Place to Belong, a Page 20

  “Out there? Where did you sleep?”

  He smiled. “Under pine trees. Made a fire. Glad it didn’t snow again.”

  Mavis waved a hand. “Please come into the kitchen. It’s warmest there. A cup of coffee?”

  “Please.”

  He took the chair Cassie led him to and smiled at her as he sat down. “You look good. Your arm good again?”

  “It’s still some weak but I’m working on it. Oh, how I’ve wondered about you.” She wanted to ask how it had been on the reservation, but knowing how reticent he could be, she didn’t.

  “Were they glad to see you when you got there?” Gretchen asked instead.

  Chief took a swallow of his coffee while Mavis sliced bread and, after buttering both sides, laid the pieces in a skillet to brown.

  She asked, “Can I heat you some soup now or . . . ?”

  “I will wait. This will be enough. The stock looked good out there.”

  So he was ignoring Gretchen’s question. That did not bode well. And he was here. When Cassie thought about it, that did not bode well either. What went wrong at his old home that he would travel through snow for three days to come back here? She grinned. “Plenty of hay, and George is just as testy as ever. I haven’t had much chance to ride Wind Dancer, though.”

  “Micah, Runs Like a Deer, they’re all right?”

  Cassie had so much to tell him, and she wanted to do it all at once. “Oh yes, we’ll have to tell you all about that. The men are over at Arnett’s now, setting up a furniture-making shop in his barn. Micah is in on it too.”

  “And the mine?”

  Mavis sat down across from him. “It’s pretty much on hold for now. We have some real interesting news. You knew about the Wild West show and rodeo they’re planning for this summer in Hill City?”

  He nodded and inhaled the fragrance of the toasted bread Mavis served him. “Sure smells good.”

  Mavis seemed as eager as Cassie to fill the man in on everything all at once. She was talking faster than usual. “Well, Mr. Porter has added another idea. He is calling it guest ranches and sent out a letter asking if some ranches want to host people from the East who come for the show but might like to see what ranch life is like.”

  He chewed and nodded at the same time, noncommittal.

  “He also said he would go talk to the Indians on the reservation and see if some of them wanted to come to the show. Did he write you a letter?”

  Chief shrugged. “I never heard.”

  “Hmm.” Mavis frowned. “It probably went to the head of the reservation, I expect. Would that be a chief, or an Indian agent, or what? Anyway, Mr. Porter is wanting Indians to perform in the show.”

  Cassie went back outside and put Chief’s horse up in a stall well bedded with straw and amply supplied with hay and a big scoop of oats. “Don’t worry.” She gave him a parting pat. “We’ll fatten you up. Soon your ribs won’t show like this.” She hung his saddle on the rail by the front door, checked on the calf, and returned to the house.

  When she brushed off her boots and stepped inside, they were sitting around the table talking and eating cookies. As expected, the women did most of the talking, and Chief did lots of nodding.

  When dinnertime came, Mavis dragged the kettle of soup to the front of the stove, set out a bowl of applesauce, and made more coffee. They kept on talking as they ate their soup and still didn’t get nearly all of it said. Cassie watched Mavis awhile just to make certain. Yes, Mavis was just as glad as she was to have Chief back in her kitchen.

  “I need to go practice,” Cassie said when they finished eating. “Do you want to help me?”

  Chief nodded.

  Mavis stood and gathered up dishes. “John, you are welcome to stay in the bunkhouse if you’d like. There’s plenty of room. At least you’ll have a bed that way and not have to sleep on the floor.” Mavis gestured with the coffeepot again, but he shook his head.

  He stood also. “I’ll talk with Runs Like a Deer and see. Used to a pallet on the floor.”

  “Better than in a snowbank.” Cassie picked up her satchel and headed outside.

  She did a round through all the targets and was pleased with her success. It was coming back; she was shooting like the old Cassie. Gretchen came out to watch, so Cassie enlisted Chief and Gretchen to take turns throwing wood chips up in the air. Gretchen’s chip sailed high in a lazy arc. With her shot, it instantly exploded in two directions. Chief’s chip arced far higher, nearly overhead, and a little twinge darted through her arm as she closed on it and fired. Direct hit.

