MADDIE AND THE RANGER
by Janine Mick Wills
CHAPTER ONE
Dallas, TX
Spring 1902
“Hey! Someone stop that kid. He just stole an apple!”
Maddie Spencer whipped around in time to see a boy with a heavy thatch of chocolate brown hair and an upturned nose barrel past her. The screen door of Mr. Walters’s Grocery and General Store banged shut behind him.
Oh, Riley, she groaned. Not again. And after the stern lecture I gave you last time.
It had all started a half-hour earlier when Maddie bounded upstairs to stir a pot of beans cooking on the stove. Planning to be gone a minute, she left her paintbrush on the easel of a portrait she was painting. By the time she returned, there sat two-year-old Nathan merrily painting a masterpiece of his own on the studio floor. She snatched the palette and paintbrush from him, but it was too late. The bristles were ruined. Since she needed several new brushes anyway, she’d told her brother to keep an eye on Nathan and Levi, Nathan’s older brother, and asked eight-year-old Riley if he would accompany her to the store.
Maddie hiked up her skirt above her front laced boots and dashed after Riley, still clutching the paintbrushes she had planned to purchase.
“Hey,” Mr. Walters hollered after her. “Get back here! You didn’t pay for those brushes either.”
Ignoring the storekeeper, Maddie ran down the street in pursuit of her ward. Riley was fast, but Maddie was faster. Her long legs caught up to him a block away. She snagged his arm and made him face her.
“Come on, Riley. Hand it over.”
The boy’s eyes refused to meet hers, but he dropped the apple into her hand.
“How many times have I told you not to take things from Mr. Walters’s store? If you wanted an apple, you only had to ask.”
“What’s the fun in that?” came the surly reply.
“Taking things that don’t belong to you shouldn’t be fun.”
“It was until I got caught.”
Maddie sighed. Since Pete and Juanita Murphy had asked her to foster Riley Wilson, he had bucked her or made excuses at nearly every turn. She didn’t blame him. She knew the pain and confusion of losing a parent, although she’d been years older than Riley when she’d lost both of hers.
“Riley,” Maddie said, “you’re going to march right back and return that apple to Mr. Walters .”
She reached for his hand, but he jammed it into his pants pocket and hurried ahead of her. Her gaze fell to the paintbrushes she was still holding in her other hand.
Rats. Mr. Walters is probably having a conniption fit. I hope he doesn’t call the police on us.
She hid the brushes behind her, so Riley couldn’t accuse her of doing the same thing of which she’d scolded him. “If Levi were here—”
“I know. He wouldn’t have taken the apple.”
“I wasn’t going to say that,” Maddie replied, though Riley’s words were true. Since Levi Armstrong and his little brother Nathan came into her life a month ago, the only thing he’d stolen was her heart.
“I was going to say he would have told us all he knows about apples.”
Riley wrinkled his nose in disgust. “He’s such a know-it-all, and he acts like he’s an adult.”
“That’s because he’s Nate-Nate’s big brother and feels responsible for him. Like I did toward my brothers and sister when our mama died.”
Riley kicked a rock, which sent it skittering down the street. “I never had no brothers and sisters.”
“But Levi and Nate-Nate think of you as a brother.”
“They ain’t my brothers,” he shot back. “When Mama comes for me, she ain’t gonna want another couple of boys.”
Maddie knew better than to pick up that argument. Though Riley had been left as a newborn at Saint Anne’s Convent, he believed with every inch of his small being that his mother was alive and would come back one day. This false idea fueled not only his defiant behavior but also made him unfavorable for adoption. One institution after another pawned him off onto the next until he had ended up at Martha’s House, the orphanage the Murphys had started to honor Pete’s beloved mother.
“Well,” Maddie said, “until your mama comes back, you can pretend Levi and Nate-Nate are your brothers.”
“Maybe Nate-Nate. He’s kinda cute with those chubby cheeks and big blue eyes.”
“What about Levi?”
“He’s a pain, and he says he’s smarter than me ‘cause he’s a month older.”
“What about the times you play baseball or cowboys and Indians? Don’t you enjoy that?”
Riley hiked up a dismissive shoulder. “Yeah, but he can go on and on about the dumbest things. He can yap the rattler off a rattlesnake.”
