The Princess Club / Family Secrets / Mountain Madness Read online

  Ruby Mae shook her head.

  “Here. Take a look. It’s chock-full of interesting things. Some useful. Some not.” Mr. Halliday passed the book to Ruby Mae. “It’s a catalog. That means you find things in it you want, and then you order them. A few weeks later, the item is mailed back to you.”

  “If’n you have cash-money,” Ruby Mae said softly.

  Mr. Halliday nodded. “Yes. That’s how it works, all right.”

  Ruby Mae turned the crisp pages one by one. Hats and plows and hammers and shoes! Drawing after drawing of the most amazing things! It was like going to the general store in El Pano, only with a hundred times more shelves.

  “It’s like the world’s biggest store,” she marveled.

  “Yes, I suppose in a way it is.”

  “Ruby Mae!” Miss Ida called again. “You stop bothering Mr. Halliday and march on in here. Breakfast is almost ready.”

  Slowly, carefully, Ruby Mae closed the amazing book. “I have to go,” she said, gazing longingly at the catalog as she handed it back to Mr. Halliday.

  “Tell you what,” he said, “why don’t you borrow it for the day? I’m in no need of it.”

  “You mean keep the book? For a whole entire day?” Ruby Mae cried in disbelief. “Why, I’d be tickled to death! Thank you ever so kindly!”

  Clutching the book tightly, Ruby Mae started for the kitchen. But she hadn’t gone far before she paused.

  “Mr. Halliday,” she asked, “can it be that you would have money enough to just out and buy things from a book like this?”

  Mr. Halliday looked up from the picture he was examining. “Some,” he said. “Enough.”

  “What kind of things do you buy?”

  “Oh, supplies, mostly. I have them sent on to the post office in the town where I’m heading next. Last order, I bought a canteen and a horse blanket for Clancy. Some handkerchiefs for me. Odds and ends.”

  “I guess you made all kind of cash-money,” Ruby Mae said, trying to sound casual, “takin’ pictures of powerful folks like the President.”

  “I suppose you could say I made a good living,” Mr. Halliday said gently. “But more importantly, I got to experience wonderful things. Traveling the world. Meeting many different kinds of people.”

  “Princesses, even?”

  “Princesses, presidents, working men, thieves.”

  Ruby Mae gulped. “Thieves?”

  “A few.” Mr. Halliday smiled. “They’re not as frightening as you might imagine. Just people like you and me, trying to get by. People who took the wrong fork in the road.”

  “Well, I’d best be getting on to the kitchen,” Ruby Mae said quickly. “Thank you again for the catalog. I promise I’ll take real good care of it.”

  “I trust you completely,” Mr. Halliday said.

  Eight

  So, what do you think of our guest Mr. Halliday?” David asked that afternoon.

  He sat beside Christy under a sprawling oak tree in front of the schoolhouse. It was the noon break—what the children called “the dinner spell.” As usual, the students had broken off into small groups to eat. Some sat on the schoolhouse steps, but most lay on the wide blanket of green grass, soaking up the hot sun. A knot of children surrounded Ruby Mae, Bessie, and Clara. They’d become quite the celebrities, it seemed.

  Christy unwrapped the sandwich Miss Ida had prepared for her that morning. “I like Mr. Halliday. What a fascinating life he must have had.”

  David gave a wistful nod. “Sometimes, when I hear talk of travels like his, I wonder if I’ll stay in Cutter Gap forever.”

  “You’re needed here, David,” Christy said. “And being needed is a wonderful gift, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, I suppose it is.” He reached for Christy’s hand, then looked away shyly. “I guess we always want what we can’t have, hmm?”

  Christy wondered if David was referring to his recent proposal. She’d told him she wasn’t ready to get married yet, and since then, things between them had been a little awkward. Perhaps it was because David thought Christy was really in love with Doctor MacNeill.

  “Sometimes we don’t really know what it is we want,” she said softly.

  David let go of her hand. He sighed, his dark eyes shining. “Maybe you’re right.”

  “Are we talking about us?” Christy asked. “Or about Mr. Halliday?”

