The Unplowed Sky (45 page)

Authors: Jeanne Williams

BOOK: The Unplowed Sky

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He dried dishes for her that night. They sat up long after everyone else had gone to bed and poured out their hearts to each other. How he had been afraid to love her, how Rory had hinted that she was engaged to him. How hard it had been with Meg and Jackie that winter, how she had resolved to leave after the threshing run if he still wouldn't trust her â¦

“We'll have bumps ahead,” he warned. “I've spoiled Meg, and I don't know how to talk to a woman I loveâ”

“I'll teach you,” Hallie said. But the kiss she began needed no words, and he was a swift learner of when to kiss her gently and when to cast off restraint.

After a long time, he said, “I'd like to drag a J.P. out of bed and marry you tonight, sweetheart. But it doesn't seem right with Rory just goneâ”

Hallie burned and ached for Garth, but she also felt it was too soon. “We'll wait,” she whispered. “We need to have our minds on running the separator and engine. But we don't have to wait for this â¦ or this.â¦” She melted in his arms.

They buried Rory near a mass of wild roses on the Old Prairie not far from the burrowing owls. Hallie read from
The Book of Common Prayer
and Shaft played a beautiful, haunting requiem before the crew and neighbors recited The Lord's Prayer and The Shepherd's Psalm. “He leadeth me beside the still waters â¦”

“The owls will keep Rory company,” Jackie said as they started home. “Won't they, Hallie?”

Was he remembering his father? “Of course they will. And the great horned owls and blackbirds and meadowlarks. But we'll come visit him, too.”

Back at the house, Mary Donnelly and Mrs. Halstead had organized the bountiful dinner of covered dishes brought by the neighbors, including some rather shamefaced ones who had been in the mob. Only the Brocketts weren't there. It was whispered that Sophie had suffered a complete nervous breakdown and was in the Hospital for the Insane at Larned.

As the neighbor women were collecting children and dishes, leaving the MacLeod household enough food for several days, Ed Brockett drove up. He joined the men on the porch, nodded, and stated his mission.

“You know what we agreed, boys,” he said to his neighbors. “That we'd each put what we could toward gettin' MacLeod another engine and he could pay us back by threshin' for usâthose who've got any wheat left this year and all of us next year, God willin'.” His Adam's apple bobbed in his scrawny throat; but, after a moment, he went on sturdily. “After I took Sophie to Larned, I stopped at every town on the way back and asked if anyone had an engine for sale. Found a good sixty-horsepower Case about twenty miles north of Hollister for $1,800.” He turned to Garth. “Would you like to check it over, MacLeod? If you like itâand if our proposition suits youâI've told the owner to let you take it, and I'll send him a check.”

“I like your proposition just fine.” Garth looked around at his neighbors. “My partners and I have done some arithmetic, and we won't have to borrow more than about eight hundred from you, but that'll save wrangling over a bank loan. We'll sign an agreement, but I want to shake your hands.”

He smiled proudly at Hallie and brought her forward. “I want you all to know that Hallie's promised to marry me as soon as the run's over. We decided we'd better not mix honeymooning and threshing.”

What he didn't say but what everyone understood was that they owed this respect to Rory, who had loved her, too, and had given his life to try to right the wrong he had done. Besides, tired as they would be after a day's threshing, it would be sweet to sit in the darkness and talk and get used to being in loveâif that was possible. Sweet to have a courtship and discover new things about each other. But when they came home next fallâwhen they came home â¦

The women hugged Hallie while the men slapped Garth on the back and shook hands with him and the crew. Mike Donnelly hugged Hallie, too, and gave her a hearty kiss on the cheek. “We'll give you the biggest, happiest charivari ever seen in Kansas,” he vowed. “Shaft, you'll be head fiddler, and we'll dance all night!”

Mary Donnelly laughed. “It'll be quite a wedding. Can't remember one where the separator man married the engineer!”

“And the water monkey was bridesmaid,” Meg put in.

“Will I be your real brother then?” Jackie asked her.

“Wacky Jackie!” she crooned, stooping to gather him into her arms. “You already are!”

Three days later, Hallie, in a new red sunbonnet, steered the procession past the Old Prairie. She pulled the whistle in a long, trilling salute to Rory. Then she blew Garth a kiss over her shoulder and sounded the two long, two short that meant they were on the road.

About the Author

Born on the High Plains near the tracks of the Santa Fe Trail, Jeanne Williams's first memories are of dust storms, tumbleweeds, and cowboy songs. Her debut novel,
Tame the Wild Stallion
, was published in 1957. Since then, Williams has published sixty-eight more books, most with the theme of losing one's home and identity and beginning again with nothing but courage and hope, as in the Spur Awardâwinning
The Valiant Women
(1980). She was recently inducted into the Western Writers Hall of Fame, and has won four Western Writers of America Spur Awards and the Levi Strauss Saddleman Award. For over thirty years, Williams has lived in the Chiricahua Mountains of southeastern Arizona.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover design by Connie Gabbert

ISBN: 978-1-5040-3630-6

This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

180 Maiden Lane

New York, NY 10038

www.openroadmedia.com