Winnie Bullock stood at the edge of the creek, watching it swirl into a pool next to a large boulder. She tightened the drawstring on her hat to guard against the gusts of late spring wind and then stooped to pick up a piece of quartz, its silver mica glittering with moisture.
Since her brother Chase had died after a logging accident, it fell to her to help her father work the homestead while Mother and her two younger sisters stayed in Boise, where they earned a small income by singing and reciting poetry in the parlors of wealthy patrons. Today her father had gone into town for supplies and wasn’t expected back until nightfall.
When she heard a faint drumming sound grow louder, she looked up to see a rider coming toward her, his galloping horse lifting him skyward and thudding him back to earth in an undulating rhythm. His long hair streamed backward from beneath his battered Stetson as if the speed at which he rode was forcing a part of him to fly off toward the clouds scattered along the shadowy horizon to the east.
“Hello! Hello! Is your husband around?” he called.
The light in the young woman’s eyes faded as she reflected on the danger a man could bring to a woman alone in the desert. Even before her recent high school graduation, she’d seen the ruined farm girls hustling outside the bars in Boise. She raised her arm and threw the rock she’d been admiring into the creek, its splash startling the trout where they’d rested, the steel ridge-lines of their backs roiling, the soft rainbows of their sides exposed.
“He’s not here,” she lied, trying to head the intruder off. “You must be at the wrong place—maybe you need to check the miners’ campsite over to the east a couple of miles.”
The rider’s horse stumbled against a limb of dried greasewood on the ledge above the creek as he reined in, its hooves knocking loose the pungent scent of resin. Winnie’s fingers traced the worn grooves of the rifle stock she’d been cradling in her arm, her forefinger sliding down into the oval shell of the trigger guard, its sleek steel contrasting with the wood. She slid her fingers further, caressing the trigger, its curve a perfect comma waiting for the right phrase to complete the sentence. Ignoring her move, the rider began to dismount.
“My father will know you’ve been through here,” Winnie choked out, and then cringed at how she’d made it plain that no one at all was around to come to her aid. The smell of the scarred greasewood slid further into the air, stinging her nostrils. She dropped down onto the boulder, raising the rifle to her shoulder in what she hoped appeared as a natural, reflexive action. “What is it that you want?”
“Well now, who’d think I’d be finding a little prairie flower like you when I’m just after a cup of coffee?” the rider asked, sliding his hand onto the leather holster where his rifle rode alongside the saddle.
He doesn’t think I can take him down, Winnie thought. Her mind flashed back to the last Boise Citizen she’d read, a story about another drifter, a good-for-nothing rapist attacking a young woman who’d been traveling to Mountain Home to join her fiancé. Some of the local busybodies had even claimed the assault was her own fault for riding out alone—like a ripe plum ready for the picking.
“I’m clear out of coffee, Mister,” Winnie said, and then she whispered, “and I’m nobody’s flower.”
“Say, you won’t need that rifle anyways,” he commented as he drew a letter from his saddlebag. “You’d be from Boise, I’ll bet. Douglas Bullock is your father and you’re working that spread a little piece further on. Right?”
“What do you want with us?”
“You are Edwina Ann Bullock then?”
“Yes,” Winnie admitted.
“This letter is for you. It’s called a subpoena and it’s from Judge LeFevre. It says you’ll have to testify about your brother Chase when called upon to do so.”
Winnie’s face went red as she eyed the man. “I know what a subpoena is, but Chase died last winter. He got hurt on a log run from Idaho City.”
“The authorities don’t figure his fall was any accident, Miss Bullock. Andrew Brady, the new prosecutor up in Boise County, he’s put a man in jail. He’s planning a trial for murder. You take this paper now and I’ll be on my way.”
“What about my father? Don’t you have one for him?” Winnie asked, after she read her name on the envelope. But all she heard in reply was a little creaking sound from the saddle as the man mounted, flicked the reins, and turned his horse back toward town. He raised one hand, tipped his hat, and nodded goodbye so casually she wondered if he could even imagine what an uproar his message would cause.
* * *
Without the rider, the plain sank back into its usual inertia, a wide vista featuring nothing to interrupt the vacant miles. The Bullocks were the first to set up housekeeping although, but the whole forty miles of desert between the Boise and Mountain Home would be irrigated after a new dam at Arrowrock went in. It’d been approved in 1910 so that sometime soon—Winnie hoped—developers would dig the irrigation canal that would make the desert bear crops. Nevertheless, Winnie would have to stay on the homestead, unless some kind of miracle came along, until the high desert turned into a profitable farm.
