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Shep, the crusty retired range cook, was still working in the Dollarhide kitchen. He was a decade older, his hair snow white and his disposition grumpier than ever. But the meals he prepared were as tasty as Kristin remembered.
Sitting down to dinner that night, she couldn’t help but recall her mother’s dining style—the white linen cloth and napkins, the good china and silver, and the insistence on proper manners and polite conversation. Sarah Foxworth Dollarhide had declared that her aim was to raise children who could share a table with anyone, even the president, and not feel out of place.
But times had changed. Hanna had made an effort to follow Sarah’s example, but with a young family and a busy husband, dinners tended to be less formal and more practical. And that was all right, Kristin told herself. It was all right even when five-year-old Elsa spilled her milk or nine-year-old Annie argued for a later bedtime—or when Joseph sulked over his food, as he was doing tonight. This was family—what she’d yearned for during those long, bleak months of tending the wounded. And if there was mild chaos at the dinner table, there was also an abundance of love.
Only her parents were missing. They hadn’t been elderly. If not for the flu, they would have been here, smiling and chatting with the rest of the family. Coming home on the train, Kristin had read a news report speculating that even more people had died of the Spanish flu than had died in the war.
“Why aren’t you eating, Joseph?” Hanna asked her son. “I know you like chicken and dumplings. Is everything all right?”
Joseph nodded, his mouth set in a grim line. “Sorry, I’m just not hungry,” he said. “May I be excused to go to my room?”
Hanna reached out and laid her palm against his forehead. With the dreaded flu still raging in the world beyond Blue Moon, the worry about contagion was far from over. “You don’t feel feverish,” she said. “But maybe you should go and lie down. Promise you’ll let me know if you start feeling worse.”
“You may be excused, Joseph.” Blake, looking preoccupied, gave the boy his fatherly permission.
Joseph pushed back his chair, stood, and trudged off toward the stairs. He didn’t look sick, Kristin thought. But something was clearly troubling him.
“I can look in on him later, if you like,” she offered.
“Thank you,” Hanna said. “It’ll be good to have a doctor in the house again.”
“As I told you, Hanna, you’ve made me feel welcome here,” Kristin said. “But I can’t stay long. Once I start my practice, I’ll need to live in town—or close to town, at least.”
Hanna looked disappointed but nodded her understanding.
“I’m hoping to find a house where I can have my office up front and living space in back,” Kristin said. “Do you know of any place like that?”
“Nothing comes to mind. But I can ask when I go to town tomorrow. I want to see the letter that man left with my parents. What did you say his name was?”
“Hunter. Major Logan Hunter.” The stranger’s scar-slashed face rose in Kristin’s memory. He’d mentioned that he was a relative of the Calders. Did that mean he was planning to stay? Would she see him again?
But what did it matter? Given the history of the two rival families, and what Blake had told her about the water incident last summer, the less she had to do with any Calder, the better.
“Why don’t you come with me tomorrow?” Hanna suggested. “If my mother knows of any available houses, you’ll be there to look at them.”
“That’s a fine idea. And I’ll enjoy seeing your family again. It’s been a long time.”
With the meal finished, Hanna took the girls away to get them ready for bed, leaving Kristin and her brother alone at the table.
“You weren’t very talkative tonight, Blake,” Kristin observed. “And now that your family’s gone upstairs, you’re looking as if you’d bet your savings on a horse that lost the race.”
His mouth twitched in an ironic half smile. “Hardly that. But you always were too observant for your own good.”
“So, what’s the matter?” she asked. “Sometimes it helps to talk. And I’m a good listener.”
Standing, he opened a high cabinet behind him, took out a partly filled decanter of brandy, and poured a small amount into each of two crystal glasses. “I know alcohol’s illegal now,” he said. “But some nights call for a drink. Let’s go into the parlor.”
Kristin took her glass and followed him into the next room. A fire had been lit earlier against the chill of the spring night. As he stood facing the fireplace, the glow of its embers cast Blake’s face into deepening lines and shadows. Only now did Kristin realize how much the weight of grief and responsibility had aged her brother.
“So what’s the trouble?” she asked him.
“Nothing, yet. Just disappointment and worry. I’ve had my eye on that Tee Pee Ranch parcel, the one that used to belong to the Petits, ever since the rumor went around that it might go up for sale. I even asked the bank to let me know the minute it went on the block.”
“Do we really need more land?” Kristin asked, sipping her brandy, feeling the heat of it creeping down her throat.
“We needthatland. The wagon road from the lumber camps to our mill runs straight across it. And the creek that flows along the boundary of that ranch is the one that waters our property. The money would be a stretch—I’d need to get financing—but having the road access and the creek water under our control would be worth whatever I had to pay.”
Blake drained his glass and set it on the hearth. “This afternoon I went into Miles City on business and stopped by the bank to ask about the land. The manager told me that Webb Calder had put down a deposit to hold it until the end of the month for some oil-rich Texas relative of his who was looking to buy a ranch and could pay top dollar.”
