The Gunman's Bride (13 page)

No, it made good sense to distance herself from Bart a little and see how the situation turned out. Rosie was no naive, lovelorn schoolgirl. Certainly not. She’d seen
too many of the harsh realities of life to count on a happily ever-after ending. People who did wrong in life eventually paid for it one way or another. It wouldn’t be long before the law came after Bart. She might as well start preparing herself for that right now.

“You want me to let you off at the schoolhouse?” Bart asked when they rolled into Raton.

“Yes, please.” Rosie wanted to look at him, but she was afraid she would lose her resolve to keep him at a distance. “I’d like you to bring a trunk of my clothes and toiletries to Mr. Kilgore’s house.”

“You’ll be staying in town now?”

“For a while.”

“A while? Buying a house sounds pretty glued down to me, Rosie.”

“Bart, try to understand.”

“I’ve been trying to understand you all the way here. I don’t see how a woman and a man can do the things we did this morning and then chuck it out like an old cow chip.”

“Our love isn’t a cow chip!”

He pulled the wagon to a stop in front of the one-room school. “Then believe in me, Rosie. I won’t do wrong by you, I promise.”

She studied his green eyes beneath the shadow of his hat. “I won’t do wrong by you, either, Bart. But I need this chance to give myself some roots, something I can hold on to when things go bad.”

“Who says things will go bad?”

“Who says they won’t?” She slid to the edge of the seat and climbed down from the wagon. “I’ll send word
to the livery stable when you can come for me again. It won’t be long, Bart.”

As she gazed up at him, he settled his hat lower over his brow. “I never had you figured for a hard-hearted woman, Rosie,” he said. “But now I know different.”

He flicked the reins and set off in the direction of the railway depot.

Rosie could not have imagined feeling worse than she did when she first set foot inside her new classroom. Not only had she driven Bart away, but she had given up something unbearably precious. To wake up each morning with her husband’s big arms all warm and wrapped around her had become dear. To gaze out from their dugout and see his tall, strong figure laboring over the plow had filled her heart to overflowing. To stand in their cozy little home with stew bubbling over a snapping fire, curtains rustling in the windows, and the scent of wildflowers drifting through the open door had become heaven itself.

But she had fled that Eden, traded it for a few shekels worth of security.

“Mrs. Springfield!” Thomas Kilgore hurried between the rows of desks as she entered the room. “Welcome, welcome! Students, Mrs. Springfield is your new teacher.”

Amid the clapping, he led her to the big wooden desk she had dreamed of for so long. Rosie had barely begun to accept what she had done—how swiftly she had reversed all her best plans for a life with Bart—when Mr. Kilgore began loading her arms with books, slates and tablets of lined paper.

“The school commissioners have selected Sheldon’s English readers,” he said, “Patterson’s grammars and spellers, Robinson’s arithmetic, Harper’s geography and Spencerian penmanship books.”

“Oh,” Rosie managed as she gazed down at the well-worn books with their patched and tattered covers.

“Now, I’ve found that some of our students need supplemental work. Clark’s Drugstore carries comprehensive geography books for a dollar and fifteen cents. I’ve been thinking of putting Minnie and Lucy to work in them—those two girls are so far ahead of the others. Manford and some of the boys may need the spelling books there that sell for two bits. The boys struggle to spell correctly, but I’ve had difficulty finding the right texts. You’d think parents would gladly buy books for their children. What with the price of whiskey at two bits these days, a schoolbook is not only cheap but a much more prudent purchase.”

Rosie nodded, and hoped her numbed brain was absorbing at least some of what he was telling her.

“School begins promptly at seven,” he continued. “Student tardiness is not tolerated. Break for morning recess at nine. Ring the lunch bell at noon, then start class again at twelve-thirty. Some, like Manford, must leave school after their midday meal and work at various occupations—mostly in the mines and fields—one or two days a week. Dismiss the rest of your students at four. You will give ample homework, won’t you, Mrs. Springfield?”

“Yes, sir.”

“It’s vital that these children catch up with their city
counterparts. Under your tutelage I expect them to be able to compete in any educational arena.”

Rosie nodded, though she didn’t see how. With their parents expecting them to do many chores other than schoolwork, the ragged homesteader children must certainly lag far behind city students.

“Discipline is a matter of the first order in my school, Mrs. Springfield,” Mr. Kilgore went on. “Without limits and control, children cannot and will not learn.”

“I agree completely,” she told him.

