But for some reason he couldn’t keep the silly grin from stretching across his face. Catherine was teasing.
This was the most she’d said since he’d arrived in her life.
“You’d better watch out next time you come in to have a cup of coffee,” he said. “You might find it filled with mud.” His words tasted gritty from the dirt that had fallen in his mouth.
Light streaming in the window highlighted the dust motes floating through the air.
She didn’t respond, but a trickle of dirt rained down on the pillow where his head had been moments ago. She could make a fool of him once, but he knew how to move.
It chafed knowing she was out there working hard and he was laid up in bed. At least his brothers weren’t here to see his humiliation.
But those same thoughts that had snuck up on him yesterday tickled the back of his brain all over again. If Catherine and her Pop hadn’t been here, he would already be dead.
How could she stand to live out here so far from other people? Just the thought of what could happen—grave injuries, even death—made him shudder, and he was a grown man.
Out here, there was no one to depend on.
“How often do you get to town?” he called up to her. “I mean when it’s not the busiest part of spring?”
“Never.”
Her one-word response was a shock. “You mean you haven’t been in a while? This year?”
“I haven’t been since I was eight years old.”
It couldn’t be true. But he thought to the state of her clothes, the buckskin trousers and homespun shirt.
How did folks survive without going to town?
“But what about—” His mind spun as he searched for the right thing to ask. “What about the tools I saw in the barn?”
She must’ve heard the incredulousness in his voice, because her answer emerged sharp. “Traded a neighbor.”
“What if you run short on crops one year?”
He could almost sense her shrug those slender shoulders.
“We make do.”
“But what about friends—”
“I don’t need a friend,” she said. She sounded matter-of-fact, but something—maybe it was just being stuck in this situation—made him question whether she could be telling the truth.
“Everybody needs a friend.”
“Not me.”
His sister was one of the most tomboyish females he knew, but even she had friends in Oscar and Sarah’s girls, Cecilia and Susie, and Emma, Fran’s sister. It just didn’t sit right with him that Catherine was out here alone without a soul to talk to except Pop.
She got real quiet. He could still hear her movements and sometimes see dust raining down inside the sod house. His eyes roamed around the place, his innate curiosity going crazy because he was stuck here lying on the cot.
The place was clean and neat, as if she took pride in having organized surroundings. Everything in its place.
But he could also see small things that had been left undone, probably due to lack of time.
The stove could use another coat of polish. The rag rug on the floor was badly worn.
His eyes were drawn to the wall right next to the bed. The panels were slightly uneven, making a slight pocket right next to his side. Between the two uneven boards, he could see the smallest corner of something.
He reached for it. As long as he kept his torso still, the pain was manageable. His fingertips brushed against something, but he couldn’t quite grasp it.
He shifted, biting back a gasp when pain fired across his chest. But his fingers closed around it. Holding it up, he saw it appeared to be a leather pouch, brown with age. Medium-size. And something was inside it.
He set it on his stomach and wiggled the pull cord, finally drawing out what looked like…schoolbooks.
His fingers tracked idly over the long-ago familiar title of the book in front. A reader. The cover was intact, though badly worn as if someone had opened it over and over again.
Were these the same ones that Catherine had owned back when she’d been at the schoolhouse?
If so, why had she kept them?
It seemed such a simple and whimsical thing to hold on to.
And somehow he knew Catherine was an infinitely practical person.
Did the primer have a deeper meaning to her?
He heard scuffling above. Was she finishing with her patching job on the outside?
He doubted she would like to know that he found her hidden books. He carefully slid them back into the leather pouch and pushed it with the tips of his fingertips back into its hiding place.
*
Catherine entered the soddy, squinting a little as she came out of the bright sunlight into the dim interior. As her eyes adjusted, she saw the cowboy was still laid out flat on his back, his hair tousled against the pillow.
“Still in pain?” she asked.
In all his conversation, he hadn’t offered up what he had been doing when he’d reinjured himself yesterday.
“Only when I move.” He’d obviously wiped his face clean, but there was dirt along his hairline and she felt a moment of uncertainty at seeing it. Maybe she shouldn’t have played the joke.
There were small piles of dirt also at the foot of the bed and on the table. Above each pile, those were the places she needed to patch.
She would deal with the dirt that had landed on the cowboy’s pillow last; that way he didn’t have to move quite yet.
After she’d climbed off the roof, she’d filled a pail with mud down from the creek, a gray shale that dried to a stiff clay.
She carefully stood on the little stool between the table and Pop’s cot, balancing when it wobbled. She wiggled her fingers into the small crack between two of the wooden slats and wedged them apart.
It was awkward work with her hands above her head and balancing on the stool. Made worse because the cowboy was watching.
“Do you have to replace the roof often?”
“Every few years.”
She stood on tiptoe, stretching to push a clump of mud into the opening she’d created between the two slats.
“That must be hard work.”
