Page 26

D aisy tiptoed across the barn floor and went outside to get a breath of fresh morning air, watch the sun rise, and listen to the birds singing. Early morning—before the day began with all its troubles or worries—was her favorite time of the day.

“What are you doing out here?” Frannie asked from the shadows.

“I might ask you the same thing,” Daisy answered.

“I like this time of day. You know that I really don’t like you, right?”

“The feeling is mutual,” Daisy said. “Do you have a reason?”

“Do you?” Frannie snapped.

Daisy nodded. “You have a nasty attitude.”

“Well, you think you are better than me, and you have a hot temper, too,” Frannie said.

“And you don’t?” Daisy chuckled.

“Do you know why I like some quiet time in the morning?” Frannie’s voice cracked, but she went on.

“It’s when I can spend a little time thinking about my son.

It’s when I’m not dressed like a ... a .

..,” she stammered. “Whatever you ladies call us. ‘Soiled doves.’ ‘Prostitutes.’ ‘Shady ladies.’ Take your pick. It’s when I can put on a calico day dress and pretend that it’s time to wake him up to go to school.

You are not a mother, so you wouldn’t understand. ”

“My grandmother used to say, ‘Once a mother, always a mother.’” Daisy swallowed hard but the lump in her throat seemed to be stuck.

“So did mine,” Frannie said. “She was so right about that.”

“Think we’ll ever be as smart as those who endured the war as grown women?” Daisy asked.

“You think that smartness just fell out of the sky and landed on them? No, it did not! They had to cut their own path, just like we’re doing.

They taught us that women are tough and we can do whatever men can do—and even better, because women had to do it and still be ladies.

Hopefully, we will make it so much better for those coming behind us that none of them ever have to work in saloons or brothels because that’s the only place left for them.

” Frannie’s voice cracked again, but she seemed to get past it quickly.

“I’m going to go help get things ready for breakfast. Don’t think this talk means I like you. ”

“Like I said, the feeling is mutual—but maybe you should be standing up after supper some night and saying all that to everyone else,” Daisy told her.

“See you here tomorrow morning.” A mixture of both sympathy and guilt washed over her.

She could have so easily been in the same place as Frannie had it not been for a stroke of pure luck.

“Probably. But you don’t have to talk to me. I’d rather you didn’t. I get up early to enjoy the quiet,” Frannie said before she disappeared into the barn.

“Me too,” Daisy muttered, and watched two young squirrels come out of a nest high up in a tree. The rising sun lit them up as they chased each other around the limbs. She smiled at their antics and thought of Alma’s little girls, who were probably helping their mama fix breakfast in the bunkhouse.

“Rising sun,” she whispered. “We’re all like this right now.”

“We’re like what?” Lily asked.

Daisy was so wrapped up in her own thoughts that the sound of Lily’s voice startled her. “You shouldn’t sneak up on a person like that.”

“Good morning to you, too,” Lily snapped.

Daisy looked down at the two buckets in Lily’s hands. “Sorry for my tone. Looks like you are off to get some water?”

“Yep, after I visit the outhouse,” Lily answered, then asked again, “We are like what?”

“The rising sun,” Daisy answered.

Lily set the empty buckets on the ground. “How do you figure that?”

“I don’t know if I can explain it. But think about how Alma’s little girls are just finding out that they don’t have to be scared of every move they make for fear of punishment.

As a group of women, we are pretty much the same.

Alone, we aren’t strong enough to make a stand, but we’re finding out that with the right circumstances, we can cut a path—not only for ourselves, but for those coming behind us.

Abbie and Elsie, and all of us, are like the rising sun.

I’m not explaining it very well, but that’s what I felt this morning. ”

“That’s deep thinking, almost like one of those parables in the Bible.” Lily picked up the buckets, took a few steps, and looked back over her shoulder. “I like it, though. No matter what place we are in, we are merely waiting on the light to shine to show us the path.”

“Exactly,” Daisy said and went back into the barn.

After breakfast Lily carried the pistols and the ammunition down to the shooting targets and laid them out on the table for another lesson.

Daisy had stayed behind to give a self-defense class.

Lily was so wound up in her thoughts about what Daisy had said that morning about the rising sun that she didn’t even notice the little girl sneaking along behind her.

