The Man from Stone Creek Read Free Page B

grateful. She just wanted him gone, so she could close the store, tally the books and deliver Mrs. Burke’s groceries. She wanted the place to expand to its normal size, so she could breathe.
    â€œObliged,” he said, pausing in the front doorway to don his hat again. He tugged lightly at the brim.
    â€œGoodbye, Mr. O’Ballivan,” Maddie said pointedly, right on his heels. She put one hand on the door lock, eager to latch it behind him.
    He shifted the parcel from one hand to the other, as easily as if it were a basket of eggs. “Until next time,” he said, and touched his hat brim again.
    Maddie, already moving to shut the door, frowned. “Do you receive a lot of mail?”
    â€œNo,” Mr. O’Ballivan replied, “but I expect we’ll have a few more rounds over your brother.”
    Maddie gave the door a shove and latched it.
    Mr. O’Ballivan smiled at her through the glass.
    She wrenched down the shade.
    As she turned away, she was certain she heard him laugh.
    Â 
    B ACK IN HIS ROOM behind the schoolhouse, Sam built a fire in the stove, ladled water into the coffeepot that came with the place, along with the last of Tom Singleton’s stash of ground beans, and set the concoction on to boil.
    If Miss Maddie Chancelor hadn’t run him off so quickly, he’d have had time to lay in a few staples. As things stood, he’d need to take his supper at the saloon and bring the leftovers home for breakfast.
    After school let out tomorrow, he’d go back to the mercantile.
    Like as not, Miss Maddie wouldn’t be all that glad to see him.
    Sam smiled at the thought and turned his attention to the parcel. He’d packed the books himself, before starting the trip down from Stone Creek, and taken them to the stagecoach office for shipping. Now, he looked forward to putting up his feet when he got back from taking his meal, and reading until the lamp ran low on kerosene.
    Of course, he’d have to shake Maddie’s image loose from his mind before he’d be able to concentrate worth a damn.
    After what the boy and Singleton had said, he’d expected someone entirely different. An aging, mean-eyed spinster with warts, maybe. Or a rough-edged Calamity Jane sort of woman, brawny enough to do a man’s work.
    The real Maddie had come as quite a surprise, with her slender figure and thick, reddish-brown hair, ready to tumble down over her back and shoulders at the slightest provocation. She couldn’t have been much past twenty-five, and while that probably qualified her as an old maid, it was a pure wonder to him that some lonely bachelor hadn’t tumbled right into those rum-colored eyes and snatched her up a long time ago. Women such as her were few and far between, this far west of the Mississippi, and generally had their choice of men.
    Her temperament was on the cussed side, it was true, but there was fire in her; he’d felt the heat the moment he’d stepped into the mercantile and locked eyes with her.
    He smiled again as he opened the stove door and stuck in another chunk of wood, hoping to get the coffee perking sooner and wondering how long it would be before the lady organized a campaign to send the new schoolmaster down the road.
    Satisfied that the stove was doing the best it could, Sam opened the box to unpack his books. Except for his horse, Dionysus, grazing on sweet hay up in the high country while a lame leg mended, he treasured these worn and oft-read volumes more than anything else he owned. Some were warped by damp weather and creek water, having traveled miles in his saddlebags, while others had been scarred by sparks from forgotten campfires.
    All of them were old friends, and Sam handled them tenderly as he silently welcomed each one to a new home. When he got time, he’d find a plank of wood somewhere and put up a shelf they could stand on. In the meantime, they made good company, sitting right there on the