  “Both. But let’s stick with Mr. Halliday. He’s a much safer topic.” David managed a grin. “It’s not his talk about knowing famous people that made me . . . well, a little envious. It was his freedom, I suppose. And the money he’d made. The things I could do for the mission, Christy, if only we had a little more money!”

  “I know it sounds like Mr. Halliday’s well off, but did you see the way he looked at me when I mentioned the gold the girls had found?”

  “It’s perfectly natural. Who wouldn’t be intrigued?” he said, accepting the half sandwich Christy offered him. “You know, it actually occurred to me that the gold might have belonged to him. I mean, somebody had to lose it. But I guess we may never know its true owner.”

  Suddenly, the tranquil air was filled with the sound of sobbing. Christy scanned the area. Near the schoolhouse, she noticed George and Mountie O’Teale together. Mountie was crying uncontrollably. George, her nine-year-old brother, was patting Mountie on the back, trying to comfort her.

  Christy dropped her sandwich. “I just hope this isn’t Lundy, up to his old tricks.” Mountie was one of Lundy’s favorite bullying targets.

  Christy rushed to Mountie’s side. “What’s wrong, sweetheart?”

  Mountie rubbed her eyes. “The p-p-p-princesses say I c-c-can’t—” She stopped to take a gulp of air.

  “Can’t what?” Christy asked. She glanced over her shoulder at Ruby Mae and her friends. They were huddled over the Sears Roebuck catalog that Ruby Mae had borrowed from Mr. Halliday.

  “The princesses say Mountie can’t get herself a doll she set her sights on in that there book,” George explained. He stroked Mountie’s tangled hair. “Say she ain’t got no gold. Say she’s poor as a church mouse and they’s rich folks now and that’s that.”

  Christy wrapped her arms around the children. “Don’t you listen to those girls. They aren’t princesses. They’re just Ruby Mae and Bessie and Clara, like they’ve always been.”

  Mountie sniffled, her sobs subsiding. “I-I knew I couldn’t buy me the doll,” she whispered. “I just wanted to look at her, Teacher. So later I could pretend in my head she was mine.”

  “You know what, Mountie?” Christy said, wiping the girl’s dirty, tear-stained cheeks. “You can pretend right now. You don’t need that picture. You can use your imagination to come up with the prettiest doll in the world. And when you’re done, she’ll be yours forever.”

  Mountie considered. “Just make her up, right here on the spot?”

  “George will help you. What color eyes should she have?”

  Mountie pursed her lips. “Blue, like George’s. And sparkly.”

  “Good. And what color hair?”

  “Just like Mountie’s,” George pronounced.

  “She’s got right purty hair, even if’n it do have some tangles in it.”

  “There you go. Now you get the idea. I want you two to come up with the perfect doll for Mountie,” Christy instructed. “Meantime, I’m going to have a little chat with Ruby Mae and her friends.”

  Nine

  Christy marched across the lawn, hands on her hips. She shooed away the other children and led Ruby Mae, Bessie, and Clara into the empty schoolroom.

  “Give me the catalog, Ruby Mae,” Christy said as she sat at her desk.

  “But, Miz Christy, Mr. Halliday said . . .”

  “Now.”

  Reluctantly, Ruby Mae set the catalog on Christy’s desk. “We was just plannin’ on what we might could buy ourselves,” she said in a pouty voice.

  “I found me a dress with a puff-out skirt and a straw hat to match!” Bessie exclaim
ed.

  “And I . . .” Clara began, but Christy held up her hand.

  “Did it ever occur to you that your good fortune doesn’t mean you can forget about your friends’ feelings?” Christy asked. “Mountie was in tears just now because you told her she could never buy the doll she wanted. Why would you say something so cruel?”

  “We weren’t tryin’ to be hurtful, Miz Christy,” Clara said. “But she was gettin’ so all-fired excited, lookin’ at the doll picture . . .”

  “We just didn’t want her to get her hopes up,” Bessie added. “I mean, just ’cause we found gold don’t mean everybody in Cutter Gap’s goin’ to be rich.”

  Christy took a deep breath. She knew the girls weren’t being deliberately thoughtless. But she had to put a stop to this before it got out of hand.

