The Man from Stone Creek. Linda Lael Miller

blinked.

      Sam silently congratulated himself on a bull’s-eye.

      By ten-thirty, he’d taken in four dollars and forty-eight cents, and made careful note of every transaction, so Maddie couldn’t say he’d fouled up her books. Then, figuring the hygiene lesson ought to be over, and Violet decent again, he dispatched Terran and young Ben Donagher to the schoolhouse to find out.

      When they came back, Maddie was with them, the front of her dress sodden and her hair moist around her face. He couldn’t rightly tell if that sparkle in her whiskey eyes was temper or satisfaction with a job well done.

      “I see my store is still standing,” she remarked.

      Sam grinned. “I trust my school has fared as well,” he parried, reaching for his hat.

      “You’ll have to empty the bathtub yourself,” Maddie said, taking her storekeeper’s apron down off a peg and donning it. “Violet fairly gleams with cleanliness. One of the other girls aired out her dress while she was soaking.”

      Sam sent the boys trooping back to the schoolhouse, lingering to take out his wallet. “Next time Violet comes in the store,” he said, laying a bill down on the counter, “you outfit her with a new one. Say there was a drawing and she won.”

      Maddie regarded him solemnly. He still couldn’t tell whether she was pleased with him or wanted to peel off a strip of his hide. “You lie very easily, Mr. O’Ballivan,” she said.

      Well, that answered one of his questions. “Kids like Violet run into more than their fair share of humiliation, it seems to me,” he replied. “If a lie can spare them embarrassment, then I’m all for it.”

      She had the good grace to blush.

      He waited until he’d reached the doorway before putting on his hat. “We’re due at the Donaghers’s supper table at seven o’clock,” he reminded her. “Best have Terran hitch up that buckboard you use for deliveries unless you want to ride two to a horse.”

      Maddie put the bill he’d left on the counter into the cash register and headed for a display of calico dresses, probably to choose one for Violet. “We’ll take the buckboard,” she said without looking at him.

      Sam smiled to himself as he closed the door behind him.

      Damn, he thought. It would have been a fine thing to share a saddle with Miss Maddie Chancelor. A fine thing indeed.

      * * *

      SCHOOL HAD LET OUT for the day and Sam was seated at his desk, going over the map Vierra had given him the night before, when a small, impossibly thin woman stepped shyly over the threshold. She wore a bonnet and a faded cotton dress, and he knew who she was before she introduced herself.

      He refolded the map, set a paper weight on top of it, and stood. “Sam O’Ballivan,” he said by way of introduction, and added a cordial nod.

      “Mrs. John Perkins,” Violet’s mother responded, lingering just inside the open door.

      “Come in,” Sam urged when she didn’t show any signs of moving.

      She hesitated another moment, then thrust herself into motion. He noticed then, as she approached, that she was carrying a basket over one arm, filled with brown eggs. She set the whole works on his desk, straightened her spine, and looked up at him.

      “I guess my Violet had a bath today at school,” she said.

      Sam waited. She’d brought him eggs, which might be construed as a peaceful gesture, but you never knew with women. They could be crafty as all get-out. Most of the time, when they said one thing, they meant another. They expected a man to learn their language and converse in it like a native.

      Mrs. Perkins drew herself up to her full, unremarkable height, the top of her head barely reaching Sam’s shirt pocket. Under the brim of that bonnet, her eyes spoke eloquently of her discouragement and her fierce pride. “I came to thank you for making a lesson of it,” she said. “Violet’s real pleased that she was chosen for an example.”

      “Violet,” Sam said honestly, “is a fine girl.”

      Tears brimmed along the woman’s lower lashes and her pointed little chin jutted out. “It’s been so hard since John was killed. I love my Violet, I truly do, but betwixt keepin’ food on the table and a roof over our heads, I fear I’ve let some things go.”

      Sam wanted to lay a hand on Mrs. Perkins’s bony shoulder, but it would be a familiar gesture, so he refrained. “Any time you want the use of my bathtub,” he said awkwardly, “you just say the word. I’ll fill it with hot water and make myself scarce.”

      Mrs. Perkins blinked, sniffled, looked away for a moment. “That’s right kind,” she said. “I can do better by my girl, and I will, too. I swear I will, Mr. O’Ballivan. Short of goin’ to work for Oralee Pringle, though, I can’t think how.”

      Sam took an egg from the basket and examined it as thoroughly as if he’d never seen one before. “I do favor eggs,” he said. “I’d buy a dozen from you, every other day, and pay a good price for a chicken now and then, too, if you’ve got any to spare.”

      “Them eggs was meant as a present,” Mrs. Perkins said, but she looked hopeful. “I sell a few, but folks around here mostly keep their own chickens.”

      “Bring me a dozen, day after tomorrow,” Sam replied. “I’ll give fifty cents for them, if you throw in a stewing hen every now and then.”

      For the first time since she’d entered the schoolhouse, Mrs. Perkins smiled. It was tentative, and her eyes were wary, as if she thought he might be playing a joke on her. “That’s an awful lot of money, for twelve eggs and a chicken,” she said carefully.

      “I’m a man of princely tastes,” Sam replied. His mouth watered, just looking at those eggs. He’d have fried half of them up for a feast if he wasn’t dining at the Donagher ranch that night.

      It would be interesting to see if those two fools he’d locked in that Mexican outhouse showed up at the table, and more interesting still to pass an evening in Maddie Chancelor’s company.

      “You want that chicken plucked and dressed out, or still flappin’ its wings?” Violet’s mother asked.

      Sam took a moment to shift back to the present moment. “It would be a favor to me if it was ready for the kettle,” he said.

      Mrs. Perkins beamed. “Fifty cents,” she said dreamily. “I don’t know as I’ll recall what to do with so much money.”

      Sam took up the eggs. “I’ll put these by, and give you back your basket,” he told the woman. She waited while he performed the errand, and looked surprised when he came back and handed her two quarters along with the battered wicker container. “I like to pay in advance,” he said as casually as he could.

      To his surprise, she stood on her tiptoes, kissed him on the cheek and fled with the basket, fifty cents and the better part of her dignity.

      CHAPTER FIVE

      MADDIE DROVE UP in front of the schoolhouse promptly at six o’clock that evening, the last of the daylight rimming her chestnut hair in fire. She managed the decrepit buckboard and pitiful team as grandly as if she’d been at the reins of a fancy surrey drawn by a matched pair of Tennessee trotters.

      Sam lingered a few moments on the steps of that one-room school, savoring the sight of her, etching it into his memory. Once he left Haven for good, and married up with Abigail, as it was his destiny to do, he wanted to be able to recall Maddie Chancelor in every exquisite detail, just as she looked right then, wearing a blue woolen dress, with a matching bonnet dangling down her straight, slender back by its ribbons.

      He felt a shifting, sorrowful ache of pleasure, watching her from under the brim of his hat, and the recalcitrant expression on her face did nothing to dampen the sad joy of taking her in.