Fairer than Morning (26 page)

“We sure are grateful to you, Enoch, for taking us,” John said. “We couldn't go on the steamboat, not with these on us.” John indicated his circle-and-cross-branded forehead. The scar reached almost down to the bridge of his nose. “I can't hide mine with a hat, not all the way.”

“But he still wore his hat, and Clara pulled her bonnet down,” Mr. Washington said to Ann's father.

Clara Simon remained silent, leaning against the wing of the chair.

“Are you unwell?” Ann asked. “Is there something I might do to help?”

“I'm feeling a little poorly, but I'll be better soon,” Clara said, lifting her head.

“Don't be listening to her,” John said. “She's had a bad fever since last night.”

“It's nothing to worry you for,” Clara said. “I get these chills every so often. And it's not catching.”

“It's the marsh fever,” John said.

“Malaria,” Mr. Washington said. “From her time in New Orleans. We brought quinine with us to treat her, but it will be a week before she is fully recovered.”

Ann's father considered Clara for a moment from his chair by the hearth. “I think you had better rest before you go on with your journey, Mrs. Simon.”

“No, sir, I can go on. I'll be just fine,” she said, but her head drooped again to the side of the chair.

“No, you mustn't,” Ann's father said. “The next part of your journey will be more arduous. Mr. Washington will return to Pittsburgh with his coach, and I will have to take you to another man who will help you. At some point northward, you may have to go by foot.”

“We don't want to burden you,” John said.

“It's no burden. We wish to help,” her father said.

The teakettle steamed on the stove; Ann walked back to prepare the tea. She brought the cups and saucers back into the sitting room on a tray.

“Out in the woods past our fields,” her father was saying, “there is a one-room cabin I built when we first settled here. That would be the safest place. Even if someone came searching for you at our home, he would not find you out there in the woods.”

Ann gave a teacup to Mr. Washington.

“And there is still a bed frame,” her father added. “We can put the girls' mattress out there for you, and they can sleep with Ann.”

“Oh no, Miss Miller, I can't take one of your beds,” Clara said weakly as Ann set a teacup on the little table next to her.

“I won't take no for an answer,” Ann said, smiling. “Sharing a bed for a week will bring back fond memories of when the girls were smaller. They always stole into my room halfway through the night.”

She handed the last teacup and saucer to her father and seated herself on the other side of the hearth. She was glad the Simons were here, despite her lingering fear at the thought of Jack Rumkin pursuing them. Helping John and Clara soothed her wounded heart after her failure to help Will in Pittsburgh.

“I will help you set up there and get food and firewood, John,” her father said. “You and Clara can have a little home of your own for as long as you need it.”

John's eyes glistened with emotion; he did not say anything.

“It's very kind of you, Samuel,” Mr. Washington said.

John recovered his composure. “Mr. Miller, you don't know how much it means to me and my wife.”

“Call me Samuel, please.” Ann's father stood up and walked to the hallway that led to the bedrooms. “Girls!” he called. “I need your assistance.”

A bustle of activity began. Ann and the girls gathered food and supplies in baskets for the Simons while their father and John loaded the mattress in the wagon.

Ann placed a tin of dried beef in a basket and went back to the pantry to get some jars of apples. The younger girls had already set off for the cabin with their baskets, preferring to make an adventure of it rather than ride sedately in the wagon. Ann was alone with her thoughts as she packed the jars in rags to keep them from breaking against one another.

It was always possible that Jack Rumkin would find them. She pushed away the nauseating memory of his weight on her legs, trapping her. Her hand trembled as she reached for the box of salt on the shelf.

She would have to ask her father what they would do if he came after them. A loaded shotgun leaned in the corner behind the door—only a fool would live in this untamed state without a gun at the ready. She shuddered at the idea of staining her soul even more deeply with human blood. But she would do it, if she must. Even so, nothing promised that she or her father would be close enough to the house to get the gun in time.

She would just have to pray that Jack Rumkin never learned where the Simons had gone.

The heavy coach trundled down the road at a rapid clip. Will could not shake off his conviction that he was dreaming. He wore a coat that Mrs. Crandall had given to him with the insistence that her husband did not need it. She had also sent along an extra set of clothes and a few books to pass the time on the journey. On the occasions when the coach stopped for the driver and horses to rest, Will exchanged a few words with the coachman, but for the most part he read the books. One of them was about a man named Natty Bumpo. Will lost himself for hours in Cooper's dramatic tale of pioneers, settlers, and Indians.

Reading kept his mind occupied more fruitfully than contemplating the future. He did not know what else to do except to look for Mr. Miller. His only useful skills were in saddlery. But any saddler other than Mr. Miller would guess immediately that this wandering young man with nothing but his stitching skills to recommend him was a runaway apprentice. And most saddlers who needed apprentices already had them. He would have to rely on Mr. Miller's compassion for employment.

The daylight faded and his eyes grew tired. When the coach stopped and the driver came around to tell him they were in Rushville, his sense of unreality intensified. He disembarked from the coach, taking the knapsack that held the extra clothing.

