Margaret Brownley - [Rocky Creek 02] (28 page)

She stopped in the hall. Smoke escaped from the room next to theirs, slithering from beneath the closed door like ghostly snakes. Was that a cough? Someone calling for help?

She motioned Brenda downstairs. “Quick, tell the desk clerk to sound the alarm.”

She knocked on the door once before throwing it open. The room was filled with smoke and her throat closed in protest. The mattress smoldered, but so far no flames were visible. Hand over her mouth, she raced to the body on the floor by the bed and dropped to her knees.

“Sir, are you all right?” She shook him and he moaned.

The man opened his eyes, but his breathing was labored and rattled in his chest. An older man with a balding head, he had a long white beard. He coughed, spraying her with a whiff of stale alcohol.

“Let’s get you out of here.”

She slipped her hands beneath his arms and tried lifting him. He slumped over, a dead weight. She ran around to grab his feet and pulled him inch by inch across the floor.

A man she didn’t recognize rushed to her side. He was as muscular as he was tall. “I have him,” he said.

The man lifted the bulky body off the floor with remarkable ease and flung him over his shoulder.

No sooner had he left than Mary Lou rushed into the room. Flames now shot up from the mattress. In the distance came the tinny sound of metal upon metal as the hotel clerk sounded the fire alarm, but in the time it would take for the volunteer firemen to arrive, it could be too late.

“Quick, the blanket!” Jenny yelled. She glanced around and grabbed the first thing she could find. It was only a threadbare towel, but it would have to do. She brandished the towel over her head and flung it down on the flames. The butt of a smoldering cheroot fell to the floor and she stomped it out.

Mary Lou threw the blanket across the bed in an effort to smother the fire but the blanket was too small to cover the entire mattress. Flames shot up the headboard, licking the wallpaper with long, fiery tongues.

With her hand covering her nose and mouth, Mary Lou grabbed a wool shirt from the floor and slapped it against the wall.

Jenny ran around the bed, beating the mattress with frantic swipes. Her throat raw, she coughed and her eyes watered. Despite her discomfort, the memory of Mary Lou walking hand in hand with a stranger was as persistent as the flames.

“Where were you and who was that . . . that man you were with?” she rasped.

“Not now, Jenny,” Mary Lou grated, smacking a flare-up with a well-aimed swat.

“I want to know this minute,” Jenny demanded, her voice hoarse. She batted a glowing ember. “Who is he?”

“My fiancé,” Mary Lou rasped. “Are you happy?”

Stiff with shock, Jenny lowered her arm. “Y–your fiancé?” A spark flared on a nearby upholstered chair, bringing her back to her senses. Wielding the towel, she extinguished the flame and then turned her attention to another.

“Who is he?” she demanded while clobbering flare-ups. She coughed before continuing. “How do you know him?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me.”

“I love him,” Mary Lou croaked.

Jenny stared at her sister from the opposite side of the charred mattress. Dear God. Here they go again.

“H–how do you know him?” Jenny repeated.

Mary Lou opened her mouth to say something but her words were garbled by a coughing spell. Her face red, she glared at Jenny with open defiance before finding her voice again.

“I met him that first day . . . when you and the marshal were arguing.”

Jenny frowned. “And you never said anything. Not a word?”

“How could I?” Mary Lou cried. “You expect a man to be perfect—”

“Not perfect,” Jenny argued, smothering the last flame. “I just want to make sure your future is secure. I promised Papa—”

“Promised him what?” Mary Lou choked out. “That I wouldn’t marry a failure like him?”

Her angry retort hardened her features, and Jenny barely recognized the glowering mask of rage in front of her.

“How dare you say such a thing!”

“It’s true. You know it is. He dragged us all over the country, chasing the next dream. If we hadn’t moved so much, maybe Mama would still be alive.”

“We don’t know that Mama would still—”

“Yes, we do, Jenny. Everyone knew it. Even Grandfather. She had a bad heart. Traveling put a strain on her. You tried to hide Papa’s faults as if we would love him any less if we knew what he was really like.”

