Journey of the Heart by Marjorie Farrell Read Free Book Online Page B

isn’t it, Ma? I’m embarrassed at what a child I was when I left.”
    When you left , thought Elizabeth. And what are you now, Caitlin? She smiled to herself. Her daughter was a young woman, of course. Why was it so hard to accept how a mere two years, though it had felt like forever at the time, had changed her daughter?
    “You can always change his name if you want to,” said Michael. “He’s probably in the near pasture so Gabe can work with him.”
    “Gabe?”
    “Gabe Hart, our new hired hand, Cait,” said her mother. “Your Da finally took my advice and got himself some help with the horses. Some good help.”
    “Why, you said you’d never let any bronc buster near your horses, Da!”
    “And I wouldn’t. But Gabe works them gently, like I do. He’s done a fine job, so far, halter-breakin’ the yearlings and trainin’ the two-year-olds.”
    Caitlin felt cheated of something she thought was supposed to be hers. Her horse was hers to train. She’d had him following her around before she left. Of course, she hadn’t expected her father would actually ignore the horse for almost two years. He would have had to be halter-broke. Maybe lunged a little. But a complete stranger working him? She decided there and then she wasn’t going to like Gabe Hart and she most certainly wasn’t going to have him training her horse.
    “Here we are, Cait.”
    The long, low ranch house looked the same, with its soft, weathered cedar shingles and bright blue door and window frames. There were chamisa bushes on the side of the house and in the front, a profusion of herbs and flowers that Elizabeth had managed to grow over the years.
    Inside the floors were covered with rag rugs and on the wall were hung a trio of Navajo weavings by Serena, Cait’s godmother. There was a small piece that Serena had given Caitlin years ago, and two larger ones that were more recent.
    There were fresh flowers on the table and Cait turned to her mother and said, “It looks lovely, Ma. I am so glad to be home.”
    “Thank you, dear, though I’m sure it’s nothing to compare to some of those fine houses in Philadelphia you’ve been visiting.”
    Elizabeth made the comparison lightly, for she knew she was an inspired gardener and good housekeeper. But Caitlin was ashamed to confess to herself, as she took her bag up to her own room, that she had been making a comparison. How little they had, she thought, as she sat on her bed and gazed around her small room. Her own wall was hung with her mother’s watercolors and one of Serena’s newer weavings that showed the influence of aniline dyes and store-bought wool. There was a small bookshelf that her father had built that held her cherished three shelves of books, a few pottery shards, and the beaded pouch her father had brought back from his trip to Idaho years ago.
    It was very different from Susan Beecham’s room. Even the spare room, where Cait stayed when she visited the Beechams’, was at least three times the size and luxurious compared to this. The house and her room greeted her, saying you’re home where you belong, just like her parents had. And she responded. How could she not? But at the same time, she was seeing it with new eyes. Or as a new person. The young girl she had been rejoiced to be home. The young woman she had become wondered how her mother had lived all these years with so few pretty things. New Mexico was a hard place to live, especially for women, thought Cait. I’m so lucky that I have Henry and the possibility of a richer life.
     

Chapter Five
     
    When Gabe arrived at the sheep camp, Eduardo was out with the flock and so he started unpacking the supplies himself. Within a half hour, the sheepherder had returned.
    “ Hola, Eduardo. Usted me recuerde?”
    “ Si, señor, pero donde esta Jake? ”
    “Jake is keeping an eye on things at the ranch while the Burkes pick up their daughter in Grants.”
    “Ah, Señorita Caitlin,” said Eduardo, his eyes lighting