Softly Falling (25 page)

M
rs. Buxton remembered the yarn, which meant that Luella, smiling in triumph, brought a small skein to the Temple of Education in the morning. Lily assigned the children to unroll the ball and cut the yarn into four-inch pieces while she wrote sums on the blackboard and tried not to worry that the Little Man still hadn’t returned.

“Maybe he wants more than the two hairpins on your desk,” Nick said as he unwound the yarn ball and the girls snipped off the sections.

“That’s why we’re doing this,” Lily said, putting down her chalk. “I talked to Mr. Fontaine last night and he suggested yarn for nesting material.” She smiled at her charges. “We’ll tempt the Little Man with luxury. It is beautiful yarn, Luella.”

The girl beamed with pleasure.

When they finished, a lively discussion followed. Nick argued the merits of piling it up in one place, while Chantal advocated a little yarn in each corner. Amelie agreed with her brother and Lily sided with Chantal. Lily gestured to Luella.

“We will let you break the tie, Luella, since you brought the yarn.”

“Let’s do this,” Luella said. The child sounded assured as if she made decisions every day. “Let’s pile some yarn by the hole, as Nick and Amelie want, and then a little in each corner, as Chantal and Miss Carteret want.” She looked at Lily, seeking approval.

“That is a brilliant stroke,” Lily said. “Do you realize what we have done? This is a compromise.” She turned and wrote the word on the board underneath the numbers. “C-o-m-p-r-o-m-i-s-e. That means we have each given a little so everyone is satisfied.”

Chantal raised her hand. “Since Nick is so good at ciphering, I could give him some of my numbers to add in columns. He will be happy and so will I.”

The children giggled.

“But I will not be happy,” Lily said. She looked at her students. “What else could we do?”

Everyone was silent, considering the matter. Lily added some wood to the pot-bellied stove. The wind was picking up and she felt a chill. She glanced out the window beside the winter count, dismayed to see the cottonwoods bending and swaying. Did the wind never stop in Wyoming Territory? She would have to ask Jack.

Luella raised her hand. “I could help Nick with his letters while he is helping Chantal with her numbers.” Her face fell. “But that is not compromise.”

“True,” Lily said. “It is something else. Do any of you know?”

Amelie’s eyes were bright, but Lily knew how shy she was. Lily cupped her hand around her mouth as she had seen actors do to deliver an aside to an audience. “Look you, I think Amelie knows.”

“Tell us, Amelie,” Luella urged.

“We would be cooperating,” Amelie said softly, glancing at Lily.

“Yes, we would,” Lily agreed, touched. “We can all help each other.” She clapped her hands. “But first, let us distribute the yarn for the Little Man.”

They did as she said, but they were sober about it, careful to mound a tempting yarn pile at the doorway to the pack rat’s home, and then a little bit in each corner. She saw their fear that he was gone for good.

Lily added another pine log to the stove, making a mental note to ask the men to bring up more wood. She looked at her students and their gloomy faces. “He’ll be back, I just know it,” she told them.

“Maybe he is sulking because we bothered his home,” Chantal said.

Amelie opened her mouth to speak, then closed it.

“Yes, my dear?” Lily said, prompting the shy child.

“I say a prayer every night,” she replied, then looked around to make sure no one thought that was silly.

“We could all do that,” Luella said. “Do you think God cares about pack rats?”

Lily nodded. “I remember reading something in Matthew about the Lord Almighty being mindful of sparrows that fall.”

“That’s well and good for sparrows, but this is a pack rat,” Luella said, ever practical.

“I think He means all little things, not just sparrows,” Lily said, trying not to smile.

The children considered that. “Does he keep a look out for us?” Chantal asked. She frowned. “My father died and he was more important than a sparrow.”

Lily was sitting on Amelie’s stool while the children had spread around the yarn. She held her arms open for Chantal, who crowded in close. “He looks out for us,” she said, even as her eyes started to fill. She had never met Jean Baptiste Sansever, but she knew his children. “Sometimes things happen, and that is life.”

