RR05 - Tender Mercies Read Free Page B

rode into the yard at Ingeborg’s and that you are pure as gushing springwater, but you are such almighty fun to tease.”
    Katy swatted him on the back pocket from her position in the rocking chair.
    “Tease me all you like, but I still think—”
    “Solberg took me aside one day and warned me that I better take good care of you, or I’d have to answer to both him and God.”
    Katy flopped back against the chair. “He didn’t!” Her Bjorklund blue eyes grew rounder. “You didn’t.” Heat painted roses on her cheeks to match the pink climber that dressed their porch.
    “Sure ’nuff.” He leaned forward to run a gentle fingertip down the bridge of her nose. Silly how after six months of marriage he still couldn’t resist the urge to touch her. . . . He jerked his thoughts back in line. This was the middle of the afternoon, and if the laughter dancing in his sister’s eyes carried any warning, he’d soon be the brunt of her teasing.
    “Well, I . . .” Katy lapsed back into her native Norwegian when she couldn’t find the right words in English.
    “I have a feeling that Pastor Solberg may still be nursing his wounds,” Mary Martha added. She smiled up at her brother. “First you take his sweetheart, then you parade your sister by him. Tsk, tsk, tsk. Poor man.”
    Zeb rolled his eyes. “Poor man indeed. He’s got every matchmaking mama in the countryside courtin’ him in her daughter’s stead.”
    “I rest my case.” Shaking her head, Mary Martha continued. “Why anyone would want to be a minister’s wife is more than I can guess.”
    Zeb gave her his “don’t ask me” look and glanced out at the barn where thirteen-year-old Manda Norton, now MacCallister—he and Katy had formally adopted both Manda and five-year-old Deborah just before harvest—was jogging and stopping, the colt obeying her every move. Manda’s sister had stayed over at the Bjorklunds’ to play with Andrew and Ellie. The three would be going to school for the first time next week.
    His thoughts wandered back to the days he and Katy had spent in Montana rounding up wild horses. The mountains drew him with their grandeur, and he knew Katy would go there with him if he asked. But they had a fine farm here and family and friends close for her to enjoy. Not that he didn’t also, but he knew homesteading was harder for the women, and it was important for them to have other womenfolk nearby.
    Manda had put away the weanling colt and was bringing out one of the young fillies he and Katy had rounded up from the wild horse herd. Now that he had purchased the heavy stallion, in a couple years he would have some fine workhorses for sale, a much needed commodity out here on the Dakota prairies, especially farther west where homesteaders were still breaking the sod. Here in the Red River Valley farmers were trying to improve their stock and plant as many acres of wheat as they could beg, buy, or lease. The coming of the railroad had made shipping easier, and the territory now produced more wheat than several of the eastern states combined.
    Mary Martha watched her brother, the pride of him evident on her mobile face. While she’d give anything to get him to come back to the MacCallister homeplace in Missouri, she could tell he was happier here than she’d ever seen him. With the threat of the feuding Galloways finally over, Zeb was a free man and living that freedom with a joy that pleasured her heart. If only her mother would come west also, she could stay here. There was an excitement underlying life here on the prairie that she didn’t find in Missouri, where folks still talked about the war as if it were last week.
    “Katy, why don’t you go put your feet up for a spell and take a bit of a nap?”
    Katy’s eyes snapped open, and she set the rocker to creaking again. “No, I’m fine.”
    “You may be fine, but your snoring near to woke the bees.” Zeb turned from his study of the corrals and, taking his wife’s hand, drew