The Man from Stone Creek

They’d all washed up, in the basin Anna kept refilling with hot water from the reservoir on the cookstove, and taken their places at the table in the next room—Undine had seated herself squarely between Mungo and Sam, Maddie saw, with rising trepidation—when a clamor arose in the kitchen.

Nobody moved, and Mungo, who had been glowering at Sam since they’d sat down, didn’t look away.

Maddie felt a little trill of fear when the door between the two rooms swung open, and Garrett, Landry and Rex strolled through, single-file, all of them looking as though they’d just come off the trail.

Garrett, the firstborn, was tall and broad through the shoulders, with dark hair and watchful blue eyes. If he lived to old age, which wasn’t likely, given his reputation, he’d look much as Mungo did now. Any woman who didn’t know him would mark him down as handsome, Maddie supposed, but he was no stranger to her, and she kept a careful distance.

Landry, the second son, was a plain man, smaller than Garrett, with a narrow face and small eyes that flitted constantly from place to place, like a rodent on the lookout for a hungry cat.

Rex, like his eldest brother, was at least six feet in height. The resemblance ended there, though; his features were oddly blurred, as though reflected in moving water, his skin pitted by an early case of smallpox.

When their eyes fell on Sam O’Ballivan, Rex and Landry came to a standstill. Garrett, seeing that his father’s attention was focused elsewhere, winked at Undine, who blushed and lowered her gaze.

Well, Maddie thought. I should have guessed.

Sam stood, and Maddie wondered if he was still wearing his .45 under his suit coat, or if he’d left it in the wagon, as most dinner guests would.

“I’m Sam O’Ballivan,” he said heartily. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Rex and Landry didn’t look as though they agreed, but they recovered soon enough.

“Howdy,” Rex said grudgingly.

“You sure do get around,” Landry observed. “I’d swear I seen you someplace before.” The unfriendly expression on his face clearly indicated that he knew exactly where he’d seen Sam O’Ballivan before, and had hoped not to repeat the experience.

Sam smiled, unruffled. “It’s a small world,” he said, and sat down again.

Undine watched out of the corner of her eye as Garrett took the place next to Maddie, reached for a cloth napkin and flipped it open.

“Anna’s ready to serve that venison roast any time now,” she said, oblivious to the tension snapping in the air.

Maddie suppressed an urge to move her chair an inch or two farther from Garrett’s. It made her skin crawl, being that close to him, and in her agitation, she happened to snag glances with Sam, sitting directly across the table from her.

She’d have sworn he smiled at her, even though his mouth didn’t move, and she felt reassured.

Meanwhile, Rex and Landry hauled back their own chairs, with a great deal of scraping, and sat themselves down. Both of them kept casting unhappy looks in Sam’s direction.

How, Maddie wondered, had he managed to make their questionable acquaintance in the short time since he’d come to Haven? When the Donagher brothers came to town, word spread like a storm warning and, since the mercantile was the heart of the community, and thus the changing house for the smallest tidbit of gossip, she would have known they were around five minutes after they rode in.

How would a schoolmaster, new to this part of the Territory, know a pair of scoundrels like Rex and Landry?

She could hardly wait to ask him.

The venison roast proved delicious, as did the rest of the meal—a heaping bowl of mashed potatoes, freshly baked biscuits, green beans and corn and peach cobbler for dessert.

Undine spent the entire evening fawning over Sam, and Mungo glared the whole time. Landry and Rex were jumpy, and Maddie, hungry as she was, could barely get a bite down her throat. The whole place felt like one giant tinderbox ready to explode into flames at a spark.

Garrett appeared comfortable enough, filling and emptying his plate more than once and stealing the occasional telling glance at Undine. And Sam seemed impervious to the sullen hostility coming his way from Mungo, Landry and Rex. He listened to Undine’s relentless chatter as though it had been written on a sacred scroll and carried down from Mount Olympus on a platter, and by the time the peach cobbler went around the table, Maddie’s stomach was clenched tight as a fist.

Would this night never end?

It was nearly nine-thirty, by the fancy clock on the sideboard, when Sam declined a third cup of coffee from a devoted Undine, and announced that he and Miss Chancelor had better be getting back to town. After all, he said, he had work to do in the morning, and Maddie liked to open the store for business right on time. She kept it open every day except Sunday.

Maddie fairly knocked her chair over backward getting to her feet.

“Landry, Rex,” Mungo said gruffly, “you go out and hitch up that team.” It was the first full sentence he’d spoken since they’d all sat at the table. “Garrett, help Undine clear the table. I’m sure Anna’s gone out to her cabin and turned in by now.”

Maddie felt regret. She liked Anna, and rarely got to see her.

“Sure thing, Pa,” Garrett said, and waited until his father had risen and turned his back before dragging his eyes slowly over Undine.

Sam and Maddie took their leave. They had gone a mile up the river road before Sam stopped the team, got down and inspected the rigging. Up until then, he and Maddie hadn’t spoken.

“What are you doing?” Maddie asked. She was fitful, anxious to get home to Terran, lock the doors behind her and forget she’d ever gone to supper at the Donagher ranch.

Sam didn’t answer. He just tightened everything and climbed back up to take the reins. Maddie figured he hadn’t trusted the Donaghers’ hitching job, and didn’t pursue the subject.

“You know them,” she said when they’d been rolling again for several minutes. “Rex and Landry, I mean.”

Sam chuckled. “Not as well as I plan to,” he replied, and left Maddie to go right on wondering who Sam O’Ballivan really was, and what he wanted with Mungo Donagher’s outlaw sons.

CHAPTER SIX

A LOW, MEWLING SOUND caught Sam’s ear as he rounded the back of the buckboard, out behind the mercantile, hoping to help Maddie down before she went ahead and made the leap herself. He paused and peered into the wagon bed, waiting for a cloud to pass over the skinny moon so he could see more than a shadowy shape huddled in the corner behind the seat.

Just as the moon was unveiled—the side lanterns had winked out, one and then the other, halfway back to town—Maddie turned from her perch to look down. “Land sakes,” she said, “it’s Ben’s puppy.”

Sam sighed, resettled his hat, and reached over the side of the wagon to hoist the little critter out. He’d been nestled on a pile of empty burlap bags the whole way, without making a sound until now.

“Sure enough,” he agreed, setting the mutt on the ground and watching dubiously as it sniffed the rear wheel and then lifted a hind leg.

Maddie gathered her skirts and clambered deftly over the board backrest to stand on the floorboards, her hands resting on her hips. “Somebody must have put him in the wagon. He couldn’t have gotten there on his own.”

“Ben, I reckon,” Sam said. The dog had finished his business and was now smelling his pant leg. He hoped the lop-eared little creature hadn’t mistaken him for a wagon wheel.

“Looks like you’ve been gifted with a dog,” Maddie said with a degree of satisfaction that was wholly unbecoming.

Sam rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. “Now what would I do with a dog?” he countered.

She sat on the side-rail and swung her legs over with a swish of skirts. Sam caught her around the waist just before she would have made the jump, and stumbled a bit at the unexpected solidity of that deceptively slender frame. The contact between their two torsos roused something inside him that made him set her away from him abruptly.

Remember Abigail, he told himself. Damned if he could bring her face to mind, though, right at that moment.

“You’re heavier than I would have guessed,” he said, and then wished he could suck the words back in and swallow them.

Maddie seemed flustered. She straightened her skirts and patted her hair and took her time looking up into his face. “I can think of a thousand things you could have said,” she told him peevishly, “that would have been better than that.”

Sam felt the fool, and that always made him testy. He cleared his throat and tried again. “I didn’t mean—”