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  “Get on my shoulders,” Jeanie said.

  They faced each other with Jeanie’s wrists crossed, hands joined. Jeanie bent her knees and exploded upward swinging Katherine around her back. Katherine wiggled into a comfortable place on Jeanie’s shoulders and fastened her ankles around Jeanie’s chest.

  “You all right, Mama?”

  “My yes, Sweet Pea. All is well.” She was going to make all of that true. “Peel your eyes for the wagon.” Jeanie plodded, feeling Katherine’s weight quickly, thinking of the baby inside.

  “Yes, Mama.” Katherine hummed a tune.

  “Concentrate on the looking,” Jeanie said.

  “The humming helps me look.”

  “Well, then,” Jeanie said through heavy breaths. “Keep those eyes wide as a prairie night.”

  “Wide as a what?” Katherine said.

  “A prairie night,” Jeanie said. Katherine’s legs stiffened and she pulled hard around Jeanie’s neck.

  Jeanie halted, absorbing Katherine’s tension.

  “What’s wrong? What do you see?” Jeanie looked upward at Katherine’s face above her. She squeezed Katherine’s thigh to get her attention. Were they about to step into a snake pit, be trampled by a herd of cows?

  “What is it?”

  “A man,” Katherine said.

  “Who?” Ridiculous question in light of them not knowing a soul in Dakota.

  Katherine’s legs kicked—she gripped Jeanie’s bonnet making its ties nearly choke her.

  Jeanie’s heart began its clunking patterns again. “Where?”

  Katherine didn’t respond so Jeanie swung her from her shoulders and tucked her behind her skirts. Jeanie glanced about the ground for something sharp or big. There was nothing that could be used as a weapon against a small rodent let alone a man.

  Katherine clenched Jeanie so tight that the two nearly flew off their feet. Steadied, Jeanie couldn’t see anyone coming toward them. Her bare feet pulsed with pain making her feel more vulnerable. Katherine must be hallucinating, the thirst taking its toll on her.

  Jeanie spun in place, craning for the sight of a man, the sound of feet, but a windblast made anything that might emit noise, soundless.

  For a moment Jeanie was tempted to burrow into the grasses, hide there, play dead, anything to avoid the man, if there was a man. A new burst of sweat gathered at her hairline and dripped down the sides of her face. Katherine’s fingers delved into the loosened stays of Jeanie’s corset.

  “Who’s there?” Jeanie yelled into the wind. She shuddered. She could feel someone watching them. She whirled again, Katherine whipped around with her.

  “Who’s there?” Jeanie shouted. This time her words tore through the air, the winds momentarily still.

  “It’s Howard Templeton! Jeanie Arthur? That you?” A full, gruff voice came from behind. Jeanie and Katherine twisted around a final time. Jeanie’s body relaxed. If he knew her name it must be a good sign. She tensed again, maybe not. Maybe he tortured Frank and the boys and…she wouldn’t think about it. This Templeton sported a pristine black hat. His ropy limbs were strong though not bulky, not threatening in any setting other than that of the naked prairie.

  Jeanie shaded her eyes and looked into his six feet two inches, meeting his gaze. A crooked grin pulled his mouth a centimeter away from being a smirk.

  “Mrs. Arthur, I presume? There. That’s more proper, isn’t it? Don’t be nervous.”

  “It was the wind,” Jeanie said. You scared me blind, she wanted to say, but wouldn’t. “I couldn’t pinpoint…well, no matter.” She wasn’t accustomed to making her own introductions. It felt rude to say, who are you? So, she said nothing.

  Templeton removed his hat and bent at the waist, lifting his eyes. Was he flirting with this dramatic bow? She grabbed for absent pearls then smoothed the front of her dress before pulling Katherine into her side.

  He straightened, replaced his hat. “I met your husband, Frank, on his way to stake a claim.”

  Jeanie flinched. Where was Frank?

  Templeton jammed one of his mitts toward Jeanie, offering a handshake. She stepped backward while still offering her hand in return.

  He clasped her hand inside both of his. They were remarkably soft for a man ferreting out a home on the prairie. He held the handclasp and their gaze. Jeanie looked away glimpsing their joined hands. She cleared her throat and wormed her hand out of his.

