Pop Millerton’s clothes weren’t as big as Seth thought they’d be. In fact, they fit about right. Wet shirt and trousers in hand, he waited at the bedroom doorway until he heard kitchen sounds. Then he eased down the stairs and stepped squarely on a squeaky riser. Dadgum it. His memory wasn’t as good as he thought.
“The coast is clear.” Abigale trickled her clear-creek laugh he’d always found so remarkable. As if she mimicked the streams that drained off the mountains and into the parks and meadows.
After spreading his clothes out next to Chester and adding more wood to the fire, he took a seat at the kitchen table. “Didn’t there used to be more chairs?”
She cut him a sidelong look that said “don’t ask,” but he already had.
“Well? You chop ’em up for kindling?”
“Funny.” She set a mug on the table and filled it with stout coffee. It’d been cooking all this time and could probably float a wagon wheel.
She poured a cup for herself and brought a tin of D.F. Stauffer’s crackers to the table. “This will have to do. I haven’t baked anything since I arrived.”
“When did you get here?”
“Three days ago.” She sat in the other chair across the table, took a handful of crackers, and shoved the tin toward him. She never was big on formalities, but he figured that girls’ school might have rubbed off some of her charm.
It hadn’t.
He chuckled.
“What?”
He fingered through the tin for a lion-shaped cracker and dunked it in his coffee. “I thought you might have changed some after going to that Wolfe Hall up in Denver.”
She popped a cracker in her mouth.
“I’m glad to see you haven’t.”
She wrinkled her nose at him like old times. Good times. The tension between them was nearly gone. If only the snow would melt as quickly.
“How long you plan on staying?” He pulled a frown, masking unrealistic hope that she’d never leave.
“Undetermined.” Another cookie, followed by a swig of coffee. “Maybe forever.”
He coughed and clamped his mouth tight. Had she learned to read minds?
“Does that come as a surprise?”
Coffee flushed the catch in his throat, and he set the cup down gently. “It might to some folks around here.”
She stopped with the crackers and gave him her best glare. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Someone’s been cuttin’ timber on your land. Since before Pop passed on. I expect he knew.” Better she found out from him than someone else, someplace else. “I’ve heard rumors it’s your neighbor to the south.”
“Blackwell.” Her face went cold, colorless, and her free hand balled into a fist.
He reached over and covered it with his. Icy. Was she gettin’ sick from being wet for so long?
She tried to pull away, but he wouldn’t let go. “Abigale.”
She looked into her coffee cup.
He squeezed her balled-up hand. “Look at me.”
Without raising her head, she glanced up under her brows. Her hair had dried some, and stray curls broke away from her braid and danced around her face, softening her scowl. He wanted to smooth that hair back, but he didn’t know exactly what she thought of him. If he was still just a neighboring rancher’s gangly son, or if she’d grown feelings like he had for her, missing her something fierce the last two years. Even more so since the funeral.
“Don’t go huntin’ trouble, Abigale. Let’s take care of the barn first, then I’ll check at the mills, see where Blackwell’s taking the timber. If he’s selling it, then we’ll get the law involved.”
“We?” No invitation in the word. More like a challenge.
Maybe he’d overstepped his bounds. She was seventeen, after all. But she was like family and she was alone. He’d not let her go through all this by herself, even if he had to tie her to that chair.
He squeezed her hand again. “We.”
Her fingers relaxed. And her shoulders slumped. Her head dropped lower, and a wet spot hit the table next to her cup.
“If I hadn’t left, he might still be alive.” Her voice had run back to the little girl who used to pester him.
His chest tightened. “That’s not so, and you know it. Pop’s time came around, and it would have whether you were here or not. And there’s something else you ought to know.”
She looked up quick, her brown eyes almost black, shiny with tears.
“You were the best thing that ever happened to him and Mams.”
And to me.
~
Seth flexed his I’m-older-than-you-muscle—which Abigale highly resented—and made her lie down while he brought in more wood. She’d helped him set the sofa back from the hearth some and covered the worn leather with the log-cabin quilt. He’d spread the other one on the hearth, which was beginning to look like a counter at the dry goods store.
She would have argued more, but her head hurt. Her shoulders and neck hurt. All of her hurt, really. Miraculous that she hadn’t broken something when she fell.
And miraculous that Seth Holt just happened to be in the area when that crack of lightning hit.
She closed her eyes and her thoughts drifted to Wolfe Hall and back again. She’d not return. Not now. All the main ranch stock had been sold off, but the land was here. The land that Pop and Mams had loved. Her home. She’d not let that Blackwell buzzard get his greedy hands on it by sending one of his hired help to squat on a corner. He’d always had an eye for Pop’s timber. Now, with silver mines sprouting and talk of the railroad heading this way, the cry for lumber was even louder. It could be a cash crop for her, along with the hay.
And she’d buy a few head from Seth’s family. Start small but start over. Selling out was no longer an option.
The weight of responsibility squeezed a sigh from her chest. How had Pop done it all with only part-time help?
How would she with none?
The door opened and Seth stomped in. Chester’s nails clicked across the plank floor as he dashed for his spot by the hearth and shook himself, no doubt scattering snow all over everything drying there.
