“Joe, I’m finished. We can leave now.” Amelia stood in the gap at the side of the curtain, her basket filled.
Joe stood. “Guess I’d better get going. Good to see you, Rusty.”
“I’ll tell the boys you said hello.” Rusty shook his head as Joe took the basket Amelia handed him and followed her out.
* * *
As they drove home, with the sun warm overhead, Amelia slipped off her shawl. “What a lovely day it’s turned out to be. It’s a shame I didn’t have the cook pack us a lunch. We could stop and have ourselves a picnic. Maybe next time.”
“Next time might be too cold,” Joe said.
She gave him a saucy look. “Oh, pooh! You’re such a sourpuss! Sometimes I wonder why I bother with you. Maybe it’s because I really, really like you.”
“Well, at least we can stop for a few minutes.” They’d reached the highest part of the rough wagon road, a level stretch with a sweeping view of the grassy plain and the distant, snow-capped peaks beyond. Joe pulled the team to a halt and applied the brake to the buggy wheel.
“If I seem like a sourpuss, as you call me, Amelia, it’s because I have serious plans, and I spend a lot of time thinking about them.”
“What kind of plans?” She shifted closer to him as a chilly breeze ruffled the prairie grass.
“Take a look,” he said with a sweeping gesture toward the scene before them. “I’m not always going to be a poor cowboy. Someday I plan to own a spread bigger than everything you see here, with cattle and horses and a house as grand as Benteen Calder’s. And when I get it, I’ll need a woman to share it and raise a family with me.”
She was silent for a moment, her hands clasping and unclasping in her lap. At last she spoke. “I like that plan, Joe,” she said.
“Good. I like it, too.” He pulled her to him and kissed her, deep and hard and long.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Ogallala, nine months later
SITTING UP IN BED, SARAH FINISHED NURSING HER SON AND LIFTED him against her shoulder. She held him tenderly, feeling the warm weight of his head against her neck and savoring the sweet baby smell of his skin as she patted his small, strong back.
After a moment, he rewarded her with a lusty belch, so loud in the silent bedroom that it made her laugh. When she lowered him to her lap, he looked up at her with Joe’s blue eyes and gave her a baby version of Joe’s smile. Hair as dark as his father’s curled over his forehead. No one who had seen Joe could have a moment’s doubt who had sired this little boy.
Sarah had given birth alone, three months ago, with a spring thunderstorm battering the old house. Luckily, the birth had been an easy one. She’d known what to expect and what to do. When she’d cradled her baby in her arms for the first time, the love that surged through her had been so powerful that she’d broken down and wept.
She’d named him Blake, in honor of her great-uncle, and given him her own last name, since she had no legal right to Joe’s. But his middle name was Joseph, in acknowledgment of his parentage. Blake Joseph Foxworth. It was a good name. She liked the sound of it.
With early-morning sunlight slanting through the curtains, Sarah laid her baby in the bureau drawer that served as a makeshift cradle and hurriedly dressed for the day. She was still seeing patients, although not so many as before. And, ruined woman though she was, there were still a few customers for her laundry service. But her everyday life was a constant struggle for enough food, enough money, and all the things a baby needed.
“If you don’t do something to set this straight, you won’t have a friend left in this town.”
Margaret Lacy’s words, spoken that day in the dressing room of the general store, still came back to haunt Sarah. True to the lady’s prediction, the so-called “decent” folk of Ogallala had turned their backs on her as soon as her pregnancy began to show. People had stopped greeting her on the street. Everett had married another woman. But even with an attractive, charming wife by his side, he’d still lost the election for county commissioner.
Only the poor families she’d helped, and the few women who’d been in her situation, remained her friends. They’d brought her food and