THE COW HE CAME TO BUY

by

Chapter 5

THEME:
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I stared at him.

"You want to hire me?"

"Yes."

"At your ranch?"

"Three days a week."

My thoughts stumbled over one another.

"And Clover?"

"Stays here."

"Why would she stay here if I work there?"

"You bring milk."

"Eleven miles?"

"You can make butter and cheese here when it suits you, or at the ranch. I have wagons coming through this road often enough. We can arrange transportation."

He tapped the bills.

"I advance you forty dollars against wages."

"No."

"You repay it through the summer."

"No."

"If the word advance offends you, call it the first month's pay."

"For work I have not done."

"You will."

"You cannot know that."

His eyes moved once around my house, over the clean table and patched curtain, then to my hands.

"I suspect I can."

I hated that the answer warmed something in me.

My pride came up like a shield.

"You think because you've seen my bank note you know me."

"No, ma'am."

"No?"

"No."

Then the corner of his mouth shifted.

"But I suspect your pride is considerable."

"My pride is not your concern."

"No, ma'am."

Outside, Oscar shouted.

"Mama!"

I was moving before I had time to think.

I reached the doorway with Adrien directly behind me.

Oscar stood beside Clover, one hand pointing north.

A rider was coming hard along the track.

Dust rose behind him.

At first I saw only a man in a brown coat on a black gelding.

Then the horse came closer.

White sock on the left hind leg.

My fingers closed around the doorframe.

I knew that horse.

Or one like it.

But horses changed.

Men did too.

Then the rider straightened.

My heart stopped.

Some faces can be forgotten slowly.

Others wait inside you.

They survive anger.

Years.

Court papers.

Nights of telling yourself you have stopped wondering.

Curtis Dunore rode into my yard nearly three years after walking out of it.

He looked older.

Thinner.

There was more beard along his jaw and deeper hollows under his eyes.

But it was him.

Oscar turned to me.

"Mama?"

I could not answer.

Adrien looked from the rider to my face.

He understood before Oscar did.

Curtis reined in twenty feet from us.

For a moment nobody moved.

Then he smiled.

That smile had once convinced me to leave a dance early and walk home beneath August stars.

That smile had once made me believe a poor man with brave plans was worth every hardship.

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