Read Online Dorothy Garlock - [Wabash River] by Yesteryear - Free Book Online

worry about you shooting me in the back. And it’s been longer than that since I sat at the table with
two
pretty ladies.”
    “Why you sayin’ that, white man? You know I’m a colored,” Trisha hissed as she spun around. Her golden eyes shone like those of an angry cat.
    “So you’ve got a dab of color. I’m part Irish, part Scot, part French. My pa’s stepfather was Shawnee. My grandmother married him because she wanted to, not because she had to. I’m named for him. John Spotted Elk Tallman. Is that the reason you won’t eat at the table with me?”
    “Ya know it ain’t!”
    “Then please sit down. I’m so hungry for these biscuits I could eat a sick dog.”
    “Ugh!” Jane Ann said, and stuck out her tongue.
    Trisha flounced around the table and plopped herself down in her chair.
    Addie hadn’t realized that she was holding her breath until she let it out. She looked into the man’s eyes and silently thanked him with hers.
    The meal would have been eaten in silence had not Dillon and Jane Ann kept up a continual chatter. They were enjoying themselves. Addie had told them to hush up only once, when Dillon started to say something about going to the outhouse. John talked to Jane Ann and Dillon, knowing the others had troubles on their minds.
    “When I was a boy, I found a baby skunk. I don’t know what happened to its mother.”
    “Did it stink?” Jane Ann asked.
    “Not at first. I carried it around in a pouch I hung around my neck. One day I climbed a tree and couldn’t get down with the pouch. My mother stood under the tree and told me to drop it and she would catch it. I dropped it. We discovered then it was old enough to . . . you know.”
    The children laughed. Colin sat with his head bowed over his plate.
    “What did she do?” Dillon asked, gazing into John’s face.
    “She made me take it to the woods and let it go.”
    “What was its name?”
    “Rose. I guess I hoped she would smell like one.” John caught Addie’s eye and winked. Just a hint of a smile touched her lips before she turned away. “Thanks for the meal, ma’am. I don’t know when I’ve had better. I’d like to repair that rail fence if the boy here would give me a hand. In a few places a good strong wind will blow it over.”
    Colin got to his feet without looking up. Addie rose too.
    “Colin . . . if you’d rather not—”
    “I want to. I can’t spend my life hidin’ behind your skirts, Miss Addie.”
    Addie stood in the doorway and watched the boy walk across the yard with the tall man. She was suddenly struck with the thought that had Kirby Hyde been more like this man, he would have survived to come home to her and their son, and now she wouldn’t feel so alone and scared.

CHAPTER
    *  5  *
    B y midmorning, six posts had been replaced and rails added to the fence where needed. Colin worked alongside John, speaking only when spoken to. The boy was a good worker, often anticipating what was needed and fetching it before John asked. When they finished with the fence, they stood back to survey their work.
    “It wouldn’t hold a herd of wild horses, Colin, but it’ll do for a horse, a cow, and a couple of sheep.”
    “Daisy and Myrtle wouldn’t run off if we left ’em in the yard.”
    John looked down at the boy. It was the first time he had volunteered anything.
    “They’re a couple of smart horses. They know which side of the bread the butter is on.”
    “What’s that mean?”
    “It means they know a good thing when they see it. In other words, they want to stay with folks that are good to them and feed them.”
    Trisha, working in the garden, was watching them. The rifle was never far from her hand. John wondered if the gun was intended as protection against him or if she was expecting someone else.
    The scene he had witnessed in the early morning stayed in John’s mind as a disturbing presence. He could still hear Addie Hyde’s heartbreaking sobs and see the two women and the boy holding on to