The Mirror by Marlys Millhiser Page B

Thora K. threw back her shoulders and her shawl came out of her belt. "Don't 'ee worry, you. Us don't go 'ungry 'ere. Us weren't scat, 'ee know, even afore yer fayther's uld mine and 'is money."
    "I didn't mean--"
    "I know wot 'ee meant. Henough indeed. 'Ere, eat every last crumb, you, or I'll scat 'ee across the chacks, proper." She threw a semicircular thing into the bowl now cleaned of soup.
    A kind of cold meat pie with potato and onion, rather strangely spiced and encased in a thick crust.
    Thora K. sucked in sunken cheeks, pressed her lips together so tightly her nose came dangerously close to her chin. Her attention shifted with equal suspicion between Shay and the new "hicebox."
    How could John McCabe have thought this a good place for his daughter, crazy or not? Shay wondered miserably.
    Dusk slid into night over the Gingerbread House and the wedding mirror still standing on the porch. Light from the windows gave straining bronze hands a dull sheen, left the secret glass shadowed.

    Elton McCabe crossed the planks over the irrigation ditch and walked through the gate. Head lowered, lost in thought, he moved slowly, not anxious to reach the house. The glum silence at dinner, the empty place at the table, his mother's sighs, his father's reaching too often for the wineglass . . . and Elton's own sense of guilt had sent him from the house as soon as the meal ended to walk quiet streets, to brood, to kick at dogs who nipped at his heels, to merely nod at others out for a stroll.
    Elton sat on the steps, smelled in the residue of dampness from the irrigating, the fragrance of his mother's flowers tumbling from their beds. And felt a curious shiver along his spine. All the while thinking of his sister in the crude hands of Corbin Strock.
    The door slammed behind him. "Should get that mirror in sometime. I forgot it." His father sat next to him. "She'll be all right, son. Don't take it so hard."
    "And how do you know that?" Elton was ashamed of the emotion that shook his voice. "That lout Strock is--"
    "Now, what else could I do? Answer me that." John McCabe spit into the grass. "As I see it, I had three choices. One was to shut her up in a lunatic house in Denver. And if she's not out of her mind she would be soon in a place like that. The second, to keep her home here."
    "That would have been my choice."
    "Would it?" John asked quietly.
    Guilt brought a flush to Elton's cheeks. "Yes," he lied.
    "And what would your chances be of finding a wife in this town, Elton McCabe, with a loony sister in the house? I don't believe she is, mind you, but she insisted on acting like it. And people have long thought it taints the blood of a family. If not yours, then maybe that of your children. Folks won't be anxious to have you courting their daughters if ... I suspect you've noticed a few fences without gates already. Haven't you?"
    "Yes." Mary Ann's mother giving him a pitying look but summoning her daughter into the house when he'd walked her home from the store. Mrs. Elliot hovering at the parlor door when he'd called on Margaret. The people of Boulder had to show respect to a McCabe but that didn't extend to endangering the future of their daughters. The cruel comments of some of his men friends. He'd tried to talk his father into keeping Brandy home and he'd felt empty when Strock drove her away. But Elton had also felt relieved. This was the reason for his heavy load of guilt tonight. "Corbin Strock is--"
    "And how many beaux has the girl had in the last two years? Where was I to go for one? Strock dropped out of heaven like it was all intended. He's not uneducated, you know. Schooled in Caribou and I've heard many a miner's child who come from that school talk with a better command of the language than you, boy. He's better-read than you too."
    "He's a lout," Elton insisted.
    "Well, if he is, he's a strapping one. Ought to beget children by the score. And what better to prove our Brandy's a normal woman than a passel of normal