Lauraine Snelling (19 page)

“He insists he’s never mentioned marriage to Betsy.”

“But he rode her home a lot, and they seemed pretty cozy at that last party. I’m sure that where there is smoke there is fire. And the wind seems to be blowing it Lucas’s way.”

“Pay. How?”

“I’ve no idea.”

Mavis finished her coffee, shaking her head every other sip or bite of cake.

“You never had any trouble like this until I arrived, did you?” Cassie blinked away any possible tears. This was not the time for crying but for action. Other than leaving, what could they do?

“Cassie, Miss Lockwood . . .” Reverend Brandenburg leaned across the table, reaching for her hand. His wife took her other. “The people we are referring to have frequently transgressed the law but have steered clear of actual injury. They are mostly mouthy, they disturb the peace, and sometimes they have to spend a night or two in a jail cell. Our sheriff is watching them, but most importantly, our God is watching over you.”

The warmth of his hand and his gaze nearly undid her. “Th-thank you.” She swallowed hard and blinked several times, not bearing to look into his face any longer, for she would surely melt into a puddle of tears. Instead of saying anything more, she nodded.

Mrs. Brandenburg hugged her as they prepared to leave. “You are always welcome here, you and your show friends.”

“They’ve become my family, strange as it may seem.”

“It’s not strange at all. You’ve known each other for a long time and been through a lot together. God has a plan, you know.”

Cassie tried to smile, but for some reason her public smile refused to stay in place, wobbling into more tears. “Thank you for the coffee and cake.”

In spite of what they’d said, her mind sought answers to the questions that refused to stay down. Perhaps she did need to leave and take her people somewhere else, where being an Indian or having Indians for friends didn’t matter.

Was there such a place? Or were they right where God wanted them to be? That thought required prayer and pondering. If she were to really believe that God had brought her to this place, that she didn’t just come on a fluke because the show closed, a desperate run into the unknown, then . . . Then what would life be like if she truly believed? Would she ever be like Mavis, who believed that God was her heavenly father, that He loved her beyond measure, and she trusted He would guide in things like when to go to Hill City? Did God really care about such trivial things when He had to run the world too?

T
he ride back to the Bar E was silent most of the way. A heavy chill settled in Cassie’s middle and stayed there. What if . . . ?

Mavis glanced toward Cassie. “You needn’t worry about them, you know. I’m fairly certain those who the pastor was referring to are a bunch of blowhards—at least one is, and the others tag along with him. They’ve not done any real damage in all the years I’ve known them. Liquor is their backbone, and after they sleep it off—sometimes Edgar throws them in jail for twenty-four hours—they either forget about it or think the better of it.”

“But what if this time it doesn’t work that way?”

“If someone strange comes on the ranch at night, our dog will announce it to the world. And Ransom and Lucas trust his bark. Besides, you have Othello. When he barks, he sounds like a huge dog. And Dog too. Barking dogs scare drunks.”

“But what if someone were to injure or even kill the dogs?” The thought of Othello being wounded or killed made her want to cry already, with just the fear of it. “If something happens it’ll be all my fault.”

“Cassie, no! Try to grasp that you are not responsible for the actions of others. Your only control is through prayer, and that is in God’s hands, not yours. It is not your fault that you have a heart big enough to love your friends no matter the color of their skin or what they do for a living. Would you feel better if we went back and talked with Edgar? The sheriff? Asked him to keep an eye out for them? It always starts at the saloon. The final test, Cassie, is that we’ve asked God for protection, and He is far stronger, wiser than anything we have.”

“This is a test, then?”
Why would a test have to come so soon? I don’t know enough yet.
Mor would have said the same. But there were questions bubbling in her mind that seemed to have no answers. Questions like why did God allow the show to die like that. So many people there trusted Him. What happened to them?

Cassie inhaled a deep breath of the chilly air and forced herself to answer Mavis with a nod. “If you think there is no danger, then I will believe that. You know the people here. I don’t. But if the dogs start barking—I know Othello’s danger bark—I will be grabbing the rifle. And I will teach Micah to fire the shotgun.”

“What about Chief?”

“He doesn’t want anyone to know, but his eyes are not like they used to be. He can see things but not really detailed. That’s why he taught me to hunt. Before our trip south, the only live things I had ever shot were birds released in a shooting match. Mostly pigeons.”