As the subpoena said, Winnie’s real name was Edwina. When she’d been in the third grade at Longfellow School, two of the older girls made up a rhyme about it and spread their derision around the school. Winnie’s older brother Chase had been the first to call her the name she went by now. When she was little and Mother’s voice had risen to a sour note, she’d call, “Edwina Ann, come right now!” When that happened Chase would hold her back a second and say, “Little Miss Winnie, I’ll give you a pinny to make Mama smile!” Sometimes he even slipped a penny into her hand before he let her go.
Later he’d tell her that she was the Bullock family’s winner—Winnie the winner; she’d make them all proud one day. Nevertheless, Edwina longed to experience her mother’s warmth and approval, to feel her eyes on her sturdy eldest daughter the same way she gazed at willowy figures of Mandy and Claire. She’d tell them, “Someday you’ll both be beautiful brides and bring us all a fortune.” Sometimes she’d nod at Edwina, and say, “You too, dear.”
All the young Edwina had to compare with beautiful was ugly. She’d learned how an ugly insult could blunt your dreams and shove your own words down your throat. You’d swallow them, even words like Hello, because of the giggles and whispers that warned you how certain girls were not your friends. So you didn’t ask questions like, Will you sit by me in gym class? or, Do you like my braids this way?
The easy breeze that had swept her along throughout her early childhood died the first day of the maypole dance rehearsals one April. She’d been chosen as the top third grade girl with the most time to spare from her lessons so she could practice with the older girls. She’d fill in so there’d be someone on the sixteenth ribbon to make up the perfect number for winding around the pole.
“Girls,” Mrs. Englund announced, “This is Edwina. She’ll be blue, on ribbon four, behind Roseanne and in front of Celia.”
“Edwina!” Celia asked, wrinkling her nose.
“What an odd name,” Roseanne giggled and then said, “Eddie, she’s an Eddie.”
“Eddie Weena,” Celia added. “Weena, Weena!” They began chanting in low voices, “Eddie, Eddie, Eddie! Weena, Weena, Weena! Never had a Freddy! Never will!” The girls savored the rhyme in their mouths as if it were a bubbly soda, or a caramel apple, sweet and sour, chewy and juicy, conjured up by their cleverness—and it was theirs. It belonged to them. And Edwina belonged to them as well, a toy. And after the teachers heard them and told them to stop, they’d whisper as she walked by or tried to find a seat in choir. She would pretend not to hear the Eddie, Eddie, Eddie that echoed in her mind. Never had a Freddy, never, never …
For years Edwina yearned for a way to be accepted into the fold by popular girls, to stop the snickering that accompanied her backside as she walked across the playground. She saw how they clustered and patted each other’s hair; their laughter and pleasure withheld from her, an unreachable ring on a daily merry-go-round. In her sorrow she cast about, looking for a way to ease the loneliness that she felt walking to school alone, walking home alone.
Late one afternoon while she sat half-hidden under the lilac tree in the yard writing in her diary, Chase came by and spotted her. “Hey Winnie-pinny, come out, come out wherever you are.” His words reminded her of a line from their long ago hide and seek games. When he’d entered sixth grade, he’d given up tag and other games, claiming to be too grown up for kiddy play. His casual reference to the fun times they’d had in the past brought tears to Winnie’s eyes.
If I could just be Winnie, they’d stop teasing me, she thought, but she had no idea how to make such a marvelous change happen. School would soon be out for the summer and if Chase could help her now, maybe when she started fourth grade in the fall the hateful Edwina rhyme would’ve simply disappeared.
“. . . making fun of me at school,” she finally blurted out.
Chase frowned and slid down next to her, inching himself under the lilac branches, the two of them side by side, just the way they used huddle together. “And who would this be making fun of you?” he asked.
“Celia Phipps and Roseanne Busker started it. When we practiced for the maypole. They rhymed my name—Weena, Weena, and Eddie like a boy’s … and … I … I can’t even say the rest.”
“They’re the worst girls in my class for making fun of people. Celia ought to wear a gold crown the way she bosses everyone around. And she’ll deny everything if you tell.”
“Maybe you could talk to her?”
Chase looked away and whispered, “Celie Phipps, liar’s lips.” Then he said, “Yes, I will. Tomorrow.”
