Mary Connealy (62 page)

Daniel pointed to the canyon gap, visible in the distance, as he and Ike prepared to chop down another tree. “It’s filled almost all the way to the top.”

Ike turned and looked where Daniel pointed. He dropped his ax, missing his foot by an inch. “We’ll never get out of here.”

Daniel felt his stomach sinking. “I reckon not. We’re socked into the 6R solid till we’ve had a good long thaw.”

“But the rest of the snow is almost gone.” Abe came up beside them, not watching where he walked as he stared at the canyon mouth.

Everywhere Daniel could hear the sound of running water. The steep mountainside where they were chopping trees was clear except on the north side of the trees where the sun never hit. When it melted, it ran off because, Lord have mercy, it was steep. Daniel found out that cutting down trees wasn’t much work if gravity worked alongside you. All he had to do was pick the right tree and hack away. The tree fell all the way to the building site.

He’d been chopping trees for two days solid, barely taking time away to eat and sleep. By now the land around the cave and barn was clear; the bulk of the melting snow had run off instead of soaking in because the ground was sloped.

The house site was one of the few level spots on Daniel’s property. It had taken a woman and an avalanche—to Daniel’s way of thinking, one and the same—to make him carve out a real home for his family. The 6R was going to be a bona fide ranch once this house was up. He was glad she’d thought of it.

“Will we starve, Pa?” Ike picked up his ax.

Daniel wondered if he should be letting ten-years-olds handle something so dangerous as that well-honed ax. “Nope. We’ve potatoes and flour to last the winter and eggs, milk, and beef to last a lifetime.”

Daniel waved at the longhorns that grazed far and wide in the vast canyon. “God’s been good to us, boys. We’re wealthy men. We’ve all we need to last forever. The only thing town has for us is luxuries, like apples until we can grow our own. But we can get along without anyone else, and that’s something a man can take satisfaction in.”

Daniel looked down over his valley and felt rich as a king. He had found this place while scouting the area, looking for good grassland.

“Remember when John found this place for us, Pa?”

Daniel pulled his head away from daydreams. He smiled down at Ike. It took young’uns to keep a man honest, it seemed.

“Sure I do. He’d got up to foolishness as usual.”

“We were just playin’, Pa. No harm in a little hide-and-seek.”

“There’s harm in it when one of you hides so well he can’t find his way back to camp.”

Abe and Ike laughed. Daniel grinned then laughed along with them. “John getting lost was the luckiest day of my life. Because when I trailed him in here—”

“Into what looked like a solid wall of stone,” Abe reminded him.

“Yeah, I didn’t see that notch in the wall until I was ten feet from it. Even then I’d’a missed it if John hadn’t left footprints.”

“It’s still hard to see,” Ike added. “Half the people in Mosqueros can’t figure out where the 6R is because of the way the one side of the rock juts out farther than the other and the two sides blend together to look solid.”

“And you tailed him into that cut and found our home,” Abe finished with satisfaction.

The hidden gap had opened into this lost paradise in the rocky west Texas plateau country. Daniel had hurried to town, homesteaded one hundred and sixty acres, and then bought ten thousand more acres for pennies from the state of Texas. His home was registered as a mountainous wasteland on the surveyor’s map. He’d registered his 6R brand, bought a small herd of longhorns, and still had most of the money he’d earned selling his Kansas farm.

“So God and this rich land He created gives us all we need and more besides.” Daniel nodded his head. He breathed deeply of the cold pine-scented air. The damp soil and fresh-cut wood were better than the rarest perfume.

“An’ you brought a heap of supplies with you when you brung Ma. It’s a wonder you could manage to fit her in with the flour sacks.”

Daniel wondered again exactly what Grace had been doing in his wagon. Had a man really chased her? “Yep, it was a tight squeeze, all right.” He thought of how pretty she’d looked yesterday, wrestling with his boys, trying to tackle him, and sitting on him.

Daniel jerked his thoughts away from trouble and looked at the stand of trees. “We’ve got about another two hours of chopping, boys; then we’ll have us enough to build a house.” He glanced at his sons, still transfixed by the snow-packed gap. It scared him a little, too.

He looked on up the mountainside. He could climb out of here if he needed to, but it would be a couple of days of hard climbing on loose rock with hundreds of feet to fall if he missed his footing. Then if he got out, it was a fifteen-mile walk to town, which he could manage in a day, or about ten miles to the nearest ranch, where the McClellens lived. Then what help he found would have to make the dangerous trek back with him. If an emergency cropped up—say, if the boys needed a doctor—it would take a minimum of three days to get out and back in. He couldn’t get help in time.

Daniel looked at his boys and the sharp axes, and his gut clenched.

He almost ordered them to leave the chopping to him and go do the animal chores. He clenched his jaw to keep from saying the words of caution. He couldn’t live his life like that.

Then he thought of Margaret dying. A doctor couldn’t get there in time to help her, either. He breathed a sigh of relief that he didn’t have to worry about Grace and a baby. He believed her that there wasn’t one on the way. He still thought she’d run from a man because she’d mixed herself up wrongly with him. But that didn’t mean a baby.

Then he thought of her sweet smile and knew what his husbandly rights were. The Bible was clear about that. A woman was to meet her husband’s needs. And since a woman inspired most of those needs, it was well and good that she met them. The way she smiled at him made him wonder if she wouldn’t even welcome a child from him. Temptation made him shudder.

The Good Book said Jesus was tempted of the devil for forty days in the wilderness. So Jesus knew just how Daniel felt. He breathed a prayer for strength to withstand the temptation.

He looked back up the steep cliff and thought of the doctor and how far he lived from town. He looked at his boys. They weren’t in nearly as much danger with those axes as he was with his brand-spanking-new wife.