  She wished there had been a manual pertaining to the etiquette of meeting on the prairie. Etiquette should have traveled anywhere one went, but she could feel, standing there embarrassed in so many ways, how unreliable everything she had learned about life would be in that setting. Jeanie ran the freed hand over her bonnet, straightening it then smoothing the front of her pond-mucked skirt.

  Templeton shifted his weight, and drew Jeanie’s attention back. “I advised your Frank to jump a claim. To take up in the Henderson’s place. That family never proved up and rather than you starting from scratch, I figured you might as well start from something. Besides, I miss having a direct neighbor. Darlington Township might have well over a hundred homesteads settled, but it’s really the few closest to you, the ones you form cooperatives with, that matter.”

  Jeanie swallowed hard. She eyed his canteen and had to hold her hand back to keep from rudely snatching it right off his body. “Well, I’m not keen on jumping a claim, Mr. Templeton. I’ll have to consult my own inclination before we put pen to paper on that.”

  She bit the inside of her mouth, regretting she’d lost her manners, her mind. “I’m sorry. My manners. It’s a pleasure to meet you. This is my daughter Katherine.”

  Katherine smiled. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  Templeton shook her hand then folded his arms across his chest.

  “You, Katherine, are the picture of your father. Prettier though, of course, with your mother’s darker coloring, I see.”

  Katherine reddened, peered upward from under her bonnet then darted away, leaping and spinning.

  “Stay close!” Jeanie said.

  “So what bit you with good old prairie fever?” Templeton asked.

  Jeanie looked around as though something drew her attention. She hadn’t considered what her response to that query would be. Her heart burst at the chest wall. Templeton’s quiet patience, his steadfast gaze heightened Jeanie’s discomfort.

  “Circumstances.”

  “I know all about circumstances,” Howard said.

  “I don’t mean to be ill-mannered, but…“ Jeanie eyed the canteen Templeton had slung across his body.

  He rubbed his chin then slid the strap over his head. “Frank sent me with some water, figured you’d need it, that I’d be the best person to find you.”

  “Water, thank you, my yes.” Jeanie licked her lips.

  He handed it to Jeanie. Her hands shook, nearly dropping it as she unclasped the catch. She would give her daughter the first drink.

  “Katherine! Water!”

  Katherine skipped toward them. She took the canteen, shoulders hunched, eyes wide as they had been on Christmas morning.

  “Watch, don’t dribble.” Jeanie held her hands up under the canteen. She forced her gaze away, knowing she must look crazed, staring at Katherine’s throat swallowing, barely able to wait her turn.

  Katherine stopped drinking and sighed, eyes closed, content. She held the canteen to her mother.

  Jeanie threw her head back, water drenching her insides. The liquid engorged every cell of her shriveled body. She took it from her lips and offered it back to Katherine.

  “You finish up,” Jeanie said, cupping Katherine’s chin, lifting it to get a good look into her now glistening eyes.

  “There’s got to be plenty back at the wagon now, right, Mr. Templeton?” Jeanie said.

  He didn’t reply. He squatted down, squinting at Jeanie’s bare feet.

  “You’re not going another inch with naked feet and phalanges. What a great word, I haven’t had use for
since, well, never mind that,” Templeton said.

  Katherine’s eyes widened.

  “I’ll thank you to find your manners, Mr. Templeton,” Jeanie said stepping back.

  “Don’t be harebrained, Mrs. Arthur. Allow me to wrap your feet so they’re protected should you step on a rattler, or into a gopher hole. I’ll be as doctorly as possible.” Templeton stood and unbuttoned his shirt.

  Jeanie waved her hands back and forth. “No, now, no, now please don’t do…” But before she could arrange her words to match her thoughts, Templeton ripped his shirt into strips and helped Jeanie to the ground. He turned her left foot back and forth. Jeanie’s eyes flew wide open, her mouth gaping.

  Katherine sighed with her entire body. “Sure am glad we stumbled upon Mr. Templeton. My mama wasn’t trying to be disagreeable. She’s just proper is all.”

  “Katherine Margaret Arthur.” Jeanie snatched for her daughter’s arm, but she leapt away, humming, cart-wheeling. Jeanie’s face flamed.