Maddie hid a smile behind the hand not holding the paintbrushes. The last thing she needed was to encourage Riley’s disdain for Levi. Instead, she asked, “May I tell you something?”
Riley didn’t reply, but a spark of curiosity lit his eyes.
“Getting along with people is God’s way of working on our patience. Take me and Charles for an example. He’s the best brother a girl could have. He works hard as a journalist to help pay the bills, he cares for you boys when I’m busy in the studio or running errands, and he collects the eggs if you or Levi forget. But will he pick up after himself or lend a hand in the kitchen? Why, he’d rather have his toenails peeled off one at a time.”
Seeing the corners of Riley’s mouth twitch as if he wanted to smile, Maddie rushed on. “And though I get bossy once in a while, Charles is patient and puts up with me. Like whenever I run off at the drop of a hat.”
“I’ve never seen you drop your hat,” Riley said in all seriousness. “You did drop the round thing you squirt your paints on yesterday, and you weren’t too happy ‘bout that.”
Maddie had to agree. She’d just begun painting a client’s portrait when Miss Lucy, the family cat, let out an ear-piercing yowl. She dropped her palette and raced upstairs to see Nathan pointing a stubby finger to where Levi had run outside. The door had slammed shut behind him and caught the poor creature’s tail.
“Dropping a hat means I jump into things as quick as a hat falls to the ground,” she explained.
“You do move pretty fast. ‘Cept when you’re painting.”
“You’re right. That’s about the only time I slow down. Can’t be hurrying that along.”
By this time, the two had retraced their steps back to Mr. Walters’s store. Similar to Maddie’s art studio, the small business sat on the first floor of an unassuming, two-story, brick building. Its upstairs apartment housed him and his equally unassuming wife of forty-one years.
Riley hesitated at the threshold of the store. Maddie kneeled down to speak to him, a tactic she learned from Pete and Juanita when she’d worked at Martha’s House. The couple believed speaking to children at eye level showed respect and also established trusting relationships.
“How about this?” Maddie asked. “I’ll smooth things over with Mr. Walters In return, you help with supper and clear the table afterward. And if you do a good job, I’ll give you a nickel to buy an apple the next time we come to the store.”
Maddie acknowledged her offer for what it was—a bribe. But if it helped Riley take responsibility for his action and kept him from stealing again, she considered it worth it.
Riley gave a slight nod, and the two entered the store to the smell of salt pork, an array of spices, rich coffee, and tanned leather. They passed shelves lined with dry goods that ranged from beans, sugar, tea, rice, and flour to bolts of colorful cloth and sewing notions, hardware, soap, candles, and fortunately for Maddie, a few art supplies.
They found Mr. Walters waiting with his arms crossed over the generous swell of his stomach. His wiry brows met in the middle as he glowered at Riley and held out a hand for the apple and the paintbrushes. Maddie surrendered both with a guilty grin.
“Sorry, I didn’t realize I was holding them. The paintbrushes, that is.”
“Miss Spencer, you’ve got to do something about your boy. Last time it was a yo-yo. The time before that a handful of candy.”
Riley scowled up at Mr. Walters. “I’m not her boy. She ain’t my mama.”
“Then do something about that kid.”
“I ain’t a kid either. I’m eight years old.”
Maddie pulled Riley close. His body tensed, but he thankfully stayed put. They were already in enough hot water without making things any worse.
“Mr. Walters, don’t you remember what it was like to be Riley’s age?”
The storekeeper skimmed a hand through his thinning, gray hair, and Maddie bit her bottom lip to keep from saying he was probably too old to remember much of anything, let alone what it was like to be a young boy. Why, he was at least sixty years old.
“How about let Riley pay for that apple by sweeping the porch and the front walk?”
Mr. Walters squinted and rubbed his double chin. “If he also sweeps the inside of the store, I’ll call it even.”
Riley opened his mouth to protest but snapped it shut when Maddie wagged a finger under his nose.
Mr. Walters marched to the rear of the store to get what Maddie assumed was a broom. She took in Riley’s sullen expression.
“We’ll be done in a couple of jiffies and it’s the right thing to do. The Bible says when we take something that doesn’t belong to us, we need to make restitution.”
