Wild Burn (10 page)

The boy’s name was the easiest to remember and to say. “Maahe?”

His small chest puffed up, and for the briefest moment, he reminded her of John in the way he squared his shoulders and stared back at her. There was an eagerness in his gaze that he struggled to mask, and Moira, who had never experienced such a sensation before where a child was concerned, felt her heart squeeze behind her rib cage. She nodded to him encouragingly, then lifted her own hand from the desk and placed it on her chest, right on top of that misbehaving organ. “Teacher.”

The room was absolutely silent while the other students, most appearing fascinated by the goings-on between her and the Indians, waited for Maahe to respond.

He didn’t disappoint. He indicated himself with a finger. “Maahe.” Then he pointed at Moira and sounded out, “Teeeacher.”

She wanted to clap her hands together, she was so pleased. “Excellent. Just excellent.” It didn’t matter that he didn’t understand her, because he clearly heard the approval in her voice, and his round cheeks flushed happily. “Now, let’s—”

“Miss Tully. Miss Tully!”

Frowning at the interruption, she turned her attention to Irwin Matthews, one of her rowdier students. The towheaded twelve-year-old was the son of the mines’ majority shareholder, and as such, he often had the accompanying entitled mien of the wealthy, even if it was ridiculous to put on airs in a town of this size. “Yes, Irwin?”

The boy stood. “My father said that the day you bring savages into this classroom is the day you stop being the teacher in Red Creek.”

“Did he, now?” Moira fought to keep her face blank. “I don’t think that’s up to your father, Irwin.”

The boy scowled. “My father runs this town.”

“Your father runs the mines,” she corrected gently. It would do her no favors to get into an argument with a child, but if she didn’t quash this, word would quickly spread that she couldn’t control her classroom, and then she really might no longer be the teacher in Red Creek. “The Cheyenne children will stay, and you will be polite to them.”

“But they’re savages.” He turned to glare at his new classmates over his shoulder.

The smaller girl, He’kase, flinched. Maahe’s jaw clenched. They might not understand English, but no translator was needed for Irwin’s malice.

“That’s enough, Irwin,” Moira said sharply. “Sit back down.”

But he didn’t. “I’m telling.”

“You’re what?”

“I said, I’m telling. I’m telling my father.” He started to gather his books.

A chill formed between her shoulder blades. His father, Jacob Matthews, was a cold, calculating man who carried quite a bit of sway with the people of Red Creek, and she would be wise to tread carefully. She kept her spine stiff and did her best impression of the Mother Superior. “You may tell your father whatever you like, Irwin Matthews. After school.”

“But I—”

“Sit. Down.” How she hated playing the disciplinarian.

“No.”

Moira’s back teeth ground together in frustration. “Not a request, Irwin.”

“What are you going to do, Miss Tully?” His dark eyes narrowed in triumph. “Hit me?”

A lead ball formed in her stomach. She didn’t want to pull out a ruler—she never had before. But if she didn’t mete out punishment, she would lose the respect of the children, and potentially their parents. The townspeople didn’t want to have to worry about their children when they were at the school. They expected a firm hand from her, guiding the youths, educating them. No one would fault her for taking a ruler to Irwin Matthews, likely not even his illustrious father. Discipline was a necessary part of teaching, a necessary evil.

But it had never been necessary for her before today.

She had a choice. She could let Irwin go tattle, making her look weak in front of her students. Or she could take the unused ruler from the top drawer of her desk and call the boy to the front of the room.

It wasn’t much of a choice at all, really.

Just as she reached for the drawer, her gaze caught on Maahe. He watched her intently, a worried frown beetling his dark brows. She froze.

She couldn’t, she realized. It was their first day, and they were excited. They had smiled at her only moments earlier, and then to see her lay a hand to another student, when they would have no idea why, due to the language barrier?

She couldn’t do that to them. She couldn’t betray their trust.

When she spoke again, it was quietly, and not so much as a single breath sounded from her assembled students. “I don’t need to hit you for you to follow instructions, Irwin. I am your teacher and your elder, and you owe me your obedience and respect. So sit down.”

