Read Online What Once We Loved by Jane Kirkpatrick - Free Book Online Page A

become someone else's. She looked around, wanted to concentrate on what was simple and sure.
    Elizabeth whipped the cream. Mariah scraped on a chunk of ice Mazy brought out from the butcher's cave in Shasta. The litde scoop below the blade filled up like pieces of crushed glass. She dumped the half-moon-shaped shavings on a pewter plate. Lura poured berry juice over the top. Only the whipped cream remained for the oohs and aahs to commence. “Ned, you going to sing for us tonight? Maybe ‘O Susannah.' I always liked that one,” Elizabeth said. “Helps me not miss Suzanne and Clayton and that Sason quite so much.”
    “Joe Pepin taught me one called ‘Dinah Had a Wooden Leg.' “
    “I bet that's a real foot stomper,” Elizabeth said.
    “Supposed to make cows get sleepy, that song, what Joe said,” Ned continued.
    They'd eaten the noodles with venison stew poured over them, finished off the lettuce, and sliced the last of the tomatoes that hadn't been dried by Sarah and Mazy. Fresh basil and oil covered the last slice, and Mazy ran her finger around the plate, lifting it to her mouth and sucking on the oil and herbs. Mazy'd been quiet all evening. Now she spoke.
    “So you're going to sell your cows,” she said to the Schmidtkes. “And you think I should buy them?”
    “Expand your herd fast,” Lura said. “Be dairying just like you wanted in no time. Your new kin there, David Taylor, he could stay home nights, not be driving a stage away. Protect his Indian wife better. It'd work out perfect.”
    “Maybe he likes traveling,” Mazy said. “Some people do.” She looked over at Ruth. “What about your work at Adora and Charles's store? Don't they need you there?”
    “They'll get by. I've got new things going,” Lura said.
    She certainly did, Ruth thought. What had been her own journey to Oregon had suddenly become a crowd. Ruth knew she should speak up. She didn't know why she couldn't, wouldn't. She and the children would be joined now by a man she had some confusion about, a girl who adored her, and their…mother. That was the only word she could think of to describe Lura right then that wasn't unkind. “Don't know of another good jack in these parts, do you?” Lura asked. “Ruthie picked up one named Ewald. Black as the night.”
    “My Hans always used to say of someone pigheaded that they was ‘stubborn as a German jack,'“ Elizabeth said. “He saved it for the most bullheaded, stiff-necked patients he had. Ones who refused to listen to what he told them to do, even if it killed them. Which it sometimes did.”
    “I once heard Pa say you were as stubborn as ‘a bobtailed mule,' Ma,” Mariah said cautiously. “Remember that?”
    “I don't.”
    “Jacks are that stubborn—not like you, Lura—but like a bobtailed mule that can't switch at flies. Here, scratch some brown sugar into this cream, girls, and we'll plop it on those piles of berries and ice. I got a pie I brought out too,” Elizabeth said. She cut the slices, and each took a piece on a tin plate, putting the crushed ice on top.
    “Have you ever seen anything prettier?” Elizabeth said. “I like that new ice shaver you bought up, Ruthie. Always something new to marvel over.”
    “A frivolous luxury,” Ruth said. “One I don't deserve. You can have it, Elizabeth. My going-away gift.”
    “Oh, Ruthie, I wasn't—”
    “I know,” Ruth said. “I…” Ruth took her pie outside and sat down. Stars popped out. She really just wanted to be alone, to think.
    “All right if I sit beside you?” Mazy asked.
    Ruth moved over stiffly, and Mazy sat down on the shallow stoop, her knees in front of her. She fumbled balancing her plate, then moved behind Ruth, giving her back a solid rest. Ruth supposed that leaning over cows to milk two times a day must put some strain on a woman so tall.
    “I always like seeing the stars come out,” Mazy said. “Remember that night Mother took off and we didn't know where she was? I felt like we