  The next “bird,” Gretchen’s, was a hit, but when she closed on Chief’s, a stab ran up her arm. Another. Another. She was still hitting them, but now her arm quivered whether she was taking aim or not. Her arm felt tired, an ugly sort of tired. This was discouraging. When she missed two in a row, she called a halt. Her arm was visibly vibrating.

  She let her shotgun hang at her side. “Thank you. You make great birds flying. I need to do plenty of raising and lowering the shotgun. That wasn’t very good at all, but it is getting better, I guess. I’m glad there will be no matches until spring.”

  “Not very good?” Gretchen practically shouted. “You got all but those last two and one other!”

  “‘Good’ is when I get them all. Thank you both again.”

  In a tone of half joking, half not, Gretchen said, “You expect too much from yourself, Cassie,” and went back to the house.

  Chief held the bag as she put her guns away. “You been working with Wind Dancer?” he asked.

  “Not since we’ve had snow.”

  “You have what? Three months after it melts out?”

  “To get ready?” She nodded. “I know, but maybe we’ll have some time in March and April too.” Getting them both back in shape was going to take a lot of work, she knew that, and Chief’s curt reminder only made her worried. “I’ll just have to do the best I can. If we can’t manage the trickier things, they won’t be in the act.”

  What would her father do if he were in this situation? Enough snow lay about to make any show maneuver dangerous. Even when the winter weather let up, from what she understood, the melting snow would turn the ground to slippery muck, and there was no way they could do sharp turns and quick stops in a muddy corral. Maybe out on the open pasture with good grass cover, but then . . . No wonder the Wild West Show had gone south for the winter.

  “You did better than you thought.” Chief gave her a half smile and began the walk up to Runs Like a Deer and Micah’s cabin.

  She called after him, “Come down for supper, will you please? And bring them along.” She walked up to the house, wandered back to her bedroom, and put her guns away. Maybe they’d better just forget about high shooting. Her arm had felt perfectly fine until this.

  What next? Make sure the kitchen was ready for supper preparations. She was entering the kitchen doorway when Othello barked again, this time his warning bark. Not a stranger, but not family or friend. Cassie opened the front door and stepped out on the porch, and when she saw who it was, called Gretchen.

  “I brought mail,” Jenna called, sliding off her horse. She cast a wary eye toward Othello and then came up the steps. “Pa went to town, and these came in on the train.”

  Gretchen popped out the door beside Cassie. “Jenna! Can you stay?” she asked eagerly.

  Mavis stepped into the doorway drying her hands on a kitchen towel.

  “Not today, but if the weather holds, we were wondering about maybe sledding down your hill after church Sunday.” Jenna handed the envelopes to Gretchen.

  “That would be good fun,” Mavis said, her smile as wide as the girls’. “Tell your ma to bring everyone. Do you have a cow milking now?”

  “No. She just stands there eating hay and being wide. This wide.” She spread her arms. “Pa says she’ll likely drop twins.”

  “Good, then you all won’t have to be back for milking. Let’s have supper here.”

  Mavis was al
ways up for a party, Cassie thought.

  “Ma will want to know what to bring.”

  “Let’s just potluck it. Tell her I’ll be making a roast.” Mavis rubbed her hands together. “Oh good! We’ve not done this for far too long. I haven’t seen your mother for months, except in church. Now I wish we had poured a skating rink in the corral. Wait here a minute.” She disappeared back in the house.

  Gretchen urged, “Bring your skis too. And we have the toboggan.”

  Cassie hoped Mavis would return soon. She was getting chilled standing out here.

  Jenna giggled with Gretchen. “See you at church,” she said and walked back out to her horse.

  Mavis came hustling out at a fast walk, a canvas bag in each hand. She gave one of them to Jenna. “Some cookies to take back with you. Don’t eat them all on the way, hear?”

  Jenna giggled again. “Would I do that? Thank you, Mrs. Engstrom.” She hung the bag on her saddle, turned her horse aside, and headed out the lane toward the gate.

