She kicked the mare forward so that she was level with Margery.
“Oh, my goodness. Are they all that awful?” Her legs, she realized, were now entirely liquid.
“Awful? Alice, that went great.”
Alice wasn’t sure she’d heard her correctly.
“Last time I rode up to Red Creek Jim Horner shot my hat clean off.” Margery turned toward her and tilted her hat so that Alice could see the tiny hole that scorched straight through the top of it. She rammed it back onto her head. “Come on, let’s kick on a little. I want to take you to meet Nancy before we break for lunch.”
THREE
. . . and best of all, the wilderness of books, in which she could wander, where she liked, made the library a region of bliss to her.
• LOUISA MAY ALCOTT, Little Women
Two purple bruises on her knees, one on her left ankle and blisters in places she didn’t know blisters could exist, a cluster of infected bites behind her right ear, four broken nails (slightly grubby, she had to admit) and sunburn on her neck and nose. A two-inch-long graze on her right shoulder from being scraped against a tree, and a mark on her left elbow where Spirit had bitten her when she’d tried to slap a horsefly. Alice peered at her grimy face in the mirror, wondering what people back in England would make of the scabby cowgirl staring back at her.
It had been more than a fortnight and nobody had mentioned that Isabelle Brady had still not arrived to join the little team of packhorse librarians, so Alice didn’t feel able to ask. Frederick didn’t say much other than to offer her coffee and help her with Spirit, Beth—the middle child of eight brothers—would march in and out with a brisk boyish energy, nodding a cheerful hello, dumping her saddle on the floor, exclaiming when she couldn’t find her goddamn saddlebags, and Isabelle’s name simply failed to appear on the little cards on the wall with which they signed themselves in and out of shifts. Occasionally a large dark green motor-car would sweep by with Mrs. Brady in the front, and Margery would nod, but no words passed between them. Alice began to think that putting her daughter’s name out there had been a way for Mrs. Brady to encourage other young women to come forward.
So, it was something of a surprise when the motor-car pulled up on Thursday afternoon, its huge wheels sending a spray of sand and grit up the steps as it stopped. Mrs. Brady was an enthusiastic, if easily distracted driver, prone to sending locals scattering as she turned her head to wave at some passerby, or swerved extravagantly to avoid a cat in the road.
“Who is that?” Margery didn’t look up. She was working her way through two piles of returned books, trying to decide which were too damaged to go out again. There was little point sending out a book in which the last page was missing, as had already happened once. Waste of my time, had been the response from the sharecropper who had been given The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck. I won’t be reading a book again.
“Think it might be Mrs. Brady.” Alice, who had been treating a blister on her heel, peered out of the window, trying to remain inconspicuous. She watched as Mrs. Brady closed the driver’s door and paused to wave at somebody across the street. And then she saw a younger woman emerge from the passenger side, red hair pulled back and pinned into neat curls. Isabelle Brady.
“It’s both of them,” Alice said quietly. She tugged her sock back on, wincing.
“I’m surprised.”
“Why?” said Alice.
Isabelle made her way around the side of the car until she was level with her mother. It was then that Alice saw she walked with a pronounced limp, and that her lower left leg was encased in a leather and metal brace, the shoe at the end built up so that it resembled a small black brick. She didn’t use a stick, but rolled slightly as she moved, and concentration—or possibly discomfort—was writ large on her freckled features.
Alice pulled back, not wanting to be seen to be watching as they made their way slowly up the steps. She heard a murmured conversation and then the door opened.
“Miss O’Hare!”
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Brady, Isabelle.”
“I’m so sorry for the delay in getting Izzy started. She had . . . some things to attend to first.”
“Just glad to have you.