Prairie Rose

by Catherine Palmer

“I don’t know about that.” She shrugged and began to twine her hair into a long rope. “What matters is Cilla’s settled, and I miss her. I won’t have this bonnet ruined.”

  Seth studied the wad of thin calico. The bonnet was a pathetic scrap, patched and frayed. Cheap cotton, it might once have been navy, but it had faded in the sun to a pale shade of cornflower blue sprinkled with small white rosebuds.

  “Is that what you’re after, Miss Mills?” Seth asked. “Bonnets and stockings and wool shawls?”

  “Good heavens, no! Those are earthly treasures. The Bible tells us not to store them up. They won’t last. I’m after something much more important.”

  “I figured as much.”

  She lifted her focus to the tips of the arching willow branches. “Faith,” she murmured. “I want to grow in faith. Hope. The hope of heaven. And love. To share the love of my Father with people who’ve never known it.”

  “Lofty dreams.” He gave a grunt of impatience. “Look, Miss Mills, you left everything familiar to risk traveling to the prairie with a stranger. You must be thinking you’ll get something practical out of it.”

  Her brown eyes searched his face. “Yes,” she said softly. She leaned toward him. “This is a secret, so please don’t tell anyone. I’ve made up my mind. I want to get married, Mr. Hunter.”

  “What?” His heart jumped into his throat and froze solid. “Married?”

  “Not to you! Don’t draw back like a snake just bit you.” She laughed for a moment as though the idea of anyone wanting to marry him was a great joke. “Of course not you. Someone else. Almost anyone will do. While I’m living on your homestead the next few months, I’m going to search for a husband. If I can find someone fair-minded and strong, a kind man and a hard worker, I’ll ask him to marry me.”

  “You’ll ask him?”

  “Why not? I don’t have a thing to offer but a pair of good hands and a strong back. Who would ask me?” She leaned back and giggled again as though this were the funniest notion she’d heard in weeks. “Oh, laughing makes my bump hurt.”

  Seth watched as she twirled the rope of her hair onto her head in a big glossy mound of loops and swirls. Still chuckling, she deftly slipped hairpins here and there. She gave her creation a quick pat to assure herself it was secure; then she swept her bonnet over it and tied the ribbons into a loose bow under her chin.

  “Keep your eyes peeled for me, Mr. Hunter,” she confided. “I don’t much care what the man looks like or how old he is. It makes no difference how many children he’s got. As long as he’s good and kind.”

  “And hardworking.”

  “Yes.” She studied him. “Why are you smirking at me, Mr. Hunter?”

  “It just seems a little strange that you’ve made up your mind to go out husband hunting like a trapper after a prized beaver.”

  “And why not? The Bible tells us it’s good for a man and woman to marry. I don’t know why I should be obliged to spend the rest of my life working at the Christian Home for Orphans and Foundlings when there might be a lonely man somewhere who could use a good wife.”

  “I guess you never considered that it might be nice if the fellow loved you. And you him.”

  “Love? Please, Mr. Hunter. Have you been reading novels?”

  Seth studied the woman’s brown eyes. He didn’t know what had made him kneel under the willow tree and talk to this creature in the first place. She jabbered like a blue jay. She giggled like a schoolgirl. He didn’t trust her around his son. No telling what ideas she might put into the boy’s head. Any woman who would walk away from a secure position to go to work for a stranger … any woman who would set out on her own in search of a husband … any woman who would ask a man to marry her … any woman like that was too downright bold. Too forward. Too impetuous. It just wasn’t proper.

  Rosie Mills didn’t seem to have the least idea what love was all about. She would marry a man the way a store owner would take on a hired hand. No feeling. No emotion. No passion behind it.

  That wasn’t how he and Mary Cornwall had felt about each other. He had been half-crazy over that girl. The way she swayed when she walked had set his heart beating like a brass band. The way she batted her eyelashes at him turned his stomach into a hundred butterflies. And when she had stood on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek that afternoon in the barn … well …

  Seth hadn’t known Mary very long when he asked her to marry him. But the way she made him feel was love. True love. No doubt about it.

