Читать книгу A Lawman's Christmas: A McKettricks of Texas Novel - Linda Miller Lael - Страница 9

As he rode slowly along every street in Blue River that morning, touching his hat brim to all he encountered so the town folks would know they had a marshal again, one who meant to live up to the accompanying responsibilities, Clay found himself thinking about Parnell Nolan. Blessed with a beautiful wife and two fine daughters, and well-liked from what little Clay had learned about him, Nolan had still managed to be in a whorehouse when he drew his last breath.

Yes, plenty of men indulged themselves in brothels—bachelors and husbands, sons and fathers alike—but they usually exercised some degree of discretion, in Clay’s experience.

Always inclined to give somebody the benefit of the doubt, at least until they’d proven themselves unworthy of the courtesy, Clay figured Parnell might have done his sinning in secret, with the notion that he was there fore protecting his wife and children from scandal. But Blue River was a small place, like Clay’s hometown of Indian Rock, and stories that were too good not to tell had a way of getting around. Fast.

Of course, Nolan surely hadn’t planned on dying that particular night, in the midst of awkward circumstances.

Reaching the end of the last street in town, near the schoolhouse, Clay stopped to watch, leaning on the pommel of his saddle and letting Outlaw nibble at the patchy grass, as children spilled out the door of the little red building, shouting to one another, eager to make the most of recess.

He spotted Edrina right away—her bonnet hung down her back by its laces, revealing that unmistakable head of spun-gold hair, and her cheeks glowed with exuberance and good health and the nippy coolness of the weather.

As Clay watched, she found a stick, etched the squares for a game of hopscotch in the bare dirt and jumped right in. Within moments, the other little girls were clamoring to join her, while the boys played kick-the-can at an artfully disdainful distance, making as much racket as they could muster up.

The schoolmarm—a plain woman, spare and tall, and probably younger than she looked—surveyed the melee from the steps of the building, but she was quick to notice the horse and rider looking on from the road.

Clay tugged at his hat brim and nodded a silent greeting. His ma, Chloe, had been a schoolteacher when she was younger, and he had an ingrained respect for the profession. It was invariably a hard row to hoe.

The teacher nodded back, descended the schoolhouse steps with care, lest she trip over the hem of her brown woolen dress. Instead of a coat or a cloak, she wore a dark blue shawl to keep warm.

Clay waited as she approached, then dismounted to meet her at the gate, though he kept to his own side and she kept to hers, as was proper.

The lady introduced herself. “Miss Alvira Krenshaw,” she said, putting out a bony hand. She hadn’t missed the star pinned to his coat, of course; her eyes had gone right to it. “You must be our new town marshal.”

Clay shook her hand and acknowledged her supposition with another nod and, “Clay McKettrick.”

“How do you do?” she said, not expecting an answer.

Clay gave her one, anyway. “So far, so good,” he replied, with a slight grin. Miss Alvira Krenshaw looked like a sturdy, no-nonsense soul, and although she wasn’t pretty, she wasn’t homely, either. She’d probably make some man a good wife, given half a chance, and though thin, she looked capable of carrying healthy babies to full-term, delivering them without a lot of fuss and raising them to competent adulthood.

Wanting a wife to carry over the threshold of his new house, come spring, and impregnate as soon as possible, Clay might have set right to courting Miss Alvira, pro vided she was receptive to such attentions, if not for one problem. He’d gone and met Dara Rose Nolan.

Stepping off the train the day before, he’d been sure of almost everything that concerned him. What he wanted, what sort of man he was, all of it. Now, after just two brief encounters with his predecessor’s widow, he wasn’t sure of much of anything.

Considerable figuring out would be called for before he undertook to win himself a bride, and that was for certain.

Over Alvira’s shoulder, he saw a boy run over to where the girls were playing hopscotch, grab at Edrina’s dangling bonnet and yank on it hard enough to knock her down.

The bonnet laces held, though, and the boy ran, laughing, his friends shouting a mingling of mockery and encouragement, while a disgruntled, flaming-faced Edrina got back to her feet, dusting off her coat as she glared at the transgressor.

