The Hired Man

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“Because first you’re gonna learn to ride bareback. The saddle comes later.”

The boy dropped his book satchel in the dust and reached up to touch the mare’s nose. “H’lo, Sally. Gosh, you’re real handsome, and...” All at once he looked doubtful. “How am I gonna get up there without a stirrup?”

“Indian boys don’t use saddles or stirrups. How do you think they do it?”

“They... I bet they stand on something so’s they can reach.”

Cord shifted the saddle so he could make a foothold with his hands. “Step here,” he ordered. “Now, grab some of the mane and haul yourself up.” He watched the boy hold tight to a fistful of mane and clamber onto Sally’s broad back.

When he was sitting upright, he sent Cord a triumphant smile. “What do I do now?”

“Squeeze your knees right around her belly and let go of her mane. Then pick up the reins. You won’t fall off if you keep your knees tight.”

“O-okay. My knees are squeezin’ like anything and I’m gonna let go of all this hair.” He lifted one hand a scant inch from Sally’s thick mane, then gingerly freed the other and grabbed the leather lines.

“Now,” Cord said, “give her a little nudge with your heel.”

“Can’t,” Danny announced.

“Why not?”

“I’m scared she’ll move!”

Cord chuckled. “That’s what you want her to do, Dan. Try it.”

The horse moved ahead a single step and Danny yelped. “Hell, Cord, she’s moving!”

“Watch your mouth, son. There are some things I will tell your ma about.”

“S-sorry.” He patted the mare’s neck. “Sorry, Sally.”

Cord bit back a grin, turned away and headed down the road. “You know how to make her go,” he called over his shoulder. “If you want her to stop just pull back on the reins and say ‘whoa.’”

“Hell—Golly, Cord, I don’t know...”

But after a moment Cord heard the unmistakable clop-clop of Sally’s hooves on the road behind him. He dropped back to walk alongside the mounted boy and tried to remember how he’d felt the first time he’d ever felt a horse move under him. Scared. Proud. All “growed-up,” as Danny put it.

Well before they reached the turnoff to the farm, Cord raised his hand and the boy brought the mare to a halt and slipped off. “You gonna mount up like you just rode in from town?”

“Nope.” He grasped the reins and walked alongside Danny until they reached the farm. He motioned the boy to open the gate and walked the horse through.

“Won’t Ma think it’s strange, you walkin’ and carryin’ your saddle like that?”

“Probably. But your ma thinks a lot of the things I do are strange, like wanting her to lock the doors at night.”

Danny chortled. “And baking pies.”

They both laughed all the way into the barn.

Chapter Nine (#ub3a4fbdf-f875-5b82-a0cf-8c3bd12de7ef)

The sound of insistent hammering stopped conversation on the porch, for which Eleanor was extremely grateful. Red Wilkins looked up from the glass of lemonade she had just poured. “Whazzat?”

She always made sure Red had a full glass; he talked less when he was guzzling his lemonade. “My hired man is repairing the barn roof.”

Silas Maginnis nudged his spectacles down and peered over the thick lenses at the barn. “Hope he knows what he’s doing, Miss Eleanor. Can’t be too careful about hired help these days.”

She gritted her teeth. “More lemonade, Silas?” Silently she prayed the hammering would resume and the conversation with her two unwanted callers would stop. She could hardly wait.

“He’s workin’ on the Sabbath, too,” Red observed. Mighty un-Christian-like.”

Silas nodded his shiny bald head. “Mighty unhelpful, too, makin’ all that clatter while we’re out here on your porch tryin’ to be sociable.”

At that, Eleanor almost laughed aloud. Please, she silently begged Cord. Make some more clatter. Lots more. She settled back into the porch swing and pushed it into motion with her foot. She hated being sociable.

For the hundredth time this spring she wondered why Silas and Red and the half dozen other young men from town bothered to bring her supplies or her mail or the town gossip or come calling, since for all they knew she was a married woman. Since she had never received word of Tom’s death, in many ways she considered that she was still married, even though Judge Silver in town said that technically she wasn’t.

She had never given even one hint of encouragement to the stream of male visitors from town, and she often wondered why they didn’t give up and stop coming. They couldn’t possibly be interested in her. Or maybe, she thought with sudden misgiving, it was not her they were interested in, but her farm?

She checked the lemonade level in their glasses and tried to close her ears to the debate about whether goats were easier to raise than sheep. Reciting the multiplication table would be more interesting than this conversation!

Her gaze drifted up to the barn roof, where Cord was pounding nails into a long piece of wood. It was hot this afternoon, the sun relentless and the breeze absent. Bees hummed in the lilac bush, and somewhere a mockingbird trilled and twittered an ever-changing song.

Eleanor is bored, it seemed to sing. Bored, bored, bored!

From his vantage point on the barn roof Cord had a bird’s-eye view of the activity on the front porch. He flipped the new board over and paused to study the two visitors Eleanor was entertaining. Town types. Pressed creases in their trousers, boots polished to a shine, shirts starched so stiff they could stand up by themselves. The fellow with the spectacles had brought the mail out from town; the other gent had brought a tin of fancy chocolates, which he was devouring along with his lemonade.

Molly had fled to the barn to play with the kittens. Danny had groomed Cord’s bay mare and was now lounging around the yard playing marbles with himself. Cord positioned another two-by-six to replace a rotted plank and set a nail in place. He had just raised his hammer when Eleanor’s suddenly upturned face made him check his motion.

She picked up the lemonade pitcher, pointed her forefinger at it and raised her eyebrows at him. Did he want some lemonade?

Sure he did. But she was down there on the porch and he was up here on the roof, so he shook his head. A look of resignation crossed her face, and she turned her attention back to her visitors.

He had to laugh. It was plain she wasn’t enjoying this social call, but he had to wonder why the men lounging on her porch didn’t take the hint.

In the next minute he figured it out. They wanted something. Cold lemonade on a hot day? Female attention? The goodwill earned by bringing offerings of mail or chocolates or spools of thread from town?

His hammer slowed. Or maybe they wanted her?

He drove the waiting nail home in a single blow. When he positioned the next one, he purposely shifted his body around so his back was facing the front porch and he couldn’t see her. But he could still hear the continuous drone of the two male voices. Made him clench his jaw.

Eleanor didn’t seem to be saying much, and that was kinda odd. Wasn’t an afternoon social call an occasion for give-and-take conversation? As far as he could tell, this afternoon was all “take” by the two gents but no “give” from Eleanor.