Dorothy Clark (7 page)

The door squeaked.

Nanna!

The door opened. Light flooded the stable. She tightened her grip on the stall wall and tried to look over her shoulder. “I’m here, Nanna. Sweetpea—”

Boots thumped against the plank floor. “Ho, girl. Come on, now.”

Cole.

Hoofs thudded. So did her heart. Sweetpea’s rump and tail disappeared from her view. She reached her foot back down to the floor, released her grip and turned to face him.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes.” Her voice quavered with the trembling that was setting in. “But I’m grateful to be free. Sweetpea had me trapped in the corner. She...wouldn’t move.”

He nodded, bent down and picked up the harness she’d dropped. “Next time, snub her tight to the post while you harness her. She can’t back you into the corner that way.”

He’d rescued her, again.
An odd sort of tingling warmth hit her stomach. “I’ll do that.” She brushed a lock of hair that had fallen forward back over her shoulder and remembered her disheveled appearance. Heat crawled into her cheeks, though she wouldn’t have thought it possible they could get warmer. She headed for the door.

“Do you want me to hitch Sweetpea to the buggy for you? Or will you be waiting until after dinner to go to town?”

She stopped dead in her tracks and looked back at him. “Surely it’s not dinnertime?” How long had she been trapped by that miserable mare?

“No. Not for another hour.”

An hour? The warmth in her stomach turned cold. “Then why—” She clamped her lips together, leaving the question unasked. There was no sense in letting him know she—

“Because I got to thinking about Sweetpea’s little trick and that there would be no one to help you if she got you cornered.”

The answer rolled off his tongue easily enough, but he sounded irritated. Had he realized she knew he’d not had time to deliver clapboards to Pinewood and return? Why had he lied about the sale? To make her grandfather agree to sign the bank note? She nodded and what was left of her coil slipped. She shoved the loosened knot of hair back toward the crown of her head. “I see. Well, whatever the reason you’re here, thank you for saving me from my...predicament.”

He shrugged and raised the harness he held. “Shall I hitch up?”

Her plan had been ruined. He would be at his mill now. She shook her head and the coil came wholly undone; hairpins pinged against the floor. Heat flared into her cheeks again. “No. I believe I’ll wait and go to town tomorrow.”

“As you wish.” He pivoted, hung the harness on its peg, then led Sweetpea toward her stall.

His voice sounded strained. Was he angry? She grabbed the drawstrings, yanked her purse off the grain chest and hurried out the open door onto the graveled carriageway. There was a strange horse tied to the hitching post. Just what she needed, a caller—and she all dirty and undone. She looked at the porch but spotted no one. Good. Whoever it was had already gone inside. She could sneak upstairs and repair her appearance before she was seen.

She ran for the porch, hurried to the kitchen door and stepped inside.

“Oh my! What happened to you?”

She looked at Gertrude’s startled expression and shrugged. “Sweetpea got ornery and trapped me in the corner when I tried to put the harness on her.” She shot a glance at the door to the hallway. “Where is our caller?”

“What caller? There’s no one here.”

“Well there’s a strange horse tied—” She whipped around, opened the door and stepped out onto the porch in time to see Cole mount and ride away.

Chapter Nine

I
t’s only a path.

Sadie stopped behind the garden fence and forced her gaze to the hard-beaten, boot-trodden soil that stretched from the gate to the edge of the woods, so close the branches of the near trees hung over the weathered chestnut pickets.

Shivers chased up her spine. She wrapped her arms about herself and rubbed her upper left arm, found the hidden lump, remembered the sickening snap of the bone when Payne threw her to the ground.

Stop it!

She whirled and started back up the garden walk, the heat of the sunbaked slate warming her feet through the soles of her slippers. She couldn’t do it. No matter how badly she wished to find those ledgers, she couldn’t go into those woods.

But she refused to run, though everything inside her was crying to do just that. She was through running away. She’d been doing so for four years. She lowered her hands to her sides and clenched them into fists. “You
will
conquer this fear, Sadie Spencer! You
must.
You have to be ready when another opportunity arises.”

