petticoat on a nail by the door and drew on clean, dry undergarments, her brain turning over the spark of an idea.
Yes! And it would serve him right, too. The very idea of eating her pie…
By suppertime she had made up her mind. Slipping the gold piece into her pocket, she snatched up the iron skillet and sped down the path to the cookhouse.
Fong glanced up from the cookstove as she entered the kitchen. “Ah, missy find fry pan. Have good luck now. Fry steaks for supper.” He lifted the pan from her hands and banged it down on the stove top.
Meggy blinked. “Don’t you want to ask me about the skillet?”
Fong grinned at her. “Nope. More better you not explain.” He turned away, dropped a teacup-size ball of suet into each of the four pans. When it sizzled, he slapped down inch-thick slabs of meat and turned to her.
“You need more flour?”
Her heart nearly stopped beating. “Yes,” she said in a small voice. “But this time I can pay.” She drew out the gold piece and laid it on the warming shelf.
The cook scooped it into his palm. “Too much, missy. You take what you need for two, three days.”
“And…and a skillet?” Meggy held her breath. Without the heavy iron utensil she had nothing to bake a pie in.
“Oh, yes. Take big pan this time.” He banged a two-pronged fork against the handle of the largest skillet. “This one good. I hear about pie,” he added in an undertone.
Meggy swallowed. “Who told you?”
Fong’s black eyes sparkled. “Cannot say. But—” he beckoned her closer “—he say needs maybe more sugar.”
“Oh! The pie thief is criticizing his booty?”
“I not steal,” Fong protested. He pointed to the side pocket of his black tunic. “Someone pay. In gold. Good business, missy.”
Meggy exchanged a long, significant look with the cook. Was she dreaming, or was he encouraging her in her enterprise?
Whistling idly between his teeth, Fong surveyed his skillet-crowded stove top, jabbed one sputtering steak with the fork and expertly flipped it over. “Next time,” he said, “use big pan. Make more dollar.”
Was it possible Fong was in cahoots with the colonel? She baked a pie, the colonel stole—well, bought it—and Fong got rich when she paid him for the supplies she’d used? It made sense of a sort.
Except that she needed the money, or at least part of it. Otherwise, she would never collect enough for train fare back to…
She caught her breath as a sudden, sharp realization hit her. She could not possibly return to Chester County. By now, the parsonage would be occupied by the new minister and his family, and even though her sisters would surely take her in, she did not relish the role of maiden aunt, a spinster like Aunt Hattie, who’d grown old taking care of other people’s children instead of her own, and who’d become addled and crotchety in middle age because no man had ever touched her.
Oh, dear God, please don’t let that happen to me. I want a life for me. I want someone to love who will love me back.
Therefore, she resolved, she must go forward. She would go where she could have what she wanted. And if that meant selling another pie and saving her money, then that was exactly what she would do. She did not belong anywhere, now. But she would. She would.
Meggy pointed to the largest skillet. “That one, please.”
Fong nodded and flipped over two more steaks.
She set plates and mugs and utensils on the table, lugged out the coffeepot, brought two bowls of boiled potatoes and one of savory-smelling brown gravy, and finally carried out the huge platter of venison steaks just as Fong clanged the dinner bell.
A loud, quarreling knot of men tumbled through the cookhouse door.
“Get yer butt outta my place.”
“Anybody know who shot the deer?”
“Shut up and pass the meat!”
“Kinda takes the sting out of bustin’ that skid, don’t it, Swede?”
“Ya, sure it does, by golly.”
The men fell on the food like vultures. As the last man, the black-haired Indian, sat down at the table, Meggy spotted the colonel on the porch, his gait slow and loose jointed, his unruly dark hair curling over the collar of his red plaid shirt. Talk ceased the instant he moved into the room.
Meggy turned back toward the kitchen. Something clunked onto the table, and Tom’s voice rose behind her. “Boys, we have among us a sharpshooter of the first water.”
Meggy stopped in her tracks.
“Well, who is it?” someone shouted.
“Shut up, ya numbskull. It’s the colonel that done it.”
“You mean he won his own whiskey? ’Tain’t fair!”
“Well, hell, what do we care? We got meat, ain’t we?”
“Boys,” the colonel said. The sound of his voice brought instant quiet.
Meggy’s neck grew warm. Would he tell them who had shot the deer?
“Now, boys, when a person’s this good a shot, it pays to take note. First off, it’s food on the table. And secondly—”
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