Gingham Mountain (25 page)

“Even if I do, there are hard times in ranching. We’ve got some cash money built up for now, but a hard winter might cost us a crop of calves and we could be in trouble. You kids need things. Your shoes wear out and your arms and legs sprout. I spend what needs spending and save the rest for a rainy day.”

Grant noticed Charlie looking down at his outfit. Everything the boy had on was new. Grant remembered the shame of having clothes come to him secondhand. Not that his children didn’t wear hand-me-downs; they did. But when they first came to the family, they got one set new, right down to socks and boots, made just for them.

Charlie, settled on the floor on the far side of the fireplace, raised his eyes. Those hostile eyes, so suspicious, carrying a world of anger around on his thin shoulders. Grant saw the war in the boy. He wanted to get mad about the clothes because he reacted to everything with anger. But what was there to get riled up about with clean, freshly made, nicely fitting shirts and pants?

Grant also noticed something sticking out of Charlie’s pocket. The little corner he could see had the look and shape of a pocketknife. Charlie didn’t own a pocketknife. Grant knew that for a fact. And how could the boy have any money? With a sinking stomach, Grant knew it had most likely gotten into Charlie’s pocket in a dishonest way. Charlie wouldn’t be the first orphan to have a knack for thieving. Just because a boy had enough food and a warm bed didn’t always stop things from sticking to his fingers. Sighing, Grant knew he had something else to deal with. He said a silent prayer for his troubled son.

Looking at his children, Grant’s eyes landed on Libby with her new dress. After Grant had fixed her worn little shoes, he got her new ones at the mercantile and fixed the soles on those. Now she had a pair for good and another for home.

The little angel was settling in well, but Grant had to clear up this fuss about clothes and go for a walk with Charlie.

“I think we’ve got enough cloth to spare to make you a pair of pants and a shirt.” Sadie stepped to Grant’s side as Charlie rose to his feet. The two of them exchanged a glance then turned to face Grant. Grant noticed Charlie tuck that knife deeper in his pocket.

“And you need new boots, Pa.” Sadie crossed her arms. “Yours are worn clear through on the bottom. They have to be cold.”

Grant studied his boots. They were the ones his ma and pa had gotten for him when he was sixteen, just a couple of months before they died. They’d seen to it he had a new pair the two years he lived with them. But that was when his feet were growing as fast as summer grass. His feet hadn’t grown since then. Why buy new? Two leather thongs held the soles on, and his toes peeked out in half a dozen places. He’d slipped new pieces of leather on the inside because the bottoms were worn thin as paper, and he’d sewn buckskin on over the heels a couple of times. “I’m fine.”

Sadie reached past him and snagged the piece of fabric off the pile. “Please, Pa. It makes me feel selfish to have nice things and see you go without.”

Marilyn stepped up behind Sadie, her blond head nodding. “We’re not going to make one more new thing for anyone in this house until we get you out of these rags.”

Benny dodged in front of Sadie with his wide, loving eyes. “Are we selfish, Pa? Do you think we are?”

“No, son. Not a one of you kids has a selfish bone in your body.”

“You must think we are, or you’d have something nice for yourself once in a while,” Sadie said. “You gave up your room, and now you sleep on the floor without complaining.”

“I didn’t even think of that when I was so mad at Benny. You don’t even have a room.” Charlie’s hand slid deep in his pocket to hold the knife. The boy looked up and Grant caught his eye. A faint flush of red that screamed guilt rose on Charlie’s fair cheeks.

“Now, you guys stop it. The kitchen is a room. No one’s using it at
night. It’s a waste not to have someone sleeping in it. I’m closest to the fire. Why, I’m the selfish one. If you kids’d just think about it, you’d be fighting me for the kitchen floor.”

He scanned all those worried young faces. None of them was buying it for a second.

“You never have anything nice for yourself.” Sadie held up the yards of brown cloth. “And we never even noticed till now. We really
are
greedy and selfish.”

This had started out differently. Grant had seen the teasing light in Marilyn’s and Sadie’s eyes. He’d known they were up to something that had only a little to do with clothes. But they weren’t teasing anymore. Somehow he’d made them feel bad. The last thing he ever wanted to do was hurt a child.

