The Headless Horseman came at Isabella, but she jumped out of the way, not sure of what to believe about this sight before her. The horse turned and came back towards her, and she jumped out of the way again, this time landing in a pile of fallen leaves that rolled away and took her part of the way with them. She raised her pistol from her belt and as the Horseman came towards her again, pulled the trigger sharply and quickly. A shot fired and seemed to have hit the rider, but made no indication that it had indeed struck him.

However, the horse turned away and the Headless Horseman rode off into the night. Isabella didn’t care to follow. She just headed back for the Van Tassel farm where she could put this experience behind her.

It was 10 o’ clock when Isabella returned back to the house, by which time Brom had returned from visiting Fred, and both he and Katrina had waited up for her.

“You were gone a long time,” Katrina noted, “Did something happen?”

“A ghost is all,” she said.

“What’s that?” Brom asked.

“Nothing…I’m tired and cold and I think I’ll sleep like the dead tonight,” Isabella said as she headed for her room.

They watched her descend into her room and shut the door, Katrina turned to Brom and said, “She doesn’t look well, I think something did happen to her tonight.”

“If it had,” Brom insisted, “Wouldn’t she have said so?”

“I’m not sure,” Katrina replied, “I just have an awful feeling that something happened to her out at the river tonight.”

“Well she’s back now, so we can go to sleep,” Brom said, “That’s all I’m concerned about.”

Katrina went with Brom in retiring to their room for the night. What they hadn’t noticed was that Isabella’s door was slightly ajar, and from the crack between the wooden door and its frame, rested an eye. The eye watched as they went down the hall to their own room, and once their door closed, that door closed, removing the eye from sight. Isabella locked her door and went to her table and took out a book that she had declared one of her father’s personal journals that he had kept around the middle part of his life; after leaving Sleepy Hollow and before becoming a widower. She lit two candles and set down to read through it. She had an idea she was getting somewhere.

It snowed during the night and the next day the whole of Sleepy Hollow was white. When Isabella walked to the schoolhouse in the cold, she had a companion to follow her along the way. She got along well with most men in Sleepy Hollow, but one in particular had taken an interest in her, and that was the undertaker’s son, Loren Wilcox. He was about her age and nowhere near as educated; two qualities she appreciated very much in a man, but she made it clear that she had no interest for him.

“I’ll have you know I’m a grieving widow and am liable to shoot the next fool who asks to marry me,” she told him as they approached the schoolhouse.

“A widow? When were you married?” Loren asked as he stopped behind her.

She answered as she went up the steps, “When I was 16, I was widowed at 19.”

“To who?” he asked.

“Whom,” she turned back around to face him.

“What?” he asked.

“I was married to whom,” she corrected him.

“That’s what I want to know,” Loren said.

“Well if you’ll just listen, I’ll tell you. His name was Jonathan Lawrence, he worked at a sawmill. He died three years later, Ebola.”

“Horrible way to die,” Loren said.

“Yes it is,” she replied, “I moved back with my father after that. Truth be told, I think he was happy when Jonathan passed. Oh mind you, he didn’t hate him,” she shook her head, “My father could never hate anybody. That was his one weakness, even as a lawyer he could never hate a soul. But, after my mother did, he didn’t like being alone. He didn’t do well alone. He was a man who needed a good woman taking care of him. So after I buried Jonathan, I went back home and did the best I could with that.”

“But that was…10 years ago wasn’t it? How long are you going to be in mourning?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

Isabella tried to get in through the door to the schoolhouse but Loren was persistent to stay with her, “You want me to stick around incase there’re anymore poltergeist roaming around in there?”

She cocked her head to the side, “Who told you about that?”

“All the kids saw what they did in the schoolhouse. They told their parents and their parents know everybody else in all of Sleepy Hollow.”

“I’m appreciative but no thank you, I can take care of myself. Ghosts don’t scare me and I’ve been around enough of them that they should’ve by now.”

“Alrighty then, I’ll see you after school,” Loren said as he turned away.

Snow continued throughout the day and came down so hard, a set of tracks made early in the morning were covered without a trace by midday. Come the afternoon, Brom went out to fetch more firewood and when he did, he sneaked off to meet Fred to discuss what had gone on the night before.

“She shot you?” Brom asked Fred.

“I got lucky,” Fred rolled up his pants leg and showed a horrible mark where the bullet from the gun had grazed him, “Scared the horse right out of its mind.”

“So she will be a harder one to get rid of than Ichabod,” Brom said, “We’ll just have to try harder.”

“We?” Fred repeated, “What we? After last night she nearly shot me, you gotta be kidding me we.”

“Suppose we caught her when she was unarmed?” Brom asked.

“When isn’t she armed?” Fred asked, “She wears that ‘durn belt all the time, ain’t a soul alive in Sleepy Hollow that ever sees her without it. She always has that gun and that sword at her side at all times.”

“Maybe not,” Brom said.

