Wild Rippling Water
Chapter 5
by snarkypants
Just as the Daggetts' maid was bringing out mince pie and lemon pie, one of Mr. Daggett's men beckoned to him from outside the dining room. Daggett excused himself and urged his company to avoid Front Street on their journeys home if his return took longer than expected.
LaBoeuf folded his napkin and set it aside. "Ma'am, thank you for your gracious hospitality. I told the sheriff's deputy I would come to his aid if things turned ugly, so I must beg your pardon. It was my pleasure and honor to meet you and your guests." He paused. "Miss Ross, I must ask you to please wait for me to return so I might escort you safely home." Without even waiting for Mattie's reply, he rose and followed Daggett out of the room, to his study.
"How bad is it?" Daggett was asking the man.
"Those boys are all liquored up and spoiling for a hanging."
"All right. Thank you, George. If you would like you can head to the kitchen and ask Delia to make you up a plate."
"Yessir, Mr. Daggett. Thank you."
Daggett turned to LaBoeuf. "I suppose you will need a firearm, then, unless you have one tucked in your boot there."
"No sir, not tonight."
Daggett handed him a shotgun and a handful of shells. "Mattie has extolled your marksmanship so you can surely put this humble instrument to good use."
"If all goes well I should not need it, but I would rather have it all the same."
Daggett led him to the same buggy and team of bays LaBoeuf had seen outside Mattie's house when he first arrived. "I should like to get there sooner rather than later, and I do not care to foot it," he said.
"Not after that meal."
Daggett patted his belly. "Marriage is a good thing, Mr. LaBoeuf," he said, and belched.
LaBoeuf smiled to himself at the older man's transparent attempts at matchmaking.
"Lawyer Daggett, this is not the best place for you tonight," the sheriff said.
"I have hope that cooler heads will prevail. If not, though, I am well armed."
The sheriff sighed. "Well, all right. Who is your friend?"
"I am Sergeant LaBoeuf of the Texas Rangers."
"Sergeant," the sheriff said. "I am glad to meet you. Deputy McDonald said you might come by."
LaBoeuf nodded a greeting to the deputy and the other men. "How may I help?"
"I have heard that you Ranger fellows can disperse a mob without so much as firing a weapon. Is that true?"
"Yes, that is always our goal."
"That is my goal, too. This has gone on long enough, and I do not care to have a blood feud in my town. All I want is to keep the peace."
LaBoeuf gathered the men around. "Spread yourselves out in front of the calaboose. Keep your muzzles down and your pistols holstered. Keep your chest and your chin up, and the sheriff and I will do the talking. Mr. Daggett, you will keep watch over Wallace. Douse the lights inside. We do not want any sharpshooter taking Wallace out before the judge says so."
One of the men was looking out the window and yelped, "They are coming!"
The glow of torches confirmed it. LaBoeuf nodded at the sheriff, who led his men out. LaBoeuf brought up the rear, coming to stand next to the sheriff at the middle of the line of men. They concealed their nerves well enough, he thought.
The group heaved into sight and began to shout and chant: "Bring him out! Hang him!"
"May God be with us," the sheriff muttered.
"Amen," LaBoeuf said.
Daggett heaved himself into his buggy seat and withdrew a pewter flask from his jacket pocket, opened it and passed it to LaBoeuf. "Whew! I am glad that is over!"
LaBoeuf saluted him with the flask and took a swig, relishing the velvety burn of good whiskey. "Thank you," he croaked, handing the vessel back. "That was thirsty work."
"I can well imagine. I must say, you are wasted on the Rangers. Even I understood only about three-quarters of your speechifying there. I have never heard the like, and I have gone up against Polk Goudy! You should go before the bar." Daggett tipped the flask into his mouth.
"I have always preferred a more active sort of profession."
Daggett harrumphed and took another slug of whiskey. He cleared his throat. "And now I must enquire as to your intentions with our Mattie."
This was not unexpected. "My intentions, such as they are, are strictly honorable."
"Could you be more specific?"
"I will not dishonor her. She is a remarkable young lady."
"Hm. I suppose you could support a family on your wages."
"I would have to leave the Rangers in order to marry, and I am not prepared to do that just yet."
Daggett made an impatient sound. "Good God, man, what will it take? You are getting no younger. You have been gunshot and had your head broken and nearly severed your tongue, and those are only the wounds I know about. Get yourself a wife and a family before it is too late."
LaBoeuf scowled at him and took back the flask, drinking in silence.
Daggett took another tack. "To all reports you are an honorable man, but so was Brutus. What is the situation of your family?"