  Cassie heard her call cheerfully, “Hi, Mr. Chief! Glad to see you back.”

  Here came Chief walking down the hill from the cabin. Cassie saw him wave to Jenna, but she could not hear if he responded. Cassie puffed out a frosty breath.

  “Well, that sure is a change in plans. But it will be so nice to see the Hendersons.” Mavis looked at the letters. “One from Jesse and one from Mr. Porter. I’ll read them to everybody tonight.”

  Cassie was really getting cold now, but she waited on the porch with Gretchen and Mavis as Chief came through the gate and walked over to them. He waved a hand in the general direction of the barn. “Go get my horse. Stay up at the cabin tonight. Thank you for the dinner.”

  “Take these with you.” Mavis handed him the other bag of cookies. “Micah likes cookies too, and there is no oven up there.”

  Chief bobbed his head once, a nod, and walked off to the barn.

  Cassie led the way inside. Behind her, Gretchen said, “Mor, I thought you’d give both bags to Jenna.”

  “I intended to, but then I saw Chief coming down the hill.”

  Gretchen settled into a kitchen chair. “I wish he would talk more. I want to know what it was like for him on the reservation. He hasn’t said anything about where he went or what he’s been doing.”

  Cassie parked herself in front of the stove. “I prayed sometime during the night or very early morning that he would be all right and that he would come back. I was hoping if he ever came back, it would perhaps be a visit during the rodeo and show.”

  She stepped aside, for Mavis was bringing a big iron frying pan to the stove.

  Mavis stopped and looked at her. “There is a verse I dearly love where God says, ‘Before they call, I will answer.’”

  Cassie stared at Mavis. “Are you sure?”

  “Of course she is sure. Mor knows everything about the Bible.” Gretchen stood up and headed for the doorway. “I want to wear my skirt tomorrow. I didn’t think how far around that skirt is.”

  Cassie smiled. “All that’s left is the hem. I’ll help. You’ll wear it.”

  “Maybe I should wear my hair up too.”

  “I don’t think so. You are not a young woman yet.” Mavis tapped her daughter on the nose. “Besides, if you are a young lady, you might not want to go tobogganing.”

  “That doesn’t work, Mor. Cassie is a young woman, and she likes the toboggan too.” Gretchen ducked away from her mother’s playful swat and went to fetch her skirt.

  “I’ll make the bread loaves while you two sew the hem. I think I’ll fry some pieces for an afternoon treat.” Mavis paused and stared out the window. “I’m glad he’s back where we can take care of him. He doesn’t look to be in the best health.”

  Cassie closed her eyes. Please, Lord, let Chief live here with all of us a long time. And if you want to give me a way to get him talking more, I’d sure be tickled. In her next thought, she chided herself: He already answered one of your prayers today. What do you want to be—greedy?

  21

  Cassie stared at the calendar. The New Year really had come in with a roaring wind and another foot of snow. Gretchen was supposed to go back to school today, but there was no getting through those drifts. The short, familiar path between the barn and the house had been obscured by swirling, blowing snow, and had those ropes not been strung between house, barn, and bunkhouse, the men could easily have become disoriented and wandered out into the blizzard. But thanks to the ropes, Ransom and Arnett could make sure the cattle were fed, the cow was milked, and the barn animals were cared for, and return in safety to the house.

  She thought back to Sunday, when the Hendersons came over to dinner and the afternoon of fun on the hill. She’d even learned to make real turns while on skis, though she fell the first few times. By the time they finished, even the horse Arnett rode looked plumb tuckered out from dragging the toboggan back up the hill. Mavis had set apple juice to heat with some spices to warm everyone up again before the guests waved good-bye from their sleigh.

  So far Cassie had won two rounds of the latest checker tournament, but when she played Ransom for the third time, something about him distracted her.

  He won by a king.

  What had it been? Was it the twinkle she saw in his eyes? Ransom’s eyes didn’t twinkle much. Or had she just not been paying enough attention? Whatever it was, she lost the tournament and wasn’t doing much better on figuring it out.

