by Ana Morgan
“Laura has a rush order for a dress but is having trouble getting the measurements just right. Would you mind being a model? It won’t take more than a minute.” Mrs. Rosenbaum propelled her into the small fitting room, blocked her escape, and drew paper and a short pencil from her skirt pocket. “Raise your arms, please.”
Bewildered, Stormy let Laura Boe fit the tape around her chest.
“Thirty-four,” the seamstress said. “Waist twenty-three. Hips thirty-three.” She spun Stormy partway around, pressed one end of the tape against her neck, and measured to her belt. “Eighteen. Waist to ankle . . . twenty-eight.”
“Just a little bit longer, Stormy.” Mrs. Rosenbaum picked up a swatch of mint green fabric from a shelf and set it on her shoulder.
Mrs. Boe shook her head.
In quick succession, Mrs. Rosenbaum thrust more swatches under Stormy’s chin.
Both women eyed her like she was a heifer in heat. Neither asked for her opinion, but if they did, she’d say she liked the emerald green.
The bell over the front door chimed.
Mrs. Rosenbaum turned to greet her new customers. “Gertrude and Emma Schultz, good morning. You’re right on time. Emma’s dress is ready for a final try-on.”
Stormy’s heart almost sank into her dusty boots. Emma was the last person she wanted to see. Invariably, Emma found a way to make fun of her.
Mrs. Boe tugged on her sleeve. “This way.” Holding two bolts of material as a shield, the older woman motioned with her head. Together, they sidled along the wall and backed into a workroom. The seamstress unbolted the store’s rear door and shooed her outside.
“Your mama bought the first dress I made when I come to this town,” Mrs. Boe said softly. “Said it made her feel like a real lady. You remember that, Stormy Hawkins.”
Stormy felt like an escaped piglet as she walked around the building and stood next to her buckboard. She was free, but the buttons she needed were inside, where Emma Schultz was trying on a new dress, probably for the Founders Day dance.
Stormy hated Founders Day. After two or three full cups of Levi Hollingsworth’s hard cider, hired hands shoved each other for a chance to dance with Emma. Emma always twirled fast, so her petticoats showed. And, she called even more attention to herself by whooping like a drunken sailor whenever Ibra McSweeney called Soldier’s Joy.
Brownie would go to the dance. He played the fiddle. Running Bear had to bring his meat and potato pies. They could take Blade with them.
Her breath hitched. Emma would flirt with Blade, and he’d probably ask her to dance. Stormy didn’t want to watch that.
She tugged on the ropes that bound her load of fence posts. The doctor in Yankton said Zed shouldn’t overexert, so if she went back inside and bought buttons, and Zed went to the Founders Day dance, she’d be violating medical orders.
Instead, she’d volunteer to stay home and keep Zed company by reading aloud. Robinson Crusoe would be good. She’d play Crusoe, and he’d play Friday. They’d make up the other characters’ voices, like they’d done since she was small.
Mind made up, problem solved, she climbed onto the seat of the buckboard and picked up the reins. Tomorrow they’d start stringing the barbed wire. If they worked sunup to sundown, they could finish the fence before Founders Day.
Blade would move on. Life would return to normal.
Chapter 6
Blade grunted as he hefted the sixteenth spool of spiky, two-point fence wire onto the Hawkins’ work wagon. His arm muscles burned. He’d just lifted and loaded more weight than his mare carried on her four tan hooves.
He removed his work gloves and wiped sweat from his brow. The dawning sky glowed in shades of pink. Mouthwatering aromas of brewing coffee and baking cornbread drifted out the kitchen’s open window, overpowering the homey smell of cook stove smoke.
He’d been on the Hawkins’ ranch for three weeks, and he’d not even broached the subject of purchasing their land. He’d been too busy. Too included. Too well fed.
His stomach was growing accustomed to three square meals a day, a schedule he’d never be able to maintain when he worked the ranch alone.
Running Bear had offered to show him how to bake, but listening to Zed’s innovative ideas for pasture rotation seemed more important. Around Prosperity, open-range grazing was no longer possible. People built fences, and fences made for good neighbor relations.
