by Ginny Aiken
Walking and mincing?
Tinkling feet?
Haughty?
What a nasty man!
After Mr. Lowery left, Emma continued to stare at the tiny wisps of smoke that still curled every so often from the ashes on the fireplace hearth. She could no longer see red embers through the thick coating of silvery ash, but the smoke told her they were still there.
Maybe it was the misery that made it hard to see much.
Emma leaned forward and laid her face in the palms of her hands. Her tangle of curls cascaded forward, bringing to mind what an utter mess she must look like by now. Her hair had become a nest of knots. She had no comb, no brush, and each time she worked to untangle and braid it with her fingers, it only stayed in the plait for a short while. The wild curls fought against any kind of restraint.
Her clothes… well, they were beyond ruined. She wanted a clean change of garments, but she didn’t see how that would be possible anytime soon. The thought of spending months imprisoned in these filthy rags was almost more than she could bear.
But a bath… oh, goodness. That she truly needed. A pail of cold water mixed with kettles of hot sounded dreadful. On the other hand, her skin felt uncomfortable. Her arms and legs and back itched. At times, it was all she could do to keep from scratching like the tiny monkey she had seen when Papa took her to the Central Park Zoo in New York a few years before. One way or another she was going to make the tin tub Mr. Lowery had mentioned work for her. Only thing she had to figure was how she would avoid bathing outdoors. No matter how much she itched, she had no intention to ever bathe outdoors. Under no circumstances.
She stood, stretched, and walked to the bunk. “Wanton eyes. Hmph. Absolutely not. I am not some… some floozy, Mr. Peter Lowery. I will show you.”
Determined not to cry herself to sleep again, Emma lay down. Although she wasn’t one given to prayer at the drop of a hat, the sight of Mr. Lowery reading Scripture to scold her had awakened something restless and sad inside her. She could, however, remember having heard something about nothing being impossible for God back when Mama insisted on attending church every single Sunday.
“God? Seeing as he seems to be on such close terms with You, could You please tell him I’m not a criminal like the other two? Nor am I a floozy, as he called me.”
She rolled onto a side, and a wave of exhaustion swept over her. Her eyes felt heavy and gritty, and before she gave it much thought, she’d fallen asleep.
She didn’t stay that way for long. Strange dreams filled her night. Disjointed images had her jolting awake over and over again. Finally, when she was nearly in tears from frustration, she again dozed off to a dreamless slumber.
Morning came much faster than Emma wanted. Robby shook her shoulder and her aching head told her right away she hadn’t rested half enough. “Oooh…”
“Miss Emma! Colley’s here. She says you said you wanted her to show you how to make breakfast.”
She almost gave in and groaned. The amount of movement it took to just rub her eyes made her feel as though her whole body might break into dozens of tiny pieces, she was so tired and sore. She wasn’t used to this sort of life, of course, and her muscles were objecting in the most unpleasant way. Almost as nasty as Mr. Lowery’s very pointed and mean-spirited Scripture reading—
Mr. Lowery! The very thought of the judgmental man made her scramble out of bed and straighten her clothes as best she could. When she gave up, frustrated by the futility in the effort, she pulled her hair forward and began to braid again.
“ ’Morning, Colley,” she said, finishing up the end of the braid. “What’re we making this morning?”
“Flapjacks.” The older woman gave the contents of a large yellow ware bowl another good stir. “And bacon.”
Emma had now eaten bacon at every meal since the outlaws had taken her to the cave, even when she’d made the chicken, since Colley had added bacon to the beans. It seemed as though it was all folks out here wanted to eat.
The door burst open and Ned rushed in. “I’m here! With the fresh water—” He stopped, stared at Emma, that silly smile widening across his face. He swiped his frayed hat off his head, the pail of water in his other hand sloshing over. “Good mornin’, Miss Emma. Hope you did rest yourself well last night.”
Emma had to stifle her quick, true, but unhappy response. She felt as though she hadn’t slept at all. “It was a long night.”
Colley harrumphed.
Emma sensed the ranch manager was fighting a laugh, and at her expense, no less. She felt her cheeks warm. Don’t let it get the best of you, Emma.
