“Next thing, you’ll want to turn your name to Hoppety.” Lucy giggled. Childish laughter was one of the things Emma liked most. She reached for Lucy’s middle and tickled. “Hoppety, Hoppety, Hoppety!”
Lucy’s giggles rang out over the land. Pearl quit her grazing to let out a playful snort.
“Hoppety Suede!”
“Mama, I’m Lucy!” she declared with a hiccup.
“Yes, you are. I suppose your papa wouldn’t like it if you turned into a frog.” Lucy shook her head hard. She’d quit laughing when the tickling ended, but her eyes continued to dance with blue sparkles. Healthy children had the most wonderful glow about them. “Lucy, sweetheart, you know that I’m not really your mama, don’t you?”
“You brush my hair like a real ma, and make me wear a bonnet.”
“I think you’re a fine little girl.” Emma touched Lucy’s chin and peered into a face that had grown suddenly solemn. “Someday you’ll have a real mama and that’s what you’ll want to call her.”
“I want to call you Mama.”
“How about if you call me Mama Emma?”
The sparkle flashed back into Lucy’s eyes. She hugged Emma tightly around the neck.
Hopefully she hadn’t set Lucy up for heartache by giving in to that name.
“We’d better get busy giving the rest of these trees names.”
Lucy let go of her neck and hurried over to the line of trees lying on the ground.
“This one is Lucy.” She pointed to a peach tree and then to a pecan. “This one is Mama Emma.”
Lordy, she’d never allowed a child to call her Mama-anything. She prayed that she wouldn’t have to mend that mistake at summer’s end.
After two hours, Emma and Lucy broke for lunch. Emma took the gun out of the picnic basket and set it beside the tools.
After they’d eaten, Lucy yawned, stretched and fell asleep on the picnic blanket.
“Come on over here, Pearl.” Emma positioned the horse so that her shadow covered Lucy. “That’s a good horse. Now, don’t move. Stay right there.”
Pearl whickered and nuzzled Emma’s chin.
“I’d best get back to work on these trees. In no time at all I’ll be feeding you apples from them.” She kissed Pearl’s velvety muzzle. “You watch over Hoppety there, and I’ll bake you a pie full of apples.”
It took only another hour to get the remaining trees into the ground, thanks to the soil preparation that must have taken such time and sweat.
She firmed the dirt around the last sapling. The bawling of a steer cut the peaceful afternoon. Mercy, if it didn’t seem to be right behind her.
Emma pivoted on her knees. A bull munched Hoppety Tree between his hairy brown jaws. Dirt crumbled from the roots before the huge mouth chomped and swallowed them.
“Shoo!” She jumped up and waved her apron at him. “Go away!”
“I wouldn’t wave your clothing at him, ma’am.”
Emma glanced up to see a cowboy ride into view. “If this beast belongs to you, get him off my land!”
“Now, the trouble with beasts is that they don’t have a speck of respect for property lines.”
Finished with Hoppety Tree, the bull lumbered toward the next tree in line. The cowboy gave him an indulgent smile.
“You get this steak off my property, Mr… .”
“Mr. Samuel Tucker, foreman for Lawrence Pendragon.” The cowboy twirled a rope over his head and lassoed the bull but he let it hang slack, giving the animal the space he needed to eat another tree.
“Fickle critters.” Mr. Tucker drew his gun from his holster and aimed it at the munching steer.
“You never know what they’re going to do.” While he spoke, the barrel of his gun shifted. It took dead aim on Lucy asleep in Pearl’s shade.
Angry heat flashed through Emma. She stepped between the piece and the child.
Blast! Why had she left Matt’s gun with the pile of tools? A good twenty feet lay between her and the weapon. She took a few sidesteps in that direction.
Praise be! The cowboy’s gun shifted away from Lucy and toward her. The sun’s glare glinted up and down the length of it.
Pearl snorted. She lowered her head to sniff Lucy then stepped over her so that she straddled her. The good horse had always had a sense for protecting young ones.
“I’ve seen these cattle trample the dreams of many a settler,” the foreman declared.
So far, the cowboy hadn’t wrapped his finger around the trigger of his revolver. Emma stopped to consider her situation further. Even if she made it to Matt’s gun, what then? The cattleman had the upper hand, since