“It’s not fair,” Nick said as he moved closer too, no longer a boy trying to seem older than he was.

“No, it isn’t,” Lily agreed, thinking of the mother she barely remembered, except for the softness of her brown hands and her soothing voice. “I . . . I still miss my mother, but I decided a long time ago that I would be very good, because she would want that.” She reached for Nick’s hand and he did not pull away. He leaned against her shoulder, and her arm went around his waist.

“He knows we’re here in search of True Greatness in the Temple of Education,” Lily told them. “In Wyoming Territory, America.”

When they chuckled, she knew the moment had passed. She glanced at the board, where the morning’s ciphering lesson languished.

“My goodness! We had better get busy,” she said, standing up to stand by the board. “Slates out, everyone.”

They did as she said, students once more, and not children searching the mysteries of life and death and reluctant pack rats.

Trust Luella to make a comment. “We’re not learning much this morning, are we?” she asked.

“I believe we have learned a great deal, Luella,” Lily replied. “Here we go now: three plus four equals . . .”

“Seven!”

“They fear we frightened off the Little Man,” Lily told Pierre that afternoon, after the children had marched down the hill in what had become their everyday pattern. He had walked up, giving her a little nod as she stood in the doorway, watching her charges as she always did, and keeping an eye out for Freak. When she glanced toward the cottonwoods, Pierre looked too.

“Do you ever just stand still and wait for Freak?” he asked.

“Quite often. He’ll come out from the trees, but that is about all for now.” She felt her face grow warm, wondering what he would think of this next piece of information. “I’ve started calling him Francis instead of Freak. It seems more polite.”

So much for stoic Indians. Pierre threw back his head and laughed loud and long. His laughter was irresistible and made her smile.

“How would
you
like to be called Freak?” she asked, when she thought he was through. “You already know how we feel about True Greatness at the Bar Dot School. We look for the best in everything, not just children.”

He smiled at her then, and she saw nothing but admiration in eyes as dark as her own. “Francis it is then.” He reached in his vest pocket and pulled out a twist of paraffin paper. He unwrapped it, exposing what looked like meat pellets.

“I like to trap rabbits and chipmunks now and then.” He touched a little beaded bag on the leather thong around his neck. “I make medicine bags with the hides, and I dry the meat. Here.”

He handed her the paper of meat. “Set it on the rock for . . .” His lips twitched, but he managed. “. . . for Francis.”

She accepted the dried meat as politely as she could, whooping inside when she imagined what starchy Miss Tilton would think, if she could see her less-than-star pupil. Lily set the meat on the rock for Francis and turned back to Pierre.

“Thank you, Pierre.” She stared down at her shoes a moment, still caught up in the peculiarity of this social situation. “Give me some advice: What if Francis decides to come closer and be my friend?”

He considered the matter more seriously than she thought the problem warranted. “I think he will not, because cats never do what you want.” He chuckled. “If he does, pet him carefully.”

“You’re mostly no help,” she joked.

“As Jack would tell you, free advice is worth what you pay for it.” He stood there in thought again, but she was getting used to his pauses. Maybe that was the Indian way. She waited.

“Jack said you’re ready for me to talk to your children about winter counts.”

“I do. What I want is to have each of them start a winter count. We’ll do it by months instead of years.”

He nodded his approval. “I like it. For the next two days, we are moving cattle.” He made a disgusted sound and looked up at the cloudless sky. “Pushing cattle, more like, because they know something is coming.”

Lily felt again the little chill she remembered from the river bank when Jack showed her the thick muskrat lodge. “How do animals know?”

He shrugged. “Will Friday be all right for you? Jack said I can have some canvas in the tack room that you can use for the counts.”

“What, you cannot find me four middling-sized buffalo hides?” she teased.