“So, Colley,” she said, “how can I help you this morning?”
“The flapjacks are pretty much made already, an’ I’m gonna be fryin’ ’em straight away, but you can slice up the bacon. Good knife’s on the shelf, and the slab a bacon’s—”
“In the lean-to,” Emma said with a smile. “I saw it yesterday when I was out there. I’ll be happy to fetch it for you.”
She began to don her boots, but Ned hurried past her to the door. “No need to go an’ trouble yourself none, Miss Emma. I’ll get that bacon for you.”
“That’s…” His presence in the cabin suddenly registered. “I thought Mr. Lowery had put Wade to watch you and Sawyer. How is it you’re here instead?”
Ned shuffled his feet, spun his hat around in front of his middle, stared off past her shoulder. “Well, miss, I… well, I told Miz Colley, here, I’d be much obliged if she’d be willing to let me make myself helpful to her. I know I can, really, I do. Then she gone an’ told Mr. Lowery she’d be seeing to me if the boss’d let me come on along with her. An’ then, why, I’m just trying to help you now.”
Emma sent a questioning look to Colley, who gave her a quick nod. “Very well, then, Ned,” Emma said. “You get the bacon, and I’ll get the knife. We’ll be done much faster.”
“Good!” Robby cheered. “I’m hungry.”
“You’re always hungry,” Colley answered.
Emma stepped close to Colley, not wishing to alarm Robby with her question. “Are you sure Ned should be trusted to go out alone? I mean, I know what I said and I don’t think he’s pure evil, or anything like that, but he did steal your sheep.”
“I reckon that boy there is just needin’ hisself a mite of sensible learning from a body what knows some. Reckon he fell in with the wrong sort, if that there Sawyer’s anything to go by.”
Emma found the knife on the shelf, then returned to the table, ready to try her hand at slicing meat. “Don’t you wonder how they wound up partners?”
“ ’S just what I mean, missy. Don’t look right to me, somehow, and I’m ready to give him a chance. He might could make something right and good of hisself while he’s here stuck with us.”
“I did mention it to Mr. Lowery, but, of course, he paid me no mind.” Emma shook her head. “He’s dead set against me, and I don’t know that there’s much I can do to change his opinion. I didn’t ask to be left in the woods, you know.”
“Naw, Miss Emma, you didn’t.” A wise and serious light deepened her gaze. “But then he didn’t go and ask to be left a widower with a lil shaver, neither.”
She felt the mild rebuke despite Colley’s bland tone. “I do understand, Colley, but I would hope he understands a mite how difficult this is for me, too. I’m here, all alone with a group of men—and you, of course—I don’t know… and that’s not right. Not for a lady. And I do promise you, I am willing to do everything I can so I don’t become any more of a burden than necessary.”
Colley’s smile tilted up one side more than the other. “I reckon I can take you at your word. Mr. Lowery, why, he might could take you a mite longer to bring ’round to your way of seein’ things, but he’ll come ’round. He’s not so hard-headed that he’ll keep refusing to see.”
“We shall see, won’t we?”
The cabin door opened, and Ned rushed in, carrying a huge slab of smoked bacon. Emma glanced at the kni
fe she’d retrieved from the shelf. She really hoped she could do this right. She didn’t want to give the rancher any more reasons to dislike her.
The next few minutes went by peacefully as Colley mixed up a fresh batch of biscuits. It seemed the men ate them at every meal, too, no matter what else appeared on the plates. At the table, Emma concentrated on slicing even strips of the streaky meat. Robby kept up his chatter, and Ned sat across the table from Emma, his expression as silly as ever.
His blatant admiration was difficult to handle. Had she really basked in that sort of attention before? It was growing uncomfortable, indeed.
When she had sliced a good stack of meat, she turned to Colley again. “I’m ready. Is the… um… spider ready?”
“Sure. I’m using the big skillet for the biscuits.”
Emma spread out the bacon on the hot spider, and then, curious, hurried back to Colley’s side. “Is that where you make the flapjacks, too?”
“Watch.”
