Free Place to Belong, a by Lauraine Snelling Page A

rather unchristian thought to take life, all the ranch would be back in the family. So why didn’t he just tell Lucas that he now believed that Lucas was truly in love with Cassie and all his shenanigans with Betsy were the actions of—of what? An irresponsible boy? One who indeed trifled with a fine young woman’s affections, like Betsy’s brother had said? And he was Lucas’s best friend. Was Betsy so brokenhearted, as her family had said, that she would go off somewhere to pine?
    His thoughts tumbled over and around one another, each hollering for attention, like a schoolyard full of children playing blind man’s bluff.
    What about Cassie? As always there were two sides to every coin. She still maintained she did not want to marry Lucas. And she treated him like a brother, which is what his mother said Cassie had said more than once. How would she know what she felt if she’d never had a brother or ever before been in love? But then, had anyone asked her if she was in love with someone from her past? She’d never mentioned a man in her life, other than her father, of course, and that despicable Jason Talbot.
    Ransom thumped his pillow and turned over for the third time. Maybe he should just get up, light a lamp, and work on some of the things on his desk. While the accounts were all current, he never had enough time to draw his dreams of furniture to build. Or to look through the catalogs that came in the mail. He huffed out a sigh. His mother would tell him to quit stewing and start praying. But why should he expect God to work this out? After all—after all, what? Now he was even questioning his questioning. And what about the offer Arnett made? He needed to think that through and come up with something they could all be comfortable with.
    Having the old man living at the bunkhouse was not payment enough for a ranch, not in any kind of deals he’d ever seen. Actually, he’d thought that if Lucas and Cassie were to marry, they could move into that ranch house rather than up to the cabin like Cassie had mentioned.
    How could life get so complicated? All he wanted was to get the mine restored and spend wintertime up there, digging, searching for another vein of gold. Something kept prompting him to do that. Was God truly talking to him, as his mother said might be the case, or was it his ego, wanting to prove his father wrong? Why did he have the feeling that there was a secret inthat mine? Did his mother know the secret and just refused to tell, or . . . Mor was certainly a good one for keeping secrets. She had even kept secret that the Lockwoods were half owners of this ranch. His eyes finally felt heavy enough to close, and he exhaled another deep breath. Maybe he wouldn’t have to go work at his desk after all.

    Ransom woke to a frost-rimed window, the early shards of morning setting the intricate patterns painted on the window to spearing his eyes with shafts of yellow brilliance. Stove lids rattled from the kitchen. His mother was up. Maybe he should talk over some of his late-night musings and see what she thought.
    But the sight of Cassie starting the fire in the cookstove instead of his mother stopped him in the doorway. With her hair bundled into a snood and one of his mother’s aprons nearly covering her from neck to foot, she rattled the grate just like Mavis taught her.
    â€œWould you like me to do that?” he asked.
    She jerked around, one hand to her throat. “Goodness, you have to go and scare a body like that?”
    â€œSorry, I didn’t mean to.”
    â€œThank you, but no thanks. I need to learn to do all these things, and the only way to learn them is to do them. I’m thinking I need to learn how to milk the cow too. Oh, and Lucas has already gone to the barn.”
    Without bellyaching? Ransom made sure his shock didn’t show on his face. With Cassie in the kitchen, he would’ve thought his brother would be there