“Res-ti-tu-tion? What’s that?”
“That’s making up for something we’ve done wrong. Like when Mr. Pete needed—”
Maddie stopped mid-sentence. She shouldn’t fault Levi’s constant chattering. Her mouth tended to get the best of her as well. She’d almost said Pete had wanted to make restitution for the crimes he committed before he met Juanita. For two years he rode all over Texas as an outlaw. But when he got right with the Lord and started Martha’s House with Juanita, he felt forgiven and confident God could still use him.
“Hmm… Let me think.” Maddie tapped her cheek with a finger. “I know. How about if Levi took your cookie—”
“I’d bop him upside the head.”
“No, no. And please let me finish. If Levi took your cookie and was sorry about it later, he might give you two cookies in return. That’s restitution.”
“If Levi had two cookies, he must have stole ‘em from the cookie jar and needs to do his own resti–restitooting.”
Maddie shook her head in resignation. No matter how hard she tried, her parenting skills were about as effective as a bulldog trying to keep a room full of cats content.
Riley looked thoughtful. “Does all that payin’ things back make God happy?”
The query took Maddie by surprise. Riley rarely spoke about the Lord, but since it wasn’t the right time nor place to discuss God, she motioned to the broom Mr. Walters had thrust at him. “We’ll talk about it later. The sooner you finish up, the sooner we can go home.”
She glanced at the clock behind the cash register. It was almost two-thirty.
“Mr. Walters, you agreed for Riley to sweep, but I need to scoot home so Charles can get back to the paper. If you’ve got another broom, I could help, and we can get the job done a whole lot faster. And you don’t have to give me an apple.” She hoped her suggestion and attempt at humor might calm down the storekeeper.
Mr. Walters said nary a word but retrieved another broom. Maddie clicked her heels together, grabbed the handle with one hand, and saluted him with the other. “Thanks. You won’t regret this.”
“We’ll see about that. And don’t forget to sweep the corners.”
Maddie gave a sigh of relief. Another crisis averted. Somehow, she’d managed to keep her imaginary boat upright and floating in calm waters, a full-time job if there ever was one. She went straight to work, and twenty minutes later, she and Riley had swept not only the inside of the store, the porch, and the front walkway, but true to her compulsive nature, she’d gone out back and swept that porch too.
Satisfied, she leaned both brooms against the counter and handed Riley the apple he’d earned. “Thank you, Mr. Walters. That was a good thing you did.”
“Next time I won’t be so accommodating.” He waved the paintbrushes at her. “You want these or not?”
Maddie paid for the brushes, grabbed Riley’s hand, and was about to flee the store, when
Mildred Harris, her across-the-street neighbor and the local gossip, bustled inside. Her straw hat was pushed low over her forehead but not low enough to cover the raised eyebrows she gave Riley.
“Let me guess.” Her voice was haughty. “He stole another apple?”
“I earned this apple fair and square,” Riley said. “Well, I sorta did.”
“What do you expect from an orphan,” she sniffed.
Maddie drew Riley protectively to her side. “Mrs. Harris, if memory serves me right, both of your parents have passed on. Haven’t they?”
The woman puffed up an ample bosom and drew herself up to her full height of five feet, which left her a head shorter than Maddie. “Why, yes, they have. What does that have to do with anything?”
“Since you no longer have parents, you’re an orphan too. Riley’s young and may need to pick up a few manners, but you’re old and should have already learned them.”
Maddie fled the store, but not before Mrs. Harris gasped and said, “Why, I never…”
Maddie and Riley didn’t stop running until they reached Padgetts’ Bicycle Shop two blocks up the street. They leaned against the plate glass window until they caught their breath. Maddie’s eyes met Riley’s in the reflection, and they both dissolved into giggles.
“Miss Maddie,” Riley said. “After what you said to mean ol’ Mrs. Harris, you’re gonna owe God some restitooting yourself.”
He slipped his hand into hers and gave it a squeeze. Maddie smiled at the boy’s rare display of affection. She returned the squeeze.
“I think you’re right.” Then with a laugh, she took back her words. “No, Riley. I know you’re right.”
***
