The Jeweled Spur (8 page)

“Why, there’ll be no trouble about that, I’m thinking.” The man rose and moved across the floor with a strange jerking gait to stand beside her. “Michael McGonigal is me name, but it’s Mac I answer to,” he said in a speech thick with the flavor of Ireland. He had a squashed face like an old potato, a shock of iron gray hair, and a pair of sharp blue eyes. “That’s a foine horse, miss. Ever race him?”

“Oh, just against other horses on the post.”

“Post, is it? Why, you’re an army girl, then!” His eyes lit up and he asked, “Which outfit?”

“The Fifth Cavalry. My father’s the commanding officer at Fort Grant.”

Mac McGonigal’s face showed astonishment. “Do you tell me that? Why, I served a hitch with the old Fifth—under Major Reynolds, it was. What’s your father’s name?”

“Major Thomas Winslow.”

“Don’t know him, miss, but I’ve been out for a spell.” Regret came to his eyes as he slapped his leg. “I’d be in the cavalry still, but my horse fell on me. Broke my leg so bad it couldn’t be rightly fixed.”

“I’m sorry, Mac,” Laurie said. “I know how you must miss it all . . .” She stood there talking to the small man, and soon he had managed to find out most of her history. Finally she sighed, “Well, I’ll have to go now.” Biting her lip nervously, she said, “I don’t know what to do about boarding Star.”

McGonigal squeezed his eyes together, thinking hard, then asked abruptly, “Is it a Christian girl you are, Miss Laurie?”

“Why, yes, I am, Mac.”

“Then ye’ll be knowing that the Lord don’t let us wander around down here like a bunch of blind moles! Me old mother taught me that—bless her memory!”

“She sounds like my own mother,” Laurie nodded. “She hears from God all the time. But I don’t seem to have the
knack for it.” A streak of impatience tightened her lips and she shook her head in frustration. “Why doesn’t God tell
me
what to do? Where is He when I need Him?”

“Faith, girl!” Mac slapped his hard hands together sharply, his blue eyes snapping. “Do ye expect the good Lord to come down and shout every little thing in your ear?”

“Well, no, but—”

“Before ye started out this morning to find a place for your horse, did ye ask God to help you?”

Laurie blinked, then answered feebly, “Well, no, but I didn’t think I needed to pray over such a little thing.”

“Oh, that’s it? Ye’ll handle your own business until you stub your toe, and it’s then ye’ll be goin’ to God?” McGonigal shook his head and looked fierce. “Well, devil fly off, if that ain’t a pitiful way of servin’ the Lord!”

Laurie felt a flush of anger, primarily because she had been told essentially the same truth by her mother. “Well, I can’t ask God for every little thing, Mac! And suppose I had asked—do you think He’d send a shining angel down to show me the way to a stable?”

“Well, He’s got plenty of them, ain’t He?—angels, that is! Don’t the Word say, ‘The chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels’? It ain’t my business—or yours—to figure out
how
God is going to lead us. It’s ours to ask, and His to do!”

Laurie suddenly laughed and put her hand on the small man’s arm. “When I write to my parents, I’ll tell them they don’t have to worry about me. I’ve got a fine Bible-believing trooper from the Fifth here to watch over me! “ Her smile was warm and a happy light danced in her eyes as she added, “And I’ll
ask
God about finding a place for Star. Does that satisfy you?”

McGonigal’s rumpled face broke into a grin. “There’s no need to ask now, because I can tell you where to keep your animal.” Seeing the surprise on the girl’s face, he swept the stable with a gesture of his arm. “Right here, it is.”

“But—this is for the faculty and staff!”

“Go see President Huddleston,” McGonigal said, smiling. “Tell him what you need.”

Remembering her encounter with the short-spoken president the day before, she asked doubtfully, “Do you think so, Mac? He seems so
grumpy.
”

“Now, Miss Laurie, here the Lord’s given you what you want and you go doubting! Don’t the Word say, ‘Trust in the Lord with all thine heart’? You be goin’ on now, and see the man!”

“All right, I will!”

Laurie left the stable and went at once to President Huddleston’s office. By the time she got there, her confidence had eroded, so much that when she asked to see him, she half hoped he would be too busy to see her. But the middle-aged woman sitting at the desk nodded at once, “Go in, Miss Winslow. This is the hour that President Huddleston sets apart for talking with students.”

