Livy Keene
by tallsunshine12
Chapter 1 The TWISTER
A low, dark horizon. Black, billowing clouds, piling high in the sky. Clothes whipping in the stiffening breeze. The loft door of the barn banging to and fro, loose straw flying out of it, as the tall, smoke-colored funnel cloud moved towards the farm.
In a swirl of skirts, Livy rushed to get the clothes off the line before the twister hit. It was already raining. Her clothes basket tumbled across the yard. Wooden shingles flew about. Bits of the old corral broke off and blew away.
Seeing how close the twister was, Bret threw down his ax and ran to help her and Davy into the house. Once inside, he kicked the rag rug out of the way and lifted up the trap door. Clothes still tucked under her arm, Livy followed Davy down the ladder into the root cellar.
"I'll be down in a minute," Bret yelled over the rising wind. He'd been out riding Clancy earlier that day and after unsaddling him, had put him in the old corral. With this deadly storm, he'd be safer in the barn, where he had already stashed his saddle, saddlebags, and bedroll.
The gusting wind was driving the horse mad. Bret just missed snagging Clancy's mane as Clancy leapt over the top rail of the corral and galloped off up the road. For a hundred yards, Bret pursued him, but with the swirling black mass of the twister now incredibly close, he had to give it up and go back inside.
In the cellar, he clung to Livy and Davy. As the house shuddered above, threatening to blow off its pins, the three kept a silent vigil, too shock to speak.
Then, after fifteen minutes, the raging terror had moved on. Except for a banging shutter, there was an eerie silence, an absolute quiet. Bret and Livy climbed out to survey the damage. Davy followed close behind, his eyes wide and dark.
The house had weathered the twister pretty well. Shingles, branches, and a shutter or two lay in the yard, but that was all. Not so the barn. The front of it had caved in, and the double doors, big enough to drive a wagon through, had collapsed on top of one another.
Bret loped over and cautiously slipped in, crawling on all fours under a beam lying across the room. On his left, in a corner, the milk cow lay on her side. In a stall on his right, Jack, one of the two draft horses, was pinned down, his legs kicking feebly. Sugar, the other horse, hugged the wall, wild-eyed and snorting, kicking at the fallen timbers.
Bret questioned what he was doing there, on the Kansas prairie in a demolished barn just after a twister.
Four days ago, he had ridden up to ask to water his horse. He met Livy, and gleaned that she and the boy Davy lived there on the farm alone. She was married, but her husband, who went by the name of Mike Keene, was off somewhere, busy with his own pursuits, whatever they were. From the looks of things, she was in dire need of a man on the place, so he had stayed, just to help out.
From outside, Mrs. Keene—Livy—called, "Bret, do come out again. You'll be crushed if that roof falls in. It's bound to!"
His voice muted by part of the barn wall still standing, he called, "I'm comin'! Can't get to the cow or the horses from this end." Slapping at dust, he emerged. "I'll check the back," he said. At the rear of the barn was another door, man-sized. Much smaller than the wagon doors, it was just big enough to squeeze a horse through.
Livy moved some stray hair out of her face and tucked it behind her ear. The bun in back had unraveled from its bobby pins and now her long hair hung in chestnut waves on her shoulders. Too tired and out of sorts to answer, she merely nodded and followed Bret to the back of the barn through the rain-matted grass.
"This end's better than the other," Bret told her as he tried to prize open the crooked rear door. She screamed as part of the lintel fell and whacked him on the shoulder. Some better!
Bret, shrugging off the board, yanked the door open and made his way through the dust motes to the stall where he had left his saddle things. Hauling them out, he laid them on the ground by the door. Once inside again, he decided to tackle Sugar first, as the closest. His stall was a wreck. In order to get to the horse, Bret threw aside board after board, sometimes three together. Once he tore his arm once on a jutting nail.
Having made access to the stall, he stood upright and moved around the stamping horse, talking to him and trying to get hold of his mane.
"C'mon, Sugar," he urged. "Come out."