Her low, tense words hung on the hot, still air, quivering and useless. She turned onto the path to the stable and walked toward the hitching post at the end. Cole had lied about that big sale. He’d not taken a wagonload of clapboard to Pinewood as he’d claimed. He’d been riding a horse. But there was no sense in telling Poppa until she got those ledgers and could refute any lie Cole might tell to cover what he was really doing.

“Almighty God, please give me the courage to go to the shingle mill the next time I learn Cole is gone—even if I must walk that path. And please expose Cole’s scheme to me, whatever it may be, that I might help Poppa. Amen.”

An image of the horse flashed into her head. She could see it as plainly as if it were still standing there. A golden chestnut with flaxen mane and tail. Cole’s horse was gray. She frowned and moved on to the stable. Why had Cole been riding a strange horse? And why had he
really
come back from wherever he had gone yesterday? The reason he’d given was ridiculous. Did he truly think she would believe it was in case Sweetpea had pinned her in the corner? Not for a moment! Though it would be nice if it were true.

She opened the stable door and stepped into the dim interior, paused as the memory of Cole standing there looking at her with Sweetpea’s reins in his hands flashed into her head. For that moment she’d felt...safe. No. That was foolishness. She was letting her gratitude and relief at being freed from Sweetpea’s tyranny run away with her imagination. She mustn’t let Cole’s act sway her from her purpose, lest she never discover his. Still, it was odd that she hadn’t felt frightened, only...nervous.

Sweetpea stretched her head out over the stall door and whickered, thumping her hoof against the floor.

Her thoughts returned to the task at hand, and she hurried to the stall and stroked the mare’s nose. “Oh, no, Sweetpea. You can’t fool me again with your pretense of friendship. Nanna and I are going to town—” she reached up and snatched the halter from its peg on the post “—and this time, you’re getting snubbed to the post while I harness you.”

* * *

The vertical blade screeched through the log as the pitman arm lowered the sash, chattered as the arm raised it again and the log carriage inched forward. Cole put down his pen and crossed to the office door, looking out at the sawyer running the saw and the joiner fitting the rough-sawn boards for the smoothing plane. The plank floor vibrated beneath his feet.

A frisson of satisfaction spurted through him. The mill was turning out sawn stock faster than ever. Simply having the sawyer take a cut off both sides of a log, then turn it onto one of the flat sides before he began cutting boards saved them the time and labor spent having to hand-edge them after they were cut, as was the usual method. And that idea had enabled him to lower the board-foot cost and still increase Manning’s small profit because of greater sales. The other improvements he’d made had also proved worth both the time and money he’d expended. And, due to the changes he’d implemented, there were fewer accidents now.

He shifted his gaze to where four men worked with froes and mauls, draw shaves and planes riving out clapboards. He’d begun filling all the shingle orders at his own shingle mill so he could put Manning’s shingle weavers to work making clapboards, and they still couldn’t turn out the work fast enough to fill order requests.

But that machine could. If the clapboard machine was as fast as his shingle machine, it would turn out ten times the work those men could in the same amount of time. And the clapboards would all be of a size and superior to man-made ones.

Still, he could make no further plans until he heard from Eastman and learned the dimensions and installing requirements, but he hoped the water-powered machine would fit where the men now worked. If he didn’t have to build an addition to hold it, they could have the machine in place a few days after it arrived. It wouldn’t take long to teach the men to operate it. Then Manning’s mill would have the advantage of being able to make superior clapboards faster than all the other sawmills in the area.
If
he could convince Manning to sign a bank note to buy the machine.

He shoved doubts away and strode to the open edge of the deck, skimmed his gaze over the workers picking up and stacking to dry the sawn stock that had been slid down the skids to the yard. He focused on the men who were loading already dried wood on a wagon. After today’s delivery, he would have more money to put in the profit column—even after he paid the men. It felt good. Manning’s business had been shakier than the floor beneath him when he stepped in to manage it.

He lifted his lips in a grim smile. Having put Manning’s business back on a solid basis eased a bit of the guilt he carried for the hurt Payne had caused the Townsends—and Sadie.

Sadie.