The older woman poured the thick mixture onto a strange, flat iron disk hanging by a thick wire handle on an S hook from the iron rod across the fireplace. As the mix hit the hot, greased metal, it sizzled and spread. Small bubbles formed one by one on the surface, and then, when it all looked a bit dry around the bubbles, Colley used a long tool with a flat paddle at its end to flip the flapjack over onto the bubbled side.
“See, missy?” Colley asked. “That’s all there is to it.”
“And to make the mix you’re cooking?”
“Eggs, buttermilk, sugar, flour, baking soda, and a pinch of salt.”
“Same as for biscuits, then.”
“That’s right, Miss Emma,” Ned piped in. “They’re kind of the same, ’cept different. Biscuits and flapjacks, they’re close. Only difference is y’aren’t wantin’ to put no eggs in biscuits, and then the flapjacks, they’re… uh… wetter.”
Emma turned. “You cook?”
“Nah,” Ned answered, looking bashful. “Just that Sawyer and Dwight always need a hand here and there, so I helped and seen ’em make food. I can help you learn some, too.”
His hope-filled expression reminded Emma of Robby. He didn’t know how to cook, but he insisted he could help her learn. An interesting—if ludicrous—proposition. “I suppose we can all learn from Colley.”
“You’re all going to learn what?” Mr. Lowery asked from the open doorway.
Emma started. She hadn’t heard a sound. “Oh! Ah… good morning, Mr. Lowery.” With a pair of long-handled metal tongs, she flipped over the strips of bacon, not wishing to give her unwilling host any more reason to object to her.
Ned spun to face the rancher. “Mr. Boss—oh!”
SPLASH!
In his enthusiastic effort to greet Mr. Lowery, Ned moved too fast, and hit the bucket of water he’d brought in earlier. The entire thing seemed to explode in a large wave of glistening wetness, bathing everything in its path. Unfortunately, Mr. Lowery’s boots and legs were in that path.
“What—?” The rancher was not pleased.
“Oh-oh-oh!” Ned lost all color from his face. “I… am… er—”
“Here,” Emma said, running to Mr. Lowery’s side, cotton towel in her hand. She dropped down on a knee, and swished the cloth over his boots, then did what she could with the other puddles of water on the wooden floor.
While she realized Mr. Lowery was anything but pleased with this latest disaster, at least it hadn’t been one of her making. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Colley fighting a laugh. Robby lost his battle. The boy laughed and laughed, and Emma tried with all her might not to follow his lead.
Ned, on the other hand, offered the most inventive stream of apologies Emma had ever heard. When her rag became so soaked all it did anymore was slosh the water from one spot to another, she stood, holding the fabric carefully, and went for the door. She came to a complete stop, face to face with Sawyer, who stood in the doorway. The look on his face made her feel dirtier than ever, if possible.
“Excuse me, Mr. Sawyer. I must take this outside.”
He paused for a second longer than Emma thought proper, all the while staring at her in that way that made her so dreadfully uncomfortable. Just as she was about to turn and go back to the table with the drippy cloth, he stepped aside, but only enough for her to squeeze by past him, holding her breath so as not to touch him. To her disgust, her arm made contact. She shuddered and he laughed, only too aware of how much he’d bothered her.
She ran. She wasn’t too clear where she was going, but she knew she wanted to get as far from the vile man as she could. Behind her, she heard his hateful laughs, and despite her better judgment, she cast a glance over a shoulder.
The last thing she saw was Mr. Lowery grab Sawyer by the arm and shove him back toward the bunkhouse. Perhaps she wouldn’t have to face him again when she returned for the meal.
When she returned. She had to gather her wits about her before that could ever happen. The incident with Sawyer, as brief as it had been, had shaken her up more than she could have imagined. Then again, she didn’t think she ever could have imagined such treatment before meeting a ruffian like the thief.
When she reached the edge of the woods, she stopped. A few steps away she saw a fallen tree and made her way over the carpet of fallen leaves. She had run out of the cabin barefoot, hadn’t noticed any sensation on her feet as she’d run, but now that she’d slowed down, she’d begun to feel the painful reality of the forest floor.
