My apology...I posted Ch 10 under Ch 9 without realizing it.

Chapter Nine

"He got away!" Timothy, who had been pulling on his homemade fishing pole, he'd refused the one Jim had offered him simply telling him 'my mother made it for me', cried out when the fish on the other end managed to wiggle free of the hook and swam away.

Heath had asked Ruth if he could take Timothy fishing. She had hesitated and then began to tell him okay only to have Timothy, who had overheard, ask if she could go with them. Ruth had again hesitated, but Timothy had actually started pleading with her to go. Heath, who feared Timothy would back out of going, told her she was welcome. She had finally consented, but only after making it crystal clear she was only going for Timothy's sake.

"Don't worry." A crooked smile appeared on Heath's face as he handed Timothy another worm. "We'll just keep on tryin'."

Ruth sat on a small log near the edge of a clearing that lay roughly four hundred yards from the back of Jim's home, watching Heath and Timothy fishing. She was pleasantly surprised to hear Timothy and Heath engaging in an actual conversation. Though, it concerned her too. She didn't want Timothy hurt and, while it appeared Heath and Nick were trustworthy, she still held onto the fear that they, along with her uncle, might just be putting on an act. Heavens knows her ex husband had had that part, putting on an act down, pat when they first met and then married. She hadn't been married but a few weeks before her ex-husband began showing his true colors. Would she ever find someone she knew without a shadow of a doubt could be trusted, someone who could successfully show her others could be trusted as well? She was shocked as a memory from long ago flashed across her mind…one of a dark haired, hazel eyed young soldier who had been wounded lying in a hidden make shift hospital, a "hospital" hidden in the basement of an old Tennessee church. 'What a strange thing to remember at this moment. What has it got to do with my question?' Ruth silently wondered.

"Ruth?" Heath's voice brought Ruth out of her thoughts and she turned her head to look at Heath; he and Timothy were standing in front of her with five nice sized fish connected to a string on Timothy's pole.

"Sorry, I let my mind get sidetracked." Ruth apologized as Heath and Timothy set the fish down beside the fire pit Heath had made once they got to the clearing. "Let me help you with those fish." She stood up and held out her hands. Soon she, Heath and Timothy were cleaning the fish.

While she and Timothy cleaned their fish, they did their best not to look at Heath's right leg, though it was hard not to as she thought on the way he walked. 'Curiosity killed the cat, and I'm not cat' Ruth chastised herself for allowing her mind to wander to a subject she had no business thinking about. She would have to talk to Timothy later too. However, they might as well have admitted their interest, as Heath had caught both their subtle glances now and then.

"It's not real." Heath sent shock waves through Ruth and Timothy both when he glanced at his right leg and then looked at them. "That is, half of it isn't. Doc had to amputate half of it to save my life."

"The war?" Ruth managed to ask, once she could find her voice while Timothy just stared.

Heath let out a small chuckle and shook his head. "No, but it might as well have been." He proceeded to give his new friends a short version of what had happened. "A part of me wanted to blame everyone but Nick for awhile, seeing how he backed me up from the start when it came to my leg. Only, if I'm to be honest, things only got bad because I took off and refused their help the first time around."

"Why did you do that? They're your brothers." Ruth figured if he had brought the subject up it was okay for her to ask questions.

"I knew that, but they hadn't truly accepted it." Heath, who saw additional surprise appear in her eyes, sighed. "We share the same father, but not the same mother. I wasn't raised on the ranch with them; I lived in Strawberry." He kept his eyes on Ruth to gauge her response.

"Life could not have been easy for you, world's not exactly accepting of children born into a situation like that." Ruth said without thinking, but did not apologize once the words were out of her mouth. They were the truth, even if she hadn't intended to speak so frankly.

"It wasn't, but mama did her best to provide for me anyway." Heath answered as he turned his eyes to the fish in his hands. "And, as I grew, I did what I could to ease her burden." He had to, even going to the mine as early as nine years old. Of course, that wasn't something he saw necessary to divulge at the time.

"Didn't you and your mama have anyone else to help you?" Timothy asked quietly, almost too quietly. However, Heath and Ruth still heard him.

Heath looked at Ruth, who was looking more than uncomfortable now. For a moment Heath wished his mother was alive. Even though the circumstances between the two women were different, he was sure Leah could have been a great comfort to Ruth about now. "We had my Aunt Rachel and Mama's good friend, Hannah. Sometimes, I called her aunt too, though there was no blood relation between her and us. They helped out where my own aunt and uncle refused to so much as let us in their door…unless it was their hotel door. Even then it was only to do our work and leave." Heath fought to keep the bitterness of out of his voice; these two didn't need to hear about his Uncle Matt and Aunt Martha at the moment.

"May I see it?" Timothy asked after a moment of silence.

See it? For a split second Heath wondered what Timothy was talking about only to realize the boy had changed the topic of conversation back to Heath's prosthetic leg.

Ruth realized it too and her eyes flew wide open. "Timothy!" She snapped ever so slightly. Was it bad enough the two of them had behaved the way they had…when it came to glancing at Heath's leg? Did they have to make it worse by actually asking to see it?

She needn't have worried as Heath began pulling up his pant leg. "No reason to hide it from you." Heath said as he threw a crooked grin towards Timothy and Ruth, and then lifted his pant leg to show them. He proceeded to explain how his new leg worked.

The rest of the afternoon the three enjoyed a pleasurable enough visit, though the end of the outing Heath was no closer to knowing just what Ruth and Timothy was hiding. Knowing Nick was interested in Ruth, Heath wondered if Nick could, somehow, get some information…without tripping over his two feet doing it.