The boy wavered. She watched as he glanced around at the twenty-some other students in the classroom and noticed that not a one of them would look his way. When her voice had softened, every other head in the room had focused on her, and whatever bravery Irwin had drawn from his audience of peers, it was gone now.

Very slowly, he sat.

Relief flooded her, leaving her shaky, but she hid her hands in her skirts momentarily and began the morning’s lecture. When her eyes locked briefly with Maahe’s from his seat at the back of the room, he smiled at her, and she let herself smile back. She had control again. She was in charge.

Or at least she was until they broke for midday meal.

Some of the miners’ children who lived in the shanties outside the town packed their lunches in metal tins and ate on the wooden steps bathed in sunlight, but many of Moira’s students walked home to eat. Their parents were the shopkeeper, the physician, the banker, the investors—namely, the monied. Those children would go to their kitchens, where their mothers had been baking, and enjoy a nice repast before returning for afternoon lessons. They would tell their mothers about what they had learned from the weirdly accented Miss Tully and come back, pink-cheeked and slightly put out at being denied a few extra hours of play before sundown, for recitation.

Somehow, in the excitement of the Cheyenne children’s presence, she’d forgotten that Irwin Matthews was one of those students. She didn’t register the victorious expression in his eyes when he returned to her classroom, not until his father and Sheriff Nelson filed in behind him.

The happy chatter of the other students faded, and Moira rose from where she’d been seated next to Maahe, He’kase and Heovâheso, with whom she’d been trying to ascertain what they’d learned that morning. “Mr. Matthews. Sheriff.” She nodded calmly at the two men. She wouldn’t let them see how their overwhelmingly male presence affected her, no matter how heavily they loomed in her direction.

“Miss Tully,” the sheriff intoned gruffly. “Can we speak to you outside?” He didn’t bother doffing his hat, and once again she was reminded of how much she disliked the man.

“Right here is fine, I think.” She would have said the same thing had her goal been just to be perverse, but something in the back of her mind recognized this as a learning opportunity for her students. Because she feared she knew what was coming.

“You don’t want that.”

“Oh, but I do.” She tilted her head toward her silent, wide-eyed classroom. “It’ll be educational.”

Jacob Matthews, obviously annoyed by her refusal, swiped a hand through the air. “Fine, have it your way.” He gave his son a little pat on the shoulder that sent the boy to his seat, never taking his mean-looking dark eyes off Moira. He was a big man, tall and broad, with a bit of a paunch and a thick neck that hinted at the stasis wealth had brought to his life. “I won’t have my son taught in the same classroom as a bunch of scalper brats.”

Moira barely controlled her flinch, and some of the children gasped. “Language, Mr. Matthews.”

He sniffed and folded his arms across his barreled chest. “You’re the one insisting we have this conversation here.”

“As Sheriff Nelson will tell you, we’ve been encouraging the Cheyenne to send their children to this school for nearly two months. If this troubled you, there was plenty of time for you to say as much, prior to today.”

“We never thought they’d actually show up!” The mine owner’s words were a booming explosion that seemed to rattle the timbers of the schoolhouse itself. “No one wants them here.”

“I do.” She’d needed a cause, needed
something
to fight for when she came to Red Creek, because it was too exhausting to consider fighting for herself. Healing, for Moira, was a laborious process, and she couldn’t bear to think on her past, on Boston, on the evilness that had sent her spiraling into a chaotic grab for independence. The Cheyenne had been the perfect distraction, but the more she’d spoken with John White Horse, the more she’d cared about integration for integration’s sake. It hadn’t taken long for this fight to stop being about her and start being about what was right.

“And who are you, you little Indian lover?” He sneered, and suddenly Moira knew from whom Irwin had learned that earlier mean expression on his face. Matthews leaned forward until his face was much too close and his breath, carrying the strong scent of chewing tobacco, puffed over her cheeks. “You live in the shack down the way, right next to that savage masquerading as a real man. The whole town’s seen you in and out of his cabin.” He hissed the last as Moira felt the color drain from her face. “Spreading your legs for the red man, Miss Tully?”

