Fire Along the Sky
Page 175

Not many rumors were robust enough to survive the hard walk up Hidden Wolf. At Lake in the Clouds they had been sheltered from the gossip and quarrels that circled the village like a fever passed hand to hand.
But now they had moved into the house where Judge Middleton had held court. The villagers, many of whom had come to Paradise as his tenants, were in the habit of bringing the judge all their disagreements. His word was final in matters as diverse as property boundaries, the digging of wells, naming dogs, and marital squabbles.
His death had left a great gap in the village, one that was filled inadequately and reluctantly by Jed McGarrity. Jed had never wanted to be constable and was always looking for a replacement. Elizabeth had done him a great favor, unawares, by presenting herself as another ready source of wisdom.
“Ben Cameron was here today,” she told Nathaniel on their third evening. They were having a supper of milk and bread and berries in the kitchen, which seemed empty after a day of visitors.
“Let me guess,” Nathaniel said. “The fence.”
“Indeed. He wanted to talk to you, but settled in the end for telling me the whole story. As if I had never heard it before.”
“And you said?”
“I gave him tea and gingerbread and told him he'd need to consult a lawyer. He went away with a full stomach, but unsatisfied.”
“I hope you've got more gingerbread,” Nathaniel said. “Tomorrow Ignaz Hindle will be here to tell his side of the story.” He worked his shoulders to loosen the muscles. “Who else was here?”
“Anna, complaining about Mr. Stiles. Missy Parker, complaining about Anna and making not quite veiled remarks about Lily and Simon. Mr. Stiles, wanting to read the Bible to me. Horace Greber, asking me to write to Mariah and ask her to come back home. Half my students, it seemed to me, at one point or another. It was looking a bit like a meetinghouse until Gabriel chased them all away.”
Nathaniel laughed out loud at that. “That's my boy.”
“I think I shall have to post visiting hours,” Elizabeth said, a little ashamed of the whining tone in her voice. “Or perhaps just station Gabriel at the door with a musket.”
“That would suit him,” Nathaniel said. And: “Where is he?”
Elizabeth poured more milk into her tea. “Curiosity is giving him his supper. I even sent Lucy to help Daisy set out her seedlings, I was that eager for some quiet.”
“Missing the mountain,” Nathaniel said.
Elizabeth nodded. “More than I imagined.”
“We can move back.”
Curiosity had brought one of her cats as a welcoming gift, a huge tabby with tufted ears who had promptly given birth to ten kittens in a basket of Elizabeth's good linen. For a long moment she watched as the mother tended her newborns, one eye on the spot where Nathaniel's hunters sprawled senseless in front of the hearth. Then she shook her head. “It's for Curiosity's peace of mind as much as my own, Nathaniel.”
He nodded at that, resigned. “And where's Lily?”
“I suppose she's walking with Simon.”
Nathaniel grunted into his cup. “That's one word for it.”
Elizabeth gave him a severe look. “Nathaniel Bonner,” she said. “If you are unhappy with this state of affairs, then I suggest you talk to your daughter and her young man. Perhaps you will have more success than I.”
Her short temper wasn't a surprise—Nathaniel recalled the early months of her other pregnancies too well to expect anything else—but he knew from hard experience that it would do no good to try to mollify her when she was sick to her stomach. The evenings were the worst. Other women were uneasy in the morning and got it over with; Elizabeth carried it with her all day and into the twilight. Now she was pale, her upper lip beaded with sweat. Soon she would bring everything up that was on her stomach—which wasn't much, by the look of the plate in front of her—and then fall into an exhausted sleep.
Nathaniel wiped berry juice from his chin. “No need to bite my head off. I ain't criticizing.”
“No, but you aren't helping either.”
“Maybe so. But I have given the whole business some considerable thought.” He leaned across the table to put a hand on her wrist. “I got an idea that may settle your worries without stepping too hard on the girl's pride.”
“Does it involve bloodshed?”
He laughed at that. “No more than it did when you and me were getting around to tying the knot.”
A horrified look crossed her face. “Nathaniel, you won't encourage them to elope. You wouldn't.”
“Hell, no,” Nathaniel said. “What I got in mind has to do with giving Lily the chance to change her mind, if that's what she needs to do.”
“Well, come along then,” she said, tapping the table with a finger. “Spit it out.”
“It's got to do with your aunt Merriweather,” Nathaniel said.
Her mouth had begun to soften into a smile when the dogs righted themselves suddenly, the fur bristling down their spines—a signal louder than any knock.
Elizabeth's hands flew up and then settled like restless birds.
He said, “Easy, Boots. I'll send them away, whoever it is.”
But then he hadn't been expecting to open the door to Almanzo Freeman, given up for dead long ago and now returned to the land of the living.
It was more than ten years since they had last seen Manny, and to Nathaniel it looked as though he had spent every day of it in battle. He had gone away a young man and come back a soldier, of a particular kind. It was in the way he stood, his hand curled around the barrel of his rifle; it was in the set of his shoulders, the expression that gave away nothing: not pain or joy or hope.