In the Face of Danger (3 page)

Someone had lit a lamp, and the light shone on Emma’s long hair, which was down around her shoulders. “Dear little Megan,” Emma said. “Hush, hush. We’re here.”

“The gypsy!” Megan stammered. “The gypsy came back and took my mother!”

“It was only a dream. Your mother is safe and sound.”

“She has a mother? Living?” Megan heard the bewilderment in Mrs. Parson’s voice.

“It wasn’t Ma’s fault.” Megan felt a tear roll to the end of her nose. “Ma wanted us to have a better life than she could give us, so she gave us away!” A flood of tears crashed through the barrier Megan had built and spilled down her cheeks.

As though she were a baby, Megan clung to Emma and wept against her shoulder, until finally all the tears were gone. She raised her head to see tears glistening on Emma’s cheeks, too.

“Oh, Megan,” Emma said, “we
will
try to make life better for you.”

Megan struggled to pull away from Emma and shook her head. “No,” she insisted. “I’m bad luck. Something bad will happen if I stay with you. You must send me back.”

Ben’s face appeared above Megan, and one of his hands rested on Emma’s shoulder. “You had a bad dream, and it’s frightened you,” he said. “That’s all.”

“But the gypsy—” Megan began.

“We chose you because we wanted you,” he said, “and we’re not going to send you back.”

Emma gave Megan another hug and helped her lie back on the pallet, tucking the quilt around her snugly. “Forget the gypsy in your dream,” she said. “She’ll never bother you again.”

The lampwick was snuffed out, and soon the house was silent. Megan lay on her back, staring into the darkness. Ma hadn’t believed in the gypsy’s curse either, but look what had happened: Da gone, the family scattered. It hadn’t been Ma’s fault. It hadn’t been Mike’s. The bad luck had come from the gypsy through Megan. What if bad luck now came to Emma or Ben?

Megan’s bout of weeping left her too exhausted to struggle with her worries any longer. As calm now as the cool night air after a storm had passed, Megan slid into a dreamless, restful sleep.

I
N THE MORNING
after breakfast Ben pushed back from the table and announced that it was time to make ready to go.

While Ben and Will hitched the horses to the doubletree, Emma and Megan helped Nelda wash dishes and put away the pallets. Thea followed Megan’s every step, staring up at her with big eyes.

Finally she tugged at Megan’s skirt. “Play with me,” she insisted.

Emma smiled over the quilt she was folding and gave a quick nod, so Megan took the little girl’s hand and said, “All right. What would you like to play?”

“Let’s play with my dolls,” Thea said. She led Megan to the corner and opened a box, carefully removing short lengths of twigs, some of which were wrapped in tiny scraps of cloth. “This is the mother, and this is the father, and these are all the little children,” she said, holding them out to Megan. “You be the father, and I’ll be all the rest of them.”

“The mother and a dozen children?”

Thea raised her chin and answered firmly, “I like them the best.”

Megan chuckled, took the father doll, and held him on her lap.

“Well?” Thea said impatiently. “Have him say something.”

Megan self-consciously held up the doll and spoke in a low voice. “Here I am, home again after a long, hard day’s work,” she said. “Where are my dear children?”

Thea shook her head. “The father doesn’t say that. The father hasn’t gone away from home. Don’t you know? He works in the field and comes into the house for his noon dinner.”

“Oh,” Megan said. “I thought this father would carry bricks and build large buildings.”

“What are bricks?”

Megan’s jaw dropped in amazement. Then she laughed. “I guess I have a lot to learn about living on a farm.”

Thea picked up two of her twig dolls and marched them toward Megan’s father doll. “We want to pick berries, Papa, but we promise not to go without Mama and a hoe to kill rattlesnakes.”

“Rattlesnakes!” Megan gasped.

“You know. Sometimes they curl up under the bushes,” Thea explained.

Megan shivered. “I hope I never see a rattlesnake.”

“No,” Thea said. “Mama says, you hope a rattlesnake never sees
you
. Now—it’s your turn again.”

“What should he say?”

Thea scowled. “You’re not very good at playing dolls.”

“I’m sorry,” Megan said. “I never had a doll.”

