Courageous

He threw up a hand and kept walking.

She grinned.

The day of the Cattleman’s Ball, she was so nervous that she burned the biscuits at breakfast. It was the first time since she started cooking, at the age of twelve, that she’d done that.

“I’m so sorry!” she apologized to her dad and Grange.

“One misstep in months isn’t a disaster, kid,” Grange teased. “The eggs and bacon are perfect, and we probably eat too much bread as it is.”

“Frankenbread,” Ed muttered.

They both looked at him with raised eyebrows.

He cleared his throat. “A lot of the grains are genetically modified these days, and they won’t label what is and what isn’t. Doesn’t matter much. Pollen from the modified crops gets airborne and lands on nonmodified crops. I guess those geniuses in labs don’t realize that pollen travels.”

“What’s wrong with genetic modification?” Grange asked.

“I’ve got a documentary. I’ll loan it to you,” Ed said grimly. “People shouldn’t mess around with the natural order of things. There’s rumors that they’re even going to start doing it with people, in ‘in vitro’ fertilization, to change hair and eye color, that sort of thing.” He leaned forward. “I also heard that they’re combining human and animal genes in labs.”

“That part’s true,” Grange told him. “They’re studying ways to modify genetic structure so that they can treat genetic diseases.”

Ed glared at him. He pointed his finger at the younger man. “You wait. They’ll have human beings with heads of birds and jackals and stuff, just like those depictions in Egyptian hieroglyphs! You think the Egyptians made those things up? I’ll bet you ten dollars to a nickel they were as advanced as we were, and they created such things!”

Peg got up and glanced around her worriedly.

“What are you doing?” Ed asked.

“Watching for people with nets,” she said. “Shhhhh!”

Grange burst out laughing. “Ed, that’s a pretty wild theory, you know.”

Ed flushed. “I guess I’m getting contaminated by Barbara Ferguson who owns Barbara’s Café in Jacobsville. She sits with me sometimes at lunch and we talk about stuff we see on alternative news websites.”

“Please consider that those websites are very much like tabloid newspapers,” Grange cautioned. “I do remember that Barbara was saying that electrical equipment could sustain an electromagnetic pulse by being stored in a Leyden jar. It’s a Faraday cage,” he explained. “She was very upset when I corrected her, but I pulled it up on my iPhone and showed her the scientific reference. She quoted a source that was totally uninformed.”

“Dang. I guess I’ll have to toss my Leyden jar, then,” Ed said with twinkling eyes, and grinned.

“If you can build one, let me know,” Grange requested.

“Don’t look at me,” Ed replied. “I took courses in animal husbandry, not physics.”

“I flunked physics my first three weeks in the class in high school, and had to transfer to biology.” Peg sighed. “I loved physics. I just couldn’t wrap my brain around it.”

“I took courses in college,” Grange said. “I made good grades, but I loved political science more.”

“You might end up in Machado’s government,” Ed mused. “As a high official. Maybe Supreme Commander of the Military.”

Grange chuckled. “I’ve thought about that. Plenty of opportunity to retool the government forces and make good changes in policy.”

Peg felt her heart drop. That would mean he might not come home from South America, even after the assault, if it was successful. She might never see him again. She studied him covertly. He was the most important thing in her life. She hadn’t slept well since that unexpected, passionate kiss in the barn. He wanted her. She knew that. He hadn’t been able to hide it. But he wasn’t in the market for a wife, and he didn’t do affairs.

Her sadness might have been palpable, because he suddenly turned his head and looked straight into her eyes. There was a jolt like lightning striking her. She flushed and dragged her gaze away as quickly as she could, to avoid tipping off her father that things were going on behind his back.

Her father was pretty sensitive. He looked from one to the other, but he didn’t say a word.

Later, though, he cornered Peg before she went into her room to start dressing for the ball.

“What’s going on between you and Grange?” he asked quietly.

She sighed. “Nothing, I’m afraid. His father was a minister and he doesn’t sleep around.”

Ed, shocked, let out a sudden burst of laughter. “You’re kidding.”

She held up both hands. “Hey, I’m just the messenger. He doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke and he doesn’t … well, indulge. He thinks people should get married first. But he doesn’t want to marry anybody.”

Ed’s expression lightened. “Well!” Grange went up very high on his respected list.

“So he’s taking me to a ball but not to a motel afterward, in case you were worried, I mean,” she added with twinkling eyes.

He shrugged. “I’m out of step,” he confessed. “I don’t know how to live in this world anymore.”

“I guess you and I live in the best place for dinosaurs,” Peg pointed out. “We have plenty of company.”

He grinned. “Yes, and we all live in the past. Look at the town square, all decked out for Christmas, with lights and holly and Santa Claus and his reindeer.”

“With decorated trees in every public and private office, too,” she added, laughing. “I love Christmas.”

“So does Gracie Pendleton,” Ed reminded her. “She’s got their place in San Antonio decked out like a light show, and the ranch here is sparkling with seasonal color as well.”

“I’m going to be sparkling tonight, in my new borrowed designer evening gown,” she said. “I had the beauticians teach me how to do my hair, and I’ve got Mama’s pearls. I thought I’d wear them.” Her face was sad. Her mother had died five years past. They both still missed her.

“She loved parties,” Ed recalled with a sad smile. “But only occasionally. She was like me, a misfit who never belonged anywhere. Except with me.”

She hugged him. “You’ve still got me.”

“Yes, and you’ve still got me.” He hugged her back, and then let her go. “I hope it’s the best night of your life.”

She smiled with breathless anticipation. “I think it might be.”

The gown was silver, with black accents. It draped across her pert, firm breasts from one shoulder, leaving the other arm bare. It was ankle length, with a tight waist and flaring skirt, in a clingy fabric that outlined every soft curve. The bodice was bow-shaped across with the drape from her upper arm diagonally to her other breast. The effect was exquisite, displaying her creamy skin to its best advantage.

The pearls were a single strand, off-white, with matching stud pearl earrings on her small ears. She put up her pale blond hair in a bun with little tendrils escaping, and a set of pearl combs, artificial but pretty, to keep it up. She used a minimum of makeup, just powder and lipstick, no eyeliner or messy mascara. Fortunately the nice boutique owner had even loaned her a pair of pumps to wear with the gown. Peg’s shoes were mostly sneakers and an old pair of scuffed loafers. Her budget didn’t run to fancy clothing.

Finished, she looked in the mirror and beamed at her reflection. She was never going to be beautiful, but she had good teeth and pretty lips and eyes. Maybe that would be enough. She hoped she could compete with all the really pretty women who would be at the ball. But most of them were married, thank goodness, so there shouldn’t be too much competition there.

She had a nice coat that her father had bought her last winter, but when she looked at it in the hall closet she grimaced. It was a shocking pink, hardly the thing to wear with a couture gown. It was very cold outside today, with a high wind. She’d need something to keep her warm.

In desperation, she went through her own closet, looking for something that might do. It was useless. Except for a sweat jacket and a short and very old leather jacket, there wasn’t anything here that matched her uptown outfit.