``Its true,'' she said, ``I killed a man in Oregon. Shot him right between his lying eyes. And not a woman in that town didn't cheer me on,'' she turned to look at them, ``some men don't deserve to live.''
``But if you want this job,'' the school board said, ``you would be well advised not to mention it again.''
They hired her from a newspaper ad. Now they found they had a self proclaimed killer on their hands. Not only that, but she was teaching their children and teaching them well.
The first generation born on the prairies often didn't learn to read or write. Life was too hard for education.
But that year the children of the railway settlement were all reading at seven years and there was great pride among the parents.
The children knew she had killed a man. They watched her in fear filled fascination. Her pale, bony face, her glittering eyes. Her hair so fiercely drawn back. She carried a cane and she whacked relentlessly at the hands of recalcitrants. And so they learned the rivers of Africa and the mountain ranges of the Americas. They learned long division and compound interest. And the children knew that she carried a Derringer in the deep side pocket of her skirt, though no one had seen it.
The women longed to learn her story. They speculated endlessly as they scrubbed and peeled and hoed and plowed and milked cows and nursed babies.
What would cause a woman...
An educated woman...
An independent woman...
What would cause a woman to shoot a man between his lying eyes?
And they looked out at the mules in the shade of the new barn and the dry hard ground of their hopeful wheat fields, and they thought to themselves yes, there had been times...but best not to think of them. So they didn't.
And the men were drawn to the new teacher and she froze them with her eyes.
It was early summer when her belly began to bulge.
``You cannot stay,'' the Hansens said. The teacher rented their attic room.
The children would not let her go. The Hansen girls, the wild kids from up river, the boy from the line shack. They rallied around her and pleaded with the school board. All in vain.
When she walked to the train carrying her own valise, the children followed her and climbed on to the train and the train rolled away with them.
Thank god for the telegraph!
The train was stopped thirty miles down the line. They tried to get the children off the train, but every time they got two off, three more would have climbed back on.
Then the teacher took out her cane and started rapping their indignant heads.
``I'll be alright,'' she said, ``you must go home.'' And she held each child in a close embrace and they felt the baby pushing at her belly and she kissed each child.
``I'll be alright,'' she said.