Silver Lining (29 page)

Today she and Max would have to feed the beeves.

She'd seen it coming and had prepared by cooking all day yesterday. Extra loaves of bread filled the bread-box. She had plenty of butter; there were boiled eggs and pickles for something quick. They might get weary of ham, but she'd baked enough to see them though several days if need be. And finally she had crowded the icebox with raisin pies and vanilla pudding.

Thick slices of ham sizzled in the skillet, the gravy was bubbling, and the biscuits ready to come out of the oven when she heard Max enter the mudroom and stamp the snow off his boots.

"Something smells good."

Snowflakes still clung to his eyelashes when he entered the kitchen, carrying the bucket of milk. Louise watched as he spooned cream out of the bucket and into his coffee cup. "Do I have time to shave before breakfast?"

"The biscuits are ready now." She didn't like beards because they hid too much of a man's face. And a mustache caught food and concealed the shape of the upper lip. She preferred a man to be clean-shaven so she could see who she was talking to and dealing with. But there was something ruggedly appealing about Max before he stropped up his razor and shaved. She wouldn't have believed that a time would come when she found herself mooning over a man's morning whiskers. She didn't like to admit it, even to herself.

"Damn."

"What's wrong?" Max asked, wiping snow off his face with her dish towel. "Do you regret volunteering to hay the cattle? I wouldn't blame you if you did."

She hadn't realized she'd spoken aloud. "I was just thinking what a foolish woman I am. But not because I volunteered to be a ranch hand. Sit down so I can dish this up."

"You're a lot of things, darlin', but not foolish. Aside from Ma, you're the least foolish woman I've ever met."

The bones melted in her hand, the pan tipped, and biscuits rolled across the plank floor.

Son of a bitch. He'd called her darlin'. The word just rolled off his tongue as easy as pie, like it had been waiting there for just this moment.

"Did you burn yourself?" He jumped up from the table and took the pan out of her hand, dropping it into the sink.

"The biscuits are ruined." It had to be a mistake. He hadn't meant to call her darlin'. Or he didn't mean it as an endearment, it was only an expression. Very likely he addressed a lot of folks as darlin' and wasn't aware that he did. And she hadn't noticed until now.

"A little grit won't hurt." Leaving her rooted to the floor, Max bent to pick up the biscuits, putting them in a bowl. He turned his head sideways. "You're wearing a pair of my trousers under that apron."

"Well, you didn't think I was going out there to feed cows wearing a skirt, did you?" For no reason at all she was suddenly angry enough to bash him over the head with the skillet. Gripping the handle, she stared down at him, wanting to smack him one.

What was this darlin' business, anyway? She did not want to moon around over his unshaved whiskers, and she did not want him calling her darlin'. No sir. When it was time to walk away from here, she wanted to do it without a pang. Without regret, without a single backward glance. And without hearing the wind whistle through a hole in her heart.

Releasing the skillet, she slammed the oven door, then forked up ham slices and slapped them on the plates. Grits slopped over the pan when she ladled out a couple of scoops and smothered the grits and ham beneath a river of red-eye gravy. Not a single egg yoke survived an assault with the spatula.

"Louise?" Max leaned back when she banged his plate down in front of him. "What happened here?

Why do you suddenly have a burr in your blanket?"

"Just eat your breakfast. And don't go calling me darlin' anymore. I mean it."

He blinked. "I called you darling?"

"Damned straight you did, and I don't like it!"

He sat down and snapped a napkin across his lap. "Exactly when did this terrible offense occur? Last night?"

A rush of color heated her cheeks. The last two nights had been, well, spectacular. She wasn't sure how she felt about that, either. It troubled her that she'd done a complete about-face and was starting to enjoy poking so much. And kissing. Kissing was more thrilling than she had ever dreamed it could be.

"Not last night. You said it just now." She'd been right, he didn't even know he'd called her darlin'. On the one hand, that lessened the offense. On the other hand, that he didn't even know he'd said something nice was pretty insulting.

"Now, I'm not saying you're wrong to be angry and offended. But it seems to me there are a lot worse things one person could call another person than darlin'."