“I see. How close must something be for him to see it well?”

“I’m not sure. I hate to make him feel bad, so I’ve never asked. But I know he would shoot to protect me, to protect all of us.”

When they reached the ranch, Mavis drove up to the cabin to unload the boxes for Cassie.

Micah greeted them. “Where do you want this?”

“Inside by the chifforobe.” Cassie climbed over the wheel and stepped to the ground. Othello instantly attached himself to her side, as though she’d been gone for days rather than hours.

Mavis gathered up her lines. “You know you are welcome to use the corrals at the barn for practice, if you want.”

“Thanks, but this is working well.”

“I’ll be baking bread in the morning.” She smiled at Micah when he returned. “What are the men doing tomorrow?”

“We’ll be back up with the trees. Some of those oak branches are the size of trees, so they take time. Ransom is bringing up another saw tomorrow.”

“I see. Oh, Cassie, if God says tomorrow is our day to drive to Hill City, we’ll leave early. I think we’ll ride in rather than use the wagon. If Runs Like a Deer would like to come along, there are plenty of saddle horses.”

“I’ll tell her. Maybe the sooner I get this over with, the better I’ll feel.” Cassie patted Othello’s head. “How will I know that we’re to go tomorrow?” To go into Hill City and get the discussion with Mr. Porter over with or to wait? All these decisions that she had to make now when the main one used to be whether to eat a meal in the dining tent or go without.

“One way is to make plans to do something and ask God to block those plans if we are not in tune with Him.”

Cassie gave a short nod. “If nothing happens to stop us, let’s do it tomorrow and get it over with. Can you bake bread the next day? If so, can you teach me? Someday we are going to have a stove with an oven, and I want to know how to bake bread and a lot of other things.”

“Yes, I’ll bake the next day. I’ll be ready to leave whenever you come to the house.” Mavis waved and turned the team in a tight circle to head back down the hill. Since they all kept using the same tracks, it was now beginning to look like more than a trail up to the cabin. The almost-road now continued up the hill too, to where the trees had been felled.

“Supper nearly ready,” Runs Like a Deer said after the greeting. “I found wild turnips today. Good patch. Also a walnut tree, the only one I found around here. I filled my basket. We can shell them in the evenings.”

That night after supper, all four of them sat shelling and husking the walnuts. Another skill Cassie had never learned and Runs Like a Deer had mastered. Cracking the hard shells was difficult enough; breaking away the tough husks was more difficult. They left dark brown stains on Cassie’s hands.

“Does this stuff come off?”

Runs Like a Deer grunted. “Someday.”

Cassie grinned. It was the closest Runs Like a Deer had come so far to joking.

She was joking, wasn’t she?

When the basket was empty, the men headed outside to the wagon, taking a kerosene lamp with them. Since they’d not started the stove out there, they didn’t have matches to light the lamp.

Cassie asked, “What will you do with the nuts?”

“Mix with dried chopped up elk, fat of some kind, and would add dried fruit if we had some. Berries, apples, pears. Whatever we can find. And give some to the missus.”

“They have apples in the cellar down at the ranch house. They came from the trees up here. Mavis said they planted those trees while they were building the cabin.”

“Long time ago.”

“Do you want me to ask for some apples? How will you dry them?”

“Next year.”

Before Cassie blew out the lamp, she checked to make sure Othello was lying on his bed by the door. She’d brought him in when it started freezing harder at night. Besides, she felt more secure with him nearby. Dog didn’t like it in the house.

She fell asleep thinking on the conversation with Reverend Brandenburg. She was almost asleep when she remembered. She’d not read those Psalms like she told Mavis she would. And her Bible was still out in the wagon.

Tomorrow, she would bring it in first thing.

She was all saddled and ready to go in the morning when she thought of the Bible again. The men had already gone up the hill, so she climbed into the Wild West wagon and found it in the cupboard where she had put it. One of these days she would need to get all the paper work into the cabin too, but all these drawers and cubbyholes made sorting things so much easier out here. The locket lay in a drawer too, but it seemed safer there. Pausing a moment, she thought back to the conversation with Mavis. Was this what was meant when she said God would guide? Did He sometimes guide by just staying quiet, letting you use common sense and what you thought best? Would she always have more questions like now?

