“Girls are supposed to faint,” Joseph said. “It’s a fact.”
“It’s no such thing!” Dot’s face screwed up red. “Just ask my mama.”
Mitchell held up a hand. He could just imagine Mrs. Thomas coming out here to give little Joseph a lesson on what women were good at. Just trying to get the woman to sit down for the good of her baby was hard enough when she insisted she could still rope livestock and carry heavy bales of old, dry hay. “Let’s not do that. How about you allow Dot to do as she wishes? And I’ll stay behind the well this time. All right?”
Joseph kicked the dirt. “All right.” He raced to the back porch, paused for half a second, and then bellowed, “I know you spies are out there! Come on out or I’ll shoot you!”
Mitchell bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing at the little boy’s exuberance.
“Who are you going to shoot?” Lara paused at the back porch, Hart Chapman and Ambrose Young with her.
“The spies. Ssh, Miss Lara. You’ll mess it all up!”
Lara nodded gravely and covered her mouth with her hand. She and the two men beside her watched with amusement as Joseph flew from the back porch out into the brown grass.
Mitchell waited for Dot to make her stand—and then run away laughing as Joseph fired his pretend bullets at her—before he rose from behind the well.
Joseph paused in his play. “You’resupposedto—”
“What kind of spy would I be if I just let you get away with capturing me?”
Joseph thought on that for second before pretending to fire a gun at Mitchell. “Got you, you dirty spy!”
Mitchell clutched at his heart and tumbled to the ground. A cloud of dust rose around him, and he was pretty sure he swallowed some of it. The things one endured to entertain children.
“Joseph, can you please resurrect Mr. King? These gentlemen need to get on with the drilling,” Lara said.
“Come on, get up.” Joseph pulled at his hand, but Mitchell continued to play dead. “Miss Lara, he’s not getting up.”
Through the slivers of sight between his eyelids, Mitchell saw Lara peering down at him.
“Hmm,” she said, arms crossed. “I imagine that if you start tickling his side, he’ll awaken, good as new.”
Before Mitchell could react, Joseph dove in and began tickling him. Mitchell laughed and jumped up, catching the boy under his arm and holding him upside down.
“That worked, Miss Lara,” Joseph said as his hair skimmed the ground.
She laughed, as did the other men, and Mitchell brought the boy to the porch to dump him gently onto the wooden slats.
“Why don’t you go check on your mama?” he said. Joseph nodded and ran inside.
Chapman and his partner were already making their way to the machine when Mitchell joined Lara.
“You have a way with him,” she said. “And with Dot.” If he wasn’t mistaken, she looked at him with something akin to admiration shining in her eyes.
Mitchell pulled off his hat and ran his hand through his hair. “That’s what comes with being the eldest child.”
She said nothing, which Mitchell presumed was likely a first for her. But he could hear the questions bouncing around her mind anyway. He’d avoided them yesterday, when she’d asked about his family out there by the overturned wagon. But he’d grown to know her well enough that the question would come again.
He might as well get it over with as quickly as possible. “Four siblings. One brother and three sisters, all younger. What did the doc say about Mrs. White?”
She blinked at him, and he knew she wanted more. But he wasn’t inclined to speak on the past right now—or ever. And thankfully, she let it go.
“He apologized for not making it by yesterday, but said you and Josie did well setting the leg. So long as it doesn’t take on gangrene, it should heal well. He said to keep it clean and to change the bandages frequently.”
Mitchell nodded. “She’s something else, your cousin.” Mrs. Thomas had gone right to work the second they’d brought Mrs. White into the girls’ bedroom. He’d assisted, but she’d done the bulk of the work.
“I know.” A smile played at the corners of Lara’s mouth. “She’s night and day from my mama, but according to my grandmother, she’s exactly like my Aunt Vivi. And my Aunt Vivi isn’t anyone you’d want to mess with.”
