In Open Spaces Read Online Free PDF

wrong. But a voice somewhere inside me protested loudly, not wanting to give up hope.
    I pulled myself to one elbow, and looked around to see how much further we had to go. I groaned when I saw the tiny house in the distance. I turned back, looking in the direction we’d come, at the buttes. There was still a faint hint of smoke drifting just above the tablet ops. And the sun, moving higher into the sky, floated in the smoke like a giant orange balloon.
    “Tired, Blake?” Dad asked.
    “Mm-hm.”
    “When did you get in? I didn’t hear a thing.”
    “Don’t know. Way after midnight.”
    “It was five,” Mom answered. “You only slept about a half hour before Annie came back and told us about the fire.”
    I groaned again. And laid back into the jerking, rolling motion of the wagon.
    But any thoughts of rushing into the house and falling into bed died the minute the wagon came to a halt. Mom had to cook breakfast. Bob went to feed and water the team, and Dad and Jack had to get the horses ready for their day in the fields. Which left the milking to me.
    If not for the swishing tail of our old milk cow, and the mewing of our mousers rubbing against my legs, I’m sure they would have found me sound asleep against that old cow’s ribs. As it was, I milked her dry, although the teats kept slipping from my weary fingers. And as I milked, I thought about the day, about how much work I’d done in the hours since I’d returned home, and how if I hadn’t been there to do the small things I did, someone else would have had to take the time to do them. Time they didn’t have. And I knew that they needed me. That the ranch was my master now. My teacher. It was time to stay.
    I carried two full buckets into the house, where I was so hungry that I gladly delayed sleep for another half hour when I smelled bacon, eggs, and fried potatoes. I realized that I hadn’t eaten dinner the night before. I devoured my first helping, then filled my plate again.
    “Hi, Blake.” My sister Katie greeted me as she came from her roomand sat up to the table. She rubbed her eyes, which were red. Her cheeks were moist.
    “You okay?” I asked her.
    She nodded. “I’m fine. I was a little scared when I woke up, because I didn’t know where anybody was. Muriel was the only one here.”
    I tousled her curly head. “You’re okay now, though?”
    Again she nodded, but she was clearly putting on a brave face. I imagined that Mom had told her to stop her crying, that we had enough to think about without someone crying. I could see she was still scared.
    “Are you going to work on your garden today?” I asked her.
    This made her face light up. Katie was the worst gardener in the county, but to her credit, she was the only one who didn’t realize it. She was fiercely proud of her tiny formation of drooping, dried plants, and she tended them—digging, weeding, and dumping buckets of water over them—with a devotion we all admired with some degree of amusement.
    “I’m gonna see if there’s any potatoes today,” she announced.
    “Great,” I said, shoveling food. “Maybe we can go out to the little house later this afternoon.”
    Katie’s eyes grew. “Really?” she asked.
    I nodded.
    Katie bounced in her chair.
    A few years before, Katie and I had been rummaging through the old deserted shed behind the original homestead house that Dad had built in 1898. Katie suggested that we pretend that the little structure was our own house, and that we were pioneers. It had become her favorite game. She used whatever knickknacks she could find to set up a tiny household, with a table, and two old tin plates. She adopted Mom’s personality, instructing me to do the same chores she heard Mom give our father. I took an old hammer and pounded on the walls, pretending to put up pictures, and do repairs. We pretended to paint,and Katie set up an old orange crate, using it as a fake stove. As I got older, I had lost interest in the game. But any time