Page 30

“I’ll just add this,” Daisy said. “While Frannie was skinning those varmints, she shot a few more slithering out of the tall grass. Which goes to show that we can kill and butcher our own food, cook supper, and defend ourselves at the same time. A cast-iron skillet isn’t just for frying up bacon. It can be used as a very handy weapon.”

“Can I get an amen ?” Amanda said.

The whole group shouted out the word.

Five minutes later the women and children were lined up. The photographer took a picture and then nodded at Wilbur.

“Thank you for your time,” Wilbur said as he crawled up into the wagon and sat down on the buckboard. The photographer loaded his equipment in the back and sat down beside it.

“I’ll take these fellers back to the train station and then come back with supplies and get your petition,” Elijah told Daisy as he passed by her.

“Claude should have everything loaded up in another wagon by then. Miz Beulah’s store is lookin’ pretty pitiful.

I hope y’all can get things settled soon or it will be plumb empty.

We’ve been writing down the tallies for what we have taken out of the store so Miz Beulah will have an accounting, and I’ve seen to it that the menfolk have written down what they needed as well. ”

“I hope it ends soon, too.” Daisy was tired of sleeping on a pallet in a barn packed elbow to elbow with other women. She missed her own bed and the privacy that having a room all to herself afforded.

“Are you thinking about Claude?” Lily joked as the two of them watched the wagon disappear down the road back to town.

“I wasn’t, but I am now,” Daisy groaned. “I can’t do too much to freshen up or everyone will tease me worse than you do. But I look a fright.”

“Go redo your hair at least and grab a clean apron from the clothesline. This heat probably dried everything while we were in the church. Beulah made cookies today, so you can offer Claude and Elijah some refreshments,” Lily said.

Daisy’s pulse jacked up several notches. “I shouldn’t do any of that. What I should do is go on down to the shooting place and get rid of some of my frustrations by firing off a few rounds.”

“What aggravated you the most, that man’s smug looks or the twist he could put on his article?

” Lily asked. “I bet he thought he would come here and find a bunch of whiny women griping because they had to sleep on straw beds and help cook meals for more than a hundred women. Can’t you see the headline?

” She waved her hand across the air. “‘Unhappy Women Learn Lesson.’”

“Now he’ll have to write ‘Women Take a Stand,’” Daisy said. “I’d bet silver dollars to the rattlers Frannie cut off those snakes’ tails that he is married and doesn’t agree with what we are doing. Which ...” Daisy frowned. “What did she do with those things, anyway?”

“I have no idea, but you can bet she’ll do something with them,” Lily answered. “Do you think Wilbur visits the upstairs rooms in a saloon in Waco?”

Daisy shrugged. “If he does, I feel sorry for the women who have to put up with him.” She headed back to the barn to help finish up the rest of the barn ladies’ laundry. If Claude singled her out, she made a vow that she would discourage him from flirting.

Miz Raven was back. You’ve had these same thoughts more than a dozen times.

“I know, but I have to keep reminding myself or else a good man could get hurt. If I admit to him that I’m really like Frannie, the story could get out all over town and ruin what we are doing,” she said.

“What story?” Bea asked as she slipped her hand into Daisy’s. “Are you going to tell us kids a story tonight?”

“Yes, I am, but for now, I’ve got some more laundry to do,” Daisy said. “Do you want to help me fold some things so we can make room for more?”

Bea frowned and drew her eyebrows down. “Not really. I’d rather go play Kick the Can with the other kids.”

Daisy gently squeezed her hand. “Then, darlin’, you go play. Be a little kid while you can. When you grow up, you can’t go back.”

“What does that mean?” Bea asked.

“You’ll find out soon enough.”

Lily grinned and took a basket full of sheets to the clotheslines.

Amanda kept washing a tub full of bedsheets on a rubboard.

When they were clean enough to suit her, she handed them off to Sally Anne, who dipped them up and down in a watering trough of rinse water.

That done, they became Daisy’s responsibility.

She wrung them out and Lily hung them on the clothesline.

They had finished with the last two pillowcases when the noon bell rang out promptly at twelve o’clock.

Daisy threw her shoulders back and rolled her neck to get the kinks out.

“I’m starving,” she said. “And I’m glad those newspaper men are gone.

I didn’t like them well enough to ask them to stay and eat with us. ”

“I didn’t mind them so much,” Amanda said.

“If they’ll get the word out that the women in Autrie are making a mark, maybe others will follow our example.

It could be a good thing for all of us. I just hope he doesn’t put a spin on the story that makes us look bad.

Not a single one of us were cleaned up enough to have our photograph taken.

” She wiped her brow. “I’m famished, too, now that you mention it.

Edith said we’re having ham, beans, and corn bread for dinner today.

She and Sally Anne made jam cakes for dessert.

” A wide smile spread across her face. “I wonder if Gertrude and her followers are standing over a hot stove all day for all those poor abandoned husbands?”