When she looked up, his eyes were sparkling and his lips twitched at the corners.

"In fact, if you wanted to call me darlin', I think I could stand it. I imagine I'd shudder the first time, maybe take offense. Then I think I'd settle down and decide that darlin' was a lot nicer than, oh, something like 'you bastard.'"

She narrowed her eyes and stared at him suspiciously. "You're joshing me, right?"

His eyes twinkled and danced above those twitching lips. "Now would I tease an angry woman?"

Good Lord. That's exactly what he was doing. Louise leaned back in her chair. She didn't think anyone had ever teased her before.

"Darlin'," he said, drawing out the word, "finish your breakfast. Time's wasting. We need to get out there in the storm and find out if we've made a mistake or if we're going to be able to feed those beeves all winter."

"Of course we are," she snapped, staring at him. Her mind had turned mushy. She didn't know if she was still pissy that he'd called her darlin', or if she was flattered and pleased that he'd teased her. Well, damn. Here she went, mooning around again. "How are we going to do it?"

"Have you pitched hay before?"

"I've seen it done. You want more coffee?"

"Watching it and doing it are two different things. Yes, thank you, I'd like more coffee."

"Well, get it yourself and I'd like some, too." The way she was mooning around and falling into wifely service was enough to gag a cat. Most of the time she didn't even notice the bad habits she was developing. If she didn't nip this in the bud, pretty soon she'd be polishing his boots and saddles. "How much hay pitching are we going to be doing?"

He blinked and ran his fingers over the pox marks on his chin, then he got up and poured them both more coffee. "We have to fork the hay out of the stack and onto the sled. Then you drive the team and I'll pitch hay off the back. When the first load is distributed, we'll drive back to the haystack and load up again. We'll know more after this morning, but I figure we'll need at least five or six loads."

Louise smiled and relaxed in her chair. "That doesn't sound too hard."

*

She was dead wrong.

By the time she finished washing the breakfast dishes, bundled up, and trudged out behind the barn, Max had hitched the team and was already pitching hay onto the flat bed of the sled. Like her, he wore a bandanna tied over his hat and knotted under his chin to hold his hat in place. But he'd thrown off his duster. After a few minutes Louise threw off her duster, too. Pitching hay was hard labor, and within minutes she'd worked up a sweat. Long before the sled was loaded she thought her arms were going to fall off her body. Only pride and willpower kept her wielding the pitchfork.

Once the sled was mounded, they stopped to wipe their foreheads and catch their breath. In less than a minute, Louise felt the cold seep through her shirt and trousers and settle in her sweat-damp long johns.

In silence they brushed snow off their shoulders and shrugged on their dusters, then Louise took the reins and Max vaulted onto the back of the sled. Squinting, trying to peer through the thickening snow, she drove the sled out onto the range behind the barn and sheds. She drove slowly so Max could fork hay without falling off.

What surprised her was how scattered the cattle were. She had assumed they would bunch up against the weather. Instead, there were a few beeves here and a few beeves there. None of them were smart enough to walk up to the haystacks and pull off a bite. No, someone like her had to take their meal to them. And they weren't all that easy to spot as snow blanketed their backs and ice rimmed their nostrils.

They were easy to mistake for bushes until they shifted weight.

On their second trip out to the range, they stopped at the stock ponds so Max could knock ice away from the edges and keep the access clear. Louise waited with the team, willing her arms to stop twitching and pretending she wasn't cold to the bone.

After a third bout of pitching hay onto the sled, her long johns were soaked and so was her shirt. Her shoulders and back ached like she'd taken a beating. This time when she gripped the reins and led the team into the storm, the cold found a way inside the duster and formed a thin layer of ice on her wet shirt.

Her teeth chattered during the fifth and sixth drives out to the range, and each time it took longer to load the sled. Louise heard cussing from the back, but she didn't turn around. She muttered a few curses herself.

She didn't know why Max worried about the herd being small this year. It seemed to her there were millions of cows out here in the snow, all hungry and unable to feed themselves, and all of them too dumb to stay close to the barn where a person might hope to easily locate their butts.

