The Accidental Guardian

by Mary Connealy

  “It’s kinda a wild man covered with hair. Heard it called Sasquatch. Bigfoot. A wild man. I described it to the tribe, and the Cayuse called it Ts’emekwe. They said they lived in the highest hills and fought shy of people. Pretty sure I saw one. And I once shot a buffalo, cut it open, and slept inside it to survive a blizzard. That was almighty strange.” Utah passed Trace and went to build up the fire.

  Trace shook his head to knock loose the image of a wild man covered with hair living inside a buffalo, then set the flour and other supplies on the small table beside the things Deb had carried.

  From where he knelt by the fire, Utah said, “I’ll start building a new house today.”

  Deb gasped and turned from Utah to Trace. “You don’t have to do that. Not for us. Trace, you and your men have already done so much.”

  “We were planning on building in the spring, miss,” Utah said. “But now that you’re here, we decided to get on with it and hope the weather holds until we can get the roof on. When I got back from the drive, I decided to talk Trace into building now anyway. I didn’t want to sleep in here all winter. So I reckon we’ll build two houses if we get the time.”

  Deb looked bewildered. “Two houses?”

  Trace nodded. “And I need you to write a letter.”

  He saw Deb’s eyes light up. “To Maddie Sue’s pa, you mean? You can mail a letter?”

  “Yep, Adam’ll make a trip to Dismal, the nearest post office. Three hours on a fast horse, one way. So he wants to get moving.”

  “That’s wonderful. Where can I find paper and a pencil?”

  Trace stopped in his tracks. “Uh, don’t you have that?”

  CHAPTER

  10

  Deb had spent her whole life writing. Well, about all of it she could remember, anyway. She’d started fetching and carrying for Ma at the newspaper since before she went to school.

  Then she got a few years in school until Pa saw she was writing and reading well, and he brought her home to help Ma with the paper. She still studied at home some, using Gwen’s books, and managed to get to school enough to keep passing through the grades, but mostly she’d worked at the newspaper. With the writing and the bill paying it’d been a fine education of reading and writing and arithmetic. But never before in her life had she wondered how to find a piece of paper.

  “No, I don’t have any.” She thought of the bag she carried with so many supplies in it. She’d never considered adding paper and a pencil. “There was paper and such in the wagon, but it all went up in flames.”

  Trace’s brow furrowed, and he snapped his fingers. “I know where I have a piece of paper. No pencil, but maybe one of my men has one.” He turned to the fireplace. “Utah, have you got such as a pencil or a pen and ink among your things?”

  “I can’t read nor write, Trace. I have no need to carry those around.”

  “Well, can you go ask Adam? Though I doubt he has any. He’s been here four years, and I’ve never seen such things.”

  “Maybe you can write with a bit of charcoal,” Utah said. “I seen it done once.”

  “Or we could burn a pointed stick and use that. Okay. Go check with Adam just in case.”

  Utah headed outside.

  “I’ll get breakfast started,” Gwen said. She began bustling around the table, taking steady glances at the children.

  Trace went to a corner in the cabin, a square space formed where the head of one bed touched the foot of another. There was a gap, and Deb saw there was a trunk of some kind back there hidden in the shadows cast by the cabin’s single lantern.

  Trace bent down and lifted the whole box. Not that big, a couple of feet high and deep and wide, but Trace’s muscles bulged as if it was heavy. He set it on the bed, flipped a latch, and swung the lid open with a rusty squeak.

  Deb saw the trunk was full of . . . “Books. Is that full of books?”

  “Yep. I’ve hung on to every one I’ve ever gotten hold of.”

  There was a Bible on top. A strangely battered Bible that looked as if it’d been burned around the edges. Deb frowned. She hated to see a Bible treated so poorly.

  Trace pulled out one book after another. She saw a thick book of Shakespeare’s plays. A book by Plutarch and another by Plato. Charles Dickens and, of all things, a copy of her favorite book ever, Robinson Crusoe.

  “Have you read them?”