“I doubt it,” Daisy said. “She seems like a lot of things, but generous isn’t one of them. Though I have been wondering about what happens when that food Beulah has donated is all gone. Are y’all going to stick around if beans is the only thing on the menu for days on end?”

“I like beans,” Lily said as she fell in step behind Amanda, Daisy, and Sally Anne, “but I figure if I can shoot a rattlesnake, I can sure hit a deer or a bunch of rabbits for our cooks to use. Maybe tomorrow morning you and I should go hunting.”

“Y’all could take Frannie with you,” Amanda suggested. “That woman is a good shot, and I bet she knows how to field dress a deer.”

“Good idea, if Daisy is willing,” Lily said.

“I might not want to be forever friends with Frannie, but I’m willing to go hunting with her,” Daisy said.

She was glad she hadn’t seen Claude getting down off the wagon before she spoke, because when she did see him coming at her with a big smile on his face, all the moisture was suddenly sucked out of her mouth and her pulse raced.

“Looks like we’ve got some company for dinner,” Lily said. “I bet Elijah is here to get our list.”

“I do, too, but look. That’s Claude carrying supplies inside,” Amanda said.

Claude threw a big burlap bag over his shoulder and headed inside the church without even looking around. Elijah set a wheelbarrow on the ground and loaded it as high as he could with more supplies, then rolled it inside the door.

Daisy was the last one in the church, and just as she stepped up on the porch, Claude came out the door—still smiling. “Good afternoon, Miz Daisy.”

“Afternoon.” She returned the smile.

“Matt tells me that you-all had some excitement out here when a bunch of snakes came calling,” he said.

“We did, at that,” she said. “Lily and Frannie shot enough to make our supper.”

He leaned on the porch post. “Dipped in cornmeal and fried up crispy in bacon drippings?”

“Exactly,” she answered.

“Ain’t nothing better,” Claude said. “I should let you get on inside. Your dinner is waiting.”

“There’s dozens of women and children ahead of us. I can wait a spell,” she said and sat down on the top step. She was determined to let him know she wasn’t interested—not just in him, but in any man. She had work to do for women’s freedom.

“Are you tired of this life and ready to get back to your seamstress business?” he asked.

“A little, but it hasn’t been so bad. Besides, all my customers are out here with me,” she replied, but couldn’t push forward with her intended statement. “How about you? Do you ever get tired of being a sheep herder?”

“Yes, I do,” he admitted. “Though I wouldn’t ever tell Matt that. He needs me to help run the ranch—but that’s his dream, not mine.”

Daisy’s curiosity was piqued. Sure, she had been ready to leave Spanish Fort when Miz Raven closed down the Paradise. But she had never really wanted to just go farther south in Texas. She wanted to see more of the world. Maybe even go someplace where she could see a real snowstorm every year.

“What was—or should I say is —your dream?” she asked.

“To go north into the Idaho Territories and start my own sheep farm,” he answered.

“I’d like to be independent of my family, and live where it’s not so blessed hot in the summers.

I could take the snow and the high mountains better than this heat.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Matt and the whole bunch of my family.

But I want to live somewhere—anywhere, really—where the sun doesn’t try to bake a person to a crisp. ”

“I can agree with that.” Daisy could hear the longing in her own voice.

Maybe Claude just wanted a friend outside of his family whom he could talk to about his dreams. Perhaps he hadn’t been flirting at all, so she didn’t have to say anything to him about relationships.

“If we want something bad enough, we might find that our dreams can come true.”

Elijah came out of the church with a chunk of corn bread on top of a bowl of beans.

“Lily asked me to bring this out to you,” he said and handed it off to her.

“It’s hot out here, but it’s scorchin’ in that church.

With no breezes at all, it’s a good place for a preacher to remind his flock that hell is supposed to be seven times hotter than anyplace on earth.

I reckon a lot of poor souls have been saved when they think about enduring that kind of heat. ”

“I imagine so.” Daisy set the food on the porch. “I’ll let that cool awhile before I dive into it.”

“You about ready to go, Claude?” Elijah asked.

“Yes, sir,” he said and tipped his hat toward Daisy. “Maybe I’ll see you again?”

“Maybe so. Are y’all sure you don’t want to have a bite of dinner with us?” she asked.

“We already ate,” Elijah said. “Claude’s mama sent along a couple of her chicken pies.

She knows that’s one of my favorite dishes.

I want to get this list on over to the judge before he closes up shop today.

I understand there’s a town meetin’ in the other church this evening to talk over the points you ladies have made.

Who knows, you could be back home by the end of the week. ”

“That would be nice,” Daisy said. “But there’s a lot on the list for consideration, and we want all of it before we agree to leave our camp. Some of it will be a bitter pill for the guys to swallow.”

“I imagine it will,” Elijah said.

Claude shot another smile toward her, and then he and Elijah headed back toward town.

Daisy watched them until they turned the curve in the road, then picked up her food and began to eat.

Thoughts of deep snow and a big blaze in a fireplace flooded her mind.

That would never come true, but she could enjoy thinking about it—especially in this blasted heat.