Spirit of the Wolf by Loree Lough Read Free Book Online

in the field beyond it, or the brown-board fences that hugged the property on all sides.
    "I'm afraid I haven't been much of a father to them. What they know about farming they learned from the hired hands."
    Chance remembered feeling a mite sorry for the man. But all too soon, pity was replaced by low-burning anger. That day, h e'd had a mind to tell Micah that it would have been better for the boys if he'd fessed up about his grief; honest sorrow, he reckoned, would have been easier to bear than the distance Micah had put between himself and his sons .
    But he'd learned long ago that a man seldom spoke what was on his mind, and it was rarer still for him to speak what was in his heart. So he kept silent his opinions, telling himself Micah had been as good a father as he knew how to be. Chance wondered how well he'd have borne up, if he'd lost the love of a woman like Bess. Just a day later, he found a new insight into Micah's behavior, when he'd stood in Micah's parlor, staring at the row of silver and brass- and bronze-framed photographs on the mantle.
    His favorite ? T he tintype of the Beckley clan. In it, Bess and Mary sat on a red velvet settee wearing identical dresses and matching smiles. Behind them, Micah held his dark-bearded chin high , and in front of them, Matt and Mark —like miniature male versions of their mother —stared into the camera's lens. J ust a typical family portrait, folks might say. But Chance knew better, because he'd seen what went unnoticed by most: There, in the shadows behind their children, w here they thought no one would notice , Micah and Mary had clasped hands, proof to those who looked closely enough proof of their undying love and genuine affection for one another.
    The photo had entranced him , and he found himself making up excuses to step into the parlor , again and again, if only for a moment, to drink in the sight of true familial warmth. Sometimes, as he waited for sleep to rescue him from the snores and grunts of the bunkhouse, it was that picture, floating in his memory, that helped him drift off to sleep.
    Mark 's sudden appearance beside him startled Chance.
    "What did you do," the boy asked, "roll over and thump your head on a rock during the night?"
    Chance shook off the last of his daydream and accepted the blue speckled metal mug from the boy's extended hand. He took a sip of hot coffee and frowned. "What in tarnation are you yammering about , boy ?"
    "Didn't mean to rile you." Mark shrugged. "You seem a mite addlebrained this morning, is all."
    Matt elbowed his brother. "Think maybe he's love-struck, little brother?"
    Mark's eyes widened as he considered the possibility. "Sure looks that way to me." The boy drained the last of his own coffee before facing his twin. "And if you call me 'little brother' again," he challenged, grinning, "I'll stick your nose in the dirt and plow the bottom forty with you! Just 'cause you were born two minutes before me don't give you no right to rub my face in it."
    Matt tossed several pebbles at his brother's booted feet. "Wipe the ground up...with me? Ha! I'd like to see you try!"
    It was invitation enough, and before Chance could open his mouth to forestall it, the brothers started wrestling in the dust like a couple of rowdy pups. He grinned, and wondered for a moment what it might have been like to grow up with a brother who really gave a hoot what happened to you, instead of coming to age in a house with no kin but the man who despised him . Chance frowned to smother the fury that always rose within him when he thought of Uncle Josh.
    "You boys act more like four than fourteen," he said, forcing a sternness into his voice that he didn't feel. "I'll give you one minute to pack up this gear."
    The playful jostling came to a grinding halt and their dark-eyed expressions changed from young-boy-happy to young-man-wise. Chance swallowed the lump of guilt that formed in his throat at having caused the abrupt change, and pretended to busy