  “I don’t know a thing about love except what the Bible says,” Rosie announced, cutting into his pleasant memories. “Love is patient, kind, forgiving. Never jealous or proud. Love is never demanding or critical. I imagine I could love just about anybody, Mr. Hunter. Couldn’t you?”

  “Nope.” He stood and swatted the dust from his knees with his hat. “I hate Jack Cornwall’s guts, and if he tries to take my son again, I’ll kill him.”

  “Kill him?”

  “Besides that, I’d never marry some bold, insolent woman who thought she could do the asking. If I ever marry again, I’ll have more in it than patience, kindness, and forgiveness. You don’t know the half of what it takes to make a marriage.”

  Rosie got to her feet. “Maybe I do know the half. I may never have had a family to grow up with or a man turning somersaults over me, but I watched the family who lived across the street from the Christian Home. I climbed up in the white oak tree every morning to say my prayers, and I studied that family. I saw how they lived, working together day and night. I watched the children grow. I saw funerals and weddings and birthday parties.”

  “Working together day and night is not all there is to marriage,” Seth said, growing hot around the collar.

  “Maybe it’s not all, but it’s half!” Rosie Mills tilted her chin at him, her brown eyes sparking like coals. “Half is what you know— the kind of love that forces a man to marry a girl against her parents’ wishes, love that makes him write her from the battlefield and steal away her son and keep her alive in his heart even when she’s dead.”

  “Stop talking about my wife!” Seth exploded.

  “I won’t deny I’ve never known that kind of passion,” Rosie went on. “But I know the other half of what makes a family. It’s commitment. It’s holding on through thick and thin. It’s surviving through freezing winters and burning summers and sick children and not enough food in the pantry. That’s what it is. Commitment like that is plenty to make a marriage, and I’m going to find myself a husband no matter what you think, Mr. Seth Hunter!”

  “Good luck to the man who hooks up with the likes of you!” he roared, his mouth just inches from hers.

  She swallowed and blinked. To his utter dismay, her brown eyes filled with tears. She gulped. “I’ll … I’ll just go and see if Sheena found her pickles. Excuse me.”

  Rosie swung away, her palm cupping the bump beneath her bonnet. Seth watched her go, a slender twig of a woman with hair like a river, dark coffee eyes that glowed when she laughed, and enough spunk to survive the worst life had to offer. It occurred to him as he went back to his plate of salt pork that Rosie Mills would probably make some man a pretty good wife.

  CHAPTER 3

  AS ROSIE stood inside the stagecoach station watching Sheena and Jimmy count their purchases, she fought the lump in her throat. Once again, she had to confess she had stepped out on her own instead of turning to her heavenly Father for direction. In setting off for Kansas with Seth Hunter, she had been willful, selfish, and headstrong. To the best of her knowledge, she hadn’t offered up a single prayer for guidance before climbing onto that mule wagon bound for the prairie. And now she would have to suffer the consequences.

  Seth Hunter was a hard man. An angry man. A bitter man. He didn’t want tenderness or compassion. And he certainly didn’t seem to like anyone standing up to him. Unfortunately, his new hired hand was everything he found intolerable.

  Rosie had always assumed a girl who had spent her life in a place
like the Christian Home for Orphans and Foundlings ought to be meek, contrite, humble. Instead, she fought a constant battle with her willful nature.

  Precisely because she had grown up in the Home, she had learned to rely on her wits and to trust her instinct. On an impulse, she could devise a game that would transform toddlers’ wails into giggles. She could create meals when there was nothing in the kitchen pantry but a bag of bug-infested beans and a few withered carrots. She contrived ways to keep the orphans warm during blizzards. She improvised a pull-rope swinging fan to keep the kitchen cool in summer. If a townsman gave the Home a sack of old, half-rotten potatoes, Rosie had the children cut out the eyes, plant them in the kitchen garden, and grow a bumper crop. If a church donated an extra quilt, she cut apart the patches and used them to mend the holes in every child’s clothing.

