I'm going to go ahead and apologize for any historical inaccuracies, as I know it's inevitable. I'm trying to do research, and remember back to what I've read. My knowledge is limited and I have a busy real life. Hope you can enjoy it anyway!

I do not own Once Upon a Time

Chapter 2 Hobblefoot

Ralph was even sweatier when he finally managed up the loft steps that evening. He was thankful that Mr. French hadn't seen his scrambled climb, or he was sure that he would have laughed at the 'Ralphy boy' that 'wasn't much use'. Even better than that, Miss Belle wasn't there with her kind blue eyes and gentle looks to watch him falter. He sunk down on the mattress, and thought over how much his life had changed in the last month.

He had been desolate. He had been certain that his life was over when that beam crushed his leg. Wrong place at the wrong time and now he was cripple for life. The little town closest to the railroad camp boasted only of a midwife, and hardly that. Mrs. Lucas was nice enough and seemed as though she was attempting to do something for him, and allowed him to stay in their town home for two weeks while he recovered. His leg had hardly healed enough to stand, but the man of the house could see no sense in a man sitting around, regardless of injury, so he had been pointed in the direction of the general store, and told perhaps he could make himself useful there.

The general store owner worked with poor farmers managing on claim shanties. Mr. Jones was a bachelor with his room in the back of the store containing one small cot for him alone. He told Ralph that he didn't run a charity, and told him he had better find another place of employment before another two weeks had ended, or he would be swept out with the dust.

Ralph didn't like the man, with the small beady blue eyes and brown hair. He seemed to get great joy of gaining goods and paying less than they were worth on poor unsuspecting farmers, and charging too high of prices, knowing that his was the only store in town.

Ralph learned to sweep, tote boxes and sacks for whatever little Jones would let him eat, and sleep on the floor with his leg screaming at him on a solitary blanket that Jones had thrown at him. There were only a handful of people who came through those two weeks, and most were hardly making ends meet on their own claims to need an extra hand, an extra hand that was cripple to boot.

When Mr. French came to town, Jones whistled as he watched the large man tied his horses to the post outside.

'Lookie here, Hobblefoot. See that big man? I bet you he is what you've been looking for-If anyone needs help, he does! Just wait and see-this is it.' He said all this quietly and quickly and Ralph was just imagining that he should probably have some sort of answer, when Mr. French himself walked in, and Jones got busy taking care of the man to think anymore of the cripple assistant.

French was his last chance to gain employment and he knew it. Jones had told him that tomorrow was the day that he needed to be out of the shop and he still had nowhere to go. All the sudden he heard Mr. French comment.

After complaints of his back with all the work he had been doing, he said, 'This blasted prairie is about too much for an old man. Issy helps all she can, but sometimes a man wishes he had sons.'

Jones remembered the crippled assistant. 'Hobblefoot here is looking for work. Maybe you could find something for him to do? I have no more use for him.'

Ralph wished he could turn invisible then, as the big man's eyes looked him over from top to bottom, scowling as he did.

'Cripple?' He said to Jones, not to Ralph.

'Yes, Railroad camp accident. He can shift around though. Can't you hobblefoot? Walk for the man.'

Ralph looked up expectantly at Mr. French, hoping that he wouldn't make him walk like some sort of lame horse that you were wondering if it would just be better to put down, and yet at the same time he was hoping he was at least interested enough to keep talking. Ralph needed something, anything. Even if it was with this scowling man, and his apparently little daughter. Mr. French nodded and said, 'Go on, boy, let's see if you could at least walk to feed the animals for me.'

Ralph's face was hot with embarrassment, and he limped from one end of the store to the other.

'Pick up Mr. French's flour sack for him and show him how you can carry.' Ralph did as he was told, Mr. French nodded his head and rubbed his chin in thought.

