Prairie Rose (12 page)

Determined to fulfill her promise to her employer, she selected a pair of grain sacks that had been dyed a beautiful sky blue— the exact color of Seth’s eyes. As she slit the sides of the sacks, Rosie thought about those blue eyes. When Seth had laughed that morning in the barn, his eyes had lit up and begun to sparkle. They fairly glowed against the deep tan of his face—as though they were lit from inside with a hot blue fire. Rosie felt her stomach do an odd little flip-flop at the mere memory of the way Seth Hunter had looked at her as they danced.

She wished she could say it had been a look of fascination, intrigue, or maybe even admiration. But Seth probably thought his hired hand was a little touched in the head, the way she had been so silly about finding the grain sacks. Rosie didn’t care. After all, the first chance she had, she was going to ask Rolf Rustemeyer to marry her, and she felt pretty sure he would say yes. He thought she was beautiful.

She draped the grain sacks over one shoulder and set out from the house toward the creek to find Seth and take his measurements. As she tramped down to the water’s edge, an odd thought occurred to her. She had met Rolf Rustemeyer three times now: the other day on his land, earlier that morning in the barn, and at lunchtime. What color were his eyes?

A pontoon bridge. Perfect. The bridge would drop when the creek ran low—as it did right now. It would rise when the creek ran high. Seth’s infantry unit had built and crossed a hundred pontoon bridges during the war. He knew the bridge across the Bluestem would need to support the weight of heavy wagons and be stable enough to keep travelers from toppling into the water. The construction would require strong cables, two or three flat-bottom skiffs, wood planks for the walkway, and secure piers on each bank. But how to explain the structure to Rolf Rustemeyer?

Seth rubbed a hand around the back of his neck as he studied the big German. Maybe the thing to do was call on Rosie. At lunch, she had managed to teach the fellow the English words for meat, potatoes, and bread. She could get a few facts across to him by pointing things out with her hands or drawing pictures in the dirt.

On the other hand, Seth wasn’t crazy about the way Rustemeyer ogled Rosie. The man had no manners. He followed her around like a big, shaggy dog. When she set out the lunch, he would have wagged his tail if he’d had one. And he ate like he hadn’t had a decent meal in two years. He probably hadn’t. Most bachelor farmers had a hard time tending to both crops and housekeeping. Like every unmarried male homesteader other than Seth, the German would be eager to find himself a wife. Though isolation and language barriers had kept him from the few social gatherings on the prairie, Rustemeyer wouldn’t overlook an unmarried female living so close at hand.

No, Seth thought he’d better try to explain the pontoon bridge to the German without Rosie’s help. After all, she belonged to
him
. No, that wasn’t quite right. She worked for him. And the more she worked around the house, the better he liked having her here. No doubt about it, Rosie could cook. Clean, too. The garden looked good. Chipper stayed busy. Even the floor—

“Fräulein Mills!” Rolf hollered, waving one of his big beefy paws. “How you are?”

Seth glanced up to see Rosie coming down the creek bank, her skirt dancing around her ankles and a smile lighting up her face. She was toting some blue grain sacks over one shoulder. As she approached, Rolf nudged Seth.

“Pretty,
ja?
”

“What is it with you?” Seth said, his voice more irritated than he liked. “Look, Rustemeyer, the fräulein works here. Understand? She works for me.”

“
Ja
. Not vife.”

“No, she’s not my wife.”

“Gut. Sehr gut.”
The German grinned broadly.
“Ich bin glücklich.”
Seth gave a grunt. “Whatever that means.”

“Hello, Mr. Rustemeyer,” Rosie said as she stepped up to the two men. When she looked at Seth, he could see a pair of pink spots on her cheeks. “Mr. Hunter, I’ve come to borrow your shirt for a moment. I need to make a pattern.”

Seth glanced at Rustemeyer, who was scanning Rosie up and down. He wished she would get on back to the house. “Maybe tonight, Miss Mills. We’re busy right now.”

“But I promised you a shirt by Sunday. If I wait to measure until tonight, I’ll never get it done. Tomorrow I’ll be baking bread, and the next day I’ll be making soap, and the day after that I mean to hunt for strawberries. With the gardening and cleaning and gathering chips and such, I barely have time to sit down for a moment. You need a new shirt so badly, Mr. Hunter, and this blue color I’ve found will make your eyes … your eyes …”

The pink spots on her cheeks blossomed into red roses. Seth couldn’t hide the grin that tickled the corners of his mouth. So, Miss Mills wasn’t all housekeeping and chores. Her eyelashes fluttered down, and she cleared her throat.

“This fabric is a very nice shade of blue,” she said, lifting her chin. “It will hide the dirt well, and that shirt you’re wearing is so dirty it could walk around on its own. Now take it off and let me measure it. As soon as you’re wearing the new one, I’ll give the other a wash and you can have it back—if it doesn’t fall to shreds at the first touch of soap and water.”

“All right, you can have it. While I get out of it, see if you can explain a pontoon bridge to Rustemeyer.”

“You’ll have to explain it to me first.”

Briefly, Seth outlined his proposal for the bridge. He had two skiffs himself—one he’d bought off the farmer who went bust— and he suspected Rustemeyer had a third. They could braid regular rope into heavy cable, build piers out of stone and mortar, and add the plank walkway last. With hard work, the construction shouldn’t take too long.

“Think you can get that through his head?” he concluded, jabbing a thumb in the direction of the curious German.

“All you have to do is draw him a picture, Mr. Hunter.” Rosie turned away and knelt to the ground. She began to sketch. “Here’s the bridge.
Brücke
. Here’s the water.
Wasser. Ja?
”

“Sie sprechen Deutsch!”

