AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“And how’s Dad doing?” Mason asked. “I’ve been meaning to come up to the house and see him.”
“He’s slowed down since that stallion broke his leg this spring. But otherwise he’s doing all right. And Sarah’s the same. They miss you. You know you’d be welcome anytime.”
“Sarah was like a second mother to me. You can tell her I said so. But I didn’t see our little sister at the dance. I was looking forward to watching the cowboys battle to lead her to the floor.”
“Kristin isn’t much for socializing—or cowboys. She’s got her own way of thinking, whatever that is. But she misses you, too. We got used to having you around in the old days. Now it seems everything’s changed.”
“I know.” Mason pulled the buggy up alongside the saloon, where Blake’s buckskin horse was still tied to the rail. “Mother’s grooming me to take over the ranch—a waste of time if you ask me. She’ll probably live to be a hundred, and she won’t let go of the reins as long as she’s got breath in her body. Her only ambition for me is that I marry a rich woman. Do you know any of those around here?”
Blake chuckled. “Only your mother. Now what do you say we get that drink I promised you?”
* * *
The Andersons’ nearest neighbor, Stefan Reisner, paused his wagon outside the shack that was Hanna’s family home. His wife, Lillian, lay in the wagon bed with wet cloths on her blistered legs. The burns would heal, but she was in pain. Stefan was anxious to get her home. He was stopping only to drop off Hanna and her father.
Hanna had ridden in the wagon bed next to Lillian, cradling her friend’s head and giving her sips of water. “I could stay with her the rest of the way,” she said. “It’s not that far to walk home.”
“I can take care of her.” Stefan sounded almost angry. “Just get out so we can go.”
Big Lars had already climbed off the rear of the wagon. As Hanna moved back to join him, he turned and held out his huge hands to help her to the ground.
“I’ll come to see you, Lillian,” Hanna called as the wagon rolled away. Stefan didn’t look back. She hoped he wasn’t angry at Lillian. It wasn’t Lillian’s fault that her skirt had caught fire or that Webb Calder had been there to save her.
As Hanna walked toward the house with her father, she could smell the rabbit stew cooking in the kitchen. Her mother came rushing outside, wiping her hands on her apron. “We saw the smoke. Are you all right?” Inga Anderson had been a pretty girl in her youth, but twenty years of work, worry, and childbearing had aged her before her time. Her blond hair was streaked with gray, her face creased, her body shapeless beneath her worn gingham dress.
“We’re fine. I’ll wash up.” Big Lars was a man of few words. Walking to the barrel, he filled a tin dipper with enough water to splash the soot off his face and out of his sparse, light brown hair.
“And you.” She looked Hanna up and down, shaking her head. “I was hoping that pinafore could be passed down to Britta, at least. But it’ll never come clean. We might as well tear it up for rags. Why can’t you be more careful, Hanna? We don’t have money for nice clothes. We need to make them last.”
Hanna untied the sash of the pinafore and slipped it off, uncovering the threadbare calico dress beneath. She could see that the pinafore was ruined. And new clothes cost money the family didn’t have. “I’m sorry, Mama,” she said. “I needed to wet down blankets so the men could fight the fire. The blankets were dirty. What could I do?”
“I suppose you could’ve taken the pinafore off and put it out of the way. But that might be asking too much of a young girl with other things on her mind.” Inga held up the pinafore, examined the soot stains, shook her head again, and rolled it into a ball. “So, did you have a good time at the dance?”
“It was . . . all right.”
“And did you behave yourself?”
“Of course, Mama.” Hanna knew better than to talk about the handsome, well-dressed man who’d almost kissed her. As for the news about Lillian’s accident and the rancher who’d rescued her, that would be best passed on by her father.
“Let me wash up, and I’ll set the table.” She dipped enough water into a shallow basin to get her hands and face clean. Her hair would have to be brushed clean at bedtime.
Mason Dollarhide.
Hanna’s lips shaped his name as she set the table with the tin plates and the few chipped, mismatched dishes that had been salvaged from their old home. When Mason Dollarhide had told her his name, he’d mentioned that he had his own ranch, so he wasn’t one of those common cowboys her mother had warned her about. She wasn’t fool enough to think she was in love, or that she had any future with such a man. But the memory of his pretty words caused her pulse to skip a little.
What if he had kissed her? Would his lips have felt like warm velvet touching hers? That was how she’d imagined her first kiss. There next to his buggy, with his hand tilting her face toward his, she’d been ready to let it happen. But then the other man had come—his brother—and sent her running back to her father like a scolded child, her face burning with shame.
“Hanna, didn’t you hear me?” Her mother’s voice broke into her musings. “I said, go outside and call your brothers and sisters to supper. For heaven’s sake, what’s got into you?”
With a sigh, Hanna obeyed. Daydreaming was a waste of time, she admonished herself. Her life was here with her family, plowing and planting, washing and mending, tending the animals and the younger children—all for a future in this land where nothing was won except by hard work. For now, at least, she would have to put away her secret longings and try to be content with her lot.
* * *
Blake and Mason had enjoyed two whiskeys each and were about to leave the saloon to go home and clean up when Mason’s friend, Doyle Petit, walked up to their table and sat down without an invitation.
“Doyle.” Blake gave him a nod. He didn’t especially like the young man who’d inherited his father’s cattle ranch and sold every stick and pebble of it to the wheat growers. Doyle was awash in money—some of which he’d spent on the county’s first automobile. He was keen to make more, even if it meant taking advantage of other people’s bad luck.
Blake pushed his chair back from the table. “You’re welcome to stay and visit with my brother. But I was just about to climb on my horse and head home.”
