Sins of Summer (3 page)

Ben ignored the question and helped Odette into her coat.

Louis Callahan took off his mackinaw. “Waller, I was a bit hasty,” he admitted grudgingly.

“Only a bit?” Dory’s green eyes were large with mock concern.

“A man can’t be too careful about his womenfolk in this country,” he said with a meaningful look at his sister. “We’ll fix
up quarters for you and the girl.”

“We’ll be moving on.” Ben steered Odette to the door. “About the barn?” He left the question hanging.

“Wait. It’s best we talk this over,” Louis said, pulling the cap from his head, which was bald except for a fringe of thick
graying hair around the edges. “I ain’t a man to go back on my word. I said you’d have private quarters and they’ll be decent.”

“I’ve never worked for a man who considered me unfit to step foot inside his home.”

“You’d understand if you knew the circumstances here.”

“Your family affairs are none of my business. I came here to do a job and move on.”

“There’s no womenfolk at Malone’s,” Louis said quickly.

“There are,” Dory declared stridently. “You’re lying and you know it.”

Both men ignored her.

“We’ve been where there were no women before.” Ben was settling his hat on his head.

“Stay. Dory would be company for your girl. And I’ll pay half again more than you asked.”

Dory suddenly let out a peal of contemptuous laughter.

“Hush up,” Louis snapped.

“Why would you pay more than I asked for in the first place?” Ben asked.

“Because I need that engine working and a flume built,” Louis said, glaring at Dory as she continued to laugh.

“I’ll tell you why he’s suddenly desperate to keep you.” Dory’s eyes sparkled with laughter. She didn’t appear to be at all
cowed by her huge older brother. “You said the magic words—you said you’d work for Malone over on the Saint Joe.” She burst
out in laughter again. “That was enough to make Louis roll over and play dead.”

“We need to talk in private,” Louis growled.

Ben looked down at Odette’s tired, pinched face. He couldn’t let his pride stand in the way of what was best for her. If the
man was willing to pay half again the money he had offered, and with what he had already put away, it would be enough to set
up a carpentry business for himself. Settlers were moving in by the droves, and there was bound to be a great demand for furniture,
doors, window frames and flooring. He liked the mechanical work with the donkey machine, but he liked woodworking better.

Hell, he didn’t have to like the man to work for him.

While Ben was mulling these thoughts over in his mind, he glanced at the child sitting at the table. Jeanmarie was perfectly
still. Only her eyes, blue as the sky, betrayed anxiety. They shifted from her mother to her uncle as she waited patiently
for the scene to end. Memories of himself cowering in the corner while his aunt and uncle battled verbally and physically
flashed into his mind, and he felt once again the confusion this child was feeling.

“Well, Waller. Are you willing to talk it over?”

Ben looked once again into Odette’s anxious face. Out of the blue the responsibility of caring for her had been thrust upon
him. What had followed had been three difficult years of adjustment for both of them. Now he realized just how empty his life
would be without her.

“I’ll talk.” Ben hung his hat back on the peg and shrugged out of his coat. “Stay with the lady,” he said to Odette and was
relieved when she nodded.

Without another word to his sister, or a greeting to his niece, Louis led the way from the kitchen into a hallway. Away from
the fire, it was cold. Along the hall on one side was the stairway and beneath it a door that opened into a small room. Inside,
Louis lit a lamp and flung open the door of a round Acme Oak heater. The firebox was full of tinder that caught when he struck
a match on the ornamental rim of the stove and tossed it inside. With a grunt of satisfaction, he slammed the door shut and
reached into a cabinet for a bottle of whiskey.

Ben stood inside the door of the sparsely furnished room. A rolltop desk, its contents neatly arranged, occupied one wall,
a leather-covered lounge the other. The only other furniture was the glass-front cabinet that held several bottles of spirits.
There were no pictures on the walls and no rug on the floor.

He accepted the half-glass of whiskey when Louis handed it to him.

“That’ll warm your insides while we wait for the fire to take the chill off.” Louis pulled the chair away from the desk, sat
down, and motioned toward the lounge. “Sit. Not much here in the way of records,” he said, indicating the desk. “We do business
at the mill.”

