“Get on!” Matty used his hat to slap a slow-moving calf, urging it out of the corral. Behind him, the branding fire burned hot, and he was wielding the iron today in deference to his injury.
He wiped his forehead with his sleeve before replacing his hat where it belonged.
“This the last batch?” he called out to Oscar, who was closing the gate after sending ten more animals into the corral. They worked in one of the corrals on the far edge of his pa’s property.
Oscar acknowledged him with a grunt.
They’d started before sunup with only a short break at noon, and now it was almost sunset. His eyes were gritty with smoke and dust. He’d sweated through his shirt by lunchtime. He was exhausted.
Maybe he’d be able to sleep tonight.
Or maybe not. Thoughts of Catherine plagued him day and night. It hadn’t even been a week, but he couldn’t keep his thoughts from returning to the homestead, especially those moments in the dark with Pop nearby. When she’d let him hold her close.
“You ready to talk about it yet?” Jonas asked from near his elbow where his knee held the calf in place.
“What?” Matty grunted.
“Whatever’s got you moping around these past few days.”
“It’s that gal,” Seb called out from where he’d roped the next calf inside the corral. “Catherine.”
Matty gritted his teeth. Their final goodbye had left him too raw. He didn’t want to talk about her.
“Little brother fell in love, huh?” asked Oscar as he helped Seb bring the calf to the ground.
Matty ground his teeth harder. During his weeks at the Pooles’, all the times he’d wanted to be back home among his noisy, rambunctious family, now all he felt was frustrated. Like he was a square peg that didn’t fit the round hole of his family anymore.
He hadn’t been to see Luella since he’d returned home. Those last days at the Pooles' he hadn’t even spared her a thought. And the more he thought about it now, the way she’d left things had been final. Hadn’t it?
“I’ve been holding off your ma,” Jonas said, as calm and implacable as usual. “But her patience is gonna run out. Just warning ya.”
Maxwell had left Hattie in charge of the clinic and had been working alongside his brothers all day. He looked up at Matty from across the calf’s shoulder as Matty pushed the red-hot brand into its hide. Maxwell didn’t have to say anything. His small smile said enough.
And Matty vividly remembered years ago ganging up on Maxwell with the rest of his brothers and giving him a dunking when he’d been out of his mind over Hattie.
He could only hope Jonas’s presence would prevent something like that from happening today.
“I’m still mad I didn’t get to meet her,” Breanna added from her perch on the corral rail. She was in her element, in trousers and on horseback all day. “I wanted to go.”
“Edgar and Seb know the way,” Davy put in from his perch astride his horse, just outside the corral. “We could make a social call.”
“Oh!” Breanna exclaimed.
“No!” Matty barked.
He hadn’t meant for it to come out quite so harshly, but everyone went silent.
He felt like he’d hit his face with the branding iron, as if steam was rising from his skin. So much for hiding his feelings for Catherine.
Slowly, he raised his head.
They were all staring at him. Jonas and Maxwell with expressions of compassion, Davy, Oscar, Edgar, Seb and Breanna with ornery grins.
“When’re we going to meet her?” Oscar asked.
Matty shook his head. “You can’t. Her grandpop—she doesn’t want to see me.”
“Aw, c’mon—”
His brothers protested even as Jonas shushed them and refocused them on finishing the grueling task.
The final few calves branded, Matty hung back. He was seriously contemplating taking a dunk in the creek instead of following the rest to clean up in the bunkhouse before the family would gather for supper.
It was difficult to be around his family when all he wanted was to be back on Catherine’s homestead.
Was she getting any rest? Working herself to death trying to figure out a way to get a wheat crop to last them through the winter?
Was she still being threatened?
The steers turned loose out into the field, his brothers had ridden ahead, leaving Jonas and Matty to walk home together.
They walked in companionable silence for a bit. He appreciated that his father was a good listener. And that he didn’t try to fill the silence with advice or teasing.
Matty sighed. He took off his hat and used the other hand to run his fingers through his sweat-matted hair. “I can’t stop thinking about her,” he finally admitted.
“You care about this girl?”
He let his eyes slide to the far horizon. “Yes.” The answer was easier than he’d expected. “But it’s complicated. Her grandpop is aging and…sometimes imagines things that aren’t there. Doesn’t like to be around people.”
Jonas hummed in his throat. Still listening.
“And… Catherine has a reason to be distrustful of some folks in Bear Creek. I don’t know if she’d ever want to be a part of the community, not like our family is.”
Jonas seemed to consider his words as they climbed the last hill toward the house and barn.
“Do you think there could be a time she’d come around? Maybe if she spent some time with folks in a smaller setting—” like their family? “—she’d start to like it.”
Matty shrugged. He didn’t know if Pop would ever come around, not with his history. And he risked alienating Catherine if it backfired.
Hat hanging by his side, he rubbed the back of his neck with his opposite hand. “There’s more. She’s in a bad way—or her homestead is. She needs a wheat crop to make it through the winter and her barn needs rebuilt.”
Jonas didn’t speak for a long moment, and Matty turned his head toward his father.
One side of Jones’s mouth quirked in a half smile. “Seems your brothers are right. You’ve never been this discombobulated by a gal before.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re so twisted around you can’t see straight.”
That about summed it up.
Jonas clapped him on the shoulder. Matty’s collarbone barely twinged.
“What if there was a way to ease her back into society—and solve her most pressing problems. Might help her a little with trustin’ others.”
Matty let the idea take root. Hope soared. What if his pa was right? What if there was a way he could be with Catherine?
“What did you have in mind?” he asked.
Catherine washed up at the creek, the cool water soothing against her heated skin.
Dust and dirt turned to a thin film of mud and then dissolved in the brook, streams of brown disappearing in the clear, burbling water.
It had been a week since the flood. The water had receded to its normal levels, and the dirt had cleared, leaving behind evidence of what had been—moss, limbs, branches strewn along the banks where none had been before.
A week since Matty had gone.
And she felt a gnawing emptiness inside. She missed his steady presence. His conversation. Playing games with him.
His kisses.
She’d spent the past days digging out the barn. With the creek changing direction, she vacillated on whether to rebuild there or find another location. If she couldn’t rebuild here, digging out a brand-new building large enough for two animals and the chickens would be backbreaking work.
She hadn’t brought up with Pop yet the possibility of her hiring on at Elliott’s for the remainder of the summer. She didn’t know if Harold Elliott would hire a woman, or whether Pop would be able to handle being alone for long workdays.
But she was running out of time. The field she’d spent days clearing after the first flood lay dormant, with no wheat to plant.
She pushed up from her squat, pushed her damp hair out of her eyes and headed for the dugout.
Inside, Pop had made a hearty-smelling stew. She dried off her hands and face with a small square of a towel and sat down at the table.
“You doing okay today? No spells where you’re short of breath?”
He grunted, and she took that to mean no. He would tell her if he had one, right?
Later that night, he moaned in his sleep and she awoke. Darkness enclosed the room.
Her breaths came fast, as blood pounded in her temples, in her ears. Should she wake him? Was he having a nightmare about the war?
She couldn’t forget what had happened the last time. Being pinned to the ground, stuck beneath the table and bed, unable to roll away.
Afraid that he wouldn’t wake up.
And tonight there was no cowboy staying in the barn to intervene.
She sat up in the bed, wrapping her arms around her knees.
It was too much to bear alone.
The homestead, their livelihoods. Pop.
She buried her face in her knees, trying to stem the tears that threatened, but it was no use. They fell anyway.
Why did Mama have to die? Why did Pop have to fade into his memories the way he was?
She was afraid. And there was no one to turn to.