“You young’uns are the most generous people I’ve ever known. There’s nothing greedy about any of you. It’s not that. It’s just. . . ” Grant looked at all of them. “You’re such fine young people.”

Charlie dropped his chin to rest on his chest and studied the floor as if it held the meaning of life.

“I’m pure lucky to have gotten you. We’ve all lived through hard times. What if there’s not enough? What if we run short of something? Yes, we may have fabric we’ll never use, but if times got hard, we could maybe sell it. There’s always a day coming when there might be a need for us.”

“It makes no sense for you to dress in rags,” Marilyn said. “Using up three or four yards of fabric that came to us as a free gift will not change a thing if hard times come. I want you to let Sadie and me make you some new clothes. If you love us at all, you’ll let us share with you one tiny bit as much as you share with us.”

Grant tightened his jaw. An almost desperate fear twisted around inside him when he thought of wasting anything on himself.

A tug on his hand pulled his attention away from Marilyn’s stubborn eyes. Libby held his hand. She looked at him then lowered her eyes
to study a patch in his flannel shirt torn away from the nearly rotten fabric. She reached one tiny finger into the hole in his shirt, stuck her finger on in through the hole behind that in his union suit, and poked him in the belly.

She wiggled her finger back and forth and tickled him. With a little laugh he jerked away, surprised to find out he was ticklish. She smiled up at him and reached her twitching finger toward him again.

Grant jumped back and glanced up to see all of his kids with their eyes focused straight at him.

“You’re ticklish,” Benny said.

“Pa’s ticklish.” Sadie’s dark eyes almost caught fire as she came toward him, her fingers raised in front of her, wriggling around like ten worms.

“You’re gonna get some new clothes, Pa.” Sadie gave him a diabolical smile. “We’re not going to leave you alone until you say yes.”

With a scream, Benny jumped on him, tickling his belly. Libby latched onto one of Grant’s legs, and that tripped him as he tried to get away from Benny while laughing. Marilyn, Sadie, and Charlie stepped back to watch him go down under them, but Grant saw a gleam in Charlie’s eyes like he wished he could be part of the wrestling match. Sadie looked like she’d be willing to attack if need be. Joshua laughed from his spot on the floor.

“Okay, okay, okay!” Grant laughed as he tried to escape his tormenting children. They quit attacking as quickly as they’d begun. Grant dumped them off him, pretending to be rough but very careful not to hurt either of them. Through laughter, he said, “Make the blasted clothes. Just don’t tickle me anymore.”

“New boots, too?” Sadie said with an arch of her eyebrows and a twitch of her fingers.

Grant collapsed flat on the floor. Gasping for breath, he said, “Yes, fine, new boots, too, you little monsters.”

Sadie and Marilyn exchanged satisfied nods that made Grant
wonder what they were up to. But he’d never known how ticklish he was, and he didn’t want to go through it again. He stood patiently while the girls measured him.

He tried Joshua’s boots on and when they were too tight, the young’uns wouldn’t be satisfied to let Joshua guess at a fit. Under threat of another attack, he promised he’d go to town the next day and let Zeb at the livery measure him for new boots. With that, his cantankerous household settled down to do their studies.

As he sat with Benny, going over his lessons, Grant wondered what he’d ever do with fancy clothes. Then he wondered if Hannah would like the way he looked in them, and if it weren’t for the tickling, he might have gone back to refusing. It didn’t matter anyway. It was too late to stop ’em. Once the girls had gotten him to go along, they’d been cutting quick as lightning, most likely afraid he’d weasel out of his bargain somehow.

“Pa, you remember when you first brought me and Sadie home?” Joshua drew Grant’s attention, and Grant realized Joshua had been watching the sewing just as he had. “You sewed all six of us a new outfit of clothes.”

Grant laughed. “Yeah, I really made a mess of ’em, didn’t I?”

Joshua shook his head. “We should have saved ’em just as a bad example. Even then Sadie was better at it than you. And she was only five.”

Sadie nodded over her needle and thread. “And you made me a dress.”

Sadie and Marilyn looked up from their fine, neat stitches.

“Pa sewed you a dress?” Marilyn looked at Sadie as if she’d grown another head.

