Tennessee Touch, Sisters of Spirit #6 (35 page)

“My car,” Walt moaned. “I should have been driving. Not her.”

"It wasn't anyone's fault," Luke Rogers insisted, touching her step-father's hand so he would lip-read what he was saying. "I'll have Jordan check the car, Walt. Just in case."

"Do that."

"Who's he?" Perri asked, signing the words as she spoke. She always signed when speaking to him.

"An insurance investigator. He finds things the police miss. Crystal should have slowed down for her own driveway."

"A scorpion was in the car."

"A scorpion? You're sure?"

"Yes. She told me. She’s terrified of them."

Luke frowned. "You're positive she was talking about an insect."

"Well...sure." Perri looked at him, puzzled. What other kind was there?

"We won't bother Jordan then. I'll take care of your latest project, Walt. Don't worry about things at the office." Bending down, Luke Rogers picked up the pendant by its leather thong. "You won't want to lose this," he added, dropping the smooth ivory into Perri's hand.

She clutched the pendant with both hands. "Mom kept saying she wanted me to have it. She wouldn't let me take care of her until I took it."

"Injured people tend to focus on one thing," Luke said. "Usually it's an object; sometimes a person."

His words made Perri remember her step-brother, in the middle of a three-week business trip. "Owen. He needs to know."

"Right," Walt agreed, then looked straight at his boss. "Ask the company to bring Owen home. He needs to be here."

"Regardless?"

"Yes."

"Alvaro, wasn't it?" Luke Rogers mouthed the words, but Perri could read lips very well, having practiced with her step-father.

"Yes. Just don't tell Owen why he needs to come home. I wouldn't want him to get careless."

* * *

"Is he dead?"

"No. His wife took the car."

"I thought you never missed."

"I don’t, normally. But an accident, like you requested—well, it's not so certain. I’ll set up another."

"Cancel that. I've a better plan; one that will rid me of both him and his son."

"He has a daughter."

"Splendid. She can be the bait."

Can’t get enough of those sisters? Snatch up
SONGS FOR PERRI
,
#5 Sisters of Spirit
   Romantic mystery, suspense, contemporary.  
Perri travels to Mexico to rescue her brother, and finds a man of many masks.
“Charming and wonderful with a dramatic twist at the end.” AddyM

All sweet, all contemporary, and this one with mystery and suspense. The Sisters are in danger again.  Pick up
SPIRIT OF A CHAMPION
,
#7 Sisters of Spirit
   Romantic mystery, contemporary.
Stormy is a veteran crusader, and when she discovers the danger her brother faces, she flies to the rescue.No one believes her. She gets help from Hugo and her cousin, Perri, whom you met in
Songs for Perri.

A complete short pioneer story by Nancy Radke

(The Traherns Series)

I hitched my creaky old rocker out onto the wooden porch of my old home and set a bit, watching the early summer sun fall down over the Tennessee mountains. There was no one around to ask me to get them a bite to eat, or for help, or for anything. I was all alone on the mountain.

Mallory Buchanan hadn’t been gone two days and already I missed that gal. I missed the knowledge of her being there, just a few miles away on the other side of the mountain. She should be almost in Kentucky, if she took the most direct trail to Missouri.

Mally was the last of ‘em, God bless ‘er. With my husband, Jacob, gone five years now, alive or dead I had no way of knowing, and all my boys off to this war between the states or the western lands, I had a whole mountain to myself. I was used to loneliness, but this here went a mite too far.

“Well, Abigail Courtney, what you gonna do now?” My voice sounded strange. I was used to talking to the animals, but not much to myself.

I had the rest of the summer to answer my question. I needed to be off this mountain before winter, for I sure as shootin’ wouldn’t live through another one. Last winter had just about done me in. Mally had come over to help me drag in some firewood. Said she had thought about me, and wondered how I was, so left off nursing her sick mother and come to see if I was still kickin’.

The wood had froze to the ground, complements of an ice storm, and we hacked at it until we had enough broke loose I could rebuild my fire. It had gone out two days before, and I hadn’t been able to cook or keep warm. I had finally decided I was going to have to pull down some of the barn siding, when she came.

