Chapter Two
Last Chance, Nebraska- September 1879
“There you are.” Josie Gresham spotted the calf the moment she rode up.
The little calf made a plaintive sound as Josie climbed down from her horse and grabbed the rope she’d brought. Josie laughed as her faithful beagle, Turnip, barked at the calf.
“Hush, Turnip.” The dog immediately behaved. Josie turned to the calf. “Well, if you didn’t get yourself into this mess, you wouldn’t be stuck, now would you?” It was silly, talking to the animals as if they could answer her questions, but Josie had caught her brother George doing the same thing more than once. Perhaps it was merely an affect one took on after spending so many years seeing cattle more often than people.
Josie scrambled down the steep slope that led to the narrow ravine. This wasn’t the first time a calf had gotten itself stuck down here. Perhaps there was some way they could block it off so it wouldn’t happen again in the future. The last thing they needed was a cow breaking her leg to get to her baby, especially when their herd was nowhere close to being the size it had been before the blizzards last year.
The calf bleated again as Josie gently placed the rope around its neck. She nudged the animal forward as its mother looked on from above. All was going well until she reached the slope to climb back up to level ground. The calf planted its feet in place, causing Josie to stumble and land on her hands and knees.
Dirt streaked the dun-colored men’s trousers she wore, a cast-off from George and so big around the waist, she’d also had to “borrow” a belt and suspenders from him to keep them in place. She wiped her gloved hands on the sides of the trousers and turned back to the calf.
“Now, you don’t want to stay here,” she told him firmly, locking onto the animal’s brown eyes with her own. “You’ll miss your mama and get lonesome and hungry.”
The calf bleated again, and when its mother peeked her head over the side of the ravine—Turnip at her side—Josie tried again. This time, the little fellow moved with her, clambering up the slope and out of the ravine to the safety above.
Josie untied the rope and smiled as the calf joined his mother, who was clearly pleased to see her little one again. She coiled the rope and looked past the reunited pair to where more of their cattle dotted the land. Without the possibility of selling as many as usual, they’d been unable to hire on as many cowhands as they needed. Not that there had been many to find considering the number of men in and around Last Chance who had perished in the blizzards. Josie’s brother George had been among the lucky ones, unable to join either the ill-fated hunting party last September or the search party that ventured out afterward, because of an illness that had left him feverish and weak for nearly a month.
Her husband, Vincent, hadn’t been so lucky.
It was still so odd to think of him as having been her husband. Josie hardly felt as if she’d been married at all, given that they’d had only two weeks together and had barely known one another before that. He’d been nice enough, though, and she’d felt the sort of sadness at his passing that one might feel upon reading about a particularly sad death in the newspaper. He’d left her with only his name and a particular determination never to be married again.
“Sorry, Papa,” she whispered into the empty landscape as she pulled herself up on Gretchen again. The old familiar ache at her father’s loss, one that never quite went away although it had dulled a little with the passing of almost a year, pinched at her insides. Josie nudged Gretchen forward, Turnip trotting at her heels. Josie wondered—yet again—what Papa would think of her outright refusal to take another husband despite meddlesome Pastor Collins’s insistence and George’s occasional mentions of the subject.
She paused by the little family cemetery, where both her parents were now buried, to say a quick prayer on her way back to the house. Vincent rested somewhere out on the plains, among all the other men who had ventured out to find game to feed the townsfolk that perfectly normal fall afternoon. The town had set up memorials for each man who had perished in the blizzards, and Josie often visited to leave flowers for Vincent. After all, no one else would do so. Folks here had barely known him.
Mama had been gone years now, a warm hazy memory from Josie’s childhood. Although Papa’s passing had been difficult, Josie often reflected on how lucky they’d been to have lost him from his weak heart a month after the blizzards had come through. At least they’d known where he was and that he hadn’t suffered, which was more than any of them could say for the men like Vincent, whose whereabouts hadn’t been discovered until spring.
Prayers said, Josie aimed Gretchen toward home as Turnip trotted behind them. The late summer sun blazed above, making her thankful for the men’s hat that hid her face. It was so hot that even the bluffs off in the distance seemed to shimmer in the sun.
If George had already returned from checking on the cattle that grazed east of their property, he might have started supper. That was something he did fairly often. They had an odd sort of relationship, George not expecting much in the way of domestic duties from Josie, and Josie more than happy to lend a hand in hard or dirty work.
As she grew closer to the house, it became clear that an unfamiliar horse waited in front of it. It might have been a neighbor from one of the other nearby ranches, but Josie didn’t usually forget a horse. And this was one she was sure she’d never seen before.
After turning her own horse out to the corral and putting away everything she’d brought with her, Josie approached the new horse.
“Hello, friend,” she said raising a hand for the bay to sniff. It—he—snuffled, and Josie smiled. A horse never judged one on appearance, propriety, or any of those other useless things. They did, however, Josie thought, sense the state of one’s soul. And for that, she loved them. She scratched the horse’s nose before turning her eyes to the house.
“And who did you bring with you?” she said under her breath.