  Templeton’s deep laugh shook his whole body. He began to wrap her foot. “These feet look to have been damaged by more than a simple run across the land.”

  Jeanie bit the inside of her cheek. She wouldn’t confide her utter stupidity to a stranger.

  “Let me guess,” Templeton said. “I’d say you had a little trouble parting with your city shoes? Perhaps? The way your feet are lacerated below the ankles, as though stiff shoes meant for decoration more than work had their way with you?”

  “Stay close Katherine!” Jeanie shouted to avoid admitting that in fact, she’d kept three pairs of delicate, pretty shoes and only traded one for a pair of black clodhoppers. The clodhoppers that bounced out of the back of the wagon just beyond their stop in Yankton.

  Jeanie flinched as Templeton bandaged the other foot.

  “Did I hurt you?”

  Jeanie covered her mouth then recovered her poise. “No. Let’s finish this production and get moving.” It was then Jeanie realized she was shoeless—and not temporarily speaking. She wouldn’t be able to sausage her swollen feet into the pretty shoes and she had nothing utilitarian in reserve. Frank was a miracle worker with wood, but wooden shoes? That wasn’t an option.

  Templeton whistled. “Nice you have such a grand family to cheer you while you make your home on the prairie. Times like this I wish I had the same. No wife, no children to speak of.”

  “You’re unmarried?” Jeanie smoldered at the thought that not only a strange man handled her feet, her naked toes, but one who was batching-it! A scandal in the eyes of many. Thankfully, there were no prying eyes to add this outrage to her hobbled reputation.

  Templeton snickered repeatedly as he moved with a doctor’s detachment. The feel of hands so gently, though firmly, caring for her, nearly put Jeanie in a trance. She couldn’t remember the last time someone had done such a thing for her.

  “There. Good as new. Until we get you to the wagon, anyway. I assume you have another pair of boots there.”

  “Well, I uh, I…“ She told herself to find her composure, that she was one step away from a reputation as an adventuress or an imbecile if she didn’t put forth the picture of a respectable woman.

  “Had a shoe mishap?”

  “It could be characterized that way.” Jeanie wanted to die. How stupid could she have been?

  She turned one foot back and forth and then the other before having no choice but to look at Templeton and thank him for his assistance. Blood seeped through bandages and she nodded knowing he had been right. She’d have been wrought with infection and open to the bone if he hadn’t wrapped her.

  “Thank you Mr. Templeton. I thank you sincerely.” Jeanie put her hand over her heart.

  He pulled Jeanie to her feet.

  “My pleasure.” Templeton gave another shallow bow then tied an extra shred of his white shirt to a small cobwebby bush to use as a landmark, to show Jeanie and Katherine how the prairie land could work against even the most knowledgeable pioneer.

  Jeanie knew she’d been careless that day, but she certainly didn’t need white ties all over the prairie to keep her from getting lost again. She’d be more vigilant next time.

  Move on, Jeanie. No time for moping. Jeanie drew back and lifted her skirts. She stepped onto the fresh bandages then snapped her foot back in pain. She held her breath and pressed forward ignoring the pain.

  “It’s this way,” Templeton said. “You’re turned around.”

  Jeanie halted. Her face warmed further than the heat and anxiety had already flushed it. “I suppose I’ve made some dire errors today, Mr. Templeton.”

  “I suppose we all do at first, Mrs. Arthur.”

  Jeanie puckered her lips in front of unspoken embarrassment. When was the last time she’d faced a string of endless failures? Never. She wondered if that could be possible, or if she was just making such a fact up in her mind.

  “This way, my sweet!” Jeanie pushed her shoulders back, tugged her skirts against her legs and took off in the correct direction, Katherine beside her with Templeton just behind, gently guiding them back to Jeanie’s family, back to the life she didn’t think she could actually live with, but would not survive without.

  Chapter 3

  1905

  Des Moines, Iowa

  In the three days since Yale had stumbled drunk into Katherine and Aleksey’s home, the couple had made the decision that their Edwardian home, even with four children, allowed more than enough space to care for both the cancer-stricken Jeanie and Yale, who was slow. There wasn’t much to do in the way of transporting her sister and mother’s belongings into Katherine’s home for other than two trunks and some hanging clothes; they did not own a single item that needed to be moved.