  “Yep, over and over. Adam too. I’ll get Utah to readin’ by the time winter is over. It helps pass long days when we can barely move in the snow.” Trace turned a copy of Ben Franklin’s autobiography over in his hands.

  Deb had never in her life had time to just sit and read. Oh, she’d done it some—she’d managed to finish Robinson Crusoe, and she knew the Bible pretty well, which Ma had read to them every night. Deb had loved it, but there was always work. Long hours, all spent writing her own words and setting up the press and cranking out copies and selling them on the street, then writing out bills and collecting payments. All she knew of words was work. But how she’d dreamed of long stretches of time and a book in her hand.

  “If we are to stay here all winter, do you think I might be able to read some of your books?”

  Trace smiled as he continued to empty the box. “I’d be proud to share them with you, Deb. Gwen too, and you can read to the children.”

  He turned to the back of the book, to the last page. “It’s blank.” He held it up for her. “We can use this for paper.”

  “You know all these books well enough to know one of them has one blank page in the back?”

  Trace’s hand tightened on the book. “It feels wrong to tear it up. But this page serves no purpose, does it?”

  He looked hopefully at her, as if asking her to approve of what he wanted to do.

  “It does seem wrong to tear up a book. You’re sure there’s no paper?”

  Trace’s eyes fixed on something, as if sorting through everything he owned. “Wait, I think some of the supplies from Sacramento were wrapped in paper.” His whole face lit up.

  “I’ll go search the cellar.” He set the book down and ran out. A man eager to protect a book. How had the Bible been so badly abused, then?

  Deb ran one finger over the last book he’d held, the one with a single blank page. “Robinson Crusoe. Can you imagine finding a copy here in the high-up mountains between Nevada and California?”

  “I’ve never had time for much reading,” Gwen said. “But I would purely love a chance at a book and some stretch of quiet to linger over it.”

  Maddie Sue shrieked and wrestled with poor, patient Wolf. Deb wondered if quiet would ever really exist.

  “Maybe we can spend this winter reading aloud to each other, taking turns.” Gwen rescued the dog and set Maddie Sue to playing with Ronnie. “We can rock the children to sleep and read a chapter each night. And add a bit of Bible reading, too. Maybe we can work our way through a lot of them.”

  “It sounds blissful.” Deb looked around the tiny cabin. “And keeping this place tidy shouldn’t take up much time, now, should it?”

  “I hope they don’t build us a big house.” Gwen went to work on breakfast. Back east she’d done most of the household chores while Deb ran the paper, and she was a fine cook. “We’ll have to clean it.”

  “Let’s make sure they don’t think we need a lot of space. Of course, the cabin is for Trace and his men, so maybe they want more room.”

  “Not if they’ve been putting up with this little wreck of a cabin for years. I don’t think we need to worry on that score.” Gwen stirred up pancake batter.

  “But two houses? One for us, one for them?”

  “They don’t want to spend the winter in here, either.”

  “Even though they’ve lived here a long time?” With a shrug, Deb found a skillet among the supplies she’d scavenged from the wagon train. Trace had one too, but this one was bigger, and they had a lot of food to make. She got to work on the bacon, and soon they had a meal cooking along.

  Tra
ce came back with a small can wrapped in paper. “You can write your letter on this, and Adam said he’s got a pencil. He went to fetch it.”

  He sniffed. “That smells great.”

  “Pancakes and bacon. And there’ll be fried eggs in a few minutes. Grab a plate and start eating. We found four plates, so you men eat and we’ll feed the little ones, and then we’ll wash up a couple of the plates and eat ourselves.”

  Utah came in the door with a milk pail. Deb had him figured out: the man planning to lead the building. Next came Adam, the stub of a pencil in his hand. He had the fast horse, and he carried a tin basin full of eggs. Deb needed to get that pencil and unwrap the canister, then figure out where to send this letter. She’d looked through the papers she saved and hadn’t found much.

  “Maddie Sue, what’s your pa’s name?” Abe had talked of his brother a lot. Abe was proud of him for fighting in the war and heading west and finding them land. But his name . . . Deb was having trouble remembering it right now.

