A week before the storm, in the Larkin Saloon, Clem Petty had been going on about the old maid up the mountain whom no man alive had seen smile in years. Earl, drinking sarsaparilla and feeling clever, had declared that any woman would smile if you went about it right. Clem had said, « $5 says you can’t. » Earl had said, « Done. »
So he had ridden up the pass with a tin of peppermints in his saddlebag, until Biscuit put a foot in a badger hole.
He looked across at Frieda frowning at her book, spectacles slipping, and felt two inches tall.
« Miss Haas, » he said. « Thank you. For not leaving me in the woodpile. »
« Don’t thank me yet, Mr. Jessup. It’s a long winter. You may wish I had. »
Yet when he woke in the night sweating and aching, there was a cool cloth on his forehead, fresh willow bark on the stool, and Frieda asleep sitting up in the rocking chair, watching over him.
By the second week of December, Frieda had decided Earl was the most aggravating man alive, and that she would miss him terribly when he was gone.
He could not sit still. He whittled spoons, read her father’s books, and talked so much she threatened to gag him. Daily, she washed the ragged tear on his shin with boiled water and carbolic, watching it closely against festering.
By Christmas he could hobble on an ash crutch and announced he intended to learn to milk. Duchess, the nanny goat who despised men, kicked the pail over twice and stepped on his good foot. Earl took it with muleskinner curses until he finally coaxed a thin stream into the pail.
He looked up with such boyish triumph that Frieda laughed out loud.
He stared at her from the stool, his blue eyes suddenly still.
« Miss Haas. You ought to do that more. »
« Do what? »
« Smile. »
She turned around and went back into the cabin, her face burning hot in the freezing air.
On Christmas Eve he gave her a small goat carved from pine, with Duchess’s stubborn ears. She gave him one gray wool sock.
« Only one? » he asked.
« You’ve only got one foot that takes a sock, you great fool. The other’s in a splint. I’ll knit the other one in March. »
« Frieda, » he said quietly, « why’s a woman like you up here alone? »
Instead of telling him to mind his business, she told him the truth: nursing her widowed father through decades, then four years of failing mind until he died, and turning down a suitor who had told her she needed to soften after the wedding.
« I didn’t care to soften, » she said. « So I came up here where nobody could tell me. »
Earl looked at her across the lamplight.
« Don’t you ever soften. Not for anybody. Not for me. »
Gus Eckberg skied over the pass on the 10th of January with the mail.
Frieda met him at the shed with hot coffee. Doc Leland had sent a reply to her note:
« Watch that gash. If you see red streaks climbing past the knee or the fever comes on hard, it’s gone bad and you’ll need me. God help us both if that happens before the thaw. »
« Jah, and the whole town is talking, » Gus chuckled. « Clem Petty has a slate behind the bar where folks bet on when the cowboy crawls home. And of course, Clem says Jessup owes him $5 already, since that was the bet that he could ride up and make the old maid smile. Did he do it, Frida? Clem says he never will. »
The coffee pot went very heavy in Frieda’s hand.
She set it down carefully on the shed shelf.
« What bet? »
Gus’s grin faded. An uneasy flush crept up under his red beard.
« Ach… I thought you knew. I thought he would have told you. It was why he came up the pass before the storm. $5 with Clem that he could… »
He stopped.
« Frida, I am sorry. I talk too much. Everyone says so. »
« Yes, » said Frieda quietly. « Everyone does say so. »
She watched Gus ski away until the trees swallowed the red of his coat. Then she stood in the shed with the coffee cooling beside her, listening to the wind scrape snow against the roof.
Five dollars.
That was what her laughter had been worth to a man who had spent weeks sleeping beneath her father’s quilt, eating her food, and learning to milk her goats. Five dollars and a joke told over a glass of sarsaparilla.
She remembered Christmas Eve. The little wooden goat. His earnest voice asking why she lived alone. The way he had told her not to soften for anyone.
Had he been laughing at her all along?
When she entered the cabin, Earl was sitting beside the stove, carefully rubbing a strip of leather between his fingers. He looked up immediately.
« Everything all right with Gus? »
« No. »
His expression changed.
« Something happened? »
« Apparently, I have become quite a popular subject in Larkin. »
He set down the leather.
« Frieda? »
« Tell me about the five dollars, Mr. Jessup. »
For a moment the cabin seemed to lose all its warmth. Earl’s fingers remained on the leather, but his face went pale in a way that had nothing to do with the cold.
« Who told you? »
« Gus. He seemed to think it was common knowledge. Perhaps I am the only fool who wasn’t invited to the entertainment. »
Earl opened his mouth, then closed it.
« Was it true? » she asked.
« Yes. »
The answer was quiet. It was also the worst possible answer.
Frieda looked at the man she had nursed through fever, pain, and long nights of restless sleep. She saw the pine goat on the shelf, the single gray sock beside his bed, and the book he had been reading to her father before the old man’s illness had taken his mind.
« You came up here for a five-dollar bet? »
Earl rose too quickly, caught himself against the table, and reached for his crutch.
« Frieda, I can explain. »
« I should hope so. Five months is a long time to practice a lie. »
He looked at her, and she saw that he was afraid—not of her temper, but of losing something he had only just begun to understand.
« Please, » he said. « Let me tell you the whole of it. »
She stared at him for a long moment.
« Then you had better start at the beginning. »
And Earl Jessup, who had always found words easily, discovered that the truth was the hardest thing he had ever been asked to say.
