Cecilia And The Stranger

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“For what?” asked Cecilia, astonished.

“For hoping that...” She let the sentence trail off, leaving Cecilia still mystified. “And then, seeing you together...”

Slowly, understanding dawned. Somehow, Dolly must have sensed that there was something going on between her and Pendergast. Of course, there wasn’t, nothing besides animosity, nothing at all. What a horrible misconception!

“Oh, no, Dolly, you’re wrong.” As Dolly’s eyes peered at her in hope, Cecilia shook her head decisively. “I have no interest in him whatsoever, nor he in me. Not the kind you mean, anyway.”

She didn’t know what to say next, but she felt in her heart of hearts it was her duty to dissuade Dolly from pinning her hopes on Pendergast. True, he was a bachelor, of a marriageable age and arguably attractive after a fashion, but Cecilia had serious misgivings about his character. Overall, they knew very little about this man. Also, if she had her way, he would soon be a man with no means of employment.

But before she could speak further, Dolly said, “That’s not true, Cecilia. Perhaps you don’t like him, but he’s been flirting with you for five years.”

“Five years!” Cecilia said, astonished again. “But Mr. Pendergast just got here a few days ago!”

Dolly gaped at her. “Mr. Pendergast? What has he to do with any of this?”

“But that’s who you mean, isn’t it?” Cecilia asked, perplexed. “Who else—”

An unbelievable possibility occurred to Cecilia, cutting her sentence short. She felt herself go pale as the blood drained from her cheeks. “Dolly, you can’t mean...”

Fresh tears spilled freely down Dolly’s face, and she nodded miserably. “Yes!” she cried.

“But you can’t possibly...” She hardly knew how to put it into words.

Dolly did it for her. “It’s Buck! I love him terribly!”

How else? Cecilia stared at her friend in horror. And disbelief. “Buck?” she asked, unable to keep the amazement out of her voice. “Buck McDeere?”

“When I saw you two together, Cecilia, I felt something die inside me,” Dolly said, wiping her eyes with a wrinkled soggy handkerchief.

“But, Dolly,” Cecilia said, still trying to cope with her friend’s initial pronouncement, “Buck?”

“You’re just a snob, Cecilia,” Dolly said harshly. “You think he’s unsuitable because he works for your father!” Cecilia took offense at those words. True, she had her faults, but this wasn’t one of them. “You’re wrong, Dolly. I wouldn’t condemn a man for doing honest work. But, think. When you saw him last night, he was passed-out drunk!”

Dolly shot her an accusing glare. “That obviously didn’t deter you from playing fast and loose with him while he was vulnerable.”

Cecilia’s mouth popped open in astonishment. “He fell on top of me!” she defended. “Truly, Dolly, that’s absolutely all there was to it.”

Suddenly, Dolly’s eyes cleared. For a moment she gazed doubtfully at Cecilia, as if the news was too good to be true. “Honestly?” she asked, blinking.

“I swear it,” Cecilia said. “But nevertheless...Buck? Dolly, he drinks, and goodness knows what else. He spends half his life at Grady’s.”

Dolly smiled radiantly, as if Cecilia’s words had conjured the image of a saint for her. “You’re wrong, Cecilia. No one is a lost cause. I’m sure, deep inside, Buck McDeere has it in him to be a great man, if someone would just set him straight.”

Cecilia released a frustrated breath. “I’m not certain about that....”

“I know what you’re really thinking.” Dolly looked at her sharply and sniffed. “You think I’m too old.”

“The thought never entered my mind.” Which was the truth. Cecilia had been too stunned to think things through even that far. “But now that you mention it, wouldn’t you prefer someone more...mature?”

Dolly lifted her chin proudly. “I’m not yet thirty, after all, and Buck is nearly twenty-four. If our sexes were reversed, no one would blink an eye at the difference.”

Everything she said was true. Still, Cecilia had serious misgivings. She was so used to thinking of Buck as a clown, or a pest, like a fly persistently buzzing around that needed to be swatted away. Considering him as a serious marriage partner—for anyone—was a stretch. But especially one for Dolly, who always seemed overly concerned with appearances and having things done properly.

What couldn’t be denied was that Dolly was still young, and pretty, and had endured four lonely years of widowhood. She deserved love in her life, but men, good ones, were scarce—at least in Annsboro, which hadn’t become the boomtown people like Lysander Beasley had hoped. And so Buck had become a serious prospect by default, especially since lately he was coming by more often to see Cecilia.

“I suppose I can see where he might be molded into marriage material,” Cecilia allowed grudgingly, feeling half-responsible for the catastrophe.

