“I’ll be nice to him.” At first, anyway.

“But you won’t run off and marry him.”

“Dad!”

She rolled her eyes just as the boy came out on the porch. Lil studied him as she might any new specimen.

He was taller than she’d expected, and his hair was the color of pine bark. He looked… mad or sad, she couldn’t decide which. But neither was promising. His clothes said city to her, dark jeans that hadn’t been worn or washed enough and a stiff white shirt. He took the glass of lemonade her mother offered and watched Lil as warily as she watched him.

He jolted at the cry of a hawk, and Lil caught herself before she sneered. Her mother wouldn’t like it if she sneered at company.

“Sam.” Grinning broadly, Joe stuck out a hand. “How are things?”

“Can’t complain.”

“And Lucy, don’t you look pretty?”

“We do what we can with what we’ve got. This is our grandson, Cooper.”

“Glad to meet you, Cooper. Welcome to the Black Hills. This is my Lil.”

“Hello.” She cocked her head. He had blue eyes-ice-on-the-mountain blue. He didn’t smile, nor did his eyes.

“Joe, you and Lil go clean up. We’re going to eat outside,” Jenna added. “We’ve got a fine day for it. Cooper, sit down here by me, and tell me what you like to do in New York. I’ve never been there.”

In Lil’s experience, her mother could get anybody to talk, make anybody smile. But Cooper Sullivan from New York City seemed to be the exception. He spoke when spoken to, minded his manners, but little more. They sat out at the picnic table, one of Lil’s favorite things, and feasted on fried chicken and biscuits, on potato salad and snap beans her mother had put up last harvest.

Conversation ranged from horses and cattle and crops, to weather and books and the status of other neighbors. All the things, in Lil’s world, that mattered.

Though Cooper struck Lil as stiff as his shirt, he managed to eat two helpings of everything, though he barely opened his mouth otherwise.

Until her father brought up baseball.

“ Boston ’s going to break the curse this year.”

Cooper snorted, then immediately hunched his shoulders.

In his easy way, Joe picked up the basket of biscuits, offered it to the boy. “Oh, yeah, Mr. New York. Yankees or Mets?”

“Yankees.”

“Not a prayer.” As if in sympathy, Joe shook his head. “Not this year, kid.”

“We’ve got a strong infield, good bats. Sir,” he added as if he’d just remembered to.

“ Baltimore ’s already killing you.”

“It’s a fluke. They died last year, and they’ll fade this year.”

“When they do, the Red Sox will pounce.”

“Crawl maybe.”

“Oh, a smart-ass.”

Cooper paled a little, but Joe continued as if he hadn’t noticed the reaction. “Let me just say, Wade Boggs, and toss in Nick Esasky. Then-”

“Don Mattingly, Steve Sax.”

“George Steinbrenner.”

For the first time, Coop grinned. “Well, you can’t have everything.”

“Let me consult my expert. Sox or Yankees, Lil?”

“Neither. It’s Baltimore. They’ve got the youth, the momentum. They’ve got Frank Robinson. Boston ’s got a play, but they won’t pull it off. The Yankees? Not a chance, not this year.”

“My only child, and she wounds me.” Joe put a hand on his heart. “Do you play back home, Cooper?”

“Yes, sir. Second base.”

“Lil, take Cooper on around back of the barn. You can work off the meal with a little batting practice.”

“Okay.”

Coop slid off the bench. “Thank you for dinner, Mrs. Chance. It was very good.”

“You’re welcome.”

As the children walked away, Jenna looked over at Lucy. “Poor little boy,” she murmured.

The dogs raced ahead, and across the field. “I play third base,” Lil told Coop.

“Where? There’s nothing around here.”

“Right outside Deadwood. We have a field, and a league. I’m going to be the first woman to play major-league ball.”

Coop snorted again. “Women can’t play the bigs. That’s just the way it is.”

“The way it is isn’t the way it has to be. That’s what my mother says. And when I’m finished playing, I’m going to manage.”

He sneered, and though it brought her hackles up, she liked him better for it. At least he didn’t seem as stiff as his shirt anymore. “You don’t know dick.”

“Dick who?”

He laughed, and even though she knew he was laughing at her, she decided to give him one more chance before she clobbered him.

He was company. A stranger in a strange land.

“How do you play in New York? I thought there were buildings everywhere.”

“We play in Central Park, and sometimes in Queens.”

“What’s Queens?”

“It’s one of the boroughs.”

“It’s a mule?”

“No. Jesus. It’s a city, a place. Not a donkey.”

She stopped, set her fists on her hips, and fired at him out of dark, dark eyes. “When you try to make somebody feel stupid when they ask a question, you’re the stupid one.”

He shrugged, and rounded the side of the big red barn with her.

It smelled like animal, dusty and poopy at the same time. Coop couldn’t figure out why anybody would want to live with that smell, or the sounds of clucking, snuffling, and mooing all the damn time. He started to make a sneering remark about just that-she was only a kid, after all, and a girl at that-but then he saw the batting cage.

It wasn’t what he was used to, but it looked pretty sweet to him. Somebody, he supposed Lil’s father, had built the three-sided cage out of fencing. It stood with its back to a jumbled line of brush and bramble that gave way to a field where cattle stood around doing nothing. Beside the barn, under the shelter of one of the eaves, sat a weatherworn box. Lil opened it, pulled out gloves, bats, balls.

“My dad and I practice most nights after dinner. Mom pitches to me sometimes, but she’s got a rag arm. You can bat first if you want, ’cause you’re company, but you have to wear a batting helmet. It’s the rule.”