“Maybe they’ll refer to this year as the year Sage Presley lost her edge and got all sappy.” She opened the door and Noel bounced inside ahead of her. Angel met them, bumped noses with Noel, and then proceeded to wind herself around Sage’s legs. The dog shook snow and dog-smelling water all over the floor.
Sage unzipped her snow-covered coveralls to the waist, removed her boots and set them on the rug to drip, and then finished removing her coveralls. She hung them on the rack and grabbed the mop from the pantry. Wintertime had its problems just like all seasons in the canyon. But at least there was Christmas to make it bright and cheerful.
“Is it your breakfast time, sweetie?” Sage crooned at the cat. “Well, that old slow cowboy will be here soon with warm milk…”
“Who’s slow?” Creed pushed through the door, closed it behind him, and set the milk on the table. “Can I please have some of that bread now? I’m starving.”
“Soon as I feed the house livestock and you get out of all those wet things.” She broke four eggs into a bowl, whisked them into an orange froth, and poured fresh milk over it.
Angel hurried over to the pan and joined the dog when Sage set it on the floor.
“They’re still sharing,” Creed said.
“Looks like it. Let’s get that milk taken care of and we’ll share that loaf of bread,” she said.
“Well, damn!”
She spun around. “What?”
“I thought it was just for me.”
She smiled. “Too bad.”
* * *
Creed settled in a chair at the table with a spiral notebook before him.
“What’s that?”
“I usually keep the workings of the ranch on the computer, but since there’s no electricity and the battery is down on my laptop, I’m making notes. When things are back up to normal, I’ll get it all transferred into the computer. How’d your grandmother do things?”
“By hand. I offered to put it on the computer, but she’d have none of it. She doesn’t even like banks,” Sage said. “Didn’t she give you the books?”
“Not yet, but she said she would when she came back.”
Sage’s giggle was soft but he heard it.
“What’s so funny?”
“There’s at least ten big boxes out in one of the bunkhouse bedrooms. You’ll pull your hair out when you start to go through all that,” she answered.
The canvas she fastened into the easel was smaller than the one she’d just finished. Creed figured it to be an eleven-by-fourteen, about the same size as his momma’s velvet picture of the King. In no time she’d sketched in the lower branches of a cedar tree with a couple bunnies hiding underneath. It didn’t look like much right then, but he’d seen her work magic with nothing but a kitchen window as a model.
From the corner of his eyes he watched Sage mix the colors and begin to work.
“I told you in the beginning I don’t like people to watch me,” she said.
“But you fascinate me. Bunnies, right?”
“I saw them when I was on my way back inside. They’d taken shelter up under that big cedar between here and the barn.”
“You going to take a whole month to paint that one?”
“I don’t think so. Must be the Christmas season that’s gotten into my blood. Probably won’t sell but I’m having fun.”
“Then you are a success,” Creed drawled.
“How do you figure that?”
“Granny Riley said that if you love what you do, whether it’s diggin’ ditches or servin’ as president of the U.S. of A., then you are a success. Your love comes through the paintings, so you are a big success. Take a snapshot of that window painting and send it up to your gallery owner. See what they think, but I’m telling you, they’re going to love it,” he said.
“You think I should?”
“Can’t hurt. But if they say it is trash, don’t burn it. I’ll buy it to hang right where it is.”
* * *
Ada tried to call the house phone at the ranch in Texas, but evidently the lines were still down. She tried to call Sage’s cell phone and Creed’s as well, but service wasn’t available and with no electricity, they had no way to recharge their phone batteries anyway. The weatherman on the six o’clock news said that the storm was finally moving east but it was going slow. The last time the Panhandle had seen a storm that severe had been back in the thirties and thousands of people would be without power for several days.
She carried a bucket of milk in each hand from the barn to the house. Essie did need her help, that was for sure. Until she got there, Essie had been doing all the work on the place, and at eighty-six she didn’t have a bit of business milking two cows and picking apples. But convincing her to leave the five-acre farm was like getting St. Peter to open up the pearly gates and welcome Lucifer in for a double shot of Jack Daniel’s.
Essie had always kept two milk cows. According to her, it was as easy to milk and feed two as one and she sold enough milk to the neighbors to buy her groceries. The small apple orchard produced abundantly, and on good years she put quite a wad of money into her bank account, but last year she’d fallen off a ladder while picking apples.
Ada kicked the back door with the toe of her cowboy boot. “Eighty-six and still climbing ladders!”
Essie opened it wide. “Age don’t mean I can’t fix a roof or pick apples, so stop your bellyachin’. Idabelle called and said that blasted Texas storm is headed toward us now. Weatherman says it’s going to build up force until it hits the East Coast and that by the middle of next week, we’ll have snow.”
“Long as my flight can get off the ground on Christmas Eve morning, I’m not too worried.
