Amethyst (21 page)

Heat started below her neck and worked its way upward. She glanced up from under her eyelashes. He was still watching her.
Don’t you know that’s not polite?
She dropped another stitch and had to rip out a good part of a row. She had a hard time paying attention to the story, what with the man across from her and the needles and yarn that had a mind of their own.

Jeremiah loved to watch a woman knit. How she could manage to knit at the same time as listen to the story was beyond him. He’d seen some women walk along a road, knitting and talking with a companion. They never tripped, they laughed in the right places, and whatever they were knitting grew accordingly. Miss O’Shaunasy was probably like that. Not like him, who tripped even when watching carefully. She didn’t have much to say, but when she did speak, her voice had a cadence that pleased the ear. She didn’t laugh much either, but she had chuckled with Carly once, and the sound made him want to make her laugh more. From the bit he’d overheard earlier, he had an idea she’d not had much to laugh about in her life.

He thought back to life at Fort Bowie and compared it to now. There the sun blazed the moisture out of any living thing, while here a blizzard fought to freeze all living creatures to death. There the hills hid marauding Indians who’d just as soon kill anyone in blue as breathe. Here there were two women bent on providing comfort, entertainment, and good food, instead of lonely soldiers who often drank too much and lived in dread of the next campaign.

He brought his thoughts back to the room and the warmth both physical and mental, in spite of the storm doing its best to blow them and their houses off the face of the earth.

He woke sometime during the night to silence.
Please, God, let it stay that way
. He went back to sleep and woke to the rattling of stove lids and the low murmur of the Heglands talking softly so as not to awaken their guests. Darkness still reigned, but when he scraped the frost off the window, he could see a lightening of the eastern sky and several stars overhead. He heard the back door slam and saw a lantern throwing circles of bouncing light as Carl made his way to the barn. While they’d taken water to the animals yesterday, they’d not been able to let them drink their fill. Today they would. Hard to believe this was the second blizzard since Christmas.

Jeremiah pulled on his clothes and sat down to lace up his boots. No telling how long they had to get the stock watered and fed. He couldn’t see the northern sky from his window, and the dark clouds wouldn’t show until daylight anyway if they were brooding.

Both Miss O’Shaunasy and Mrs. Hegland wore full aprons over their clothes and were dipping hot water out of the reservoir to pour over snow in buckets, boilers, and washtubs. Every container that could melt snow covered the stove.

“Good morning, Mr. McHenry. I hope our banging around didn’t wake you.”

“No, the silence did sometime during the night.” He shook his head. “Who’d think silence would wake one.”

Miss O’Shaunasy glanced over her shoulder. “Strange, wasn’t it?”

He nodded and smiled, hoping he could bring her to smile back. She had a lovely smile when playing with Carly, but so far she’d kept it from him. “If you have buckets of hot water ready to go, I’ll take two out.”

“Good, take those.” Pearl pointed at two. “When the sun comes up, Carl will try to thaw out the pump, but in the meantime we can get all the animals a drink this way.”

Jeremiah shrugged into his coat and wrapped the muffler around his neck.

“Take that other hat of Carl’s. It will keep you warmer than yours.”

He did as she suggested. Flat-brimmed hats were great for protection from the sun and rain but did nothing for cold such as this. After both men had made three trips, they sat down at the table set for breakfast.

“I know what I’m building next,” Carl said after saying grace.

“What?”

“A house for the pump. I wanted to do it last summer but never had time.” Carl passed the platters of ham and eggs around the table.

“I’m hoping to build a house. Will you be for hire?”

“You get the logs together, and we’ll all come out and put it up in a day, just like a barn raising.”

“Do you know where you plan to build?” Pearl asked.

“Out on Pinewood Creek. That’s one bend upriver from Rand’s place. The bottom there isn’t as large as where he is, but I’m not planning on putting up a lot of buildings. Just a house, barn, and corral. Perhaps a smokehouse.” He glanced up to see Miss O’Shaunasy watching him. He smiled when he caught her eye, and she ducked her chin, but not before a slight smile teased the corners of her mouth.

The jingling of harness bells caught their attention. Carl pushed back his chair and went to the front door. But when he pulled it in to open it, snow covered the opening chest high. “Morning, Charlie, come on around to the back door,” he hollered over the top of it. “Haven’t had time to shovel here.”

“Will do.”

Carl slammed the door before the snow wall fell in on him. “First time that’s happened.”

“I’ll clear it off after breakfast,” McHenry said. “Then I think I’ll ride out and see how Rand and his family are doing.”

“You might do better if you skied. You know how?”

“Never learned. Though Opal did. I remember how that girl can do about anything she sets her mind to.”

“She’s becoming a young woman now, as you saw when she came to visit in her sapphire gown. When she was sent back to New York last summer after the drifter tried to attack her, she returned with two trunks of gowns for all occasions, along with all the shoes and hats one could dream of.” Pearl smiled. “I love watching her grow up.”

“Drifter? What happened?” Jeremiah asked.

Carl turned to Jeremiah. “Long story, but she and Atticus beat him off.”

Pearl shook her head. “Ended in the tragedy of Ward Robinson being killed. Just awful, the whole thing.”

After a knock on the back door, Charlie was inside and stamping snow off his boots. “Near to blind you out there, the sun off that snow.”