Mary Lou’s claims sliced through the last of Jenny’s defenses. It was true, all of it. She lied about their father, making him seem like a responsible parent, but only because she was afraid to confront her anger at him for leaving them destitute. Now it shocked her to think that the lies and half-truths had inadvertently sent the wrong message about love to her sisters.

Jenny swatted a glowing ember. “Papa loved us all very much.”

Mary Lou stared, her features contorted with disbelief. “Why is it so hard to admit that no one is perfect? That Papa wasn’t? You think a person has to be perfect to be loved. But that’s not true.”

“I’m not looking for perfection.”

“Yes you are! You want Brenda and me to be perfect ladies and to marry perfect men.”

Mary Lou’s words stung. If Jenny demanded perfection from others it was only because she saw so little of it in herself.

“I was wrong to make you feel that you had to be perfect to be loved,” Jenny said. “And I should never have lied about Papa. He was charming and fun and he loved us all dearly, but . . .”

What she didn’t say, couldn’t say, was that the constant moves probably
had
hastened their mother’s death.

“He was a thoughtless, reckless man who cared more for following his dreams than providing for his family!” Mary Lou spit the words out with such force that even the walls seemed to shrink from her anger.

Jenny’s first instinct was to defend her father as she had done so many times in the past. Instead, she held her tongue and smothered a burning ember, but the painful memories of the past could not be so easily stifled.

“I don’t want to talk about Papa. I want to talk about you and that . . . that . . . Does this man even have a profession?”

“He’s a logger.” Mary Lou’s mouth twisted in defiance. “Yes, you heard me right. He cuts down trees for a living. And no, he can’t read or write because the letters keep bouncing, whatever that means, but I don’t care. I love him and he loves me.”

Can’t read? Can’t write? Bouncing letters? What in the world?

As distressing as all this was, she was more concerned about Mary Lou’s behavior than the man’s abilities or lack of them. First Brenda had sneaked off in the middle of the night to be with a man, now Mary Lou. Hadn’t Jenny taught them better? Had she expected too much from them? Too little?

Frustrated that her efforts had been in vain, Jenny swatted the bed with angry strokes even after the last of the flames had died down.

Mary Lou matched her lash by lash, glare by glare. Jenny smacked the towel across the headboard. Mary Lou wielded the shirt upon the wall.

Whack
.

Smack
.

Thwack
.

Slap
.

They might have continued that way indefinitely had Redd Reeder not rushed into the room with a bucket of water and thoroughly drenched them both.

Later that same day, Jenny drove out of town in a rented buckboard, forcing the gelding to pick up speed the moment the road veered toward the river.

Not only was it hot, the acrid smell of smoke clung to her body and no amount of bathing could get rid of it. The hot sun, humidity, and dust only added to her discomfort.

No matter. She had other things on her mind. Namely one Mr. Jeff Trevor.

What kind of man would propose to a young woman without consulting with her family?
Can’t read. Can’t write. No manners. Drat!

She hadn’t seen or spoken to Mary Lou since the fire. Not that she was worried. There would be time enough later to try and talk some sense into her. Still, the argument left her depressed. Both Mary Lou and Brenda had accused her of trying to change them rather than love them for who they were. It wasn’t true, of course. She did love her sisters, would always love them no matter what they did or who they married.

As far as changing them . . . Maybe she
had
gone overboard, but only because of her anxiety about the future. About
their
future.

Perhaps if she let up a bit, Mary Lou would be less inclined to rebel by marrying the first man she fancied. Encouraged by the thought, she urged the horse to go faster. The sooner she confronted Mr. Trevor and told him exactly what she thought of him and his proposal, the sooner she could drive back to town and make amends with her sister.

She barreled along the wooden bridge leading to the other side of the river and followed the dirt road to the sawmill. On one side of the bridge, the water was thick with logs. On the opposite side, a man on a flat-bottomed bateau guided the logs toward the landing with long metal-tipped staffs.

Just as she cleared the bridge, she thought she caught a glimpse of Scooter. She glanced back over her shoulder to have another look, but he was gone. She shook her head with disapproval. She hated to see the boy’s fine mind wasted. Too bad Rocky Creek didn’t have a school. Brenda insisted it did, but Jenny had yet to see one.