“Good. Here is the switch.” He pointed to a long, supple branch that had been stripped of twigs and leaves. Beside it hung a thick, smooth stick. “That is the cane, and in the corner is the stool and dunce cap. Be frugal in their use, but do not hesitate to employ them to good benefit when needed.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll be next door instructing the high school students and tending to administrative duties. I shall be happy to take all disciplinary matters into my own capable hands. Any questions? Well, then, Mrs. Springfield, good luck.”

With those parting words, he stepped out the front door leaving Rosie alone to face the fulfillment of her dreams.

R
osie dared to hope that Bart would drive his wagon past the school on his way out of town at noon, but he didn’t.

As she sat on the front porch steps eating a lunch Mrs. Kilgore had fixed for her, she scanned the narrow, dusty streets for any sign of an ebony-haired, broad-chested man with his hat pulled low on his brow. Bart didn’t come, and by the time Rosie rang the bell for afternoon classes, she had to accept that he had done just as he said he would and gone to work alone at their homestead.

Rosie had to learn thirty-seven names, figure out how to rotate the six grade levels and oversee recitations and slate work. By the end of the day, she felt like the director of a large orchestra of various and sometimes inharmonic instruments rather than the teacher in a one-room schoolhouse.

Exhausted, she rang the final bell and watched the students collect their homework and file out of the room. Manford Wade, who had not gone to Bart’s homestead that day, lingered and gave Rosie his familiar red-cheeked grin.

“Bye, ma’am,” he called from the row of coat hooks by the door.

“Goodbye, Manford. Practice your script tonight. Mr. Spencer would be rolling in his grave if he knew about the angles in your uppercase
B
.”

“Aw, Mrs. Springfield, ain’t a soul around these parts cares about my letter
B
but you and Mr. Kilgore.”

Rosie brushed a wisp of loose hair from her cheek as she neared the boy. “Any young man who wants to make his way in this world must learn to write properly.”

Manford stuffed his cap over his spiky red hair and gave a little shrug. “Us boys have got a game of picket going over in the alley twixt Walley’s Saloon and Farley’s Bakery. Then I got to go home and milk the cow and put up the chickens. If there’s any time left before sundown, I’ll do my letters.”

“School should come before picket, Manford,” Rosie admonished. “With a good education, you can become anything you want in this world—a doctor, lawyer, mercantile owner. But with picket, all you’ll ever learn how to do is hide out and sneak around. Those skills will only serve if you want to be an outlaw.”

“An outlaw? Naw, ma’am, I aim to grow up and be just like your husband—and I bet he can’t write a Spencer
B
no better than me.”

Tipping his cap the way Rosie had seen Bart do a hundred times, Manford took his leave. She stood silently in the doorway as Mr. Kilgore emerged from the classroom next door.

“How did things go today, Mrs. Springfield?” he asked.

Startled, she turned to face him. “Oh, everything was fine. I enjoyed the day very much.”

“Would you like to come over to the house and take a cup of tea while you wait for Mr. Springfield to arrive? You’re looking a little peaked.”

“Thank you, Mr. Kilgore, but I won’t be waiting for my husband today. We’ve agreed I’ll stay here in town during the week. I plan to use my savings from the Harvey House to purchase a small town home.”

“Oh?” His brow rumpling, Mr. Kilgore took off his spectacles and began cleaning them with a white cotton handkerchief he had pulled from his back pocket. “This is not an arrangement I had expected, Mrs. Springfield.”

“Would you and Mrs. Kilgore be so good as to put me up tonight? Tomorrow afternoon I’ll speak with Mr. Osfield about the house I’m hoping to buy.”

“Already picked one out, have you?”

“Yes, sir. It seemed prudent.”

“You’re welcome to stay with us for as long as you like. I would prefer you invest your money in a horse and buggy so you can take yourself home to your husband each evening.”

Rosie worked up a small smile. “We shall see. In the meantime I’d best collect my texts. I have a lot of preparing to do for tomorrow. I’d like to teach some songs for a spring musical program.”

“Wonderful!” With the change in subject, Mr. Kilgore’s attitude mellowed, and soon he was off and running with her idea. By the time Rosie stepped into the Kilgore home, he was positively giddy about the pros
pect of patriotic recitations, spring medleys, piano solos and even a small operatic play.

Mrs. Kilgore was quick to support the idea of Rosie spending as much time as she wanted in their home, and she hurried to prepare the attic bedroom for their guest. After a quiet dinner, Rosie climbed up to the small gable room and worked on her lessons until the lamp wick burned low.

Her first day of teaching had been everything she had hoped. But she couldn’t help weighing what she had given up against what she had gained. Finally she crawled into the cold, empty bed and fell asleep to dream of Bart.

