“Sometimes you’re too clever, Leah. I ain’t so good with words, but Revis is. You try your words on him. And you be careful you don’t start attackin’ him with logs ’cause the boys protect Revis. I’d sure hate to see my own sister hurt.”
“I’m sure you would,” she said sarcastically.
“Ain’t me got no family feelin’s,
it’s you.”
Leah didn’t bother to make a reply.
In another few minutes they came into view of a little clearing with a ramshackle cabin, a woodpile, and a stream nearby. Leah stopped and looked down on the scene as an emaciated woman emerged from the back of the cabin and began loading her thin arms with logs.
“Who’s that?” she asked.
“Verity,” Abe answered. “She’s our last, er, a…cook. She didn’t hold up very long at all. It’s them boys, always eatin’ and eatin’,” he added, his eyes slipping to the side.
Leah didn’t question his story but kept her eyes on the woman as they went down the hillside. The woman didn’t even look up. In fact, she looked too tired to care who walked into the clearing.
“Fix up some grub,” Abe commanded the woman, his voice deepening.
The woman Verity didn’t move any faster as she trudged into the cabin.
Bud and Cal appeared in the clearing as if they’d never left.
After only a moment’s hesitation, Leah followed Verity into the cabin, went straight to the woman, and took the wood from her. “You sit down,” she ordered gently. “I’ll cook.”
A flicker of surprise was Verity’s only reaction before she went to a corner of the cabin and crouched on the floor.
“Not there!” Leah said, shocked. “Sit at the table.”
Verity turned frightened eyes toward Leah and shook her head.
“Are you afraid of Abe?”
Verity shook her head.
“Bud or Cal?”
Again she shook her head.
“Revis,” Leah whispered and saw the woman try to make herself smaller at the mention of the name. “I guess that answers that,” Leah said, beginning to look into bags of supplies. “That would be the type of man Abe got himself into partners with,” she murmured.
If there was one place Leah felt comfortable, it was in front of a cooking fire. All her life until she’d married Wes, she’d been involved with food—growing it, storing it, and cooking it. Now as she began to work, it was in the back of her mind that maybe a good meal would help get Bud and Cal on her side. She’d probably need any help she could get if this Revis was as brutal as Verity had indicated.
The supplies in the cabin were abundant, and after Leah found a woman’s dress inside one of the sacks, she realized they were stolen. She refused to let her spirits fall. Bud and Cal had helped her with Wesley and she was going to repay them with a good meal, a very good meal.
“Can’t you hurry up?” Abe demanded. “Revis might come back at any time.”
“If you’d stay out of my way I could get done faster.” She handed Verity a hard-boiled egg.
“She don’t deserve nothin’ to eat. In this group if you don’t work you don’t eat.”
“Someone has worked her nearly to death. Now get out of here or I’ll tell Bud and Cal you’re interfering with my cooking.”
To her surprise and delight, Abe’s face lost some color and he immediately left the cabin. “Well, well, it looks like Abe is a little afraid of the boys.” She looked toward Verity for confirmation, but the woman was greedily stuffing the egg into her mouth.
From start to finish it took an hour and a half to prepare a meal, the size of which astonished even Leah. “Bud, Cal,” she called out the back door.
“You weren’t gonna call me, were ya?” Abe whined as he pushed past her into the cabin.