Read Online Mail Order Cowboy (Love Inspired Historical) by Laurie Kingery - Free Book Online Page A

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.”
    â€œHmm. 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.
    â€œNick, 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.
    â€œIt’s getting late, and I’m keeping you from your reading,” he said, rising.
    â€œI’m sorry, that was rude of me to pry. Please forgive me for asking,” she said, rising, too. Her face was dismayed.
    â€œIt’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
    A s 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.
    â€œHank, 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.
    â€œWe 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 therecent war? Certainly not the warlike Comanche. Poor Mexicans? And what was the “circle” Waters referred to?
    â€œExcuse me,” he said, when the men seemed oblivious of his desire to enter the store.
    The unknown man glared at the interruption before taking his hand off the door and moving aside just enough for Nick to squeeze past. “I’ll be there,” the man said to Waters. “We kin blame Lincoln for this, curse his interferin’ Yankee hide. I just wish I could shoot him all over again.”
    Nick nodded at Waters as he walked past him, but the man looked right through him.
    â€œGood morning, Mr. Patterson,” Nick said to the man behind the counter in the general store, recognizing him as one of the men of the posse. “Miss Matthews sent me for five pounds of sugar.”
    â€œThat’ll be thirty-five cents, please,” said Mr. Patterson, measuring out the amount into a thin drawstring bag and wrapping it in brown paper.
    Nick counted out the coins, glad he’d become comfortable with American currency before coming to Simpson Creek.
    â€œNicholas Brookfield, isn’t