Read Online Sisters of Grass by Theresa Kishkan - Free Book Online Page B

opening upon the home fields, mauve, pale pink, a faint orange like the opened belly of a trout, gold and dove grey. A few tendrils of honeysuckle ventured in the open window, and a blackbird’s piercing whistle. It was too lovely to stay in bed and too early for anyone else to be up and about. She left her bed, pulling up the warm sheets and her quilt with its border of wild geese, and quickly put on her clothing.
    Out the door, out to the barn to change into her blessed trousers in the tack-room graced by a coyote skull over the lintel, grabbing a bridle and a tin of oats. Daisy was standing under a cottonwood with the blue roan gelding, and Margaret gave them each a handful of oats, leading Daisy away to be saddled by the barn. She wanted to be up on the ridge before the sun came over, wanted to see the darkened windows flare. It was a Sunday, and everyone was taking an hour or two of extra rest, even the ranch dogs lying on the porch. One of them barked a little as Margaret led Daisy through the gate and then returned to sleep.
    Daisy was fresh and sidestepped as Margaret tried to mount; once up, she tightened the reins as the mare snorted and blew, wanting to run. Margaret gave her the chance on the lower slope of the ridge, letting her gallop until she slowed down as the hill grew steeper, sweet oaten breath drifting back to her rider’s face. Once on the summit, Margaret dismounted to look back at the ranch as the sun came up. Everything was illuminated, house, summer kitchen, barn, bunkhouse, by clean sunlight. A rooster crowed once, then again for the sound of his own voice. Seeing her home from this vantage gave Margaret a sharp delicious ache, as though she was watching the life of the ranch go on without her. As though she had never been part of it, watching from the years ahead while the trees grew to shelter her absence. Mounting again, she rode east, letting Daisy gallop along the ridge, the smell of young southernwood rising from her hooves.
    She decided to ride to the spring range to see if there were messages to take home to her father. The cowhands were camped in a shack they’d fixed up, their bedrolls stretched out on plank bunks, a stone fireplace outside to bake biscuits and grill slabs of marbled beef. An old coffee pot frothed continuously on the back of the fire, the cook adding water until the cowhands refused to drink the bitter brew; then he’d rinse the pot in a cursory sort of way in the nearby creek and start fresh. They were pleased with this cook, a Celestial who’d come recommended from Douglas Lake last year. He had an odd smell, sort of sweet and tarry; Margaret’s father told her it was opium, which the Celestials smoked. She found the little jars sometimes when she helped to clean up the camp after the cowhands had moved on to a new range and was fascinated by the writing on them, more like the marks on her grandmother’s baskets than the alphabet she knew. And once she found a tin with a rooster on its label. Opening it, she could smell the cook’s fingers as he handed her a plate of food, his clothing.
    As Margaret rode, she was thinking of the treat in store for her family. Her father had purchased tickets for concert in Kamloops; Madame Emma Albani was coming to the Opera House with several other singers, and Father had booked rooms at the Grand Pacific Hotel. They were going by stage — the Costleys ran stages in summer, fall and spring, and a horse-drawn sleigh in winter — and were making a holiday of it. Father knew Angus Nelson, the rider for the stable, from the days when the Kamloops hockey team came to play at Nicola Lake. Angus had been both team captain and a forward during the last game at the Kamloops rink; Margaret’s father had played goal for Nicola. That was 1902, and every year since then, both men hoped to organize more games. They’d meet on the Kamloops-Forksdale road, William Stuart taking harness into Nicola Lake to