Heartbreak Creek by Kaki Warner Page B

will not tolerate poor manners or unkind remarks directed at me, or my . . . friend, Miss Lincoln. Is that clear?”
    Without waiting for them to respond, she lifted her gaze to Declan and smiled. It wasn’t a friendly smile. “And I’m sure your father will back me up on that,” she added, “since he has paid dearly in time and money to get me here, and is doubtless indisposed to making the long trip back to Heartbreak Creek today.”
    A threat? Declan scowled at her, unsure how to respond and wondering where his cowardly, complaining wife had gone. Maybe his children did need to be chastised for their rude remarks, but they were his children, and he should be the one to do it. But before he could point that out, Prudence Lincoln stepped into the breach with another of her overly bright smiles.
    “Please, please, come sit down everyone. The corn muffins are just about ready.”
    Magic words, as far as his children were concerned. The test of wills instantly forgotten, they scrambled into chairs around the table.
    It was a tense meal, although that didn’t seem to put a damper on his children’s appetites, Declan noticed. Brin’s complaint that Thomas had fed them nothing but pemmican must have been right. He wondered why Chick hadn’t fed them as he usually did, then realized he hadn’t seen either Chick or his other ranch hand, Amos, since he’d gotten back.
    “Where’s Chick?” he asked.
    “Joe Bill burned his leg,” R.D. said through a mouthful of beans. “Trying to make smoke signals. Went to cut a new one.”
    “It was just laying there in the barn,” Joe Bill defended. “How was I to know it was his leg?”
    Declan was wondering what else Joe Bill might have burned other than his front hair and Chick’s leg when he caught the looks of horror on the ladies’ faces. “Chick McElroy,” he explained. “Cooks and helps out some. Lost his leg to snakebite and now wears a peg leg.” Turning back to his eldest, he asked, “Amos with him?”
    R.D. shook his head. “Drunk. Tried to baptize Thomas.”
    Joe Bill laughed out loud, spewing bits of cornmeal onto the table. “Uncle Thomas baptized him instead, ain’t that right, R.D.?”
    Brin hooted and waved her spoon, slinging beans on Prudence Lincoln’s apron. “You shoulda seen it, Pa! Amos kept hollering and sputtering every time Thomas shoved his head under. Looked like a giant fish the way he flopped around.”
    Declan stared morosely at his plate rather than face the looks of disgust he was sure the ladies were aiming at him and his children. Not that they didn’t deserve it, but he was too weary to deal with his children’s behavior or his wife’s complaints right then. He still had a wagon to unload, horses to unhitch, and three days of chores that had piled up while he was gone.
    He sighed and spooned more beans onto his plate. Since that odd moment in the bedroom when Miss Priss had given him a friendly smile instead of her usual condescending smirk, he’d been hoping things might yet work out. But ten minutes in his children’s company had likely shot that hope to hell. Finishing off his beans, Declan reached for the last corn muffin. At least the food was good.
    After the merriment over the river scene died down, when Declan was thinking the rest of the meal might pass without further incident, his wife finally chose to speak. “Are you enjoying your meal, children?”
    “Oh, dear,” Prudence Lincoln muttered.
    Declan looked up.
    As did the children, eyeing their new ma with expressions of belligerence, laced with distrust and a trace of wariness. Smart kids.
    “I hope so,” Miss Priss went on in a friendly tone. “As it will be your last in this house. Unless . . .” Letting the word hang like an executioner’s ax, she paused to take a dainty bite of muffin, set it back on her plate, dabbed at her mouth with a napkin—where had she found a napkin?—then looked up with that terrifying smile. “. . . you improve your table