Dolly shook her head emphatically. “I wouldn’t want to change him.”

“You’d take him as he is?” If so, Dolly had gone bug crazy.

“Well...”

Cecilia breathed a sigh of relief. At least her friend hadn’t gone completely over the edge. Oh, but what a mess. She had no idea what Buck thought of Dolly—if he thought of her at all. But what difference did any of this make to her? She was about to be packed off to the ranch, never to gossip again, except on the occasional revival day. It was too pathetic.

And then, miraculously, an idea occurred to her through the murk of her despair. If she played her cards carefully, she just might hold disaster at bay for a precious while.

“Oh, how terrible,” she gasped, sounding an alarming note.

Dolly’s eyes snapped open wide. “What is it?”

Cecilia worried her lip to calculated effect. “Oh, nothing.”

“Yes, it is so something,” Dolly said. “Is it about Buck?”

Cecilia spoke her next words carefully. “I feel so sympathetic to your plight, Dolly. But unfortunately, once I go home, Buck probably won’t come to town so much. Really, I’ll be helpless to give you a hand.”

Dolly straightened alertly.

“I might hint to him about you,” Cecilia reasoned, “but I’m sure you wouldn’t want him to know the extent of your feelings. Not before you know his.”

“Oh, no.” Dolly looked horrified at the thought. “He can’t find out what I just told you!”

“Hmm.” She wrinkled her brows thoughtfully. “With me back at home, this might be hard to maneuver.”

“Oh, Cecilia!” Dolly’s eyes were pleading, the set of her shoulders contrite. “If you’ll just do this one thing, I swear I’ll never tell your father about last night. I was only going to because...I was jealous.”

Cecilia felt a pang of guilt for manipulating her friend this way. If her livelihood and her liberty weren’t at stake, she wouldn’t have stooped to such conniving. “If you had just asked me, you would have known there was nothing to be jealous of.”

Dolly’s face reddened with shame. “It was foolish of me, but I was afraid you would laugh if I told you how I felt about Buck.”

Cecilia swallowed. “Not at all.”

“Then you’ll do your best to bring Buck around?” Dolly asked.

“Of course.”

Dolly clapped her hands together. “I want to make a new dress, and I saw the sweetest little pattern at Beasley’s! I’ve got the perfect material for it upstairs—I’ll get it and show you.”

She flew out of her chair and bounded up the stairs, leaving Cecilia still sitting in a stupor. How on earth was she going to manage to get Buck to fall in love with Dolly? She chewed her lip in deep thought. If she didn’t manage to succeed, she wondered, would Dolly exact some kind of revenge?

She would have to get busy—both on Buck and on Pendergast. Because if she didn’t bring Buck around, she might well end up on the ranch anyway. And then she’d never be able to oust the suspicious schoolteacher from his job!

* * *

Ten-year-old Beatrice Beasley sat on the topmost schoolhouse stair, waiting for her teacher. Two nut brown braids fell over her yellow checked pinafore, neat as you please. Generous freckles dotted her face and hands, made darker by a summer exposed to the sun. Nevertheless, she held her hands primly in her lap atop her schoolbook. Her big brown eyes, magnified by round spectacles, were focused adoringly on Mr. Pendergast, who was just shutting the building for the day.

At her feet was her dog, Mr. Wiggles, an old yellow hound that was treated by the entire town as if he was a queen’s precious lapdog. The faithful animal roamed Annsboro all day until it was time to fetch his mistress home from school. Though the dog was sometimes known to be troublesome, Lysander Beasley, who because of his social status was always fearful his daughter was at risk of abduction, wouldn’t allow a word to be spoken against the animal.

Catching sight of Bea and her hound, Jake let out an exasperated sigh. The child tormented him. Just seeing her bespectacled little face made him go clammy with fear. Of all the children in school, Lysander Beasley’s daughter was the smartest. Smarter than her teacher, which gave Jake nightmares. Sometimes he imagined that even Mr. Wiggles could see right through his ruse.

The trouble was, he’d only finished seven years of schooling himself. When his father had had the ranch, Jake couldn’t be spared once he was grown enough to work. Then, when his family had lost their farm due to Otis Darby’s greed, he’d had to work even harder trying to do enough odd jobs to keep him and his mother going.

Burnet Dobbs had saved their lives by offering him the deputy job. It didn’t offer much as far as pay went, but it gave him a sense that he was working for right, for justice. Sending Otis Darby up the river had been one of the high points of his life, like vindicating his father’s death. But that had been before justice had backfired on him.