She tried to figure out why she was jittery and jumped from one idea to another without figuring out anything. All alone in the wooded area a hundred yards from the church, she sniffed the air and got a whiff of something that smelled like a bushel of cucumbers.

“I bet there’s some wild ones growing down in the rocky bottom of that old, dried-up creek that Beulah told us about, or else the birds spread the seeds from the last garden that Beulah made up at her old place and they’ve produced.

I might go hunt them down and pick some for supper after the shooting lesson this morning.

” She shaded her eyes with her hand and looked up at the sun, now a nice big ball right over the tops of the trees.

“The sun is still heating up the day. Daisy is right: the sun only goes up a little each hour. Kind of like us women as we take steps toward the end result of being equal with men. I wonder how far we are today?”

She’d barely gotten the words out when she heard a gasp right behind her.

She turned and saw a little girl with long, blond braids hanging down her back.

The child opened her mouth to scream, but nothing came out.

She pointed in the direction of Lily’s feet and shivered all over as if she were having a high-fever seizure.

Lily followed the little girl’s finger all the way to the ground .

.. right to the biggest rattlesnake she had ever seen.

Apparently, the tail of her skirt had gotten caught in the rough wood of the table leg and had been held back as she walked.

And worse yet, her naked ankle was now only inches from the snake’s slithering tongue, darting in and out of a mouth that looked like a deep black hole from Lily’s viewpoint.

She was afraid to blink for fear that even that motion would cause the snake to strike.

If that happened, would the little girl come out of shock enough to go for help, or would this be Lily’s last day on earth?

Wasn’t her entire life supposed to flash before her eyes?

Maybe after all the men who had passed through her doors, whoever was keeping track of Abigail Carolina Boyle’s heavenly record had given up on her years ago.

The snake began to shake his tail, sending off its warning rattling sound.

The feeling of fight or flight rushed over Lily, but she really had no choice.

She couldn’t go two steps without being bitten.

A bunch of doves flew up into the sky when something spooked them in the tall grass not far from the table, but Lily didn’t have wings and God wasn’t going to miraculously give her a pair—not with her background.

Using as few motions as she could, she eased her hands to the table, picked up a pistol, and carefully loaded it.

Then she very gently turned back around, aimed, fired, and prayed that she didn’t shoot herself in the foot.

She didn’t realize she was holding her breath until her chest began to ache.

After a moment, she got the courage to look down to see that the varmint’s head had been blasted away, but the long body was still wiggling and trying to slither away.

The child gasped again, and Lily’s gaze left the snake and focused on the little girl. Her big blue eyes were wide and full of fear, and her little chin quivered. She raised a hand and pointed not three feet behind Lily and whispered, “More.”

Lily had five bullets left and there were four more huge snakes gliding along the ground, coming toward her. She took a few steps forward, grabbed the little girl around the waist, and set her on the table. “Cover your ears,” she said, then aimed and fired at the nearest one.

Where were they all coming from? And what if one made it through the line and got up on the table with the kid?

She remembered her father talking about a nest of the vile critters that had holed up under a neighbor’s barn.

He had said that the whole place smelled like cucumbers.

She sniffed the air and the scent got stronger with each breath she took.

Stop thinking and fire! Miz Raven yelled loudly in her head.

She popped off four more rounds, hit a snake every time, and then turned to the little girl, who had her hands over her ears and her eyes closed.

“It’s all right. They’re all dead.” She motioned with a sweep of her hand to take in the snakes.

“No they ain’t,” she sobbed.

Lily looked back to where the dead snakes were having trouble giving up the ghost and saw the grass waving back and forth—but there was no wind, not even a breeze. She checked the path back toward the church and barn. Nothing was making waves in that area.

“Run! Run as fast as you can toward the barn and find your mama!” she yelled at the child.

The little girl shook her head and appeared to be frozen to the table.

“Did your mama ever teach you how to shoot?”

“Daddy wouldn’t let her. He said that boys shoot guns. Girls cook,” she answered.

“Okay, then. You cover your ears and don’t move.” Lily hitched up her skirt and hopped up on the table beside the child. “What’s your name?”