Ruth by Lori Copeland

Author:Lori Copeland
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: FICTION / Religious, FICTION / Christian / Romance
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2012-11-30T08:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

Ulele Ford was a dictator.

Ruth was firmly convinced the woman was a tyrant as she cleaned the old shack from top to bottom. She scrubbed floors down on her knees. Since she’d been here, she’d hauled heavy water buckets up from the creek, cooked three meals a day, and washed the old couple’s clothes in the icy stream. The whole while, Ulele sat in the rocker and talked gibberish to the baby.

On the second afternoon Ruth caught the Indian staring at her.

“What?” she asked, attempting a genial smile. Though she treated Ruth as nothing more than a servant, Ulele, with her strange herbs and tonics, had most likely saved Dylan’s life. Ruth tried to summon gratitude, but mostly she rued the day she and Dylan had accepted the old couple’s help. Ruth was accustomed to hard work, but the labor the old woman forced on her was nothing short of a crime. And Nehemiah worked Dylan like a plow horse.

The squaw shook her head, which Ruth had come to recognize meant that the woman was in no mood to communicate. Ruth understood little of what the Cherokee woman said, though Ulele made her work instructions very clear.

“Clean!”

“Wash!”

“Cook!”

“Sit.”

Nehemiah seemed proud that his wife’s vocabulary was broadening. Ruth preferred the “sit” and “go” commands.

It was no wonder the woman was a domineering bully. The way Nehemiah treated his wife was shameful. He ordered her around in quick curt sentences, much as he would one of the old hounds lying on the front stoop. The woman did as he ordered and never offered a single rebuke. Ruth would flash a cold stare at the evil man as she dished piping hot stew into bowls. There was no need to speak to a woman in that tone—no need at all.

Tonight Dylan was sitting by the fire, his head drooped from exhaustion. Ruth laid Ulele’s mending aside and got up to pour a fresh cup of coffee.

Dylan briefly smiled his gratitude when she closed his hand around the steaming cup. The fire burned low; outside, a cold wind whistled across snow-packed ground.

“Must you leave so early each morning?” she asked softly. She cast a glance at Ulele, who was preoccupied with the baby. Snores rolled from the old man’s mouth as he slept by the fire, his pungent stocking feet propped on a wooden chair.

Dylan shook his head. At night it seemed to Ruth that his pain was unbearable. He nodded toward the sleeping tormentor. “He insists we start before sunup.”

Dylan rose at three thirty and left the house with Nehemiah a short time later. Ruth made sure he had a warm breakfast of oatmeal and thick slices of toasted bread spread with honey, but the marshall ate very little these days. Night covered the land when the two men returned. Dylan said little about his work, but Ruth knew by their scant conversations over supper that he was doing hard physical labor: cutting wood, setting fence posts, working long hours behind the heavy anvil Nehemiah kept in the barn.

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