a night.

I had heard about the rehab program Mr. Tate ran when I’d gotten released from Reynoldsville State Prison, but I never applied because I figured that me and my measly eight months in jail wouldn’t give me enough time behind bars to qualify.

I was always somewhere in the middle, either too needy or not needy enough.

Always unworthy. Until, that is, I stumbled upon an ad that Ricky Patterson had placed on an online ranch jobs site.

Leatherwork apprentice wanted. What a life-changer that apprenticeship had been.

With the skills Dick had taught me, I could survive on my own.

Overheated in the market, even with my parka unzipped, I pushed my buggy—locals called it a cart—over to the meat counter.

There, I met up with Mabel and her dog, Mister Rocket, a sharp-eyed Russell Terrier who, as evidenced by his welcoming wag and open-mouthed panting, might actually be glad to see me.

I’d worked hard to earn the dog’s trust, though I knew that I still smelled like prison, even after all this time.

I came up to them and made kissy noises and reached out to pet him. “Hello, sweetness,” I said to him. And to Mabel, I said, “Hello, ma’am.”

She had the sweetest eyes. She had grandmother eyes, dark and bright at the same time, and it just about made me cry to look in them.

My own grandmother passed away while I was in prison, so I hadn’t been able to go to the funeral.

Not that I would have been allowed near the family had the funeral taken place after I got out.

Well, it was too late to think about it now, so I settled my shoulders and focused on Mabel and Mister Rocket.

“Getting everything you need, ma’am?” I asked her, looking at her cart. It was, I was glad to see, stocked with good things to eat: bread and milk and cheese and butter, bundles of carrots and of onions, a bag of peaches and of rhubarb, and two pints of mint chocolate chip ice cream.

“You’re sweet to ask,” she said. “And do you have a moment? I wanted to talk to you about making a new collar for Mister Rocket. Leather with brass fittings. Something very elegant.”

“Sure,” I said, stopping, letting the hurried crowd at the market ease around me. “Would you like me to make up some sketches, and then you can say yes or no?”

“That would be lovely.” She smiled at me, her smile that always made me melt. “And here,” she said, waving at her cart. “I was over by the baked goods, and the donuts were going fast. I grabbed a dozen cake for you.”

It took her both hands to lift up the brown box to me. The number 12 was written across the top in red grease pencil, next to the word Cake.

“Oh.” My breath just about left me as I took the box.

I’d been in Hysham a little over half a year, and I was still taken aback by the most common of kindnesses.

Like someone in a truck waving to me as they passed me, even though I didn’t know them.

Ambrose and Neville and Maurice taking me under their collective wing.

Gus making that call to Mr. Tate. The two baristas, Shane and Julian, going out of their way to introduce me to new coffee blends, even though I was a dyed-in-the-wool tea drinker.

Then there was the one time, back in August, that Young Tommy (who was not young), and the energetic Deputy Hartland had taken it upon themselves to drive out to my place to warn me about the grass fire headed my way from the low hills beyond the Hysham Canal.

“We sent out a text message to everyone,” Young Tommy had said. “Did you receive it?”

From the look on his face, I knew that if I admitted I usually turned my phone off, I’d get a round scolding. He had Watchful Dad written all over him.

“No, sir,” I said. Puzzled, the sheriff and deputy looked at each other as if wondering how I had missed the text. Which meant that I had to admit that my phone had been off. “I think my phone was off,” I said. “Old habit. I’ll keep it on from now on.”

“See that you do, young man,” Young Tommy said. To which Deputy Hartland added, “The fire probably won’t cross the Yellowstone River, but do be prepared to evacuate.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

It was that kind of kindness that had softened me from the hardness I’d built up around me during my time in prison.

Nobody but nobody could have survived the onslaught of care and concern and the reachings out the town of Hysham had given me.

Nobody but Morgan Malone, who was now stomping out of the store as though somebody had offended him.

Ambrose and Neville, and Maurice ambled in his wake because they obviously had more advice to give.

Advice and bundles of wood which Morgan would surely need in that feed and grain, a great cave of a building with windows that were too thin and a furnace that, as I recall from my few visits there, gasped in effort to stave off even the slightest drop in temperature.

Oralee Malone, Morgan’s aunt, now sadly passed, had done the best she could with her place, at least the way I saw it. The feed and grain was ancient, but it had been a cornerstone of the town since the beginning. A bit of living history.

Morgan didn’t seem to appreciate any of that. Well, that was fine. I avoided him. He hadn’t been in town long and, according to the grapevine, was set on leaving as soon as he could. Except there was the blizzard coming, which would lock everyone down.

Including me. I needed to get back home before that happened.

“Thank you, Mabel,” I said. “I need to get moving to get back before the storm hits. I’ll have the sketches for that collar soon as I can.”

“No rush, sweet Wolfe,” she said. “His gotcha day isn’t until December first.”

“Sounds good,” I said to her, then ambled along the aisles, enjoying the hubbub without really talking to anyone.

Being among people gave me a sense of connection, even if I didn’t talk to anyone as I shopped. I selected chuck roast for stew, and the veggies, bread, milk, and eggs. The shelves were starting to look thin, but that only made sense.

Hauling everything out to my truck, I tucked the plastic carry bags into the truck bed, tightened some rope over them, got in, started the engine, and drove out of town the way I came in.

Which was the back way, as I thought of it, along the frontage road that went past the truck scale on the west side of town. I seldom encountered anyone along that road, so it would be a straight shot as I raced to beat the blizzard to my place.

As I crossed the railroad tracks, the freight train had gotten moving, headed west, the tail end of it just going over the rise in a swirl of thickening snowfall.

I noticed someone walking across the gated yard of the feed and grain through a thick curtain of falling snow. Was it someone Morgan Malone knew?

With a shrug, I put my foot on the gas pedal and sped up.

The road, dark beneath the swirling snow snakes, was plenty clear of ice.

Which would not be the case come nightfall.

I needed to be home before the blizzard really hit.

As I drove, I planned dinner in my head, thought about making sure my workshop was locked up tightly, and that I had enough dry wood to make it cozy inside the cabin as I watched the storm swirl outside.