The Man from Stone Creek

“That right?” Sam asked. Bracing his elbows against the edge of the well, he let the kid dangle.

“The blood is probably rushing to his head,” Singleton advised fretfully.

“Good for his brain,” Sam said companionably.

“Get me out of here!” Terran sputtered, squirming. “Right now!”

“I wouldn’t flail around like that, if I were you,” Sam counseled. “Hell of a thing if you came out of those splendid boots of yours and took a spill. Fall like that, you’d probably break your fool neck.”

The boy heeded Sam’s advice and went still. “What do you want?” he asked, sounding just shy of reasonable.

“For a start,” Sam answered, “a sincere apology.”

“What do I have to say ‘sorry’ to you for?”

Sam wondered idly about Maddie Chancelor and what kind of influence she might have in this little cowpattie of a town, plopped right along the border between Mexico and the Arizona Territory like an egg on a griddle. If she was anything like her brother, she must be a caution, as well as a shrew.

“Not a thing,” he replied at his leisure. “But a kindly word to Mr. Singleton here wouldn’t go amiss.”

Sam felt a quiver of rage rise right up the length of that boy, then along the rope, like grounded lightning coursing back through a metal rod.

“All right!” Chancelor bellowed. “I’m sorry!”

“‘I’m sorry, Mr. Singleton,’” Sam prompted.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Singleton,” the boy repeated. His tone was neither as dutiful nor as earnest as it might have been, but Sam yanked him up anyhow and set him hard on his feet. The fury in the kid’s eyes could have singed the bristles off a full-grown boar, but he held his tongue.

There might be hope for this one yet, Sam concluded silently, folding his arms as he regarded the furious youth.

“Go home and tell your sister,” Sam said, “that the new schoolmaster will be stopping by shortly to discuss the calamitous state of your character.”

The boy glowered at him in barely contained outrage, fists clenched, eyes fierce. “She’ll be expecting you.” He spat the words, simultaneously leaping backward, out of reach, ready to run. “Don’t bother to unpack your gear. You won’t be around here long.”

Sam raised an eyebrow, took a step toward the kid.

He turned and fled down the road Sam had just traveled, arms pumping at his sides, feet raising little puffs of dust.

By then, Singleton had recovered his composure. “You’re in for some trouble,” he said with friendly regret, consulting his pocket watch and starting for the schoolhouse. “Might as well show you around, though. I have an hour before the stage leaves for Tucson.”

Leaving his horse to graze on the sweet grass, Sam followed. “Where will I find the formidable Maddie Chancelor?” he asked.

Singleton mounted three plank steps and pushed open the schoolhouse door, which creaked ominously on its hinges. “She’s the postmistress, and she runs the mercantile, too,” he answered with a note of bleak resignation. “When she hears how you hung young Terran headfirst down the well, she’s not going to like it. They’re alone in the world, the pair of them, and she protects that little scoundrel like a she-bear guarding a cub.”

Sam digested the information as he crossed the threshold into a small, square room. There were long tables, rough-hewn, with benches, facing a blackboard on the east wall. A potbellied stove stood in one corner, with wood neatly stacked alongside. A few reading and ciphering primers lined a shelf next to the teacher’s desk, and the place smelled of chalk. Dust motes danced in the light coming in through the high, narrow windows.

Singleton looked around wistfully, sighed.

Sam felt a twinge of sympathy, wondering if a lone incident had spurred those little hellions to act, or if anarchy was the order of the day around here. He wasn’t about to ask, figuring the man had been through enough mortification as it was, but he’d have put his money on the latter.

“Your private quarters are back here,” Singleton said after a long and melancholy pause, making for an inside door. “It isn’t much, but the roof keeps out the rain, and there’s a decent bed and a cookstove.”

Sam was used to sleeping on the ground, wrapped up in a bedroll. The accommodations sounded downright luxurious to him.

“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.