Chapter Four

The stormed had waged throughout the night. As it grew later last night, they spread out their blankets on the dirt floor and lay down to sleep. Angus slept near Margaret, but didn’t offer to touch her. She tossed and turned with the dog at her feet until sometime early the next morning when she awoke to the sounds of someone beating on the door upstairs. Jumping up, she ran up the stairs and through the house to look out the window. There was a strange girl standing there, looking badly shaken.

“Ma’am? Can you help me? Ma’am?” the girl called out through the door.

Margaret pulled it open and stared in amazement past the girl at all of the trees that had been uprooted and lay on the ground. Debris were scattered everywhere.

“What’s wrong?” Margaret asked.

“It’s my pa. He’s stuck under a tree. I can’t get him out,” the girl told her.

“Let’s go,” came Angus’s voice from behind her.

He and Margaret ran out, following the girl along the road to where a wagon sat, completely demolished beneath a tree. A man lay beside it, his leg trapped beneath a fallen tree. Margaret could see that the leg was not only broken, but crushed. It would be useless to him, even if he made it through this.

“Get to town and bring the doctor out here. See if you can find some men to help us while you are there. Tell them to come quickly and to bring a wagon,” Angus told the girl. She immediately ran down the road in the direction of town.

“I found a post, Angus. Maybe we can get some leverage and get this off his leg,” Margaret told him, dragging over a small fence post that had been dislodged from somewhere.

“I don’t know, Margaret, but we will try it,” he said, motioning for her to come around to his side.

They wedged the post into the mud beneath the tree and began trying to pry it upward. It moved just a little, but not enough to free him. He remained unconscious, making Margaret wonder if his injuries weren’t far more extensive. After several more tries, Angus shook his head.

“Let’s see if he has anything else we need to tend to,” Margaret said as they waited for help to arrive. Checking him over, she couldn’t find anything else that seemed to be wrong other than some cuts and bruises. He began to come around as she knelt beside him.

“I hope you are the angel of mercy,” he croaked, wincing in pain as he spoke.

“I am not, but we are going to get you out of here. I’m Margaret and this is my husband, Angus,” she told him. It felt somehow both weird and natural to say that. The man’s eyes refocused on Angus for a moment before closing, pain obviously taking hold of him.

“My leg, it’s broken, isn’t it?” he moaned.

“Yes. I’m afraid so,” Angus replied.

“Badly?” he asked.

“Yes,” Angus told him.

“There was a girl with me. My daughter. Where is she?” the man asked in a panicked voice, trying to look around.

“Your daughter is fine. She came to get us this morning and now she has gone to town to get some help for us to get you out of here,” Margaret told him.

“She’s a good girl. Don’t let anything happen to her,” the man said, calming down.

“Nothing is going to happen to her or you, for that matter. We are going to get you out from under this tree and let the doctor tend to you,” Margaret told him.

A good bit of the morning was spent waiting for help to arrive. Once it did, things moved fast with several men pulling the tree up enough to get the man out from under it. They quickly had him back on the wagon and were headed back to town with him and his daughter. The doctor had been unable to come due to other injuries piling in, but would tend to him once he got there.

Walking back to the farm, Margaret and Angus looked around. They had left in such a hurry at dawn that they hadn’t been able to see what it looked like. In addition to the trees that had been uprooted, there were farm utensils everywhere, some theirs and some that had blown in from who knew where. Other than the missing tin from the shed Angus had been staying in, the other corn bins were all intact. At least their work at getting the crops in was not in vain.

“Welcome to Montana,” Angus told Margaret. “I guess this is a far cry from your life in London or New York, isn’t it?”

“Just a bit,” Margaret admitted.

“I’m glad you are here,” he said simply, heading into the house with her and the dog following behind.

“I am too, oddly enough,” she laughed. Turning toward the panting animal at her feet, she spoke to it. “Come on, Dog, and we’ll find us all something to eat.”

“You still haven’t named that thing?” Angus asked, pausing at the foot of the stairs.

“I just did,” she replied.

“What did you decide?” he asked.

“Dog,” she replied.

“That is his name? Dog? Just Dog?” Angus laughed.

“Yes. I think he and I will enjoy a simple life here together, so we are just going to give him a name which suits that idea,” she said.

“Dog,” Angus said with a laugh, climbing the stairs. She could still hear him chuckling as he reached the top.

Margaret made her way to the kitchen, feeding Dog a few scraps she found. She felt dirty, having spent yesterday in the fields, last night in the cellar and this morning digging a man from beneath a tree. Her dress had dried from being out in the rain, but was splattered with mud. It was getting late, thoughm and she still had so much to do. Cleaning up would have to wait. She set about making biscuits and slicing thick tomatoes to go with them. It wasn’t something she would have eaten back home in England, but some of her American friends in New York had taught her to make them and shown her how incredible they were with fresh tomatoes.

She could hear Angus coming back down the steps and doing something downstairs. When he walked into the kitchen, he was cleaned up and wearing dry clothes. He sat a metal bucket of water down on the stove to heat up and joined her at the table, taking only a few minutes to down his food.

“I’m sorry to rush through such good tasting food, Margaret, but there is a lot to be done. I brought in some water for you to use so you can get cleaned up and change. I put some on the stove to heat up for you. I didn’t figure you wanted to use it cold like I usually do. I’m going to get started on cleaning up outside.

