Rebellion in the Valley (12 page)

Teasing, he nodded.

“Well, Daddy said I could get some sheep,
right?”

“That he did.”

“That brings me to what I need from you,”
blinking her eyelashes a bit much, she placed both hands under her
chin. “Do you think you could help me bake a pie for the Hoods?
They might think of me as annoying if I stopped by asking for a
favor without bringing them something in return.”

“Girl, your list of things to do has grown
over this past year, but I have to hand it to you,” Richard nodded
as he cut the vegetables and scooped them up. “Seems like you’re
more than able to keep up with your interests. All except that idea
of teaching Epoenah to walk backwards, that is.”

“Hey! Have you been comparing notes with
Tobias or something?”

Changing the subject straight away, Richard
tilted his head to side and inquired, “Are we talking about a fresh
filling for that pie, or should we pull out a jar from the
pantry?”

P

Tom Hood stood in the yard with a heavy ax
hung on his shoulder and the Rosita sunshine in his eyes. The
unevenly stacked pile of pine at his feet begged him to finish the
job at hand, but judging from the look Hailee caught on his face,
his back leaned more toward taking a break.

Just as he swung the ax again, Susan called
out the window, “Tom, isn’t that the Johnson girl?”

Hailee waved and called back, “Yes, It’s me,
Mrs. Hood! Are you busy?”

Susan flashed that inviting grin all the
neighbors had grown to love.

“Never too busy for you, dear!” she responded
as the heavy wooden door flung wide open.

Tom propped the ax up against the wood pile,
thankful for the rest he intended to take anyway.

“And especially never too busy when you’re
bringing food,” he teased when he saw the checkerboard cloth
covering what was, he hoped, a baked good of some sort.

Susan shook her head.

“Oh, never mind Tom,” she chuckled. “I
haven’t had a chance to bake much of anything sweet for almost a
week now and I suspect he might be able to smell treats from fifty
yards at this point.”

Grinning in agreement to that assumption, he
propped his ax up against the pile and held out an arm as if to
escort the treat-toting ladies inside.

“Young lady, how is that father of yours?
Last time I saw him, we were both standing in line to pay for some
grain in Westcliffe,” Tom recollected. “If memory serves me right,
he has a notion on planting a whole new crop of apples. Is that
so?”

She nodded and grimaced all at once. “Yes, it
is; I’m certain to be one of the main recipients of a good blister
when the hole-digging begins,” she glanced down to both palms. “But
that won’t be for a while, anyway, seeing as how he and some of the
others have gone off for a while.”

Tom listened to Hailee’s explanation as to
where her father had gone and for what reason. The news allowed
both he and his wife a sense of relief.

“Good. Long as they stay close to the canyon,
I bet they’ll come across her; she’s causing a lot of trouble
around here. I know several of us up and down this stretch of road
alone have lost critters,” Tom reached over and took Susan’s
hand.

“We even lost our favorite kitty,” he
mumbled, taking note of his wife’s saddened face.

Susan’s head bobbed in disbelief, as if she
still held out some measure of hope to see her furry little friend
scurry across the floor at any moment.

Before Hailee offered any words of comfort,
Susan stated, “A young girl doesn’t come all the way down the road
with a fresh peach pie just to hear about the misfortunes of other
people’s critters. What I’m hoping is, you’ve come to ask me for
help in one way or another. My girls have all grown up and moved
into town. It sure would be nice to be needed for a little
something now and again,” she smiled.

Hailee blushed. Had she really been that
obvious?

“Well, now that you mention it, I heard you
know how to spin your own yarn from your sheep. Is that true?”

“Is that true?” Tom repeated. “That’s my cue
to scoot on back outside. I thank you for the peach pie, Hailee,
but this is where I get on with my work,” he winked.

The women scooted their chairs to different
spots around the kitchen table, pushing dishes off to the side for
the moment as Susan leaned in closer.