"I am estranged from my father. Have been since the war."
"He is a drunk," Daggett said; it wasn't a question.
LaBoeuf resisted looking surprised. "He is. As is his wife."
"Your brother Henry is a respectable man, but your brother Charlie…" Daggett's voice trailed off, leaving his meaning clear.
"Well. Charlie spent nine months in Point Lookout during the war. He barely survived and ruined his health. He does what he can. I do not like it much, but he is my brother."
"So which way will you go? The way of the drunkard, or the panderer, or the clerk?"
LaBoeuf bristled. "Since I am well past my first youth, I believe the answer to that question is clear, sir: I will go as I have gone. Like you I am both a Confederate veteran and a man of law. I am a sergeant of Texas Rangers. I have served honorably these many years, and I defy you to find anyone who says otherwise."
Daggett nodded as though none of it was a surprise. "That is what my man in Texas has reported. I wished to hear it from you. These days a man cannot be too careful with his loved ones." He took the flask back from LaBoeuf, draining it. "Frank Ross was my dearest friend in the world. I lost everything in the war, so Frank let me live in a cabin on his land for the merest pittance while I recovered my health and read the law. Little Mattie cut her teeth on my books," he said with a chuckle. "I can never repay his generosity to me. For all intents and purposes, his family is my own, and I will always look after them as best I can. I have failed with Victoria, and to a certain extent with Mattie, but I do wish to see her happy."
LaBoeuf nodded, some of his annoyance fading. "I understand."
"Well, I reckon we ought to head back, then," Daggett said, tucking the empty flask in his vest pocket. "I expect Lorena will be beside herself."
They entered the house to find the charming tableau of Miss Keel playing the piano as Mr. Barton turned the pages of the music for her. Mrs. Daggett entertained Miss Barton with stereopticon views of the seashore. Mattie held Mrs. Daggett's sleeping baby against her shoulder. Taken together, it was a scene of perfect domesticity, calculated to charm a single man-or two-into contemplating the pleasures of matrimony.
"I hope that you enjoyed your evening," he said.
"It was very pleasant. The Daggetts are excellent hosts," Mattie said, although she sounded hesitant.
"What is it?"
"I was glad that you and Mr. Daggett left, as it turned out," Mattie said.
"Why?" he asked, stung.
"Because Mrs. Daggett had meant for there to be dancing after supper. But we were down to two gentlemen for five ladies, so she changed her plans." She grinned at him.
LaBoeuf tipped his head to the side in confusion. "But there were three men left," he said, squinting at her.
"Judge Stewart began complaining about his 'rheumatiz' as soon as he saw the way the wind was blowing."
"Ah. Well, that is a pity for I do like to dance. I am very sorry to have missed it." He looked over at her. "I take it that you do not care for it, though."
Mattie sighed. "Perhaps if I could somehow steady myself better it would be nicer. Those men who have been coerced into dancing with me in the past often turn me so quickly that they send me crashing into walls and furniture. I do not care to be in that position any longer."
"It sounds as though you have been badly partnered."
"That goes without saying."
"Would that Mr. Perry be one of the men who has treated you in this way?"
She blinked. "Why do you ask me that?"
"He appears to hold you in some disdain. And you him."
Mattie worried at her lip with her teeth for a moment. "At one time he thought to curry favor with Mr. Daggett by turning me up sweet."
"He might have had other reasons," LaBoeuf said, and Mattie gave him an arch look.
"Oh, yes, four hundred and eighty acres full of reasons, by my reckoning. When Mr. Daggett asked me about it I told him that his clerk was too great a fool to live."
"Ah. That could account for it."
"Honestly, he has been clerking for six years now; if he had any sense he would have gone before the bar years ago. I could have, and I have not read half as much law as he has."
"Perhaps you should." He grinned at her.
"Hm," she said. "Assuming they would admit me—which I doubt—I do not think I could convince any man to hire me as his lawyer. I do not have the sort of face or demeanor that can entice a man into doing my bidding unless I am holding my bank book. No, I will toil away in my own sphere and make the best of it."
"You have made the best of it. It is a fine place."
"All of the credit for that goes to my father. He built the house and the outbuildings, but more than that, he shared it with those who needed it. Even Mr. Daggett lived in a mean little cabin on our land for years. Up until he married Mrs. Daggett."
"Is that not why a man seeks to marry? To secure the heart of a lady who will make him a happy and comfortable home? I will admit, the idea has merit. Your home makes my canvas tent on the prairie a sad prospect, indeed."