* * *
Casting her memories aside, Winnie realized the rider was, like Chase, long gone. She ran back to the tent house, hoping to read the subpoena and the letter that came with it before her father quit work for the day. The idea that Chase had come to harm from another person opened a huge gap between the way she’d mourned her brother and the import of this new investigation. When she opened the summons, she saw that the prosecution had charged a Gordon Phipps. She wondered if the accused was related to Celia and if so, how.
“A man caught up with me over by Standley Creek today,” Winnie said when Father came in. She paused to sweep her hair from her eyes before turning to pour the hot water into the tea pot. “I didn’t have much warning without Striker to bark at him.” She looked to the Border collie on the floor as he raised his head and perked his ears on hearing his name. Most of the time Winnie and Striker stuck together, but he’d had a run-in with a coyote the night before and she’d left him tied up for the afternoon so the torn skin above his eye would start to heal.
“You’ve let your hair fall clear onto your cheeks, Winnie. Tighten the knot!” Father said. “Now you’ve spilled the water too.” He’d insisted that Winnie wear black or gray and tie her hair back since she’d finished high school—not that her navy blues and browns hadn’t been drab enough without the lacy collars and cuffs the other girls wore. With Chase dead. she’d be in black for a whole year. Mourning or not, decency in the eyes of the Lord demanded that a grown woman look and act plainspoken, according to her father, a sometime Free Methodist preacher.
Winnie mopped the table with a cloth, managing to push the legal papers out of the way before they were damaged. “This is what he brought,” she said, nodding toward them.
“These are from Boise County? What could they want with us?”
“You remember where Chase got hurt,” Winnie answered, as she poured the tea. She crossed over and sat in the rocking chair so she could watch her father’s back while he read. She patted her leg to signal Striker to come closer and the dog whimpered a little as he came, as if he knew the soreness of the hurt she felt. His leg bones clunked against the floor boards as he settled. Her father turned and thrust the legal pages in her face. “Why is this subpoena for you, Winnie? What do you know that you haven’t told your mother and me?”
“I’ll be riding in an autobus from Boise to Idaho City with some other people next Wednesday. As it says in the letter, the prosecutor is calling witnesses together for a pretrial investigation.”
“We’ll see about that. If this Andrew Brady knew his business as a prosecutor, he’d call on Chase’s father and leave the women in the family alone.”
Winnie turned her head so he wouldn’t see the tears filling her eyes. Perhaps she’d been called to testify because she was the one who cared for Chase all those months of sickness after he fell from the log wagon. But then a shudder ran through her as she remembered how she’d sat at Chase’s bedside asking herself, Why, why? Maybe she should have been asking, How? How could this have happened?
What if Chase had been pushed? They’d never gotten any details about his fall. Loggers died when trees fell the wrong way, not when they were moving logs down a road. The sheriff had met Mother and Father and shown them the shady curve marked with a wooden stake. And a Boise Citizen article reported what supposedly happened, but Chase hadn’t been a careless man. I’ll go to Boise on my own, she thought. Father will never seek out the truth because he’ll be fighting the very men he needs to listen to.
* * *
On Wednesday morning, when she usually started the fire and put on coffee before waking her father, she dressed silently. She opened her letter box, took out the silver dollars Chase had given her, and slipped them into her purse before she eased out of the tent house. At least she’d have the money with her in case something unexpected happened. Late the night before, she’d slipped out and pegged her horse, Sassy, away from the others so their nickering wouldn’t wake Father. She was in the saddle well before sunup.
Father’s angry words echoed in her mind as she rode. “What haven’t you told your mother and me?” he’d asked. Her cheeks flushed as she remembered how his question had burned in her ears. As if she knew of some secret wrongdoing that had led to Chase’s death. While Sassy carried her along the way to meet with Andrew Brady, she whispered the lines she’d say to Father later, “I thought you needed your rest, Sir, and besides, I managed perfectly well.”
As her emotions faded, Winnie watched the ground squirrels scampering through the sagebrush in the half-light spreading from the mountaintops. The little busybodies relayed ahead of her horse, calling their pip, pip, pip warnings to others who might be in danger. Riding through the vacant miles, she could hardly imagine the promised irrigation water someday turning the arid land into fertile fields. The hungry little guys would just be vermin then, their tunnels dug up and colonies killed off. People did what they had to do. She knew she’d lie if the prosecutor asked about the money Chase had saved from his wages, keeping his stash secret from the family. Even from her until the very last.
