Read Online The Man from Stone Creek by Linda Lael Miller - Free Book Online Page A

the food would go to waste if Violet didn’t eat it.
    â€œHere?” she asked, noting that Sam had set out the bar of French-milled soap and the towel he’d purchased with the bathtub. “In the schoolhouse?”
    â€œWhat better place?” Sam reasoned. He’d been sitting behind his desk, wearing spectacles and poring over a thick volume when she burst in. At Maddie’s appearance, he’d set aside the glasses and stood. “A school is a place to learn, isn’t it? And Violet needs to know how to take a bath.”
    Flummoxed, Maddie spread her hands. “What about the other students?” she asked. “You can’t expect the child to undress in front of the boys—”
    Sam smiled. “Of course not. The girls can stay—I suspect some of them could do with a demonstration. I’ll take the boys down to the river for their lesson.” He held up the cake of yellow soap from yesterday’s marketing. “I’ve noticed that Violet is generally the first to raise her hand. Let her think she’s volunteering.”
    Maddie glanced at the schoolhouse clock, torn. It was nine o’clock, straight-up, and the mercantile was still closed. At that very moment Mr. James was probably looking out his office window, the bank being kitty-corner from the store, wondering why the customers couldn’t get in to buy things and whipping up a temper because of it.
    â€œWhy me?” she asked.
    Sam smiled again. “You’re the only woman I know in Haven besides Bird of Paradise over at the Rattlesnake Saloon. I don’t guess it would be fitting to bring her in to teach bathing, though she’d probably agree if I asked her.”
    Maddie sniffed. “It certainly wouldn’t be fitting,” she said, wondering how Sam O’Ballivan had come to make the woman’s acquaintance. Damned if she’d ask him, even if her life depended on it. She approached the tub and peered inside, already unfastening her cuff buttons to roll up her sleeves. “We will need water, Mr. O’Ballivan.”
    â€œI’ve got some heating in the back room,” he said. “No sense in lugging it in here and pouring it into the tub if you weren’t going to agree.”
    She sighed. “What about the store?”
    â€œWell, I figured, as the owner, you could—”
    Maddie flushed. “I am not the owner. I manage it for someone else, and I am accountable to Mr. James, at the bank, who serves as trustee.”
    Sam frowned. “Oh,” he said.
    â€œYes,” Maddie confirmed. “ Oh. By now, there are probably people standing three-deep on the sidewalk, complaining because they can’t get in to buy salt and tobacco and kitchen matches.”
    Sam brightened. “I think I have a solution,” he said. “I’ll take the boys to the river another day. In the meantime, they can learn how a mercantile operates. We’ll make a morning of it.”
    â€œ You intend to take over my store?” Maddie asked, affronted. “Do you think it’s so easy that any idiot can do it?”
    The schoolmaster smiled. “I don’t regard myself as an idiot, as a general rule. How hard can it be, filling flour bags and measuring cloth off a bolt?”
    Maddie came to an instant simmer, but before she could tell the man what she thought of his blithe and patently arrogant assumption that keeping a thriving mercantile was something he could do one-handed, the pupils began to straggle in. She swallowed her outrage and stood as circumspectly as she could, letting her gaze bore into Sam O’Ballivan like a pointy stick.
    When everyone was settled in their seats, Sam announced his plan. The boys would help him tend the mercantile, the girls would remain at the schoolhouse for a “hygiene” lesson.
    The boys cheered and stomped their feet, and rushed for the door at an offhand signal from Sam. The girls sat,