She bent over the boy. “I am extremely sorry. Are you hurt?”
“Heck, no, I ain’t hurt.” He assessed her generous figure. “I guess I’ve been hit by hay bales bigger’n—” His voice trailed off.
“Beg pardon, Miz Mayfield. You ain’t shaped like no bale of hay, no matter how—” His thin face flushed the color of cooked beets.
Lolly took pity on him. “Have you a name, young man?”
“Huh? Oh, sure. But at the moment I can’t exactly recall— Oh yeah, it’s Henry Morehouse, ma’am. At your service.”
Lolly suppressed a burst of laughter. “Well, Henry Morehouse, I am Leora Mayfield.” She extended her hand. “I have been in correspondence with the ladies here in town, and I have come out from Kansas to marry—”
“Oh, we know all about that, Miz Mayfield.” He hoisted her travel satchel in one hand and offered his arm. “I’ll escort you over to the schoolhouse to get registered.”
“Schoolhouse? Isn’t there a hotel?”
“Why, sure, ma’am. We’ll get you registered there, too.”
She peered at him. He was a nice-looking, lanky boy of about fifteen, she guessed. Clear-blue eyes and floppy wheat-colored hair.
“Why must I register at the schoolhouse?”
As her question sank in, his cheeks colored. “Well, you see, ma’am, the colonel, he figured…well, he figured—”
“Colonel! Mr. Macready is a colonel? In what army, may I ask?”
“He was a Reb, ma’am. But not anymore. War’s been over some years now.”
“I am aware of that.” She brushed off her skirt, keeping her head down so her black straw bonnet shielded her face. So, Mr. Macready had been a Confederate soldier. Papa had fought on the Union side. Her saucepan was boiling over.
“What,” she said in as steady a voice as she could manage, “precisely has the colonel ‘figured’?”
“That you all could sign up at the schoolhouse first. That way, we’ll know how many.”
She tried hard not to frown, she really did. Frowning just added wrinkles to her already sundried face. Not that anyone knew how parched her skin was; no one but herself ever touched her cheek or her nose, or any other part of her. Which was the reason why she was braving the wilds of Oregon instead of withering into an old maid in Kansas.
“That way you’ll know how many what?”
Henry Morehouse studied his dusty brown button-top shoes. “I’d rather not say, Miz Mayfield. Best we just go along and do it. You’ll find out soon enough.”
“Henry?” Back in Kansas, grown men had quaked at that tone. She used it now because she was exasperated.
The boy shuffled two steps backward. “Don’t usually answer to Henry,” he mumbled. “My friends call me Hank.”
Lolly stepped toward him. In her stocking feet they were exactly the same height. “Hank, then. Best we just ‘go along and do’ what?”
“S-sign up, ma’am. Like I told ya.”
“Sign up for what?” She narrowed her eyes in her best Pin the Polecat look and watched the Morehouse boy bite his lower lip.
“For, uh…for what the colonel figured, ma’am. That’s all I can tell ya, till we get to the schoolhouse.”
Lolly spun on her heel, then wished she hadn’t. Ignoring the bite of wood splinters through her stocking, she collected her shoes from the platform, rescued Hank’s mashed hat from the railroad tracks and returned to the motionless boy.
“March,” she ordered.
“Oh, yes, ma’am.” He started to salute, then realized his error and grinned sheepishly at her. “Just follow me.”
The schoolhouse sat smack in the center of a field of blue lupine and scarlet Indian paintbrush. A wandery path snaked its way through the ankle-deep blooms to a run-down building that looked more dilapidated than any farmer’s neglected barn in Kansas. Why, the gaps between the split logs weren’t even chinked! She could tell they had been at one time, but the mud-and-straw daubing had dissolved to dust. The wind, or the snow, could whistle through at will. No doubt the students froze in the winter and baked in the summer.
It was high summer now, Lolly reflected as she zigzagged along the path behind Hank Morehouse. The air brushing her cheeks felt hot, and the heavy, lazy heat pressed the air out of her lungs. The schoolhouse would be an oven.
And it was. The instant she stepped over the threshold her already-wilting underclothes stuck to her back and chest, and her muslin drawers pasted themselves to her legs. At every step she heard the skitch-skitch of her inner thighs brushing together. Could everyone else hear it, too?
The three gray-haired ladies seated behind a long oak table didn’t even look up. The only other occupants of the room were two younger women sitting off to one side, spines straight, hands folded, smiles unwavering.
Lolly crossed the uneven plank floor with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. Was this some sort of inquisition?
Hank clumped up to the table. “Got another one fer ya.” He plopped her satchel on top of an empty school desk and stuffed his lanky frame into the child-size seat.
All three elderly women snapped their heads up.
Lolly’s stomach tightened into a hard knot. Another one? Another what?
A large-bosomed matron in a royal-blue day dress grasped a pencil. “Name?”
“Another what?” Lolly ventured in her Refined Voice.
The woman’s eyebrows waggled. “Bride,” she said. A satisfied smile spread over her face. “Name?”
“Leora Mayfield.” Lolly swallowed. “But I believe I am the only bride. At least that was my understanding from the newspaper advertisement.”
“Oh, no, dearie,” a lilting voice sang. “There’s no profit in just one bride.”
“Profit?”
“Well, you see, dearie,” the woman cooed. “We, that is the Maple Falls Ladies Helpful Society, are determined to finance construction of a new schoolhouse. You can see for yourself that this one is in such sad disrepair, and—”
“Let me tell it, Minnie.” The Bosom in Royal Blue made a sweeping gesture. “This schoolhouse was built back in twenty-seven, you see, when old Abel Svensen left us a small bequest in his will.”
“That was over fifty years ago,” Minnie interjected, her hands fluttering as she spoke. Dressed in a lavender-sprigged dimity, the tiny woman looked like a dainty butterfly trying to decide where to land.
“Now,” Royal Blue continued, “the walls are collapsing, the floor is buckling, the outhouse needs—”
“Dora Mae Landsfelter!” Minnie’s hands danced. “Not in polite company.”
Dora Mae turned snapping blue eyes on Lolly. “So you see, Miss Mayfield, that is why we need a new schoolhouse.”
“But…”
“Why,” the older woman continued in a no-nonsense tone, “we, the ladies of the Maple Falls Helpful Society, have resolved to raise the necessary funds.” She held Lolly’s gaze in an unblinking look.
“Why,” chimed the third woman, rising from her chair behind the table, “the Helpful Ladies are sponsoring this competition.”
Lolly blinked at the three. “Competition?”