A Hopeful Heart Read Online Free PDF Page B

cow, squirting an even stream of creamy milk into the tin bucket between his knees. A lopsided grin stretched across his face.
    “Reckon Aunt Hattie managed to get them girls out of bed with the rooster’s crow?”
    Abel tossed the forkful of hay into the horse’s stall. Cole was a good worker and more than earned his pay as a hand on Abel’s ranch, but once he latched on to an idea, he was like a fox with an egg in its mouth—all the hollering in the world wouldn’t make him drop it. Last night at supper Abel made it clear he didn’t want to discuss the herdsman school or its pupils. Cole had hushed his speculations when Abel got cranky, but here he was, starting in again first thing this morning.
    Drawing in a lungful of air, Abel prepared to tell Cole in plain language to get his mind off those girls at Aunt Hattie’s ranch, but before he could speak, Cole continued.
    “Seems to me it wouldn’t be so bad to have one of ’em on your ranch, seein’ to the cookin’ and milkin’ an’ such.” Cole rested his cheek against the cow’s flank, his expression thoughtful. “Free us men up to focus on other things.”
    “Like I said last night . . .” Abel forced the words through clenched teeth, jabbing the pitchfork into the mound of hay with enough force to bend the tines. “I wish Aunt Hattie well with her school, but I’m not interested in those girls.” He pointed at Cole, squinting one eye.
    “An’ I’ll thank you to keep your nose out of my business.”
    “Well . . .” Cole lifted the bucket from beneath the cow’s slack udder and rested it on his knee. The man’s sparsely whiskered cheeks blotched red. “I wasn’t necessarily thinkin’ of you so much as . . .”
    Abel waited, his body tense.
    “Me. Maybe takin’ a look-see at ’em an’ seein’ if . . . well . . .”
    Abel’s jaw went slack. “You thinkin’ of marryin’ up with one of those girls?”
    Cole shrugged one shoulder while keeping a grip on the bucket. “Dunno why not. Most men think of gettin’ hitched at some point. An’ I’m gettin’ up there, ya know. Be twenty-two on my next birthday. . . .”
    Abel swallowed a laugh.
    “Why, even you must think it’s a good idea for a man to have a wife. ’Member two years back when you—”
    Abel snatched up the pitchfork and stabbed it into the mound of hay. “Two years back I didn’t have the sense I have today.” He tossed the load over the stall’s door and then moved to the next stall. “Besides, we weren’t talkin’ about me—we were talkin’ about you.” Abel faced Cole, hooking his elbow on the rounded end of the pitchfork’s handle. “Seems to me that before you start courtin’, you ought to think where you’d keep a wife. You forget you live in a bunkhouse with two other men? No woman I know would cotton to a setup like that.”
    “I reckon not.” Cole rose, catching the bucket by its rope handle and letting it dangle from his hand. His shoulders slumped, his chin low. “Just thinkin’ . . . Them girls, they’re bound to be pretty.”
    Abel double-fisted the pitchfork’s handle. “Eastern women.” He didn’t try to hide the disgust in his voice. “Pretty packages with not much inside.”
    Cole heaved a sigh as he ambled toward the barn’s wide opening. “Yep . . . Reckon you’d know.” He exited, leaving Abel alone.
    “Reckon you’d know . . .” The words buzzed like a persistent horsefly. Abel reached to scoop another load of hay, but then his hands stilled, an old hurt rising to pinch his chest. When would the humiliation of Amanda’s rejection ease?
    More than two years had passed since he’d offered his heart through letters and then paid for her transport west. But even now, if he closed his eyes, he could picture how she’d looked as she stepped out of that stagecoach, wearing a gown the color of the Kansas sky, her big eyes as green as fresh clover. His heart had fired into his throat when he’d realized how lovely his