Free Stands a Calder Man by Janet Dailey

he stated and looked down at Lillian Reisner. “Young lady, hand me a chunk of that black rock by your feet.”
    There were any number of shiny black rocks at her feet, broken from the wide seam showing in the exposed earth of the cutbank. Bending, Lillian picked upa large, rough-edged chunk and handed it to him. A curious frown narrowed her eyes because the rock had looked just like coal.
    â€œNow, I’ve been telling you people what treasures you can find in this land. This is one of them.” Harve Wessel held up the piece of black rock for all to see. “It’s coal. It’s a few feet underground just about anywhere you want to look. And in places, like here”—he pointed to the coal seam in the cutbank—“it’s at the surface. There’s your fuel!”
    Slowly Lillian swung her attention to Stefan. She had no more doubt about the wisdom of coming to Montana. It was only a matter of finding their piece of land.

4
    The wind rustled through the green-growing grass, bowing its tall spring stalks and creating shimmering hues of emerald, jade, and turquoise under a sapphire sky. It seemed a jewel-studded land with wild flowers of ruby red and topaz yellow strewn all around and a horizon that was limitless. At last, the promises of riches that had lured her parents to America’s shores were about to be fulfilled.
    With her head lifted high to the shining sun, Lillian Reisner filled her lungs with the freshly scented air. Blind hope had been her traveling companion for such a long distance. To be standing here in the middle of this vastness made her feel as if something wonderful were bursting inside. It was a sensation of freedom beyond expression.
    No more buildings crowding in to block out the sun. No more smoke-clouded skies and air that choked the lungs with the stench of sewage and animal waste. No more living on top of neighbors, hearing all their quarrels and crying.
    â€œListen to the wind, Stefan.” She turned her shining face on the tall, square-jawed man. “I can’t ever remember hearing the wind before.”
    â€œAnd the birds, too.” His speech was laden with the guttural accent of his native Deutschland. “My ears have so long heard only pigeons that the songs of birds in the meadow I forget. I vas a young man vhen ve left Germany—your papa and me. You vere only a gleam in your papa’s eye.”
    It was a story Lillian had been told many times: the long ocean voyage in steerage, her parents’ ardent wish that their first child be born in America where the streets were paved with gold. She was a native citizen, raised in the German ghetto of New York City. Both of her parents had believed in the dream of America all the way up to their deaths within a few months of each other. It hadn’t mattered that the streets weren’t paved with gold. The markets held more food than they had ever seen, lb them, it had remained a land of plenty, untarnished with disillusionment.
    Listening to Stefan’s thick accent, Lillian remembered how once she had been so ashamed of the way her parents talked, how intolerant she had been, unable to appreciate the strength and courage it had taken to leave their homeland for a strange, new country with a different culture. To her deep regret, it was a discovery she had made after they were gone.
    Now she had made a journey so very much similar to theirs—traveling across this huge continent of America, eager, yet unsure of what she would find waiting for her. This big, open stretch of land was awesome—a long, lonely distance from anywhere. But she wasn’t intimidated by the empty landscape.
    Her father and Stefan had shared a dream of owning their own farm in America. She was here with Stefan, taking her father’s place, to make that long-ago dream a reality. Respect and deep affection were in the look she gave the forty-three-year-old man who was her husband. Despite the