Hearth Stone

by Lois Greiman

  Surprise shone on Sydney’s face. “Oh. Well, I’m sorry, but—” she began.

  “What kind of work?” Hunter asked and, pulling his gaze from the vehicle behind her, ignored the annoyed expression Sydney flicked in his direction.

  Vura shrugged. “They say hunger makes us flexible … so …” She chuckled again. “I can do back bends.”

  There was something about the woman’s easy laughter that seemed to increase Sydney’s tension exponentially.

  “Unless you’re a roofer, I’m afraid we can’t use you,” Sydney said.

  “Well …” The girl glanced at the house with a critical eye. “What is that? A 9/12 pitch?”

  “About that,” Hunter said, “but we’re considering patching up the barn right now.”

  “Yeah? Well, good for you,” she said and turned toward the other building with an admiring gaze. “What a beauty.”

  Sydney looked at her disbelievingly.

  “Wouldn’t it be great if we could use all-dowel construction to restore it? Maybe have a cedar shake roof and double Dutch doors. We could add dormers in the loft. Get some natural light in there and …” Her eyes widened in excitement. “What about cupolas? We might be able to find a couple lying around that were from similar old barns. Lots of them have been dismantled and …” She paused, jerked her attention back to Sydney, and laughed at herself. “I’m sorry. Dad always says I can get more excited about power tools than most girls get about diamonds.”

  “How long have you been in construction?” Hunter asked.

  “You’re a carpenter?” Sydney said the words like another might ask if she was visiting from Mars.

  “The only kid of a contract builder. To hear Dad talk, you’d think I was born with a hammer in my hand.”

  “My sympathy to your mother,” Hunter said and she laughed again. It was a good sound, round, full bodied, and wholehearted. “You do interior work?”

  She nodded. “Drywall, trim, framework. I’ll even pour a little concrete if I have to.”

  “Well …” If Sydney’s back got any stiffer it would crack right in two, Hunter thought, and worked hard to contain his chuckle. Not that he had been jealous about Mr. Mossy Anderson, but it never hurt to even the score a little. “That’s very … impressive, Ms… .”

  “Mrs.” The correction came quickly, followed by another laugh. “I’ve been married nearly four years now,” she said, but there was a jitteriness to the words.

  “Mrs. Lambert,” Sydney corrected, “I’m afraid—”

  “I’m a hard worker.” The smile had slipped a little. She hoisted it back up. “And conscientious.” She sent one quick glance at her truck.

  “I’m certain that’s true, but—” Sydney began.

  “Do you paint?” Redhawk asked.

  “Like Michaelangelo.”

  “How about stripping old flooring? You do that?”

  “I just finished Meryl Baker’s living room. Harp’s older sister. You know her? Lives over by Pringle. Prettiest black walnut flooring you’ll ever see. I can get references, if you like.”

  “I’m afraid we just don’t need—” Sydney began.

  “—References,” Hunt finished.

  Sydney snapped her scowl on him, but he was undeterred.

  “Can you start Monday morning?”

  The girl’s eyes shone. With gratitude, relief, or hope, he wasn’t sure. “I’m an early riser,” she said.

  He nodded and turned away. “Bring your own tools.”

  By the time Sydney caught up with him, she had worked up a full head of steam. “Perhaps you could inform me about what you think you’re doing.” Apparently, a full head of steam still required perfect diction.

  He shrugged and picked up a battered bushel basket he’d found hidden in the dried buffalo grass near the creek. “She needs work.”

  “I have to assume there are others in the great state of South Dakota who are also looking for employment. Do you plan to hire them all?”

  “I’ll leave that up to you.”

  “Up to me? Really? Just because I own the property, I hardly think—”

  “I noticed that,” he said and pressed past her. She followed him like a hound on a hot scent. Beside the silo, he knelt to pull dead foliage away from the tiny spears of hope just peeking through the damp soil. They were as red as autumn apples.

  “What are you doing?”

  It seemed obvious. But he could play along. “Weeding.”

