A Baby for Dry Creek and A Dry Creek Christmas. Janet Tronstad

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      Of course, not everyone was a customer. The hardware store served as an informal community center, and some retired ranchers, like Jacob, spent most of their waking hours there arguing about cattle prices and waiting for the mail.

      “Who’d be writing to our postmaster?” Jacob asked as he lifted the first envelope and read the address. He had been a rancher for sixty of his seventy-seven years, and his gnarled fingers showed it as he held up the letter.

      “We don’t have a postmaster.” Mrs. Hargrove also waited for the mail. She didn’t sit, like the men, preferring to stand on the rubber mat by the counter so her muddy boots didn’t dirty the wood floor as the men’s boots were doing. She would rather distribute the mail herself, since she could do it more efficiently than Jacob, but she was a fair-minded woman and Jacob had gotten to the mail counter first.

      In addition to Mrs. Hargrove, a half dozen ranchers were waiting for their mail, and the door was opening to let more into the store. Each time the door swung back or forth, a gust of wind came inside. As usual, spring had started out cold, but everyone had expected it to warm up by now. Most of the ranchers said they could still smell winter in the air and they didn’t like it. They should be planting their fields, and it was too muddy to even plow.

      “We might not have a postmaster, but we got us a letter,” Jacob said as he put the envelope up to the light and tried to see through it before lowering his eyes and looking around at the others. “From a law firm. In California.”

      “What would a law firm want with our postmaster? We haven’t broken any laws.” Another retired rancher, Elmer, spoke up from where he sat by the black woodstove that stood in the middle of the hardware store. The morning was chilly enough that a small fire was burning inside the stove.

      As he was speaking, Elmer stood up and frowned.

      The inside of the hardware store got quiet as Elmer slowly walked toward the counter. The people of Dry Creek had a large respect for the law and an equally large distrust of California lawyers. They also knew that Elmer had an instinct for trouble, and if he was worried enough to leave his chair, they were worried, too.

      “I keep telling folks we need to get a more regular way of sorting the mail,” said a middle-aged rancher, Lester, as he looked up from the bolts he was sorting along the far wall. He scowled as he took up the old argument. “You’re not supposed to see other folks’ mail—it’s not legal. The FBI can get involved.”

      “The FBI has better things to worry about than who sees your seed catalogs,” Elmer said as he finished walking over to Jacob and looked down at the letter the other man still held. “Besides, no one in California would care how we sort through our mail. Would they?”

      “Well, open it up and read it to us,” Mrs. Hargrove finally said. She had a raisin bread pudding baking in her oven and she didn’t want the crust to get too brown. “We haven’t got all morning.”

      Jacob took out his pocketknife and used it as a letter opener. Then he cleared his throat and carefully read the entire letter aloud word by word. Jacob had always been proud of his speaking abilities, and he hadn’t had many chances in his life for public performances. If there hadn’t been so many people gathered in the hardware store, he probably would have listened to what he was saying instead of just focusing on getting all the words spoken correctly and loudly the way Mrs. Baker, his first-grade teacher, would have expected.

      ,!

      Joseph K. Price, Attorney-at-Law

       918 Green Street, Suite 200

       Pasadena, California 91104

      Dear Dry Creek Postmaster,

      I’m writing to request your help in locating a man who lives in your community. Unfortunately, I do not know the man’s full name, so I cannot write to him directly. The nature of my business is this man’s relationship with a young woman, Chrissy Hamilton, and her new baby. It is the paternity of the infant that I wish to establish.

      Miss Hamilton was in your community last fall. I am hopeful you will know the young man who spent the night with Miss Hamilton in her cousin’s truck. The man’s first name is Reno. If you can supply me with the man’s full name, I assure you that my client, Mrs. Bard, will be happy to reward you (you have no doubt heard of the family—they own the national chain of dry cleaners by the same name). I realize this is an unusual request, and I want to assure you that no one is asking the man to assume financial responsibility for the baby. Quite the opposite, in fact. Mrs. Bard is anxious to adopt the baby should it be proven to her satisfaction that her son, Jared, is the baby’s father. I apologize for the unorthodox nature of this request. It would not be necessary if Miss Hamilton were more cooperative. But she is young (eighteen, I believe) and does not yet see the full advantage to herself in this arrangement. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

      Yours truly,

       Joseph K. Price, Esq.

      The whole store listened and then stood still in stunned silence for a moment.

      Finally Elmer spoke. “Our Reno?”

      “Nothing says Reno’s the baby’s father,” Mrs. Hargrove cautioned, and then her voice softened. “Imagine, a baby.”

      “Where is Reno, anyway?” Elmer looked around. “He’s usually here to get his mail by now.”

      Chapter One

      Reno Redfern stopped his pickup in front of the hardware store in Dry Creek. He was late and splattered with thick gray mud. Hopefully someone would have sorted the mail by now, and he could quietly pick up his few bills and get back to the ranch and shower. If he had been paying more attention to the road, he wouldn’t have slipped into the ditch and ended up with the wheels of his pickup stuck in the mud.

      Reno shook his head. He’d made it a point to thank God repeatedly for the rain—what rancher wouldn’t?—but he was working on being honest in his dealings with God, and so far he hadn’t been able to say anything polite about the mud. The mud just lay everywhere, making the ground look forlorn and generally being a nuisance.

      Reno had liked the first part of spring well enough. The cold of winter had eased up a little and he could walk from the house to the barn without pulling his cap down over his ears. But later, for some reason, everything had turned to mud. The mountains were no longer covered in snow, but the grass hadn’t taken hold yet either. Gray clouds hung in most of the skies, and the air was wet even when it wasn’t raining. The worst part was the deep clay that trapped everyone’s wheels.

      Reno frowned as he opened the door to his pickup. The one good thing he could say for the mud was that it matched his mood these days. If it had been a normal Montana spring with endless blue sky and those tiny purple wildflowers blooming beside the gravel roads, he wouldn’t have been able to take all the love and sunshine flowing around the Redfern Ranch now that his sister, Nicki, had settled into married life.

      At first Reno had wondered in alarm if he were jealous of Nicki’s wedded bliss. But that wasn’t it. He just missed the way things used to be.

      There was such a thing as too much happiness, Reno finally decided, and his sister proved it. Nicki was so sweet these days it made his teeth ache. If she weren’t so sweet, he probably wouldn’t miss the old Nicki so much.

      But as much as he tried to bring Nicki back to her senses, he СКАЧАТЬ