  “Here’s what you three need to understand,” she said slowly. “Your good luck isn’t a blessing at all if you end up making other people feel badly. You need to understand that there’s going to be a certain amount of jealousy about the gold you found.”

  “Can’t help it if’n folks got the envy in ’em,” Ruby Mae declared.

  “You can make it easier for them, though. These people are your friends, girls. That hasn’t changed. Calling yourselves princesses, setting yourselves apart with a private club . . . well, that’s just bound to make other people unhappy and angry. It’s as if you’re saying that because you may have more money, you’re somehow better than they are. And that hurts.”

  Clara frowned. “We ain’t sayin’ we’re better, Miz Christy. But the whole truth is, we are different now. Can’t help it.”

  “But you can,” Christy insisted. “You can be the same kind, generous, thoughtful friends you’ve always been. Have you forgotten the Golden Rule? How would you feel if Lizette and Mountie and George had found the gold instead of you?”

  “’Tain’t likely,” Ruby Mae said, jutting her chin. “They ain’t exactly bosom buddies.”

  “The point is, what if they had? What if Lizette had brought a catalog to school, full of things you might never be able to afford?”

  Ruby Mae cocked her head. “I s’pose I’d be a mite jealous.”

  “Exactly,” Christy said. “I realize you’re excited about what’s happened. But from now on, I want you to try as hard as you can to think about the feelings of your friends. Understood?”

  “Yes’m,” Clara said.

  Bessie nodded.

  “Can we still have The Princess Club,” Ruby Mae asked hopefully, “if’n we do it private-like?”

  “That’s up to you,” Christy said. “But I want you to think about how you’d feel if some of the other children wouldn’t let you join their club.”

  “Speakin’ factually, Miz Christy,” Ruby Mae said with a sly grin, “you got us doin’ so much thinkin’ about other people, I don’t see as how there’ll be any room left for thinkin’ about our ’rithmetic test.”

  Christy laughed. “Nice try, Ruby Mae.”

  That afternoon, after the children left school for the day, Christy sat at her desk, grading papers. The sun cast long yellow rays through the windows, spreading onto the floor like melted butter. The sweet smell of honeysuckle carried on the warm breeze. A scarlet tanager warbled joyously from the branch of a hickory tree.

  Christy loved this time of day, when the echoes of the children’s voices still lingered and the chalk dust still hung in the air. It was a time to reflect on her day. How could she help the children learn better? What could she do tomorrow and the next day to make their hard lives a little easier?

  She scanned Ruby Mae’s math test. Four wrong answers out of seven. No, Ruby Mae definitely did not have her mind on “’rithmetic” today.

  Christy piled up the math tests and straightened her desk. She’d grade the rest at home this evening.

  Before leaving, she opened her desk drawer and removed the Sears Roebuck catalog she’d put there for safekeeping. Locking up temptation, she thought with a rueful smile. Just like the gold in her trunk, back at the mission house.

  She thumbed through the pages. Page after page of things. Things people needed, things people didn’t need.

  When she’d first come to Cutter Gap, she’d wondered how these people could get by on so little. She still remembered the first mountain home she’d seen—the cabin belonging to Clara Spencer and her family. It was gloomy and cramped, just two rooms, side by side. The family owned a few sticks of furniture and a big iron pot in the kitchen—a pot that was empty, more often than not. And yet the love and happiness Christy had discovered in the midst of those tiny rooms had filled her with awe.

  Christy flipped to the back of the catalog, where she happened upon a page of school supplies. Chalkboards, pencils, paper by the pound, even beautiful desks! How wonderful it would be to be able to order everything she needed and have it all magically appear. But that was not the way the world worked— a lesson Mountie had learned only too well this afternoon.

  “Knock, knock!”

  Christy looked up in surprise to see Doctor MacNeill standing in the doorway. He was holding a slightly wilted handful of wild violets.

  “Neil! What brings you here?”

  “I had to stop by to talk to Miss Alice about a scarlet fever case she’s been helping me with. Thought you might want to take a walk.” He gave an embarrassed grin. “Sorry about the violets. It’s the thought that counts.”

  Christy grinned. “I’m sure they were lovely.”

  “What’s that?” Neil pointed to the catalog.

  “Trouble, that’s what it is.”

