Dorothy Garlock Read Online Free

the side street. A year ago she'd had the energy of a twenty-year-old, but now she had to exert a major effort to negotiate the few steps to the chair. The thick wavy hair she had colored with henna was thin now and streaked with gray. The bright jewelry she loved lay forgotten in a bureau drawer.
    As a bride, she had come to Oklahoma in 1907, the year it was admitted to the Union as the forty-sixth state. She and her new husband had lived in Bartlesville, Ponca City and Pawhuska before settling in Rainwater. Ralph Byers had been a dreamer, a man who had flitted from one business to the other seeking recognition and hoping to strike it rich.
    Justine never did find out where he had found the money to build the hotel and didn't really want to know, but she suspected he had won it in a poker game. The hotel had provided them with a meager living, but it had given Ralph the prestige he needed so badly.
    He had been mayor of the small town of three hundred citizens when he stepped out in front of an ice truck and was killed instantly. He would have been pleased to know that almost every person in the town attended his funeral. Later that same year the Byerses 'little three-year-old girl died of whooping cough.
    Since that time Justine had had many opportunities to remarry, but Ralph had been her one and only love. And she had found satisfaction helping her “girls.”
    Justine turned from the window when Jill came into the room. She had not been one bit disappointed in her namesake, just surprised that her brother, Jethro, had allowed his daughter to come. Most people considered Oklahoma a land of wild Indians, outlaws and empty prairie land. Justine loved the openness, the rawness and the variety of people who lived in the state formally known as Indian Territory.
    Jill reminded Justine of herself at age twenty. Although she hadn't been nearly as pretty as her niece, she'd been just as ready to command the world with a buggy whip. Jill's wavy mass of wheat-colored hair ended just below her jawbone, accentuating her high cheekbones and the pure cream of her skin. She had a generous mouth, full-lipped and red, with a charming uplift at the corners. Her slim young body moved with vibrancy, yet with the grace of wind on prairie grass. It was her personality Justine admired the most. Her niece had backbone and a mouth to go with it. She'd not be pushed around.
    “Did I hear you calling someone buzzard bait? ”Justine wheezed when she spoke.
    “I can think of a lot more names to call him. His name was Skeeter-something-or-the-other and he spit on my clean porch.”
    “Skeeter Ridge. He knows better than that. I'd have whopped him alongside the head.”
    “I bathed him with my dirty mop water.”
    Justine smiled. “Good for you. I've run him off that porch more than once.”
    “Not to hear him tell it.” Jill noticed her aunt's hands lying loosely in her lap. “When is the doctor coming again? ”
    “That old quack? ”Justine scoffed. “Old fool admitted that he didn't know what the hell was wrong with me. Just losing strength, he said. Well, Christ Almighty. I already knew that.”
    “Aunt Justine, why don't we go to Tulsa? The doctors there may be able to operate or…something.” Jill squatted down beside her aunt's chair.
    “Honey, they can't do any more for me than Dr. Russell. I want to stay right here. This is my home. Besides, I don't think I could stand the trip.”
    “Are you sure? Doctors can do great things now.”
    “There is nothing they can do for me. Old Doc isn't the smartest man in the world, but he was honest with me. He didn't know what was causing my trouble, but he'd heard of a case like mine. Creeping paralysis, he called it. I've already lost the strength in my hands — can't hold a water glass. It's affected my arms, my feet and my legs just like he said it would. I'm at peace with what's to come and thankful that I'm not in terrible pain.” She looked first at the limp hands lying in her lap