His lips lifted into another smile, this one throwing her off-kilter and making her slightly dizzy with happiness. As he ambled around the oxen and approached the father and son, she couldn’t contain a smile of her own.

Chapter 12

“When will they be back?” Astrid asked for the hundredth time as she sat in the open doorway and peered outside.

The August day was stifling without the slightest breeze. In front of the stove stirring the bubbling pot of fruit, Greta plucked at a strand of hair sticking to her face. “They’ll be back just as soon as they find the lost steer.”

During the few days since the trip to town, Wyatt had branded the new oxen and set them out to pasture with the other cattle. But one of them had strayed. And today, Wyatt and Judd had decided to track it down.

Of course, today Astrid had managed to have enough energy to finish the horsehair saddle blanket that Judd had set her working on. And now, she was determined to take him up on his promise to teach her to ride in spite of her persistent cough.

Greta had already made one batch of jam with the supplies she’d purchased. And she had enough jars and wax to make one more set.

She lifted the wooden spoon and blew on the mixture of huckleberries and chokecherries, hoping she’d gotten the consistency right. For yesterday’s batch she’d added under-ripe chokecherries to help thicken and set the jam. And while she’d done the same today, she’d run short of huckleberries and added more sugar to the bubbling mixture to keep it from being too tart.

“Please thicken,” she whispered to the liquid on the spoon. If she could keep contributing to the ranch in this small way, then perhaps Wyatt wouldn’t regret marrying her.

Not that he appeared to have any regrets . . . In fact, he seemed to like talking with her. He was plenty busy, which didn’t give them much time together, but whenever he and Judd came in for the morning and evening meals, he shared about all the things they were up to, everything from the poisonous plant one of the steers had nibbled to the porcupine quills in the nose of another. She and Astrid had laughed over his retelling of the attempts to hold down the steer and extract the quills while it kicked and bawled.

On Sunday, Wyatt had offered to take her to church. Judd insisted on staying home with Astrid while they went. In addition to getting to spend time with Wyatt, Greta had been excited to meet a young German woman a little older than herself who’d ridden down from her cabin up in one of the remote mines with her children so she could attend Reverend Zieber’s services. Mrs. Mueller spoke limited English, but Greta learned her husband ran a sawmill that catered to the miners.