'Well, can't say much for you, but I hate to see a man so low as you, and little Issy would have my hide if she knew I had left you to die here in this unforgiving land. I don't have much in the way of payment. Issy and I have just enough to eat these days and maybe a little to spare, and I've got a barn you can sleep in. The girl told me I'm working too much and maybe if you at least did a couple of things for me, I could see that you have food in your belly and a place to sleep. I'll keep you a year, see if you're useful, then if I think you aren't I'll drive you back here. That sound like a plan, boy?'

'Yes sir, thank you so much sir.'

'Well, take these things out to the wagon. I imagine you'll want to sit in the back, it might be a hard climb to the seat.'

'Yes sir.'

Two weeks of managing had taught him how to balance the sacks with his staff, but it didn't make the pain any less. Terrified that the man might change his mind, he bit the inside of his cheek as he hauled the sacks to the back of the wagon and situated his own body as best he could in the back, while the big man sat up front. From there it was a long and grueling five hours back to his shanty. Ralph could feel every jostle, every rock, every swing of the wagon and his leg was on fire with overwhelming pain by the time they got to the tiny building.

The entire way there he had fretted over just what the man might want from him. Jones had made it obvious that he was of little help there at the store, no matter what Ralph had tried to do. The midwife's husband had wondered that he had ever worked for the railroad camp at all; he was so 'wiry and scrawny'. Now he would be helping on a claim-helping work the land that might not even be worth the five years put into it.

He had read the details of the act himself, before he had embarked on his own adventure. He knew that most found the loneliness and work unbearable, not to mention the expense of keeping a property running, free land or not. Most would head back East or wherever they came from before the five years were out. It was a bet with Uncle Sam, and most lost. Now here he was, helping with someone else's claim, and he would get nothing in return. He had been told he wouldn't starve. That was at least something.

'Isabelle!'

His mostly silent companion bellowed out once they had made it to the shanty. He had heard Mr. French mention his little girl Issy, and imagined just that-a young girl of ten, wild of hair and tan of skin, hard and ruddy from exposure to the prairie. What came out the door was not that at all.

The few glances he managed to shyly obtain told him a few things. They had caught her in the middle of preparing something. Flour dusted her face and the ends of her curly brown hair. It covered her apron, and bits of dough clung to her hands as she tried to wipe off her hands with the already covered apron. The second thing his glance told him was that she had the prettiest blue eyes he had ever seen in his entire life. They matched the prairie sky and he felt ashamed that they were looking at him. The young woman, for a woman she was, though still very young, was looking at him and he only felt what he must be to her. A cripple, another mouth to feed, desperate, pathetic.

'She'll get you fixed up in the loft there, Ralphy boy. Go along to the barn with you, I'll meet you in a minute to show you around.'' Oh how he hated that name. His father had called him that, and somehow Mr. French, who had only heard him by the name Hobblefoot from Jones, had come to the same condescending nickname that his own father had. He didn't dare correct him. Perhaps it was better than hobblefoot. At least at the railroad camp he was Gold. It was a cold, sterile, unfriendly sounding name, but it was a solid one. After the accident he was less than a person. A thing to kick around and only sometimes feel sorry for. Feel sorry that he was so pathetic and useless. For that he was what he was. A tired, lonely, pathetic cripple.

He slowly made his way to the barn where Miss French had already begun readying the loft for him. He could tell by her tone that she didn't really know what to do with him. He felt sorry that he had been brought to be what could only be a burden to the family.

'Will you be able to climb the ladder, do you think?'

The ladder! A loft! Why hadn't he thought of that before? He would be expected to climb the thing every night to get to his bed, and with the pain he felt right now, he couldn't imagine trying to climb them anytime soon. Perhaps he would feel better by tonight. He would assure her that he would be able to, and perhaps Mr. French would make his appearance soon. She smiled at him. A smile that had no hint of pity in it and asked him if he was from 'the old country'. She didn't only see a cripple, but a man, and no one had been interested enough in him to wonder or even care. Not even in the Railroad camp where he had been just another worker in a throng of others.