Thirty-four years of hard life had left Ben Waller little room for trust. He was especially leery of a man who flew off the
handle and made quick, unfounded accusations. He waited for Louis to speak. Waiting was something Ben knew how to do. His
thoughts reverted to what had led up to this abrupt change of mind on the part of his potential employer. Louis Callahan had
been giving him the boot until he had mentioned working over on the Saint Joe.

Before coming here, Ben had studied the area carefully. Malone’s was the only mill of any real size on the Saint Joe. Callahan’s
and Malone’s used the same waterway to the river that flowed into the Coeur d’Alene Lake, where “boom men” would sort out
logs stamped on their ends with the marks of the upstream loggers.

“I’m not a hard man, Waller,” Louis said, interrupting Ben’s thoughts. “It’s not been easy lookin’ after a woman like Dory
in a place where men outnumber women ten to one.” He waited for Ben to comment and when he didn’t, he went on. “Dory’s got
wild blood. So has James. He ain’t got sense enough to pour piss out of a boot. Their ma was a hot-blooded little piece if
there ever was one. She was after my pa before he had time to get my ma in the ground. She got him so heated up he married
up with her and from then on she was queen of the roost. She paraded around with her hair hanging down her back, a-smilin’
and touchin’ Pa all the time. The old fool was bedazzled. Whatever Jean wanted, Jean got.”

“I thought we were going to talk about the job.”

“We are. I’m tryin’ to tell you why I acted the way I did.” Louis set his glass on the desk, leaned back in the chair, and
hooked his thumbs in the wide galluses he wore over his broad shoulders to support his britches. Ben noticed that the wool
shirt Louis wore was neatly mended and wondered if the work had been done by the sister with the wild blood.

“Your family history has nothing to do with the job I’ll be doing here.”

“I think it does,” Louis said belligerently. “Dory’s already got one bastard, mister. I mean to see she don’t get any more.”

“You’re talking pretty blunt to a stranger, Callahan.” There was a hard ring in Ben’s voice.

“Maybe. It ain’t somethin’ we’re proud of.”

“As I said before, your family problems have nothing to do with me.”

“But now you know why I was rankled when I found you here.”

“No, I don’t know. Did you think I was going to plow your sister in front of my daughter and hers?” Ben stood. His tone was
as cold as a frozen pond. “I don’t see a way for us to come to terms, Callahan.”

“Sit down, sit down. I’m a straight-talkin’ man and didn’t mean to rile you.”

“I don’t hold with a man running down a woman, especially his sister.”

“Half-sister. Pa had two batches of kids. Me and Milo, then James and Dory. Hell, man! Dory ain’t got no reputation to run
down. Ever’body knows what she is. Ain’t a decent woman in the territory that’ll give her the time of day. She’s got a youngun
and ain’t wed. You’d a heard about it sooner or later. Might as well come from me.”

Ben finished his drink and put the empty glass on the desk.

“Talk business or I’m leaving.”

“I’ve put a lot of money out to get Dolbeer’s engine. I heard of it back in ’82. It took me three years to get a hold of one.”
Louis rubbed his hands on his broad thighs. “We’ve got plenty of big stuff cut and ready for the steam donkey to reel in.
I’m building a V-shaped flume. Ever seen one?” He went on before Ben could answer. “It’s a dandy. Won’t take as much grease
as a flat-bottom and has less chance of jamming. By God, before the end of the next year my flume will be 2,000 feet long.
We’ll reel the logs to the flume and let it take them to the river.”

Ben’s mind was on the woman in the kitchen. Her green eyes had looked straight into his. Not boldly, but with assurance and
self-possession. Nothing in her manner conformed with the picture her brother had painted of her. She was all woman and Ben
could understand why men would swarm around her like flies. He’d had more experience with the type of woman Callahan painted
his sister to be than with any other kind, and she just didn’t seem to fit the mold of a loose woman; but appearances were
deceiving. He knew a banker’s wife in Spokane who was as hot as a firecracker and had spread her legs for half the men in
town, yet she sang in the choir every Sunday. Another more important question puzzled Ben. Why was Callahan so eager to have
him believe that his sister was a strumpet?

“We’re not milling near as much as we’re sending down river. My brother Milo is mill boss. We float some of the plank and
haul some. Our sawmill has the capacity of only about three thousand board feet of lumber a day.”

