Free No Eye Can See by Jane Kirkpatrick Page A

someone she could confer with over words.
    Esther sighed. “I do wonder, though, how far the money we get for those tacks will carry us, divided as it must be.”
    “Maybe your share will be enough for you to return the contract money,” Mazy said.
    Esther dabbed at her eyes with her fingers. “He never gives more than we can manage, Scripture says.” She sighed. “Sometimes I do wonder why he thinks I am so strong.”
    Mazy waited to see if Esther would share more. In the silence, Mazy stood, straightened the shawl around the older woman's bony shoulders, and said, “It's God's landscape. Let's look for the pleasant vistas in it.”

    The water in the bucket had a thin covering of ice when Ruth pushed her hand into it that morning. She shivered. “What is it, Auntie Ruth?”Sarah asked. The girl stood behind her, her narrow shoulders hunched beneath her shivering thin nightgown, her feet almost white from the cold of the ground.
    “Get yourself dressed,” Ruth said.
    Sarahs eyes clouded over, her lower lip squeezed out.
    “That's not a scolding,” Ruth said. “I just mean it's cold here. Look at your feet. Guess we're higher up than we've been, and it's getting later in the year. So it's cold. Go on, now. Skedaddle. Get your jumper on and your wool socks. At least until it warms up.”
    The girl brightened some, pulled her thin shawl around her, and disappeared back inside the tent. Ruth shook her head. Pretty thin skin, that one, Ruth thought.
    She splashed water onto her face, liking the numbing of it. She wiped her eyes with her fingertips, shook her head to dry, then replaced Zane's floppy felt hat on her head. Sarah was a fragile thing, so easily offended by Ruths stark words. Today Ruth vowed to talk with Mazy and Elizabeth about caring for the children while she headed to Oregon to find her horses in Matt Schmidtke's care. She needed to give the women time to consider. The talk of what to do with Suzanne spurred her on.
    She knew Mazy liked Suzanne and she might commit herself to the blind woman's care, leaving no room to look after Ruth's children. Elizabeth was good with little tykes, even demanding ones like Jessie, and for a brief moment Ruth wondered if Mazy might have been a demanding child. She doubted it. Mazy might be strong-willed and a bit stubborn, but Ruth couldn't imagine her being rude the way Jessie could be. How had Betha handled that kind of behavior? Ruth thought back. She hadn't ever noticed Jessie whine about her discomfort with Betha the way she did with her.
    Yesterday, Jessie'd demanded a different quilt be put beneath her legs, had shouted so loudly Seth had ridden back to see if she'd been injured again.
    “My leg, my leg! Put something soft under it,” she said. “Get me your quilt, Auntie Ruth.”
    “Your Auntie Ruth needs that to sleep with,” Elizabeth told the girl. “Its all she's got for a bedroll. You've got this nice cornhusk mattress that was your mama's. Now don't you be taking from someone else what little they got.”
    “She's s'posed to take care of me. My mama said she would if anything happened to her and Papa.”
    “And so she is,” Elizabeth said, holding up a warning finger.
    Jessie had actually struck at Elizabeth then, the action so quick and stunning, Ruth had jumped back as Elizabeth did. “I'll go get the quilt,” Ruth said.
    “Don't you be letting this girl herd you like a cow, Ruthie,” Elizabeth said. “She ain't no general positioning her troops, either. You need your only quilt, and she don't need to be rewarded for her nasty behavior. She needs to accommodate. Yes, you do.” She turned to Jessie, whose lower lip stuck out while her eyes were black as hard coal. “Best lesson a child can learn, to bend a little, tailor herself stead of waiting for others to make the perfect fit. Something the rest of us has to learn too. The world don't make many changes for us; we got to make it ourselves.”
    Ruth considered Elizabeth's words. Then