“Mrs. Crandall told me you have friends here,” the young ruddy-faced coachman said. “Where are they?”

“They live a little way out from town, off the main road,” Will said. Mr. Miller had told him so while they worked together in Pittsburgh.

“Ah,” the coachman said. “I'd take you, but the coach barely made it over this last road. A little more mud and we wouldn't make it back.” The coachman extended his hand. “Good luck to you,” he said.

Will shook it. “Thank you. And please give Mrs. Crandall my thanks, again.”

“I will.” The coachman climbed back to the driver's seat and turned the horses around.

As the coach rattled away, Will looked around him on Rushville's main street, such as it was. The whitewashed store in front of him displayed a sign that proclaimed it to be Sumner's General. It was growing late, but perhaps the storekeeper would give him directions. The sign on the door still read Open.

He walked in. A woman sat on a stool behind the counter, jotting something in a ledger. She looked up at the tinkle of the bell.

“Good evening! We are just about to close up. May I get you something?” She had a freckled face and a broad smile.

“Yes, ma'am. I mean, no, ma'am.”

She chuckled. “Make up your mind now.”

“I just need to know the way to Samuel Miller's farm.”

“Are you a friend of the Millers?”

“Yes, ma'am.” He felt it would be polite to explain more, but he didn't dare.

She gestured at the street outside. “Take this road past the town center. After about a mile or so through the trees, you'll see a big oak on the left that's been split in two by lightning. You can't miss it. It's huge.” She made a circle with her arms. “Each trunk is this big, and it's split almost all the way to the ground.”

Will nodded.

“Look to your right there and you'll see a smaller road through the trees—little more than a set of wagon tracks. You'll go down that road about another mile, and you'll see the Miller farm. You can't miss it; it's the first farm, and there aren't any others close by.”

“Thank you, ma'am.”

“You're welcome. But you'll need to hurry if you want any light to walk by.”

He nodded again, but as he walked out the door he hid a wry smile. She did not know how accustomed he had grown to walking without light.

He moved up the road as rapidly as his blistered feet would tolerate; they still stung inside the sturdy boots Mrs. Crandall had given him. An oak was a landmark easy to miss, among all these other trees, especially in darkness. And the light was fading.

By the time he reached the split oak, it was almost dark, with just a trace of gloaming left to outline the tree trunks ahead of him. He followed the little road as she had instructed, as the stars came out overhead through the treetops.

After just a few minutes, he saw the farmhouse. It nestled between two hillocks, the glow of a fire faint through its front windows.

His chest clenched tight as he walked through the yard and headed for the front door. He could not believe he had made it this far. And if Mr. Miller would not take him, he did not know what else he could do. He reassured himself by recalling the sympathy in Mr. Miller's eyes when he spoke of the one who came to save people from darkness.

He took a deep breath and knocked.

Twenty-Five

A
KNOCK CAME AT THE FRONT DOOR
. A
NN WAS DEEP
in the pages of a novel by Mrs. Radcliffe. Her father would answer; he was out there reading to her sisters in the sitting room. The visitor was probably John Simon, who had been back to the house once already to collect a few small items after settling Clara in the little cabin.

The bar on the front door clunked, and a murmur of male voices seeped over the threshold of her bedroom. She hoped her father would not call for her help. Her candlelight time alone with her books was precious. Her reading gave her food for thought for the next day, keeping her mind alive through hours of repetitious chores.

“Ann.” Her father raised his voice from its previous low rumbling so it carried clearly to her.

She sighed. Perhaps her father's request would be quick and she could return to her novel in just a minute or two. She marked her place in the book with one finger and clutched it to her bosom with one hand. With the other hand, she cleared her skirt from its tangles around her feet, then rose from her chair and brushed through her bedroom doorway.

There was enough light from the fire in the kitchen hearth to guide her through the hallway. The shifting glow grew brighter as she emerged into the sitting room. Across the room, a lamp on the side table cast its whiter light down on the faces of Susan and Mabel where they sat at the foot of her father's empty armchair. The girls sat in total silence. Curious, this absence of chatter. They did not even glance at her. Instead, their attention was riveted on their father. He stood with another man, silhouetted against the flames that leapt behind the open hearth.

The visitor's back was to Ann. It was not John Simon, but a young man with dark hair, about her father's height. His blue shirt lay close over his shoulders, which were sharpened down to nothing but bone.

“We have an unexpected pleasure,” her father said to her. The young man turned around.

Will Hanby.

He was different somehow. Neater. More civilized. His dark hair had been trimmed from its former wild tangle—now it waved thick but obedient above his brow and tapered to neat sideburns behind his cheekbones.

She was gripping her book so tightly that she must look like a scared rabbit. She scrutinized the spine of the book as if she had never seen it before, then laid it on the side table with the greatest care. She hoped that her eyes were not as wide and astonished as those of her sisters. It was not polite to remain silent for so long, but her social graces had hopped off down the rabbit trails and showed no signs of returning to her.

When she looked again at Will, his face was in shadow, unreadable. But he stepped toward her, and the lamplight rose up and caught his clear brown eyes.