Backbreaking. The last time she’d had to cut squares of earth and grass and haul them where she needed them had taken a week and she’d been sore for another week after that.
“Haven’t you ever wanted…well, things that normal girls might want? Friends? Frocks? A family?”
“I have a family,” she snapped. Her arms were beginning to ache as she held them above her head. She kept her eyes on what she was doing, but the cowboy was sorely testing her focus.
“That’s not what I meant,” he backtracked. “I meant…like a husband someday. Babies. That kind of family.”
Her ears grew hot. She knew her face must be red, but she hoped he would attribute it to the exertion and not his words.
“Those kinds of things aren’t important to me.” She meant more the former than the latter. The truth was, she did want to have a family someday. She’d always held a secret longing for it. And after Pop passed away, who would she have left?
“I didn’t mean any offense,” he said.
She didn’t respond to that. His entire presence here bothered her, made her ask questions of herself. Made her think things that were dangerous.
She finished her patch and rubbed a muddy hand against her pant leg. Now the only place she had left to patch was right above the cowboy’s head.
He must’ve known where her next target was because even as she stepped off the stool, he was attempting to struggle up onto his elbows. And having a hard time of it.
“Here, let me—” She braced one hand beneath his elbow. The muscles in his arms flexed under her hand as she tugged until he was sitting up. Sweat poured off his brow, and he panted with pain.
“There,” he said. “It’s only the getting upright that’s bad. I’m all right now.” He edged off the bed and onto the stool, far enough out of her way t
hat she could stand on the bed and finish with the ceiling.
His nosy questions made her want to escape. It was safer in the field with the mule.
She worked quicker than she normally would, arms still aching, unused to working above her head for so long. When she attempted to shove the slats back in place, she cut her finger on a ragged edge.
She hissed but made sure the panels were secure before bringing her hands down in front of her. She examined the splinter sticking out of her finger and the blood welling around it.
“You need some help?”
It was as if he had to stick his nose into everything. He couldn’t help himself.
She was irritated with his presence and with herself for being unable to ignore those things that she wanted in the deepest parts of her heart.
“It’s just a splinter,” she growled at him.
Her hands were too muddy to stick her finger in her mouth. She’d have to wash off in the creek before she could do anything about the splinter.
But when she stepped off the bed, her foot went into the bucket and she lost her balance, falling onto the edge of the bed with a whuff! of air expelling from her chest.
It put her face-to-face with the unnerving cowboy. His eyes seemed to see right into her.
He didn’t say anything.
She hiked her chin.
And then he did. “You say you don’t need a friend. But I don’t believe you. For as long as I’m here, I’m praying I can be that friend.”
Chapter Six
A day and a half after Matty had made his declaration that he wanted to be Catherine’s friend, he’d barely seen her since. She’d lit out of the soddy as if her pants were on fire. At the time he couldn’t help but smile, but after thirty-six hours of boredom, he didn’t find it funny anymore.
He’d pushed himself to get out of bed this morning, gritting his teeth against the pain. Catherine was nowhere in sight when he stood outside the dugout squinting against the early-morning sun.
The field she’d been plowing the other day was empty, and there was no movement near the barn, though the cow mooed. Had he scared her that badly?
Pop appeared from the nearby woods, muttering to himself. He didn’t seem to see Matty yet. The older man had remained coherent, if quiet, for the past day.
And maybe Matty was desperate for human contact or maybe he was just crazy, but he called out, “You need any help this morning?”
Pop looked up at him, face drawn.
“It’s me. Matty.”
Recognition flashed in Pop’s eyes, and Matty again felt a stirring of unease. What if the old man woke up one morning and didn’t recognize Catherine?
“I’ve been trying to think of ways I might help around here, in exchange for my keep.”
Pop squinted at him.
“But it’s hard without being able to move much. I thought maybe we could go fishing this morning, if you’ll show me the creek.”
He didn’t really need the old man to show him the creek. He was capable of going by himself. But maybe it would keep Pop out of trouble and out of Catherine’s way if they went together.
“Fine,” the older man growled. “But don’t lag behind.”
Matty trailed Pop through the woods along the creek bank. A black-and-white chickadee chirruped, hopping from branch to branch. Underbrush tugged at his boots; silver ripples reflected sunlight off the water.
They settled under the dappled shade of a gnarled oak in a place where the stream made a natural bend. With all the fishing he’d done with his brothers, he knew that the big clump of roots that must protrude out into the water would be a natural spot for fish to congregate.
Maybe this hadn’t been such a great idea.
Sitting at the water’s edge, the large tree trunk behind him, he was only a little out of breath from the hike. Adrenaline pumped through him, along with memories of what had happened the last time he’d been near the water. For moments he was lost in memories of tumbling loose limbed in the creek, being unable to get his head above the murky water.
He blinked the images away.
The lazy trickle of water in the stream would have been comforting before the day he’d nearly died. The water level had gone down, though moss and branches and other debris left behind showed where the water had risen during the flooding.