  It wasn’t Katherine’s decision to have them come. She resisted with all her might but Aleksey, had for the first time in their marriage, asserted the type of overbearing male dominance so many men reveled in regularly. He told Katherine she had no choice but to let Jeanie and Yale live with them. It was Katherine’s duty to nurse her mother back to life or onward to death and it was her job to comfort and house her struggling sister.

  Katherine stood in their doorway and watched Aleksey help Jeanie, one awkward step after another, up the front steps and across the porch. Katherine may not have remembered any warmth toward her mother, any sweet, shared moments or precious mother/ daughter secrets, but she felt them from time to time, inside her skin, down in her soul, coursing through her body. Below the surface of her conscious mind was the memory of a woman she once adored. Normally when that flash of love for her mother shot through Katherine, she pushed it away, and let the resentment, the gritty hate that seemed to be layered like bricks, weigh on the goodness, squashing it out.

  But now, with her mother being ushered into her home for Katherine to tend until she took her final breath, she let the shot of warm feelings sit a bit; saturate her mind, hoping the sensation would allow her to cope.

  As Aleksey and Jeanie entered the front room, Katherine watched Jeanie’s gaze fall over the carved-legged mohair davenport, velvet chair, and an oil painting done by Katherine herself. The thick Oriental rug drew Jeanie’s attention, then when Katherine pushed the button, the diamond-like chandelier jumped to life, drawing Jeanie’s gaze before she settled it back on Katherine’s painting, one she’d done when they lived on the prairie.

  Jeanie’s once graceful posture was hunched over an ugly black cane as her hand opened and closed around the handle as though the action soothed her. Jeanie’s brown hair, pulled tight into a bun, was thin, sprouting out of the severe style. The frail woman straightened, stared at the painting then brushed the front of her dress before falling hunched over her cane again.

  Katherine told herself to find the love she wanted to feel. She took Jeanie’s elbow and helped her to the couch, hoping it didn’t smell like the old hound that often curled on one corner.

  Aleksey kissed Jeanie’s cheek and took her cane, supporting that side as they shuffled t
o the davenport. Acid rose up inside Katherine and blossomed into full envy at the warmth Aleksey showed Jeanie—the fact that he could touch her without looking as though his skin would combust on contact, as Katherine felt hers would.

  Katherine gritted her teeth as she and Aleksey turned Jeanie and settled her onto the davenport. She sighed and squinted at Aleksey. She loved him more than anyone except their own children, but this may be too much.

  “I’ll get that sweet tea you made, Katherine.” Aleksey headed toward the hall.

  Katherine couldn’t have guessed exactly what her mother was thinking, but the puckered lips and narrowed brows didn’t look positive. “Well,” Jeanie said. “You’re a little late with your spring cleaning, but the place is respectable all the same. I can see you purchase things that last.” Jeanie smoothed her dress over her knees then smiled at Katherine.

  “I know you mean that as a joke, Mother, but I don’t appreciate it.”

  Jeanie scowled and Katherine flinched, waiting for hard words in return. Her mother opened her mouth and closed it then stared toward the painting with reed straight posture.

  The pounding of the ice pick as Aleksey split the ice into cold slivers mimicked Katherine’s heartbeat. She took a deep breath. How could a person feel so uncomfortable with the very person who gave her life? She prayed for Aleksey to speed it up in the kitchen as time moved like a fly in honey for the two in the front parlor.

  With a startling jerk, Jeanie grasped Katherine’s hand. She jumped in her seat, so surprised that her mother actually touched her. She stared at their hands then at her mother’s profile. Jeanie gazed at the moody landscape Katherine had created on that awful day so long ago.

  “You were such a beautiful artist,” Jeanie said. “I remember when you did that one.”

  Prickly heat leapt between their hands, making Katherine sweat with anxiety. Jeanie caught her confused expression then squeezed her daughter’s hand three distinct times. I love you. Each unspoken word was hidden in the three contractions of Jeanie’s grip. Katherine nearly choked on swelling anger as she fought the burst of tears that threatened to fall.