Sins of Summer
Authors: Dorothy Garlock
Dear Reader,
In so many of my previous books, the hero and heroine triumph over the hardships of a westward-expanding America. I’ve enjoyed
writing my Western romances, hope you’ve enjoyed reading them, and still intend to write more of them.
Yet lately I’ve been longing to tell a story from a more recent time in our history, the period between World Wars I and II,
years when young lovers faced a different kind of hardship: the Great Depression. Drama and romance flowered then as well.
Gangsters, every bit as nefarious as western outlaws, made violent headlines while young people danced to new jazz rhythms
that shocked their elders. As always, strong family ties were the keys to survival.
With Hope
is the first of at least three novels I’m writing set in the 1930s. It tells the story of a woman trying to keep her farm
and misfit siblings together after her parents’ deaths, and of the strong, kind-hearted man who helps her but can’t offer
her the one thing he wants to give her the most.
I hope you’ll enjoy it when it comes your way in the fall of 1998.
With thanks to all my loyal readers,
Dorothy Garlock
Annie Lash
Dream River
Forever Victoria
A Gentle Giving
Glorious Dawn
Homeplace
Lonesome River
Love and Cherish
Larkspur
Midnight Blue
Nightrose
Restless
Wind
Ribbon in the Sky
River of Tomorrow
The Searching Hearts
Sins of Summer
Sweetwater
Tenderness
The Listening Sky
This Loving Land
Wayward Wind
Wild Sweet Wilderness
Wind of Promise
Yesteryear
Published by
WARNER BOOKS
WARNER BOOKS EDITION
Copyright © 1994 by Dorothy Garlock
All rights reserved.
Warner Books, Inc.
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10017
Visit our website at
www.HachetteBookGroup.com
First eBook Edition: September 2009
ISBN: 978-0-7595-2277-0
Contents
For the Tulsa gang—
Joy and Mike Bruza,
Caroline and Emily
Janythe and Tim Graham
Lauren and Scott
Jennifer Carwile
Meredith and Matt
And in memory of Jack and Tony Bruza
* 1 *
“We’re almost there.”
The man lowered his head and spoke to the girl, although he knew that she could not hear him. Five miles back he had taken
her from her horse, placed her in front of him in the saddle, and opened his sheepskin coat and wrapped it and a blanket around
her. They had been traveling since daybreak, stopping only a time or two to rest the horses and to eat the meat and biscuits
he had stored in his saddlebags.
It was quiet and bitterly cold.
The snow seemed to go on forever. The wind worked softly, smoothing out the snow around the gray spiky trunks and naked branches
that edged the road. Flakes touched the man’s whiskered face and stayed there. The creases in his coat and the blanket wrapped
around the girl became a web of white lines.
Around a little bend the road flattened out and buildings came in sight. The weary man sighed with relief.
A track of rutted snow and mud led to a weathered-plank, two-storied house, a barn, outbuildings, and a few shacks. Black
smoke oozed out of chimneys. This was the Callahan Lumber Company headquarters, not unlike a dozen other operations in the
Bitterroot Range of Idaho.
The man glanced with curiosity at the house as he passed it on the way to the barn. It was big and square with tall, narrow
windows. The front door looked as if it were seldom, if ever, used. A large covered porch ran along the back of the house.
Light came from the back windows.
The horse, sensing the end of the journey, walked faster, whinnied softly, and stopped at the barn door. The man shook the
girl. She looked up with questioning eyes. Without speaking, he lifted her to the ground, dismounted, swung back the heavy
door and motioned her to go ahead. He followed, leading the horses. It was dark in the barn. Before he closed the door, shutting
out what little light the late afternoon provided, he lit a lantern.
The girl hugged the blanket around her and waited while the man quickly unsaddled the horses, wiped them down, put them in
a stall and forked them some hay. Leaving the bundles he had taken from behind the saddles in the stalls with the horses,
he went to the girl, adjusted the shawl that covered her head, and, with an arm around her shoulders, guided her out of the
barn and across the snow-covered ground to the house.
Standing at the window, Dory was trying to decide if she had enough time to make a quick trip to the outhouse before Jeanmarie
awakened, when the riders rode into the yard and stopped in front of the barn. The saddle of one horse was empty, while the
other carried double. Was someone really hurt, or was it a couple of no-goods hoping to get into the house by pretending to
need help? If that was the case, she would send them packing with a load of buckshot in their rears. That stupid trick had
been tried before.
Dory was always apprehensive when men came to the homestead. Only the most reckless dared to come when her brothers were not
at home. As she watched, a man stepped out of the saddle and reached to lift someone down. The person was small and wore a…
skirt that came to her shoe tops. Forevermore! A woman! She went into the barn. He followed with the horses.
Dory’s heart thudded with excitement. It had been months since she had talked to another woman. The last time she had been
to town was before Thanksgiving, and here it was April. She waited eagerly for the barn door to open. Would they go to the
bunkhouse seeking shelter for the night, or would they come to the house?
When they crossed the yard toward the house, she backed away from the window. She heard them on the steps to the porch, stomping
the snow from their boots, and she opened the door when the knock sounded. A man with a dark stubble of beard on his face
stood with his arm across the shoulders of a young girl. Her face was red with cold.
“Come in. It must be near zero.”
Dory swung the door wide, stepped back for them to enter then quickly closed it against the biting cold. Warm air struck the
man’s face—air filled with the scent of freshly baked bread. Two lamps lighted the cozy, well-equipped kitchen. A black iron
range dominated one end of the room, a cobblestone fireplace large enough for a six-foot log the other.
“I’m Benton Waller.”
“Are you lost?” Dory lifted straight dark brows.
“Not if this is the headquarters of Callahan Lumber Company.” He pulled an envelope from his pocket and handed it to her.
She glanced at the writing and handed it back.
“This is the Callahan homestead. The mill is farther north—five or six miles.” Her eyes went to the girl and back to him.
His eyes were the color of polished pewter and she couldn’t help being intrigued by their unusual color and the keen intelligence
they projected. “You must be the donkey engine man from Spokane,” she said with sudden realization.
“I’ve been hired to set up the steam donkey. I wrote that I’d be here between the tenth and the fifteenth.”
“I hadn’t heard you were bringing your family,” she said, glancing at the girl, who hovered close to the man’s side, her head
barely reaching his shoulder. She was young, slight; her face stiff with cold. “Come over to the fire. There’s nothing worse
than a late spring blizzard.”
The girl ignored the invitation until the man, with his hand against her back, urged her toward the roaring fire.
“We’ll warm up a bit and go on up to the mill.”
“You were promised family quarters?”
“He said there would be a cabin—”
“—The cabin Louis had in mind isn’t fit for a girl. He’s at the mill and won’t be back until tomorrow,” Dory said, not bothering
to hide her frank appraisal of the girl and the tall, lean man who stood with his back to the fire. He had removed his hat
the instant he had stepped inside the door, revealing thick black hair. His face was too blunt-edged to be called handsome.
Despite his casual manner, she felt the tension in him and knew instinctively that he was a hardened, cautious man who had
had his share of bad times.
“Mrs. Callahan, my daughter is cold and tired. I’d be obliged if you’d tell me where we can settle in.”
“Miss
Callahan. Louis, Milo, and James are my brothers— the
sons
of the Callahan who founded the company.”