back,’ and he’ll hand it over?”
A small smile curved the man’s lips above the bushy beard. “We are Amish. We repay our debts.”
A sound from behind Luke drew his attention. He turned in the saddle in time to see Jesse waver, and then tip sideways and tumble out of the saddle. He landed in the dirt with a thud.
Jonas chuckled. “It appears your friend needs your help too.”
Disgusted, Luke shook his head. Yesterday he’d chased a stampede as bad as he’d ever witnessed and then spent the night rounding up strays, and now he had to play nursemaid to a drunken cowhand. “Yeah. It appears so.”
He touched his hat in farewell again and rode off.
Anger buzzed in Emma’s ears as she marched down the street, dust swirling around her feet with every step. That rude Englischer, sitting tall on his horse and staring down at them as though they were stupid. The Lord certainly would not send someone like him to help. If he’d given his money to her, she would have thrown it back at him. How could Papa stand to take it?
“Granddaughter, you’ll walk my legs off my body and pound my heart through my apron,” Maummi complained.
Contrite, Emma slowed her pace. Her grandmother’s face did look flushed, and her chest heaved with exertion. Perhaps they really should call for the doctor.
But what kind of doctor must be retrieved from a saloon?
Rebecca ran up from behind and fell in step with them. “Weren’t they handsome?”
Alarmed, Emma gave her sister a startled look. Dark tendrils of hair clung to her damp forehead, and her eyes sparkled with something that should not be there. “They are not handsome. They are Englisch.”
Even as the words left her tongue, she admitted privately that they were untrue. Though he was arrogant and rude, she could not deny that Luke Carson was a handsome man. Or he would be, if he would wash away the dirt and cut his hair in a proper manner, like Papa’s. And those dark eyes, the rich deep color of chocolate. Straight seeing too, unlike poor Amos Beiler’s.
“My dearly departed, Carl, was Englisch.” Maummi’s mouth curved into a smile at a memory only she could see. “A more handsome man you never saw.”
Emma had heard the tale many times, how Maummi met a handsome young Englisch man while on rumspringa and had chosen marriage to him over church baptism. Their marriage was short lived, for Grandpa Carl had been killed less than two years later, leaving Maummi with a toddler and a baby on the way. Thank goodness she’d had the sense to return to her family and her faith then, so Papa and Aunt Gerda had been raised in an Amish district.
“Surely our grandfather was not like these men.” They arrived at the boardinghouse, and Emma helped her grandmother up the wooden steps and into the shade of the deep porch. “He didn’t spend his time in saloons.”
“Certainly not.” Maummi sank into one of four rockers behind the railing and eyed Rebecca. “Most Englisch are rowdy in their ways, and to look on them overmuch will invite temptation. Remember your instruction, girl. ‘Keep your eyes cast down until the Lord raises them. Then you will see only what He wants you to see.’” She quoted the oft-repeated proverb in the tone of one about to launch into a lesson on humility.
Though Emma might agree with the lesson when it came to her fanciful younger sister, she herself had no desire to hear it repeated. She hurried toward the door. “I’ll speak to Mrs. Gorham. Rebecca, stay here with Maummi.”
With a resentful stare, Rebecca sank into the second chair while Emma made a hasty retreat toward the boardinghouse door.
“’Tis unfair.” Rebecca’s surly voice trailed after her.
“What?” Maummi asked absently.
“That the Englisch are so…charmingly rowdy.”
FOUR
A few miles outside Gorham, Luke returned to a sluggish herd and seven even more lethargic men. Yesterday’s stampede had sapped the energy out of them and run a few pounds of meat off the beef besides. He’d suffered some hard days in the saddle in the months since they started out from Texas, but yesterday’s incident was the worst. And they were within a few days of their goal. He couldn’t afford to let it happen again. The cattle had already lost weight on the long trail, and no time was left to fatten them up again before they were counted and loaded on the train in Hays.
When the two men approached the herd, the