Unending Devotion (Michigan Brides #1)(17)
She glanced around the camp at the scattering of log buildings. In addition to the bunkhouse and blacksmith shop, there was a log barn that housed the teams of oxen. The cook’s shack connected to another large log building that was likely the dining hall. A smaller hut sat off to one side, and Lily guessed it was the van, the office and home of the camp foreman and his scaler.
The door of the van swung open, and her heart did a flip of surprise when Connell McCormick stepped out, deep in conversation with an older lumberman whom she guessed to be the foreman.
For a moment she stared at Connell, at the gold strands of his hair that the bright sunshine highlighted, the fresh cleanness of his mackinaw in comparison to the foreman’s, and his purposeful stride.
The lines of his forehead wrinkled with seriousness as he talked with the foreman. There was a refined, educated look to Connell’s face. And yet the strong lines of his jaw and nose defined him as a man worth reckoning.
Would he be surprised to see her? She swatted at the fresh mud splats on her skirt, hoping they weren’t too noticeable. What would he say to her?
She waited for him to lift his head, for his green eyes to find her as they had in the dining room of the hotel. Her heart pattered faster with the thought of how he’d defended her honor against Jimmy Neil, how he’d watched after her and protected her.
But without casting even the slightest glance in her direction, Connell and the foreman headed toward the narrow-gauge tracks that ran through the middle of the camp. No longer were the lumber camps solely dependent on the snow and ice for transporting logs. The railroads meant they could carry on their lumbering operations year-round.
She could only shake her head at the piles of cut logs lining the track, waiting to be loaded and shipped to the main railway track in Harrison, the Pere Marquette line. She’d learned that from there, they were moved to the river-banking ground in Averill to await the spring thaw. Then the logs would be floated down the rivers until they reached the sawmills of Saginaw and Bay City.
The longer she’d traveled around central Michigan, the more saddened she’d grown to see the widespread destruction of miles and miles of forests and the devastation left in the wake of the lumber companies when they moved on.
Even though God had placed a burden on her heart to rescue lives, she’d begun to think that maybe the land needed some rescuing too.
As she continued her task of writing down names and collecting money from the men awaiting their pictures, she tried to focus on the task of asking about Daisy and whether any of them had seen or heard of her. But she couldn’t keep from peeking at Connell and watching him at work.
The foreman followed Connell around, his hands stuffed into the tight pockets of his trousers, the weathered lines in his face growing more worried.
“Looks like the boss man is figgering out how he can get more work out of us,” one of the shanty boys grumbled under his breath.
Boss man? Lily followed the man’s narrowed eyes back to Connell.
Under the rising temperature of day, Connell had discarded his mackinaw and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, revealing thick arms. With the help of another man, he lifted a log onto the back of a half-filled flat car, and his well-defined biceps bulged under the strain.
Her stomach fluttered with strange warmth. He was obviously a strong man and a hard worker. But was he the boss of the camp?
“I ain’t gonna work on Sunday,” another man muttered. “The boss man can if he wants. But I need my Sundays to catch an extra forty winks.”
Surely Connell wasn’t the one in charge of all the destruction and mayhem at this camp. The ruination of this beautiful forest.
But even as her heart fought to deny the accusation, her head told her it was true. It made perfect sense that he was the boss. He was too educated, too polite, too polished, and entirely too clean to be an ordinary shanty boy.
She didn’t know why she hadn’t realized it sooner.
A lump of disappointment lodged in her chest. She didn’t know why the revelation saddened her, but it did.
At a tiny meow and a bump against her shin, Lily forced her attention away from Connell to a skinny kitten rubbing against her leg.
“Well now. What do we have here?” She bent and scratched the cat’s head between its ears.
A tabby painted with the same streaks as a faint evening sunset peered up at her with hungry eyes.
“Oh, he’s just the camp mouser.” The shanty boy closest to her gave the cat a shove with the spikes of his boot, sending the tiny creature scurrying across the slushy clearing toward the edge of the forest and the fence of tall pines that hadn’t yet suffered the sharp teeth of the crosscut saw.
“That was cruel.” Lily scowled at the man and then started after the kitten. “Come here, kitty.”
She patted her coat pocket and felt the bump from the two molasses cookies Vera had given her the night before. She’d wrapped them in a handkerchief, intending to have them for breakfast. But she wouldn’t mind sharing some with the cat. The scrawny fellow looked like it needed the sustenance more than she did.
Following the cat’s paw prints, she tramped toward the forest edge. Her boots sloshed in the mixture of melting snow and mud. “Here, kitty-kitty,” she called as she ducked past a low pine sapling and over the rotting remains of a windfall.
She caught a glimpse of muted orange in the spiky tamaracks that grew among a confusion of vines and broken tree limbs. She darted after the cat, lifting her skirt to make the chase easier. Following the flashes of color, she headed deeper into the grove until she lost sight of the kitten altogether.