Seasons of Bliss (Saskatchewan Saga Book #4) Read Free Page A

pleading.
    “Tomorrow, tomorrow for sure,” Robbie said quickly.
    “Weel, then,” Tierney said uncertainly and stepped toward the buggy. Robbie took her elbow and helped her up into the rig, which rocked and righted itself and engaged her attention momentarily.
    “For supper tomorrow night, then?” Mr. Bloom asked, with some relief, aware that his wife would not thank him if he surprised her with an unexpected guest. Besides, he and Lydia needed the evening to get acquainted with the girl.
    “Aye. Seven o’clock.”
    Robbie Dunbar stood at the side of the buggy, looking up, his face—if Herbert Bloom was any judge—suddenly haggard, his eyes almost desperate. Herbert Bloom clucked to the horse, made a wide turn, and headed the buggy toward the road. The girl Tierney kept turning her eyes, whichever way they were headed, so that she could see the face of the man standing alone beside his plowed field and watching them until they were out of sight.
    As the horse and buggy reached the road, Tierney turned apprehensive eyes on her new acquaintance, her employer, and said, through stiff lips, “Somethin’s not reet . . . right, Mr. Bloom. I know Robbie Dunbar well, and somethin’ . . . something’s not right.”

A s though in a dream, Robbie Dunbar turned back to his plowing. The letter, a communication from Prince Albert concerning the sale of a seeder, delivered by—was it indeed a dream?—Tierney Caulder herself, was stuffed into a pocket and forgotten for the time being. Who was there to write him anything personal? Certainly no one here in this new land in which he found himself, a stranger among strangers. Except for Allan, his brother, Robbie was as alone as though he had gone to the end of the earth and found it uninhabited. And mostly uninhabited it was, this isolated corner of the world.
    Hard as it had been to leave Binkiebrae, home, and all things known and dear, still something in him had thrilled at the challenge opening before him—to tread on land never before stepped on by human foot, to slide a plow into soil that had never felt a blade’s bite, to build a “hoosie” of his own on landof his own. Yes, it had been the chance of a lifetime, and, to a young, healthy man with little to look forward to, tremendously challenging.
    Robbie’s gaze drifted to the cabin. Just down the road stood its duplicate—Allan’s. Crude they both were, and rough, the one rougher than the other, for they learned together as they erected Allan’s cabin, then turned their attention to Robbie’s, to proceed with a little more finesse. They had been warned that the logs, being green and unweathered, would undoubtedly shrink, allowing for drafts, even snow, to blow in. But just now they were snug and sturdy dwellings, and Robbie felt king of all he possessed when, at night, he shut the door behind him, sat up to the side of his small stove, and took his rest from a hard day’s labor.
    Simple and rustic as things were, they had not been easy to come by. Though only $10.00 was needed for the filing fee, there was much to buy before the two men could live on the land and make it productive. Houses, of course, were made from the trees on their own property, but the motley assemblage of items to put in them—a stove, a few dishes, a bed, a couple of chairs—all basic and necessary, had to be purchased. Besides the small supply of household goods, there were windows to buy, doors, nails, axes and countless other tools. As for horses to work the land, a cow for milk, and a few hens for eggs, these items were being shared between the brothers, one set doing both places for now. Certainly there were no frills on the Dunbar homesteads. Even as Robbie used the team for plowing today, he could hear Allan’s axe as he worked doggedly and persistently at the task of clearing land so that, in three years, he might have the proper number of acres cleared and so fulfill that requirement to prove up his land; it took