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

wide-eyed, waiting for enlightenment. Maddie would have bet not a one of them could have defined the word hygiene, but they had noticed the bathtub. They were all agog at the spectacle.
    â€œMiss Chancelor will give the demonstration,” Sam went on, looking worriedly from face to face. “But we’ll need a volunteer to get into the tub.”
    Sure enough, Violet’s hand shot up. “I’ll do it, Mr. SOB,” she cried.
    â€œMr. O’Ballivan,” Sam countered easily. “That’s good, Violet. I appreciate your willingness to take the initiative.”
    Violet beamed. “Can I go to the privy first?”
    The other girls giggled and Sam silenced them with a ponderous sweep of his eyes.
    â€œYes,” he said. “You do that.”
    While Violet was gone to the privy, he brought in four buckets of hot water and emptied them into the tub. The remaining girls watched, barely able to suppress their amusement.
    When he’d set aside the last bucket, Sam turned to address them. “If even one of you makes fun of Violet,” he said, “you’ll find yourself writing ‘I will not bully smaller children’ one hundred times on the blackboard. Is that clear to everyone?”
    The girls nodded, subdued.
    Sam dusted his hands together. “Good,” he said, and turned to Maddie. “Now, Miss Chancelor, if I might have the key to the mercantile—”
    She surrendered it, slapping it down into his palm with a little more force than strictly necessary.
    â€œThank you,” he said, tossing the large brass key once and catching it with an aplomb that made Maddie grit her teeth.
    And so it was that Maddie came to illustrate the finer points of taking a bath, using Violet Perkins as a model.
    Â 
    M ADDIE HAD BEEN RIGHT , Sam thought as he opened the mercantile for the day’s commerce. There were eight women waiting on the sidewalk, shopping baskets in hand, tapping their toes in impatience. He greeted them with a nod and made his crew of boys wait until the ladies had swept inside.
    It was the contrary nature of folks, he reckoned, that on this particular morning, everybody in town wanted to get their marketing done. Had Maddie followed her usual routine, there most likely wouldn’t have been so much urgency.
    He set the boys to sweeping and dusting canned goods while the female population of Haven made their various selections.
    â€œWhere,” demanded a narrow-faced old biddy with hooded, hawklike eyes and a nose to match, “is Maddie?”
    Sam opened his mouth to answer, but before he could get a word out, Terran cut him off. “She’s over to the schoolhouse, giving Violet Perkins a bath!” he crowed.
    â€œTeaching a hygiene lesson,” Sam corrected quietly.
    â€œWell,” huffed the Hawk Woman, “it’s about time somebody look that child in hand.”
    â€œYes,” Sam said, opening the cash register drawer to tally the funds on hand. “It is about time.”
    The woman blinked.
    Sam silently congratulated himself on a bull’s-eye.
    By ten-thirty, he’d taken in four dollars and forty-eight cents, and made careful note of every transaction, so Maddie couldn’t say he’d fouled up her books. Then, figuring the hygiene lesson ought to be over, and Violet decent again, he dispatched Terran and young Ben Donagher to the schoolhouse to find out.
    When they came back, Maddie was with them, the front of her dress sodden and her hair moist around her face. He couldn’t rightly tell if that sparkle in her whiskey eyes was temper or satisfaction with a job well done.
    â€œI see my store is still standing,” she remarked.
    Sam grinned. “I trust my school has fared as well,” he parried, reaching for his hat.
    â€œYou’ll have to empty the bathtub yourself,” Maddie said, taking her storekeeper’s apron down off a peg and donning it. “Violet fairly gleams