Prairie Fire (15 page)

The three men stared at Jack.

“My wife tells me you’re a Confederate,” Jimmy spoke up. “Kansas is an abolitionist state, so it is.”

“And the war is over,” Jack replied.

“You’d better not set your eyes on any of our women.”

“Jimmy!” Caitrin cried. “What a thing to say. We shall include Mr. Cornwall as one of us, just as Christ welcomed all men into his presence.”

“Sheena is say you haf crazy woman here bringen.” Now Rolf addressed Jack. “Vit chains. Maybe she is hurting children. Maybe killing.”

“Lucy is my sister,” Jack said. He squared his shoulders. “She will not hurt the children. She loves children. She … she trusts them.”

Jimmy gave a snort. “Perhaps, but she’s Cornish—as are her mother and brother. I lived my early life in Ireland, and I’ve run into your kind many a time. We’re growin’ into a good little village, so we are, with a church and even talk of a school. There’ll be no Cornish tricks goin’ on about the town of Hope, let me tell you that. Sure, the first time you cheat somebody or tell a lie or make any trouble—”

“Do you expect the man to be perfect, then, Jimmy O’Toole?” Caitrin asked. “The last time I read the Holy Scriptures, I saw there was only one man perfect in all history. And the likes of us managed to kill him on a cross. Nay, Mr. Cornwall won’t be perfect every minute, nor will you. All he’s asked for is a chance. Will you not give him that much?”

“If his crazy sister comes anywhere near my
brablins
—”

“If you so much as lay a finger on Chipper, Cornwall—”

“If you haf plan to hurt anybody here—”

“Oh, it’s the Welcoming Committee!” Rosie cried, dancing into the midst of the three men and slipping her arm around Seth’s elbow. “We used to have a Welcoming Committee in Kansas City. When I lived at the Christian Home for Orphans and Foundlings, I’d see the committee sometimes after I’d climbed up into the big oak tree to pray. Come to think of it, that old tree is where I met Seth, isn’t it, honey? And Mr. Cornwall, too, as a matter of fact. Anyway, sometimes when I was up in the tree, I’d see the Welcoming Committee marching down the street to visit the newest family in town. Five or six women in their Sunday best would take along baskets of fresh bread and candy treats for the children. All the businesses would donate gifts in order to introduce themselves to the newcomers. Well, now that’s a grand idea! Mr. Cornwall, would you take your family a little something … a little …” She looked around the store.

“Eggs,” Caitrin said, sweeping the basket off the counter. “Take these eggs to your mother as a welcoming gift.”

“Thank you, Miss Murphy.” Eyeing the men who stood gaping in the doorway, Jack accepted the basket.

“And you must present your sister with this brush and mirror,”

Caitrin added, laying the gifts on the eggs. “Tell the family they must come to tea tomorrow here at the mercantile. Isn’t that right, Welcoming Committee?”

Seth cleared his throat. Jimmy shifted from one foot to the other. Rolf stuck his hand in his pocket.

“My mother enjoys a good afternoon tea,” Jack said to Caitrin. “But I might ask Lucy to stay at the camp. Sometimes she’s a little uncomfortable around strangers.”

“That would be fine,” Caitrin said. “Wouldn’t it, Rosie?”

Rosie smiled. “Yes, that would be fine. Wouldn’t it, Seth?”

When he didn’t answer, she jabbed her elbow into his side.

“Uh, yeah, I reckon,” he said. “Welcome to Hope.”

CHAPTER 8

C
AITRIN sat beside the stove in the half-empty soddy and tried to think about wallpaper. Stripes. Flowers. Ivy. She would need a bucket, thick white paste, a brush. Scissors, too. She would start papering beside the front door and …

“Oh, this is hopeless!” She slapped her hands on her knees and stood. “I’ll never make paper stick to these sod walls. Brown, ugly sod walls with grass roots growing right into my sitting room!”

Night had fallen, but the dim light cast by the oil lamp on the table revealed all but the darkest corners of Seth Hunter’s old soddy—Caitrin Murphy’s new home. Choking down tears, she stormed to the front door.

“Leather hinges,” she said. “Dear God, why have you given me leather hinges? And no windowpanes! Couldn’t I at least have glass windowpanes instead of this—this ridiculous half-rotted gauze?”

She hung her head. Was it wrong to shout at God? Was it wrong to moan and complain when she was blessed with her own warm home, loving relatives, and honest work to do each day? Shouldn’t she be singing praises on this moonlit night?

