Sweetwater Springs Scrooge: A Montana Sky Holiday Short Story (The Montana Sky Series) Read Free Page A

Instead, unusual curiosity kept him rooted to the boy’s side, staring over his shoulder at the tableau on the counter.
    Noah slid over his last coin.
    Even without knowing the price of the vase, Elias guessed the boy didn’t have enough money to cover the cost.
    Mrs. Cobb scowled and shoved back the stack of money. “The vase costs more that that , boy.”
    The child’s shoulders slumped, and he picked up the coins and put them in a small sack. He turned to leave, glancing up at Elias as he did so.
    Those eyes! The sadness in the blue depths took Elias back thirty years, to a similar pained expression, the eyes of his beloved brimming with tears.
    “Why are you buying that vase, boy?” The question burst out of Elias’s mouth before he could think, shocking him. Not sure what came over him, he began to set his purchases on the counter, attempting to appear nonchalant.
    Mrs. Cobb fluttered her hands at hearing Elias voluntarily string seven words together.
    He couldn’t help a spurt of amusement at her reaction. He never spoken more than necessary words to her. But today his nature was somehow different. After all, I did set out intending on a little human interaction, and I just accomplished that.
    “No need to look so,” Elias told the stricken boy. He reached into his pocket and pulled out several crumpled bills, sliding them across the counter.
    Mrs. Cobb gasped. Her hand shot out to claim the money, as if she thought he’d change his mind.
    The boy’s eyes widened.
    Bemused by his need to intervene on Noah’s behalf, Elias didn’t bother to bargain with the shopkeeper. “Add that to young Mr. Turner’s account.” What in tarnation has come over me? I haven’t been so impulsive in thirty years.
    The woman’s close-set brown eyes narrowed in speculation.
    Elias could almost see the gossip about to spill out of her mouth, probably to the next customer to darken the doors of the mercantile. “And not a word about this transaction, Mrs. Cobb. It’s Christmas time, after all. Presents. Secrets.”
    The woman’s lips pressed together. She gave him a nod, stiff with reluctance.
    But he knew she’d keep her agreement. As much as the shopkeeper liked to gossip—the more malicious the better—Mrs. Cobb knew if she didn’t exercise discretion, people would stop using her store, instead ordering from catalogues and such.
    Hope sparked in the depths of the boy’s eyes. “Really, Mister? You’ll help me buy Grandmother a vase? I broke her other one.”
    “It’s a loan, you hear,” Elias said sternly to cover up the pang that went through him at hearing about the broken vase. As if I hadn’t shattered our relationship so many years ago. “I expect you to work off the debt. You can start by helping me haul wood.” Not that he needed any more wood. He was set for the rest of the winter. But that task was the best he could come up with on the spur of the moment. “You come over to my house—I’m two lots over from the Adler’s stone house—on Monday after school.”
    “Yes, sir! Thank you, sir!”
    The boy’s fervent tone sent an unexpected surge of pleasure through him, and Elias couldn’t resist a smile back at Noah, albeit his mouth felt a little rusty at the unexpected movement. He reached over and picked up the vase. “We’ll keep this at my house until you pay me back.”
    ~ ~ ~
    After school the next day, with the weather crisp despite the sun, they worked on the woodpile together. Elias split some logs he’d sawed last summer into stove-length pieces, which Noah gathered and stacked in the woodshed. The sun’s rays sparkled off the snow, making him squint. The air was crisp and frosty, but exertion soon heated him, and Elias took off his outer coat, walked over to the nearby clothesline, and draped it over the rope.
    On this side of Sweetwater Springs, close to the forest, the lots were divided into square acre parcels. His land was screened on all sides by trees his parents had planted