Victor Vifquain felt at home on John Veuleman's Missouri cattle ranch. Each day, he planned to leave, but he couldn't part from the energetic French-speaking family. Plus their seventh daughter, fifteen-year-old Caroline, appealed to him. She moved like a colt. He liked her energy, her tomboy streak.
She liked him, too, and why not? His chiseled face held deep-set eyes, and his mop of dark curly hair reigned over what would be a bushy mustache.
So Victor stayed, a regular at their dining table, listening to stories of how the Belgian family traveled down the Mississippi in a flatboat they'd made.
"I never lived in Belgian," Caroline said. "I was born in Louisiana."
"So you're American, not Belgian."
"Don't tell Mama!"
Victor went berry picking and fishing with Caroline, chaperoned by her much older sister, Joannes. Caroline knew all the good spots, where to find wild strawberries and red mulberries, where to snag catfish and how to clean and cook a squirrel.
Or so she claimed.
Coming soon in
THIEVES, RASCALS & SORE LOSERS
by Marilyn June Coffey
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