Chapter Two
“Did you see that?” Mason Starkwell cackled, slapping his knee. “That poor woman was covered in lemonade!”
Adam Summers placed a firm hand on the shoulder of his thirteen-year-old ranch hand in training. “Don’t laugh at people, Mason,” he said firmly. “What if it had been you that lemonade had spilled on? What if you were the one everyone was laughing at?”
Mason’s laughter faded. He looked up at Adam sullenly and curled his lip. “It wouldn’t have been me,” he said. “You saw what happened. The other woman knocked over the glasses on purpose. They must be enemies. I haven’t got any enemies.”
“Well, you will if you keep that behavior up,” Adam warned.
Mason turned away and folded his arms, scowling.
His temper was as fiery as his flaming red hair, and Adam often found him difficult to manage.
But sending him back to his abusive father wasn’t an option Adam was willing to consider.
No matter how smart-mouthed Mason was, Adam was determined to provide the boy with a place to live and work to do.
He had seen the incident with the lemonade, and he wasn’t sure what to make of it.
From what he had seen, the woman in the green dress hadn’t done anything to provoke the attack.
She had just been standing there watching the dancing when the other woman had come up to her and started shouting.
There must be some sort of history there.
But it always mystified him how people could be so cruel to one another for no apparent reason.
He looked in the direction she’d run off, but there was no sign of her anymore. He turned back to Mason. “Twenty more minutes,” he said. “Then it will be time to head home.”
Mason groaned. “Don’t punish me,” he begged. “I’m sorry I laughed at that woman.”
“I’m not punishing you,” Adam reassured him. “But we do have to call a halt to things. You know I’m supposed to go out and talk to a few women around town today to see if any of them are able to fill in as teachers now that Mrs. Garrett has gotten married and left for Montana with Mr. Garrett.”
“I still think of her as Miss Libby,” Mason chuckled. “And I’m sorry she’s gone. No other teacher can hope to be as good as she was.”
“I’m sorry she’s gone too.” Adam reflected on Mason’s year in school thus far.
The boy was a troublemaker, but Miss Libby—Mrs. Garrett, now—had taken him in hand, and he had begun to turn his behavior around.
Adam worried that all that progress would be undone.
The new teacher was going to have to be someone special.
He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket. “I’ll be meeting today with a woman named Jennifer Foster,” he said. “Apparently she went to teachers’ college and is ready to find a job of her own. Nathan Foster’s daughter, I can only imagine, though I’ve never met the woman.”
“If you’ve never met her then how can you know she’s going to be a good teacher?” Mason demanded. “She’ll probably be terrible.”
“That’s why I’m going to meet her today, Mason,” Adam said patiently. “And that’s why we need to leave the fair early. So take the next few minutes to walk around and see anything you’d still like to see, but be back here in twenty, please.”