Dear Readers, this is the first of my 14 vignettes. They go in sequential order, but each one has a different unique theme. I hope you have fun reading all of them.

(After I wrote 7 vignettes, another writer chose to write a story and call it a vignette. It is not written by me and I have nothing to do with it. All my vignettes are by jellybean49.)

Enjoy!

Chapter 1

Elizabeth looked at the clock for the third time in five minutes. Jack hadn't said that he would stop by for dinner after his rounds, but she had been hoping that he would. The two of them had fallen into a nice pattern of meeting for dinner at the end of day. It had become routine for Elizabeth, after she had dismissed the students, to work on the next day's lesson plan, until dusk. Then she would freshen up and read, write letters, or practice a new recipe until Jack knocked on the door. She looked at the clock again and then out the window. Jack should have finished his rounds and written his daily reports by now. She tapped her pencil on the table and tried to concentrate on a letter to her family.

"Elizabeth", Jack greeted her as he came into the parlor from the kitchen.

She looked up startled. "Jack, I was expecting you at the front door".

"I was dropping off some supplies for Abigail. What have we here?" he asked as he looked at the small table Elizabeth had moved into the parlor from the café.

"I thought we would have a nice private dinner tonight. I'm tired of eating in the café. Every night, we're interrupted by people asking you about Mountie matters, or asking me to get them something from the kitchen if Abigail's busy. I've become part school teacher, part waitress for the town!" she said exasperatedly as she escorted him to the table. "Sit down and relax. I'll bring us some dinner. You haven't eaten yet have you?"

"No, of course not" he said as he leaned in and gave her a kiss.

"Dinner can wait" Jack murmured as he kept kissing her.

"Jack, you have to eat" Elizabeth laughed "and I want you to taste my newest dish".

"I like what I just tasted" Jack replied with a smile.

"Jack!" exclaimed Elizabeth.

Over dinner, Jack told Elizabeth about his day. He had run across the occasional gold miner, some trappers, and a group of lumberjacks, who had mentioned a possible rabid dog in the area. Elizabeth told Jack about the latest fight at school between the boys, and the girls being more curious about Elizabeth's new dress than their spelling lesson.

"That was delicious." Jack said as he put down his fork and pushed back a now empty bowl.

"It was rabbit." Elizabeth answered with a smile. She was never sure if her food tasted like it was supposed to and she frequently felt the need to explain her meals.

Jack smiled back. "I'm going to miss a good meal like that the next few nights" Jack said offhandedly.

"Won't you be coming home each night?" Elizabeth asked as she picked up their plates and began to move away from the table. She tried to be causal in her question, without letting her sudden anxiousness creep into her voice.

Jack sensed her worry and placed a hand on her waist. He gently pulled her onto his lap, took the plates from her hands and put them on the table. "I'll be gone two or three nights. I just have to go to some of the outlying areas. Don't worry. I'll be fine."

"Promise me you'll be careful" she whispered as she looked at him, her hand gently touching his cheek.

"I promise." he whispered back just before he touched his lips to hers.

The next day, Elizabeth kept busy as school. In the evening, she helped Abigail in the café. By the time they that had cleaned up after the last customer, she was exhausted. She smiled wryly at the thought that a benefit of living in Hope Valley was that she was becoming a very good waitress. Her sister, Viola, would be appalled. As she lay in bed, she thought about what it would be like one day, married to Jack but sometimes alone in bed while he was away on patrols. She smiled and then blushed at the idea of them sharing a bed one day.

On the third day Jack had been gone, Elizabeth frequently glanced out the school window looking for his red serge riding into sight.

"Miss Thatcher?"

"Miss Thatcher?"

"I'm sorry Henry, did you say something"

"My mom says I can't get my clothes wet tomorrow" Henry said.

"I agree, Henry. Children, tomorrow when we go to the lake to study nature, you can take off your shoes and socks to wade in the shallow end. But there will be no dunking or splashing each other." Elizabeth said sternly. "Scientists do not splash" she said matter of factly.

The next morning, Elizabeth looked out her window at the jail and sighed when she saw that it didn't look like Jack had come back to town overnight. "Oh well, he said it might be three nights away" she told herself as she got dressed and went downstairs.

"Jack should be home today, shouldn't he? Would you like me to help you make a nice dinner tonight?" asked Abigail as she packed up a bag of cookies for Elizabeth's students.

"That would be wonderful. Thank you, Abigail." Elizabeth said with a smile as she took the cookies and headed to the door. "Wish me luck. I have to keep a gaggle of students from drowning each other instead of learning about water life."

As Elizabeth went through the morning lessons, the students were restless. They were anxious to actually get wet and didn't care about learning how to spell "aquatic". Finally, Elizabeth announced "It's time to go. Get your lunches, the nets, and the buckets, and let's get going!"

After walking for 10 minutes, they reached the lake. Elizabeth had the children carefully line up their shoes and socks. The boys rolled up their pants legs, while the girls copied Elizabeth as she tucked her skirt into her waistband so it wouldn't drag in the water.

After an hour of examining the shoreline, plants, and water-life, half the pants legs had fallen into the water, the hems of the skirts were dragging, and the students had thrown more than one small minnow at each other. Several of the youngest students had decided that squishing their toes in mud was more fascinating than science.

"Look, Miss Thatcher, a dog" said Anna.

"Unless it has fins and gills, we are not studying dogs, Anna." Elizabeth said, without looking up, as she removed some algae from her skirt.

"I ain't never seen it before, Miss Thatcher. Hey, Sam, you ever seen that dog before?" Anna called to Sam.

"Nope, I ain't never seen it" Sam responded. "Pete, you seen that dog before?"

"Children, do not say "ain't", do not use double negatives, and we are not here to study dogs! Now lets . . . " Elizabeth suddenly stopped talking as she finally looked up in the direction in which the kids were looking.

She caught her breath as she saw a dog moving slowly towards the lake. It was still about 60 feet away from the children who were playing on the muddy shoreline, when it pulled back its gums in a snarl. There was no question that it was getting ready to attack. Jack's words from the other night came back to Elizabeth in an instant. "Some lumberjacks thought they saw a dog acting strange down by their camp. It could be rabid from the way they were describing it."

"Into the water! " Elizabeth yelled, as she scooped up the smallest child from the ground, and with him on her hip, dragged another child by the arm into the water. The children, frightened and screaming, splashed into knee deep water, with Elizabeth yelling at the slower ones to keep moving. As the dog charged, growling and baring teeth, several children tripped and fell face down in the water, sputtering as they came up.

"Pick up the smaller children!" Elizabeth ordered as she now had one child on each hip. The dog began snarling and pacing at the edge of the water. Its coat was matted, it walked with a limp, and it looked unhealthy. It also looked deadly.