The Cowboy Father. Linda Ford

come back and play with me.”

       “I was on my way.” He shouldn’t have lingered talking to his aunt about things that didn’t matter.

       “I’ll clean this up.” Auntie May brought a broom and dustpan from the kitchen. “You go ahead and amuse your daughter.”

       “Thanks.” He caught Ellie’s eyes and tilted his head toward his aunt, silently signaling her.

       Ellie smiled sweetly. “I’m sorry for breaking your lamp, Auntie May.”

       “Goodness, child. Don’t you fret about it. Accidents happen.”

       His daughter made him proud. “What would you like to do?”

       “Ride my pony.”

       He chuckled. “I guess you would, but how do you think he’d feel with a big white stiff body on his back? Wouldn’t he be frightened?”

       Ellie giggled. “He’d kneel down and dump me off.”

       “I expect he would.”

       “Is that lady going to be my teacher?”

       “Miss Morgan? She’s coming with lessons tomorrow.”

       “Do I have to do schoolwork? Please don’t make me.”

       He hated doing so, but surely it was the best thing for her. “It will help you pass the time and you’ll be able to keep up with your friends at school.”

       “But Daddy, all my friends are where we used to live. I have no friends here.” Her bottom lip quivered. “Why did we have to move?”

       “I’m sorry, Button. But I couldn’t take care of you and run the ranch.”

       “Betsy could look after me.”

       Anger surged up his throat at how Betsy had looked after his daughter. He’d arrived home early to find Ellie on the ground, screaming in pain with a broken leg and Betsy absent. She’d gone to a nearby homesteader’s place—a single man—and left Ellie on her own. From all accounts, not an unusual occurrence. Seemed he was the last to discover it. Shouldn’t he have been the first? “I didn’t much care for the way Betsy watched you.”

       “Miss Morgan is very pretty, isn’t she?”

       Far too pretty to be single. But that mattered not to him in the least. “She’s passable, I suppose.”

       Auntie May, mussing about in the kitchen, snorted loudly. Emmet chose to ignore it.

       “You might like her better than me.”

       “Oh, Ellie.” He pulled a stool close to her side and cradled her in his arms as best as the body cast allowed. “I will never like anyone better than you. Not so long as I live.”

       “You promise?”

       “I promise.” He held her close a moment longer, then she squirmed free.

       “Tell me a story.”

       “I’m not much good at storytelling.”

       “Tell me about Grandma and Grandpa.”

       He sucked in air. All she knew was they had died when he was nine. He never talked about them. It was another life. This was his life now. “How about if I tell you about the night you were born?”

       “Okay.” She sounded less than enthusiastic. Perhaps because she’d heard the story before.

       So he tried to up the drama and suspense of that long-ago night when the doctor had come in the middle of an October snowstorm and the electricity had gone off. His little daughter had been delivered by flickering lamplight. And he’d fallen smash, dash in love with his tiny girl. “I loved you from your first breath, and I will love you until my last breath.” He squeezed her gently.

       Ellie giggled. “Daddy, you’re silly.”

       “Silly about you.”

       “Then you won’t make me do schoolwork?”

       Emmet laughed, pleased at her wily ways. “You’ll still have to do schoolwork.” He scooped up the gray cat and put it on the bed beside Ellie. “You play with the cat while I do some chores.” He didn’t intend to sit around and let Auntie May do everything. He’d noticed a number of neglected things he planned to take care of while he was here.

       Later, after he fixed a broken step and cleaned out weeds blown around the back shed, he returned to play with Ellie.

       “I wish you would stay with me all day.”

       “I wish I could too, Button. But I can’t.” Having Louisa Morgan spend a few hours each day with Ellie would make it better for both him and his daughter.

       Next morning, Emmet waited at the front door for Louisa to arrive. He’d had a restless night, wondering if he did right by Ellie, forcing her to take lessons while confined to bed. But Louisa said she’d spent time in a similar situation. Had she been ill? It was hard to believe. She looked in perfect health.

       A battered-looking car, a Model A, wheezed to the front gate. Louisa stepped daintily from the vehicle. She moved as if she anticipated what life had to offer. Her cheeks glowed. Her skin was like pure silk, and curly dark hair framed her oval face. A dark pink dress with a flowery pattern accented her chinalike complexion and swirled about her legs as she turned. If she had any physical flaws, he did not detect them, and if she suffered any chronic illness, it didn’t reveal itself in the way she moved.

       She leaned into the backseat and pulled out a satchel so heavy it required she use both hands to set it on the ground. Then she dragged an awkward board out, set it beside the satchel and bent to extract some lengths of wood.

       All this to teach Ellie a little reading, writing and ’rithmetic? He stepped outside. “Can I give you a hand with those things?”

       She sent him a smile full of gratitude that sneaked through his defenses and delivered a king-size wallop to a spot behind his heart.

       He sank a mental fist into the area and pushed it into oblivion. “Seems you’re serious about this tutoring business.”

       She laughed. Music seemed to fill the air. He glanced around to see if a door was open, if someone was playing the piano. All doors were closed. He shifted his gaze to the trees. Birds sang an accompaniment to the sound. He concluded the music came from Louisa’s laugh. “I like to do a good job.”

       “I’ll take the bag. It looks heavy.” He grunted as he hoisted it from the ground. “Did you bring bricks?”

       Another musical chuckle. “Just books. Some Adele—Miss Ross—loaned from the school and some I brought from home.” She tucked the longer pieces of wood under one arm and tried to tackle the bigger piece, but it was almost as big as she.

       “I’ll take that. What is it?”

       She turned it to show the other side. “A blackboard. My brother-in-law, Judd, made this tripod. See, the legs extend so I can write on the board then raise it so Ellie can see it from her position in bed. Isn’t that clever?”

       “Oh, very.”

       She chuckled. It seemed everything amused her, pleased her.

       Obviously, he thought with a shade of bitterness, she had not encountered major difficulties in her life.

       They struggled toward the house and dropped the items on the floor.

       “Is that all?”

       “Yes. Thanks for helping.”

       They stood in the doorway to catch their breath. “We sure need rain.” Clever conversation, Emmet mocked himself. But what did it matter? He was only being polite.

       “Rain, an end to grasshoppers, better commodity prices. So many things. I know my sister thinks the government should