A trunk filled with Rosie’s clothes, shoes and other belongings appeared on the school porch the following day, but she never caught sight of Bart. As the week passed, she and the students settled into a schedule that began to chug along like a train on a well-greased track. Mrs. Springfield would tolerate no nonsense—no pigtails dipped in inkwells, no secret messages passed back and forth on slates. And most certainly no hidden tobacco.

Instead of the switch and cane, the new teacher found other methods of motivation. Within a week, the schoolhouse fence had been whitewashed by a pair of boys who couldn’t refrain from chewing gum like a pair of old heifers. Three girls who had chosen to whisper rather than learn their geography lessons were stitching curtains from a bolt of blue fabric. A tardy Manford Wade scrubbed the classroom blackboard. Geraniums, planted by a group of playground fistfighters, flourished
in window boxes built by a young man who dawdled in memorizing his Shakespeare soliloquy.

Mannie reported to her everything said about Rosie, complimentary or not. The new teacher’s after-school punishments, it seemed, were the best thing going. She provided cold lemonade and sandwiches and regularly joined in the work. People wondered at Mr. Springfield, who never came to visit his wife, and they said she looked skinny and dark-eyed from sadness over it.

That first week, Rosie put down ten dollars on a small yellow clapboard house. The joy she had expected to feel never came. Instead, it was all she could do to keep from running to the livery stable, throwing her arms around Bart and begging him to take her home to their soddy.

She made it her crusade to remove every wanted poster in town. Needing paper to write a message, wipe a spot of mud from her shoe or mark a book she was reading, she tore down the posters one by one. She felt guilty for her gratitude that Sheriff Bowman had taken so ill with his coughing that he had no time to investigate Bart’s background.

In fact, she began to wonder if everyone in Raton had taken ill. A bout of chickenpox felled the youngest students, while the others coughed and sneezed through their lessons. Rosie couldn’t cure her bouts of nausea either. Finally she scheduled an appointment with Dr. Kohlhouser, whose dog Griff had made the school’s front porch a favorite haunt.

One Saturday morning Rosie was sweeping that porch when Manford Wade and his chums sauntered by. “Hey, Mrs. Springfield,” he called. “I just saw Buck over at
the livery stable! He asked me out to work at your place this afternoon. We’re gonna build a refrigerator!”

Rosie clutched the broom handle for support at the mention of Bart. “Refrigerator? Sounds like a big job.”

“Not for Buck and me. We’re gonna dig it wide and deep. It’ll be so cool you can keep food in there for weeks without it spoilin’. Buck says it’ll work by ‘vaporation.”

“Evaporation.” Rosie took a breath. “So, how are things…on the homestead? The sugar beets, I mean.”

“Buck says the beets are growin’ like weeds, and come fall he’s gonna have to quit his job at the stable to get ‘em all harvested. He don’t mind, though. With the kitchen garden abloom and the beets doin’ so good, he thinks the two of you should do just dandy without the extra pay.”

“That’s what he said?”

“Ask him yourself if you don’t believe me. Why don’t you go see him, ma’am? Do the both of you good. If you think you’re feelin’ poorly, you should see Buck.”

“Buck is sick? Mannie, why didn’t you tell me!”

“He ain’t sick the way you are. Buck is blue as an old hound dog day after day. He ain’t hardly fun to be around. You better go see him, Mrs. Springfield. I reckon it’d cheer him up mightily.”

“I may just do that. Yes, maybe I will.”

By now, the other boys were shuffling their feet. “Come on, Mannie,” one spoke up. “Let’s get on over to the alley.”

“Playing picket again, boys?” Rosie asked.

“Yes, ma’am. And we wanna watch the goin’s-on at the shootin’ gallery.”

Rosie ruffled Mannie’s sweat-dampened red hair. “On a Saturday, I can’t think of anything better than a good game of picket. If I weren’t all grown up, I’d join you myself.”

This comment drew hoots of laughter from the group. “I reckon a schoolmarm playing picket would draw a bigger crowd than Charley Baker’s shooting gallery,” Mannie said.

“I expect you’re right. Well, get along with you, then. And be careful around the guns, boys.”

Manford waved as he ran off with his friends. The redhead was the only one of the older boys who didn’t pack his own pistol. Rosie knew it was only because his mother was too poor to provide her son with that particular trapping of manhood.

Rosie swept the last dusty board on the porch, her thoughts on Bart. Was he really so sad? Could he have planned the refrigerator with her in mind? It was nearly noon. Should she hurry over to the livery stable and tell Bart she was ready to go home…at least for the weekend?