The mill consisted of several buildings. She drove past the one that appeared to be the bunkhouse, then pulled up in front of a stone and wood building with a silo-shaped sawdust burner attached.

A young man dressed in stagged pants cut to his knees and steel-caulked river boots greeted her. She guessed he was in his late teens. His dark skin glistened in the sun.

“Wouldn’t park there if I was you, ma’am,” he said.

He nodded toward a heavy wagon piled high with freshly cut lumber attached to a team of mules. Her buckboard blocked its way, but since the mule driver was absent, she set the brake and jumped to the ground.

“I understand Mr. Trevor works here.”

The youth’s eyes grew wide with curiosity. “He’s the manager, ma’am.”

“The manager?” A man who can’t read or write?

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I wish to speak with him.”

At first she thought he would deny her request, but then he shrugged and said, “Wait here.”

He walked away and disappeared into the building. She paced back and forth in front of a boom of logs waiting to be sawed into lumber. The air was thick with the smell of sawdust.

Several minutes passed before a man she guessed was Mr. Trevor walked out of the building. When he drew near, she recognized him as the same man who’d rushed into the smoky room that morning and carried the near-unconscious man to safety.

He pulled his red cap off and greeted her with a nod. “You’re Mary Lou’s sister. If you’re worried about Chester, he’s doing fine.”

“Chester?”

“The man who set his bed afire. Doc Myers plans to keep him a day or two for observation.”

Caught off guard, she was momentarily speechless. In all the confusion following the fire, it never occurred to her that the man who rushed into the smoke-filled room that morning was Mary Lou’s so-called fiancé.

“I’m happy to hear that,” she managed, and because it seemed liked the proper thing to do, she thanked him for his help.

“No problem, ma’am. It was just plain luck that I happened to be in the neighborhood.”

Luck? She studied him with cool regard. He really was pleasing to the eye. She could almost understand why Mary Lou had lost her head. Still, that was no excuse for sneaking behind a person’s back.

“I appreciate your help, Mr. Trevor. What I
don’t
appreciate is your disregard for common courtesy.”

He quirked a dark eyebrow but said nothing, and she continued, “You had no right to propose marriage to my sister.”

“Oh, I didn’t propose marriage, ma’am. To propose means to suggest. I told her loud and clear on the first day we met that we were going to be married.”

His arrogance astonished her, but not nearly as much as her sister’s submission. Mary Lou hated being told what to do. Yet she allowed herself to fall for a man who did exactly that.

Refusing to be sidetracked by semantics, she continued, “Whatever you choose to call it, it’s customary to consult with a young woman’s guardian. That would be me.”

He rubbed his chin. “Didn’t see any sense in that, ma’am. I already knew you’d say no. I couldn’t even fill out the application. A hog would have a better chance of meeting your requirements than me.”

“But . . . you’re the manager,” she said. She glanced around. The mill was no small enterprise. To successfully operate such a business would require many different skills, certainly math, and possibly even the capacity to read.

He wrinkled his brow as if he found her surprise amusing. “I don’t read books. I read trees. I can look at a tree and tell you exactly how to make it fall the way I want it to fall, how much lumber it will yield, and how much it will bring at market.

“I can read people too. That’s how I knew the first day I saw Mary Lou that I wanted to marry her. She struck me as a woman who’s not afraid to look truth in the face. I figured she wouldn’t cotton to a man who beats around the bush, so I made sure she knew where I stood from the start.”

“You knew that about her so soon?” Jenny hadn’t even known that about her sister until recently. If she had, she would have been more honest with Mary Lou about their father and not tried to hide his shortcomings.

“Yes, ma’am. And you needn’t worry about my ability to support your sister, if that’s what’s worrying you. She’ll always have a roof over her head, food on the table, and those pretty clothes she’s so fond of.”

Oh, yes, she could see how he managed to turn her sister’s head. She doubted Mary Lou had looked much past his blue eyes and winning smile. Certainly she never considered what it meant to be a logger’s wife.

Since Mary Lou obviously couldn’t see past his good looks, it was up to Jenny to put a stop to this madness.

“Mr. Trevor, you cannot marry my sister. It simply would not be in her best interests—”