Napoleon barked sharply and charged like a berserker toward an approaching rider.
Brownie rushed out onto the front porch.
A towheaded boy galloped bareback into the yard waving his broad brimmed hat. “The cows won’t come up for milking,” he shouted. “Pa says come quick.” He spun his pony around and galloped off.
“Trouble,” Brownie hollered. “Everyone, front and center.”
Running Bear sprinted toward his tipi and reappeared carrying a coiled rope and a carbine rifle. Moments later, Brownie lumbered down the front steps followed by Zed and Stormy.
“I bet Sultan busted out again,” she said.
~ ~ ~
Blade galloped with the Hawkins clan onto a neighboring farm.
Two huge plow horses idled in a corral on one side of a barn that badly needed fresh paint. On the other side, the post of a barnyard fence was snapped like a matchstick. Broken rails on adjacent posts dangled like dislocated arms.
Stormy reined her pinto to a walk and jutted her chin toward a house half-dug into the side of a hill. In the entryway, a pretty girl held a chubby-faced baby.
“That’s Emma Schultz,” Stormy said flatly.
“Her father paid top dollar for a bull advertised to be tame,” Zed added. “Named it Sultan.”
“Over here!” Albert Schultz waved from a lane that opened onto a hay field. The billowy sleeves of his tan shirt were torn and dirty, and his face was beet red. Behind him, a reed-thin woman flapped her long apron at six brown milk cows and a thick-necked, scrawny-assed bull.
The bull snorted and pawed the ground with its front hooves.
“Stop now, Gertrude,” Albert called hoarsely. “Come to me.”
The woman obediently dropped her apron, turned her back on the bull, and scurried toward her husband.
Sultan clomped after her.
“Watch out,” Albert shouted.
Flashing a look over her shoulder, Gertrude stumbled. Her foot caught on the hem of her long dress, and she fell onto her hands and knees.
Belinda, born with built-in cow sense, tensed under him, then shot forward to put herself right between the bull and the woman.
Sultan stopped and cocked its head, as if deciding whether to mow the horse down, or back away.
Without a word, Running Bear rode in, hoisted Gertrude onto his gelding, and delivered her to her frantic husband. Zed and Brownie bunched the milk cows into a group and drove them toward the lane.
Tail swishing, the lead cow plodded toward the barnyard. The other cows fell in line behind her.
Blade was impressed by the Hawkins’ calm efficiency with the cattle, a skill that he, a city boy, had struggled to master. But, a bull was never managed as easily as a herd of cows. Sultan’s raucous bellow made that perfectly clear.
Hoping the bull was ready to follow its harem, Blade laid a hand across the crest of his mare’s neck and squeezed gently. Belinda immediately took a step back, disengaging from the bull and returning her attention to Blade.
Off to one side, Stormy positioned her gelding to encourage the angry creature to go down the lane.
Sultan took several steps.
Stormy followed at a safe distance, as did Albert and his wife, on foot.
The bull stopped and stood with the air of a schoolyard bully, yellow eyes brimming with an I-dare-you distain.
B
lade sat tight. Had he been a smoker, he would have lit up. Instead, he tapped a rhythm on his thigh. Tried to ignore his growling stomach. Fingered the leather string holding his coiled lariat. Bulls were dangerously unpredictable, and strong enough to toss a horse through the air.
“I have to do the milking.” Albert Schultz waved his arms impatiently. “Get along now, Sultan.”
The bull whirled with frightening agility.
Albert scampered to the right.
Stormy’s pinto pivoted left. A front hoof sank into a hidden hole in the grass. The gelding’s legs buckled, and it went down, landing hard on his side.
Time seemed to slow as Blade watched helplessly.
Stormy hit the ground next to her horse with a sharp whuff. She pushed up onto her knees and reached for the injured animal with outstretched hands.
Sultan eyed her like she was a foe he could dispatch, once and for all. He lowered his head and took a step in her direction.