  “I’m fully aware of that, Mr. Redhawk. But what are you weeding?”

  “I suppose you don’t know how to make rhubarb pie.”

  She remained silent.

  He glanced up. “You do know what pie is, don’t you?”

  “You are a very amusing man.”

  “I’m working on my standup routine,” he said and went back to the task at hand.

  “I can’t afford to hire every drifter who comes along.”

  “You can afford her.”

  “Because she needs a job or because she has big, heaving breasts?”

  He wouldn’t have been more surprised if she had sprouted a tail and a fiery pitchfork. In fact … he thought, but stopped that uncharitable line of thought in its tracks.

  “Because she has a kid,” he said, and rising to his feet, left her to stew in her own well-bred juices.

  Chapter 20

  “How long will you continue on this path?” Hunter asked.

  “As long as it takes,” Sydney said and didn’t glance up at the man who controlled the mustang with a long-handled twitch attached to the mare’s upper lip. Neither did Sydney straighten, though she had finished applying Hunt’s homemade ointment and re-bandaging the dun’s legs. In fact, she wasn’t entirely certain she could straighten. Once again, she had spent most of the night in the barn, with the previous hours being consumed by backbreaking labor and heart-wrenching worry.

  Courage stood with her legs braced wide and her head drooping toward the floor. How much of that lethargy was caused by the sedative necessary to keep her quiet and how much was dictated by her deteriorating health? Sydney wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to know the answer; despite the fact that the mare’s injuries seemed to be healing, she looked as if she had already begun the long slide toward death. Beneath her scraggly, clay-colored coat, her ribs looked as sharp as knives, her eyes as dull as dust. Guilt blended with the sorrow and anxiety already awash in Sydney’s system. The toxic mix made her tone strident. “I suppose the Indian way is to let her die.”

  “If she does not eat soon, she will have little choice in the matter.”

  Sydney’s stomach twisted and her thigh throbbed as she rose to her full height. “If we eliminate the sedatives, she’ll reinjure herself.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “And how would we change her bandages? Give her the necessary injections? The chances of infection are astronomical.”

  “You are right. It would be easier if she were dead.”

  Sydney gritted her teeth and faced him dead-on. “You’re—” she began, but footsteps distracted her.

  “Hey.” Vura Lambert strode into the barn. Her smile was bright, her blue jeans worn, her hands covered in scarred leather gloves that were snugged in at the wrists by beaded strips of rawhide. “I knocked at the house. Nobody answered. So I thought …” She shrugged, making her dark ponytail bounce. “It’s Monday morning,” she said, as if they might have forgotten. Which actually was a possibility. The days ran together like river water out here in the long quiet of the hills.

  Sydney said nothing. Hunter nodded.

  “Have you eaten?” His voice was little more than a rough murmur in the soft morning light.

  “Yes. Thanks. But listen …” She shuffled her feet, which were laced into chunky leather boots. “I don’t want to cause …”

  “Mama?”

  Sydney snapped her gaze toward the door, where a tiny person was even now shuffling down the aisle toward them. Dressed in purple-footed pajamas
bright enough to make you squint, she came rubbing her eyes and dragging a tattered something behind her. It looked a little like a one-eared rat.

  “Hey, Lily Belle,” Vura said, and after one quick, apologetic glance at Sydney, turned to scoop up her daughter. “I asked you to stay in the truck, remember?”

  “But I want to see the cows.” There was the faintest lisp in her voice. Her eyes were magic-fairy bright.

  “There aren’t any cows, baby.” Vura shot the other adults a look rife with regret. Sydney merely stared. She was no expert at this work scenario thing, but she suspected it was somewhat unconventional to bring a midget to your place of employment. “And right now …”

  “But it’s a barn. And barns is the houses of cows. Our book said so. Remember? The black and—oh!” Her eyes were wide and forest green beneath a frazzled cap of runaway hair as she peered between the bars of the stall. “Horse!”

  “Yes.” Vura’s cheeks, usually a soft sienna hue, were brushed with pink. “There’s a horse, but right now I have to talk to these nice people.”