“I’d seen my ma do some sewing. Even threaded a needle for her. I didn’t really know anything. But Pa’s hands were so clumsy.” Sadie started giggling until she had to set her needle aside. “He made Joshua a pair of pants so big, Joshua and Will could’ve both fit inside them.”

All the children snickered. Even silent little Libby giggled behind her fingers.

“They weren’t that bad,” Grant said between his own chuckles. “It beat what you were wearing.”

“We were all in rags, even worse’n what you’ve got on now.” Joshua nodded. “When you made Sadie try on her new dress, it dragged on the floor in back and her knees showed in front. Plus there was no hole for her head, so you just hacked an opening with your knife.”

“And then you cut the back off so it wouldn’t drag, and then it was too short so you cut the front off.” Sadie quit talking so she could laugh full time.

“Good thing it was about four times too big around for Sadie,” Joshua said, leaning his head back against the wall, his shoulders shaking with laughter. “Will ended up wearing it as a shirt as I recall.”

“Sadie got better at it quicker’n I did.” Grant shook his head.

“Sadie taught me most of what I know.” Marilyn grinned at her little sister.

“You picked it up fast enough.” Sadie picked up her needle.

“And Cassie was ten,” Joshua added. “And she knew a few things that helped us along. And you boys pitched right in to help on the ranch.”

Grant remembered that little gang of orphans. Joshua, Sadie, Will, Cassie, Eli, and Sidney. They’d all been starving. It was a cold morning, and they didn’t have a single coat between ’em. Will had tried to pick his pocket. Grant had caught him and known right away he was dealing with a street urchin just like he’d been near all his life.

He’d convinced Will to trust him, and before long he’d been carrying out food from a diner. . . a diner that wouldn’t’a allowed black children inside. He fed six little kids breakfast while he fretted over how to take care of them forever.

Grant could see people in a huge city like New York ignoring hordes of children. The problem was just too huge for a lot of people to deal with. But it made him furious to think of the citizens of a good
Texas town like Houston letting those children scurry around in alleys without taking them in.

He’d been riding his horse, planning to sign up for the Confederacy if he could ever hunt up the War. He’d seen those children, banded together, Will acting as the father, ten-year-old Cassie mothering the littler ones, Joshua and Sadie, black, but accepted as members of the family without a question. Grant had been planning to fight for the Confederacy, just because that’s what a good Texan did, but after seeing Joshua and Sadie, and knowing what danger they were in running around loose in the South, he couldn’t have taken part in any fighting that supported slavery.

With no paperwork and no permission, he’d claimed them as his adopted children and taken them home. He’d found his calling in life.

Soon after the War, the first orphan train came through Sour Springs.

“Cassie and I both learned a sight quicker than you, Pa.” Sadie basted a sleeve onto the shirt she was making for him.

“A fractious longhorn would’a learned quicker’n me.”

The family laughed again.

Sadie looked up from her work. “Now Cassie’s sewing for her little ones, just like Megan and all your other grown-up daughters. You would have made everything easier if you’d have rounded yourself up a wife before you started collecting children. That’s the proper way of things.”

“I was too young to get married.” Grant flinched when Sadie and Marilyn exchanged a quick glance. “I’m still too young to get married.”

Marilyn said quietly, “But not too young to have children, right?”

That set the whole bunch of them off in a fit of laughing again, and Grant felt his cheeks warm up even as he laughed along. He’d never explained to his children about the vow he’d made to care for young’uns. He’d told some of them when they’d grown up, after they’d left his home, but the ones who lived with him would never know. He didn’t want them to think he was sacrificing anything for them,
because he wasn’t. He got so much more than he ever gave. But talk of marriage led to thoughts of Hannah, and kissing her, and how she’d stood shoulder-to-shoulder with him and offered to sacrifice her job for his children.

And that made him desperate to think of something else. He couldn’t think of a way to talk to Charlie about that knife without embarrassing him in front of the family, so Grant left that for later and settled in beside Benny to help him wrestle with the words in his reading book.

Maybe it was time he polished up his skills for working inside the house. It’d keep him busy and keep his mind off Hannah if he’d do the sewing. He could stab himself a few times with a needle anytime she bloomed inside his head.

The girls could teach him fine stitchery and dressmaking. As Benny droned out the words of a psalm, Grant stared down at his callused hands and wondered if it was hard to crochet lace.