All up and down the street windows slammed closed and doors banged shut. The slap of wood on wood and the nervous call of voices echoed over town.
Near the railroad, cattle bawled in the stock pens. The poor beasts didn’t know that a wide firebreak had been maintained all around the town. Even if the flames came close enough for Dodge to be in danger of flying embers, folks would be on the lookout. Already the baker had set out four pails of water on the boardwalk.
The town wasn’t likely to catch fire. From what Emma could see, the flames were miles outside town. It was only the wind blowing in the smoke and ash that made the danger seem so immediate.
Surely Rachael’s husband had been right about the fire not burning her home. She would make herself believe it and not go running through a blazing prairie fire thinking she could save the place. As much as she loved her home, she wouldn’t risk her safety and that of Pearl to watch it incinerate before her eyes.
Matt, Billy and Red had been diligent about keeping the firebreak cleared. Emma snuffed out her worry. She tucked it in the back of her mind and looked forward to an evening with Rachael’s family. Certainly, tomorrow morning she would find her home as intact as she had left it today.
An acrid wind whistled down the street and pushed Emma’s bonnet into her eyes.
“Blast!” She shoved it back with the fingers of one hand and gripped her fabric tight to her chest with the other. “Cursed wind!”
If only there had been room in her purse for the Orange Lilly as well as the material, her progress toward the livery would have been quicker. As it was, she had to stop every third step to pull the dratted bonnet into place. If it hadn’t been for the ash so thick in the air she would have let it flap behind her.
All at once the perverse wind seemed to lose interest in her bonnet and tossed up her skirt instead. It flew up about her petticoats. When she tried to press it modestly down a gust caught the fabric for Lucy’s dress and spun it right out of her clenched fingers.
It looked like a blue-checkered tumbleweed racing across the street toward the Long Branch.
“Oh blazes!” she cried, and took off after it at a run. Her petticoats flashed white to the knee but she didn’t care. Imagine having to wash perfectly new material before it could be sewn!
The checkered fabric came to rest, wrapped around the thick thighs of a man standing outside the saloon.
Emma stopped short. She stood in the middle of the street with her hair streaking out of its bun as if it was possessed.
Daylight borrowing an unnatural orange tint from the sun had settled down on the town. It made the scene before her appear absurd. Even though the stranger looked intimidating, like a big mean bull trapped on the boardwalk, she covered her mouth to keep from giggling while he struggled to untangle the creeping fabric from his legs. The harder he plucked at it the more wrapped up he became in its checkered claws.
Apparently the wind was not satisfied with tormenting him with a gingham skirt. It took a sudden updraft and knocked the hat from his shaved head. His hand shot out. Nearly as fast as Emma could see it, he caught the hat by its black brim and smashed it back on his head.
The wind sighed softly all of a sudden, giving him an instant to free himself of the fabric, then fold it neatly from corner to corner then side to side.
“Ma’am?” He held her wayward goods out to her with long slender fingers that didn’t match his stocky frame. One shiny fingernail caught the orange glow of the sky. What an odd day when a man’s fingers looked like flaming matches.
Under any other circumstances she would not have approached a stranger standing in front of the saloon.
Mercy, but wouldn’t Matt and the boys have something to say about her meeting this crooked-nosed stranger without them beside her.
Why, they would raise dust from here to home to see her coming up the saloon steps with no more sense than the dry leaves blowing wild in the street. Still, she had paid good money for that fabric and she wouldn’t shy away just because the fellow had silver eyes that peeked out of lashless