Rosie’s worst fears had never materialized. Most of the posters in town had vanished. Harwood, the toothless troublemaker, had not returned. No one had a bad word to say about Bart. Filled with sudden determination, she propped the broom by the door and started across the street.

“Bart,” she would say, “I’ve come about the refrigerator. I’d better go out to the homestead and make sure
you dig it in the right place. I don’t want it too far from my kitchen.”

Her
kitchen? Rosie shook her head. Why should she expect Bart to do anything for her? Oh, but she had missed him so much! The days without him seemed endless. The nights even worse.

“Bart,” she would say, “I’ve come to tell you that I love teaching, I’ve put ten dollars down on a house and I’ll do just fine without you. But I want you to know how lonesome I’ve been…and how much I want to go home….”

She stopped at the street corner by the livery stable and tried to swallow the lump in her throat. She couldn’t cry in front of Bart. That would never do. But how was she ever going to hold back her tears when the thought of the man tore at her heart so?

Lifting up another of her futile prayers, Rosie walked up the hay-littered ramp into the livery stable. “Well, Bart,” she would say in a perfectly casual voice, “So how have you been?”

“Rosie?” His deep voice came from somewhere in the shadows.

She stopped, unable to move. “Oh!”

“That you, Rosie?”

“If it’s not a ghost, it’s her,” another voice spoke up—one Rosie realized as that of Cheyenne Bill.

“Rosie, what are you doing here?” Bart asked.

The two men emerged into a shaft of golden light. Bart was every bit as tall and strong and handsome as Rosie had remembered. His jet-black hair gleamed in the sunlit stable, and he wore no shirt. Ropes of muscle shone a coppery red across his chest and down the flat
plane of his stomach to his leather-belted denims. His green eyes flickered.

“I…well, I…” Rosie fumbled, exactly as she feared she would. “I wanted you to know that…that my teaching job is wonderful. And…I hear you’re building a refrigerator.”

“Rosie?” Bart reached toward her, and she melted.

“Oh, Bart, I’ve been so lonely and—”

“A killin’, a killin’!” someone screamed just outside the livery stable. “There’s been a shootin’!”

Instinctively Bart grabbed Rosie and held her against his chest. The stocky Cheyenne Bill sprinted to a table near the stable window, grabbed a rifle lying there and bolted for the door.

“Stay here and guard your woman!” he barked. “I’ll tend to this.”

Bart whipped his six-shooter from the holster hung at his hip. “Bill, watch your back. No tellin’ what kind of troublemakers are lurkin’ out there.”

The massive man swung around and gave Bart a lopsided grin. “Or lurkin’ in here. See you later, Kingsley.”

As Cheyenne Bill ran outside, one of the Harvey House kitchen boys sprinted past the livery. Rosie called out to him. “Jimmy, what’s going on?”

“It’s a shooting!” the youth called back as she and Bart headed for the door. “I heard tell a kid got killed over by Charley Baker’s shootin’ gallery. The men are threatening to lynch Baker for not taking better care of his business. They say Mrs. Wade’s wild with grief!”

“Wade!” Rosie jerked out of Bart’s arms. “Dear God, please not Mannie!”

Without waiting, she tore down the ramp and joined the crowd racing toward the alley between the bakery and the saloon. Heart aching, Rosie elbowed her way through the throng. “Not Mannie! Not Mannie!” she breathed.

But the moment she pushed through the ring of onlookers, she knew her prayers were in vain. Manford’s mother huddled over the boy, her shrieks of grief piercing the air as Doctor Kohlhouser examined the small limp form.

Sheriff Bowman and a couple of deputies were attempting to hold back the crowd while at the same time keeping a close watch on the shooting gallery owner, Charley Baker. A group of men who had participated in the shooting gallery’s games were studying the bullet holes in the board behind the target while Manford’s young friends stood against the alley wall, their eyes wide with horror.

Rosie tried to push her way past the sheriff, but he caught her arm. “Not so fast, ma’am. It ain’t a pretty sight.”

“I’m his teacher, Sheriff Bowman,” she pleaded. At that, he let her go. Falling to her knees beside Mrs. Wade, Rosie cradled the sobbing woman. Manford, eyes closed and body motionless, lay bloodied and lifeless in the dust. Then a pair of strong brown arms slipped beneath the figure as Bart lifted Mannie against his chest.

“I’ll take the boy home,” he said. “Doc Kohlhouser, if you’ll follow me, you can look after him there.”