A Lantern in the Window

Bobby Hutchinson

SMASHWORDS EDITION

@ Copyright 2012 Bobby
Hutchinson

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

For my mother, Bertha Dahl Rothel,
whose vivid memories of those pioneer times inspire many of my
stories. Thanks for the memories, Mom.

February 22,
1886

"She’s good and late. Prob’ly hit a
blizzard.”

The garrulous man also awaiting the
arrival of the westbound train tugged his knitted cap closer around
his ears and huddled into his woolen overcoat, eyeing Noah’s heavy
buffalo coat with envy. “That’s some coat you got there, mister.
You shoot the buffalo yer- self?”

Noah nodded, wishing the man would go
pester someone else and leave him alone. He wasn’t in any mood for
small talk this afternoon.

“
You a rancher
hereabouts?”

Noah nodded again, a curt
nod.

"Only just moved out here me’self,”
the man went on. “Don’t know many folks yet, takes time. Name’s
Morris, Henry Morris.” He held out a mittened paw.

“
Noah Ferguson.” Noah shook
the extended hand. Any other day, he’d have welcomed this stranger
to the Canadian West, taken time to get to know him, but today he
was too distracted.

"Nice meetin' ya, Ferguson. Waitin’ on
my wife Sadie and the kids, comin’ out from the East,” Morris
confided, then waited expectantly.

When Noah didn’t respond, Morris
shifted from one foot to the other and then gave up. "Well, no sign
of the train, and it looks like we’re in fer a real blow, way that
wind’s pickin’ up. Don’t know about you, but I’m about freezin’.
Why not come along inside the station house with the rest of us? No
tellin’ how late she’ll be.”

"Thanks. I’ll be along presently.”
Relieved to be left alone, Noah thumped his mittens together and
stamped his booted feet, pulling his scarf up and his weathered
Western hat further down, painfully aware of the cold on his newly
shaven cheeks and chin.

What the hell had possessed him to
shave off his beard this morning? His rugged features might look
better without all that wild black hair, but the beard might also
have kept his chin from freezing, waiting for this damnable
train.

And after all, what did he care how he
might appear to her? It wasn’t as if he had to court her; the
marriage was over, the legal bond established between them. She had
insisted on a proxy marriage before she left Toronto on the
four-day train journey that was bringing her here to Medicine Hat.
Against his better judgment—and the advice of the only lawyer in
town—Noah had agreed.

He’d wanted it all over and done with.
He’d signed the papers and sent the money for the fare, and now
that she was almost here, his gut was churning. He wished to God
the train would get here so they could be done with this awful
first meeting, he and Annie Tompkins.

Annie Ferguson
, he corrected
himself. Annie Ferguson, his second wife. Tall, she'd described
herself. Thirty-four, on the thin side, and plain, which suited him
just fine. He’d been relieved to read her description of herself;
after all, this was no love match, far from it.

Instead, it was a practical solution
for them both. She was a soldier's wife, widowed in the Rebellion
of 1885, a farm woman trapped in the city, working in some dingy
factory to support herself and her young daughter while longing for
the country life she'd known as a child.

And as for him, this marriage was a
desperate measure.

He thought of his cranky, bed-ridden
father, being cared for at this moment by a kindly neighbor, then
deliberately forced his thoughts back to his new wife.

Redheaded, she’d said, which worried
Noah some. Was it true, what they said about a redhead’s temper?
There’d been no sign of it in the eight letters she’d sent during
the past months, and Lord only knew he had no experience of women’s
temper and no desire to learn.

Molly had been the sweetest of women.
In their three years of marriage, Noah was hard put to recall times
when she’d even come close to losing her temper.

Molly
. Without warning, bitter
rage at his loss welled up in him, rage so intense that his tall,
well-muscled body trembled with the force of it, and he clenched
his teeth and knotted his hands into fists inside the blue wool
mittens his dead wife had knitted for him.

There were holes worn through one
thumb and two fingers. Noah had clumsily mended them.

It had been two years now since Molly
and his eighteen-month-old son, Jeremy, had died within hours of
one another, victims of typhoid, and in recent months he'd begun to
believe this smothering, impotent, choking fury was gone forever,
that time had eased the agony of his loss. Instead, here it was
back again, as powerful as ever, and now there was this gnawing
guilt as well.

I never wanted any woman
but you, Molly. Still don’t, but I can’t do it alone anymore, not
since Dad had the stroke. If you’d lived, Molly, I wouldn’t be in
this damnable position, waiting to meet some stranger. I’ve had to
invite her to share the house we built together, the bed we slept
in. Damn it all, Molly, how could you do this to me?

He struggled for, and as always,
recovered his self-control. He reminded himself with harsh honesty
that his new wife would share as well the work of the ranch, the
care of his father, the constant, ill-tempered demands of a once
sweet natured man who'd become a tyrant since his
stroke.

Noah swallowed hard and the last of
the rage subsided, replaced with apprehension. He’d mentioned in
his letters to Annie that his father wasn’t well, but he’d never
really explained exactly what taking care of Zachary involved.
Hell, if he had done so, no woman in her right mind would have
agreed to come, would she?

Like him, Annie and her young daughter
would just have to make the best of this situation. He brushed one
hand across his eyes, clearing away the snowflakes that blinded
him, and squinted down the track.