By dint of soft words and hard jerks on his mane, he guided the horse over the planks in its way and out into the main area of the barn. Then he blinked, with a sudden dizzy feeling—the effect of all the effort he had made in such a short period of time.
Trying to quell the dizziness, he leaned on Sugar. "Sugar! Listen up, boy! Put those pretty feet to work." The horse whinnied madly as Bret coaxed him to the rear door. Bret pushed, then pulled, doing whatever the horse needed most to get him there.
Some of the roof beams creaked and Bret looked up, afraid they were about to give way. "Come on, Sugar! Now move!" he urged.
Sensing freedom, almost too wild for his own good, Sugar bolted outside. Livy trapped him at once with an old rope, causing Bret to marvel at her unforeseen roping skills. She handed the rope to Davy who led him to the pond for a drink. Tying him to a low bush, he stayed with him, petting him and talking softly with him.
Bret, meanwhile, went back into the barn and fought his way to the stall where Jack lay. Jack was still kicking, and softly whinnying. The cow on the other side of the barn lay under so much debris, he didn't think he could get her out. But the horse—
Again dizzy, he teetered for a minute, then bent to lift the pieces of roof rafters off Jack. At the sound of loud mooing and some kicking, he swung his head around. The cow was trying to free herself. If she kicked hard enough, she could bring down what remained of the roof on her head—and on Bret's and Jack's.
With a loud cracking, in fact, a couple of roof beams crashed to the floor. More dust. It was all about to fall in. Realizing this, Bret ducked out of Jack's stall and ran towards the rear door again—his only escape. He turned as more of the roof fell in, all but burying not only Jack's stall, but the valiant cow's.
Nervously staring at what could have been his own tomb, he shook his head to clear it and rubbed his pants leg. It still might be. He turned to Livy. She wanted him to try again. She didn't have to say it. It was all right there in her eyes.
This time, he'd go armed, and ran to get the wood-chopping ax. Taking a drink from the dipper at the well, to clear his throat of dust, he swung at the debris in front of the barn until he had hacked a good portion of it into kindling. Livy, pale and quiet, dragged the pieces away, leaving Bret a clear field to hack the rest of the way in.
He fought his way closer to the cow in her stall. The rain, which had preceded the twister, now fell in torrents again, accompanied by a fresh wind. Livy stood sodden. If she asked him to give it up, he couldn't hear her from inside the barn.
The milk cow was still alive. But how to lift her to her feet? As he paused to consider this conundrum, he heard a terrible crunch and looked up. The side wall behind her, with very little roof left, began to give way. He fled over to Jack's stall and turned to watch the slow collapse. He'd wasted a quarter of an hour trying to fish the cow out, only to have the wall tumble in and finish her off.
He leaned on what remained of Jack's stall. The horse was not moving, not even kicking anymore. He was a goner, too.
Bret was tired that night. Spent, sore, weary to the marrow, and dispirited at his twin failures to save the cow and Jack. Over a thin soup, some buttered bread, and coffee, he spoke very little, his arm wrapped in a white cloth. Livy refilled his coffee cup a couple of times, then at the clock's striking ten, she looked up from the rocker by the fire.
"It'd be good to turn in," she murmured. "Busy day tomorrow."
He shot a vexed look at her, seeing her for the first time that evening. Wispy hair, a stained apron, thin hands as she was darning—ah, but even with the dark rings under her eyes, she had a face any painter would cherish, small nose, bow-shaped mouth, and high cheekbones.
Prairie winds, overwork, lonely vigils waiting for Mike to come home—these had sapped the beauty Bret could see lying under the fragile features.
"Of course," he said, feeling a rising weakness. He tried to rub it out of his chest, "should go to bed. Look over there."
Asleep on the couch lay Davy, all tuckered out. He had a room of his own, but it would be empty tonight. Bret didn't want to take a chance of waking him. Davy had done more work that day than he had in all his short nine years put together.
Pushing himself up from the table, Bret carried his cup to the basin of sudsy water and washed it, then set it dry on the drainboard. Livy yawned and flexed her shoulders a mite. She gazed at him and laughed. "You need to wash that prairie dust off, Bret."