'Does your leg hurt you very badly?' She wanted to know. She looked concerned, not disgusted. He assured her through gritted teeth that it wasn't so bad. Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad if he could just rest a spell. Then she said something that almost caused him to lose balance. She wanted him to climb the ladder to prove that he could do it. She was just like Jones, just like Mr. French. Making sure the cripple boy could do the simple task they required. Her words of assurance and her sudden disinterestedness in what he knew would be multiple embarrassing failures made his shoulders ease in relief. She wasn't trying to catch him in failure. She just wanted to make sure he was able, not to do what she wanted, but that he had everything he needed. It was the little difference that made Ralph feel almost like a man again.

His attempts to climb the ladder put him right back in his proper place. He was useless.

Finally, out of breath and his leg throbbing, he achieved his goal, but not before Miss French lunged towards him and grabbed his arm to help steady him.

Miss French was tiny. If he was wiry, then she was a tiny delicate thing. She was made for the likes of tea parties and parasols, not for the rough vastness of prairie life. While her near presence left him tense, he also was in wonder at how much smaller she was than him. He wasn't a tall man, but she barely reached his shoulders. She set him on the makeshift mattress of straw and suddenly ran out of the barn. He wondered if his crippled state had finally caused her to flee his presence, but no, in a moment she was carrying a cup of cool water for him to drink.

Again, she treated him like he was a person with actual feelings. She worried over the bedding, as if something better than a hard floor wouldn't feel like heaven to his aching leg!

'You can call me Belle. I like it better than Isabelle, or Issy, if I'm being quite frank. Isabelle is what Papa calls when he's cross, and Belle is what mama and my friends back home called me.'

Belle. He couldn't help but smile. It exactly fit the petite beauty. 'Miss Belle.'

She smiled back and called him Ralph. Not Ralphy boy, not hobblefoot, not even Mr. Gold. Ralph.

Once she was gone, Mr. French had come. He could thankfully slide down the steps with his good leg a bit more gracefully than climbing up. It still produced a laugh from Mr. French.

'Come along, Ralphy Boy.' He said it as if Ralph was a dirty faced child. He sighed and then hobbled behind French. The claim couldn't boast of much. Many acres were tilled with long lines stretching their long fingers into the open prairie. Wind blew and blew among treeless fields. Mr. French gabbed about the boasts of the acreage before turning to go back to the tiny shanty. Miss Belle peaked out from behind the door of the shanty, saw them headed that way, waved and called to them that she had supper ready.

The room was warm and smelled heavenly. The mix of long stewed beans and fresh baked bread made Ralph's belly rumble. It had been so long since he had more than the scraps Jones left for him. Ralph wondered that Belle didn't sit with them, but noticed there were only two chairs. He felt bad that she had given her own chair, but didn't know what to do about it. Mr. French didn't seem that worried about it, so he silently ate his food. Miss Belle filled his bowl again as soon as it was empty, and he finally felt full for the first time in two weeks.

Mr. French laughed at the amount eaten, but Miss Belle stood up for him. Another wonder. No one had ever done that, even when he had two good legs instead of one. When Mr. French called him to follow him again, he noticed Belle scraping the bottom of the pan of beans.

What had he done? The pan was empty, she had gathered hardly a full ladle for herself. Not only had he taken her chair, but he had stolen her supper as well. What a pathetic fool he had been. She had given him nothing but kindness thus far, but surely she would scowl and berate him for being such a pig.

Instead she smiled and touched his arm, and comforted him. She told him she wasn't very hungry, but he knew that surely wasn't true. She had done nothing but work since he had arrived, and she was so very tiny.

Here he was now, listening to the rustling of the hay by the animals, the bugs singing a song of the coming warmer weather, and the pulsing of pain in his leg, cursing himself for his constant folly. He sighed and rubbed his leg a little more before he allowed the sounds to lull him to sleep.

Author's note: There will be more Ralph back story in the future, I promise! Let me know what you think. I hope you enjoy this chapter!