He dropped his line in with a soft plunk, breathing in deep of woods and moss and brook.
Pop was silent a few feet away, his gaze focused on the water.
“Good trout fishing?” Matty asked. His voice was slightly hoarse as he fought back the memories.
“Most days.”
Pop returned to his silence.
Matty was so used to having his brothers or someone around that the days of silence grated. He didn’t like where his thoughts went without the distraction of his family. He didn’t particularly like thinking about those three days when he’d been completely on his own, after his parents had passed away. He’d been stricken with fever, too, and when he’d come out of it, his parents had been gone.
He remembered the desperate fear that had filled him when he’d realized he was all alone.
They lived a fair piece from town, and he’d thought about riding one of the horses in to try to find help—he was only a boy, and while he could do chores around the farm, he didn’t know how to cook or take care of himself. And there were certain chores that a boy just couldn’t perform.
But a bigger part of him had been afraid to leave the farm. He knew the way to town. But what if he got lost? What if someone accosted him? He knew it was far-fetched, but he’d lost the two people closest to him and wasn’t thinking completely rationally.
And then two days later a neighbor had stopped by to chat with his pa and found Matty on his own. He’d been taken into their home but told it wouldn’t be permanent.
And his fears had simply shifted. What if no one wanted to adopt a boy of his age? Would he be sent to an orphanage? Would he be made to work?
For almost two weeks the town and the church had discussed his fate, until Jonas had been asked to take him in.
And everything had changed.
He wanted to break free of the memories. And so he blurted out a question. “How old were you when you went into the war?”
Pop looked up, skewering him with a gaze.
Matty met his gaze levelly. “I’m just making conversation.”
Pop went back to looking at his line in the water without making a response.
“How long were you in?”
Still nothing.
Matty’s line tugged and he pulled it in. Nothing on it. Fish had taken his bait.
“Anybody ever tell you you talk too much?” Pop asked in his gravelly voice.
Thinking about Breanna and his ma, a smile spread across Matty’s lips. “Yeah.”
Pop harrumphed, and for a moment Matty thought that was the end of it, but then the older man popped a pretty little trout onto the bank. “Had a good friend, John. He and I joined up together,” Pop said quietly.
Matty kept his eyes on the water where his line disappeared. “Did you serve in the infantry? Cavalry?”
“We were sharpshooters. All those days we’d spent hunting together. He was better’n me—could hit a squirrel at a hundred yards.”
“Did he survive the war?”
Pop was silent for so long that Matty thought he wouldn’t answer. Then, finally, “No. He was like a brother to me. And then one day, we were ambushed and he got hit… I watched him die.”
Matty tried to imagine what it would be like going into something like that with one of his brothers at his side—and watching him die. He quickly blinked away the morbid thoughts.
“That must’ve been real hard on you. I’m sorry.”
Matty pulled in a fat perch without tweaking his collarbone too badly and tucked it into the basket with Pop’s trout, silence stretching between the two.
It was after he’d gotten his line back in the
water that Pop said offhandedly, “You remind me of John—a bit.”
Surprised, Matty jerked his gaze to the older man. “In what way?”
But Pop’s gaze had gone far off—probably back into the past when John was still alive. And he didn’t answer.
*
“Evening,” the cowboy greeted.
Catherine stepped into the soddy and shut the door, closing out the thunder rolling in the distance. Rain pattered against the roof. Hopefully her patch job would hold.
She took off her hat and hung it on a peg next to the door. Water rolled down the back of her collar, chilling her.
The cowboy sat near the stove again, wooden spoon in hand, while Pop sat catty-corner on his bed.
Frying fish. The cowboy was frying fish.
Her stomach growled in appreciation. She had seen the storm clouds rolling in on the horizon as early as lunchtime and hadn’t stopped working the garden plot. She’d wanted to get as much done before the rains started as possible.
And returned home, as bedraggled as a soaked puppy, to find this.
She’d been covered in dust from the field, but when the rain started it had likely turned to mud. Normally she’d have washed up in the creek, but it was really starting to come down now.
Her shirt was stuck to her like a second skin. Outdoors, it hadn’t bothered her, but in the closed warmth of the soddy, she would soon begin to chafe beneath the wet cloth.
“If you want to change your shirt, we’ll turn our backs, won’t we, Pop?” The cowboy clapped a hand on Pop’s shoulder, and to Catherine’s amazement, Pop allowed the friendly gesture.
What had happened between the two men today? Did it have anything to do with the fish frying on the stovetop?
Not wanting to miss the opportunity to get into something dry, she gave a terse, “Fine.”
The cowboy turned his back with some effort, Pop following suit. Catherine quickly shucked her soaked-through shirt and pulled a dry one on.
“Okay.” Her stomach gurgled again as she crouched over the washbowl near the door. She needed to get rid of some of the mud that coated her.
Matty chuckled, even as he returned to stirring what was in the pan.
Love Inspired Historical October 2015 Box Set Page 6
