The Devil You Know Read Free

forward.
    Wilhelmina Pancake had known her Grandpa Obie, remembered quite clearly sitting on his lap in the rocker he brought all the way from Philadelphia because he promised Granny that he would. She remembered that Granny complained, mostly good-naturedly, that excepting for the years she was nursing her sons, Obie and Willa got more use out of that rocker than she ever did.
    Grandpa Obie was gone almost a score of years now, having taken a spill from a fiercely bucking mare that he was trying to break. Instead, the mare broke him, snapping his neck like a frozen twig. Willa had known he was gone before she reached him, and she had wanted to put the mare down, but Granny had stopped her, taking the gun out of her hands and holding her so tightly that Willa thought she might suffocate in that musky bosom. She hadn’t, though, and was glad for those moments because it was only a few years later that Granny passed.
    Some days Willa missed that bosom, missed the comfort of it the way she missed her grandpa’s lap. From time to time, she sat in the rocker, but it wasn’t the same, and unless Annalea crawled into her lap—and really, Annalea wasgetting too big to be an easy fit—Willa found sitting there to be a bittersweet experience that was best avoided.
    Willa lifted her face to the halcyon sky, tipping back her pearl gray Stetson, and let sunlight wash over her. She remained in that posture, one gloved hand resting on the top rail of the corral and the other keeping her hat in place, and waited for sunlight and the cool, gentle breeze to press color into her cheeks and sweep away the melancholy.
    â€œUse your knees!” she called to Cutter Hamill as she pulled herself up to stand on the bottom rail. “Get your hand up! She’s going to throw you!” No sooner had the words left her mouth than the cinnamon mare with the white star on her nose—named Miss Dolly for no reason except that Annalea declared it should be so—changed tactics and crow-hopped hard and high, unseating her rider and forcing him to take a graceless, humiliating fall.
    Miss Dolly settled, shaking off the lingering presence of her rider even though she could see his face was planted in the dirt. She nudged him once with her nose as if to prove there were no hard feelings, and then she walked toward Willa, her temperament once again serene.
    Willa threw one leg over the top rail, and then the other. She sat perfectly balanced, her boot heels hooked on the middle rail, and braced herself for Miss Dolly’s approach and inevitable nuzzling.
    â€œYou all right, Cutter?” she asked as she held the mare’s head steady and stroked her nose. “This little lady has no use for you climbing on her back.”
    Cutter lifted himself enough to swivel his head in Willa’s direction. “She’s no lady, no matter what Annalea says.” He laid his cheek flat to the dirt again. “Anyone else see me fall?”
    Willa looked around. Except for animals of the four-legged kind, the area was deserted. “Happy’s inside the house, making dinner if you can take him at his word, and Zach must be in the barn, leastways I don’t see him out and about. Seems like I’m the only witness, and you know I don’t carry tales.”
    â€œI don’t know that,” he said. “I don’t know that at all.”
    She chuckled. “Go on. Get up and shake if off.” Willacould not repress a sympathetic smile as Cutter groaned softly and pushed to his knees. He rolled his shoulders to test the waters, and upon discovering he was still connected bone to bone, scrambled to his feet.
    Unfolding to his full height, he shook himself out with the unconscious ease and energy of a wet, playful pup. At nineteen, Cutter still had a lot of pup in him, though Willa knew he thought of himself as full grown into manhood. She had suspected for a time that he favored her in a moony, romantic sort of