The Man from Stone Creek Read Online Free PDF Page A

skittered to Maddie.
    She realized that her mouth was open, and closed it again, but not quickly enough, she saw, to fool Mr. O’Ballivan. The flicker in his eyes told her he’d registered her disapproval of Undine’s bold behavior and found it amusing.
    Recovering her manners, Maddie said, “Mrs. Donagher, this is Mr. O’Ballivan, the new schoolmaster.”
    Before she could introduce Mungo, he stepped between Undine and Mr. O’Ballivan, extending a work-roughened, pawlike hand in greeting. His manner was one of blustery goodwill, but Maddie wasn’t fooled, and neither, apparently, was Mr. O’Ballivan. A muscle bunched in his jaw even as he shook Mungo’s hand.
    Undine, her flirtation thwarted, pushed out her lower lip and retreated to the counter, where she and Maddie had been poring over the catalog.
    â€œYou look like you might just be able to handle that bunch over to the schoolhouse,” Mungo boomed, apparently determined to keep the conversation going. “One of those whelps is mine. Name’s Ben. He gives you any trouble, you just haul him off to the woodshed and tan his hide.”
    A motion at the window drew Maddie’s eyes, and she saw her brother peering through the glass. When he spotted Sam O’Ballivan, he recoiled visibly and hurried off down the sidewalk.
    â€œI don’t make much use of the woodshed,” O’Ballivan said.
    Maddie’s temper heated. No, she thought. You just hang innocent children upside down in the well by their feet and scare the life out of them.
    Mungo laughed, fairly rattling the canned goods on the shelves. It was not a friendly sound; Mungo Donagher was not a friendly man. In fact, most people feared him, along with his three older sons, who were, in Maddie’s opinion, little better than criminals. She stayed close to the shotgun when any of them were in the store.
    â€œI hope you’re a better man than poor Tom Singleton,” Mungo said. “Those snot-nosed little devils stampeded right over him. Thought he might toughen up, but he didn’t.”
    Maddie glanced at Undine, saw a faint blush rise in the woman’s cheeks and the slightest tightening around the mouth. She wondered about that, but only briefly, because the exchange between Sam O’Ballivan and the patriarch was building up steam.
    â€œYes,” O’Ballivan agreed mildly, selecting a cake of yellow soap from those on offer and dropping it into the box in the curve of his left arm, moving on, and then going back for another. This time, he chose the fancy, scented kind, French-milled and wrapped in pretty paper. It cost the earth, and Maddie’s curiosity was piqued again. “I saw the evidence of that yesterday. I’ll need two pounds of coffee, Miss Chancelor. A pound of sugar, too.” He proceeded to add tins of peaches, tomatoes and green beans to his purchases.
    â€œA man’s got no business teaching if he can’t ride herd on a few brats.” Mungo thundered on. “’Course it’s usually a woman’s job. Teaching school, I mean. My older boys always favored a schoolmarm.”
    I’ll just bet they did, Maddie thought, watching Sam O’Ballivan closely while trying to pretend she’d barely noticed him at all.
    O’Ballivan didn’t answer. Occupied with his shopping, he reached down for a shaving brush, then a razor, then tooth powder. Maddie wondered, as she had from the first moment of their acquaintance, why a man like that would want to spend his days writing on a blackboard in a border town like Haven. He must have felt confined in the schoolhouse, a place hardly big enough to accommodate the width of his shoulders, and his skin was weathered, as if he’d spent much of his life outdoors.
    Maddie knew the salary allotted to the teacher was paltry, since she attended school board meetings, and besides, Mungo was right. Most teachers were female. Mr. Singleton had