When they finally finished, the morning was gone and it was nearly noon . She helped Max unhitch the team then left him to rub down the horses. Lowering her head against the falling snow, she returned to the house and carried in enough wood to fill the stove's firebox.

When Max came in the door and fell onto a kitchen chair with a low sound, she stood stripped down to her long johns, hunched over the warmth of the stove examining the blisters bubbling up on her palms.

"Well, you know what they say. It's not work that kills, but worry." She stared at the blisters. "I was getting soft."

"Who says that?"

"Whoever makes up proverbs. There's always a proverb to make a person feel better about whatever."

"I don't know who I'm madder at. Howard Houser or Shorty Smith." He closed his eyes and stretched his neck against his hand. "Don't go to any trouble over dinner. I'm too tired to eat. Let's just have whatever's left over from breakfast."

"If you can find the energy to slice the ham and bread, I'll stir up some fresh gravy. Lord a'mighty, I'm glad we're finished with that!"

"Darlin', you do know that we have to feed them again before it gets dark."

She groaned, and the string of cuss words that spun out of her mouth would have done a mule skinner proud. But Max was too tired to object to her cussing and she was too tuckered out to object to his calling her darlin'.

After they finished eating in their long johns, they sat in silence, hands cradled around their coffee cups, sober faces turned to the snowy window.

It was going to be a long, hard winter.

*

On sunny days, Louise asked in a hopeful voice whether they still had to feed the cattle, as if Max might announce that beeves didn't get hungry when the sun shone. Like it or not, the snow pack was here to stay until the spring melt, and that meant the cattle couldn't graze, and that meant he and Louise had to feed them. Twice a day. Every day.

Blurred by exhaustion, the days blended into weeks and the sole purpose of life became feeding.

Feeding the horses, the chickens, the cattle, themselves. There wasn't time or energy for much of anything else. He and Louise rolled out of bed and were dressed before dawn; they dropped back in bed shortly after a hurried supper, so fatigued they didn't often try to read but fell asleep within minutes.

Each of them performed only the most necessary chores. The barn didn't get mucked out daily as it had when Shorty was foreman. The only fence lines Max rode were those nearest the house and barn. He chopped enough wood to keep the firebox blazing but couldn't find time to stack logs or chop kindling for tomorrow.

Louise kept them fed and washed what clothing they needed on a piecemeal basis. Housework fell by the wayside except for one item. Every day when she returned from driving the sled, she polished her silver spoon.

On the positive side, Livvy understood they had no spare time for family dinners. For that, Max was grateful and imagined everyone else was, too. But he did make a point of riding up to the main house once a week to check on his mother and make sure her foreman and hands were taking care of business.

Ordinarily Wally would have kept an eye on things, but Wally was riding into town every day to his job at Howard Houser's bank.

Twice Max had seen Philadelphia , but they hadn't spoken. Both times she'd been sitting in the parlor, hands folded in her lap, facing the foyer when he walked in the door. And each time they had stared at each other and he had remembered her running into his arms when he returned from Piney Creek.

Today when he stepped into the foyer and glanced toward the parlor, she wasn't there. Relief or disappointment, he couldn't be sure which, tightened his jaw as he hung up his coat and hat, then went through the house to the kitchen where Livvy waited with coffee and biscuits.

"Eat something," she ordered, sitting at the kitchen table across from him. "I know you miss your dinner when you come over here."

"Just coffee. I had a bite with your hands down at the bunkhouse." Every time he came to the main house, he caught himself listening for footsteps overhead. And sniffing the air for traces of rose petals.

"This situation is never going to seem natural if Philadelphia runs and hides every time I ride down your road. Tell her that she can continue cooking or ironing or sewing or whatever she's doing to help you."

Livvy folded her arms on the table and gave him a long unreadable stare. " Philadelphia 's in town visiting her father," she said finally. "That's good, because you and I have some things to talk about."

He knew that tone of voice. "Am I going to wish I was holding a shot glass instead of a coffee cup?"