Rustemeyer squatted down next to Rosie and gazed at her with those big puppy-dog eyes of his. Seth had the urge to topple him straight into the creek.

“You must learn better English,” Rosie said. “Now you and Mr. Hunter are going to build a pontoon bridge. Floating on the water, see? The small boats will float. The water can go up and down, but the wagons can still cross over the bridge.”

With some gratification, Seth watched Rustemeyer shaking his shaggy blond head. Not even Rosie could make the big hound dog understand. Seth dropped his suspenders and pulled his shirt over his head. When his eyes emerged, he saw that Rosie was walking down to the creek. In one hand she held a stone. In the other, she carried a leaf.

“The stone sinks,” she told the German. “You see? It goes under the water. But the leaf floats on top of the water. The bridge must float. Like the leaf.
Float
.”

“
Float
? Nein. Ich verstehe nicht.”

“Oh, he doesn’t understand, Mr. Hunt—” Rosie caught her breath as Seth tossed her his shirt. Her focus dropped to his bare chest, then darted quickly back to his eyes. The flush on her cheeks spread down her neck, and she hugged his shirt as though it were some kind of shield.

“Excuse me,” she muttered. Turning away quickly, she hurried to the spot where she had laid the blue fabric. “I’ll just measure this now.”

“You do that,” Seth said.

He rubbed a hand across his bare chest and gave Rustemeyer a victorious smirk.
See if you can make her blush
, he wanted to crow.
Go ahead and kneel at her feet. Kiss her on the hand. Tell her she’s pretty. Trail her around the house. I don’t notice her turning pink when you look at her, you ol’ shaggy dog
.

“The bridge is going to float, Rustemeyer,” he shouted. He had the feeling if he could just talk loud and slow enough, the German would understand. “A … pontoon … bridge. Like … like boats.”

“
Boat
? Das Boot! Ah, die Schiffbrücke! Ja, ja!”
Rustemeyer splashed out into the creek, spread his long arms wide, and indicated with his hands how the pontoons would float.

“Ja,”
Seth said. “That’s right. You got the idea.”

Excited now, Rustemeyer began a long discourse in German. He pointed at his farm, gestured toward the creek, and formed his hands into circles and parallel lines. As he talked, he strode back and forth in the water. He drew marks on the bank and set stones in little piles. After a while, Seth gave up trying to make sense of it and wandered over to where Rosie was working on the new shirt.

“I think Rustemeyer understands about the bridge,” he said, hunkering down beside her. “It could be tricky getting the cables across the stream. It would be nice to have O’Toole’s help. Even so, I don’t reckon it’ll take us long to build it, once we gather enough lumber.”

“I haven’t seen many trees around here.” Rosie was laying out his shirt as a pattern on the blue cloth. She kept her attention squarely on the fabric. “You may have quite a time getting boards.”

“I bought a big load of lumber off that fellow who went bust. It’s stacked out behind the barn. There’s enough for the bridge and a good start on the house I plan to build after I’ve proved up my claim. I built my barn from that wood. Most folks around here don’t have frame barns, you know.”

“It’s a very nice barn.”

“You been sleeping okay out there?” He wished he could entice her to look at him. He liked the way it flustered her to see him without his shirt. “That blacksnake hasn’t bothered you, has he?”

“Not a bit.”

“You reckon I ought to invite the O’Tooles over after we get the bridge built?”

“That would be nice. Chipper’s been lonely.”

“Maybe we could have a dance in the barn.” He paused and leaned toward her. “Like this morning.”

Rosie bit her lip but kept her attention on her work. “I’ve never been to a real dance,” she said softly as she began to cut the fabric. “I wouldn’t know how to fix things up right.”

Seth sat, stretched out his legs, and plucked a stem of grass. He hadn’t enjoyed talking with a woman this much since … well, he didn’t know when. Mary had always been the one causing him to stumble over his words. The way she had batted her eyes and flounced around him had left him all but dumbfounded. Truth to tell, he had felt like a puppet around her—always ready at her beck and call, always subject to her whims. And Mary Cornwall had had a lot of whims.

But with skinny little Rosie—this brown-eyed twister—he was the boss. He could make her laugh. Make her blush. Make her mad. Look at her now, furiously cutting away on that shirt. All day long he had been thinking about the way Rosie had flung her arms around him. He had liked that. Liked it a lot.

“I reckon a barn dance might be fun, Miss Mills,” he said, chewing on the grass stem. “Come late spring everybody’s working so hard that a break would be good. Maybe you and Sheena could plan the party. What do you think about that?”

Rosie nodded and kept cutting. “Who would come? Everybody’s so spread out.”

“The O’Tooles, of course. Casimir Laski’s a nice fellow. His family could visit. They’d have to stay the night. And then there’s LeBlanc. He’s the French fellow who owns the mill. He’s got a passel of pretty daughters. I’m sure they’d love to dance.”

Rosie stopped her cutting. She was silent for a moment. Then she flipped Seth’s shirt into his arms and stood. “I certainly hope you won’t forget to invite Mr. Rustemeyer,” she said, looking straight into his eyes. “I’m sure he would be more than welcome by the women at the dance. And by the way, he appears to be miles ahead of you in building the bridge.”

Before Seth could stand, Rosie was striding away with the scraps of fabric fluttering in her hands.

“Auf Wiedersehen
, Fräulein Mills
!”
Rustemeyer called to her from the heap of stones he was gathering to build a piling.

She swung around and waved.
“Auf Wiedersehen!”
Before she turned again, she gave Seth a curt nod. “Good day, Mr. Hunter.”