“Now, there’s a fine bit of manhood. I didn’t know whether to straighten my collar or unbutton a couple of buttons.”
“You’ve been out in the sun too long,” Zita quipped. “The buttons, of course!”
“Oh, Mama.” Ella just shook her head as she took hold of one of the mares by the bridle and led them toward the barn.
Hettie said that she would linger behind to tend Lucas and send Caroline their way as soon as she was free. Ruth, along with Sally and Zita, followed Ella into the big barn, where they found two wranglers unhitching the team while Ella stood nearby eyeing the interior with a look that clearly said, “I want one of these someday.”
“My Ella,” Zita said, shaking her head. “Always looking up at the clouds for the next thing. Did you know she’s already planning the frame farmhouse that will replace the soddy?”
“Well, if anyone can make that happen—” Ruth began the sentence, but everyone finished it together. “—Ella can.”
Caroline joined them as they came out of the barn, and when they rounded the corner, there sat Jackson astride a buckskin gelding. Pete let go of the horse’s bridle and crossed the corral to where Ruth stood. “Sam’s not very flashy, but he’s a good old boy. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Not a bit,” Ruth said. Jackson was beaming with joy.
Pete called out. “About all you have to do is sit up there and get the feel of how he moves. And don’t fall off. You grip with your knees. Only a greenhorn hangs on to that saddle horn.” The instant Pete said it, Jackson let go of the saddle horn as if it were a hot poker.
“All right,” Pete said. “Give him a little nudge. Tell him to move out.”
Jackson nudged. The only thing the horse moved was an ear.
“You got to tell him so he knows you mean it,” Pete said. “Nudge him harder and do this.” Pete made a clicking sound with his jaw and Sam looked his way. When Jackson did it, the horse took one step, then stopped.
“Well, I won’t have to worry about him losing control of a wild animal,” Ruth chuckled.
“Mind if I take him for a little ride outside the corral?” Pete asked. “We’d be back by sundown.”
“He’ll be thrilled,” Ruth said. When Pete took Sam’s reins and told Jackson what they were going to do, he let out a whoop. Sam lifted his head and looked almost awake.
Matthew lay on his back staring up at the bare rafters of the lean-to in the predawn light. Dare he believe the nightmares were gone? He hadn’t had even one since leaving the dugout. In fact, he’d been dreaming good things. Seeing Katie happy and whole. Watching Linney toddle off up a hill through blooming spring flowers. It was so strange to sleep soundly that it was its own kind of frightening. He didn’t quite know how to think about feeling…good.
He also didn’t know quite how to think about the way he felt when he was around Caroline Jamison. The fact that he liked that lilting voice of hers didn’t make him feel guilty. The demon who’d always reminded him that he didn’t deserve to be happy seemed to have up and left. Could that be true?
He liked the way Caroline laughed, too. The way she joked with Sally Grant—a rough woman most would think a southern belle wouldn’t have anything to do with. But Caroline truly liked Sally, and that was another reason Matthew was drawn to her. A woman who could look past rough exteriors was an attractive woman. Caroline’s exterior beauty was just a nice bit of coincidence. A very nice bit of coincidence.
He stretched and yawned and got up and opened the door. Blue skies. Beautiful blue skies. A day or two more of sunshine and he could get started on the roof at the Four Corners. He was looking forward to it. Another new feeling…looking forward to more than just seeing Linney.
He stepped outside and pulled his suspenders up over his bare shoulders. Opening the lid to the toolbox he’d made, he ran a calloused hand over the smooth handle of a mallet. It might still be too wet for the ladies to get much done, but there wasn’t any reason he shouldn’t hitch up the wagon and go on ahead. He could pull the tarps off the sod walls so they’d dry out faster. He could drive by way of Cooper’s and see if Jeb wanted to join him. If things dried out fast enough, the two of them might even get the chord rafters in place as a surprise.
The idea of working with Jeb Cooper made Matthew smile, too. Cooper was easy to be around. Matthew didn’t mind admitting—at least to himself—that he even liked the singing. There was comfort in those old hymns.
