The Gazebo. Kimberly Cates

Darther.

      “Listen here, you wall-eyed bastard, either you start walking or I’m going to carve your dumb ass into a thousand pieces and feed every scrap to the crows!” Bishop Whittle would be scandalized if he could hear her now.

      Sighing, she slapped the reins across the mule’s thick, dusty hide, causing him to lurch into motion. Her feet flew up, the straw hat slipped over her face again and she nearly lost her grip on the reins. “That’s better,” she grumbled, shoving her hat back on her sweating head.

      Within minutes they had settled back to a torpid stroll. Where Sorry was concerned, locomotion came in fits and jerks, or not at all. “Come on, sweetheart,” she cajoled, “we have a long way to go, and the slower you move, the longer it’ll be before you can get shed of this old cart. I’ll give you a turnip if we make it back before dark.”

      Which would never happen at the rate they were going. Not that she was afraid to be out after dark. Still, she didn’t like the prospect of driving home alone at night with a prisoner. By the time darkness fell she intended to be secure in her own home, with the chickens shut up for the night, the mule fed and watered, and her prisoner, if she managed to rent one, safely locked inside the barn.

      Twitching away the flies, Sorry continued to amble along the dusty wagon road. Carrie managed to curb her impatience. At least they were moving. It could be worse. According to Darther, all mules hated all females. Something to do with what he referred to as their half-ass breeding.

      If anyone should know about jackasses, it was Darther. Theirs was not a match made in heaven. The first time she had suggested hitching that ugly gelding of his to the plow and clearing the cut-over field, he’d given her a wallop that had landed her on her backside. She had been new to marriage at the time, and hadn’t known what to expect.

      Now she did.

      From the top of a tall, dead pine, a red-tailed hawk watched her progress. Dust rose in pale drifts behind the cart, overtaking it as a fresh breeze sprang up from the cloudless sky. It hadn’t rained since early July. All that was left of her kitchen garden, of which she had been so proud only a few weeks ago, were a few leathery beans no longer than her little finger, despite all the buckets of water she had toted up from the creek. She’d felt like giving up when the deer and rabbits had got to her cabbages, leaving only two rows of green stalks.

      But giving up wasn’t in her, because Carrie had another dream. And this time she had the grit and determination to make it come true. As a child she’d had those same qualities, but back then they’d been called stubbornness, and no one had wanted to adopt a stubborn, headstrong little girl who was neither smart nor pretty, even though she had tried her very best to be quiet and obedient.

      One thing had never changed, though. Once she made up her mind to do something, she refused to give up. And Carrie had set her mind on making her husband’s land prosperous again. The first step was to grow herself a cash crop. With the seed money she would get from that, she would clear more land and grow more corn, until not one square foot of dirt was wasted. One field had been cut over by a previous owner years before, but the job had never been finished. The stumps were still there, and now the underbrush had grown back again, but it was conveniently close to the creek. Come spring, once she got it cleared and turned, she could hill it and plant it by herself, and tote water during the dry spells. That was the first part of her dream. She couldn’t allow herself to look farther into the future.

      During Darther’s absence she’d been making good progress. A gambling man, her husband was seldom home if there was a horse race, a dog race, a cockfight or a card game anywhere within a three-day ride. He would come home, more often drunk than sober, and stay just long enough for her to sponge and air his fancy suits and launder his shirts and smallclothes, and then he’d be off again. As the racing season neared, he’d be gone sometimes for weeks at a time.

      Once he left home again, Carrie was in the field every day at cock-crow, digging and prying, playing tug-of-war by pitting that stubborn mule against equally stubborn stumps. It was backbreaking work, even with two good hands, but she was determined to have every damned stump—every blessed stump—dug up, dragged off to the side and burned. She’d been whacking away at gum roots when she’d missed and nearly chopped her thumb off. The fact that her hand had been filthy at the time hadn’t helped, but one way or another she intended to be ready to plant come spring, and nothing as puny as a bad hatchet cut that refused to heal was going to keep her from doing it, either.

      It was Emma, her elderly widowed neighbor, who had told her about the prisoners who were sometimes leased out for farm labor. “County allows so much a day for feed. As long as a man’s not wanted for murder, you can take him out on parole and save the county his keep. I don’t think it’s on the books that way, but as long as you sign papers saying you’ll return him in as good condition as when you took him out, they’ll look the other way. Let him escape, and I reckon they can lay a claim against you for misuse of county property.”

      They’d been idly discussing ways of getting the job done, seeing as how Carrie’s hand was so slow to heal. She couldn’t afford to hire anyone, even if she could have found someone willing to work on her husband’s farm. “Darther left me a little money last time he was home, but I spent it on meal and sugar and cracked corn. Wonder what kind of prisoner I could rent for the price of three dresses, two straw hats and a pair of shoes with holes in the bottom?”

      She’d been half teasing, and Emma had laughed. Thank goodness one of them was able to laugh. “You’ll manage,” the older woman had said. “I’ve got some money laid by. You can pay me back from your first crop. For interest you can give me half a bushel of corn for my chickens.”

      Carrie had thought about it all the way home that day last week when she’d gone to take her friend a basket of fried rabbit and turnips. It had been Emma who had befriended her nearly three years ago when Darther had first brought her to this godforsaken place to cook and clean and service his needs whenever he was sober enough to attempt the marriage act.

      It had been Emma who had told her all she knew about that particular part of a wife’s duties. More importantly, she’d taught her all she knew about planting. Carrie still had much to learn, but driven by dreams, desperation and determination, she refused to waste another planting season. By now she knew better than to expect any help from her husband. Even if he was home long enough, and remained sober enough, he was hardly inclined to soil his hands with honest labor. Racing and gambling were all the man ever thought about. He was convinced that Peck, half Arabian, but so ugly no one ever suspected him of being a runner, would one day make him a fortune.

      Peck was fast, all right. Carrie had watched him being put through his paces out on the road, but even if the big, ugly gelding won a fortune, Carrie would never see a penny of it. Darther would plop it all down on the next race or cockfight or hand of cards, and lose every last penny. Not only was he a loser, he was a stingy loser. He might come home sporting a new silk vest with his fancy frock coat and checkered trousers, but just let her ask for money to buy something useful, like a new cow, or a plow that wouldn’t fall apart at the first use, and she’d end up on her backside with a swollen jaw. Drunk or sober, her husband had a treacherous temper.

      When Darther had accepted her in payment of a debt he was owed by her uncle, she had been so eager to escape her uncle that she’d allowed herself to be used that way. She had even begun to dream all over again. She had seen him around the store a time or two before that, and noticed his fine fancy clothes. He’d boasted a lot, too, only back then she hadn’t known it was only boasting.

      “Darther has racing interests,” her uncle had said, making it sound terribly important, as if he owned a track, or at least a flock of Thoroughbreds. “The man knows more about horseflesh than he knows about his own family.”

      If he even had a family, he’d never admitted it. “Raised up in New York,” he’d once boasted. “Been to every racetrack on the Eastern Seaboard.” She had later learned that he was what was called a carpetbagger, a species not well respected in the South. But that was long after she’d married the man. When they had crossed the border into North Carolina after the hasty marriage ceremony,