“Looks like trouble,” Clay observed dryly, causing Miss Alvira to flare out her long, narrow nostrils and then spin around to see for herself.

Edrina, still flushed with fury, marched right into the middle of that cluster of small but earnest rascals, stood face-to-face with the primary mischief-maker and landed a solid punch to his middle. Knocked the wind right out of him.

Miss Alvira was on the run by then, blowing shrill toots through the whistle every schoolmarm seemed to come equipped with, but the damage, such as it was, was done.

The thwarted bonnet thief was on his knees now, clutching his belly and gasping for breath, and though his dignity had certainly suffered, he didn’t look seriously hurt.

Clay suppressed a smile and lingered there by the gate, watching.

Edrina looked a mite calmer by then, but she was still pink in the face and her fists remained clenched. She stood her ground, spotted Clay when she turned her head toward Miss Alvira and that earsplitting whistle of hers.

“What is going on here?” Alvira demanded, her voice carrying, almost as shrill as the whistle. She reached down, caught the gasping boy from behind, where his suspenders crossed, and wrenched him unceremoniously to his feet.

Clay felt a flash of sympathy for the little fellow. Like as not, he’d taken a shine to Edrina and, boys being what boys have always been, hoped to gain her notice by snatching her bonnet and running off with it—the equivalent of tugging at a girl’s pigtail or surprising her with a close-up look at a bullfrog or a squirmy garter snake, and glory be and hallelujah if she squealed.

Miss Alvira, still gripping the boy’s suspenders, turned to frown at Edrina.

“Edrina Nolan,” she said, “young ladies do not strike others with their fists.”

Edrina, who had been looking in Clay’s direction until that moment, faced her accuser, folded her arms and staunchly replied, “He had it coming.”

“Go inside this instant,” Alvira ordered both children, indicating the open door of the schoolhouse with a pointing of her index finger. “Thomas, you will stand in the corner behind my desk, by the bookcase. Edrina, you will occupy the one next to the cloakroom.”

“For how long?” Edrina wanted to know.

Clay had to admire the child’s spirit.

“Until I tell you that you may take your seats,” Miss Alvira answered firmly, shooing the rest of her brood toward the hallowed halls of learning with a waving motion of her free arm. “Inside,” she called. “All of you. Recess is over.”

The command elicited groans of protest, but the children obeyed.

Thomas, clearly humiliated because he’d been publicly bested by a girl, slunk, head down, toward the schoolhouse, and Edrina followed in her own time, literally dragging her feet by scuffing the toe of first one shoe and then the other in the dirt as she walked. Finally, she looked back over one shoulder, caught Clay’s eye and gave an eloquent little shrug of resignation.

He hoped the distance and the shadow cast by the brim of his hat would hide his smile.

That kid should have been born a McKettrick.

DARA ROSE MADE THE ROUNDS that morning just as she’d planned, swallowing her pride and knocking on each door to ask for work, with little Harriet trudging along, uncomplaining, at her side.

There were only half a dozen real houses in Blue River; the rest were mostly hovels and shanties, shacks like the one she lived in. The folks there were no better off than she was and, in many cases, things were worse for them. Thin smoke wafted from crooked chimneys and scrawny chickens pecked at the small expanses of bare dirt that passed for yards.

Mrs. O’Reilly, whose husband had run off with a dance hall girl six months ago and left her with three children to look after, all of them under five years old, was outside. The woman was probably in her early twenties, but she looked a generation older; there were already streaks of gray at her temples and she’d lost one of her eye teeth.

She had a bonfire going, with a big tin washtub teetering atop the works, full of other people’s laundry. Steam boiled up into the crisp air as she stirred the soapy soup, and Peg O’Reilly managed a semblance of a smile when she caught sight of Dara Rose and Harriet.

Two of the O’Reilly children, both boys, ran whooping around their mother like Sioux braves on the warpath, both of them barefoot and coatless. Their older sister, Addie, must have been inside, where it was, Dara Rose devoutly hoped, comparatively warm.

“Mornin’, Miz Nolan,” Peg called, though she didn’t smile. She was probably self-conscious about that missing tooth, Dara Rose figured, with a stab of well-hidden pity.