  As she started to close the catalog, Christy’s gaze fell on a beautiful dress. Back home in Asheville, she’d seen one of her old friends in a dress just like it. Blue satin, sleeves trimmed in lace, tiny pearl buttons down the bodice. It had been beautiful.

  Christy traced her finger over the drawing of the dress.

  Be the belle of the ball! . . . the description began.

  Quickly, she slapped the catalog shut. There was no point in imagining such a thing. It wouldn’t be the same as having it.

  Like an imaginary doll, she thought with sudden sadness.

  Ten

  For sure and certain nobody followed us?” Bessie asked for what had to be the hundredth time that afternoon.

  “For sure and certain, Bessie,” Ruby Mae said. She peered through the thick woods behind her though, just to be on the safe side. “Would you stop actin’ like a scared rabbit?”

  At the edge of Dead Man’s Creek, the girls stopped to catch their breath. The dense greenery around them rustled with every breeze. The sun dappled the creek with sunlight.

  “I could have swore I heard somebody a-whisperin’,” Bessie said nervously.

  “We doubled back just to be sure,” Clara reminded her. She sat on the bank and let her dusty feet cool in the creek. “Even Lundy Taylor would have had himself a hard time followin’ us.”

  “I still don’t see why we had to come all the way back here with Prince Egbert,” Bessie complained.

  “Now that Miz Christy’s done teachin’ with him, we owe it to him to set him back in his rightful home,” Clara said. “Could be he has a wife and kids, you know.”

  “Let’s just get this over with,” Ruby Mae said curtly. She didn’t like coming back here any more than Bessie did. For some reason, returning to the spot where they’d found the gold made her feel guilty.

  “You know, that talk about the gold with Miz Christy got me to feelin’ kind of bad,” Clara murmured as they walked along the bank.

  “You’ve been usin’ your head too much again,” said Ruby Mae. “I can tell by the way your forehead gets all crinkled up.”

  “Ain’t crinkled.” Clara felt her forehead, just to be sure. “But all that talk about the Golden Rule and all . . .” She sighed. “This bein’ princesses is awful complicated, ain’t it?”

  Bessie nodded. “Lizette wouldn’t even talk to me this afternoon. You’d a thought I
had the typhoid or somethin’, the way she run off.”

  “And last night,” Clara confided, “I heard my ma and pa arguin’ out by the woodpile. Somethin’ about how to spend the cash-money. My pa wants a new roof and a floor. And my ma wants to save some of the money for later. My pa started to yellin’, sayin’ how are we even goin’ to have a later if’n we don’t have a roof over our heads? It was somethin’ awful to hear.”

  “For a blessin’,” Bessie said, “this gold sure is a passel of trouble.” She paused. “What’s that? Did you hear anything? Kind of a rustlin’ noise?”

  “You’re imaginin’ things,” Ruby Mae said.

  “All I’m sayin’ is,” Clara continued, “this gold sure does seem to bring out the argufyin’ in people.”

  Suddenly, Ruby Mae stopped. A flash of white under some reeds by the edge of the creek caught her eye.

  She bent down and fished her hand in the icy water.

  It was a white handkerchief.

  “What’d you find, Ruby Mae?” Clara asked.

  Ruby Mae stared at the white clump of fabric in her palm. “Nothin’ much. A man’s handkerchief. Or maybe it’s just a piece of fabric off’n a shirt. Can’t rightly say.”

  The other girls joined her. “Can so say,” Clara said. “That’s a man’s handkerchief for certain.”

  “It looks like the one Mr. Halliday was carryin’ with him,” Bessie said.

  Ruby Mae wrung out the little piece of fabric. “Prob’ly lots of people carry handkerchiefs.”

  “Not in these here parts, they don’t,” Clara said. “Are you thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?”

  “Not likely,” Ruby Mae said. “You think more than a whole roomful of teachers and preachers put together, Clara Spencer.”

  Clara put her hands on her hips. “I’m thinkin’ we were right about what we were sayin’ before. I’m thinkin’ that gold might just have belonged to Mr. Halliday. And I know you’re thinkin’ it too, Ruby Mae. Even if’n you don’t think you’re thinkin’ it.”