Chapter Four #2
George swung down off the sorrel mare at the corral gate and came across the yard with his hat in his hand and his brown mustache already wide with a grin.
He was younger than Wade by two years and had lived his whole life as though neither of those years counted.
He caught Sadie, who had come flying out the back door at the sound of his mare, and turned her in a wide, easy circle while she shrieked with joy.
“Auntie Zoe is here,” Sadie announced as soon as her feet touched ground. “She has agreed to be my friend and Henrietta has met her.”
“Henrietta,” George said with careful gravity. “And?”
“Henrietta approves. She left an egg.”
George kissed the top of Sadie’s head and looked at Wade over her braids.
Something in the look said, well, then.
Wade gave him nothing back. He crossed the yard and headed for the barn.
He was saddling the black gelding when George appeared at the barn door with his thumbs in his suspenders and a second cup of coffee somehow already in hand.
“Zoe Preston,” George said cheerfully. “She is lovely, Wade. You understated.”
“The south pasture cattle drifted to the creek bend,” Wade replied, pulling the cinch. “I need to move them before noon.”
“You always need to move them before noon.”
“The gate was unlatched again, George.”
“Was it.”
“It was.”
“Strange. Almost as though someone hadn’t latched it.” George took a sip of coffee. “On the subject of Miss Preston, brother, I would like to say —”
“There is nothing to say on the subject of Miss Preston.”
“There is a great deal. Sadie just laughed in the kitchen, Wade.”
Wade pulled the cinch with more force than the horse required. The gelding turned a reproachful eye on him. He patted the horse’s neck twice by way of apology.
“How was she at the house?” George asked gentler. “Inside. With Sadie. With Henrietta.”
Wade tightened the cinch. He did not look at his brother.
“She asked the chicken’s name,” he said. “She held out a finger and let it peck her.”
George waited.
“Sadie laughed,” Wade said. “It was a real one. The first one. She hasn’t laughed like that since...”
George was quiet for a moment. When he answered, the easy humor had moved out of his voice and something steadier had moved into it.
“Then you keep her here, Wade. Whatever it takes. You keep her here.”
A ranch hand came up the path from the south pasture with his hat in his hands and a worried set to his face.
“Mr. Collins. Cattle are spread to the creek bend. We need help bringing them in before the herd splits.”
George reached for his mare and set the coffee on the fence rail.
“Looks like the gate was a worse problem than we thought,” George said, swinging up. “Probably someone forgot to latch it.”
“Probably,” Wade replied evenly.
“Mysterious. Who that could have been?”
“Mysterious.”
“A man might think it was the same person who fed the stock at dawn and made you coffee and laid out the dropped chicken egg for breakfast.”
“A man might.”
“A man might also wonder whether his older brother appreciates everything that man does for him.”
“That man knows he does.”
George grinned, and they rode.
They went at a fast canter across the south pasture, side by side, in the silence that settled between them whenever the work called for it. The cattle had drifted wide, clear to the creek bend, exactly as Wade had told George they would.
“Wade.”
“George.”
“Sadie really laughed?”
“She did.”
George nodded once. He said nothing further. He cut west, and Wade cut east, and the herd sensed the turn and drew together as the pressure built from both sides.
Wade rode to the lead steer, put the gelding at the steer’s shoulder, and turned it.
The gelding moved like part of the thought.
The steer turned, and the steer behind it turned, and Wade whistled once, sharp and low, and Job and Patience came off the porch at a dead run and dropped into a working crouch at the back of the herd.
The cattle began to move.
He rode them steady, pushing without crowding. The herd came back up the pasture in a long line. He reached forward to turn a calf at the edge, touched its flank with the end of the rein, felt it turn, and his head came up.
The kitchen window caught the morning light.
Zoe was at it.
One hand on the sill. She was looking at him.
He held her eyes for a half-second across the length of the south pasture.
Her hand came off the sill. Her face went pink, visible at that distance, and she turned away into the kitchen.
Wade put his eyes back on the cattle.
He pushed the herd the last quarter-mile to the corral at an even pace and said nothing to George, who had come around the west side and was very carefully failing to mention anything at all about kitchen windows or women’s faces.
The gate closed. The bar dropped.
George leaned on the corral fence with both arms.
“She has pretty eyes,” he said peacefully.
“George.”
“I am only noting the facts, brother.”
“The facts are that the south gate is a problem and will remain one until you make a habit of latching it.”
“The south gate,” George agreed. “Yes. I will latch it. Do you want to know what Sadie said when I came through the kitchen just now?”
Wade gathered the gelding’s reins.
“No.”
“She said Auntie Zoe is teaching her to pray funny.”
The reins went still in his hands.
“Pray funny,” he repeated.
“Something about the Lord and a chicken and the full weight of divine providence. Sadie seemed to feel this was a reasonable approach to the Almighty. She seemed, in fact,” George added, with his easy grin, “very considerably at peace with the universe for the first time in a while.”
Wade kept his eyes on the corral fence.
The gelding blew through her nose and shifted her weight, patient.
“I’ll rub her down,” Wade said.
“Yes. You do that.”
He led the gelding toward the barn. At the door, he paused.
“George.”
“Yes, brother?”
“Latch the south gate.”
“I’ll latch the south gate, Wade.”
He went into the barn with the gelding and stood in the cool dark, with the smell of straw and horse sweat and old timber.
He worked the saddle loose with his ordinary hands and thought about Zoe—her face flushing pink across the length of a pasture.
Sadie laughing in the kitchen. His mother's sampler catching the morning sun above the writing desk.
Be still, and know that I am God.