Abigale was too tired to scold him. Maybe that fall had taken more out of her than she thought. Or maybe she needed real food.
Seth dropped his armload of wood at the end of the hearth and built up the fire. She tracked him to the door, where he hung his slicker on a hook. To the stove, where he poured coffee in a cup, and finally to a spot in front of her, where he dropped to the floor.
The man-smell of him, Pop’s pipe smoke in the shirt he wore, his cold breath mixed with coffee—it all made her lonely and she wasn’t even alone. She opened her eyes to find him sitting there cross-legged with his hat-flat hair, watching her as if she were a hen’s egg about to hatch.
She pushed up on her elbows. “Can you cook?”
“Better than you.” He didn’t miss a beat or even pretend to.
“I can see you’re still as cocky as ever. And speaking of such, the chickens are all gone.”
He gave her a wry smirk. “Coyotes, I expect.”
“Or weasels.”
“Maybe the two-legged variety.”
“If someone took the chickens, why wouldn’t they take Ernestine?”
“She’s more work than chickens. Plus she’s a little long in the tooth.”
Abigale lay back and closed her eyes, the conversation tiring after such a long and brutal day. “Yes, she’s old.”
“You want some coffee?”
His voice came gentle again, caring. Quite unlike the Seth who always thought he had a better idea.
Slowly shaking her head, she kept her eyes closed for fear she’d see more than she wanted to in his expression. He sat too close. Not that she didn’t trust him. She didn’t trust her own emotions now that she was alone in the world for the second time.
Danger lay in that line of thinking. She hadn’t had a good cry since the funeral, and she didn’t want to start now. “Tomorrow I’ll ride in and pick up supplies. I have a little money and I know where Pop kept his stash.”
Silence answered.
She peeked.
Seth’s arms propped on his knees, his eyes closed, the coffee cup dangling from one hand and about to fall.
She took hold of the cup and eased it from his fingers. If she were twelve, she’d push him over.
But she wasn’t twelve, and he’d given her nothing but hard work, loyalty, and kindness.
She set the cup on the floor and brushed his arm with her fingertips. “Seth.”
He jerked awake and blinked at her, as if trying to get his bearings. “I always wondered what it’d be like waking up next to you.”
His face flushed red again and he pushed from the floor with a grumble. “Never mind that. I’m just tired.” Rubbing the back of his neck, he looked around. For what, she didn’t know. “I’m, uh, I’m gonna sleep by the fire if that’s all right with you. Snow’s piling up and you’ll need more wood soon.”
He offered his hand. “I can help you upstairs.”
Her hackles rose at his assumption that she needed help, but she was too weary to argue. Besides, he shouldn’t be pushing Coop through several miles of drifts in the middle of the night.
She tugged the quilt under her chin and slid further into the cushions. “That’s fine with me. Sleep where you will, but I’m staying right here. And you’d better not snore.”
~
Drip-drip-drip staccatoed into Abigale’s dreams like her piano teacher’s insistence that she practice-practice-practice. Waking, she turned her head toward the window, where blue sky and sunshine accompanied the musical melting of snow.
She pushed upright and questioned her memory. Had she only fallen off her crude ladder or been run over by stampeding cattle as well?
Wincing with the effort, she swung her feet to the floor, comforted once more by the thick wool socks that covered them.
And where was Seth? The last she’d seen him, he was stretched out on Mams’s braided rug in front of the hearth. Snoring.
Coffee’s tempting aroma lured her to the stove, where she found a not-so-tempting can of beans and a towel-covered pan of—flatbread? She shoved aside her irritation and bit into a palm-sized round.
Not a bad effort for having no milk or baking powder.
So he could cook. She could rope, ride, and shoot. Not that those skills had earned her any points at Wolfe Hall.
After a second round and a cup of strong coffee, she managed to make it upstairs to her room, where she met a horrible sight in her dressing-table mirror.
“Pop would say I look like I’d been rode hard and put up wet.” She sat on the small bench and unbraided her hair. “He’d be half right. Fallen hard and carried in wet.”
Carefully she combed out the tangles, wincing at a knot on the back of her head and a little dried blood. Seth had tended to more than her feet, and her insides warmed at the thought.
She fetched a pitcher of water from downstairs for her basin and washed her face and hands. Movement outside her bedroom window caught her eye, and she paused to watch Seth scale the side of the barn, finishing the ladder she’d started, but using what looked like bigger pieces of wood. Pride in her idea warred with gratitude that he’d taken on the task himself.
Making herself more presentable—though not on Seth’s account—she tied her hair back with a ribbon and went outside feeling a little better.
The snow was nearly gone from level ground, other than drifts that hugged the buildings, but not from the white-mantled summit rising east of the ranch like a watchful giant. Winter was settling in. She hugged her waist and hunched her shoulders. It’d be a lonely Christmas this year without Pop. Godey’s magazine mentioned nothing about celebrating by oneself.
She’d planned to come home for the holidays, so she was only a couple of weeks early. A couple of weeks and a bundle of heartache. If she’d known how ill he was, she would have gladly left her classes behind.
“Good morning.”
At the greeting from atop the barn, she looked up to see a scruffy face grinning down. “Or should I say good afternoon?”
She grabbed a handful of drifted snow, quickly formed a ball, and lobbed it.