The screech of the saw and the smack of the boards slapping against one another as they were loaded faded. He jammed his hands in his pockets and looked out at the distant forested hills. She’d had a smudge on her cheek. Her
pink
cheeks. And a piece of straw stuck in her hair that was half caught up in a skewed pile on her head and half hanging down her back. His fingers twitched. The shiny acorn color and the silky look of her hair had him hard-pressed not to pluck the piece of straw away as an excuse to touch it. And her eyes— He’d stood there hoping she’d lift her long lashes so he could look full into their brown depths, all shadowy with embarrassment and sparking with indignation at the same time.

He blew out a breath, yanked a hand free of his pocket and ran it over the back of his neck. She’d been mad as a hornet at that mare. But even angry, dusty and dirty, disheveled and disgusted as she’d been yesterday, Sadie was flat-out beautiful, with an inner dignity and queenly grace that set his thoughts to traveling down paths they had no business to tread. None. But he found them trotting along anyway. Heading for nowhere. Like now.

He frowned, turned and headed back to the office. He had men’s pay to figure and record before he drove that wagonload of lumber to town. That should keep his head where it belonged.

* * *

“Good day, Rachel. Welcome home, Sadie!”

“Thank you, Mrs. Braynard.” Sadie shifted the reins into one hand and waved at the plump woman sweeping the board path in front of her cabin. The news of her return was out now. The entire village would probably know before she reached the mercantile. Her lips twitched.

“What is amusing you, Sadie?”

She glanced over at her grandmother and grinned. “I was just remembering how, when we were young, Daniel, Willa, Callie, Ellen and I would run as fast as we could from Willa’s house to the Sheffield House to see if we could get to the hotel before the news of our coming reached Mrs. Sheffield.”

“Sadie Spencer! You be respectful of your elders!” Her grandmother huffed, looked down and smoothed her skirt. But it was too late; she’d already seen her smile.

“I’m only being honest, Nanna. Daniel’s mother is a kind, warmhearted woman, but she does like to spread news.”

“Well, someone had to spread the alarm when Daniel led you girls off on an adventure.”

How wonderful it was to have her grandmother acting normal. Tears stung her eyes. “You do Daniel a disservice, Nanna. He used to try and get away from us.” She laughed and shook her head. “Poor Daniel, he never could have any solitude. I wasn’t fast enough to keep up with him when he ran, but I was always right on his heels and would discover where he was hiding. He called me Quick Stuff.” Memories bubbled up from a forgotten well of happiness. She’d had a wonderful childhood.

A wheel dropped into a rut, jolting her back to the present. She reined in Sweetpea at the end of Brook Street, then made the turn onto Main Street, and the buggy rumbled over the Stony Creek Bridge. One of their favorite places to play...

“Oh, my. Look at that.” Her grandmother grabbed the leather hold strap and turned her head toward the side of the road. “Mr. Dibble is enlarging his establishment. I shall have to tell your grandfather. He’ll want to know all about it.”

“Yes, he will.” She drew back on the reins, leaned forward and peered beyond her grandmother at the timber skeleton of an addition being built on the back corner of Dibble’s Livery. Two men were working on the partially finished roof. Another stood on a ladder, handing a board up to them. Two others were nailing boards on the sides.

She dragged her gaze to the ground and looked at the pile of clapboard waiting at the base of the new structure. Had Cole told the truth? Was this the sale he’d spoken of? No, of course not. This clapboard had to be from another sawmill. A man couldn’t deliver a load of wood on horseback.

“Why are you frowning, Sadie? Does something displease you?”

Why
was
she frowning? What had she to be disappointed about? That Cole had lied? What had she expected from a thief? She’d let his kindness and his protective ways sway her good judgment—kindnesses he was being paid for! She straightened on the seat and shook her head. “No, Nanna. The sun is shining in my eyes. Shall we move on?”

She glanced at the road behind them to make sure the way was clear and snapped the reins to start Sweetpea moving again. As soon as she was finished with the shopping, she would go to see Willa and ask her to come to Butternut Hill and accompany her to Cole’s mill. She had to get those ledgers before Cole had her believing his lies.