Fire and Rain Read Online Free PDF Page B

arrange your time off?" he asked.
     "What?"
     Slowly Luke lifted his eyes to Carla's face.
     "Your time off. Do you want to work six days and have one off, or do you want to work right through, or do you want to save up some days and take a little vacation?"
     "I'll save them up," Carla said promptly.
     "That's what the women all say at first, but after a few weeks they can't get to West Fork fast enough."
     "Cash will be coming up in early August. I'll wait."
     Luke's smile told Carla that he didn't believe it.
     He turned toward the back door. "If you need anything, holler. I'll be in the barn."
     With a mixture of relief and disappointment, Carla watched Luke leave. The relief she understood; the disappointment she ignored. She looked around the kitchen, wondering where to begin. Everywhere she looked, a task cried out to be done. Fortunately she had the ability to organize her time. She didn't always use that ability, but she had it just the same.
     "The cleaning will have to wait," Carla muttered, looking at the clock. "In two hours, twelve hungry hands will descend. Thirteen, counting Luke. Call it fourteen. Luke is big enough for two men. Then there's me. Dinner for fifteen, coming right up."
     The number she had to feed seemed to echo in the silent kitchen. Fifteen. My God. No wonder all the pots and pans are so big.

     The thought of feeding that many people was daunting. Carla had never cooked whole meals for more than herself, her brother and, when she was on the ranch, for Luke. The three of them had eaten in the old ranch house, whose small rooms were famous for mice, drafts and dust in equal measure.
     Looking around, Carla gave each black sleeve another turn upward to make sure the cloth didn't get in the way. Then she went to the refrigerator and began taking a fast inventory of what was available.
     The refrigerator held beer, apple juice, horseradish, ketchup, a chunk of butter, four eggs, a slab of unsliced bacon and an open package of baloney that had quietly curled up and died. The big freezer opposite the stove was more rewarding. It held enough meat, mostly beef, to feed half the state of Colorado. As long as the propane held out, they wouldn't starve. All she had to do was thaw a few roasts in the microwave.
     "Oops," Carla said, glancing around. "No microwave. Not enough time to cook frozen roasts, either."
     She went to the pantry, hoping for inspiration. "Canned stew, canned chili, canned chicken … yuck. No wonder Luke is short-tempered. Eating out of cans is enough to sour the disposition of a saint." The other side of the pantry was no better. She was confronted by a solid wall of cans as big as buckets – tomatoes, peas, green beans, corn, pitted cherries and coffee. There were also half-empty fifty-pound sacks of flour, sugar, rice, cornmeal and dried apples. The bread bin held four wizened crusts.
     "So much for hamburgers," she said unhappily, "and I doubt if anyone delivers pizza this far out."
     A burlap bag bulged with potatoes. Another bag was full of onions. Pinto beans dribbled out of a third bag. She grabbed that bag with both hands and lifted. It weighed at least ten pounds. That was enough beans to make real chili or fríjoles refritos or any number of dishes. She could feed an army – but not in the next two hours.
     Behind the bag of beans Carla spotted a cardboard box that had been shoved aside and forgotten. Inside the box was package after package of spaghetti. Each package held two pounds of the slender, dried pasta. The fragile sticks had been broken but were perfectly edible otherwise.
     "I sense a spaghetti dinner on the horizon," Carla said.
     She grabbed two packages, hesitated, and grabbed two more. When she cooked for Cash and herself, a pound of dried pasta fed both of them with enough left over for several of her lunches. But then, she always served fresh salad, garlic bread and dessert with the spaghetti. Bread and salad were out of the