Read Online Touched by Carolyn Haines - Free Book Online Page B

mocking. “We’ve already tried it out, and she finds it quite comfortable. I can pull her in that and have plenty of room for the picnic basket.”
    “Okay.” I believed that JoHanna could do anything. If she had pulled out an embroidered carpet and said we would fly on it to Cedar Creek, I would have agreed.
    “Then it’s settled. Come on in the house and have a glass of tea.” She hefted the laundry basket up on her hip and started walking toward the house. I had to stretch my legs to keep up with her. JoHanna didn’t waste a movement. She was direct, purposeful. In my hot gray dress, I followed like a willing sheep.

Five
    I WAS waiting in the swing in my Elikah dress when I caught sight of JoHanna. Even though I was looking for her, at first I didn’t believe what I saw. She was wearing her big straw picture hat with a mixture of black-eyed Susans and reddish-brown rooster tail feathers around the rim. Her sleeveless yellow dress actually had a band of swinging fringe along the hem. She would have caught the attention of a blind man in a hurricane.
    She strode with her hands behind her back, her chest cutting the air in front of her like the figure on the prow of some gallant sailboat. Behind her came the wagon with Duncan and the rocking chair tipping forward and back. Riding on the back of the wagon was Pecos, his wings constantly shifting up to preattack mode as he scanned left and right for any threats to his beloved human.
    I flew off the swing and went to meet them at the corner. Elikah had gone down to the shop, even though it was Sunday. Once a month, Tommy Ladnier made Sunday deliveries to Chickasaw County. It wasn’t his best territory, but he was unwilling to give it up to the Dillard boys in Greene County, so he made his regular deliveries and enforced the perimeters of his territory. I had deduced that the barbershop was his drop-off point. The men all went down to the barbershop for a few nips and to investigate Tommy’s wares. Elikah said the men liked the barber chairs, but I thought it was because the shop was long and narrow, and if the blinds were closed on the front window, it was a private place. There was also a folding table in the back with chairs for five. The one time I’d gone to clean the shop, I’d found decks of cards and the multicolored chips that gamblers used for money. It wasn’t the only illegal card game in Jexville, just one of the more regular. And one of the more protected. Sheriff Quincy Grissham was one of the men who went in the back door of the barbershop on those Sunday mornings.
    Elikah liked for me to go to church. He said it was a woman’s duty to keep up that end of the household for her family. When I’d told him I was going to the baptism at Cedar Creek, he was happy as a one-eyed dog on a butcher wagon. It didn’t matter that the service was Baptist. Elikah was a Methodist because that’s where he happened to light when he moved to Jexville. He said there wasn’t a penny’s worth of difference between the two, so it was no big shake if I went to the Baptist service. Lots of people from the Methodist church would be there.
    “Hi.” I ran up to the corner, sort of breathless. It was better for me to meet them on the street than to have them seen at the house. “Hi, Duncan.” She stared at me with that direct, pefectly composed look. A lot of the bruising was gone, but she still looked pretty bad. Her legs were wrapped in clean bandages where the burns were worst, and her hair was still a terrible mess.
    “Been watching for us?” JoHanna asked as I fell into step beside her.
    “Yeah.”
    “Elikah wouldn’t want you going with us.”
    She spoke a statement. I didn’t feel compelled to lie, so I didn’t say anything.
    “He’s a handsome man.”
    “Yes, he is.” A flush touched my cheeks. I looked at her, a quick glance to see if she was being polite or sincere. She was sincere. “Why didn’t he marry a local girl? I saw them at the Fourth