Stoner's Crossing by Judith Pella

Author:Judith Pella [Pella, Judith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781441262981
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2012-11-23T05:00:00+00:00

45

After about ten minutes of silence, Matt rose and stretched. “I’m kinda hungry, how about you?”

“They keep this place stocked?”

“Mostly in the winter for when a hand stays out here to keep an eye on the cattle grazed up here. But there oughta be something left over.”

He walked to the cupboards in the kitchen area of the small, one-room cabin, glancing out the only window as he did so.

“It’s coming down with a vengeance out there,” he commented.

“That’s Texas for you,” Carolyn said. “Yesterday, it was dry enough to blow dust off the Brazos.”

“I reckon General Sherman was right.”

“That Yankee!” Carolyn laughed with mock disdain. “What could he be right about?”

“He said that if he owned Texas and hell, he’d rent out Texas and live on the other property.”

Carolyn laughed. “That’s good. But I wouldn’t want to live any place else myself.”

“Neither would I.”

“Were you born here, then?” Carolyn asked.

“Yeah, over by Jacksboro. How about you?”

“I was born in Indian Territory, in a Cheyenne camp.” She said it with some pride, even though she was always just a little disappointed she couldn’t claim Texas as her birthplace.

Matt whistled. “You don’t say? In an Indian camp? How did that come about?”

As Matt opened a couple of cans of beans and heated them over the fire, Carolyn told him the rest of her mother’s story.

“Well, Carolyn,” he said when she finished several minutes later, “I’m impressed. I guess you have been around some.”

She smiled, pleased to have finally made her point with this cocky cowboy. Maybe he’d respect her more in the future.

Matt took the heated cans off the fire and set them on the floor to cool. Carolyn thought there was no better fragrance than beans cooked over an open fire when you hadn’t eaten for hours. Though it was even better in the open air, this was almost as good. But Matt wasn’t finished yet with their meal. He threw on his slicker and ducked outside for a few minutes with a bucket in hand. When he returned, the pail was half full of rainwater, and he proceeded to make a pot of coffee—the second best fragrance, in Carolyn’s opinion.

She didn’t feel at all uncomfortable that this cowboy was fixing their meal. She was so inept in the kitchen that she could hardly open a can without injuring herself.

When they sat down to eat, Carolyn took up the conversation where they had left off. “So, Matt, I told you my life story, now it’s your turn.”

“Aw, never mind about that. You don’t want to hear it.”

“But I do, and what better way to while away this storm.”

“Well, it ain’t a very good story, that’s all. Not one I much like repeating.” He paused a moment in thought, as if he was remembering something. When he began again, his tense attitude had softened. “I reckon it comes out okay, though, so maybe for that reason I should tell it. Anyways, someone once told me I didn’t have to feel shy about boasting if it was about God.

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