within the week. But the truth is, it can’t be that way for us. I’ve got to take Red and Lucy and ride for California before Hawker gets here.”
Of course he did. She only prayed that the tear breaking loose from her eye didn’t make him think that she felt otherwise.
“I won’t leave until I get your house built, that’s a promise.” Emma couldn’t help but reach up and brush the brown-sugar hair sweeping alongside his cheek back behind his ear. “You are some kind of woman, darlin’. Maybe even the kind who can make it out here.”
Matt eased down onto his side of the bed. He took her hand again and twined his fingers in hers. This time he laid them over the rise and fall of Lucy’s small rib cage.
“I wouldn’t go away if I didn’t think so.”
Mercy, wouldn’t a body who’d just been handed everything she wanted be bursting at the seams for joy? Just her and Pearl out on their land with no one to care for had been her wish for years on end.
Now all of a sudden the thought didn’t give her the thrill it once had. Surely in the morning after a good night’s sleep it would come back fresh, but for now all she wanted was to lie in the dark and feel like Matt’s wife.
Chapter Five
Keeping a dugout clean was work enough to make a woman scream. Since Emma didn’t want the men outside to figure her for a weakling, she hummed a tune that anyone would think was cheerful.
A beam of sunshine shot through the open dugout door and illuminated the bed that she shared with Lucy. She smoothed the covers flat, then flicked away a flea that fell from the dirt ceiling.
If it weren’t for the bugs living in her walls, the soddie would be pleasant enough. She’d lined the walls with fabrics and covered the floor with canvas. Cool during the day and warm at night, it was a snug retreat from the wind and sun. Even at midnight, the only wild creature she needed to worry about was of the insect variety.
The men preferred to sleep outside near the campfire that burned day and night. It was what they were used to, they claimed. It reminded them of being on the roundup.
Evidently Matt preferred outdoor life, as well. Lucy and Emma had slept alone for the full two weeks they had been here.
It was only midmorning and Emma had swept the dugout floor twice, but she snatched up the broom and did it again.
For the moment, her home was clean enough for her to do a job she had wanted to begin for ever so long. This morning she would plant trees. Matt had met the train yesterday and picked up her order of fruit trees along with her shipment of Orange Lilly.
It had pleased her no end that Matt had returned to the homestead with half the case of Orange Lilly sold and ten dollars in his pocket. The crease in his cheek had been flashing when he’d told her that five ladies from town had approached the wagon before he’d turned off Front Street, vowing they would perish if he didn’t sell them the snake oil.
Emma filled a basket with chicken, bread and a piece of peach pie left over from last night. She took a canteen from a peg on the wall and put it in with the food.
She plucked her bonnet from the corner where her clothes hung and took Lucy’s little one, as well. The child didn’t care for her hat, never having been required to wear one before. It was clear that the men who’d raised her doted on the girl. What a shame they’d never thought to protect her fair face from sunburn.
No doubt at this very moment Lucy splashed in the creek like a little boy, heedless of the sun beating down and turning her skin pink.
Emma closed the heavy wood door that Matt had installed on the dugout the first day here. At least it would keep the prairie soot from getting in until she opened the door again.
As always, when Emma stepped outside her heart skipped over itself. Every day the lumber pile in the yard grew smaller. A little more than a cow’s bellow away from the creek, fresh-smelling wood took the shape of a home.
A body would think she’d get used to seeing it. Still, every time she spotted Matt carrying a heavy piece of