by Kate Whitsby
The three sisters finished their midday meal and Allegra kicked the embers of the fire apart and used the edge of her boot to scrape dirt over them. Then they untied their horses from the bushes and swung up into their saddles.
All three sisters wore the same dusty outfit of canvas pants, rawhide chaps, long sleeved cotton shirts buttoned up the front, Stetson hats, and riding boots. They all wore gun belts around their hips with rows of bullets lined up between their holsters. Alma and Amelia wore leather gloves. Allegra didn’t bother to protect her hands from the wear of her work.
Many people thought the Goodkind sisters were triplets. They all carried the same curious combination of features from their Irish father and their Apache-Mexican mother. Their black hair shone in the sun, and their sharp, fierce eyes burned in their faces. Their skin stayed clear and white, no matter how much time they spent out in the sun, but their chiseled cheekbones and strong jaw lines reflected their mother’s Native heritage.
Alma wore her hair in a single long whip of a braid hanging down her back. It hung down so long, she sometimes tucked the end of it into her belt to stop it swinging. Amelia kept her hair tied in several braids looped up around the back of her neck in the style of the local Mexican women. Allegra kept her hair cropped short, up off her shoulders, like a boy. When scolded about her appearance, she claimed she didn’t care what she looked like and this was the easiest way for her to manage. No one, she reminded everyone, would see her on the range anyway, so what difference did it make?
The sisters followed their normal daily routine and filed, in descending order of age, onto the trail to their grazing cattle herd. Alma couldn’t see her sisters’ faces behind her, but she envisioned them in her mind’s eye. She knew well enough what they looked like when they received important news.
Amelia would cover up her uncertainty with quiet contemplation, but she couldn’t hide the concern in her eyes or the repeated pressing together of her lips. Allegra didn’t have to pretend to be totally disinterested because she was. If anything, the coming of a new person into their isolated lives represented an interesting change for her.
They didn’t speak about Alma’s decision again that day. In fact, they hardly spoke at all out on the range. They went through their daily routine with an unspoken understanding of their shared goals and responsibilities.
Only after they got back to their house of adobe brick did they speak again. Tucked into a cluster of thorn trees near a spring on the upper flats of the river, the tiny house offered a welcome relief from the aggressive sun. The sisters didn’t return until dusk and the air began to cool, so the house also provided shelter from the cold of the desert night.
Alma sighed as she dropped down from her saddle. Her boots made two craters in the dust at her feet. “Home, at last. Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.”
Allegra swung one leg up over her saddle horn in front of her before hopping down. She laughed at Alma. “What do you mean, there’s no place like it? There’s only about a million mud huts across the frontier exactly like it. It’s a dump.”
Clarence Goodkind stooped under the lintel of the door and leaned against the door post. “I built this house with my own two hands, young lady. You’d do well to remember that.”
“So you’ve told me every day of my life,” Allegra shot back. “How could I forget? And if I ever was inclined to forget it, all I have to do is look at it to remember. It has ‘hand made’ written all over it.”
“That house has kept the sun and rain and wind off of your ungrateful head since the day you were born,” Amelia put in. “It’s done the job of providing us with a house all these years, and it will continue to provide us with a home for many years to come. So you should keep your remarks to yourself.”
“I never said it wasn’t a perfectly functional house,” Allegra maintained. “I just said there were a million others just like it, and it’s a dump. I challenge even one of you to disprove what I just said.”
No one took up her challenge.
Allegra squared her shoulders and led her horse off to the barn, which was another slouching lump of adobe next to the house. Amelia followed her.
Alma gazed after her sisters until they disappeared inside the barn. Then she smiled at her father.
“How did it go today?” he asked.
Alma shrugged. “The same as every other day. You know how it is.”
Clarence shook his head. “I know how it is. It’s a quiet business, herding cattle morning, noon, and night. I only wish I was out there with you. I don’t like not knowing everything that’s happening.”
“If there was anything happening out there,” Alma told him. “You would be the first to know about it. We haven’t kept anything from you. Now, come on around here to the other side of the house and sit down. I want to talk to you.”
Chapter 3