“Spiders!” she cried, stomping the small black insect that scurried in front of her foot. “I hate spiders! Dear Father, why have you given me spiders and blacksnakes and prairie dogs? I wanted heather, bracken, sandy shores, and fishing boats. I wanted Ireland. I wanted Sean O’Casey! And now I must live out my life as a spinster shopkeeper on this freezing, blistering, grasshopper-infested plain with hardly a stick of furniture but this broken chair!”

She picked up the rickety chair and shoved it under a table Seth Hunter had built long ago. The end of one table leg had been chewed to splinters by Stubby, the Hunters’ enormous mongrel dog. As the table wobbled back and forth, the lamplight flickered.

“Yes, I know they’re only worldly goods,” she said into the hollow room. “But, God, you created me, and you know the kind of woman I am. I adore lovely things! I dream of castles and ivy-covered walls. I want silk pillows and Persian carpets. At the very least, I should like a set of dishes that match!”

Picking up a chipped white plate with a central rose bouquet that had been half-scoured away, she searched for her reflection. She could make out nothing but the thousand scratches where knives had cut into meat or bread through the porcelain’s glaze. She turned the plate over, hoping to find the insignia of a pottery in some exotic city. Perhaps it had been painted and kiln-fired in Staffordshire, Paris, or Japan.

“Ohio.” She ran her finger over the raised, knobby letters on the back. Then she peered closer to discover that someone had misspelled the marking to read,
Mad in Ohio.

“Oh, I just hate this!” Caitrin cried. “Shabby!”

She hurled the plate at the sod wall. The puff of dust, the burst of breaking porcelain, and the tinkle of falling shards were followed by a soft knock on the door.
Oh no!
Caitrin clapped her hands over her cheeks and realized they were damp.

“Caitrin?” It was Rosie’s voice.

“One moment.” Caitrin dabbed her eyes with the corner of her apron. She toed the bits of shattered plate into a pile and set a basket on top of them. Then she tucked a strand of hair back into her bun.

“Rose Hunter, what are you doing out and about after dark?”

Caitrin asked as she opened the door. “And in your condition! Do come inside at once. Does Seth know you’re here?”

“He and some of the other men are meeting over at the mercantile.” Hand in hand, Rosie and Chipper walked into the soddy.

Stubby followed, his great tail thumping into Rosie’s long, blue-gingham skirt.

“Looks different around here,” Chipper said, surveying the soddy. “You don’t gots very much furniture, do ya, Miss Murphy?”

“Not a great deal.” Caitrin chewed on her lower lip as she followed the boy’s gaze around her new home. Just as she feared, his eyes went straight to the basket perched atilt on the pile of plate shards. He and Stubby set off to investigate.

“It’s broken glass,” she warned.

“Oh no, it’s that beautiful plate I left here for you!” Rosie hurried to Chipper’s side and knelt beside the fragments. “This was my favorite of all the plates we had. Did you notice there were three roses in the center, Caitie? The one on the left was a bud, and the one on the right had just begun to unfold. But the rose in the middle—bright, glorious pink! Petals like velvet! Every time I washed this plate, I was sure I could smell that precious rose.”

Caitrin sank onto her chair and rested an elbow on the rickety table. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled.

“It’s not your fault. Heaven knows I’ve let plates slip through my fingers before.” Rosie pulled a stool to the table. “One time back at the home in Kansas City I was washing a teacup. It was the only cup I had … and almost the only possession I had, other than my bonnet that blew away last year in a storm. I had discovered the teacup lying in the neighbors’ trash with just a little chip out of the rim. You know how people are so careless about what they throw away? There was no saucer, but oh, that cup was beautiful! It had been painted a pale, pale green with purple violets on the side. Anyway, wouldn’t you know? I had covered the cup with soap, and it slid right out of my hand—
crash
—into the basin. The handle broke off. There were just two little nubs sticking out, so you couldn’t hold it anymore without burning your fingers, but—”

“I threw the plate,” Caitrin whispered.

“Threw it?” Rosie repeated loudly.

Chipper turned around, his blue eyes wide. “How come you threw Mama’s good plate?”

“I was … I was angry.” She wished she could crawl under the table. “I’m very sorry. It was the wrong thing to do. I’m afraid I got carried away shouting at God about my terrible lot in life. Such a dreadful thing to do after all the blessings he’s given me.”

“Nobody should shout at God,” Chipper said.

“I’m not sure of that,” Rosie said. “God is our Father. Every moment of every day, he knows exactly how we feel inside, what we’re thinking, what we want, and what we need. It won’t do any good pretending you’re not mad if you’re really seething. You’ll never fool God. You might as well go ahead and tell him exactly what you think.”