“You sure you don’t want to go along?” she asked Runs Like a Deer when she put her Bible on the shelf by the bed.

“No. Better for me to stay here.”

Cassie stopped. “Why?”

“Just better.”

Cassie knew better than to push when Runs Like a Deer made up her mind. Trying to get information from Chief wasn’t much easier, but somehow they needed to have a talk.

As she promised, Mavis was ready with a saddled horse. “Runs Like a Deer isn’t coming?”

“She said no.” And away they went down the now-familiar road. Cassie decided she’d liked the trees much better as gold than as skeletons.

Riding Wind Dancer was so much more pleasurable than riding in the bumpety wagon, even when she had skirts to fight with like today. Riding a sidesaddle, as her mother often had, was out of the question. Not only did she not have one, she could not remember what had happened to her mother’s. Had they sold it when her mother died?

She’d hated it when her mother wanted her to learn how to use it. Thinking of the sidesaddle made her remember other times with her mother, like one of the many times she fell off her pony and her mother comforted her, holding her close before putting her back on the pony. Always she heard, “
When you fall off, you get right back on. When you fall down, you get right back up. If you are bleeding, we’ll put a bandage on it, and you go right back to what you were doing. There will be no quitting.”

She waved an arm. “My mother would have loved it here. She loved shows in the cities, but she loved the country more. She always wanted to see what was beyond the next bend or across the next hill.”

“I can understand that. But I never wanted to leave this land once I came here. These mountains and hills are home to me, not the flat plains that really aren’t very far away. On the eastern side of Rapid City, the hills get smaller and then flatten out. There are more farmers there than ranchers. We grow some crops, like oats, for feeding our animals, but mostly grow hay. Plus our garden and orchards, of course. We are pretty self-sufficient. One has to be in this day and age.”

“I am learning so much here—things I never thought about, like where food comes from, how to fix it, how to be prepared for winter. We never really had winter, at least not like that blizzard we encountered on our way south. According to Chief, there will be many more like that. Hopefully we will be more prepared.”

“The best preparations are to have a huge woodpile close by and plenty of food to eat for us and for our animals.”

The ride into Hill City took longer than Cassie had expected. They tied their horses at the hitching rail to the side of the hotel. Such an elegant place! A wide porch fronted the second story of the building, with stairs leading up to it with the first story built into the hill behind it. Velvet draped the tall windows, and elaborate woodcarving graced the eaves clear to the roof peak and around the windows and porch. The hotel sat like a grand dowager lording it over the squat buildings on both sides.

“Grand, isn’t it?” Cassie said with a smile. She’d seen big fancy houses, including castles in Europe, but there was something about this one that caught her fancy. Maybe because she was living here and not just passing through.

A bespectacled, rather rounded man greeted them from behind the reception desk. “Good morning, ladies. Welcome to the Hill City Hotel. How may I help you?”

“We’d like to speak with Mr. Porter. I am Mavis Engstrom and this is Cassie Lockwood.”

“The shooter?”

“Yes, she is.”

“I’ll get Mr. Porter. I’ll be right back. Don’t go away.” He wagged a forefinger at them and hustled off to turn aside at a heavily carved door.

Cassie and Mavis exchanged grins. Obviously Mr. Porter had talked with his staff about the shooting match in rather glowing terms.

The dapper Mr. Porter came bustling out, smiling broadly. “Well, Mrs. Engstrom, Miss Lockwood, welcome to my hotel. Now I know why I didn’t go to Rapid City this morning. Have you had dinner yet? No? Oh good! Then let me entertain you this time. I have been bragging about our time at your ranch. You made quite an impression on both my wife and on me. I’ve thought of nothing but the shooting match and the idea of a regional Wild West show this summer.” He showed them to a table in the dining room, seated them, and promised to be right back.

Cassie watched him push through the swinging doors to what was most likely the kitchen, since she had seen waiters bringing food out from there. “Have you eaten here before?”

Mavis shook her head. “I wasn’t planning on eating here today. I know of a small café down the street. If we don’t bring our own food, we eat there. This restaurant is a bit pricey. But we do most of our business in Argus. Once in a great while we come to Rapid City. Lucas has been supplying this hotel with elk meat, so he comes here most often. In the past we’ve sold them beef and pork too.”