But Megan felt a hand on her shoulder and looked up
to see Emma. “Time to leave. Get your coat,” Emma said.

Thea scrambled to her feet as Megan stood. “Don’t go,” she said. “We want to play.”

“We’ll soon pay a visit to the Browders,” her mother told her.

“When?”

“When the fall chores have been done. Maybe around Christmastime.”

The door opened wide, and Ben stood in the doorway, almost filling it. “The wagon’s ready. Time to say your good-byes.”

Mrs. Parson ran to the cupboard, pulled open the bottom drawer, and took out a blue flowered sunbonnet. She set the bonnet on Megan’s head and tied the strings under her chin. “A present for you, Megan,” she said. “Oh, my, with your long dark hair, don’t you look pretty!”

The bonnet was like a deep blue tunnel in front and spilled over her neck and shoulders in back. Megan ran the tips of her fingers around the edges of the brim. “Oh,” she stammered, too surprised and excited to speak.

Mrs. Parson cocked her head and studied Megan. “The bonnet’s a little large for you, but it will do.”

“It’s lovely,” Emma said. “What a wonderful gift!”

“I made it for you, Emma,” Mrs. Parson said gently. “It was to be your Christmas gift, but it seems that Megan has a greater need, if she’s going to be riding on that wagon in the sun.” She smiled at Megan. “The sunbonnet will keep away the freckles.”

Megan didn’t mind the smattering of tiny freckles that dotted her nose. If freckles bothered Mrs. Parson, she should meet Mike and Danny! Would she ever see a wild rash of freckles then! Forcing her thoughts back to the present, Megan fingered the bonnet again.
It was a beautiful color, and it was hers. Her very own. Shyly she murmured, “Thank you for the sunbonnet, Mrs. Parson.” She wished she had a mirror so she could see what she looked like.

There was a last flurry of good-byes before Ben guided Jay and Jimbo onto the road. The morning was soft with mist that clung to the hills, silvered by the early light, and from each side birds rose and soared high. Their long trilling songs sounded to Megan almost like cries of joy.

With the sunbonnet on, Megan could only see straight ahead. She turned her head from left to right and back again as she tried not to miss a thing.

“Those are meadowlarks,” Ben said. “Did you see them?”

“Two of them,” Megan answered. She loosened the ties of her sunbonnet and let it hang at her back, feeling the cool morning air prickling her cheeks. She gave a contented sigh. The shivering grasses through which they passed spread out before her into the horizon and, as the sun began to burn off the mists, clumps of goldenrod gleamed brightly beside the road, reflecting the light.

Megan suddenly became aware that Emma was watching her, a twinkle in her eyes, and she fumbled with the sunbonnet, trying to pull it back over her hair.

Emma placed a hand on Megan’s. “The sun’s not yet high, so let the bonnet be for a while,” she said. “Nelda still has some of the notions she was brought up with in Virginia, one of them being that ladies must have white, unblemished skins.”

“You wear a sunbonnet,” Megan said.

“That I do, because I sunburn easily. You probably will, too, and in that case you’ll be glad of the bonnet.”

“I took it off because there was so much to see,” Megan said.

Emma smiled. “Do you find the prairie beautiful?”

“Yes, I do.”

Emma’s face flushed with joy and excitement. “I’m so glad that you like the prairie! You’ll discover so many wonderful things about it. It’s different and beautiful with each season of the year. It even changes with the time of day.”

Megan peered at the rippling long grass as though trying to see through it. “Thea said there were snakes.”

“Oh, dear,” Emma murmured.

Ben spoke up. “There are snakes, yes. But you’ll learn about them. You’ll find plenty of the small, harmless garter snakes, and you’ll learn to be cautious of the rattlesnakes, which are poisonous and deadly.”

“Now, Ben,” Emma began, “you mustn’t frighten Megan.”

But Ben looked at Megan carefully. “I think that Megan’s one to face facts, and the fact is that out on the land we do watch for rattlers.”

“I’ve never met up with a snake,” Megan said, “but my brother Mike once showed me a drawing of a fearful big snake. He said it swallowed people.”

Ben chuckled. “Brothers have a way of making their stories more exciting than they should be. No, rattlesnakes don’t swallow people, but they do strike at them and bite them, and there is venom in their bite that makes people sicken and die. I’ll teach you what rattlers look like and how to listen for their warning rattle.”

