Gabriel's Atonement by Vickie McDonough

Author:Vickie McDonough [McDonough, Vickie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-63409-154-1
Publisher: Barbour Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2015-01-28T16:00:00+00:00

Lara stared up at Gabriel Coulter—at least she thought it was him. He was wearing more casual clothes than the other times she’d seen him, and he’d shaved off his mustache.

He smiled and tipped his hat, his intriguingly dark eyes gleaming. “Fancy seeing you here. I’d love to talk, but I’m chasing after a man who stole my horse. I’ll return later, and we’ll chat then.”

And he was gone, weaving his horse through the crowd, toward the state line.

She still hugged her son, and she wasn’t sure if her heart was throbbing because of the close call or the fact that she’d seen Gabe again. She watched him ride off, sitting tall in the saddle. This cowboy look was far more becoming on him than the dandy style.

Michael wiggled, and she released him.

“Why did you run off like that?”

“I was following a kitty.”

She blew out a breath, hoping for patience. “Sweetie, you can’t run away like that. Not with all these people here. What if you had gotten lost? We might never have found you.”

“But I wanted to pet the kitty.” A pair of innocent, blue-green eyes stared up at her. He clearly had no idea of the danger of wandering off. She’d just have to keep a closer watch on him.

“Let’s go back to camp.”

“But the kitty…”

She stroked his hair as she searched for the cat. “It’s gone now, and we have work to do.”

She made a mental list of what she needed to accomplish today. Feed and milk the goats. Wash some clothing. Scrape together something for them to eat. Maybe she could barter some goat’s milk for a hunk of meat to make soup with.

As they walked into camp, she noticed Grandpa had dug out his wrinkled shirt with the GAR patch on the sleeve and was wearing it. She didn’t know much about the Grand Army of the Republic organization, other than it was a group for Union war veterans. She smiled. “You found your old shirt.”

He nodded and rubbed his hand down the front of it. “I ran into Jess Filbert, from my old troop, and he had his on. Lots of veterans are here, hoping to get land to leave to their families when they’re gone.”

She winced, hating to think about life without him. But she was fortunate he was still here, considering the struggles he faced whenever a malaria attack hit him. All she could do was help ease his daily workload and pray that God wouldn’t take him home for a long while.

“A group of us are gettin’ together after supper to catch up on things.”

“That sounds like a nice evening.” She glanced around camp. “Where’s Jo?”

“She and that friend of hers went for a walk.”

Lara pursed her lips. Leave it to Jo to disappear when there was so much to do. “Do you know when she’ll be back?”

“Lunchtime, I reckon.” He winked at her. “You know how that girl loves to eat.”

“And hates to work.”

He chuckled. “Speaking of work, I already fed and milked the goats.

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