The Angel Of Devil's Camp. Lynna Banning

take her in, she did not relish the role of maiden aunt, a spinster like Aunt Hattie, who’d grown old taking care of other people’s children instead of her own, and who’d become addled and crotchety in middle age because no man had ever touched her.

      Oh, dear God, please don’t let that happen to me. I want a life for me. I want someone to love who will love me back.

      Therefore, she resolved, she must go forward. She would go where she could have what she wanted. And if that meant selling another pie and saving her money, then that was exactly what she would do. She did not belong anywhere, now. But she would. She would.

      Meggy pointed to the largest skillet. “That one, please.”

      Fong nodded and flipped over two more steaks.

      She set plates and mugs and utensils on the table, lugged out the coffeepot, brought two bowls of boiled potatoes and one of savory-smelling brown gravy, and finally carried out the huge platter of venison steaks just as Fong clanged the dinner bell.

      A loud, quarreling knot of men tumbled through the cookhouse door.

      “Get yer butt outta my place.”

      “Anybody know who shot the deer?”

      “Shut up and pass the meat!”

      “Kinda takes the sting out of bustin’ that skid, don’t it, Swede?”

      “Ya, sure it does, by golly.”

      The men fell on the food like vultures. As the last man, the black-haired Indian, sat down at the table, Meggy spotted the colonel on the porch, his gait slow and loose jointed, his unruly dark hair curling over the collar of his red plaid shirt. Talk ceased the instant he moved into the room.

      Meggy turned back toward the kitchen. Something clunked onto the table, and Tom’s voice rose behind her. “Boys, we have among us a sharpshooter of the first water.”

      Meggy stopped in her tracks.

      “Well, who is it?” someone shouted.

      “Shut up, ya numbskull. It’s the colonel that done it.”

      “You mean he won his own whiskey? ’Tain’t fair!”

      “Well, hell, what do we care? We got meat, ain’t we?”

      “Boys,” the colonel said. The sound of his voice brought instant quiet.

      Meggy’s neck grew warm. Would he tell them who had shot the deer?

      “Now, boys, when a person’s this good a shot, it pays to take note. First off, it’s food on the table. And secondly—”