"You live in tents? I thought you must be in barracks at least."
"Barracks take time to construct, and the lumber and materials must come up by train. The only timber anywhere nearby is mesquite and that is so hard that you could melt a saw blade trying to plane it. So we bivouac, unless there are families willing to take us in."
"Do wives bivouac also?" His gaze was sharp as he turned it on her, and she stammered a little. "I mean only that many ladies must find it challenging to live that way after a while."
"Only lieutenants and captains may marry, and in civilized places there are plenty of houses for the ladies. My last captain's wife declined to leave her pleasant home in Galveston, so he slept in a tent on the plains like the rest of us."
"It sounds like our excursion into the Winding Stair Mountains. What do you do for amusement?"
"I read whatever is at hand. If there are ladies and music I like to dance. And I work with the horses."
"Do you still play your Jew's harp?"
"I lost it, and have never acquired another. I miss it, though. I do like to have music about me."
"You should marry a woman who can sing or play, then," she said.
"Perhaps I should." He paused. "Are you musical?"
"My voice is true, but not pretty. Mama taught me a little at the piano before I lost my arm."
They fell into silence, broken by squeak of the wheels and the clop-clop-clop of Opal's hooves on the dirt road.
After a minute or two, Mr. LaBoeuf cleared his throat and spoke again. "Mr. Daggett's home is fashionable and fine, but I was concerned the entire time that I should put a hand or foot wrong and destroy the silks and filigrees and wallpaper. I prefer a home to be smaller and simpler, like my old home in Texas."
"Oh, where is it? Do you visit often?"
"It is in a pretty little town called Seguin, on the Guadeloupe River, but I have not been there in some years, not since the war."
"You must miss it."
LaBoeuf took so long to answer that Mattie thought that he had disregarded her comment. "In some ways. My mother died of a cancer while we were all away. My father remarried with intemperate haste, to a woman who was—and is—no better than she ought to be. I have not returned since."
"I am sorry," Mattie said. "How terrible, to come home, expecting to see your dear mother, and find a stranger in her place."
"It was." He cleared his throat and spoke again in a brighter tone. "But it was also the making of me. I took myself to Round Rock, to my uncle the farrier's, and spent several years working with him. I had meant to go for a drover, but my uncle trained me so as to keep me out of trouble; he said he owed it to my mother."
"That was sensible of him," Mattie said.
"It was, although I did later try my hand at droving. I managed to stay out of trouble, but my fellows were not the sort of company I wished to keep." He smirked. "I wanted to believe then that people were more or less hardworking and decent. War or no war, I was still very young."
"There is nothing wrong in looking for the best in people."
"There is when those people are brutish and ignorant scofflaws. I saw little that was good amongst those cowboys."
"You did well to get away from them, then."
He chuckled. "I was never their prisoner, Mattie."
She shook her head. "No, I do not mean it in that way. I have found that it is a difficult thing, to go against the herd. To do what your conscience tells you is right, when everyone else wants you to just go along with what they are doing." She sighed. "It is lonely."
LaBoeuf said nothing, looking ahead into the pools of light cast by the dash lamps.
"I think of the boy in the dugout sometimes. Moon. He could have been a good man, perhaps he even came from a good family, but he went bad because of the company he kept. It is an old story."
"Is it?" he asked when he thought he could trust his voice.
"Yes. But you are not the sort of man to be swayed by what others think. I think it is one of your finer qualities."
"You should tell that to my fellow Rangers. They say that I am a dull old dog."
"They do not!"
"They do, indeed."
"Well, I cannot see it."
"In any event, my skill with horses has always stood me in good stead. It is one of the things that has made me invaluable to the Rangers."
"I am certain of it. Could you perhaps explain for me why Texas cowboys do not ride mares? I have wondered ever since my father bought those ponies from Col. Stonehill. Mares are more biddable than geldings, after all."
LaBoeuf's jaw worked a bit. "Well, I am sure you understand that it is no good to have stallions and mares together in a working herd. But even geldings can take it into their heads that they are stallions, and when a mare is in season, you cannot get a lick of work out of them. And then a broody mare cannot work hard for long, nor can a mare with a foal. It is better for us to have only geldings, and buy fresh blood as needed for the remuda."
"I had not thought of that. I suppose it makes sense."
"I am glad you approve," he said, a note of teasing in his voice.
She sniffed.
LaBoeuf drove the buggy into the barnyard and halted Opal. He came around to Mattie's side and assisted her from the vehicle.