* * *
Winnie stabled her horse near the city hall where a new autobus waited, a vehicle resembling a long metal wagon that would hold thirteen, counting the driver. Canvas curtains hung along the open windows to protect the passengers if it rained or, as was more likely today, they suffered from the dust. A small crowd of people stood waiting and a tall young woman in a tailored suit came up to Winnie.
“You must be Edwina,” she said.
Winnie shook her head and looked down at her hands.
“Ida Swift, with the Boise Citizen.”
“I won’t be saying much, but thank you anyway. Chase wouldn’t want his name spread around in the news.”
“And why not?”
“Well, he can’t speak for himself now, can he? Seeing as how he’s over in the Pioneer Cemetery.”
Ida made a tch tch noise with her mouth and added an mmm, mmm. The reporter leaned forward and turned her face up at an angle so she could see into Winnie’s eyes. “I remember when your brother graduated high school, my dear. Such a bright future!”
“I suppose I should be getting into the autobus now.”
“Was your brother three or four years older than you?”
“You know, I used to believe we’d all have time to make our way in the world, but Chase never really had a chance, did he?” Winnie asked, surprised at herself for going on about him to the newspaper columnist. Then, just as the first rays of sunlight burst through the maple trees and dappled the red skin of the autobus, the driver started the engine.
“Wouldn’t you even like to know what will happen when we get there?”
Winnie felt the smoothness of the door handle and when she stepped onto the autobus, she slid across the cool leather of the seat, shifting as far as possible away from Ida, who’d followed her.
“I’ve covered a lot of crime stories, Edwina. I was right there when they convicted Governor Stuenenberg’s killer and I covered the family’s relief that justice would prevail. That’s worth a whole lot more than any of my society columns you may have read. And a copy clerk writes most of them for me anyway. I can help you find some peace when Gordon Phipps hears his sentence and the world knows what he did. Think of your mother and father.”
“I never thought Chase would be touched by such evil as to be killed, and I don’t want any part of making headlines for your paper!” Winnie took out her little compact mirror and lip balm and applied the salve to her lips where the sun had burned them rough. When she finished, she snapped her bag shut, and pursed her lips as if to seal them. Ida turned away, looking for someone new to interview.
The vehicle they rode in soon passed through town and stopped at the end of Warm Springs Avenue. A young man, a little dusty from the quarry, climbed into the seat across the aisle from Ida. Winnie’s eyes opened wide when she saw who he was—Robert MacAulay, Chase’s best friend from high school. She shrank back into her seat so that Ida’s large hat hid her from view and listened as the reporter sounded him out.
“I think Andrew Brady brought these charges against Gordon to get his name in the paper,” Robert said. “The whole Republican Party is upset that a Democratic governor is in the state house.”
“I’ll be sure and print that opinion if you’ll own up to it. You know, Andrew Brady passed law at Harvard and he’s the blood nephew of our last governor.”
‘I don’t care who he’s related to, and the Hawleys don’t own anyone. What I said wouldn’t be any different than what a lot of Chase’s friends are saying, so go ahead, quote me.”
“Why would Brady risk bringing a weak case to trial?”
“Miss Swift, he hasn’t done it yet. He hasn’t even heard what we all have to say.”
“I hear he has a witness against Phipps.”
Macaulay appeared reluctant to say more, and as they wound up the canyon the engine whined ever louder until the driver stopped and poured cool water on it. Winnie watched the silver willow leaves shift in the breeze along the creek and then leaned out to listen to the water grumbling down its rocky bed. Another hour and they’d be in Idaho City.
* * *
When the autobus stopped in front of a saloon, Winnie couldn’t resist commenting to no one in particular, “It’s 1911 and they still hold court in a tavern?”
“Well, yes.” Robert Macauley said. “Say, I didn’t see you on the up ride here, Winnie,” he added with a smile. “Were you hiding out then?” He grasped her elbow to help her inside the Miner’s Exchange. A long, polished bar where liquor was served at night, stretched across the room.
“That’s where the judge sits during trials,” Macaulay whispered. Winnie tried to hide her surprise that a bar could double for a place where justice was supposed to prevail. What a place for a trial! The witnesses all sat down and then a warden sent them, one at a time, over to Andrew Brady’s office, across the street and up over the liquor store. “There’s nowhere else for us to wait,” Robert explained.