“Stormy, stand up!” Blade shouted.
Other voices echoed his.
Blade yanked his lariat free. Aiming for the bull’s horns, he spun his arm and sent the noose whizzing through the air.
It landed around Sultan’s neck. Blade quickly wrapped the other end around his saddle horn.
A second noose sailed through the air and also found its mark. Running Bear’s gelding pulled in the opposite direction.
Sultan jerked and jumped as Belinda strained backwards, escalating the chokehold until the bull’s long, gray tongue lolled from its mouth.
“Gott im Himmel,” Albert Schultz cried. “Not kill him.”
“Pipe down,” Brownie roared. “They’re not gonna kill him.”
Sultan struggled for a few more seconds and then stilled, wheezing for air. It was a victory, but Blade foresaw a bigger problem. Someone had to remove the ropes.
He looked around for Stormy.
She stood next to her horse. Her pinto balanced on three legs.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I’m okay, but Odin’s not.”
Albert and Gertrude scurried toward their barn.
“Stormy, you go next,” Blade said. “We’ll tow Sultan to the barn, one step at a time, if we have to.”
Trapped between Belinda and Running Bear’s gelding, shadowed by Zed on Thor, the bull slogged down the lane like a shackled offender. It stopped and started, watchful for any chance to escape. Belinda instinctively maintained the proper tension on the rope.
Once again, Blade thanked his lucky stars for his mare. She’d thrown him repeatedly until he’d learned to trust her ability to reason and react. He couldn’t imagine life without her.
Slowly, they approached the barn, where Albert patched his fence with irregular pieces of weathered wood. The fresh-faced girl, who’d held the baby, now gripped a handful of nails. Close-up, she appeared to be seventeen, shorter and plumper than her mother.
The bonneted infant now squirmed in Gertrude’s arms. The woman fussed loose strands of hair back into the tight bun on top of her head and said something in German.
The dour look on the pretty girl’s face brightened. She eyed him brazenly, as if he were an available hunk of man-meat.
Blade had bigger things on his mind than trying to guess what Gertrude had said. Zed had a bad heart. Albert was too volatile. His son was too young. Brownie was too lame. He had no idea what Running Bear’s thoughts were. The Lakota’s face was impossible to read.
He’d watched a skilled cow handler hypnotize a hornless bull in Kansas. Spelling a bull with horns would be even more risky, but he saw no other option.
Albert slipped the handle of his hammer through the loop on the leg of his overalls and instructed his daughter to open the gate for the cows.
Swaying so her skirts swished, Emma winked flirtatiously at Blade.
“Emma,” Albert repeated.
“Oh, buffalo chips,” Stormy spat. “Useful as tits on a boar.” She handed her gelding’s reins to Brownie. After lifting a loop of wire, she swung open the gate. The cows filed obediently into their yard.
Emma ran toward the house.
“Come out now, Stormy,” Zed called.
Shaking her head, Stormy picked her way through the corral and bunched the milk cows at the far end. She motioned to bring Sultan in.
Blade and Running Bear escorted the bull into the corral. Stormy stood twenty feet away in ankle-deep muck.
Concern creased Zed’s face. “Stormy, come out.”
She shook her head stubbornly. “Someone has to hold the cows back.”
Quickly, Blade took stock. Stormy was doing a good job of holding back the milk cows, but if Sultan decided to charge her again, he wouldn’t be able to reach her in time. She was risking her life. He was about to, too.
“Everyone sit tight,” he said. “Don’t move, don’t talk, and don’t close the gate.”
Imitating the cow speller, he started to chant as he put his weight on one stirrup and slowly swung his other leg over Belinda’s saddle. “I’m going to take off the ropes and let you loose, Sultan. You are going to stand still while I do that, Sultan. It will be over in no time if you let me, Sultan.”
He eased to the ground and inched toward the bull.
Thick, pitchfork-sharp horns jutted toward him. If the bull lowered his head and charged suddenly, his life would end in agony, gored through the gut.
The bull narrowed its yellow eyes.