“What?”

“She has to take it off when she sleeps, she can’t possibly still wear it then, do you think?” Brom asked.

“I don’t think, and furthermore I’m a happily married man, I ain't going to look,” Fred replied.

“Alright then, I’ll look, tonight, when she’s asleep.”

“How will you know when that is? She told you she doesn’t sleep some nights.”

“Well then I’ll just make sure that she does sleep tonight.”

“How are you going to do that, Brom Bones?” Fred asked.

“I’ll figure a way.”

Fred nodded. Off in the distance they heard a twig snap, and they looked around the corner of the shed and saw Isabella coming down the way with an apple in her mouth.

“What are you doing out here?” Brom asked.

She took the apple out of her mouth and said, “Katrina wants to know what’s keeping you with the firewood.”

“I’ll be right there, you tell her.”

Isabella nodded and turned back around and headed towards the house.

“We better figure a way to get her out of here soon before she gets too smart for her own good,” Fred said, “Otherwise she’s going to have a bad accident.”

“We’ll see to it,” Brom added.

That night, in place of cider, Brom made sure Isabella got a heavy helping of wine, it was enough to knock out a moose, it would be enough to make sure she slept that night. Through the night, Isabella talked Katrina and Brom’s ears off about how she’d questioned a lot of the older residents of Sleepy Hollow and hadn’t been able to find anybody who would possess a motive for driving Ichabod off.

“Perhaps,” Katrina said, “It’s a mystery we’ll never know the answer to.”

“It’s certainly looking that way,” she agreed.

Changing the subject, Brom noted, “You look tired, Miss Crane, your eyes are looking dark and heavy.”

“I feel fine,” she replied, “And I’m not tired.”

About two hours later, she was yawning loud enough to scare a horse and she excused herself for bed, not long after, Katrina and Brom did the same since the severe change in the weather was enough to tire anybody.

During the night, Brom crept out of bed and down the hall, he turned the knob on Isabella’s door and found it unlocked, so he helped himself inside. It was pitch dark so he lit one of the candles on the table and found much to his dismay that Isabella had taken off her shoes and stockings but remained dressed and ever still with the belt and weapons around her waist. This woman was impossible and she was beginning to drive him out of his mind. Brom put out the flame and left the room and closed his door and retreated to his own bed.

All Hallow’s Eve was coming soon, and unless he and Fred Dumpkey managed to find a way to get rid of her before then, the Headless Horseman would have to come out again for another midnight ride to the old church bridge. He would make sure of it if that's what it came to.

What Isabella wouldn’t tell Katrina and Brom she also didn’t tell most of the rest of Sleepy Hollow, however she had no problem telling Loren everything that had gone on. One night she went over to his home and the two sat on the front porch rocking and smoking their pipes, and she told him about the Headless Horseman coming after her near the river.

“You think it was really the ghost?” Loren asked.

Isabella pulled the tip of her pipe out of her mouth and puffed out a big ring of smoke. “I don’t know. I shot at him, I don’t know that I shot him but after the bullet passed, he made the horse turn around and he disappeared down the road. That leads me to believe he was human.”

“You reckon it’s the same man?”

“Could be, and since he failed to scare me off before, I’ve reason to believe he could strike again.”

“So you’ll be ready for him?”

“It’s hard to determine just how to be ready for a man or a thing that there’s no rhyme or reason when he’ll appear.”

“What’re you going to do?” Loren asked, “You ain’t quitting are you? We need a schoolmaster here and you’ve lasted longer than the previous ones.”

“I’m not so easy to get rid of…I’ll stay, no matter what might happen, I’m staying,” Isabella assured him, “That you can count on.”

“That’s good,” Loren said.

“So, did you get an invitation to the Van Tassel All Hallow’s Eve party?” Isabella asked.

“Yes indeedy, are you going to be there?”

“I live there, how could I not be?”

“Well then I guess I’ll see you there,” he smiled at her.

“Yes I reckon you will,” she replied as she looked the other way.

“Isabella,” he said to her, “Are you still a grieving widow?”

“Every day of my life,” she answered as she alternated between looking straight forward and glancing over at him as she spoke, “Don’t misunderstand, I knew from the start that Jonathan was dying, I could feel the life leaving his body, I could feel him grow weaker with every passing day…but I still loved him, so I married him, not expecting a long life together. Or children, or much of anything for that matter, I did it simply because I loved him. I knew our life together would not be a great one, in truth it wasn't even good for the most of it. But having me around made him feel better; or so he tried to act, even when he neared death's door. If he had to die, I hope he died happy.”

“If he was married to you I’m sure he did,” Loren replied.

Isabella’s face scrunched up and she removed her pipe and rubbed at her eyes.

“Miss Crane, are you crying?” Loren asked as he took his pipe out of his mouth and held onto it.

“No,” she sniffed in reply, “Your pipe puts out a horrible aroma.”