What Once We Loved by Jane Kirkpatrick Page A

stepped over to Ruth then, fingered the rawhide hanging from the front rigging ring of the saddle. “You take care of yourself now,” she whispered, looking up at her. “You write. When you're ready.”
    Ruth felt a tearing at the fabric of her heart. These were people she'd come to love, she realized. They were as much a part of her family as herbrother and his wife had been, stitched to her through service, caring, and time. Ruth wanted to say something, to make this easier for Mazy—she had always been kind to her—but Ruth wasn't confident of speech. She swallowed, touched Mazy s cheek with her palm.
    The familiar faces looking up to her sitting atop Koda blurred. She had to leave. She reined the horse north.

“And before that?” Suzanne asked. “Where were you employed?”
    “That were my first job, Missis Cullver. Before that, my pappy paid me good to look after his kin.”
    “They weren't…your kin?”
    “Well, with his second wife, yes'urn. But his third, well, them were her children he paid me to tend. He didn't have no young uns with her. Now his fourth wife, she were younger than me, but they had one. So I got baby time, too. That's how I got such good ideas for herding little tykes, like what I told ya.”
    “Indeed. You did.” Suzanne took a deep breath. The woman before her was barely grown herself, judging from the pitch of her voice. She smelled of lavender, fresh and tidy, and probably worked hard to look proper for her interview. But she wasn't right for what Suzanne needed, what her boys needed.
    These interviews were just going nowhere. Surely there were educated women in Sacramento who, like herself, had come west with their husbands hoping for wealth and who woke up only to discover they'd not find it in the rushing streams of this state. Surely they'd be seeking something more to feed their children.
    That was the other problem she'd discovered in the interviewing: People wished to bring their own children with them. Suzanne wasn't prepared for the taking on of an entire household. Esther had said thefire last winter had wiped out a goodly number of business establishments, and they hadn't all come back full force. So there had to be people interested in work, especially work that kept them indoors, warm through the winter, and well fed. Suzanne was offering a profession here, of tutoring and training. It required respectable women.
    Even Esty had come up empty. She hadnt found a single reference from the women whose hats she created at her little shop, not one woman she could send to Suzanne with at least some kind of letter of introduction. All the young girls Suzanne had interviewed had arrived in response to the ad Esther placed. Esther said the Sacramento Daily Californian ran her advertisement right next to notices written by husbands back in the States offering rewards for their “runaway wives.” Maybe they thought her job announcement a trick of some kind, so only women of insufficient skill applied. She hadn't thought ofthat.
    “Missis? You all right?”
    “I'm fine. I'm sorry. I got distracted. Just one last question. If I asked your…pappy to describe you to me, not how you look, but your virtues, what's inside you that drives you toward your wishes, what three adjectives might he use?”
    Pig snored at Suzanne's feet, the only break in the silence. At least she must be a kind girl or Pig would not be sleeping
    “I'm guessing I don't know for sure what that word ad-chutives means, ma'am,” she said at last. “But I'm pretty sure I don't got any of them ver-chews. I never did take up chewing or smoking tobaccy, either, and I been real healthy. I wouldn't bring no nits or worms into your house. No need to keep valerean around neither. I don't have no hysteria or nervous disorders needing such kind of herbs. I'm sound as a trail-sawy ox. See, got all my teeth yet. Oh, you can't see. Want to feel them?”
    “Thank you, Miss Edina. I'm sure you are…quite capable. Just