The upshot was that he hadn’t ever expected to step inside a school again, except maybe for a town meeting. Now he was forced to dredge up memories of lessons he’d learned nearly twenty years ago. The school had few books, just enough math primers to go around. Jake spent a lot of the day on spelling, because the school did boast a new dictionary. Besides, he’d always been a good speller.

Saturday, when Jake had first arrived, Beasley had touted some newly bought readers, but Jake hadn’t been paying attention, and now he didn’t see them. For lack of any other inspiration, he’d brought out one of Pendergast’s books, Dancehall Gunfight, and read it aloud today. Perhaps it wasn’t great literature, but the children’s faces had been rapt as he’d read the story of Two-step Pete, desperado turned federal marshal, and Willa the dance hall girl. Some of the girls had even cried at the point when Willa thought Two-step Pete had been fatally wounded.

Bea Beasley had cried. And now, as she looked at him as lovingly as Willa had gazed at Pete, Jake felt a shiver go down his spine. If the kid used her noggin, she’d have no trouble figuring out he was an impostor. All she had to do was tell her daddy that the new schoolteacher wasn’t up to snuff—and just like that, he’d be out of a job. Maybe he should be thankful for her schoolgirl crush, he reasoned. Better she see him as a hero than a deputy turned ranch hand doing a poor imitation of a teacher.

He smiled at Bea, put his hat on his head and hurried down the stairs. Bea fell into step beside him with Mr. Wiggles right at her heels.

“Are you going to read us more about Pete and Willa tomorrow, Mr. Pendergast?”

“I suppose so,” he said. “Do you like that story?”

“Oh, yes! I’m going to ask my father if I can grow up to be a dance hall girl, just like Willa.”

“Don’t do that!” he said too hastily. Imagining what Lysander Beasley would think of that book put him in a panic. Mr. Wiggles growled and Jake stared at Bea’s surprised face. “Uh, I mean...stories lose their magic when you tell other people about them.”

Bea looked shocked. “They do?”

“Absolutely.” Jake winced at how easily the silly lie had jumped to his lips. Nevertheless, he breathed easier when he saw she was falling for the line. “You have to keep them to yourself.” Lord, he prayed that would make the pesky kid keep her lip buttoned!

“Oh.” Bea appeared worried. Probably thinking about all the stories she’d demystified through the years, Jake guessed.

Just then, he caught sight of Cecilia and Buck across the street, in front of the defunct blacksmith’s shop. Cecilia had the ranch hand practically pinned against the storefront and appeared to be working him over about something or other. Jake felt his spine stiffen at the sight of the two of them together. Undoubtedly, it meant more trouble brewing.

Didn’t Buck ever go home?

Without thinking, Jake veered so that he was walking straight toward the blacksmith shop. Bea and her dog did the same. He just couldn’t shake that kid.

* * *

“Aw, Cecilia, why?” Buck’s expression was petulant.

“Because, Dolly’s one of the best cooks in town. Why, Mr. Walters pays to eat there!”

“I know, but...but isn’t it more fun to walk around and talk on the street?”

Cecilia put her hands on her hips, took one step forward and glared at him crossly. “I’ll thank you to show the decency to at least pretend to care about my reputation.”

“What reputation?”

“Precisely,” Cecilia snapped. Trying to convince Buck to visit her at Dolly’s was harder than she’d thought it would be. Even the promise of better chow wasn’t bringing him around. “I won’t have a reputation left if you continue to chase me around the great outdoors like you do. So you can either come for a nice sit-down dinner at Dolly’s or just leave me alone entirely.”

He took on a kicked-puppy appearance, leaned against the blacksmith’s wall and stubbed his toe in the dirt. “But Dolly’s so—”

“It’s no wonder you’re intimidated by her,” Cecilia broke in. “I’ve always thought she was the most beautiful woman in the county.”

“Dolly?” Buck asked, astonished.

“And the funniest.” As if to demonstrate, Cecilia looked at the empty September sky and chuckled merrily.

“What is it?”

Cecilia shook her head. “Oh, I was just thinking of this story Dolly told me the other day.” She put a hand to her mouth. “But I forgot. You were in it.”

“Dolly was talking about me?” He cocked his head first in surprise, then in wonder.

“She talks about you all the time.” This, at least, was the horrible truth. Now that the matter was out in the open, Dolly used every free moment to drag details about Buck out of Cecilia.

“Really?” Buck rubbed his chin thoughtfully and glanced around, as if Dolly was going to pop around the corner of the building any second now.