“But yellin’ and throwin’ plates?” Chipper asked. “That ain’t good.”

“The Bible tells us the Spirit prays for us in groanings that can’t be expressed in words.
Groanings
… that’s the very thing it says. And we know that Jesus prayed with such agony in the garden that he sweated great drops of blood. So if groaning and sweating blood are perfectly acceptable ways to talk to God, I don’t see what’s wrong with a little shouting and plate throwing.”

Chipper laughed, and Caitrin couldn’t hold back her grin. “Maybe all my ranting at the good Lord caused him to send you two along tonight,” she said, laying her hand on her friend’s arm. “I’m glad of your company.”

Rosie’s face broke into a smile. “I’ve been so excited about the baby, I just can’t stop chattering. What do you think of Lavinia?”

Caitrin blinked. “Who’s that?”

“It’s the name of our new baby,” Chipper said, crawling into his mother’s lap. “Let’s see, we gots lotsa names already. Lavinia and Priscilla and Vanilla—”

“Valerie!” Rosie said with a chuckle. She kissed Chipper on the cheek. “There’s something so beautiful about the name Lavinia, don’t you think, Caitie? It just rolls right off the tongue.”

“I want a brother,” the little boy announced, “an’ I don’t want him to be named Lavinia.”

“Lavinia is a girl’s name, silly. Oh, Caitrin, I’m just praying every moment for this baby. I so want her to be healthy. And why are you throwing plates?”

The change in subject caught Caitrin by surprise. “Because Jack Cornwall came back,” she blurted, which wasn’t at all why she believed she’d thrown the plate. “No, that’s not it. It’s really the wallpaper. And the table is wobbly, and the chair is rickety, and I don’t know how Jack is ever going to fit in. Poor Lucy in chains. You should have heard Sheena! I could have stuffed a sock into her mouth. She was shouting
Cornish this
and
Cornish
that
, hitting Jack on the arm with her basket. Then, in came Mrs. Cornwall talking about Irish infestations. Jack said that some former colleague is still trying to take him to court, and I gave poor Lucy a comb and brush, but it’s not going to help at all!”

“Is she bald-headed?” Chipper asked.

“No!” Caitrin exploded, pushing back her chair and standing. “Of course she isn’t bald-headed.”

“Hide the plates!” Chipper shouted. “She’s gonna start throwin’ ’em again.”

“Caitrin?” Rosie tugged on her friend’s hand. “Do you remember what you told me to pray for last fall? You said, ‘If you wish to pray about Jack, Rosie, pray for his soul.’ You asked me to pray that the Spirit of God would fill Jack’s heart. You wanted me to pray for his family and his safety. And last of all, you asked me to pray that Jack would find a good woman who has the courage to love him as he deserves. Do you remember that?”

Caitrin slumped into the chair again. “Aye. I’ve prayed for him myself. But what hope does a man like that have to make a fresh start of his life?”

“Hope is the very name of our town, Caitie! If Jack Cornwall can’t find hope here, where can he find it?”

“But how can he have hope if he must keep his sister in chains, Rosie?”

“Paul and Silas were put in chains. That didn’t stop God’s love from touching them.”

“Perhaps, but can Jack ever hope the people here will love him? You know the trouble he’s caused.”

“Folks will just have to forgive Jack’s past and open their hearts to his family.”

“But there’s not a chance Jimmy and Sheena will accept the Cornwalls. Their Irish pride is so strong, and Jack’s mother is thoroughly Cornish.”

“And I’m a foundling from a livery stable.” Rosie smiled, an inner triumph lighting her huge brown eyes. “I used to hate admitting that, but now I know it doesn’t matter where we come from, Caitie. In time, people learn to look beyond such things. Folks around here have learned to love me, and they’ll love the Cornwalls, too.”

“Even if Jack can overcome all those things, a man is trying to find him and take him back to Missouri. He’s being tracked.”

“Uncle Jack tracked
me
,” Chipper put in. “An’ he found me. Now he’s gonna live here with us. And Gram is, too. So maybe trackin’ ain’t all bad. I can’t wait to see Gram tomorrow. Mama said she’d take me down to their camp first thing.”

“It’s going to be all right, Caitie.” Rosie gave her friend’s fingers a squeeze. “If God could create the miracle of life inside me, what can’t he do?”

“You hear that, Laviliva?” Chipper said, his mouth against the soft apron around Rosie’s waist. “Mama says you’re a miracle.”