He looked over toward the wagon. He was going to do it. Head to Four Corners. See if Jeb wanted to help. Maybe Martha would let Linney come, too. She could open up those tents and air out the contents. And pick some wildflowers. That girl did like picking flowers. A flash of sweet memory brought back the mental image of Katie lying back on the spring prairie, her head encircled with flowers he’d strung together on a long-ago May Day.
Was this how it worked? A man carried the burden of grief, and for a while it obscured everything else around him, until slowly, the burden started to shrink until it could fit inside his heart instead of blocking out everything else in the world. And finally, it folded in on itself. And while it still remained a part of you, and you knew it always would, it made room in your heart for hope. You woke up one morning and there was no pain behind the enjoyment of the sunshine. Memories stopped slashing their way into your consciousness. Instead, they floated in, welcome and comforting.
Linney. It was going to take a long while for him to make things up to her. She’d nearly broken his heart the way she forgave him everything and threw herself into his arms. And all he did was tell her he was sorry. How could she forgive so easily? And why was it so hard for him to forgive others in return? Martha said he must. He was beginning to think she was right, but he still didn’t think he could do it. He didn’t even want to think about it all that much. Right now part of a new fear was that if he thought about things too much, the fragile new beginnings would prove to be little more than a celestial joke the demons were playing on him.
Still, something was changing. Something indefinable that shone in the way he felt when he visited the old homestead, in the way he felt when he stood at Katie’s grave, and in the fact that for the first time in years, he’d been attracted to a woman and felt something besides guilt and the temptation to run away.
Back inside he washed up, then stood peering at the wild man staring out of the mirror nailed above the washstand. No wonder people in town looked at him the way they did. It was even more miraculous the ladies over at Four Corners had accepted him without question. He probably had Linney to thank for that. A man who was loved by his child couldn’t be all bad, now, could he?
He dug scissors and a razor from the bottom of a parfleche he’d traded for years ago. A few minutes later an unfamiliar face emerged from beneath the beard. He kept the mustache but still wondered if Linney would even recognize him. He barely recognized himself. He turned his face from side to side, wondering if the resemblance was still as strong as it used to be. They were only cousins, but people used to think he and Luke looked like brothers.
Dressed, shaved, and feeling really…great, if he dared think it, Matthew made his way up the street toward the dining hall, where he found Linney at work setting tables for breakfast. There was a momentary hesitation when she first saw him.
“It’s me,” he said. “Do I really look that different?”
Linney nodded.
Matthew grimaced. “Bad, huh?”
She shook her head.
“Old?”
She shook her head again.
“Well?” He put a palm to his smooth cheek. “I can grow it back if you want.”
“No!” she said quickly. “It’s just—I never saw you before.” She smiled then. “You’re even more handsome than I thought.”
To the aromas of frying bacon and fresh coffee, Matthew went over his plans for the next few days, suggesting that Linney might want to go with him to Four Corners. And of course she did, and of course Martha would let h
er, but she couldn’t just walk out on Martha, now, could she? So Matthew found himself setting tables and helping in the kitchen all the way through the breakfast rush and taking joy in Linney’s laughter at the sight of her pa in an apron. He was up to his elbows in dishwashing when Linney said something about the crowded Immigrant House and how Jackson and the Four Corners ladies had headed out at dawn to go up to the ranch to check in on Mrs. Dow and Mrs. Gaines and to see how Mr. Gray was doing.
Luke. Maybe the demons weren’t dancing in Matthew’s dreams anymore, but he could have sworn he sensed one or two grinning as the bile rose in his throat at the thought of Caroline going to see about Luke.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
…there shall be showers of blessing.
EZEKIEL 34:26
Caroline and her friends spent only one night in Plum Grove after their visit to Lucas Gray’s ranch. They’d learned that Matthew Ransom was back to work at Four Corners, and if things were dry enough for him to make progress, they decided it was time for them to head back, too.
