Larkspur by Dorothy Garlock

Author:Dorothy Garlock
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Romance, FIC027050, Historical, Fiction
ISBN: 9780759522473
Publisher: Twtp Assorted
Published: 1997-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

* * *

The rest of the day was filled with a strange quiet. Kristin prepared the noon meal. When Buck and Gilly came in to eat, hardly a dozen words were spoken during the meal and none of them were directed to her except to thank her when they left the table. While she was cleaning up after the meal, Kristin saw Gilly leaving the homestead. One of the Indian drovers rode behind the wagon on a spotted pony.

To Kristin it did not seem fitting that she plunge into the cleaning or other household duties on the day a beloved relative had been laid to rest. At home in River Falls only the most essential chores would be performed and the rest of the day spent in remembering.

After wandering about the quiet rooms for an hour, she put on her shawl and left the house. She walked out to the corral and looked at the horses. They appeared to her to be wild and rangy; not at all like the stocky, well-fed horses back in Wisconsin. As she stood there leaning on the top railing, an Indian with shoulder-length hair and a doeskin band wrapped about his head moved among the more than a dozen animals. It was impossible to tell his age. He was short, his face scarred, and his legs bowed. He tossed a rope around the neck of one of the horses, led it through the gate, grabbed a handful of its mane, leaped up onto its back and rode away.

The Indians here were different too, Kristin mused. Back home they had not appeared to be so uncivilized. Here they were more like the country they lived in: wild, fierce and unbroken. Not one time, as far as Kristin could tell, had the Indian looked at her, but she had the feeling that he was aware of every move she made even when she lifted her hand to shoo away a large fly that settled on her cheek.

At the end of the bunkhouse she leaned against the wall and looked toward the mountains. A thin trail of smoke came from the Indian camp. The cone-shaped tepees looked small from this distance. She would like to go there and talk to the women but feared that she would not be welcome. One of the women bent over a campfire, another pounded something with a wooden mallet. The third woman worked on the carcass of an animal that hung by its hind legs from a tree branch. Kristin wondered if they intended to live in those flimsy shelters when winter came.

Beyond the barn stretched a long slope of meadowland, backed by the woods from which the Indians had come that day. Kristin began to move through the knee-high grasses.

Beautiful monarch butterflies flitted restlessly to and fro. A black ladybug with bright orange dots clung to a blade of grass. When Kristin reached to touch it with her fingertip, the clever little beetle spread its tiny wings and flew, reminding her of an old rhyme.

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