The Man from Stone Creek. Linda Lael Miller

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      “Not that you’ll want to stay long, even if Miss Chancelor doesn’t get you fired,” Singleton added. Two carpetbags waited at the foot of the bed and he stooped to fetch them up while Sam surveyed his new home.

      “Looks like it’ll do,” he decided. The more he heard about Maddie Chancelor, the more he wanted to meet her.

      Singleton stooped to pick up the satchels. Smiled gamely. “Good luck, Mr. O’Ballivan,” he said. “And thank you again for your help.”

      “Good luck to you,” Sam replied, a little embarrassed by the other man’s gratitude. Anybody worth his bacon would have stepped in, in a circumstance like that.

      Singleton set down one of the bags long enough to shake Sam’s hand. “May God be with you,” he added in parting. Then he crossed the room, opened the rear door and left, without looking back.

      * * *

      MADDIE CHANCELOR was measuring flour into a tin canister to fill Mrs. Ezra T. Burke’s weekly grocery order, when Terran burst into the store, shirttail out, hair rumpled, face aflame.

      “The new teacher’s here,” he blurted before she could ask if he’d been fighting again, “and he just tried his best to kill me!”

      Instant alarm swelled within Maddie’s breast, fair cutting off her wind, and her hands trembled as she set the scoop aside on the counter. “Kill you? What on earth...?”

      “He would have drowned me in the well if I hadn’t got the best of him,” Terran insisted.

      “Drowned you in the—”

      “Well,” Terran finished in furious triumph.

      Maddie untied her apron laces as she rounded the counter to examine her younger brother for injuries. He looked sound, and for someone who had nearly been murdered by drowning, he was remarkably dry, too.

      “Tell me what happened,” she said, grateful, for once, that the mercantile was empty.

      Terran gulped visibly. “He got me by the feet and tried to drop me down the schoolyard well,” he burst out. “I hid out in the brush, after I got away, or he’d have finished me for sure!”

      Maddie’s heart seized at the image of her brother, her only living relation, suspended from such a height. Haven was a wild town, a crossroads for rogues, scalawags and scoundrels from both sides of the border, but she hadn’t expected the new schoolmaster to number among them. Anxiously she looked Terran over again. “You’re certain you haven’t been hurt?”

      Terran nodded. “He said he’d be by here, real soon, to talk to you. He’s going to tell you a whole passel of lies, Maddie. He’ll say—”

      Just then, the little brass bell over the door jingled and a man entered, removing his hat as he traversed the threshold.

      Terran took one look at him and bolted for the stairs at the back of the store to take refuge in their rooms.

      Maddie’s face flamed. “You must be the new schoolmaster,” she said.

      He smiled, nodded. “Sam O’Ballivan,” he replied. “And you must be Miss Chancelor.”

      Maddie gave a curt nod. Sam O’Ballivan was clean-shaven and muscular, probably six feet in height, with brown hair and shrewd blue eyes. He looked more like an outlaw than a schoolmaster, and she was sure the distinctive bulge under his long suit coat was the butt of a pistol. What had Mr. Callaway and the other members of the school board been thinking, to hire such a man?

      “How dare you assault my brother?” she asked evenly, when she could trust herself to speak at all.

      Mr. O’Ballivan’s mouth tilted upward at one corner. He kept his distance, though, which meant Maddie didn’t have to go for the shotgun she kept under the counter in case of trouble. “Is that what he told you? Guess he’s got a devious side, to go along with that mean streak of his.”

      Maddie felt like a kettle coming to a boil. “Terran is not a liar, nor does he have a ‘mean streak,’” she managed to say. “And it’s a fine how-do-you-do, your saying that, when you tried to drown him!”

      O’Ballivan chuckled, and what looked like mischievous derision glinted briefly in his eyes. His blatant masculinity seemed to take over the whole store, like some ominous, unseen force. Maddie would have described him as rugged, rather than handsome, if she’d been thinking along such lines.

      Which she most definitely wasn’t.

      “The truth, Miss Chancelor, is somewhat at variance with your brother’s account of the incident in question,” O’Ballivan said. “When I rode up, he and the rest of that pack of rascals had Tom Singleton hog-tied and hanging headfirst down the well. God knows how long he’d have dangled if I hadn’t come along when I did.”

      Maddie blinked. It wasn’t true, she told herself firmly. Terran would never be involved in anything like that.

      “I don’t believe you,” she said.

      “You don’t choose to believe me,” he remarked idly, examining a display of dime novels Maddie had spent much of the morning arranging. She disapproved heartily of yellow journalism, but the plain fact was, folks were willing to spend money on those little books, and she couldn’t afford not to carry the merchandise.

      At long last O’Ballivan’s gaze swung back, colliding with hers. Maddie felt a peculiar niggling in the pit of her stomach.

      “You’re not doing your brother any favors, you know, by taking his part when you know he’s in the wrong,” he said.

      “Did you or did you not try to drown him?”

      “If I’d tried to drown him,” O’Ballivan said reasonably, “I would have succeeded. All I did was demonstrate that hanging headfirst down a well, while memorable, is not a desirable experience.”

      Maddie swallowed so hard it hurt. “What if you’d dropped him?”

      “I wouldn’t have,” he responded, damnably self-assured.

      She slipped behind the counter again, in case she needed the shotgun. “I will not tolerate that kind of rough treatment,” she insisted, making an effort to keep her voice from rising. “Terran is a child, Mr. O’Ballivan.”

      He drew near enough to rest his hands between the pickle crock and a pyramid of bright red tobacco cans. “Terran,” he said, “is a spoiled, bullying brat. And I, Miss Chancelor, will not tolerate the sort of behavior I witnessed today. I was hired to restore order in that school, and I will do it—however many times I have to hold your brother over a well by his feet. Do we understand each other?”

      Maddie felt heat surge up her neck to pulse along her cheekbones, and her ears burned. “If you lay a hand on him again,” she said, “I will have you dismissed.”

      He smiled slightly. “Then I guess we do understand each other. You’re welcome to try to get rid of me, Miss Chancelor, but if what I saw in that schoolyard a little while ago is typical, I’d say I’m just the kind of teacher this town needs.”

      “You СКАЧАТЬ