  “It’s Pa.” Maddie Sue blinked her eyes at Deb as if the question scared her.

  “It’s Cameron, remember, Deb?” Gwen said. “Ronnie is named for him. Cameron Scott.”

  “That’s right. And what town would you say he lives in?” Deb searched her mind.

  Gwen stopped, and Deb could actually see her thinking.

  “We were to ride about another ten days on that highland trail.” Gwen looked at Trace. “What town would you say that leads to?”

  Trace shrugged. “Sacramento is more straight west, not sure what’s to the south.”

  “It was definitely in California. The town was named Fern, I think,” Gwen said. “No, that doesn’t sound quite right. Abe said his brother Cameron had a nice payout when he left the cavalry, and his sister earned good money too and had saved it faithfully. They homesteaded some farmland with plans for Abe to get more.”

  Trace said, “Never heard of Fern, California. But then I’ve hardly left this area before our cattle drive to Sacramento.”

  “I think it was Fen, not Fern. Fen Canyon,” Deb said uncertainly.

  Gwen brightened. “Fen Canyon. That sounds more like it.”

  Utah said, “I heard tell of a Fenler Canyon. Could that be it?”

  Deb and Gwen looked at each other.

  Finally Gwen said, “I think that’s right. I remember. I saw it on an envelope. I think that’s the only time I even heard the Scotts speak of the town. But then we’d never planned to stay with them so maybe I just didn’t listen. They mentioned grandparents, too. I’ll send two letters. Deb and I were heading on to San Francisco to start a newspaper.”

  “A newspaper? Two women?” Utah sounded well and truly shocked.

  Deb rather enjoyed surprising people.

  “I worked at my pa’s newspaper back east, and by the time he died, I was running it myself.” Truth was, she’d run it herself ever since Ma died, but she wouldn’t bother to talk about that right now.

  “I don’t have a printing press. We sold everything when we headed west.” For no money, because Pa had creditors who took nearly every penny. Another thing Deb didn’t bother to mention.

  “But I hope to get a job working at a newspaper and save up until I can afford to start my own,” Deb said. “Can Adam buy more paper when he’s in Dismal? I have a few coins, so I can pay for it.”

  The Scotts had a cache of money, but that belonged to the children. “I should write letters to the families of all the people who died. I know their names and where they’re from. I’m not sure if they had kin back home, but I found a few things among the wagons that can be sent back if we can find out where to send them. And there are some salvaged papers I have only flipped through while looking for Cameron Scott’s address. Even if the letters don’t go out until spring, they need to be mailed at some point.”

  “I’ll pick up paper and another pencil, Miss Deb.” Adam ate his pancake, sitting on the side of a bed. There was a table in the little cabin, but Gwen had used it for a work place, and a bowl of pancake batter sat there as she poured new cakes onto the skillet, red hot in the fireplace, flipped them, and then served them. The men had been roughing it here. Deb wondered if Utah knew how to build furniture as well as houses. She’d certainly appreciate a chair to go with the table.

  She decided to wait and ask after the house was done for fear she’d sound unappreciative, when in fact she was anything but. She knew full well she owed these men her very life.

  Deb wrote the letter to Cameron Scott, hopefully in Fenler Canyon, California, with as much compassion as she could muster. She hated to put the words on paper telling of Abe and Delia’s deaths. She’d worked with words all her life and did her best to be as kind as possible in her limited space. Trace got a second piece of paper he’d found in his cellar, to send a letter to Edmond and Florence Chilton, Ronnie’s grandparents. She hoped telling the man and the grandparents that the two children had survived would soften the blow.

  She handed the letter to Adam, with Cameron Scott’s name and Fenler Canyon as an address. But since the mountain trails were about to snow closed, it wouldn’t matter if the letters got out or not. No one was getting in here to collect the children before spring.

  With a pang, Deb looked at the little ones and knew that if it didn’t work out for Cameron Scott or the Chiltons to come, she’d gladly take the children. She and Gwen could raise them as their own.

