Prairie Fire
A Town Called Hope
•
Book 2
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Prairie Fire
Copyright © 1998 by Catherine Palmer. All rights reserved.
Cover photograph of wood panel copyright © by Getty Images. All rights reserved.
Cover illustration copyright © 2004 by Robert Hunt. All rights reserved.
Designed by Rule 29
Edited by Kathryn S. Olson
Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible, King James Version.
Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publishers.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Palmer, Catherine, date
Prairie fire / Catherine Palmer.
p. cm.—(A town called Hope ; #2)
ISBN 0-8423-7057-9 (softcover)
I. Title. II. Series: Palmer, Catherine, date Town called Hope ; #2.
PS3566.A495P65 1998
813'.54—dc21 98-19977
New repackage first published in 2009 under ISBN 978-1-4143-3158-4.
Printed in the United States of America
15 14 13 12 11 10 09
7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Sharon Buchanan-McClure,
my friend
I have come to bring fire to the earth… . From now on families
will be split apart, three in favor of me, and two against—or the
other way around. There will be a division between father and son,
mother and daughter, mother-in-law and daughter-in-law.
Luke 12:49, 52-53,
NLT
When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be
burned up; the flames will not consume you. For I am the Lord,
your God… . You are precious to me. You are honored, and
I love you.
Isaiah 43:2-4,
NLT
Contents
Hope, Kansas
October 1865
T
HERE’S not a good heart among those folks,” Jack Cornwall muttered as he led his horse across the bridge away from Hope. “Not a one.”
With icy claws of pain gripping his wounded shoulder, Jack staggered down the road that would take him to Topeka. A chill wind whistled eastward across the Kansas prairie. He swung around and glared into the night, as if by sheer willpower he could intimidate the coming storm into retreat. Heedless, a frigid gust whipped beneath his lapels and ballooned his battered leather jacket.
Gritting his teeth, Jack stopped and bent over, fighting nausea. The stallion edged forward to nuzzle his master’s neck with a velvet nose. A low snuffling conveyed the creature’s unease at this midnight journey. Jack ran a hand down the coarse mane as he fought the reality that assailed him.
He had lost everything he’d ever fought for, everything he’d ever loved. His home. The Cornwall family farm. His sister Mary. Five of the men in his battalion—including his closest friend. The Confederacy and its goal of a new and vital nation. And now his little nephew, Chipper.
The darkness surrounding the man swirled through his thoughts. Hunger twisted his stomach. Thirst parched his tongue. If he blacked out now—here—far from warmth, he might never make it back to his parents’ home in Missouri. He tugged on Scratch’s reins. The horse needed shelter from the autumn wind. They both craved decent food and a place to rest. But where?
The prairie dwellers who had dug their homes out of the Kansas sod despised Jack, and even now he tasted their hatred in the blood on his tongue. Earlier that evening the residents of Hope had gathered to cheer their neighbor Seth Hunter in the fistfight. The outcome ended any chance Jack had of taking Chipper back to Missouri. With his jaw nearly busted and his shoulder half-torn apart, Jack had been forced to surrender. The crowd had parted, watched him pass, and then clamored around Seth with whoops of victory.
“Ah, forget the whole confounded bunch of ’em,” Jack snarled. Then he gave a bitter laugh. “
Hope
. Yeah, sure.”
A short distance down the road, a soddy formed a low hump in the endless, bleak stretch of tall prairie grass. Jack knew from hearsay that the homesteaders Jimmy O’Toole and his wife, Sheena, were his enemy Hunter’s close friends, and this evening they were away at the dance. He doubted they would permit him to spend a night at their place. Not only were they loyal to their neighbor, but the O’Tooles lived with a passel of kids and relatives in the little soddy. The crowd itself would make a visitor unwelcome.
Jack snorted at the thought of the O’Toole family. Bunch of Irish street rats. Street rats turned prairie dogs. The image amused him, but his grin sent a stabbing pain through his jaw. Had Hunter broken the bone after all? Jack prodded the muscle and sinew beneath his roughly whiskered skin. Nah, it wasn’t busted. Bruised, though. He’d be surprised if he didn’t lose a tooth or two.
Checking his shoulder, Jack discovered that the bullet wound he’d suffered two months before had torn open during the fistfight. With all the travel he’d been doing, the blasted thing had never had a chance to heal right. Now blood seeped through his shirt and made his fingers sticky.
“Scratch,” he said, eyeing the ramshackle barn near the soddy, “like it or not, the O’Tooles are fixing to have company. If you promise to keep quiet, I’ll fetch you some fresh water and maybe even a few oats.”
It didn’t take Jack long to slip into Jimmy O’Toole’s barn, tend to the horse, and locate a pile of hay in a back corner. He had half a mind to raid the nearby soddy for food, but he and his Confederate vigilante buddies had already run into trouble with the law. He didn’t like the idea of landing himself in a Kansas jail. Bad enough to trespass into somebody’s barn—he’d already been doing a good bit of that during the months of tracking his nephew. But busting into their house and taking their food was another matter. Yankee soldiers once had pillaged his home. Jack Cornwall would never sink so low.
He pried off his boots, stretched out on the hay, and shut his eyes. His shoulder burned like fire. If the injury didn’t heal right, what would it mean to his dream of starting a blacksmithing business? How would he be able to work … take care of his parents … take care of Lucy … sweet, gray-eyed Lucy … ?
“I never saw such a
ballyhooly
in all my life,” a woman’s voice announced suddenly in the darkness—barely fifteen feet from where Jack lay. “Did you, Erinn? Now tell me the truth.”
Jack stiffened and reached for his pistol.
“We all expected the fight.” The second voice was much younger. A little girl. “All summer that wicked Jack Cornwall has been trying to make off with Chipper. Mama said Mr. Cornwall followed our Seth and Rosie the whole way from Missouri, so he did.”
“Bad as Mr. Cornwall may be,” the woman said, “we’re to follow the good Lord’s example of forgiveness. Jesus spent many hours in the company of the wicked, and his compassion helped them see the error of their ways. He never turned his back on a person, no matter how evil—and neither should we.”
“If you turn your back on Jack Cornwall, he’s likely to shoot you in it!”
“Aye, I can’t deny ’tis a good thing he’s gone.”
So the O’Tooles had returned from the celebration. Jack had been expecting them, of course, but not in the barn. Not tonight. The family lived so close to the Hunter homestead they could have walked the short distance with ease. So what business did these two females have wandering around in the black night with not even a lantern between them?
“Shall I fetch a lamp from the soddy, Auntie Caitrin?” the younger girl asked. “It’s so dark in here.”
Jack shook his head.
No. Say no.
“Yes, indeed,” Caitrin said brightly. “I thought the moon would be enough to see by, but that wind has brought in too many clouds. You and I might be out in the barn all night fumbling with the latches on my trunk.”