  “Horse. Horse. Horse,” the child chanted, and wriggled like an inchworm in her mother’s arms.

  Sydney stared, dumbstruck. If she had acted in such a manner, she wouldn’t have left her suite for a month. Wellesleys did not cause scenes. They might topple governments or sell century-old businesses piecemeal, but they would do so discreetly.

  “I’m sorry,” Vura said, daughter still writhing in her arms. “Can she see the horse? Just for a minute?”

  Sydney scowled. Some might find it strange, but children had not generally been a part of the fabric of her childhood. Well-paid nannies had been her companions while experienced tutors had taken the place of overworked public teachers. “I wish she could,” Sydney lied, “but I’m afraid—”

  “As is the horse,” Hunter said and approached mother and daughter on silent feet. “But if you are quiet …” He caught the child’s gaze in his own. Hers went round as cat eyes. “Like the night owl, you may see her.”

  Her tiny body stilled.

  “Can you do that?” he asked.

  She nodded once, then, leaning sideways, she reached out for him.

  For a moment, Sydney thought he would back away, felt it in his body language, in the stillness in the air. But after a second, he lifted her from her mother’s arms and turned, expressionless, as he trod across the dusty aisle to the stall.

  “Ohhhh …” The lisping voice was little more than a whisper of sound. Behind Hunter’s broad neck, her tiny fingers tightened and loosened in his collar-length hair. They stood in silence, watching, until finally Hunter drew back and returned to her mother. “Mama.” She was still whispering.

  “Yes, baby?” Vura’s voice was almost as soft.

  “There’s a horse in there.”

  “Is she pretty?”

  “She’s the most beautiful thing in all the world.”

  Sydney winced. The horse was ugly, drugged, wasting away to nothing, and probably dying.

  “Is she?”

  “Can I ride her?” Lily asked.

  “No, honey.” Vura didn’t look at them when she answered. “She needs her rest.”

  “When she wakes up? Can I ride her then?” She turned her gaze to Hunter before her mother could answer. Her kitten-soft cheek was inches from his. “Do you know how to ride a horse?”

  “Ai.”

  “Will you teach me?”

  His body was stiff as if he longed to run, but he held steady, eyes somber as stones on her hopeful face. “That is not for me to decide.”

  She blinked. “Mama?”

  “I’m sure Mr. Redhawk has important things he needs to see to.”

  The girl scowled, feathery brows lowering. “Like Daddy?”

  “Yes.” Vura’s face tightened almost imperceptibly. “Like Daddy.”

  The baby’s expression had gone somber, too. Reaching out, she cupped Hunter’s hirsute cheeks in her tiny hands. “I likes you anyway,” she whispered. “Even if your face is scratchy and you have more important things to do than to teach me to ride horse.”

  The barn went deadly silent.

  Hunter shifted his gaze toward Vura, who opened her mouth, apology ready on her lips.

  “I will teach you,” he said, and abruptly handing the child to her mother, left the building.

  Sydney watched him go. Silence echoed like thunder in his wake.

  “I’m sorry.” Vura turned back to her, expression worried. “My babysitter canceled at the last minute, and I didn’t want to be late for work so I …” She faltered for a second. “So I had to bring her.”

  Sydney tugged her stunned gaze from Hunter’s retreating back. The woman still intended to work today? With a child? Was she serious?

  “She won’t be any trouble.”

  It was a lie if Sydney had ever heard one. And she had; David Albrook had been a virtuoso. But good manners kept her silent. Or maybe it was the memory of Redhawk’s broken expression that kept her from stating the obvious.

  “And she’s smart. She reads already and she’s great at math,” Vura babbled. “So she can help out. Plus she’s brave. Can climb anything. But she won’t!” she rushed to add. “If I tell her not to, she won’t. She minds very well … usually. Sometimes. I mean—”

  “Can you pull up fence?” Sydney asked, effectively stopping the nervous chatter.

  “What?”

