Rachel and Leah (Women of Genesis) by Orson Scott Card Read Free Book Online Page A

afree man, sir, one accustomed to wealth, from your clothing. Surely you can do better than the poor wage that a free man makes from my father, even if he were to hire you.”
    He smiled and continued watering the sheep. Rachel took her turn at last, dipping with her own cup from the waterbag. When she had drunk her fill, she fastened the cup again at her waist.
    “Do you know my father, sir?” she asked.
    “We’ve never met,” said the man.
    “And yet you traveled all this way to serve him? Why should the fame of my father be known so far abroad?”
    He laughed then. “You don’t know how far I’ve traveled.”
    “Of course I do,” she said. “We had rain three days ago, and yet your clothes are heavy and white with dust. So you come from a place where the roads are dry and where the rain did not fall. That means you come from the south, because the paths are grassy to the north and east.”
    “What about the west?”
    “A man who knows animals as you do is no sailor, sir.”
    The watering was done; they both knew when there was enough in each trough to satisfy the whole flock, and now Rachel’s work was to pull off the ones who she knew tended to drink more than was good for them, while the stranger slid the stone back in place. This was harder than uncovering the well, Rachel knew, because there was some lifting, not just sliding, but he did it with no more strain than he had shown before. She hoped her father
would
hire the man. She would try to get home early, to tell her father what she had seen of him, how hard he worked, how strong he was, how good with the animals. And if he didn’t have skill with weapons, too, she’d be surprised. A man who dared to travel alone, armedonly with a heavy walking staff, had great confidence in his ability to wield that staff to keep better-armed robbers at bay.
    “Did you have to fight anyone on the way here?”
    “No, thanks be to the Lord,” said the traveler. “But I don’t look like someone worth robbing, do I? No pack animals laden with goods to sell.”
    She laughed. “I’ve heard of robbers setting on a half-naked beggar, stealing his loin cloth, and beating him for not having had more to take.”
    “Ah, but there you are, a half-naked beggar isn’t likely to put up much of a fight. Men don’t go into the robbery business because they’re brave.”
    So he did think of himself as a formidable fighter.
    It was only now that Old Jaw and the boys appeared over the crest of the hill. Apparently once she had gone on ahead, they had taken their own lazy time about sauntering along.
    But when they saw her with a stranger, Old Jaw began to hurry down the hill, coming as close to a run as a man that old was capable of. Rachel smiled at that. Oh, yes, Father would hear—from the other herdsmen, not from her—about how his daughter had come to the well alone, and took up with a stranger for fifteen minutes before Old Jaw could be bothered to show up, and him entrusted with the safety of Laban’s daughter! As if hurrying
now
would change any part of
that
story. Of course, Rachel would assure her father that she had deliberately outpaced the old man and was never in danger. And she would jolly him out of whatever anger he might feel toward the old man, and deny that it had been any time at all before he came.
    Old Jaw was full of challenge when he got near enough tospeak. “Who are you, stranger! Why are you bothering this child?”
    Anger flashed in the stranger’s eyes. “What do you accuse me of, sir!” he said. “Have I bothered her? Have I laid hands upon her?”
    Whereupon he
did
take her by the shoulders. His hands were huge on her, and yet his touch was even gentler than it had seemed upon the sheep.
    She remembered again the man in the vision, and the girl of eleven or twelve. She had seemed so big to her then, when she had the vision, but now she
was
eleven.
    “When you came over the hill, did you see me watering the sheep? Or was I kissing