The sheriff coughed into his fist. “Jacob, that’s enough—”

“Why does it matter so much to have these
things
”—Matthews jerked his thumb toward the Indian children—“come to school? Are they your little pets? Oh, no, I know,” he said with an ugly smirk. “You want one of your own. Well, you just keep on letting White Horse fu—”

The ominous double
click
of a pistol being cocked pierced the tension between Moira and Matthews. “I’d think carefully on those next words of yours, mister, because I’ve been itching to use this damn thing all day.”

Matthews straightened, an incredulous look on his anger-reddened face, and Moira saw a deadly Delaney Crawford standing in the doorway, his gun pointed right at the man’s head. Standing a few yards beyond his shoulder was an equally grim John White Horse, whose expression said he’d heard every word of Matthews’s rant.

“Who the hell are you?” Matthews demanded.

Her mind reeled from the heinous accusations thrown at her, and she struggled to breathe even as relief consumed her for the second time that day. When Maahe slipped his small hand into Moira’s, though, she found her voice, managing a cold smile as she answered for her rescuer.

“Oh, him? That’s Captain Crawford. And he’s a very good shot.”

Chapter Twelve

Whoever this pompous, well-fed bastard was, Del was going to kill him.

“Crawford, put the gun down,” the sheriff said in a placating tone.

Del didn’t take his eyes from the piece of filth who had just called Moira Tully a whore. “Don’t think so.” He may have calmed down somewhat from his chest-beating argument that morning with John, but that didn’t mean he was feeling anywhere close to controlled on the subject of Moira.

And this was, undoubtedly, on the subject of Moira.

“Outside,” he bit out. “Now.”

Surprisingly, the wealthy-looking man, along with the sheriff, carefully stepped through the doorway of the schoolhouse and out into the bright noontime sunlight. Though his focus was on the two men in front of him, he heard the low, lilting murmur of Moira’s voice and the hurried scuffle of small feet. A flood of children spilled from the building and out into the main street, scattering in various directions as they made their way home, obviously dismissed. He waited a beat for her to appear, and when she did, she was holding the hands of two Indian children. The third—a rather tall girl—gripped the free hand of the shorter girl.

“Mr. White Horse,” Moira said firmly, “would you be so kind as to escort the children back across the hill? I would do it myself, but it seems I have a discussion to finish.”

“Yes, Miss Tully.” John held out his hands to the three children and spoke quietly, rapidly, in his own tongue. They went to him, but Del noticed the little boy looked back over his shoulder worriedly at Moira.

She gave him an encouraging smile that softened the faint lines of tension bracketing her mouth. That brave smile did something twisty to Del’s insides.

I am in so much trouble.

The thought popped into his mind, ricocheting back and forth like a bullet in an iron box, and he swallowed, uncomfortable. His reaction to her was too much, too fast, but he was helpless to stop it…or so he told himself. Because, in truth, he wasn’t sure he wanted to stop it. His reaction to her felt a bit like salvation.

So. Much. Trouble.

As was this man. “Who’re you?” he asked tightly, returning his attention to Pompous Bastard.

The man, hatless, squinted in the sunlight, his face flushed with righteous anger and the sort of condescension only money could buy. “I’m Jacob Matthews, and I own this town.”

“Own it, do you? Didn’t know Red Creek was bought and paid for.” Oh, yes, Del was
very
familiar with this kind of man, the inimitable Pompous Bastard.

“It might as well be. I own majority shares in four of the five lead-ore mines. My money built half of Red Creek, including this here schoolhouse.”

“Good for you,” Del drawled, letting his Southern accent thicken. Men like Matthews, who was clearly a money-grubbing Yank, let their guards down when their superiority complexes came out to play, and Matthews was about to start feeling superior in three…two…one—

“So you’re Crawford,” Matthews said slowly. “As I’m the man paying your fee, I’d suggest you lower that gun of yours.”

“Again. Don’t think so.”

Matthews shook his head, his graying blond hair slicked so close to his skull that it refused to move, even when a strong breeze whipped around their quartet. “Don’t be stupid, Crawford. You’re holding a gun on the sheriff.”

“Nelson can leave whenever he wants. He wasn’t the one insulting a lady.” No, the next round out of his pistol’s chamber had Matthews’s name on it. Del fought to get his heart rate back under control, to unclench his jaw, to keep his fist from flying forward to break the rich sonofabitch’s nose. “You have an apology to make.”