Читать книгу The Hired Man - Lynna Banning - Страница 11
ОглавлениеCord unsaddled Sally, walked her into an empty stall in the barn and fed her a double handful of oats. Now, where should he bed down? He eyed the ladder up to the loft overhead and smiled. He liked straw, and he liked being up high; it gave him a hawk’s-eye view of whatever was going on. Which wouldn’t be much on a farm this run-down, he figured, but you never knew. Experience, most of it bad, had taught him that the unexpected could be damn dangerous.
He washed up at the pump in the yard. The cool water felt so good after days in the saddle he stripped off his shirt and did it again, then tossed his saddlebags and a single wool blanket up into the loft and let out a long breath. He’d always loved the smell of a barn—horses, leather, animal droppings, clean straw. This barn had two animals in roomy stalls, a sturdy gray gelding with a white star on its forehead and a milk cow contentedly chewing her cud and rolling a disinterested brown eye at him. A dusty saddle hung on one wall, and a broken-down buggy sat in one corner. It didn’t look sturdy enough to get to town and back, and the cracked leather seat looked mighty uncomfortable.
He wondered how the woman, Mrs. Malloy, fetched supplies. The boy looked too young to ride into town alone, and she didn’t look strong enough to make the trip. If she was a widow, as he figured, she must have had some kind of help. Then again, the place looked so run-down it was plain it hadn’t been cared for in some time.
He crawled up into the loft, spread out the worn wool blanket he’d slept in ever since leaving Missouri and folded his arms under his head. This place would do until he could get his feet under him. At least he could eat regular meals and sleep with both eyes shut instead of with his Colt under his pillow and one finger on the trigger.
He wondered if he’d ever get back to feeling like a normal human being again, someone who didn’t flinch at every loud noise and wonder where his next meal was coming from. Someone who could learn to trust his fellow man again. The War had shaken his faith in the human race, and his years in Missouri had taken care of the rest.
Stop thinking about it. He should count himself lucky; just about the time he was thinking about giving up, he’d come up over that hill and smelled those apple blossoms.
* * *
Breakfast the next morning made him smile. When he walked into the kitchen, little Molly was standing on a chair at the stove, poking an oversize fork into a pan full of sizzling bacon. Daniel was cracking fresh eggs into a china bowl. “Plop!” He chortled after the first one. “Plop!” he said again.
His mother laid slices of bread on the oven rack, moved the speckleware coffeepot off the heat and dumped in a cup of cold water to settle the grounds. The kitchen smelled so good it made Cord’s mouth water.
She motioned him to a chair. “Coffee?”
“Please.” He pushed his cup across the table toward her.
“There is no cream, I’m afraid. Bessie hasn’t been milked yet.”
“Black’s fine.”
She turned back to the stove. “Molly, lift those bacon slices onto the platter now. And no snitching!”
The girl clunked down a china platter of bacon in front of him. “No snitching,” she whispered, then twirled back to the frying pan.
“Wouldn’t dream of snitching,” he murmured. That brought a giggle from Molly and a sharp look from Mrs. Malloy.
“Daniel, pour those eggs into Molly’s pan and stir them around.”
“Aw, Ma, let Molly stir them around. I’m gettin’ too old for this cooking stuff. Besides, she’s a girl.”
“You are most certainly not too old for ‘this cooking stuff.’ In this household everyone does their share.”
“Sure can’t wait ’til I’m growed up,” he muttered.
“Even ‘growed-ups’ help out!” his mother replied.
All through the meal Cord tried to catch Mrs. Malloy’s eye, but she steadfastly refused to look at him. Daniel, on the other hand, gazed at him with intelligent blue eyes and peppered him with questions in between bites of scrambled eggs.
“What’s your horse’s name?”
“Sally.”
“How old is she?”
“About three years. Got her when she was just a filly.”
“Can I ride her?”
“No. She’s too much horse for a boy your age.”
“Do you like venison jerky?”
“Yes, I do.”
“What about chocolate cake?”
“Well, sure, son, everybody likes chocolate cake. You gonna bake one?”
“Nah. But I keep hopin’ my mama will bake one someday.”
Mrs. Malloy said nothing at all. When the last slice of toast disappeared, Daniel and Molly scooped the dishes off the table into the dishpan in the sink, and Cord waited for orders from his employer.
Five minutes went by while Mrs. Malloy sipped her coffee. Finally he cleared his throat and she looked up. She looked paler than ever this morning.
“You want me to milk your cow, ma’am?”
“No.”
“How ’bout I fix your front gate?”
“What?”
“Your gate. Yesterday I accidentally knocked it down.”
“Oh. Yes, do repair it.”
“And the fence? Wood looks half-rotten, and—”
“Of course.”
“I’ll need to get lumber from the sawmill in town. You have a wagon?”
She didn’t answer.
“Then there’s the barn roof and the corral and the front porch step and the rusted door screen and...” Hell, she wasn’t even listening.
“Yes, fix it all, please. I have accounts with the merchants in town if you need...nails or...things.”
“Kin I help him, Ma?” Daniel called from the sink.
Molly splashed soapy water at her brother. “An’ me, too?”
“We’ll see,” said Mrs. Malloy quietly.
Cord picked up his hat from the hook near the back door. “Guess I’ll be going on into town, then. You want anything from the mercantile, ma’am?”
“A newspaper. And some flour and a bag of coffee beans. Maybe one of chicken mash, too.”
He studied her hands, cradling the china coffee cup. The knuckles were reddened. Daniel and Molly were making plenty of noise having a soapsuds-splashing contest, so he risked a question for her ears alone.
“Miz Malloy, how long have you been on your own out here?”
She glanced up at him, then quickly refocused on her coffee. “Seven years.”
“Uh, is there a Mr. Malloy?”
Her shoulders stiffened under the faded green calico. “There is. Or rather there was.”
“What happened to him? The War?”
“I assume so. He went off to fight and he never came home.”
Cord’s first thought blazed through his mind like a fire arrow. What a damn fool. “If it’s not being too nosy, how have you managed all these years?”
Her laugh surprised him. “Believe it or not, until six months ago I had a hired man.”
It was his turn to laugh. “Sure hope you didn’t pay him much.”
“No, I—Why do you ask?”
He stuffed back a snort. “I can’t see that your hired man did a da—Darn thing around the place.”
She set her cup down with a snick. “Most assuredly he did not,” she said, not meeting his eyes. “But I trusted him around my children.”
He stared at her. “Ma’am, you don’t know me from Adam. How come you trust me around your children?”
She met his gaze with calm gray eyes. “I don’t really know why, Mr. Winterman. I just do. Only once before have my instincts been wrong, and that had nothing to do with my children.”
Eleanor rose and moved into the kitchen. “Children, stop that!” She rescued the suds-soaked dish towel, and when they rattled past her out the back door, she wrung it out and hung it on the rack by the stove. When she turned back, Mr. Winterman’s chair was empty.
She bit her lip and watched her new hired man push carefully through the screen and walk out the front door with a slow, easy grace. She couldn’t tell him everything. She just couldn’t.
