Mail Order Cowboy. Laurie Kingery

probably make him a bishop one day. Any Scripture I know was pounded into my thick head by Richard when I was a lad.”

      “And do you read the Bible now?” she asked.

      He wished he could say he did. “I…I’m afraid I haven’t lately.”

      He could see her filing the information away, but her eyes betrayed no judgment about the fact.

      “And how did you find Josh? Does he need anything? Is he in pain?”

      “He’s not in pain, no, but he needs a goodly dose of patience,” he said, appreciating the fine curve of Milly’s neck above the collar of her calico dress. “He’s restless, fretting over the need to lie there and be patient while he heals. But I think he’s reassured that I can help Bobby handle the ‘chores’—” he gave the word the old man’s drawling pronunciation, drawing a chuckle from her “—and keep this place from utter ruin until he can be up and around again. Oh, and he says there’s no need to sit up with him tonight, if you’ll let him borrow that little handbell of your mother’s he can just ring if he needs you.”

      “Hmm. That sounds just like him. I’d better check on him a couple of times tonight at least. I can just picture him trying to reach the water pitcher and tearing open those wounds again. That old man would rather die than admit a weakness.”

      Nick chuckled. “He said you’d say that, too.”

      They were silent for a while. Nick appreciated the cool breeze and the deepening shadows as the fiery orange ball sank behind the purple hills off to their right.

      “Nick, why did you leave India, and the army—if you don’t mind my asking, that is?” she added quickly.

      She must have seen the reflexive stiffening of his frame and the involuntary clenching of his jaw.

      “It’s getting late, and I’m keeping you from your reading,” he said, rising.

      “I’m sorry, that was rude of me to pry. Please forgive me for asking,” she said, rising, too. Her face was dismayed.

      “It’s all right,” he told her. “I’ll tell you about it sometime. But it’s a long story.” He’d known the question would come, but it was too soon. He wasn’t ready to shatter her illusions about him yet.

      Chapter Seven

      As Nick tied his bay at the hitching post outside the general store, he saw two men standing talking at the entrance, one with his hand on the door as if he meant to go inside. Nick recognized one of them as Bill Waters, the neighboring rancher who’d pressured Milly to sell out yesterday. He’d never seen the other one, the one with his hand on the door.

      “Hank, I’m tellin’ you, the problem’s gettin’ bad around here,” Waters was saying, “what with them roamin’ the roads beggin’ fer handouts and such. Why, a friend a’ mine over in Sloan found half a dozen of ’em sleepin’ in his barn when he went out one mornin’. He got his shotgun and they skedaddled away like their clothes was on fire.”

      The other man guffawed.

      “We got t’nip it in the bud, before they try movin’ in around Simpson Creek. That’s why I’m revivin’ the Circle. Bunch of us are meetin’ at my ranch tomorrow night. Can you make it?”

      Nick wondered idly who the men were talking about. Beggars of some sort—out-of-work soldiers from the recent war? Certainly not the warlike Comanche. Poor Mexicans? And what was the “circle” Waters referred to?

      “Excuse me,” he said, when the men seemed oblivious of his desire to enter the store.