  Deb got to work feeding the men. As she fried and served, she was reminded that one thing she vowed to herself when she’d come west was that she was going to work for herself. After years of working for Pa, she had promised herself that she’d work to build something for her and Gwen rather than serving an ungrateful man. It bothered her a bit to be right back to serving.

  “Miss Deb, Miss Gwen,” Adam said, handing Deb his plate, “I will try and buy more plates while I’m in town, too. It ain’t right for you to work so hard feeding us and then have to wait until we’re finished to eat yourself. I thank you for your gracious patience. You’re fine women. And it was as fine a meal as I’ve had since I sat at my ma’s table and that’s near ten years ago.”

  His voice almost throbbed with sincerity, and his eyes shone with gratitude. “Now I’d best get on the trail.”

  The kind words were so sweet to her ears, Deb took a moment to fight down tears. When she was able, she found the money in her bag. “Can you buy some fabric too, Adam? I think this is enough money. We don’t have a stitch of clothing beyond what’s on our backs, though there might be a piece or two of clothing in my bag for Ronnie, and there was one spare diaper. We’ll need the diaper cloth more than anything else. Flannel if at all possible.”

  Adam froze, his hand extended for the money. “Diaper flannel?”

  Her tears forgotten, Deb bit back a smile as she dropped the coins in his hand. “Yes, please. And probably as much as they’ve got, considering the state of most small-town general stores. If you get too much, I can sew up shirts for you men so you’ll have spares. Then I can do the washing for you.”

  “You’re going to make our shirts with the same cloth you’re making diapers?” Adam looked at his hand as if she’d dropped a rattlesnake in his palm. He gave his head a violent shake as if he’d been dunked in water, whirled around, and ran out of the house.

  These men certainly did like to dive into their work. Especially when it meant putting space between themselves and anything to do with a diaper.

  Trace and Utah handed over their cleaned-up plates with polite words. Utah found his hat on a nail in the house and tipped it as he thanked them both.

  It was so flattering, so touching, Deb could only nod.

  “We’d best get to chopping wood so these women have a snug, warm place for the winter.” Trace followed Utah out. Wolf looked back and forth between Maddie Sue and Trace and appeared just plain torn about what to do, but finally he went along with his master.

  It soothed her soul to be told “thank you” by a man, possib
ly for the first time in her life.

  No, goodness gracious, she’d be honored to cook for these fine gentlemen for the winter. Trace saved them. And these men gave up their cabin for them and now planned to build, so they all could have a warmer home.

  Whatever they needed—mending, washing, cooking, cleaning—she’d do. The men would never lack for thanks, either.

  Hooves pounded away. Adam on his way.

  Deb washed up two plates. She and Gwen had their breakfast and planned the next meal while they ate this one.

  The rhythmic ring of hewing axes set their work to a kind of rough music.

  CHAPTER

  11

  Adam took a packhorse. Trace had heard Deb ask for flannel, but that didn’t require a spare horse. And taking the packhorse slowed him down because no critter on this property was as fast as Adam’s stallion. But without the load of a rider it could keep up. Because of the early morning wake-up, thanks to Maddie Sue’s hollering, it was only just past sunup. Trace hoped Adam could get back not too far past midday.

  Trace worried about him because the sky was overcast. There’d been heavy snow all day up in the peaks. Only a little fell down here on lower ground, but more would come, and soon.

  He hated any man being on the trail this late in the season, and Trace’s turn was coming. He had some hunting to do.

  “We’re going to be lucky to get a roof over the women’s heads,” Trace said to Utah as they passed each other. They’d chopped down trees all morning, and now Trace and Utah used the horses to drag logs up to the building site. They had enough to start the walls, and Utah wanted to get the framing done.

  “Why here?” Trace asked. He knew nothing about building except some real basic things he’d learned as a youngster working with his pa.

  His cabin stood as proof of that.

  Utah started in talking about the direction of the wind in winter and how the rain came in during spring storms. He seemed stuck on morning sunlight as opposed to afternoon and pointed to trees that lost their leaves and compared them to pines that didn’t—as if that meant something important.