Dorothy Garlock Read Online Free

over the teddy and the petticoat. She found an apron to tie about her waist.
    Starr’s shoes were many sizes too big for her, and when Jo Bell offered a pair of Indian moccasins, she accepted them gratefully.
    “I hate Indians. I ain’t wearin’ nothin’ made by no stinkin’ redskin. What’s yore name, anyhow?”
    “Willa Hammer.”
    “I knowed the Hammer part. Well, ya ought to fix your hair so you’d look good when Papa gets back. Ya still won’t be as pretty as Starr. Yore too skinny.”
    “Your father’s not driving the wagon?” Willa glanced at the front of the wagon and the tied-down canvas curtain.
    “Charlie is. He drives good. Papa tied down the canvas. He said it ain’t decent for a boy Charlie’s age to look on a buck-naked woman. Not yet anyhow. He’d get all excited and go off half-cocked, is what Papa said.”
    “How old is Charlie?”
    “He’s a year younger than me. He’s big for his age. Anyhow Papa said his juices was up good and it was time he found him a woman.”
    The words coming out of the girl’s mouth so matter-of-factly caused Willa’s mind to freeze with shock. Dear God. What kind of a man would speak so frankly to his children? Had he rescued her from the mob thinking she would be a replacement for Starr? Willa stared out the back of the wagon until she recovered from the worst of the shock she had felt on hearing Jo Bell’s words and the realization that she was out here in this vast emptiness with a man whose moral values were so lacking.
    “Where did your father go?” she asked calmly while her fingers tried to bring order to her heavy hair. She twisted itin a roll, gathered it in a loose knot on the back of her neck and pinned it with long, wire hairpins from Starr’s trunk.
    “Yore hair’s awful long. I sure do wish it was red like Starr’s ’stead of that dry-grass color. I reckon it ain’t too ugly, but it wouldn’t melt no ice in no dancehall though.”
    “I reckon it wouldn’t. Where did your father go?” Willa asked again.
    “I don’t know.” Jo Bell shrugged. “He always goes off somewhere. He’ll be back by supper time. Always does.”
    *  *  *
    At sundown Charlie turned off the trail and stopped the wagon under a stand of ash trees and alongside a little branch that held a trickling of water. Jo Bell slid out the back of the wagon and Willa followed. Without a word to Willa or his sister, Charlie went about the business of unhitching the mules, watering and picketing them. He was a tall, slim, serious-faced boy and handled the animals as capably as a man would.
    Jo Bell was small-boned and petite. From a distance she would easily pass for a child.
    “Why do you dress like a little girl?” Willa asked.
    “Papa wants folks to think I’m still little bitty. He says I’m so pretty that it’d take a army to keep the men away if they knowed I was full-grown.” She giggled happily and preened. “He’s savin’ me for a rich rancher with lots of land. He says I’m like money in the bank.”
    There was nothing Willa could say to that. She merely shook her head in disbelief, a gesture totally lost on Jo Bell.
    “Papa’ll want supper to be ready,” Jo Bell said, and lowered the front of a box attached to the side of the wagon. She pulled out a spider skillet, a wooden bowl and a coffeepot. “I hope ya make good biscuits. Papa sets quite a store by a woman what cooks good biscuits.”
    Apprehension gripped Willa. Here she was in the middle of nowhere with this strange family and no means to protect herself. She didn’t remember anything about the man who had pulled her up into the wagon except that he had offered help when she needed it so badly. Deep in thought and ignoring both Jo Bell and Charlie, she walked behind a screen of bushes, relieved herself and went to the creek to wash. Life goes on, she thought dully. She would do what she had to do.
    Charlie had started a fire and a slow finger of smoke was pointing upward. There was