  “I know it’s beneath your abilities,” Sydney said and clasped her hands loosely in front of her body. “But I don’t want another situation like that one.” She nodded toward the stall.

  Vura’s dark brows lowered. “What happened there?”

  “Barbwire.”

  “So you want to dispose of the old fencing.” She was all business suddenly, though her body kept up a steady bounce and the child hummed to the stuffed rat she held tight to her cheek. “How much land are we talking?”

  “Almost a thousand acres.”

  “Any idea how many miles of old wire there is?”

  “Not really.”

  “You don’t have a plat map that would tell where the fence lines ran, I suppose.”

  “No. But I’ll need new fences.”

  “And the barbwire is probably half buried by now.”

  “Some places, anyway.”

  “How about the new fencing? Are we talking post and rail, twisted galvanized, electric?”

  Sydney laughed, feeling foolish and oddly self-conscious. Despite spending most of her life in the equestrian world, it seemed she knew next to nothing about the practical end of things. “I guess I don’t have a lot of answers for you.”

  Vura shrugged, ponytail bouncing. “Hey, no problem. You’ll have plenty of time to consider what you want while I rip out the old stuff.”

  Though she tried, Sydney couldn’t quite stop the spritz of admiration that coursed through her. “You weren’t overstating when you said you were flexible.”

  The younger woman laughed. “Did I tell you I didn’t have any brothers?”

  “And your mother didn’t object to your doing manual labor?”

  Vura’s gaze caught Sydney’s. “Mom died,” she said. “Shortly after I was born.”

  “Oh.” Sydney cleared her throat, felt a tug of unwanted camaraderie. “I’m sorry.”

  Vura quit bouncing. “What about you?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  The woman had gone very still. The child continued to hum. “Do your parents live around here?”

  “My mother is also deceased.”

  “Oh?” Was she holding her breath? “How old were you when you lost her?”

  Sydney felt a need to turn the topic aside, but Vura was watching her with such avid eyes. Even the child had gone quiet, all but one hand, which loosened and tightened restlessly in her mother’s chunky ponytail. Sydney tapped her thigh with a restive finger and felt another unacceptable thread stretch between them. “I was four years of age at the time.”

 
“Just about Lily’s age.”

  Sydney remembered being small, staring at the endless black. Black hose. Black pants. Black hats. All backdropped by their ancestral mausoleum. “Well … I’ll show you where I found …” Sydney began, but Vura stopped her.

  “How did it happen?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Your mother.” She began swaying slightly, an unconscious rhythm perhaps meant to soothe. “How did she die?”

  It was none of her business. None at all, Sydney thought, but she answered nonetheless. “There was a car accident.”

  “Do you remember her?”

  “Just a little. Tiny pieces. Like snapshots. Her voice …” Or she thought she remembered … singing, low and sweet, as she was rocked to sleep in her perfect taffeta room. “Her scent. She always smelled of roses.”

  “Prairie roses.”

  “What?”

  Vura laughed, seeming to bump herself back to the present … to her own life. “I just … I love prairie roses. Have you ever seen them? They grow wild in the ditches around here. In the pastures. They’re considered a weed, but they’re so pretty. Maybe we should plant some around the house.”

  Sydney tilted her head. “I don’t believe you’ll have time for that sort of thing.”

  There was a momentary delay, then laughter. “Of course. You’re right. What am I thinking? You’re not paying me to plant flowers. You’re paying me to …” She tilted her head quizzically. “What are you paying me to do exactly?”

  “Everything,” Sydney said. “Come on. I’ll show you where to start with the fences.”

  “We might as well take my truck,” Vura said, and opening the door of her Chevy, let Lily climb into her car seat in back. Sydney eased into the passenger side. The cab smelled vaguely of tobacco.

  “I’m sorry,” Vura said and snapped the ashtray closed before turning the key. “Dane …” There was a wealth of feeling in the single name. “He’s trying to quit.”

  “Take a left here,” Sydney said and pointed to the gravel road that wound east into the hills. “Dane’s your husband?”