Softly Falling (33 page)

Funny how the classroom felt like a refuge, once they slammed the door with their combined energy. She sank to the floor and closed her eyes, grateful beyond measure.

“Miss Carteret?”

Chantal unwound Luella’s muffler that Lily and Nick had both borrowed. Amelie held her arms out for Lily’s coat, then shook off the snow, with Luella’s help. They trundled her back into it when they finished and led her to the stove.

Not only had the girls stacked the wood, but they had mounded snow in the pitcher and basin and crowded them onto the stove, where they melted. Everyone had big drink of lukewarm water that tasted of autumn’s leaves and good earth. The color was back in Nick’s cheeks and he basked in praise from the ladies at the Temple of Education. When her own hands thawed, Lily parceled out thin slices of bread, cut with Nick’s pocket knife.

“I’m going to pretend that mine is slathered in butter then sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar,” Luella said. “You can pretend that too, if you’d like,” she generously offered Lily.

“I believe I shall,” Lily said, accepting a slice from Nick.

They debated whether to eat Lily’s cheese and voted to save it for supper, with a three to two majority.

“That won’t leave anything for breakfast,” Amelie reminded them after the vote. “I think we should save it for breakfast tomorrow.”

A re-vote yielded a different answer and Lily put the cheese in her desk drawer. They bundled themselves into the buffalo robe, after agreeing that the people on each end would take turns in the middle every twenty minutes. Lily was about to begin chapter fourteen when Chantal raised her hand.

“Yes, my dear?”

“Miss Carteret, do you think the Little Man of the Prairie is safe?”

Her eyes were anxious and Nick came to his little sister’s rescue. “He’s probably sound asleep and wrapped tight in all that yarn Luella provided,” he said. His cheeks went pink. “Luella, thanks for loaning me your muffler. I was warm.”

“Happy to,” Luella said, her voice gruff.

The Little Man. It seemed to Lily that years had passed since that morning, when she had told her father that they would choose a name for the pack rat today. She wondered if the snow had stalled the Cheyenne Northern. At least there would be plenty of coal if worse came to worse and the passengers had to use it to keep warm. He would probably be stuck in Cheyenne until the tracks cleared. Lily wished she had given him more than ten dollars for lodging and meals.

Since she was on the edge of the buffalo robe, Lily went to her desk and pulled out the
Police Gazette
—bright pink, scurrilous, vulgar, utterly fascinating in a naughty way, and probably an even greater distraction than Ragged Dick and his steady rise to fame and fortune in New York City. After making sure that the page she wanted didn’t contain any buxom women in chains, she looked around at her class.

“As I recall, Luella wants to name the Little Man Ned, and Nick favors St. Dismas.” Lily held up the
Gazette
, one of the more questionable bits of educational material she had received for the school from someone, probably Stretch. “Let me read you this.” She cleared her throat, wondering why it was sore and then remembered how loud she had screamed for Nick. The storm raged as she read the article about the Wyoming Kid, who robbed trains, stages, and ordinary citizens on the streets of Laramie, leaving behind a little note of thanks scrawled on expensive-looking stationery. She left out the paragraphs about his soiled doves in brothels from Sheridan to Cheyenne, and his sad, but defiant appointment with a hangman’s noose.

“I think we should name our pack rat the Wyoming Kid,” she concluded, folding the newspaper. “The Little Man always leaves us something, just like the Kid, and he is a thief too.”

Her students exchanged glances. Nick laughed, looking young and more like the twelve-year-old he was, but still a hero who went for the wood; the boy who loved arithmetic, but who probably shouldered even more cares than she knew about.

“
I
like it,” he said, and the girls nodded.

“When times are better, maybe we can make a little signpost next to his hole that says, ‘The Wyoming Kid,’ in big letters,” Luella added, tracing out imaginary script with her hand in the cold air.

“Very well,” Lily said. She rolled up the
Police Gazette
. “We’ll stick this in the stove the next time we put in a log.”

She thought she was being offhand and casual, but Chantal, astute Chantal, saw through the whole thing. She snuggled closer to her sister, and her voice was low. “Are we going to have to burn
everything
to stay alive, Miss Carteret?”

“We won’t miss the
Police Gazette
,” Lily said firmly. “We’ll let the desks go next, because we’re going to huddle close tonight and see how long . . .” She stopped. “. . . and keep each other warm.” There was no point in trying to fool these wise-to-Wyoming children.

“I’d really like it if Mr. Sinclair found us,” Amelie said, her voice wistful.

“So would I,” Lily said, and never meant anything more in her life. Jack was a man with a capable air, the kind of man who could probably make the worst moment more bearable. Besides, she hadn’t finished teaching him how to read, and there was
Ivanhoe
, with love and duty hanging in the balance in old England.

She was silent a long moment, then Nick prodded her. Her educationists back in Bristol would have thought it a rude thing to do, but she knew Nick better than they did. “Yes?”

“Miss Carteret, you said we are to change places every twenty minutes so those on the edge can get warm in the center. You’ve been on your outside edge for a long, long time, so it’s time to trade places with me.” He was firm, fair and right.

“Very well,” Lily said, glad to move into the center of the robe again, since she was starting to shiver. “Now I think we need to find out what happens to Ragged Dick, who is trying to become respectable.”

She read as the storm raged and the room grew colder and colder. Every syllable brought a puff of steam to her lips, which made Chantal clap her hands and exclaim, “We can see a story in the air!”

After two more chapters, when Ragged Dick continued his reformation and became known as Richard Hunter, Esquire, Lily forced herself to stand in the frigid room. “All right, everyone. Let’s get up and march.”

Amelie shook her head, but Nick pulled her to her feet and pushed her in front of him. He was rough and she gave him a hurt look, until he kissed her cheek and said softly, “March.” Lily took Chantal’s cold fingers in her own and marched with her up and down, then across the room. She looked back to see Nick squiring Amelie and Luella, who giggled.