"Thanks, Livy, you look like a million bucks, too," he teased. "I'll get some more water." He went to the door with the bucket and pulled up the latch. Before going out he took the makin's out of his coat pocket, a bag of tobacco and roll papers.
Livy watched him go. Less than a week ago, he had stayed for a meal. In that time, he had chopped wood, fixed a broken porch rail, and tended to the stock. As her husband was away, funds were getting low, so a meal and a place to bed down in the barn was all she had to offer.
What sort of man was he, what did he do for a living? Was he an outlaw? Mike Keene had never said it, but Livy knew the money he gave her was stolen. She'd heard rumors in Willow Springs, the nearest town to the Keene farm, about his hold-ups.
And she halfway believed them. When Mike and his gang rode up to the farmhouse, looking disheveled and hungry, she was secretly relieved when they rode away again, Mike along with them.
He and Bret—no two men could have been cut so clearly from the same cloth, looks-wise, same build, same height, dark-eyed, lantern-jawed. One could almost pass for the other one, but while Mike was off robbing stages—as the rumors stated—Bret, attempting to save two plow horses and an old cow, had almost been killed in the collapsing Keene barn.
Then the thought struck her. What if Bret Maverick was a lawman? Or a bounty hunter? How could she put him off Mike's trail, if he was. Whatever else Mike was, he was still the man she had married ten years ago, and Davy's father. She could not forget her wedding vows so easily.
She picked up her darning. "That's silly," she told herself. "Bret's not a lawman." He was dressed in rugged jeans, a white cotton shirt, and a dark vest, just the get-up for a cowboy. "He could be looking to hire on," she thought, "to a cattle ranch."
His coat hung by the door. He hadn't taken it with him when he went out, just the makin's, as he called it, from one of the pockets. She got up, went over to it, and cautiously began to feel inside the pockets. A few coins, a linty piece of rock candy, a couple of poker chips—what were they doing in there, for heaven's sake—and a pocketknife. No badge. She hadn't really expected to find one, not on him.
Something about Bret didn't remind her of the law. Some lawmen were good, some bad, some a mixture of both. Bret didn't seem all good or all bad. He was different. He didn't fit any of the usual categories, not a bad man, nor a good one. He was just himself, Bret Maverick. Somehow she knew that he couldn't fit into any other mold but his own.
He returned from his smoke refreshed and replaced his makin's in his coat pocket. Livy watched a trifle uneasily as he put his hand in. Would he sense that she had searched his pockets, trying to find a badge?
He set the bucket of water down on the cold kitchen stove, then strode to the door, lifting his coat off the peg. "Anything else you need tonight?" he asked. "More wood for the fire?" He'd been sleeping in the barn, and used to going out, but now that most of it was gone, he'd be sleeping under the stars.
"Bret, stay in. It's cold out. Here, take the rocker." She smiled, got up, and went to Davy on the couch, bending down over him and kissing his forehead. With a few more words to Bret, she entered the alcove where her bed and bureau were, drawing the two halves of the curtain together.
Bret took the rocker, pulling Livy's crocheted throw up close to his chin. He felt out of place, and liked the barn better to sleep in. But it was gone, just like Clancy. He had to admit he'd rather Clancy be alive out on the prairie, than dead in the barn.
: : :
Early next morning, Livy had a start. She'd been to the chicken coop for eggs when she caught a glimpse, just a glimpse, of Mike Keene through the brush at the pond. He came home whenever he got a notion, with little or no warning, but she hadn't been expecting him. Then she saw it wasn't Mike.
It was Bret, swimming and bathing off the barn dust in the pond. Pale skin flashed, that was all she saw. Hoping to have breakfast ready, she hurried in with her basket of eggs. Clothed again, but still barefoot, he came back shaking water out of his hair and sat down at her tiny table.
"Pond's full," he said, yawning and combing his wet hair with his fingers. "More rain's likely."
"Hope not," she said, calling from the kitchen nook under the eaves. "No more twisters. Barn's loss is all we can take."