“Maybe if you could fill me in with what you
already know about sheep and the caring for them, tending to them,
fleecing them -”

“Oh, my goodness, I’m about as clueless as
you might imagine! All I know about sheep is, I get my yarn and
sewing thread from them. I have no idea how the color gets into the
thread or how it gets wound onto those tiny little spools. Can you
teach me all that stuff?”

Nodding her head, Susan’s expression
demonstrated patience with the inexperienced sheep lover.

“Have you got any supplies to use once you
have yarn or thread?”

“My mother’s old spinning wheel is upstairs
in Daddy’s bedroom. He keeps it dusted and said he oils it every
now and again, gives the wheel a spin to prevent the thing from
locking up. But you know something? Not once have I ever sat behind
that wheel,” she trailed off.

Susan allowed her a moment to herself, and
then when the young lady returned to the present, she asked, “Are
you and your father comfortable with you using your mother’s tools
and wheel - or have they just been put away?”

“Oh, no! Daddy’s told me more than once that
any time I’m ready, they belong to me. It’s just that I almost
feel…intrusive by touching it. I didn’t know my mom but I know she
would have wanted me to learn her trademark craft, to carry it on.
Still,” she looked down to the floor. ”It just feels like I’d be
touching things I shouldn’t be.”

Susan nodded.

“I completely understand. When my own mamma
died, it took me a full month to empty her coffee-drinking tin,”
she reflected, then chuckled to herself. ”Would you believe the
coffee actually molded inside that tin cup before I could bring
myself to touch it?”

They sat for a few moments and allowed
themselves every bit of the silence they shared.

“Well,” Susan began. ”I guess we start from
scratch, then. Are you planning on keeping your own sheep or farm
them out?”

“Farm them out?”

The look on Susan’s face told her otherwise
and she had to laugh at the girl’s expression.

“How many do you think I’ll need just to get
started?”

“I think animals should have at least two of
each of its own kind to keep ’em company, but that’s just the way I
feel. One should suffice just fine.”

Hailee grinned and replied that she had
already asked her father for two or three and received the approval
she was hoping for.

“Daddy even promised to take me into
Westcliffe to purchase feed as soon as he gets back home. Preacher
McDermott has the sheep waiting for me in his barnyard.”

“Then we best get to teaching you how to tend
to your new critters properly, and that begins with a proper pen. I
imagine your pa already has that covered and knows all about their
feeding needs, but if you want this project to be all yours, you
should plan to all the feeding and tending all by yourself. I just
think you’ll appreciate the end project so much more that way.”

“And I’m sure Daddy will, too,” the young
lady responded in a grin. “All my father needs is three more things
to take care of.”

Pouring a couple of servings of tea, Hailee
watched her new instructor pull out two pencils and some paper. She
proceeded to draw out the parts of the spinning wheel and asked her
student to copy them onto her own sheet of paper.

“This is how my mama taught me,” she
explained. “You need to know what each part is called before you
can understand what each of those parts does.”

Half an hour passed by before the lesson of
part-and-function ended; Susan scooted a heavy spinning wheel from
the corner of the room until she had the front facing the center of
the room.

“Honey,” Susan asked, “would you mind
bringing that over here?” She pointed at the woven basket housing
several skeins of yarn and miscellaneous tools such as hooks for
crocheting, needles for knitting, scissors and other supplies
necessary for a spinner and her craft

Looking into her supply basket made Hailee
remember that large basket in the food pantry Richard never seemed
to use and made a mental note to ask him if she could have it for
her own supplies.

Susan proceeded to explain everything she
knew about yarn, taking the girls plumb into the dinner time
hour.

The ladies worked together in the Hood’s
kitchen, making toasted cheese sandwiches and a batch of seasoned
fried taters with green onions to go with the meal, barely stopping
for breath as they chattered on and on.

Once the trio had polished off the last of
the pie Hailee brought earlier in the day, Tom offered to take
Hailee back home in the wagon.

When she began to protest, Susan held up one
hand and gave her the surrogate mother look.

“Not with that cat still unaccounted for,”
she scolded. “I’d never forgive myself if anything happened to you,
especially with your daddy being gone right now. So grab your pie
plate and give me a hug before ya go,” Susan smiled once more. “And
let me know what you Pa says about the sheep,” she added.