He unhitched the horse, led her into a stall and began to rub her down. He looked over Opal's back to see Mattie standing there, and cleared his throat. "When I am done here perhaps you will allow me to prove myself to you."
She looked at him, alarmed. "In what way?"
"I am accounted a good dancer and I have never once lost control of my partner."
"Oh, do not trouble yourself," Mattie said.
"It is no trouble at all."
"There is no music."
"Then I will whistle.'
"I do not care to dance, Mr. LaBoeuf," she said and left the barn.
He sighed and continued to care for the horse. When Opal was cooled down and munching placidly at her oats he let himself out of the stall, extinguished the lantern, and followed Mattie outside.
Mattie removed Victoria's bonnet and her glove and shawl, setting them on the porch. She felt too fidgety to sit, though, and she paced in the moonlight until LaBoeuf emerged from the barn.
"I will lock up for you, and then I will be on my way," he said.
"I should make the old joke about barn doors and horses."
"You have a horse still at home, though. Surely she is no less dear than the others."
She made a small noise of amusement and smiled at him, and then watched as the humor drained from his face as surely as if it were a leaky washtub and she had pulled the plug. "What is wrong?"
"Nothing is wrong, Mattie."
"Then why are you looking at me so strangely?"
"What is strange about it?" He stepped closer to her, and she had to steel herself against stepping back.
"You look very serious."
"I am a serious man." His voice seemed deeper than usual, she thought. Why should it make her face heat to hear him say it?
"You look very…intent."
He appeared to ponder that for a moment. "I suppose it is because I feel inclined to kiss you."
"Oh." Mattie took a breath, swallowed. "Well, that inclination will soon pass, with no harm done to either of us."
"I am not so certain of it."
She huffed, indignant. "Mr. LaBoeuf, I suspect that you are only interested at this moment because I am convenient."
He laughed at that, but she did not find it humorous. "Lord, Mattie. You are many things, but convenient is not one of them." He caught her hand and caressed the back with his thumb, and she jerked away as if burned.
"I meant, because I appear convenient to you here and now."
"I know what you meant, but I will stand by my answer." He pushed his hat back and loomed over her, even though he was only a scant inch or so taller than she.
Mattie was not frightened. Her legs felt twitchy and jittery, as if wanting to run of their own accord, but she had faced LaBoeuf down before. She scowled at him.
He grinned back.
"You must think of your future wife, Mr. LaBoeuf. She will not want you to succumb to such a temptation."
"What she does not know cannot hurt her," he said, shrugging.
She gaped at him. "Really!"
"She will not reveal her identity to me, so I see little point to sparing her feelings. It would serve her right."
"That poor woman!"
"The way I feel now, I may jilt her yet."
"Perhaps you can joke about such things, but—"
What she was going to say vanished as he pulled her into his arms and kissed her. After a moment of shock she forced herself to remain stock still, even as her skin prickled and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up.
When he released her, she glared at him. "Masher!" she hissed.
"Now, Mattie—" he began, but she wasn't finished with him.
"I have welcomed you into my home, and this is how you treat me?"
"Come now, sweetheart. I am fond of you—"
"I am not your sweetheart! Where do you get such harebrained ideas? I have not had a word from you in five years and—"
"Had I known you wished it I would certainly have written to you." His grin was as smug as ever.
She stared at him. "That is not what I meant at all!" She wanted to stamp her foot but resisted the impulse.
"What do you mean? I have a long walk ahead of me before I sleep, so please enlighten me."
"You are impossible." She spun around, her skirts twirling and twisting around her legs.
"I will see you tomorrow, then."
"Not if I see you first! You can take the first train back to Texas as far as I am concerned."
"Have you forgotten our excursion to Mt.—" he paused.
"Nebo," she snapped.
"—Nebo tomorrow? I have not. So I will see you then. Good night, Mattie," he said, as she marched toward the house.
She waited for him to leave before creeping back onto the porch to collect her things.
A/N: Y'all might have figured out by now that I am an unabashed Coen Brothers geek, and I have scattered some teensy Easter Eggs from some of their other films throughout these chapters. Not so much by design, but just because they made me laugh.
I'm terribly slow at updating, and this was no exception. I have no plans to abandon this, and have plotted out and written sections for the next few chapters. Had a lot of IRL upheaval in the past year, for good (DD graduated from HS and went off to college) and ill (DH's heart attack, from which he has recovered nicely), and working out scenes in my head in the midst was a great distraction (which also led to some storyline revisions, which slowed me down further)! So thank you so much for sticking with me. If you celebrate it, have a Happy Thanksgiving! If you don't, have a great Thursday!