  One of the pleasures of winter, she had learned after Christmas, was Mavis reading aloud every evening with them all gathered in the big room. Cassie was darning wool stockings, Arnett was carving something he wasn’t really showing, and Gretchen was knitting herself a pair of stockings with fine yarn they had dyed a gentle yellow using onion skins. Ransom alternated between ranch bookwork and drawing furniture plans.

  While Cassie had read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer before, she enjoyed it even more this time.

  “Read some more,” Gretchen pleaded when her mother put the bookmark in place.

  “But what if the storm stops and you have to go to school tomorrow?”

  “So I’ll have a hard time getting up.”

  Mavis glanced around the room to see the others nodding. “All right. One more chapter.”

  Being read to like this made Cassie remember some of the times her mother had read to a group of children during school time or she and her father had read in the evenings. Being read to always equaled love in her mind. She wove the darning needle in and out, picking up knitting stitches when she could so the darn would be less obvious, laughing with the others at Tom’s antics. Twice when she glanced at Ransom to see if the twinkle had remained, she caught him looking at her. It wasn’t a critical sort of looking, or a curious looking, or a vacant staring-into-space looking, and certainly was not ogling. Just looking. Was that a smile when the corner of his mouth lifted oh so slightly?

  That he had caught her looking at him made her face and neck feel as if she were sitting right next to the fireplace. Pay attention to what you are doing, she ordered herself when she had to loosen a couple of stitches she had pulled too tight.

  Gretchen stretched and yawned when her mother closed the book, making Cassie yawn too. The yawn traveled around the room and left them all almost laughing. Almost a twinkle from Ransom’s eye too.

  What would it take to make him really smile, she wondered, or indeed, laugh out loud? She had never ever heard a genuine, deep-down belly laugh from him.

  Ransom closed his ledger and stood, stretched, and wandered over to the window. Swirling blackness out there. Cassie could see it as well as he. He opened the door for a better look, only to let a blast of powdery snow swirl right into the room. He slammed the door shut. Both Benny and Othello raised their heads, looked at him, and settled back down, eyes closed.

  Ransom started toward his room. “Guess they don’t want to go out in that either. Good thing Chief chose to stay up at the cabin. He’d never have made it back down tonight
.”

  “Good thing that rope goes to the bunkhouse too.” Arnett brushed the curls and chips from his carving into a basket kept for tinder.

  “You could sleep in here if you want,” Mavis offered. “It’s warmer.”

  “Naw, my dog is waiting out there. I banked the stove real good, so I only need to throw more wood in when I get out there. Mavis, thank you always for such a perfect evening, good food, good company, and entertainment too.” He looked to Cassie. “You shoulda won that, ya know. G’night, all.” And he disappeared into the kitchen.

  Later, Cassie found herself chuckling again as she slipped her cloth-wrapped hot rock under the covers to warm the bed. That Arnett. A tap on her door caught her attention.

  “Come in.”

  Mavis stuck her head around the door. “How are you holding up with shells?”

  “They are about half gone. Why?”

  “I’ve been thinking if this breaks, we might go into town tomorrow. I know Ransom wants to get back to the woodshop. Do you want to go?”

  “All right. Yes.”

  But while the wind had dropped by morning, clouds were still hanging low, hinting at more snow to come. Ransom and Arnett decided to work on repairing two old chairs they’d found in the pile in the barn, mending some harness pieces if they were not too dry to be mended, and sanding rust off the replacement discs they’d discovered so they could be sharpened. Repairing machinery was always a winter chore, one Ransom had neglected this year in favor of shoring up the mine.

  As they left for the barn after breakfast, Ransom cautioned, “I’d rather you didn’t head to town today, Mor. Looks iffy out there.”

  “I agree. I wish I had kept Gretchen home.” But the sledge had come for her and off they had gone.

  “If it gets bad, you know they’ll keep the kids in town.”

  “I know, but . . .” Mavis heaved a sigh. “Maybe I have cabin fever.”

  “You?”

  “I know. I have plenty to do but . . .”

  Ransom shut the door. “What is it?” His voice hardened. “Lucas?”

  Mavis paused. “Possibly.” She thought some more. “Probably. I guess I thought maybe there would be a letter from him.”