Laurie knocked on the door timidly, then when a voice said “Come in,” she entered and slowly approached the huge desk sitting squarely in front of the bay window that let the pale sunlight enter. President Huddleston lowered the heavy book he was reading and stared at her through the thick lenses of his glasses. Laurie had already heard his nickname, “The Snapping Turtle,” and couldn’t help thinking that he looked exactly like one!

“Miss Winslow, I think.” Huddleston placed the book on the desk in front of him and motioned to a horsehide chair on the left of his desk. When she had perched on the very edge of it, as nervous as she’d ever been in her life, he said abruptly, “Tell me about yourself.”

“Sir?”

“What kind of a young woman are you?”

Laurie could only stare in bewilderment at the small rumpled figure. Her simple request had been transformed into something quite different, and she stood there trying to
collect her thoughts. She had always been a quiet girl, formed by the emptiness of the land she’d grown up in, and in no small measure, by the father she greatly admired. Faced with the blunt, unexpected question of President Huddleston, she was embarrassed and said so. “I—don’t know how to answer that.” But then she straightened her back and the inner core of independence that was part of her rose to the surface. “I’m a girl who wears funny clothes,” she said evenly, thinking of his remarks of the previous day. She was afraid of the man and half expected that he might rebuke her for her impertinence—perhaps even send her back to Arizona.

But unexpectedly the president’s thin lips curved slightly in what passed for a smile. Lowering his head, he peered at her over his glasses, and she saw that the brown eyes that appeared so formidable behind the thick lenses contained a surprising warmth. “So you do,” he remarked, “but we’re more than the clothes we wear. What do you want to do with your life? What have you done with your life up until now? Do you expect to go through the rest of your life riding a black horse?”

Laurie sat there as he peppered her with questions delivered in a shotgun fashion. When he finally paused, she was not quite as nervous and began to speak of her history. He sat there listening, his face impassive, but she had the impression that he was storing all she said in some sort of filing cabinet he kept in his small head. Finally she stopped, realizing that she’d talked for half an hour, more than she’d ever talked about herself in her entire life!

“I want to be a writer,” she said finally.

“No, you want to
write,
perhaps,” President Huddleston nodded abruptly, his voice crisp as dry leaves. “That’s what you want to
do.
” Leaning back in his chair, he clasped his hands and mused, “I ask people what they are, and they always tell me what it is they
do.
‘I’m a doctor—I’m a cleaning woman.’ ” Shaking his head, he stated firmly, “What do you want to
be,
Miss Winslow?”

Instantly Laurie shot back, “I want to be as good a woman as my father is a man!”

Her answer pleased the scholar, for he nodded sharply, “Now
that’s
the sort of thing I like to hear! Tell me about your father. . . .”

An hour later, after Laurie had told President Asa Huddleston far more than she’d intended to, she was dismissed. “You’re going to be an asset to our school,” he’d said. “Now, you may leave and go to work.”

Laurie blinked at such an abrupt dismissal, but didn’t hesitate to obey his order. Crossing the room to the door, she realized that she’d discovered a man who was far more than just a college president.
I could tell him anything,
she thought, and then reaching at the door, she suddenly remembered her errand.

“Oh, President Huddleston,” she said, turning to face him. “I can’t find a place for my horse . . .”

He listened carefully, then waved his hand. “Tell McGonigal I said to take care of him. We’ll find some way for you to work it out.”

Laurie was stunned at the simplicity of the matter! Running back to the stable, she captured McGonigal and gave him the news with her eyes sparkling. “ . . . and so he said to tell you to take care of Star right here in the stable!”

Mac looked at her, pleased with the whole thing. He’d liked this girl from the moment she’d ridden in, and now he’d had a hand in helping her. But he frowned, saying sternly, “Didn’t I tell you? If you’d listen to me more, you’d know more!”

Laurie laughed, and suddenly threw her arms around the small ex-trooper, which almost shocked him out of his wits. Drawing back with a red face, he sputtered, “I’ll be havin’ a word with your father about this loose sort of manner you’ve picked up!” he threatened. Then to cover his emotion—for he was a lonely man—he said, “Now, can you ride this horse? I’ll be giving you some special lessons. I’ll not have one of the Fifth fallin’ off her horse!”

He rambled on, but Laurie knew that whatever else came to her from this new life, she’d found two men she could trust!

