Wild Horses Read Free Page B

kept the lovely old ranch house clean as well. There was always something that needed to be cleaned after the food was prepared.
    The furniture was rustic, the seating made of genuine leather. Valuable sculptures were placed carefully to complement the costly artwork on the wall behind them. The lighting was muted, casting a warm, yellow glow from the expensive lamps. Candles flickered and glowed in little alcoves built into the rooms. Sadie especially loved to clean the rooms filled with art, expensive objects bought from foreign countries, and the fine rugs on the wide plank floors which were all aged and worn to smooth perfection.
    Aspen East Ranch was owned by a man named Richard Caldwell who came from a long line of wealthy cattlemen from the west. He was a man of great height and massive build. His stentorian voice rolled across the rooms like a freight train. Once, Sadie almost knocked an expensive item off a shelf while dusting with a chamois cloth and a can of Pledge Furniture Polish, her body automatically recoiling at his first booming yell.
    Everyone snapped to attention when Richard Cald­well’s voice was heard rolling and bouncing through the house, and they tried to produce exactly the response he demanded. Patience was not one of his virtues. If the poor, hapless creature he needed was out of earshot at the moment he opened his mouth, woe to that unlucky person. It felt, as Jim once said, like being “dragged across coals.”
    Richard Caldwell frightened Sadie, but only at first. After the can of Pledge almost went flying out of her nerveless fingers, her initial shock was over. Sadie’s eyes stopped bulging and returned to their normal size, and her heartbeat stopped pounding and slowed considerably when that enormous man entered the room. Now she could face him with some semblance of composure.
    But she still always felt as if her covering was unbalanced, that her breakfast was clinging to the corner of her mouth, or that there was something seriously wrong with her dress whenever Richard Caldwell appeared. His piercing gaze shot straight through her, and she felt as though she never quite passed his intimidating inspection.
    Sadie had been helping at the ranch for almost three years and he could still unnerve her, although she had glimpsed a kindly heart on more then one occasion.
    He teased her sometimes, mostly humorous jabs at the Amish ways. Then he would watch her like an eagle, observing her struggle to keep her composure yet answer in the way she knew was right.
    “That thing on your head,” he would say, “What’s it for?”
    Sadie blushed furiously at first, appalled as the heat rose in her cheeks, knowing her face was showing her discomfort. After stumbling clumsily and muttering a few words about her mother wearing one too, she asked Mam what she should say if he kept up his relentless questioning.
    One day, when almost nothing had gone right and she was completely sick of all the menial tasks, Richard Caldwell’s booming questions irritated her. When he pulled on the strings of her covering and asked again why she wore that white thing on her head, she swiped at an annoying lock of brown hair, breathed out, straightened up, and looked Richard Caldwell straight in the eye.
    “Because we are committed to the ways in which the Bible says we should live. God has an order. God is the head, then man, and after that his wife is subject to her husband. This covering is an outward sign of submission.”
    Richard’s eyes turned into narrow slits of thought.
    “Hmmm.”
    That was all he said, and it was the last time he mentioned “that thing on her head.” Sadie had been a bit shaky after that outburst of self-defense, but he always treated her a bit more respectfully than he had previously. Her fear shifted to confidence, making her job less nerve-wracking.
    Richard Caldwell’s wife, Barbara, on the other hand, was a formidable figure in Sadie’s life—a person to be feared. It wasn’t