Tears filled her eyes. “I tried but they don’t look right.”
“It’s flour, water, and lard. How hard can it be?”
“You forgot the salt.” Jack’s voice was dry. “And if making them is so simple, why don’t you do it?”
Silence snapped through the cabin, crackling the air for a full half minute before O’Byrne broke the stillness and leaned forward.
“Cuz I’m the pa, which means I’m in charge around here.” The logger’s voice was calm, controlled, and chillingly soft. His gaze latched onto his son and stayed, so sharp and intense that Isaac felt himself swallow.
Thomas shifted, causing his rickety wooden chair to squeak, but kept his mouth shut. Though if the look on Thomas’s face was any indication, there were a host of thoughts running through his deputy’s head.
Isaac cleared his throat and sat back in his chair, his pose deliberately relaxed. “Perhaps my brother and sister-in-law can watch the children for you when you’re at work?”
“I don’t need no help watching my young’uns. ’Sides, Jack here’s old enough to tend the little ones while I’m gone.” The man’s gaze still didn’t leave his eldest son.
Jack’s shoulders finally slumped, and he ducked his head. “Yes, sir.”
“You watch yourself, boy, or I’ll find you a job at the mine in Central.”
“No, don’t make Jack go there!” Alice buried her face in her hands.
“Come here.” Thomas gathered the girl up and pulled her onto his lap. “Where’s Toby?”
Alice huddled against Thomas’s chest. “Sleeping in the room.”
“Pa gets upset if he makes too much noise.” Jack’s hands tightened into fists at his sides, but he kept his shoulders slumped, his gaze averted.
Isaac shifted again. So maybe he wasn’t the only one in this cabin purposely acting relaxed. “I’m interested in seeing whereyou work, Mr. O’Byrne. Where did you say this logging camp you manage is?”
O’Byrne straightened. “It ain’t none of your business. I tell you where the camp is, and the next day I’ll have other shanty boys moving in on our wood.”
In the backwoods, felling a tree with an ax didn’t mean ownership, but possession did. Still, it was rare for a group of loggers to move in on a track of land their lumber company didn’t own. “I’m not a logger, Mr. O’Byrne. I’m a sheriff. And I resent the implication that I’d use any information you give me dishonestly.”
“Maybe you would, and maybe you wouldn’t. But I don’t hav’ta tell you if I don’t want to.” The man pushed back in his chair, his protruding stomach bumping the table as he stood. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get out to camp and make sure the others are back to work. I gave them Christmas off, you see, but they had strict orders to start working at dawn today.”
“Are you sure I can’t go visit Miss Victoria while you’re gone?” Alice raised her head from Thomas’s chest, hope lighting her eyes, even in the dimness of the cabin.
“No!” O’Byrne’s shout echoed through the room, only to leave vast silence in its wake.
Isaac gripped the edge of the table so tightly his knuckles turned white. It was wrong, the children living here, with a shifty father who shouted and shook his fists at them—and hopefully that was all he did with his fists.
Yet what could he do? Virgil O’Byrne was their birth father, as unsavory as the thought might be. He needed a valid, legal reason to remove the children from this home, and though he had suspicions aplenty about O’Byrne and his unscrupulous friends, not a one would hold up in a court of law. Yet.
He stood, his chair scraping against the rough floorboards. O’Byrne had said the children couldn’t visit Elijah and Victoria,but he hadn’t said anything about Elijah and Victoria visiting the children. Somehow, he didn’t think Jack would turn them away should they arrive a half hour or so after O’Byrne left.
Isaac reached out and patted Jack’s shoulder, then leaned down near the boy’s ear. “You’re doing a good job. Don’t let your pa discourage you.”
Jack blew out a shuddering breath, causing his father’s eyes to narrow on the two of them. Then the boy straightened, a tough mask settling over his face.
“Goodbye, Alice. I’ll see you later.” Isaac dipped his head toward the girl scrambling off Thomas’s lap. “And tell Toby I said hello when he wakes from his nap.”
“Bye, Mr. Isaac.”
He pulled on his coat and left the cabin, the brightness of the snowy outdoors surrounding him the second he stepped outside. He blinked against the sun reflecting off the snow. Had a shadow just moved in the trees? Was someone watching them?
Thomas followed him out a moment later and blinked at the brightness. “For a man who just built a cabin, you’d think he’d bother to put more than one small window in that place.”
“Maybe he didn’t have the money for more than one.” Isaac stared at the spot where the shadow had moved. Who would be watching them come to the O’Byrnes’? Had someone followed them out here?
