Read Online True Sisters by Sandra Dallas - Free Book Online

lighter moments, her brothers sometimes made fun of Thales, imitating his speech as they ordered each other around. “I believe if you had married him, you would have come to wish him to embrace the principle of plural marriage,” Ephraim told his sister, “else you would have to have him all to yourself the day long.” He asked, “Was he ever known to smile?”
    Still, the three knew that they were lucky to be in Thales’s hundred. “He runs it shipshape,” Sutter observed. The tents were orderly, the carts repaired at each stop, and Thales saw after his people, settling disagreements, admonishing the Saints to help one another, chiding those who failed to attend prayers each morning and evening.
    For that last reason, the Coopers tried not to camp too close to the Tanner cart. The three were strong in the faith, but they did not believe that everything out of the elders’ mouths was ordered by God. They were not as dumb as cattle, Jessie thought, looking out at the herd of animals that accompanied them. One of those things they doubted was the everlasting prayer sessions that deprived them of sleep in the morning and work on the cart at night. One each day was plenty. The Coopers’ cart was among the poorest, and every evening they were taxed to strengthen and repair it. The other thing they believed was not God-ordained was the endless sound of the cornet that called them to their duties several times each day. “If I ever see the instrument unattended, I’ll make sure we never hear it again,” Sutter threatened. But to the Coopers’ regret, and that of many other Saints, the musician kept the horn closely guarded.
    Prayers were still an hour or more away, so Jessie built a cooking fire that evening and began preparing their meal. The food was monotonous—bread, salt pork, greens they picked beside the trail, if they were lucky—but the simplicity of their diet did not bother her. She liked not having to prepare a large meal, bending over the hearth to tend heavy pots hanging from cranes. She didn’t care for cooking, never had, but it had been her lot. As a girl, she had worked in the fields and the barn with her brothers, both older, who had taken over the farming following their father’s death. But then their mother died, and the housekeeping fell to Jessie, who did it grudgingly. Fortunately for her, her brothers did not care about the food as long as it was plentiful. Nor did they remark on the disorder of the house. Jessie finished her chores quickly so that she could labor outside, doing the work of a man. Now, while other women complained about the inconvenience of cooking over a campfire, Jessie enjoyed it. The easy duty gave her more time to roam the prairie beyond the Saints’ tents.
    The trip had been a lark for the young woman. She loved walking along the trail, taking her turn at the cart. The hot sun that beat down on the Saints some days and robbed them of energy felt good on her back, and the rain refreshed her. Jessie joyed to see the vast land, so wide and open, so different from the landscape of the farm, with its copses and hedgerows. She gathered bouquets of sunflowers with their brown ox-eye centers, and sometimes she picked up handfuls of dirt, smelling it and letting it sift through her fingers, wondering what crops could be planted there. “I never saw a country I liked better in my life,” she told Ephraim. “The earth is as young as a baby, while at home it was as aged as an old man.”
    “You haven’t seen but one other country,” he reminded her.
    She liked the sunsets most of all. They stretched across the prairie from horizon to horizon and were glorious, with rays of pink and gold against a sky the hue of Wedgwood, or else were violent—a streak the color of blood separating the black earth from the blue sky.
    She wanted to stop and talk to the farmers they passed, ask them what they raised. She would have if Thales had not told them to have no truck with the local