for a moment she couldn’t tear her gaze away from the sight of his glistening strong shoulders and broad chest.
“Ach!” Maummi’s cry rang in the air over the sound of the rushing river.
With a stab of guilt, Emma jerked her gaze away from Luke and turned a warm face toward her grandmother. Maummi’s mouth gaped, her lips moving soundlessly like a fish’s, her eyes round as wagon wheels. You’d think she never saw a bare-chested man before.
“Oh, my,” Rebecca’s repeated. Her eyes were nearly as round as Maummi’s, but the sudden flush that brightened her face bore the unmistakable stamp of delight.
“Rebecca.” Emma spoke her warning low as she fixed her sister with a hard stare. Better that than turn around again, where her gaze would be drawn to the water.
Even before the cart stopped moving, Maummi leaped down to the ground. She ran toward the cluster of cowboys at an astonishing speed, her apron strings trailing behind her. Emma hurried after her, her cheeks burning. Maummi would humiliate them all by scolding a group of grown men as though they were small boys for running around without shirts. She’d probably even come up with a proverb about nakedness.
A large number of cows hovered near the water’s edge, but Maummi ignored them. They skittered away when she ran by and came to a halt in front of the wagon. A stream of Pennsylvania Dutch words flew from her mouth, so quickly that even Emma had a hard time following. The cowboys nearby watched her, their expressions helpless.
Then Maummi found her Englisch tongue. “My hutch! Rescue for me my hutch, before the water takes it!”
For a moment Emma couldn’t respond. Apparently she hadn’t noticed the barely clothed men in the water. She had eyes only for her hutch. A nearly uncontrollable giggle tickled the back of Emma’s throat. When she was as old as Maummi, maybe she would focus more on furniture than handsome men, but that certainly hadn’t happened yet.
She snuck a quick glance, and the heat in her face intensified.
Her grandmother’s moan distracted her. “Made with my dearly departed’s own hands.”
Emma placed an arm across her shoulders. Being so upset couldn’t be good for her heart. “Calm down, Maummi. They will get the hutch.”
“We’re sure trying, ma’am.” The oldest of the three cowboys dipped his head in her direction. “So far we haven’t had much luck. The axle seems to be caught on a rock ledge or something down there.”
Papa arrived with Rebecca and their hired driver. He stood on the riverbank with his thumbs hooked behind his suspenders and his head tilted sideways, studying the wagon.
“The hutch is safe, I think, unless the entire wagon is washed away,” he told Maummi.
“Ach!” She raised a hand to cover her heart and wilted against Emma. “Forty years and not a scratch, only to lose it in the river.”
A splashing sound alerted her to the fact that Luke and Jesse were exiting the water. Emma mostly kept her gaze averted, but she couldn’t help another quick peek.
“Jonas, what say we put your new oxen to the test?”
A sloshing close by told her Luke had gained the shore. Oh, how she wanted to turn around and stare at him. Maummi’s saying repeated in her mind like a mantra. “‘Keep your eyes cast down until the Lord raises them.’” She knew for a fact that the Lord would not approve of her staring at Luke’s half-clad body, so she kept her back turned, standing in front of Maummi. Lord, lead me not into temptation.
Rebecca, on the other hand, openly gawked. Emma grabbed her by the arm and jerked her around. “Go help the boy unload our provisions.” She added an unmistakable command to her voice.
Her sister surprised her by obeying, though her gaze was so firmly fixed on Jesse and Luke as she wandered in the direction of the cart that she ran right into the hind end of a cow, which sent the poor beast into a sudden gallop.
Luke described his plan to Papa and the others. “There’s a narrow rocky ledge all the way across, which I figure is what the bandits tried to cross. But this side of it, the bottom’s nothing but sand and muck. That back wheel slipped off. We tried using a couple of horses to pull her free, but it’s stuck fast. The best I can tell, the axle is wedged on a rock outcropping. Not by much, but enough. If we’re lucky, it’s not cracked.”
“Please,”