“That’s fine to know,” Megan said, “but you had better tell me what to do next, too.”

“Well, that’s easy. You get out of the snake’s way or kill it.”

“How do you kill it? Thea said something about a hoe. Is that something to kill rattlesnakes with?”

“Good gracious,” Emma said. “All this talk about snakes.
Wouldn’t you rather talk about something else for a while?”

Megan shook her head. “I would rather talk about
anything
else, but only after I’ve learned how to kill rattlesnakes.”

“Very well,” Ben said. “A hoe is a metal blade attached to a long wooden handle. It’s used to break up the soil in the garden and to tear up weeds. You can also raise it high in the air and bring it down hard on a rattlesnake, aiming—if possible—right behind its head.”

“Will the hoe cut off its head?”

“Usually.”

Megan shuddered at the mental image Ben’s words called up, but what he said made good sense. “All right,” she said. “Now we can talk about something else.”

Ben chuckled. “You’re the kind of woman who’ll turn this wild prairie into good farmland.”

“Megan’s a treasure,” Emma said. “We’re so lucky to have her!”

Lucky?
The gypsy cackled slyly in Megan’s mind. Megan shivered and pushed the thought away, hoping that Emma hadn’t noticed her distress.

“Let me tell you about your new home,” Emma said. “We began in a house dug into the side of a hill. You’ll see many houses like that with families living in them. But now we have a house of logs.”

“Like the Parsons’ house?”

“Like it, but larger. We have a big room for living—a parlor and kitchen combined—and we have two bedrooms on the side, with a front door in the parlor and a back door in the kitchen area.” Emma smiled at Ben with pride. “Ben built most of it himself, with a little help from a near neighbor in putting on the roof.”

“Emma did much of the caulking,” Ben said. He glanced
at Megan. “Caulking means stuffing all the gaps and chinks between the logs with wet clay to keep out the cold and the winds.”

Emma sighed. “There’ve been droughts that hurt many of the farmers, especially in the western part of the territory, so I feel we’ve been very lucky to have good healthy crops of corn for the past two years. We’ve been able to put real glass in our windows. And we have a well, so we don’t have to carry water from the river.”

“Didn’t you need water to grow the corn?” Megan interrupted.

Again Emma glanced proudly at Ben. “Any crop needs water. Luckily some of our land is high and dry and some of it is fine bottomland near the river. Ben planted the cornfield on the bottomland, then dug a canal to bring river water to the cornfield. Ben is very clever.”

“Why doesn’t everyone live by the river?” Megan asked.

“Because of the mosquitoes, which swarm near the water and carry disease,” Ben said. “Also, if the weather were to change and it rained hard enough and the river rose high enough, a flood could take the house. That’s why our house is on a rise, a distance from the river.”

“You could lose the cornfield if the river flooded.”

“That’s true. We have to take some chances.”

Megan thought a moment and said, “It seems that you’d never be sure whether you’d have good crops or not.”

“Maybe you should put your mind to the problem. I’d be ready to listen to good advice,” Ben said.

His grin was teasing, and Megan smiled back, but Emma said firmly, “Megan, I haven’t told you about the room where you’ll sleep. There’s a trundle bed in it, with a quilt pieced in a wedding ring pattern, all blues and reds. My mother made it for me when I was a child.” She
gave a little bounce of excitement. “I know! We’ll plant sunflower seeds under your window. Have you ever seen a sunflower?”

Megan shook her head, and Emma said, “Sunflowers grow wild in Kansas during the summer. They’re tall, with gold faces the size of dinner plates. When you wake each morning you’ll see them shining in at you like a row of bright suns.”

In the distance Megan saw a small group of people coming in their direction. There were two men on horseback, and there was something dragging on the ground behind one of the horses. Other people walked beside the horses. Their clothing was strange, and as they came closer Megan could see that two of them were wrapped in blankets. The black hair, the dark skin—Megan gasped and clutched Emma’s arm. “Indians!” she whispered. Mike had enjoyed terrifying the younger children with bone-chilling tales of Indian massacres. Megan had known that Indians lived out West, but she had never expected to see real Indians up close.