When Mally and her mom had been next door, we women would get together to do the heavy lifting and hauling. Now they were gone. Although I didn’t need them at the moment, I sure would later on. Should I even try to keep farming through the summer? Sooner or later I was gonna have to leave.

The mountain farm had been my home ever since my man Jacob had brought me here as a new bride, and tears watered my eyes at the thought of leaving it. He’d built it strong to withstand the mountain storms. A strong house for a strong man. It had stood against the storms for many years, but things needed done to it that a woman couldn’t rightly do. There’d been a few shingles blown off and the door didn’t quite close snug anymore, so the wind howled as it passed through. Two windows needed repair, and a new post put on the porch roof.

Also, I’d lived here so long, I figured the rest of the world had passed me by whilst I was raising my brood. I had no idea what the world was like, apart from the small settlements at the base of the mountains.

I had me a dilemma. I was too old to pick up and move out and too young to stay. I was still in my forties. A woman needs a man, just as a man needs a woman. But I was too old to put up with another man—and didn’t want to—and too young to want to live alone any longer.

The breeze blowing past was cooler than before and I looked over that way at some gathering clouds, black and billowing.

“Storm blowin’ up and you ain’t got yer pigs in. Or the cow milked. Best rustle along and get things rounded up.”

Trouble was, I was tireder than a three-legged mule with the field only half-way plowed. I’d been trying to cut fence poles with a dull axe. When the raiders come last winter, one of them had relieved me of my whet stone. There’s nothing more dangerous than a dull axe, for it tends to bounce rather than cut. You had to swing it harder to dent the wood, and if it bounced onto your leg, you landed yourself in a heap of trouble.

I had walked over to Mally’s old house yesterday and gathered a few of the blankets she’d left. Mally had also left a sharp axe, along with a good whetting stone, and I latched onto them like a tick onto a dog. First thing this morning I’d taken that stone to my tools, sharpening my hoe, my knife, my axe and my sickle. Then I’d whacked away at the trees with great zeal, got several poles cut and blisters to show for them.

The cow bawled and I forced myself to move. I grabbed my bucket with the big dent in it where she’d put her foot last week, and took it down to where she was waiting impatiently.

Old Aggie was standing next to the milking station, ready to have her grain while I milked.

“Too bad, old girl. There ain’t any more.” I had some, but I needed it for seed.

I wiped her udder down with an old rag, straightened up the one-legged milking stool, put the bucket between my knees and commenced to milk.

I put my head in her flank while I watched the milk shoot into the bucket, a hard shot of milk with each squeeze. Squirt, squirt, squirt, squirt. The rhythm was always soothing. I did my best thinking, milking cows.

 Jacob used to give our cats milk, a squirt to their open mouths. I had never perfected the art. Also, our cats were all gone, probably eaten by the wolves. Even our ole hound dog, the one Jacob had trained, had passed away last fall.

I missed that dog. He was a good hunter. Jacob would take him out and bring back meat every time. Sometimes ducks. Sometimes deer. With Jacob gone, that dog would still go out and bring me back a quail or a duck. He’d just hunt on his own. I never had to feed him.

I had hid Old Aggie all during the war, taking her down into a hidden root cellar and staying with her while the raiders passed through. I’d hear ‘em comin’ and have just enough time to grab Aggie’s collar and hurry her over to the cellar. They’d stole my chickens and ridden over my young corn. Of the rest of the animals, only the pigs survived, hiding in the tangled brush as pigs know how to do. I didn’t even have a gun to defend myself if they’d have found me.

I’d been living on Aggie’s milk for many days now. I had no mule, but I wondered if maybe I could get her to pull a plow, just enough to put in the last of my seed grain that I’d refused to eat. I had been able to train her pretty quick to lead with that collar, which was just a strap around her neck.

This farm needed a man. Mine had all skedaddled. You’d think a woman who had raised five strapping boys would have had at least one stay to help her. But they wouldn’t stay. Each had gotten bit by the wandering bug, and when the restlessness was too great, they’d pack a kit, promise to come back, and vanish down the trail. The first two had left within a month of Jacob’s leaving, and later that year, when Paralee turned sixteen, he took off too.

I stripped the last milk out onto the ground, picked up my bucket and kicked the milk stool over by the gate.