“Stomp, stomp, stomp,” Lily ordered, clapping hands that felt like frozen sticks. “You’re the British Army marching across Spain to defeat Napoleon. We can’t stop until we reach Toulouse, France. March!”

They marched while Lily ducked outdoors for more snow to melt on the stove, hanging onto the door frame and scooping in snow that was breast high now. The blizzard showed no signs of letting up. If anything, the wind shrieked louder. If the door didn’t opened inward, she knew she would not be able to open it at all.
What do I do?
she asked herself as she crammed snow in the pitcher and basin.
Ask them to remember their favorite summer day? Think of a time when sweat rolled down their faces? When there were flowers to pick, and bees moved from blossom to blossom?

She closed the door with some effort and set the snow to melting. While the children marched, Lily grasped the hatchet and whacked apart her beautiful chair from the Back Forty Saloon. The children stopped and stared, mouths open.

“We’re going to keep warm, one way or the other,” she told them as she wielded the hatchet and wished she had learned something practical at Miss Tilton’s, like cutting wood or making food appear where there was none. “March now.”

When she had reduced the dainty chair to wooden bones, Nick took the hatchet from her and more expertly dismantled his own stool and then Amelie’s. He picked up Chantal’s stool and gestured with the blade down. “If you hold it like this, Miss Carteret, you’ll get a cleaner cut. Try it.”

She did, and Nick gave her a thumbs-up. Between the two of them, the remaining stools turned into lifesaving fuel for the stove. Next he tackled the woodbox itself, his eyes calm and full of concentration.

“Now
that’s
a lot of wood,” he said out loud.

“I think we need to chop up one of the desks before it gets dark,” Lily said.

He moved closer to her and spoke softly so the girls could not hear. “Do you think we will live through the night?”

“I have every hope,” she replied, beating back that fear again. Did she sound positive enough? Brave?

“I expect you’re right,” Nick said, in his own rational way. “Let’s grow the fire a bit. If the room is warm enough when we go to sleep, we’ll do better.”

He added chair legs until a slightly larger perimeter around the stove felt almost warm. Chantal lost her pinched look.

“Very well, my dears. Let us finish this story of Ragged Dick before it grows too dark.”

The room was deep in shadow when she finished. “And there you have it,” she said, closing the book. “Ragged Dick is now Richard Hunter, Esquire. He has a new suit of clothes and the admiration of his employer.”

She looked at her students, who lived in a world far removed from that of an ambitious boot black. They were slowly freezing in the Temple of Education, hoping to survive until morning, when the grind of another day of a blizzard would continue. No one complained, not these children who understood hard times and disappointment as well as she did.

“I have much to be grateful for,” she said out loud, and the others smiled.

Lily’s watch told her that the hour was not much advanced beyond four in the afternoon, but the room was dark, except for the weird, glowing light that came from rapidly falling snow. The snow sounded faint, and she thought for a moment that it had stopped, until she realized that snow had completely covered the schoolhouse. So be it.

“The room is nicely warm now,” she lied. “We should try to sleep.”

The words had barely left her mouth to hang in the air when a series of bumps jolted the back wall of the school house, the side facing north. Luella gasped and Chantal started to whimper.

Lily’s heart plummeted as she wondered what diabolical trick the wind was trying to play on them now. Wasn’t it enough that they were cold and hungry and
already
frightened?

Two more bumps, and then a soft lowing, a sad sound, the sound of animals in trouble.

“Nick, what is it?” she whispered, pulling Chantal, weeping openly, onto her lap.

“It’s cattle. Remember what Jack said about cattle drifting south? They’re banging up against the back of the building.”

“Mercy! Can we do anything?”

“No. Not if we want to live.” He spoke firmly but reached for Lily as he shivered, as frightened as the others. She reminded herself that even heroes have their limits.

Somehow, all four of them had managed to squeeze themselves close to her. Lily reached her arms around them all. “We’re going to . . .”

She stopped, hearing another sound. Something was scratching on the door. She reminded herself to breathe as she listened.

There it was again, a scratch scratch, pause, and then another scratch.

“Something’s out there,” Nick said, and he did not sound like a hero.

Suddenly, Lily knew what it was. “I’m going to the door, children,” she said. “Move a bit and let me up.”

Her teeth chattered as she left the warm nest of her children and hurried to the door. Bracing herself, she opened it, and reached down to touch frozen ear stumps—souvenir of earlier winters—and then a rough coat. He hissed, but to Lily’s ears, it was a half-hearted effort. She petted the cat again, amazed that he allowed her touch. Would Francis a.k.a. Freak let her pick him up? She slowly put her hand under his belly, which produced no objection.

“Children, we have a visitor. Make some room.”

C
HAPTER
31

F
rancis sniffed the little bit of warm water that Luella took from the stove. She approached the cat with considerable trepidation, which ended quickly when Francis lapped at the water until it was gone. He startled Lily by curling in her lap and settling down. In another moment he was purring.

“Stars and garters, I never expected to see Freak —”

“Francis,” Lily prompted.

“Francis turning into a star boarder,” Luella concluded.

“I suppose anyone can change,” Amelie added.

“If we get really hungry . . .” Nick began, and let the thought dangle.

Chantal started to laugh. “You’d have to catch him, and I don’t think you could! Luella’s right: Francis is our star boarder.”

Nick eyed the cat from a cautious distance. “Why did he have to come into our schoolhouse?”

“Maybe he’s never seen a storm like this one, either,” Lily said. She set her hand down slowly on the little vagabond, driven to the dubious comforts of the Temple of Education because she had been kind enough to leave bits of food on a rock. “We all just need a little kindness.”