“Do you need me to help you?” she asked.

“No. I’ll get it done. I’ll let you get started on making what you will of this house,” he told her.

“Very well, Angus,” she said, feeling a little disappointed. It wasn’t that she wanted to clean up the yard, but she found that she was going to miss having him by her side. At the same time, she was excited to get started making something of their home.

Both she and Angus worked well into the evening to get things done. It was getting very dark outside when he finally came in and sat down, looking exhausted. Margaret noticed that the bandage on his arm was soaked through with blood and caked with mud. She brought in some fresh strips of cloth and a wet cloth to clean it up and wrap it again.

“I’m not used to having someone fuss over me like this,” he commented.

“Perhaps you should get used to it then,” she told him. “Did you get a lot done outside?”

“Not enough. There issubstantial damage out there and loads of stuff that blew in from somewhere else. I’ve just stacked all the things that aren’t ours out in front by the road. Perhaps the owners will see it on their way into town or something and retrieve it.”

“Are we missing anything?”

“A few small things, but nothing too hard to replace. Thank God for that.”

“I’ll bring you a bowl of soup and we can just eat in here if that is okay. No need to be so formal with eating at the table when it is just the two of us.”

“You’ll get no argument from me. The house looks so much cleaner already, by the way. Thank you for working so hard on it while I was outside.”

“It will look like a woman lives here in no time,” she said.

Both she and Angus laughed as she returned to the kitchen to prepare a bowl of soup for him and herself, tucking a few crusts of bread that were left from where he had made it along top. They settled into their meal wordlessly, content to just eat and enjoy the peace and quiet that followed a day of hard work. Before they knew it, bedtime had rolled around and once again, Margaret found herself feeling awkward at the idea of sleeping in the same bed as a man she hardly knew. Then again, there was a part of her that was looking forward to it.

Neither of them said a word as they got ready for bed after they had finished their meals. Angus appeared as nervous about sharing his bed with her as she did. They each kept their backs turned to the other as they changed into their night clothes and climbed beneath the covers. Sleep was a long time coming for Margaret as she lay there in the darkness beside him, both hoping and dreading that he might take her for the first time. Apparently, he was just as restless, rising in the middle of the night to get out of bed and make his way downstairs.

Margaret lay in the bed staring into the blackness for a while before venturing up to see where he had gone. She was surprised to find him nowhere in the house. Dog stood looking quietly out the front window, whimpering at something he could see outside. Margaret tried to see what it was he was looking at, but could not. Finally, she stepped outside onto the porch and looked about. There was only darkness all around her, but she could hear something, a sound from behind the house and when she looked that way, she could see a large shadow looming overhead before quickly disappearing beyond the shed.

Her heart raced as she waited for it to appear again. What was it? Some sort of beast she had never heard of? It was far too large for a hawk or an eagle. She was still trying to make sense of it when she saw Angus emerge from the shed. She wondered if he had seen it too, but then wondered if perhaps she wasn’t just imagining things. Rather than making a fool of herself in front of Angus, she scurried back into the house and up the stairs, jumping into bed and pulling the covers over herself before he came back to bed.

A few minutes later, she heard himascending the stairs and coming into the room. She pretended to be asleep as he climbed into bed and seemed to fall asleep. After a while, she grew weary and joined him, trying to sleep for as long as she could before it was time to climb from the warmth beneath the covers and start what only promised to be another long day of toil. The one thing she could say about all the work to be done on the farm was that at least it kept her mind from who might still be on her trail.

Morning brought yet another surprise. Looking out the kitchen window as she prepared their breakfast, she could see that much of the debris that had been scattered about the property was now clear. It hadn’t been when he had come in for the evening yesterday and now it looked as if nothing had happened. Had he gone out in the night and finished? Is that what he had been doing out there when she had discovered him leaving the shed in the wee hours of the morning?

Walking to the back porch, she noted that the tin was back atop the shed. How had he retrieved it, straightened it and gotten it back on without making noise – and in the dark, to boot? It didn’t make any sense. Then, there was the thing that had been flying about prior to his return to the house. There was certainly something that lacked an explanation going on here. She wanted to ask, but she had a feeling that she would not get an answer or, if she did, it would not be one she wanted to hear. Instead, she decided to let him have his secrets, just as she had hers.

“Margaret?” he called out to her

“Coming,” she called back, stepping back into the kitchen to finish their meal.

“Is something wrong?”

“No. I was just marveling at all you had gotten done yesterday. I didn’t realize you had accomplished so much.”

“Needed to be done so we could get right back to the real work. Now that fall is coming, we’ll need to finish getting the corn in and prepare for the winter. I’ve got the tin back on the shed, but I need to get it nailed down properly. So, I’ll take care of that this morning while you work in the house. Once I’m done, we need to finish getting what corn is still out there to the bins and then we’ll start working on mending the fences.”

“I’ll plan on joining you this afternoon then,” she said.

Angus left wordlessly, seeming in a hurry to put some distance between the two of them. Margaret could tell that he was uncomfortable with the discussion, but she had no idea what it was that he was hiding. Some part of her felt betrayed by his unwillingness to confide in her, but was it really any different than the secret she withheld from him? In all reality, it was probably not even as heinous as the secret she kept. In time, perhaps both of them could tell one another about those things they held close to themselves. She considered that he might need time, just as she did and tried to let it go.