She stirred pancake batter in a large blue china bowl. It was her favorite from what seemed like a million years ago. She and Mike had just been married and things were still good. It was a time when he worked for a living.
She began humming. Bret looked over her way, thinking how pretty she was now with most of the dust washed off. He could even see her in a fine gambling establishment in San Francisco, or on a Mississippi showboat, say, up Natchez's way. Her smooth neck dripping with pearls, she's waltzing in a gorgeous lace gown, not a stained, torn dress. He couldn't see her partner all the well, but he doubted if it was him.
Davy, who had also gone out, came in bringing an armload of wood. "I'm starved," he said, taking a plate of pancakes to the table.
"Then sit down and eat, boy." With a spoon, she struck at a wisp of hair, the rest none too well caught up at the back. Flour bedecked her face. "Plenty to do today. You stayin'?" she asked Bret.
"I was plannin' to," Bret answered simply. "Have to burn what's left of the barn, I guess. We'll save out what we can."
"Good then."
Relieved at his decision to stay, she came over with a plate of pancakes, plus a jar of wild plum preserves, and set them both down in front of him. "There, that makes a stack," she said. After dropping the spoon next to the preserves, she took the chair opposite. Wiping her eyes with the back of her floured hand, she began to cry.
Bret reached across the table and took the other one, not minding the fact that it too was coated with flour.
"It'll be alright, Livy," he said, "you'll see. Once the barn's cleared away, then we can go to town, get some more lumber, and rebuild it."
"I have … very little money, Bret," she said, gulping. She dug at her eyes with an apron string. "Not enough even for a new cow. They're ten dollars or better. Ezra Tucker gave her to me, along with her calf, when Davy was three. After it weaned, Ezra took the calf back, but he said if I needed anything else, holler."
"Who's Ezra—is he around still?"
She took her slim arm back and pointed out of one of the windows. "Over there."
"How far?"
"About two miles. They may come by."
"I hope they do," Bret said. "Old couple?"
"Mm-hmm, Ezra and Aggie. They've really been a big help to me, what with Mike gone so much."
"Is Mike due back soon?" Bret asked, not jealous, but not wishing to leave Livy and Davy alone, either.
Livy shivered. "Bret, do yourself a favor and eat your pancakes. They're hot now."
He felt hungry enough to eat Sugar, the plow horse he had rescued from the barn yesterday. He had tied him at the back of the tool shed last night, its wide roof keeping him out of the rain. That morning, Davy had led him to the pond, dropping the rope so he could browse.
As Bret put preserves on his pancakes and began to tear into them, he couldn't help thinking, how long would Livy need him? How long would he be able to share this domestic bliss with her?
"I ought to find Clancy," he said, "before we burn the barn."
"Of course, do you want to take Sugar to look for 'im?"
Bret chuckled a bit. "That's an odd name for a horse. Why'd you call him that?"
"Seemed fittin' for his sweet nature," she said, then sighed. "He's all I've got now."
Bret ate in silence for a while. When done, he grabbed Davy up and went outside to start work, pulling boards out of the wreckage that he could reuse to rebuild the barn. Then he got the ax and began to chop the rest into firewood. Davy helped sort the boards, at first, but he got tired of the 'game' pretty fast and went to sit nearby on the rail of the old corral.
"We had a right time of it, Davy, didn't we?" asked Bret, looking up from his ax-work.
"Don't like twisters."
"Have you seen many?"
"First big one ever. See little ones all the time."
Bret wondered how he could get Davy back in the 'game.' "Hey," he said, "maybe you could rake up that straw in the yard, give it to Sugar."
Davy got a rake almost twice his size from the tool shed, then dutifully began to rake the straw—blown out of the loft in the twister—into two or three piles. Bret wasn't sure why he didn't just make one big pile of it, but as long as Sugar got fed, he was grateful.
He and Davy took a time-out in the shade of an old chestnut tree, plunking down in the grass growing under it. Taking off his hat, Bret wiped his forehead on his sleeve, then clapped it back on. He was bone-tired. It was a positive relief when Livy brought out sandwiches and a jug of cool water to wash them down with.