****

At the evening meal, after a rather hectic first day of classes, Maxine noted that Laurie had hardly eaten anything. When her new roommate excused herself and left the dining room, Maxine waited for five minutes, then rose and rushed upstairs to the room the two shared. When she pushed the door open and stepped inside, she saw Laurie lying across the bed, her face buried in a pillow. Maxine’s first impulse was to go sit down and try to console the girl, but she wisely chose another course. “What’s the matter?” she demanded.

Laurie hastily got up and tried to say cheerfully, “Oh, nothing, Maxine. Just too excited, I guess. My first day at Wilson College and all. Guess it wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be.”

Maxine stared at the tense lines of Laurie’s pale face, noting the stiff lips and the false smile. “Liar,” she remarked conversationally. “You look like you’ve been run over by a farm wagon.” She moved to the huge walnut dresser the two girls shared, opened the bottom drawer, and fumbling around under the twisted nest of underwear, came up with a small cloth bag. Slamming the drawer shut, she produced a small rectangle of thin paper from inside the bag, then after deftly rolling it into a half-tunnel, she opened the bag and filled it with amber-colored tobacco. Expertly she licked the edge of the paper, finished rolling the paper into a tube, then twisted the ends. Taking it between her lips, she drew a match from her pocket, raked it across the top of the vanity and lit the cigarette. After drawing deeply, she expelled the blue smoke with satisfaction, then looked at Laurie and said, “You’ve been looking like a poisoned pup all day.”

Laurie had watched with alarm as Maxine lit the cigarette. “Isn’t that against the rules?” she asked cautiously.

“Sure it is.” Maxine removed the cigarette from between
her lips, rounded them, and blew a perfect smoke ring. It moved slowly through the still air, and she smiled, saying, “Takes a lot of practice to do that, kid.” Then she waved the cigarette toward Laurie and said, “Listen to Mama and you’ll learn something.” She spoke in a mocking tone, but there was kindness in her eyes as she leaned back against the wall and began to lecture. “You found out that you’re way behind some of the students here in the books, and that made you fold up. And you found out that Agnes Sipes is a pain, which everybody else
already
knew!”

At the mention of the Latin teacher’s name, Laurie flushed. It had been one of the most humiliating moments of her life when the thin woman had exposed how little she knew, and she’d determined
never
to set foot in that class again!

“She’s jealous of you, that’s why she cut you to ribbons before the class.” Maxine nodded when Laurie stared at her with doubt in her eyes. “Fact. She’s scrawny and homely as a barn door, and not likely to get a husband. She hates all the pretty girls—and she’ll do worse than she did today when she sees Barton Sturgis take after you.”

“Barton Sturgis!” exclaimed Laurie.

“Yeah, Aggie Sipes swoons over him. I don’t know why, but she does.” Maxine took another draw on her cigarette, then nodded thoughtfully. “He gave her a little ride, I think, then dropped her. But she’d let him walk over her with hob-nailed boots!”

“He won’t pay any attention to me!”

“Honey, he’ll try to hustle you—just like he did me and every other girl who’s not cross-eyed.” She laughed at the outraged expression on the girl’s face, saying, “I know you’ve got some kind of crush on Sturgis, him being a big writer and all, but he’s a
man,
so take Mama’s advice, and watch yourself with him.”

Laurie flushed, shaking her head stubbornly. “You make fun of everyone, Maxine. I don’t believe any of that.” She’d had time to pull herself together and said, “I know I’m dumb,
but I’m going to show that woman! I’ll make an A in Latin if I have to kill myself studying.”

“You won’t make more than a passing grade, ’cause Aggie won’t give it to you,” Maxine said matter-of-factly. She started to say more, but at that moment they both heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs.

“It’s the matron!” Maxine dashed to the window, threw it open, and tossed the cigarette out. Grabbing a blanket off the bed, she began fanning wildly, whispering hoarsely, “Help me get this smoke out of here, Laurie! I’ve got eighteen demerits already!”

Laurie laughed suddenly, relieved somehow by what she’d heard from Maxine. “Maybe she’ll think I did it. Everyone probably thinks I smoke and chew tobacco and swear like all wild west characters.”

Maxine stopped fanning abruptly, surprise on her round face. Then she grinned broadly, and throwing the blanket down said, “It’s my only hope. I thought you’d tell on me.” She moved over and gave Laurie a hug, saying, “Don’t worry, kid—you’re going to do
great!
”