Ben knew about sawmills. From the age of ten, he had been a hand in his uncle’s sawmill, or in the woods with an ax, or on
one end of a crosscut saw. By the time he was sixteen, he had become an expert cutter, peeler, bucker and high-rigger. At
seventeen he was “bull of the woods,” a camp foreman. By the next year he was recognized as the best “river pig” on the Wishkah
River. He knew everything about the logging business, but the part that made Ben sick was indiscriminate rape of the forest
by greedy loggers who left the hillsides exposed to the ravages of snow and rain.

Louis Callahan continued to talk.

“When we get the steam donkey set up, we’ll float more logs than Malone ever thought of. By God, he’ll have to sit up and
take notice.” Excited by his own prediction, he hastily crammed tobacco into a pipe, spilling some of it on the floor between
his spread thighs.

“Before I decide to take you up on your offer of what you contracted to pay me, plus half that amount again”—Ben intended
to make it perfectly clear that he expected the extra wages—“I need to know about what type of lodging you’ll provide.”

“Well, now, I been thinkin’ on that.”

Louis studied the big dark-haired man with the steel-colored remote eyes, the careful eyes of a man who knew what he wanted
and walked strongly down a way he chose. If he lost Ben Waller to the Malones, it would take months to find another man to
set up the steam donkey and show them how to operate it. On the other hand, he was sure that Milo wouldn’t like this man;
he was too independent, too sure of himself. Well, his brother was going to have to pull in his horns this time. At least
until they were through with Waller.

“What I had in mind”—Louis cleared his throat—“is for your girl to stay here with Dory. She’ll look after her and welcome
her company.”

“You’re suggesting that I allow my daughter to stay with a woman of ill repute?” Ben asked with a heavy frown.

A deep red covered Louis’s face. “Well, now, I didn’t say that Dory was… that kind.”

“You certainly did. You said she had wild blood and implied that she was loose.”

“She ain’t goin’ to lead your girl off, I know that.”

“Considering the kind of woman you say she is, I’m not sure I want to take the chance.”

“She’s got wild blood, but I was hasty when I said she was loose… now.” Louis rubbed his sweating palms on his thighs.

“You lied?”

“Ah… no.” Louis stammered. “She’s got a bastard. That I can’t deny, but—”

“—But she ah… uses the homestead for a brothel while her brothers are away?”

“Hell no!” Louis almost rose up out of the chair. “I never said no such.”

“You implied it. How do I know my daughter will be safe here?”

“She’d be a hell of a lot safer here than in a camp with a bunch of horny timber beasts.”

“There’s something else you haven’t considered.” Ben was enjoying the man’s discomfort. “Your sister may not want to take
on the chore of looking after a sixteen-year-old girl.”

“It don’t matter none what she wants!” Louis blurted. “She’ll do what she’s told.” He paused to take a deep breath.

“I’ll put it to the women. If it’s agreeable to Miss Callahan and if Odette is willing, I’ll take the job. If not, we’ll move
on.”

Louis came up out of the chair. “Good God! You’d leave a decision like that up to… up to the likes of… them?”

“Why not?” Ben grinned. “Womenfolk have good instincts about such things.”

“Godamighty!” Louis sank back down in his chair.

As soon as the door closed behind Ben Waller and her brother, Dory took a deep, painful breath. Louis would enjoy telling
the man about her sinful past. She dreaded seeing the scorn in Ben’s steel-gray eyes when he came back into the kitchen. Dory
squeezed her own eyes shut for an instant and relaxed her features before she turned to face her daughter. She knew what to
expect. Jeanmarie’s little face would be puckered to cry, and somehow Dory had to head off the tears before they started.
Jeanmarie never cried or made a sound during a scene with Louis or Milo, but it tore her heart to see the fear on her daughter’s
little face.

“We’re lucky.” Dory smiled brightly. “We get to keep Odette with us for a while.” She helped Odette remove her coat again
and hung it back on the peg.

“All night?” Jeanmarie asked in wonderment.

“All night and tomorrow.”

“Oh goody! Oh goody!” The child clapped her hands.

“I think we’ll celebrate and have some of that sugar candy we made the other day.” Dory went to the pantry and returned with
a plate covered with a cloth, which she whipped off with a flourish.