“I cannot even find you buffalo now,” he replied, deadly serious, and with sadness in his eyes. “They are all gone, and the people are on reservations, eating flour, lard, and thin beef.”

“There isn’t much in the world that is fair, is there?” she asked, understanding him perfectly.

“Very little.” He looked toward the trees, nodded, and lowered his voice. “I think I see Francis.” He tipped his Stetson to her. “I’ll go.” He took off his hat, which sent the cat farther back into the trees and underbrush. “Lily, thank you for calling me Pierre, and not Indian.”

“It’s your name,” she said simply. She looked at him. “Do you have another name? A . . . a Lakota name?”

“My mother’s family call me Blue Hat.” He held up his hand, evidently seeing the question in her eyes. “I’ll tell you sometime.”

“Say it in Lakota.”

He did, guttural sounds that she knew she couldn’t reproduce easily. “I’ll stick with Pierre,” she told him.

“Blue Hat is all right too.” He started down the hill, walking backward to watch her. “Maybe you will get a name before this winter is over.”

“I’d like it to be ‘Teacher,’ since that is what I have become.”

“No word for that in Lakota,” he said. “Besides, it’s not up to you. Maybe it’ll be She Who Pets Wildcats.”

“Oh, you!”

He started up the hill again until he was close. “I promise you it will be right and true.”

Lily nodded, feeling as shy as Amelie. “Does Jack Sinclair have a name?”

“Oh, yes. His name is Determined.”

“There’s a Lakota word for
determined
?” she asked, skeptical.

“Well, no. It is ‘He Stands With Feet Planted.’”

Lily nodded.
I can see that
, she thought, impressed.

“If a better name comes along, I will know.”

She felt that chill again and clasped her hands together. “I think you’re telling me that this winter is going to change us.”

He didn’t reply. Maybe she was wrong to ask such a question. What did she know about Indian ways? Pierre looked at the sky and held his hand up to the wind that blew stronger now from the north and west.

“There will be snow by morning.”

She couldn’t help the catch in her throat. Drat him and Jack for frightening her with vague suspicions. And what did muskrats and woolly caterpillars know, anyway? He noticed her agitation, because he touched her arm so lightly.

“Just a little snow this time.”

Lily nodded. His finger went to her frown line and he shook his head.

“Do not worry. A man named Determined doesn’t bend and fold. If you want to worry—Lakota women do that too—worry for the other ranchers.”

“Maybe I’ll worry for Francis and the Little Man of the Prairie,” she said, hoping to lighten the moment.

He looked toward the trees and there was the cat, his tail twitching. “He wants me to leave. And the Little Man? He’ll be back.”

“You’re so certain?”

“I am. What rat in his right mind would leave such a place as you have created here?”

“Thank you, Pierre.”

He tipped his hat again and started walking Mrs. Buxton’s healthy distance from the school house to the main buildings of the Bar Dot. She started to worry a wisp of hair that had escaped her bun, wishing that some magic hand would suddenly pick up the school and move it closer to the ranch.

“I am an idiot,” she said out loud, but not loud enough for the retreating Indian to hear, she thought.

“Far from it,” he said, waving his hand behind him.

Shaking her head, she went inside the school, peering out the window as she swept the floor, pleased to see Francis on the rock, making short work of the dried meat. She watched, pleased, as he groomed himself.

Letting our guard down, are we, Francis?
she thought as she put the broom in the corner by Little Man’s front door. She stood there a moment, wishing a rat to appear, of all things. Then she put her shawl around her and closed the door with a decisive click, irritated with pouting pack rats.

At the sound, Francis leaped from the rock. She waited for him to vanish into the tree line, but he held his ground, eyeing her. She took a step toward the cat and he backed up, flattening his ears.

“That attitude will not do,” she told him. “Good night. Kindly sweeten up by morning, since you just had a free meal you didn’t have to work for.” She laughed, which made his ears go up. “And I am talking to cats.”