When Caroline caught her first glimpse of home, Ella pulled the team up. And there were Linney, Matthew, and Jeb Cooper, standing in a row, grinning a welcome.
“Where’s Jackson?” Linney asked.
Caroline forced herself to look away from the nearly unrecognizable, undeniably handsome, newly shaven Matthew Ransom as she bumbled a response. “He…uh…he stayed at the ranch.” Laws o’massey, she sounded like a tongue-tied ingenue.
Sally spoke up. “Seems to think he wants cowboy lessons or some such. Mr. Gray and his good-lookin’ foreman cooked up a plan to keep that promise Mr. Gray made on the train. So Jackson’s gonna ride with Pete for a while…the lucky little devil.”
Linney nodded, then smiled up at Caroline, even as she put her arms around her pa’s waist and gave him a hug. “It’s him. Isn’t he handsome?”
Still Caroline could not speak. Sally saved the day again. “Handsome is as handsome does.” She waved Matthew over to help her down off the wagon. As soon as her feet alighted, she curtseyed. “Thank you, kind sir.”
Matthew bowed. “My pleasure, madame.” He reached up for Caroline next. Was it her imagination, or did his hand linger at her waist when he set her down. Imagination or wishful thinking…either way…she liked his hands at her waist.
“Is that what I think it is?”
Caroline started at the sound of Sally’s voice at the tent flap. “Probably.” She nodded as she fished a black silk cord out from beneath her blue-striped chemise and bent down to unlock the case.
Whistling her appreciation, Sally came to stand behind her. “That’s a beauty.”
“Thank you.” Caroline lifted the shotgun from its padded case and ran her palm over the engraved silver plate on the gunstock. “I didn’t really envision needing it out here. Until—”
“Yeah.” Sally put a hand on her shoulder. “Me neither. I thought you were doing okay about all of that.”
“I am. But one of the things Lucas wanted to talk to me about was a sort of…warning about Lowell Day.”
“That so? Now, ain’t that somethin’.”
Caroline forced a smile. “The man who’s working with that stallion is Day’s brother. Apparently there was something said not long after we all arrived in Plum Grove. Something about me. Anyway, whatever it was—and Lucas wouldn’t tell me—it traveled from Lowell to his brother Clyde to the foreman and finally to Lucas. By the time it got to Lucas, it was probably all twisted up. But he said I might want to be more ‘vigilant’ than usual for a while, at least until they can figure out what happened to Lowell Day, who, it seems, has disappeared.”
“You don’t say.”
“Lucas didn’t want to bring it up around any of the other ladies because Day has disappeared for a week or two before, and it probably doesn’t mean anything. He didn’t want to frighten everyone for no reason, but he also didn’t want to keep it to himself, since Day doesn’t have a reputation for being a particularly…virtuous person.”
Sally grunted. “Do tell.”
“So…” Caroline ran her hand along the shotgun barrel. “While I suppose we’ll be expected to hang a fancy bit of needlework above the door, I believe I’ll be putting a Winchester up there instead.”
“Where’d you come by such a pretty thing, anyway?”
“I won it.”
“Won it?”
“When I was fifteen.” Caroline chuckled at the memory. “You should have seen the look on some of those boys’ faces when they got beat by a girl in a shooting contest.”
“How’d you even get in a contest? They let girls do things like that in Tennessee?”
“Well…” Caroline smiled. “They do if your daddy is General Harlan Sanford.” She paused. “Daddy was something of a legend in the county. There weren’t many who’d stand up to him. And if his li’l darlin’ wanted to shoot with the boys, folks let her. Until she won. They weren’t so agreeable to the idea after that.”
“So…you already know how to use that thing.”
“Of course, knowin’ how to shoot doesn’t always mean I’d react well in an emergency.” She cleared her throat. “But I think I’d do all right.”
Sally patted her shoulder. “Of course you would. Maybe you can shoot dinner from time to time.”
Caroline nodded. “Maybe I will.”