“Do you believe this Gordon Phipps pushed Chase off the logs?” Winnie asked.
“Didn’t you know … he’s Celia’s older brother, that girl you had trouble with back in grade school.” Robert paused, rubbing the coin he held between his thumb and forefinger, squeezing it, as if it might fly into the air or drop to the floor of its own accord. “I’ll be telling the prosecutor what a good person Chase was, Winnie, but you might be prepared to learn a few things. Chase got a taste of freedom up here in the mountains.”
* * *
Andrew Brady sat behind a small desk that might have been built for someone’s grandfather. His long legs stretched across the doorway and he moved them abruptly, causing Winnie to trip a little as she crossed the threshold from the landing and stepped in. Her purse, the one she’d beaded so carefully by hand, flew across the room and smacked against the log wall.
“You’re obliged to tell me the whole truth here, Edwina Bullock,” Brady said as he stood, retrieved the purse and picked up a Bible from his desk. “Hold your hand on this book and swear to it. Do you so promise?”
“Yes sir.”
Winnie took a deep breath as he sat back down. She looked hard at the man who held her more or less hostage and saw a tense face with hooded eyes. She wanted him to let her and all of the Bullocks go free, leaving Chase’s reputation as a good son and brother unharmed. To just forget the whole charade. And yet, if Phipps had caused Chase’s death, she’d cheer to see him convicted. It felt as if her whole being depended on Andrew Brady and she groaned to think that she and Chase were only steps on the ladder of his plans to rise above them.
“Mr. Brady,” she said. “Why am I here?”
“You ever hear Chase Bullock talk about Gordon Phipps?”
“Sir?”
“You nursed the deceased through his illness, isn’t that right? Did he ever tell you about the accident or why he and Phipps were riding on the logs?”
“No sir.”
Brady came out from behind the desk and kneeled beside her chair. “You mustn’t lie to me, Edwina. Its Winnie isn’t it? Did you know your brother drank with the other loggers of a Saturday night? Did you know he fought in the street out here after midnight when the bars closed? Your brother was a roustabout, wasn’t he? You know how they are. What did he tell you about Gordon Phipps?”
Winnie’s breath struggled in her throat forcing a rude gulp from her lips. The men she’d known had never thrust themselves so near her face and she smelled the lavender aroma of the soap he’d used in his bath. A narrow ray of light from the window striped across his cheek as he leaned ever closer, and she felt his breath as he whispered, “Tell me.”
Something shifted inside her and she began to feel terribly small, as if the chair had grown around her and she might be lost in it forever. He raised his hand to her chin ready to pull the words out of her mouth that would condemn Gordon Phipps, words that would also prove Chase had been a wayward son. A silent moment passed and then Winnie heard a howling sound filling the tiny room and bouncing from the rafters. She wondered where the shrieking came from, and the next thing she knew, Brady leaned over her, a cup of water in his hand. “You were upset at me and then you blacked out,” he said. “Here, drink this.”
Winnie gulped a few swallow and handed the glass back to him. They looked at each other cautiously, as if a new uproar might flare up between them at any moment.
“I’ll let you go for now, Miss Bullock, but the law requires you to report what you know about Chase and Gordon Phipps. Write to me at the address here on my card—Mr. Andrew Brady, P. A., Boise County Courthouse, Idaho City, Idaho.” He pressed the card into her hand, opened the office door, and led her down the outdoor steps. He handed her gently over to the warden who’d been waiting. “She may need a bit of looking after,” he said.
Ida Swift stood in the doorway of the bar. Dropping her officious manner, she wrapped an arm around Winnie’s shoulders and led her along the wooden walkway to an outside bench.
”I never imagined Chase would’ve sheltered you so completely. He really didn’t tell you anything about this Gordon Phipps that Brady is after?”
“No, he didn’t. But when we were in grade school, Chase protected me against Gordon’s little sister Celia. She’d been a ringleader in teasing me about my name. I guess Chase and Gordon may’ve never been friends after that, but all the time I took care of him after he fell—he said nothing to me about drinking or fighting. Maybe something wicked really did happen.”
Ida held her peace, but reached into her bag, drew out a large linen handkerchief, and dabbed at the moisture on Winnie’s forehead. Then she stood and walked to the end of the boardwalk. Winnie clasped her hands over her chest, took a deep breath, and followed her. “Do you understand now?” she asked.