“Listen to my voice, Sultan, just the sound of my voice.” Blade crooked one finger as a signal for Running Bear to give slack on his lariat. Gingerly, he leaned forward and loosened the stiff rope until it formed a hoop larger than the bull’s massive head.
The hide on Sultan’s shoulders quivered.
Blade froze.
Drawing a long, shaky breath, he resumed his singsong chant and drew off the first noose. “Now, you know Stormy. She is going to come up and untie the rope from Belinda’s saddle while I stand here with you. Just you and me, Sultan. Just you and me.”
Muck slurped against Stormy's boots as she picked a path toward his mare. Seconds passed like hours until Belinda’s end of the lariat fell to the ground.
Singing through gritted teeth, not daring to take his eyes off the bull, Blade squatted down. He patted the muck until his fingers found his lariat.
The bull’s ears twitched.
Blade stood slowly and slid his hand up the stiff rope until it was a foot away from Sultan’s dusty neck. Every muscle in his body burned with tension as he fed the rope through the splice.
When he’d formed a wide-enough loop, he maneuvered it over Sultan’s horns and eased it off its nose.
The bull blinked. Shook its body like a drenched dog. Turned and trotted toward its cows. Stormy scrambled over the fence to safety. Belinda backed out the corral, and Running Bear followed. The Schultz boy closed the gate.
Blade’s shoulders ached. He pumped his arms several times to get his blood flowing again. He coiled the ropes and climbed to the other side of the fence. Only then did he allow himself to grin. He’d spelled a bull.
Brownie and Zed thumped him on the back.
“T’ank you, sir.” Albert pumped his hand. “The boy is too young, and my horses are for plowing.”
Gertrude hurried up and tugged on his shirtsleeve. “Please you come to the haus for coffee und cake. Emma has made ready.”
“Ja, and we talk about how to make good the fence,” Albert said.
“Mrs. Schultz,” Stormy called. “Do you have any comfrey? Odin’s leg is hurt, and I need to treat it. And, I need to wash off my boots.”
Gertrude didn’t let go of his arm. “Herbs in the garden. Water in the well.”
Blade introduced himself as Gertr
ude and Albert pulled him into their house. The aroma of coffee ignited a feed-me-now fire in his stomach. Cake. Coffee. He was hungry enough to eat the tablecloth.
“Herr Masters,” Gertrude said, “this is my daughter, Emma. You already met the boy, Travis.” She shifted the baby to her other hip. “This is Rudy, the baby of my husband and me. Please to sit down.”
Emma had changed into a yellow dress with a revealing, lace-trimmed bosom. She cut a thick wedge of coffeecake and slid it onto a china plate with a floral pattern.
An alarm shrilled in Blade’s mind. Like his ex-fiancée, Emma knew how best to use her assets. She was after a husband. Her beaming parents probably hoped to lure help to the farm, but he’d lay odds she dreamt of escaping to a town, the bigger the better.
Zed eased into the chair next to him and then wriggled over so Brownie had a buttock’s perch. Brownie cleared his throat and held out his plate.
Emma leaned forward to pour coffee into Blade’s cup and smiled seductively as she reached for a sugar bowl. “One lump or two, Mr. Masters?”
Chapter 7
After rubbing bruised comfrey leaves over Odin’s injured leg, Stormy walked into the Schultz’s house and gasped. Emma’s siren breasts practically spilled out of her Sunday sunshine dress as she poured cream into Blade’s coffee.
“Emma is good in the kitchen,” Gertrude said. “She knows how to cook and clean.”
“Ja, and work the butter.” Albert added.
“More cake, Herr Masters?” Gertrude said. “Emma baked it.”
Blade’s attention seemed locked on Emma’s cleavage as he held out his plate. “Thank you. It’s delicious.”
Emma sliced a generous wedge from the half-eaten, sugar-topped round and glanced toward the doorway. A look shone on her face that said, ‘he’s mine now.’
Albert looked at his wife, who nodded meaningfully. He cleared his throat. “Do you look for work, Herr Masters? I think we can make a new fence around the barn.”