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“Gosh, you gonna go on kissin’ all night?”
“Maybe,” Thud murmured against her mouth.
“Hurry up!” Teddy yelled. “I wanna tell you ’bout this fellow Hawkeye.”
The window whapped down, leaving Thad and Leah alone except for the crickets and the whispering maple leaves.
“Tomorrow,” Thad murmured when he could breathe steadily. “Tomorrow, come out to the wheat field with me.”
Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Why?”
“I just want you with me when…when I have to plow it under. It’s important, Leah.”
She nodded. “Yes,” she said with a sigh. “I think it is time for me to confront my rival.”
She turned away. “Sit with me, Thad. We do not have to talk, but I think we should be close together.”
Thad lowered his frame to a chair and pulled her onto his lap. They sat quietly together on the porch until the sky turned pink and then flamed crimson and gold with the rising sun.
Chapter Twenty-Four
At noon the next day, Wash Halliday brought the plow horse, roped behind his gray stallion. He found Thad and Leah picnicking on sandwiches and lemonade in the shade of the two maple trees in front of the house, and he sent Thad a speculative look. He received only a silent smile.
“Guess I’ll mosey on back to the Double H,” Wash murmured. “Jeanne’s putting up strawberry jam and I said I’d—Oh, horse feathers, strawberry jam doesn’t matter a whit to you two.”
He tied the plow horse to one of the trees, reined his mount away and headed back down the road.
By midafternoon Teddy had gone fishing with Harvey Poletti. Leah and Thad crunched across the dry pasture grass and leaned against the split rail fence around the wheat field. Leah wiped her perspiring hands on her white muslin apron, pushed back her sunbonnet and stared at the field.
The wheat stalks were completely dried up. What should have been tall golden spikes, drooping with heavy heads of grain, was instead three acres of parched, sun-scorched plants.
Beside her, Thad leaned one knee against the fence and put his head in his hands.
“I can’t save it,” he said, his voice thick. “Dammit, a man feels helpless faced with something like this, when there’s nothing he can do. He feels…broken.”
“You are not in charge of the rain, Thad. Or the sun, or the wind, or—”
“Yeah, I know, but I wanted this wheat. I wanted it a lot.”
Leah eyed him out of the corner of her eye. “I think,” she said with a slight hesitation, “that in your mind you have turned your wheat into a magic charm to ward off disaster.”
Thad jerked his head up. “What do you mean, a charm?”
“In China, people put their trust in good omens and lucky charms to ward off evil and bring prosperity.”
Thad snorted. “Or the reverse, I suppose. If it’s a bad omen, something like the northern lights or a shower of stars, it brings bad luck.”
“Exactly. The Chinese are very superstitious.”
Thad raised his eyebrows and looked away, across the stunted brown field. “Guess that’s what I did, all right. I wanted a magic charm.” His voice sounded hoarse. He cleared his throat.
“That is very human,” Leah said quietly. “But it is not rational. You are thinking like a superstitious Chinese man would. And you are not a Chinese man.”
Thad grunted. “I can’t stand to look at it any longer. It’s time to plow it under.”
Leah said nothing. Instead, she stared hard at the brittle wheat stalks nearest the fence. All at once she hiked her denim work skirt up to her knees, set one foot on the bottom fence rail and grabbed on to the top. In the next instant she swung her leg up and over and jumped down on the other side.
Thad watched in disbelief. “What the hell are you doing? You trying to break your neck?”
“I am trying to break an evil spell,” she retorted. She waded into the field. The stalks were so dry they clicked softly against her skirt.
Thad shook his head. Leah was always surprising when he least expected it, as if she knew something he didn’t. Her uncanny insight had always puzzled him.
She leaned over a bent stalk, wrapped her fingers around the dried-up head and stripped off a handful of brown kernels. She did the same thing to the next stalk, and the next, collecting the bits of refuse in her loopedup apron.
Then she climbed the fence again, onehanded; the other hand grasped the collection of kernels. Once on the ground, she marched up to him with a triumphant grin.
“You are not a broken man, Thad. Just look!” She unfolded her apron. “Seeds! Wheat seeds! For next year’s crop.”
