Free Ruby by Lauraine Snelling, Alexandra O'Karm Page B

we are about to receive, for food and strength to do thy will. Amen.” While hurried, the words could be understood if one listened with intense concentration.
    Ruby glanced up to see a look of confusion on Charlie’s lined face. The light in his eyes and friendly smile beneath his brushy mustache made her feel she might have a friend in this world. And he had helped her during the night and was now treating young Opal like a princess. Who and what was this man?
    “I’ll take care of the boss when we’re done here. The others most likely won’t be up yet.”
    “Belle is. I saw her tearing the bedroom apart, looking for something, I presume.”
    He stopped and turned, holding a pancake turner in the air. “How’d she seem?”
    Ruby paused before answering. A strange question. She thought back to the scene in the bedroom where Belle had had no respect for the dead man and then torrents of grief. “Undone, I believe.” Snappy, she’d been, before the tears. But what would she know? How many people had she ever known who’d just lost someone they loved?
    “Had they been married long?”
    Charlie spun around. “Married? Who?”
    “Why my father and Belle. I assumed—” She stopped at the look of consternation that made his mustache twitch. She glanced over at Opal who was taking in every nuance while eating healthy bites of eggs and ham.
    “We will talk of this later.”
    “Ah yes. Good idea. Can I get you more to eat?”
    Ruby stared down at her half-finished plate, wondering where her appetite had suddenly disappeared to. She finished off a biscuit that now needed dunking in her coffee, its dryness making swallowing difficult. Or was it her throat that was dry? She drank several swallows to alleviate the distress. What was going on here? The saloon was bad enough, but undercurrents seemed far more dangerous than the serving of liquor and men playing cards. Why, Mr. Brandon had sometimes gone to his club for the same pleasures. Were things any different here on the frontier?
    “Will you contact the minister then for the funeral?”
    “Minister? Funeral?” Charlie’s eyebrows joined the twitching of mustaches.
    “We are going to bury my father, are we not?”
    “Ah yes. I’ll get someone to dig the hole over in the graveyard. Then whoever wants can say some words over him. That’s about all we do out here. And put some big stones on top so the wild critters don’t drag ’im off.”
    Ruby schooled her face to keep from the grimacing and shuddering that threatened to overcome her. “There is no man of God to . . . to conduct a proper burial, then?”
    “No. Sorry. We do the best we can.” Charlie wiped his hands on the dish towel he had tied around his middle, untied it, and tossed the stained article on the back of a chair.
    “I’ll be back.” He took his bowler hat off the peg on the wall by the door. “Oh, and I would stay out of Belle’s way for a while.”
    Ruby didn’t bother to ask why, certain she really didn’t want to know the answer.
    The more copious Belle’s tears as they laid Per in his grave, wrapped only in a blanket, no box having been made, the drier Ruby’s eyes grew. Opal clutched her hand, bonding herself to her sister’s side.
    Other than those from Dove House, only men joined with the mourners. One of them was the grave digger, who leaned on his shovel handle and waited for them to leave so he could finish his job. Others wore the blue uniforms of the U.S. Army, one in full dress, including shiny gold buttons and a saber at his side. Some men looked as if they’d been dragged through a dirt bank.
    Charlie took off his hat. “Per Torvald was a good man, he took care of his own and reached out a helping hand to those around him.”
    Took care of his own? Ruby kept her eyes straight forward. What about us? Across the mound of dirt rose a hill striped in the wildest colors she’d ever seen, most of which she would not normally apply to dirt or rock. Tan, dark brown,