Read Online All Together in One Place by Jane Kirkpatrick - Free Book Online Page A

missed.
    “The meeting or the dancing?” Miz Bacon asked him.
    “Only the meeting,” Mrs. Mueller answered. “Dancing's required, I'm sure.” Mr. Bacon scowled.
    They'd wandered to the clustering, Mr. Bacon bringing coffee and a cold piece of pie. Across the circle, a round woman with a snow-white apron swept an area then laid a coverlet to sit on. Her skirts billowed out about her. She must be Betha , Tipton decided, as the woman waddled in, then urged Ruth Martin and an older, slender man wearinga monocle and smoking a clay pipe to sit beside her. Ruth had a whip coiled on her hip now. Tipton hadn't noticed that before Four children whose heights were one step apart climbed around them. The slick-haired boy who'd peered into their wagon was one of them. The boys hid behind the man while they reached across to their sisters to grab at ears, pull hair, and squeal before running to hide behind their mother, who smiled, then spit on her handkerchief and wiped a smudge from one boys face.
    Ruth leaned to the youngest, a girl with deep dimples, who giggled and tumbled onto Ruths lap. When Ruth pulled one of the boys toward her, she exposed dark brogan shoes beneath her skirts.
    “Their papa must be deaf and dumb,” Mrs. Mueller said, nodding their way.
    “The Barnards?” Tipton said “That's Jed and Betha from St. Louis and his sister Ruth Martin—she's a horsewoman. Jed used to be a solic-ltor.
    Mrs. Mueller looked at her. “Aren't you the local paper.”
    “Tyrellie introduced us. He was telling her this afternoon about our impending marriage.” Tipton patted the ribbon at the back of her neck, then lifted it to let the evening breeze lick at the moisture beneath it. She wouldn't let anyone know about the worms that twisted in her stomach. “She's asked me to draw her horse.”
    “I didn't know that you could make a likeness.”
    “Lots you don't know about me,” Tipton said.
    “That's only half that story,” Mrs. Mueller said. She picked at her teeth with a thin little stick “Other half is that I don't necessarily want to know more about you.”
    Tipton grunted. The woman could be so crude.
    “So will you?”
    “What?”
    “Draw the woman's horse for her.”
    “I might.”
    “That should keep you out of trouble anyway,” Mrs. Mueller said.
    “As if I was in any.”
    “You haven't been trouble so far,” Miz Bacon said, dropping down beside her, “much to my surprise.” Mrs. Mueller had gathered her skirts and leaned over her crossed legs to pull at a grass stem she then blew between her palms. “Mother! That's a horrible sound. You're worse than the children!”
    “Used to do this as a young'un. Makes quite a squawk, you think? Better than a tin whistle, if you don't have one.”
    Tipton turned away. At least here she could see that the Martin woman wasn't with Tyrell, wherever he was. She watched Ruth smooth her niece's braids. The child whispered something, and Ruth stood, walking with her, hand in hand, away from the circle.
    Smoke from cooking fires drifted upward toward a sky that threatened more rain. Stock stomped in the distance, swished their tails at flies. Someone had hung a wind chime in a cottonwood, and its tinkling soothed the evening like fireflies in June. Tipton heard what sounded like a troubadour harp strumming and a throaty drum, then bursts of voice and laughter. There'd be dancing, and Tyrell could hold her clean and cleat. She swallowed. Tipton just had to put any other thoughts away, the ones that threatened and strangled.
    None of them had asked much of her, not really It was a small price to pay for the freedom to be with Tyrell when she could, to have people see them as a pair. It was almost as though they were married.
    “Got to have a little fun every day, I say,” Mrs. Mueller said, breaking into her thoughts. “You're all so serious.”
    “This is serious business,” Mr. Bacon said as he sat down beside his mother-in-law.
    Tipton felt something shift in the