A Lazuli bunting landed in the grass in front of them and began pecking for fallen berries from a nearby chokecherry bush. It searched restlessly, the eyes darting as fast as its beak.
“I used to believe that families like yours, where the fathers rule, kept private counsel and when trouble came along the women always knew more than they were telling.”
“What would you know about my father?”
“Birds seem so free, don’t they, flying wherever they take a notion, but lots of them starve in the winter. Or freeze … others know to fly south.”
* * *
It was late when the autobus returned to Boise and a crowd had gathered on the lawn outside city hall. People milled around asking questions, as if the riders had attended a holiday celebration. The whole Bullock family, scrubbed and polished, came forward to meet Winnie, Mandy and Claire dressed in frilly jumpers and their Sunday shoes. Ida Swift kept her hand firmly on Winnie’s back and said, “This young lady needs rest and quiet.”
Mr. Bullock grunted and opened his mouth, but no words came out.
“You needn’t worry—she hasn’t told me or anyone else a thing we didn’t already know.”
“That’s good.”
“You see how these people are acting?” Ida said. “Plenty will be published about Chase in the newspapers tomorrow and for weeks to come if there is a trial. You should give Edwina permission to tell her side of her brother’s story.”
“No! Never!”
“She knows where to find me.”
Father raised his arm and flung his hand forward as if to shoo the reporter away.
Ida put her mouth to Winnie’s ear and whispered, “The old goat.”
All the emotion of the day, the tears and fears, the grief over Chase’s fate and the worry over what Father would think or say about her actions—all of it flared up in Winnie’s mind and her heart beat a little faster as first one giggle and then another escaped from her compressed lips. Soon she and Ida were bent over, their howls of laughter erupting into the crowd and drawing everyone’s attention. Douglas Bullock allowed a smile to come over his face as he nodded to the onlookers as if to say—How foolish and unpredictable these women can be.
* * *
Winnie tossed and turned as she tried to sleep that night in her old room at the Bullock home. The events of the day crowded into her dreams. Andrew Bullock loomed over her one minute and in the next Ida Swift and Robert MacAulay peppered her with questions she couldn’t answer. She even seemed to see Chase and Gordon Phipps riding on the logs, to see Chase being pushed from behind, over and over, by some invisible force, his hands gripping the chains holding the logs, his grip breaking open. Several times she startled awake and had to remember why she was back in her old room and not in her little alcove in the tent house on the homestead.
The sun poured in from the window when she woke up late the next morning. She lay in bed thinking about the claim, the backbreaking work, the boredom of following a draft horse for days on end, of guiding the chain as it yanked sagebrush from the earth, and yes, even about the harsh beauty of the desert.
She imagined Ida, in her neatly tailored, cream-colored suit, standing near the field, shaking her finger at Father. Ida Swift would never have let herself be pushed into such a backbreaking attempt. She’d force everyone involved to think about the how and the why of such a setup. Most importantly, in the end, she’d make up her own mind. There wouldn’t be any miracle to free Winnie from working the homestead; she’d have to save herself.
Winnie knew she would miss the cactus flowers and the sage sparrows, not to mention the company of a faithful dog like Striker. But someone else would have to clear brush and break ground. Maybe Mother would find a lodger to stay in Chase’s room so they could afford to hire a young man to take her place. Maybe the irrigation canal would never be built and all their efforts would go for nothing anyway.
After she’d bathed, Winnie put on her high school graduation dress, checked to make sure the silver dollars were still in her purse, and headed downstairs. When she passed an open window, she caught a whiff of lavender scent flowing in on a gentle puff of air. Her hand flew to her cheek as she remembered Andrew Brady’s face inches from her own, a trail of lavender sweetened with orange and spiced with clove from his cologne floating in the air between them. She wouldn’t write to him until she’d learned more about what happened that day, the day Chase fell from the logging wagon. Downstairs she found her mother was washing up the breakfast dishes. “I’ll be going to see Ida Swift today,” Winnie said.
“Your father’s already gone to the claim and your horse is still in the stable downtown.”
“I’m going to ask her if she can take me on as a copy clerk. I’d like to learn more about the newspaper business.”
“You might ask her if she has a room for you as well! You know what your father will say when you tell him.”
—————————————————————————–
Margaret Koger grew up on a ranch in Idaho after rural electricity came along and before the family could afford a well due to a dry sandy outcropping. Her dad traded used tires for her first pony. She writes from this background with cowboys and their constituents.