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“Chalmer grabbed a hold of me and wouldn’t let go. I told him no, told him to let go, but he didn’t listen.”
“And that’s where you popped him in the face. And then ran screaming for your life,” Claudia said firmly and with a little heat.
“I was getting ready to do that. He’s bigger than I am but not as big as my cows. If I can manhandle them, I figured I could handle him, at least enough to get away.”
“I’m glad you got away... You did get away, right?” Claudia’s voice held compassion and concern again, and Ellen nodded immediately. She didn’t want Claudia to think the worst.
“Yes. That’s why I’m getting this ice,” she said as she filled the bag up with cubes before putting the tray back in the freezer. “Travis came. And he and Chalmer fought.”
“Really? You had two men fighting over you?”
“Not really. Travis is just a friend, and he heard me tell Chalmer no, and he was just making sure the guy listened.”
“Well, that sounds like about what you need to do to make sure that Chalmer listens, only take a sledgehammer to the hardest head in Sweet Water.”
“Yeah. I don’t know how Shanna managed to stay with him for as long as she did.”
“Shanna gets what she deserves, from what I can see,” Claudia said with a little bit of irony in her tone.
“That’s possible. Travis bought her bucket though. And they’re eating together.”
“Then she should be the one in here fixing ice for him,” Claudia said, laughing a bit, and Ellen wasn’t sure that she could tell Claudia that...she didn’t want Shanna fixing Travis up. She didn’t want Shanna anywhere near Travis.
“Travis is my friend. I don’t mind helping him at all or giving him ice which is probably all I’m going to do. But... I guess I want someone better for him than Shanna.”
“Oh. I see. Yeah, from what I’ve heard about Travis, he could do a lot better too. He apparently has been quite successful since he left Sweet Water. I’ve never met him, but if he’s your friend, he must be a good man.”
“Oh my goodness. Yeah. He’s definitely a good man.”
Travis was better than good, but she couldn’t really gush on about him without Claudia thinking things that probably were true. Or maybe they were a little bit true. That Ellen cared a lot more for Travis than what she wanted to let on. Although, if he truly wanted Shanna, she would step back and allow it.
At least she’d try to.
“I guess I can understand why you’d be concerned. From what I’ve heard about Shanna, she is not exactly a good person. Or at least, she’s not good to men.”
“No. But I’m guessing that no one was holding a gun to Travis’s head and telling him that he had to purchase her bucket, so I assume he did it because he wanted to.”
“I don’t know. I think hers went after everyone else’s. In fact, I think he bought it after you left with Chalmer.”
“Yeah. I’m pretty sure that’s true. I didn’t see it auctioned off at all anyway.” She had remembered when she was walking out that Mr. Higginbotham had been saying that they had found a couple more buckets. Shanna’s must have been one of those.
Not that it mattered. Although, she hadn’t even considered that Travis might have been standing there when she had been bought and hadn’t bought her himself.
They were just friends. Why would he buy her?
She tried to lift her chin up and push down all of the swirling feelings of pain and disappointment and not being good enough that wanted to rise to the surface. All those feelings that she felt in high school and thought that she had gotten over. Maybe she’d only gotten over them because she thought Travis and she had something going on together, something they would pick up when he came home.
She had waited for ten years. But she couldn’t really blame Travis. They both changed a lot in those years. She didn’t regret not pursuing any romantic relationships. She’d accomplished a lot more with her dogs and her cows than she would have if she had been tangled up with a man.
Still, she wanted a home and family of her own, and maybe she would already have had that if she hadn’t been...waiting for Travis.
They made a couple of comments about the festival, and how well it was going, and how much money they probably made from all of the buckets that had been sold and the other items that had been donated for the auction, and then Claudia walked out beside her as she carried a tea towel that she wet at the sink along with the ice and another dry towel.
They parted at the door with Ellen going outside and Claudia saying that if she needed a nurse, come on back in and Claudia would get her sister, who was a registered RN.
Ellen said she would and then opened the door to walk outside.
Travis stood at the swing set, pushing one of the children on the swing, while Shanna stood beside him, her hands on her hips, her mouth going, but Ellen was unable to hear exactly what she was saying.
