Coroner Creek by Luke; Short

knob.
    â€œJust hold on a little longer, O’Hea. I’ll be big enough to name my own sheriff in a year or two. And by God, I won’t have to marry his daughter, either.” He went out.
    O’Hea ceased playing with the papers now and stared somberly at his hand. He noted, with a sick bitterness, that it was old and veined and trembling. He clenched his fist slowly, and then with more strength, and then more, until his lips were drawn across his teeth with the violence of his effort. Then he unclenched his hand and looked at it. The fingers still trembled. Presently, his glance lifted to the window and his eyes were dead, without hope, resigned.

CHAPTER V
    The Box H stood just away from the foothills where they leveled off onto the Blackbow Flats; and lay at the foot of long sloping bald hills. It was a small, well weathered place, built of logs, square and practical, its few trees big and startling on the bare face of the flats. The outbuildings were modest, too, and Danning, looking at the place in the bright morning sun, could almost guess its history. Harms had probably come out here with a young wife and baby looking for poor man’s grass. He’d homesteaded here on the Flats, thrown up a crude sod shack to get his family out of the weather, and then borrowed to the limit on cattle he could graze in the mountains. This, then, was the place he had finally built, the first triumph of a stubborn man, and, Danning thought, it might have been the way he would have started.
    They came off the bald hill into the shaded yard. A massive cottonwood cast a wide pool of black shadow behind the house, and Della pulled under it and reined in the team. Against the sunny side of the house was a pretty bed of flowers and Chris noted the curtains in the windows. Only this, and the absence of men’s gear in the yard, gave it a touch of the feminine.
    There was a long slanting lean-to on the rear of the house, and a woman stepped out the door of it and came out to meet them. Mrs. Harms was a grave-faced woman of fifty, straight, inches shorter than Della, with a kind of stern optimism in her eyes. She wore a gay apron, and Danning saw her hands were rough, capable and work-worn.
    â€œMother, this is our new foreman, Chris Danning,” Della said.
    A faint surprise showed in Mrs. Harms’ face in spite of herself, but her gaze never faltered from Chris’ face.
    He stepped out of the saddle and took off his hat, and accepted Mrs. Harms’ warm, hard hand.
    â€œI’m glad you’re here, Mr. Danning. We’ve needed you.”
    Chris said, “Thank you, Mrs. Harms.”
    Della said, “Chris, if you’ll dump that sack of groceries on the porch, I’ll show you where to unhitch. The crew is scattered this morning.”
    Chris shouldered the sack of groceries out of the buckboard and tramped over to the lean-to door.
    When he was out of earshot, Mrs. Harms looked up at her daughter, and for a moment they regarded each other in silence.
    â€œSince when did we start hiring men of that stripe, Della?” Mrs. Harms asked calmly.
    Della answered promptly, without smiling, “Since we acquired Younger Miles for a neighbor, mother.” She paused. “What’s wrong with him?”
    Mrs. Harms didn’t have time to answer before Chris returned. Della drove on to the wagon shed, passing the small log bunkhouse on the way. She showed Chris where to put the buckboard and hang the harness, and then told him to come in for dinner when he was finished, and left him.
    Chris watched her walk away from him, striding purposefully toward the house, and he guessed she would have much to explain to her mother. For Chris sensed that Della had come to as sudden and reckless a decision this morning as he had, and that it was a momentous one for her.
    He unhitched the team and turned them into the corral and noticed, now, the Box H brand on one of the horses. It was a large square with