“Let’s get these trees down, boys.”

Abe and Ike looked away from the gap and lost themselves in hard work. Daniel did his best to sweat every ounce of temptation out of his body. Or at least make himself so tired he didn’t have the strength to give in to it.

Daniel thought ruefully that he was a very strong man.

A
s the sun set on the third day of chopping, Grace served supper to the usually riotous group. Their eyes were heavy with fatigue, and they could barely chew their food—and that was due to exhaustion more than her cooking.

Trying to hold her tongue in front of her sons, Grace wanted to berate Daniel for pushing them so hard. When she’d announced so boldly he was going to build the family a house, she hadn’t meant to add yet another burden to the boys. She needed to put a stop to it.

She squared her shoulders. If Daniel avoided being alone with her all day, every day, they’d just have to have it out with witnesses.

“Mark, you little rat!” Grace covered her ears as Ike shrieked as if he were being murdered. He ducked under the table and almost tipped it over.

Daniel steadied it without so much as a pause in his eating.

She had to get Daniel to let up on the boys, and she had to teach these little monsters some manners. “Daniel, we need to talk.”

No one heard her over the shouted insults being tossed back and forth between Ike and Mark.

Grace clamped her mouth closed. There was no point in discussing anything now. The boys were hungry and tired. They didn’t have enough energy to listen—only enough to yell and fight. Or maybe she didn’t have enough energy.

She forced herself to say nothing as Mark dropped from his bench and disappeared under the table for the third time during the meal.

The barn proved to be a more pleasant place to live than the cave. And now that the temperature was more moderate, they had gladly remained here even though enough snow had melted and no further danger of an avalanche existed.

None of them suggested moving back into the cave. The boys didn’t show it, but fear haunted Grace, and at least John had to feel a bit of it. She’d lay awake at night and remember that glowing ember fading, dying from lack of air. Then she’d shake herself and remember to be brave.

Thinking she might calm the riot and then be able to bring up more important subjects, she tried to engage Daniel in polite conversation. “Well, have you picked a site for the cabin?” She’d learned about pleasant talk while waiting on people at the railroad diner. She’d mainly worked in drab, dirty little restaurants, moving from one cow town to the next. But that railroad diner was a clean, refined establishment. She’d stayed there until she’d found a place that would give her a job as a teacher.

Luke yelped with pain and jumped and knocked his stomach against the table so hard it upset the milk cup. Fortunately, it was empty.

Daniel set the cup to rights without comment.

Mark stuck his smirking face out from under the table and growled at Luke.

Grace breathed through her nose so the threatening words wouldn’t explode.

John patted her on the knee and tilted his head toward his brother and sighed.

Grace smiled.

“There’s only about one level place in this whole canyon,” Daniel said. “It’s just to the uphill side of the barn.”

“Right by the stack of trees you’ve been letting fall down the mountain. Daniel, you won’t have to worry about dragging them a long way.”

“Yep, that’s why I cut ’em there. Didn’t you know that? The mountainside is covered with trees. I could have cut them anywhere.”

“Well, you never said. I guess I was thinking you decided to let them fall there because it was well away from the ranch yard where the trees could come crashing down and kill us or the animals.”

Daniel shrugged.

Ike screeched in pain and punched at Mark under the table, who laughed uproariously and popped up into his seat again beside Daniel.

“Gotcha,” Mark said with a smug grin.

Ike seemed about to throw his steak bones at Mark.

Grace grabbed them and laid them out of his reach.

Ike didn’t seem to notice or care about her displeasure.

“A man hadn’t oughta hafta say everything out loud that goes on in his head, Grace. You should figure what I’m thinking and save us some time.” Daniel began scooping white, mealy potato out of his charred, black potato skin with his fingers.

Grace tried to imagine a better way to cook the poor charcoal-colored spud. If only she had a pan. Of course Daniel wasn’t even letting her cook much, which rankled her. He refused to start the stove in the cave unless he was there to do the cooking. He carried the only matches they had in his shirt pocket, and she didn’t know how to light it without them. John said he knew, but his pa had forbidden him or any of the other boys to teach her.

She shook her head. “So we’re building it on that level spot. I want to help, Daniel. I’ll do anything you say.”

She looked at him.

“Anything?” He looked back, and after he’d looked too long, she shivered.

He suddenly turned rapt attention to eating his potato.

Grace tried to figure out what about the word “anything” had bothered him so much. She mentally shrugged her shoulders. As long as he let her help build, she didn’t care. “You know, Daniel, the trouble with expecting me to read your mind is sometimes you aren’t really thinking what I think you’re thinking.”

Daniel looked back at her.

The collar on her shirt—or rather Daniel’s shirt, because she still wore the same outfit—suddenly fit too tight. Grace unbuttoned the top button so she could breathe and maybe cool off a little. And she wasn’t reading his mind worth anything, because she wasn’t conjuring up a single thought about the house.

“So do you start building tomorrow?” Excitement rose in her that didn’t seem reasonable.
Of course, every woman wants a house
, she imagined. But the thought of its imminent construction made her breath come short and her heart race as she looked into Daniel’s eyes. She remembered her promise to God to be brave, and somehow, returning Daniel’s look took true courage.

Daniel flashed a look at her hot enough to cook the potatoes with neither pan nor fire. “I can work up the dirt on the house site for a while before dark.”

He got up so abruptly he knocked his seat over. Snagging his coat and hat, he almost ran out of the barn. “I can use a hand, boys.”

The boys bolted what scraps of food were left on the table, yelling as they gobbled and ran out after him.

Since it was already full dark, Grace didn’t have any idea what he planned to do. Maybe he could work by starlight.

She sighed and cleaned up the supper dishes—that is to say, the cup and fork. It took thirty seconds. Then she followed after her family.