“Come and have a cup of coffee with us. There’s more ham and eggs if you’d like.”

“No, thanks, I already had breakfast. Just checking to see that everyone is all right.”

“You going on out to Harrisons’?” McHenry asked.

“Plannin’ on it. You want to come?”

“Sit down and have a cup of coffee while I finish here.”

Amethyst rose and fetched another cup and saucer. “You sure you won’t take a piece of this ham?”

“You twisted my arm.” Charlie hung his coat on the peg and took the chair offered him.

“How are things at your house?” Carl nodded his thanks at the refill Amethyst poured into his cup.

“All right now that I got water and feed to the stock. Won’t nobody be getting much milk after the cows went without water for two days.”

“Yeah, we lost some of the chickens in the last one. Should have let them out of the chicken house, loose in the barn. You’d have thought enough snow seeped in to give them enough to drink. Everyone’s healthy though?”

“Other than baby Thomas—he has a runny nose. Daisy spends most of her waking hours wiping it.” He nodded his thanks when Amethyst set a plate with cookies in front of him. “Ingermeir’s soddy got buried under the snow. He might have to put an extension on his stovepipe to keep his fire burnin’. You could drive a sleigh right over the top of his house if you didn’t see the stovepipe. Helped him dig out some.”

While the men discussed the weather, Amethyst took the baby so that Pearl could eat. She sat the squirming little boy on her lap and patted his back until a solid burp made Carly smile.

“Baby.”

“He sure did burp. You want to help me change him?”

Carly nodded and, after a glance at her mother, slid from her chair.

“Wipe your hands and face.”

Carly looked from her hands to her mother, then licked the jam off one finger. “Done.”

“The washcloth is on the bar on the reservoir. Use it.”

Amethyst laid the baby on the padded flannel quilt on the low chest. The stack of folded diapers on the shelf above it was diminishing rapidly. Time to wash diapers, baby soakers, and gowns.

She heard the men prepare to leave as she pulled the woolen knit soakers back up. Instead of knitting socks for her father, perhaps she should make more soakers for this little one. Had she known she would be staying, she would have packed differently, that was for sure. Although she had brought so few clothes, that wasn’t the issue. And she didn’t need household things, since there were plenty here. But she would have brought her sewing things: needles, thread, scissors, a darning egg, pins.

“Me hold him?” Carly looked up at Amethyst, her eyes pleading.

Oh dear
. Amethyst kept a smile in place while she thought. “I know, let’s go sit in the rocker and you can climb up on my lap to hold the baby.”

“Good.” The little girl ran to the rocker, her eyes dancing. “Me rock baby.”

Holding the child on her hip, Amethyst sat down carefully, then gave Carly a hand to scramble into her lap. With the little girl settled, she positioned the thin arms and sat Joseph on Carly’s lap. “Now hold him but don’t squeeze him.”

Carly gazed at the face of her baby brother. “Sleepy.”

“Babies sleep a lot so they can grow faster.”

“Me bigger.”

“Yes, you are growing like a weed.” Pearl knelt in front of the rocker and smoothed her daughter’s hair back. “Looks like we need to braid your hair.”

Carly shook her head.

“Yes, after we put Joseph to bed.” Pearl reached for the infant. “I’ll put him in his bed now.”

Another nod from Carly. “So grow big, huh?” She slid to the floor as soon as her mother took the baby. “Cookie?”

Amethyst stood. “I’ll get you a cookie.”

After handing Carly her cookie, she tested the water in the boiler. “Do you need this, Mr. Hegland, or can I use it for washing diapers?”

“You go ahead. I’ll bring in more snow to melt.”

Amethyst took the bar of soap and scraped curls off it with a knife into the steaming water. After adding the diapers, she put the cover back on the boiler and moved it closer to the heat to set it boiling. After scraping soap into the dishpan, she finished clearing the table. Pearl reentered the kitchen and headed for the dishes.

“No, you sit there and enjoy your coffee, Pearl. I’m taking care of this.”

“You’ll spoil me.”

“I doubt it. I don’t know how you’ve managed with all this by yourself.”

“We haven’t had many guests here since the summer, when we could have had men sleeping in the barn since so many needed rooms. Some slept in tents and then ate supper here every night. Opal has been a big help, but until the weather lets up, she’ll be staying home.”

“What are you planning on for dinner?” Amethyst asked.

“The goose carcasses from Christmas are in the window box in the pantry. I was thinking of making soup from them. Then for supper we’ll bake that venison haunch, and we can make hash or stew from the remainders. At least this cold weather guarantees we’ll have no worries about anything going bad.”

After Mr. Hegland headed out with buckets of hot water to thaw out the pump—he would add snow to cool it down so as not to crack the metal pump—Pearl joined Amethyst doing the dishes. “Thank you for taking over for me like that. Carl and I never have time to talk during the day.”

“You are welcome.”

“I’ve been thinking.”

“Yes?”

“Mr. McHenry really is a fine gentleman, isn’t he?”

“Seems so.”

“I would imagine he will be looking for a wife now that he is building a home.”

Amethyst shrugged. Not after the way he barked at her, sounding just like her Pa. Of course, any man would be frustrated at stumbling on the stairs like that.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN