Chapter 30
Abby tied the apron on around her clothes.
It was a good idea to wear it. How many times had she gotten her soft leather dress stained while she worked over a cooking pot?
It was a fact, though, that gingham made her skin itch.
She missed her doeskin, the easy movement, the split skirt that made riding so simple. Foolish whites and their fussy dresses.
Even so, she was beginning to adjust to the ways of the white man. Abby snorted in disgust. She was getting soft.
After Wade’s confident announcement that he was going to marry her, she’d gone to ridiculous lengths to avoid being alone with him all week. She needed to figure out what was the matter with her that she could hate his kind and his skin color and his ways…but still like the man.
Wade wasn’t like the rest of the whites.
Abby forgave herself for her fascination because of that.
She might have even considered marrying him if they could get away from the ranch and live somewhere in the mountains, away from her Indian family and his white world.
He was an especially kind man—look at the way he grinned when she threatened him with her knife.
Although, truth be told, she was almost certain she could never really stab him.
When had she become such a weakling?
“Time to punch down the rising of bread, Abby. Do you want to do it and shape the loaves?” Gertie smiled, giving Abby another pang of guilt.
She’d come to care about this elderly woman too.
When they worked on the house or the meals or the garden, Abby felt almost like a daughter being taught by her mother.
It helped shake loose memories of her own white family, and with the memories came love.
Yes, she’d loved her family. They were good people, and they’d tried to take care of her until the sickness had made that impossible.
Not all whites were evil. She knew that.
The smell of the yeast and flour made her mouth water.
Another thing Abby had begun to like—the easy food.
Yes, there was hard work to making a meal, but the choices were plentiful, and the garden was yielding a rich bounty of vegetables.
The beef supply never ended, and there were chickens and eggs, ham and bacon, milk and coffee laced with thick cream.
And sweets. Gertie was a hand with the sweets.
Punching the soft, puffed-up mound of dough with more force than necessary, Abby admitted the disgusting, unthinkable truth. She was starting to like this place.
Mort rolled himself into the kitchen, and Abby almost cheered up. Finally, someone she really couldn’t stand.
Mort was trying. But he was failing—a lot. More this week than last. The man had a short temper, and he liked things done his way and right now.
So far, Abby had followed Gertie’s example and kept the hard words Mort said to them from Wade, not wanting to cause the final break between Wade and his pa. Especially since Mort was trying. He only yelled his orders part of the time these days.
“Get me a cup of coffee and some of those gingersnaps, Gertie.” Mort wheeled around the table to his place at the head.
Abby was working near that end with the dough, but there was plenty of room for the old tyrant.
“Why didn’t one of you women bring them into my room?” Mort swept his hand across some flour that scattered too close to him.
Abby started kneading harder, pretending the dough was Mort’s yammering face.
“You used to care that I was stuck back in there alone, Gertie.”
Abby’s temper rose. But was it really Mort, or was she panicked because she felt herself weakening to the white world?
“But now you’d let me starve to death if I didn’t come and fetch every bite I eat.”
Bam! Abby slugged the dough with her fists, her jaw clenched shut.
Mort jumped a little, and his eyes narrowed. “You act like a savage. You need to learn some woman skills if you’re going to stay around here.”
“And you’re like a whining dog that used to sneak around the edges of our camp.” She punched the dough again. “Worthless, begging for food but never doing the few little things a dog can do to help.”
“You got something you think I should do, say it. You think I like sitting in my room all day reading Wade’s book?”
Remorse panged her over her temper. Wade wanted his father to come to his own faith in God. After his outburst the other night, Wade had gone back to being patient with his father. But his father had behaved himself with Wade.
The man really didn’t want his son to leave.
And wasn’t that a good thing? Wasn’t that loving?
Wade finally had a father who loved him after all these years.
Abby didn’t want to ruin that, and she could with a word.
She’d tell of Mort’s behavior and announce she was leaving, and Wade would come with her.
He’d follow her into the rugged mountains to her valley.
She longed to go there and live. With her Indian family gone, she’d be able to have the place to herself.
All alone. Forever. No, she couldn’t bear that much loneliness.
She knew herself well enough to admit that.
But with Wade, maybe they could make a life up there in the thin air among the mountain peaks.
“I do know something you could do, old man.” Abby jammed her fingers deep into the dough.
Mort’s eyes widened as she swung her hands toward him. He snatched his coffee cup out of the way just in time.
She slammed the dough onto the table in front of Mort. “This takes no brain nor skill nor legs. Knead this dough for two more minutes. Then shape it into loaves.”
Mort shoved his chair back two feet from the table. “Woman’s work.” He might as well have spit when he said it. “You think I have no pride left?”
“Now, Abby…” Gertie had endless patience with this old curmudgeon. Confrontations distressed her.
Abby put both fists on the table and leaned down to Mort’s face, his teeth nearly bared.
She kept her jaw clenched so she wouldn’t shout the next words.
“If you want to be useful”—no, she wasn’t shouting, more like hissing, which still wasn’t good—“there are things you could do. You might not think they are worthy of your great manliness, but they would help. And there are more manly things we need done. There is a chair we set aside in the pantry because the leg is loose. You could repair that. Surely, that is a manly pastime.”
Mort’s face was turning red. His breathing was loud.
Clearly, he, too, was struggling to control himself.
He hadn’t forgotten Wade’s threat. And yes, he’d lashed out a dozen times this week.
But Gertie had jumped to do his bidding, and he’d calmed down.
There’d been no drawn-out string of insults and shouts.
Too bad he’d been closer to Abby this time.
“I’ll do any work you have for me. Don’t pretend like you’ve asked.” Mort’s voice started climbing.
“Now, Mort…” Gertie stepped to the foot of the table, wringing her hands.
Abby should stop for Gertie’s sake. For Wade’s sake. But the satisfaction grew. She’d been spoiling for this fight. For the first time, she really knew what she wanted—to leave and take Wade with her. This would be a real chance for happiness. The only one she could see.
“Don’t pretend I’ve refused to help you.” Mort pounded the side of his fist on the table and hit the dough, plunging his hand into the soft, sticky mound.
“Don’t pretend you’ve tried, old man.” Abby jerked the dough away from him.
“Please, let’s not fight.” Gertie took the dough from Abby, clearly hoping they’d just let her do the work.
“Always you leave women’s work for us and men’s work for Wade while you roll around this house like a…like a…worthless object, a child’s toy on a string, making everyone’s life harder.”
“I want this fight to stop now. You’re both being unreasonable.” For the first time, Gertie sounded stern.
His temper blew. “A child’s toy?” Mort grabbed the wheels of his chair.
At last, she’d ignited that temper. Now he’d say words he couldn’t take back. And she’d tell Wade and they’d leave.
“I want peace!” Gertie shouted and clutched her hands together as if begging.
Until now, Abby had been calculating in her pokes and jabs at Mort’s ego. But when Gertie said “peace —meaning peace no matter the cost—Abby went over the edge of her temper, right after Mort.
Suddenly, she saw Gertie and Mort in a way she’d never seen them before. “That’s right. That’s what we’ve all been doing, having peace at the cost of our self-respect. Taking Mort’s abuse to try and maintain some kind of peace in this house.”
Abby turned on Gertie. “Is that what you did when Wade was growing up? You let Mort hit him, then rushed in and bandaged his wounds when it was over, all for peace?”
“You leave Gertie out of this, you little wildcat.”
“Well, if a man hit a child I loved, any child”—Abby glared at Gertie, sorry that her temper had turned on the older woman, but not sorry she spoke the truth—“he’d have himself a war.”
She wasn’t going to find a place in this house, and she wasn’t going to go tattling like a child to Wade either.
She’d find her beloved mountain valley. She’d find her home alone in the wild.
With no man, no people, white or Indian, no peace but the peace she found in God.
She ripped the apron off her body and flung it aside.
Mort and Gertie seemed frozen by her hateful words.
She stormed out of the room and was changed into her deerskin dress and moccasins and out of the house before either one of them had moved from the kitchen.
The two of them were stuck in a twisted relationship of anger and placating, wounding and bandaging.
For all she knew, Wade didn’t have the will to leave it all behind either.
If he couldn’t break free of this sickness, it was best she found out now before she was foolish enough to fall in love with him.
She took no horse. She had only her knife. She could live very nicely with nothing else forever.