“I’ll make food,” Chris said as he set the tin cup down on the chair and headed to the sink.
“I make food,” Vicky offered, unwilling to sit still and do nothing, especially if it meant that she would have to choke down more of the insipid soup she had the night before.
“You can’t cook. You can’t even stand.” He shook his head at her. Turning his back, he set a small cauldron onto the counter and then poured water in, adding eggs. He slid the caldron’s handle onto a hook that swung over the fire in the hearth. Then he took a metal bowl out and added ingredients from metal tins he had under the dry sink, and he added water and an egg before rolling the mixture out on the counter and pressing it flat as Vicky would have done with her tortillas. He formed balls with the dough and set them inside a greased frying pan that he covered with a lid and set directly onto the fire.
Bread and boiled eggs would be a bland but filling breakfast. If they had some salt, pepper, tomatoes and chilies, she could make a salsa and give the meal some life. But the thing was, this man was cooking for her. He was taking care of her, when he didn’t owe her anything. He was clearly a kind person, a person of character. He was...different.
* * *
He glanced over his shoulder. Vicky was watching him with obvious skepticism as he made breakfast. Admittedly, he wasn’t the best of cooks, but even he could do biscuits and boiled eggs. He wondered what she usually ate for breakfast. Was she thinking he was crazy for making her such simple fare? He gave her a quick smile. She did not smile back.
From the paleness of her face when he’d entered the cabin a few minutes before, he could tell she had been about to pass out. Questions he still had no answers to circled around in his head like a herd of horses unsettled by something lurking just beyond the corral fence. Perhaps he’d see if he could get some answers.
“So, Miss Vicky, how did you end up here?” he asked.
Her cute nose bunched up as she bit her lip in concentration. “I look for Papá. No want...casar to Don Joaquín.”
“You didn’t want to walk?”
“No, casar to Don Joaquín,” she stated. Her chin and shoulders lifted in an air of defiance, but her little gasp of pain revealed how much even the slightest move still hurt.
“No house? Casar house?”
“No, casa is house. Casar is when man make woman...take to house and live. Have family. Bebe?”
She waited while he poured himself a cup of tea, trying to decipher her last statement. “Casar...is to marry?”
“Sí! Casar is to marry.”
“And you were going to get married walking?”
“No, no want marry Don Joaquín de la Vega. Bad man.”
He still didn’t know what she was talking about, but there was something vaguely familiar about her words. “So you were looking for your papá, and then what happened? How did you end up here, away from Hacienda Ruiz land?”
As he quizzed her, he checked the biscuits, feeling more and more uncertain by the minute about this breakfast. He decided the biscuits needed just a few more minutes.
“I look for Papá on hacienda for one day.” She lifted one finger on her left hand to clarify. “He not there. Nieve, white and cold? Come from—” She pointed to the ceiling and wiggled her fingers in a downward movement and cocked an eyebrow as if to test Chris’s ability to play pantomime games.
“Snow?”
“Sí, snow. Snow make stay in cabin two day, no go home.” Two fingers were added to the first. With Chris’s nod of understanding, she continued. “I no know way home. I stop by rio, water run. Puma want eat Master Chris.”
“Puma?” She must mean the cougar. So she remembered saving him. And she was calling him “Master Chris.” She’d picked up Nana’s speech.
The smell of biscuits pulled his attention away. Wrapping a towel around his hand, he pulled the pan off the hot coals and set it down on the counter. He poured some cool water on the eggs and set them aside for a moment.
“I need to thank you, Miss Vicky. You saved my life.” He tried to forget the sight of her small body half submerged under the cougar’s large frame as he pulled three plates and tin cups down from the cabinet. Once the table was set and the image was out of his mind, he turned his attention back to the small slip of a woman. “I was amazed by your shot. Who taught you how to shoot?”
It was clear that most of what he said was lost on her.
“You poor child,” Nana Ruth interjected from her bed. She shook her head. “I thank the Good Lord that He done made your shot true like David and that giant in the Bible.”
Nana Ruth struggled to sit up, and Chris left breakfast at the counter to help her. Once she waved him away, assuring him that she could manage on her own, he turned his back, knowing she would take a few minutes to dress.
“Who David? And who Good Lord, Master Chris?” The girl’s questions froze him in his spot.
“Why, David, the shepherd boy who grew up to be King o’ Israel,” Nana Ruth answered for him, “and the Good Lord, why He be God, honey child. Don’t you know ’bout God?”
“God? Sí, I hear Padre Pedro, um, Father Pedro talk about God when visit hacienda. He have big book. Biblia.”
“I have a feeling she’s talking about the priest who comes through here a couple times a year,” Chris called over his shoulder to help Nana.
“I think our little visitor needs to learn ’bout the Good Lord, and He sent her to us so we can tell her,” Nana Ruth mumbled as she walked past him on her way out the door to see to her most basic needs.
“Master Chris?”
Turning back to his visitor, he found her once again trying to climb out of bed.
“Miss Vicky, stay there, don’t move! You’re going to hurt yourself again!” Tossing down the last of the eggs, he strode across the room and leaned over her, pushing her legs once more under the covers and pulling the sheets up to her chin. She turned her head to the side, her left hand coming up in a defensive move to protect her face. Something in his gut twisted. Did she expect him to hit her?
“Miss Vicky.” He forced his voice to be gentle even as he fought not to get angry with himself. Of course she would be fearful of him. She had never seen him before, and who knows what was expected or allowed in her family? Stepping back so as to not crowd her, he waited for her to open her eyes and turn her head to face him.
She didn’t. She looked toward the door where Nana had left, a deep blush creeping up her neck to her cheeks. “I need—” Suddenly he understood what she needed, but there was no way to get her all the way out to the outhouse.
“Wait, let Nana help you.” With a nod, she settled back against the pillows, though she still wouldn’t look at him. The last thing he wanted to do was frighten her. He stepped back and studied her from a few feet away. Maybe if he removed the formality in their address. “And Miss Vicky, I’m Chris, just plain Chris. Nana calls me ‘Master’ because she was my parents’ slave and she won’t drop it, but I will never be master to anyone ever again.”
“No master?” Her gaze finally lifted to his, and he wondered what she must think of him and Nana Ruth out here.
“No, no more master. Only Chris.”