She collapsed on the felled trunk, her filthy skirt whooshing into a puddle around her. The streaks of dirt on the once-lovely velvet made her feel worse than they would have had she noticed them at any other time.
Emma burst into tears.
It seemed she had cried more in the past two days than she had in all the years since her mother died. And yet, she just couldn’t seem to stop. She sat and sobbed, her heart aching so much she feared it would have fractured into a million shards had it been possible in some way. Her situation seemed hopeless, and she saw no way to make things better. How could she do this? How would she ever find the strength to cope with Mr. Lowery’s disapproval; with Ned’s unwanted adoration; with the pressure of unexpected responsibilities; with Robby’s loss and loneliness; how would she ever cope with Sawyer’s repulsive stares?
How? How was she going to make it through this disaster?
“Dear God… please help me. Now.”
“Hey!” Sawyer bellowed as Peter turned to leave the bunkhouse. “You cain’t jist go an’ leave me trussed up like a chicken here. I’m hungry.”
Peter’s rage grew. “Perhaps you should have thought of that before you went and treated Miss Crowell like that. She’s not some… woman of ill repute, for you to look at her and try and rub yourself all up against her.”
“Ah… that weren’t nuthin’. I was just having a little fun with her, she bein’ so silly, an’ all.”
“She may be silly, but she’s a guest here on my land. You, on the other hand, are a prisoner. I’m sure as sure can be that she’s never been treated with such disrespect, and you knew exactly what you were doing. A man, a real man, would care for and protect a lady.”
For a moment, Peter paused. He sounded quite like something out of the book of tales his son so loved. But before he could ponder that, Sawyer let out a humorless chuckle.
“Now here y’are sounding jist like the lil lady herself,” he said, then cackled again. “She were wantin’ Ned and me to be her guards and… and—oh, I don’t know. Maybe you’re jist tyin’ me up in this bed so’s you can have her all to yerself.”
The taunt hit Peter in his gut. How disgusting. “I’ll have you know, I have a whole lot more honor than to be considering my guest in that way. You sit here, think about your sins, and when we’re done with our food, I might find someone willing to bring you something to eat.”
“Sins…” Sawyer laughed again. “Jist bring me that food. We’ll see how you go on and do being ’round that lil lady up
to your house. Let’s jist see how you do.”
To his horror, Peter felt the strangest urge to smash his fist into Sawyer’s leering face. As much as he had no patience for Miss Crowell, he also had no tolerance for a fellow who would dishonor a woman after he’d just offended her. After a silent plea to his Lord for strength, he was able to shut down the urge and walk out of the bunkhouse. He headed back to the cabin, speaking to his heavenly Father the whole way.
“Lord, I always reckoned You knew what You were doing, but I confess I have no idea what You might be up to with this woman. The rustlers… well, I just can’t take them to town right now, and I figure we can watch over them until it’s time to go to market in the fall. But her? Can I really keep her safe out here? What else can I do with her, Father? You know I can’t leave my flock unprotected. I owe Robby my best. And Colley, too. Sure, she sold me her spread—fair and square and all that, even—but I don’t want to let her down. She’s trusting me not to let it go, especially not if it happens just on account of my not doing all I could.”
He fell silent, unable to come up with anything further to say. What was there to say? Miss Crowell was a beautiful, refined lady, and they were a bunch of rough and tumble men—and Colley—on an isolated meadow partway up a mountain. None of them was blind, all could see how beautiful she was. Or could be, once she cleaned up some. But he realized that wasn’t her fault.
The lively cascade of auburn curls came to mind again. He smiled.
None of the crazy situation was anyone’s fault. Except maybe Sawyer’s and Ned’s. Although, truth be told, he wasn’t certain how much blame anyone could rightly put on Ned. He was young, barely more than an adolescent, and so far, Peter hadn’t seen enough smarts to the youth to consider him particularly wise. He’d likely hitched his fortunes up to those of men he thought exciting.
Lawlessness wasn’t exciting. It was just plain wrong.
As was Sawyer’s treating a lady, any lady, in such an inappropriate way. Even a lady who had a vain streak wide as the West’s open spaces, and was unlikely to have ever done a thing of true worth in her life.