What Once We Loved by Jane Kirkpatrick Page B

And with people getting back to field work, growing crops and making hay, big mules could be a premium to the Spanish ranches right here in California.”
    “So are you saying you'd stay here, in California?”
    “Now Matthew's getting interested,” Jason teased.
    Ruth frowned. She lifted the strips of egg noodles and hung them over the towel holder behind the washbowl, checking their thickness. She busied herself, made a new hole in the mound of flour on the dough boy, broke an egg inside, added oil and beat them, pinched in more flour until it felt right, and she pressed the new mass flat.
    “Got enough noodles there for an army,” Matthew said.
    “People are coming out. Mazy, too, I suppose. I wish your mother'd sharpen my knives,” she growled then as the dough bunched up along the blade.
    “Maybe she doesn't want any weaponry within your reach,” he said.
    “I know how to make noodles, and I like the idea of going north with big jacks. Maybe because that's where Jed and Betha and me hoped to go all along. Maybe because I don't really like all the memories of this place.”
    “New diggings don't change a person or their memories,” he said. “It's how they see what they got already that does that.”
    “Sometimes a change of scenery can take the work out of what you have to look at though. And I don't want to see…what happened to Jessie or Jumper in every rock I stumble over.”
    A part of Ruth wondered why she even had this discussion with Matthew Schmidtke. He wasn't her brother, no kin at all. He had given her his honest answer, which she'd asked for though. And he did know some things about stock. He'd been clear and truthful, who could ask for more? So why was she so irritable?
    “You said you thought I could go north with the children alone. Why is my wanting to take a couple of jacks along so much different?”
    “Because they don't herd well. One would be bad enough, but two?”
    “Jumper's foals will be good size, or should be. I'll breed them and their mothers to good jack stock.”
    “Too small,” Matthew said. Ruth raised the blade in protest. “Well, they are. Fine looking brood mares, don't get me wrong, but they don't bulk up the way you'd want for what you're talking about.”
    She thought to argue, but she had to agree. She just wasn't ready to say that yet. “If I can find myself a good jack, he'll make up for their smaller size. It would work. Who knows, maybe they aren't so unruly with other jacks around the way stallions and geldings can be.”
    Matthew laughed. “Have you ever been around a jack? They're the most stubborn beasts known.”
    “And you'd know this because.
    “Shoot. Ask anyone from the South. They use them to farm down that way. You can hardly train ‘em to stay inside a corral is what I always heard. That's why they run wild on the deserts.”
    “I didn't know you were an expert,” she said as she brushed flour from her face. She pulled off the towel she'd tucked into the waistline of her pants, rolled it into a bunch. Sarah scrambled from the bed where she sat and took it from her, slipping out the back to shake it in the wind.
    “You'll have your work cut out for you, with or without a jack, and besides, these mares are already bred back to Jumper. So you can't start a…dynasty until next year anyway. Why not wait to find a jack in Oregon? Herding one north will just add to your misery.”
    “Who's starting a dynasty?” Lura said, entering with her daughter,Mariah, close behind. No knocking, no howdy, just walking right in. “You? Matthew Schmidtke? Well, its about time.”
    “Ma, we're not talking about me,” he said as he rose and gave her a peck on her forehead. Ruth remembered that Elizabeth always said a woman could tell what kind of husband a man might be by watching him with his mother. Why had she thought ofthat?
    Matthew squeezed his sister close, held her for just a moment, and Ruth noticed that she let him, the bond between brother and