Outlaw Hearts by Rosanne Bittner

Author:Rosanne Bittner
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc
Published: 2015-03-31T04:00:00+00:00

Part Three

We have walked together many years.

Your spirit is my spirit.

Your breath is my breath.

Our hearts beat with one rhythm.

I know your soul, and you know mine.

Even when we cannot be together,

We are one.

Nineteen

March 1870

Miranda slowly opened her eyes, moving them just enough to see familiar flowered wallpaper. She realized then that she was in one of the rooms at Dr. Henderson’s house. She tried to move, but realized she was too weak to even wiggle her fingers.

Gradually it all came back to her. She had delivered her baby. She remembered she had been helping bandage a man’s arm when she went into labor. Thank God it had happened here at the doctor’s office and not while she was alone with Lloyd in the tiny apartment she rented above the hardware store. A man named Jerry Eastman had bought the store after the former owner, Bob Liberty, had been killed in the now-infamous shoot-out the day of the fair. Eastman was new in town, so he was at least friendlier to her than most of the others, but, oh, how she hated those two tiny rooms above his store. She had had no choice but to find the cheapest place possible. She had to be careful with money now, and being pregnant and having Lloyd to watch and unable to afford help, she couldn’t have kept running the ranch.

She thought about the lovely home she and Jake had shared, the home Jake had built with so much love. Each time she remembered the happiness they had known at the ranch, the peace Jake had found, it felt as though someone was squeezing her heart in a vise.

Now there was a new baby. If they were still living as a family at the farm, this event would be such a joy, but the only remnant of that life was the small profit she had made selling the property and livestock, most of the furnishings, the coal cookstove Jake had so proudly bought for her. She had carefully packed her lace curtains and her braided rugs into her trunk, the one pitiful constant in her life, and she continued to promise herself she would use those things again in the new home she trusted Jake would make for her and the children…somewhere.

For six months now, she had managed to live off the money Jake had left her in a savings account, as well as the money from the ranch. To keep from using it up too quickly, she helped Dr. Henderson with his practice. Betsy Price, one of the few women in town who had remained her friend since the shoot-out, graciously watched Lloyd for her when she worked for the doctor; and she spent her evenings doing ironing and mending for others. She was determined to survive this awful time away from Jake, determined to find ways to support herself and stay in Desert until Jake could send for her.

She heard hushed voices outside the door, heard Lloyd, nearly three now, running about and playing, heard the tiny squall of a baby.

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