Far off down the rails a single
headlamp flickered in the driving snowstorm, and over the sound of
the wind he could hear the eerie wail of the steam whistle and the
sound of an approaching engine. The train was coming.

At last, the waiting was
done.

* * *

With a screech of brakes and a cloud
of steam, the engine groaned to a halt. Outside the passenger car,
it was snowing heavily, but through the frosted window Annie could
see a small knot of people on the platform, all-staring expectantly
up at the train.

An old man with a white beard was
shoveling frantically to clear a path from the platform to the
small wooden station.

“
Med—i—c—ine Ha-a-a-t," the
conductor called in his singsong fashion, making his way down the
crowded aisle to open the door.

After four endless days riding across
empty wilderness, at last they’d arrived. Heart thumping so hard
she was certain it would fly out of her chest, Annie tried to
adjust the flamboyant hat Elinora had given her as a parting gift,
but it wouldn't stay put.

Bets reached out and straightened it,
and Annie gave her a grateful smile and a wink, trying to pretend a
bravado she was far from feeling. With trembling hands she gathered
their bundles together, wrapped Bets’s wool shawl tighter around
her, and followed the other departing passengers to the
door.

Tilting her chin high, Annie lifted
her skirts and stepped down into snow on legs that had turned to
jelly.

Lordie, it was freezing. She paused
and caught her breath as the cold air seared her lungs. Once the
first shock was over, however, the icy air felt clean and
invigorating after the stuffy train compartment, but it started
Bets to coughing again.

Annie twisted her sister’s scarf up
and over her chin and mouth, and then, feeling sick with nerves,
she squinted into the snow and tried to pick out which of the men
waiting a short distance away might be Noah Ferguson.

Thirty-six years old, he'd written.
Tall, dark-haired.

Her eyes skittered past a short, round
figure with a cable knit hat pulled down to his eyelids, lingered
on a thin, red-faced man with a handlebar moustache and a brimmed
cap, and then settled on the giant standing like a statue a little
distance from the others, brimmed hat hiding his face, hands thrust
deep into the pockets of a huge furry coat. Annie looked, and
looked again.

Some sixth sense told her that this
was her husband.

His gaze touched her face and flicked
past her, to the passenger car where a very fat woman with several
children was now being helped down the step. “Sadie,” bellowed the
man in the knitted hat, racing over and throwing his arms around
her.

There were no other passengers getting
off. The conductor was closing the door.

The man in the heavy coat looked at
Annie again, puzzlement in his frown, and Annie swallowed hard and
said a silent, fervent prayer as he moved towards her.

Lordie, he was big. She was tall for a
woman, but he towered over her. There was a ruggedness and raw
strength about him unfamiliar to Annie, accustomed as she was to
city men.

She drew herself up and squared her
shoulders, praying that she didn’t look as terrified as she felt.
She attempted a smile and knew it was a dismal failure.

“
How do you do?” Her voice
was barely audible.

His face was all angles and planes, a
stern, strong, handsome face, clean shaven and
unsmiling.

"I’m looking for Miss Annie Tompkins.
Rather, Mrs. Annie Ferguson,” he corrected. His voice was a deep
baritone.

"That's me," she managed to say. She
tried again to smile, but her lips felt paralyzed. "I’m Annie, and
this is my—this is Bets."

Bets, her wide, feverish blue gaze
intent on Noah’s face, made a small curtsy and then edged fearfully
behind her sister, doing her best to stifle her coughing and not
succeeding.

Annie cleared her throat; desperately
trying to remember the dignified little speech she’d been preparing
every anxious moment since she’d left Toronto. Not one word came to
her.

"Hello, Noah Ferguson," she finally
managed to stammer. "Pleased to meet you, I’m sure," she choked
out, painfully aware that she sounded both weak-minded and
simpering.

He didn’t respond. Instead, his
coal-dark eyes slowly took in her hat, her face, then her figure.
He looked her up and down. Annie refused to flinch under his gaze.
She clenched her teeth as he stepped around her to stare at Bets
before he once again turned his attention to Annie.

"You’re considerably younger than you
led me to believe, madam. How old are you, exactly?” He was
scowling down at her, and a shiver ran down her spine that had
nothing to do with the snow swirling around them.

Here it was then, the first
consequence of all her lying. There was nothing to be done except
confront it head on.

"I’m twenty-two.” Annie tilted her
chin as high as she could and met his coal-dark eyes, but after a
long moment under his steady gaze, her bravado crumbled.

"Well, almost twenty-two. I’ll be
twenty-one this June.” At the thunderous look on his face, she
hurriedly added, "I know you wanted someone older, Mr. Ferguson. I
was afraid if I told the truth, you wouldn't have me. Us. But I
assure you, I feel a lot older inside than my years. If that’s any
help.”

He actually snorted in disgust. He
looked from her to Bets and back again. “Twenty years old. And with
a fourteen-year-old daughter? That’s quite an accomplishment,
madam.” His voice dripped with sarcasm.

If it weren’t so cold, Annie would
have sworn this was hell.

“
She’s—Bets is my little
sister, not my daughter,” she confessed miserably. "I—I’ve never
been married. I thought you might not—I thought—”

He stared at her until she gulped and
was silent. "You thought I was fair game, and you told me only what
you figured I wanted to hear. I take it most of what you've told me
about yourself is nothing but a pack of lies. Is that so,
madam?”