The morning sun of May 17, 1871, cast its rays against the walls of a completed sod house raised at the intersection of four homesteads near the well-known cottonwood spring in Dawson County, Nebraska. As she stood outside her new front door, Ella’s heart was so full she thought it might burst with joy.
“Seems like we shoulda dressed up for the occasion,” Sally murmured, then wished aloud that Ruth and Hettie and Jackson were there, too. “On the other hand,” she said with a chuckle, “they don’t have to help move in.”
Mama led the way into the parlor, and while they all stood in a small circle and joined hands, she asked God to bless the house. She thanked him specifically for the good roof and the whitewashed walls, the double-hung windows, and the new stove. Then they all got to work spreading hay over the parlor floor and tacking down the rag rug presented as a housewarming by Nancy Darby and several others.
“Can we put my sewing machine right there?” Sally pointed to the window just to the right of the front door.
“And my cot here,” Mama said, indicating the wall nearest the stove.
“The table here,” Caroline said, standing in the middle of the room.
“And Caroline’s shotgun there.” Sally pointed above the front door. When Ella and Mama looked surprised, she shrugged. “I want to be prepared to defend my hens.”
“Well, ladies,” Ella said. “For better or for worse, we have married ourselves a homestead. Let’s move in.”
As another week began, life took on a new rhythm for Caroline and her friends. They rose at dawn. Zita served flapjacks on the stoneware plates with the brown tea leaf pattern Ella had purchased in St. Louis. They planted pumpkins, squash, and melons, all of it without plowing. Ella slit the soil, and Caroline walked behind her, a bag of seed at her waist as she bent and tucked seeds into the slots. They planted corn that way, too. Five acres to start with, although Ella had plans for at least twenty. Caroline didn’t know if her back would hold out through that many. She didn’t complain, but she sincerely hoped Ruth and Hettie and Jackson would be back to help soon.
They’d missed their chance to put in potatoes, but one day when they drove into Plum Grove, they ran into Nancy Darby, who said she’d be happy to share some of the crop that would result from Bill’s having bought ten bushels of that new variety of rose potatoes everyone was raving about. It was the least she could do after the way the lady doc had helped her out. Nancy wanted Hettie at her bedside when it came time for her confinement.
Caroline promised to relay the message, even as she tried not to show surprise at the idea of a pregnant woman planting ten bushel
s of seed potatoes. As her understanding grew of all that homesteading involved, Caroline wavered between thankfulness that they were a team working together and doubting that they would be able to succeed. At least she was too busy, and usually too tired, to worry over the likes of Lowell Day.
Two days after the other ladies of Four Corners had taken their leave, Ruth and Hettie had just sat down to lunch when a knock sounded at the door. Wah Lo scurried to answer. At the first sight of Pete, Ruth’s hand went to the frill of lace at her throat and her heart skipped a beat. She stood up. “What’s happened?”
“Nothing, ma’am.” Pete shoved his hat back on his head and pursed his lips. “That’s just the trouble.”
“If Jackson has done something wrong, I need to know so that I can deal with it.”
“Why, no, ma’am, that’s not it. I don’t know quite how to say it, but—that’s why I thought I’d ride in and talk to you—and leave Jackson with the boys. He’s…well, ma’am. He’s not cut out for wrangling or riding. He just isn’t.”
“Are you saying he’s miserable?”
“No, ma’am. Not exactly. But he isn’t happy, either.” Pete took a deep breath. He put one palm on the butt of the gun at his waist. “He’s afraid.”
“Afraid of what?” Ruth frowned.
“Just about everything. Horses—at least the ones with spirit. Cows. Coyotes. Falling off Sam. He’s afraid of some of the boys, too. Of course we’ve a few rough ones, but they mostly don’t mind him. The thing is, he doesn’t know how to joke with them. He gets embarrassed and stammers around, and then it seems like he’s afraid of whoever was joshing him.”
Ruth had been at the ranch long enough to know that Pete Mills was a good man. Lucas trusted him. And she trusted Lucas. “Would you…would you let me think about what you’ve said? Would you put up with him for another night and just let me…ponder?”
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