Just as the wagon turned into the Red Bone
Ranch, Hailee turned to Tom.

“Ya know, if I would’ve known how much fun
you and Susan can be, I would have come bothering you long before
today,” she smiled, then turned in her seat to give him a giant hug
before leaping off the buckboard seat.

Tom handed the brown pie plate down to her
and reminded her to come back any old time she felt the urge to get
away for a while.

That night, as she sat in front of her
bedroom mirror with hairbrush in hand, Hailee felt blessed to have
a connection to so many good people in her life; it was a fact that
her family was a small one, but there was nothing small about the
amount of love that filled her life.

Chapter 12

A
s
Bruce scanned the depths and crannies of Puma Canyon, his eyes
narrowed as if he could see behind the enormous boulders by doing
so; cautious as his men were, the cat’s home could be almost
anywhere. Lodge pole pines surrounding the cliffs would help that
dang thing stay hidden from human eyes.

With the steepest climb in the canyon laying
in the stretch of road before them, the packed dirt offered a route
only wide enough for maybe two horses, side by side; the fella
having the misfortune of riding on the outside of the path best not
have a fear of heights, as the bottom of the ravine shouted threats
of a most unpleasant landing.

As if those threats had been heard and
understood clearly enough, a couple of the men snugged to the
inside of the canyon wall, allowing their horses to keep at a slow
trot and no more. Rattlesnakes peeking heads out from under one of
those sun-warmed boulders and spooking a man’s horse as it
slithered under hoof could mean the end of the day for a rider;
without the extra space for a horse to properly kick and whinny
it’s disapproval, every eye focused both overhead in the crags for
the cat – and underfoot for snakes.

A stiff breeze weaved its way through the
trees in the canyon below and the scrub oak spotting upward on the
sides of the canyon.

When it caught the hat perched atop one of
the men’s head, he reached up with a swift hand to grab for it, but
his prized head covering was long gone.

“Well, heck!” he grumbled. “I just got that
dang thing in town, and now I gotta go get me another one!”

His riding partner chuckled and told him it
was ugly when it was new anyhow.

“I liked your old one better. It wasn’t so
fancy,” he grinned, reminding his hatless friend about the numerous
bird droppings the other one had managed to collect.

“You saying you’d rather look at me covered
in bird stuff?”

“Well,” his friend’s grin widened as he
continued to tease, “just until cows learn how to fly.”

“You’re one of those comical fellas, aren’t
you? And I got me front row seats,” he shook his head, glancing
over to Bruce.

“Hey, you know what I could go for right
about now?”

His friend made a face and twirled a finger
at the side of his head in the widely-accepted motion indicating
craziness. “Half a lick of sense?”

“Hilarious. I was thinkin' about a handful of
those cherry taffy candies we got in town. Don’t that sound real
good?”

“They about tore the rest of my teeth out of
my head, but they sure did it in the sweetest of ways,” he agreed.
“I could go for a big ole hunk of cake, even,” he suggested.

Bringing up the rear of the procession, Duffy
grunted his input to his fellow worker’s conversation and it
occurred to Bruce the man’s entire day had been spent riding alone,
keeping to himself and avoiding human interaction.

Wishing he could muster the courage to come
on out and ask the man what was on his mind, Bruce opted to leave
him be for a while. He had come to the conclusion that sometimes
people change and it’s as simple as that; he decided sometimes even
they don’t understand how or why.

“You’re making my mouth water, boys,” Bruce
groaned.

Changing the subject off food, he ran a
sweaty hand down his dungaree pants and posed the question of how a
man’s hands get so grimy just sitting on top of his horse.

“I’m hoping for a good, long soak in the tub
soon as we get home, I know that much,” he volunteered, wiping grit
from between his fingers.

Returning his attention back to the canyon
walls where the wind steadily picked up its pace again, he noticed
the leaves beginning their fall color-changing and made a mental
note to bring a few of them home for his daughter.