pain she couldn’t suppress a groan.
“Rope another cow today, will you?”
She cracked open an eye to find Maummi standing over her, a cup in one hand and a cloth in another. The smirk on her face elicited another groan from Emma.
Maummi sank to her knees and helped Emma rise into a sitting position. She dipped the cloth in the cup, and began gently washing the scrapes on Emma’s face. The scent from the water was clean, fresh, and faintly grasslike. More violet leaf tea. Was the cook right, and it was nothing more than a granny recipe? Perhaps, but much good would come of keeping the wounds clean regardless.
“Consider this, granddaughter.” Maummi blotted as she spoke. “Which is more comely, a deer gliding through the twilight or a clucking chicken strutting in the glare of the day?”
Emma winced, and not because of her stinging scratches. This lesson was one Maummi had used to teach Rebecca, who always tended toward rowdy and loud rather than soft-spoken and gentle, as befitted an Amish woman.
“A graceful deer,” Emma answered sullenly, plucking at a loose thread where her dress had been mended.
“And do deer lasso cows?”
Emma wanted to retort that chickens didn’t lasso cows either, but she held her tongue. “No, Maummi.”
Her grandmother nodded. “When we are back in Apple Grove, you will leave the saddle horses and cattle and ropes behind, ja?”
Emma didn’t answer. The question asked far more than the words implied. Was she ready to step back into the role she’d left behind a week and a lifetime ago? She and Rebecca had certainly not led the lives of typical Amish women the past few days, wearing Papa’s trousers and straddling horses and working alongside Englisch cowboys. Watching the men and listening to their talk of their families and tales of trail life was far more interesting than listening to Mrs. Miller drone on about the virtues of her husband and son, or the tally of the pickles she’d put up the week before. Plus, Emma had enjoyed a strange sense of satisfaction that came from doing the work of a cowboy without the disapproving scrutiny of their Apple Grove neighbors.
And yet she loved her Plain life. She had never wanted anything else.
Until Luke.
A painful lump rose in her throat. When she returned home, she would no longer be able to look ahead and see him at the front of the herd, to admire the way he led. Never again feel the giddy flip-flop in her stomach when his gaze connected with hers across the campfire. In fact, today would likely be the last time she saw him, ever.
Unless he agreed to become Amish, to live by Christ’s teachings and the Ordnung. Long hours in the saddle yesterday afternoon had given her time to consider their discussion over and over. He hadn’t made a firm decision. In fact, she hadn’t actually asked the question. Surely the feelings she felt for him weren’t one-sided. There might still be a chance that Luke would embrace the Amish lifestyle if he really loved her.
Maummi’s hand hovered in the air, the cloth several inches from Emma’s face, her eyes probing as she waited for an answer.
“Maybe…” She clamped her teeth down on her lower lip. She couldn’t say the words, couldn’t bear to see denial, or maybe pity, in her grandmother’s eyes. Instead, she shook her head. “I don’t know, Maummi.”
One thing she did know. She would not give up hope that Luke would profess his love for her and join her in the faith, not until she heard it from his own lips. And she had until tonight, in Hays, for that to happen.
The last leg of the trail was the hardest of all for Emma. The cattle seemed intent on spreading out as wide as the entire prairie, and the farther they roamed from the main body of the herd, the slower their pace. Emma actually forgot her own pain for long stretches of time, so determined was she on keeping the western flank in hand. Behind her, Griff was having a similar experience, while on the far side, Morris and Rebecca rode with a stream on their right, which their cows seemed to consider as a natural barrier not to be crossed.
Even worse, Luke maintained his own position in the lead. Hours passed without him circling the herd to check on his cowhands. When she wasn’t chasing steers, Emma stared at the back of his head in hopes that he would turn