  If Rosie had an idea, she acted on it. More often than not, her ideas were good ones. But sometimes … sometimes the consequences were disastrous.

  “It’s me, Father,” she prayed as she leaned against the rough plank wall of the stagecoach station. “It’s always me first, isn’t it? You must be so tired of my willful stubbornness. Every day I do nothing but rely on myself. I’ll climb the oak tree. I’ll whack Jack Cornwall on the head. I’ll go to Kansas with Seth Hunter. I’ll find a man to marry me.”

  She shook her head in dismay. Why couldn’t she remember to pray before she acted—instead of after?

  “Father, forgive me,” she murmured. “I do so want to have a home and a family. Help me to leave it up to you—”

  “Rosie?” Sheena’s green eyes studied her. “Are you muttering to yourself, then?”

  “No, no—”

  “Seth’s just told us the knock on your head has been troubling you. He’s fretting about you, he is.”

  “About me?”

  “Aye, and now I hear you muttering to yourself. Perhaps we’d better try to find a doctor so he can have a look at your head.”

  “No, really, Sheena. I’m fine.”

  “You’re certain? I’m sure I saw you—”

  “I was praying.”

  The woman’s green eyes widened. “First you pray in an oak tree. Now in the stagecoach station?”

  “Our Father is with us everywhere.”

  “That he is, and a good thing, too. All the same, I wouldn’t go talking to him just anywhere. People might wonder at it, you know.” Sheena handed Rosie a wrapped bundle. “Now then, here’s a gift for you from Jimmy and me. We want to see you started off right in your new life.”

  Rosie stared at the package in her hands. No one had ever given her anything new. Ever. Not in her whole life.

  “Well, don’t just stand there throwing sheep’s eyes at the thing,” Sheena said. “Open it.”

  Swallowing hard, Rosie unfolded the rough white cheesecloth. “A skillet! Cast-iron. Oh, Sheena, it’s beautiful.”

  “Jimmy traded one of his knives for it. He makes the best knives in all Kansas, he does.”

  “Mr. O’Toole!” Clutching the heavy skillet to her chest, Rosie danced across the room and flung an arm around the tall, gaunt man. “Thank you. Thank you so much!”

  “Now then—,” he began, but he stopped when she planted a big kiss on his cheek.

  “A skillet! I wish I could show this to Mrs. Jameson. She wouldn’t believe how beautiful it is! And so big. I’ll bet a person could fry fifteen eggs in this skillet. If the kitchen at the Christian Home had a skillet like this one … You know, the skillet we have now is so thin at the bottom … everything burns … and the other has a hole in it … Why don’t I send this one to Mrs. Jameson and the children? Would you mind if I gave it away?” She glanced at Jimmy. A look of confusion in his green eyes, he shook his head.

  “Oh, thank you! Mr. Holloway, will there be a stagecoach or a wagon passing through here on its way to Kansas City?”

  “Only ten or fifteen a day,” the stationmaster said. He was eyeing the O’Toole children, who had filtered into the building and were peering into his cases—sticky fingers, lips, and noses pressed against the glass. “What is it you want with a stagecoach back to Kansas City, missy? Ain’t that where you folks just come from?”

  Rosie set the iron pan on the countertop. “Mr. Holloway, will you please send this skillet by stagecoach to the Christian Home for Orphans and Foundlings? I’ve never been able to give anyone a gift. Tell them it’s from me: Rosenbloom Cotton Mills.”

  The stationmaster scowled at her. “What kind of a dumb-fool name is that?”

  “It’s a beautiful name. It’s the name my mother gave me.”

  “That ain’t no name. It’s a place. In Illinois, to be exact. I order my stockings from Rosenbloom Cotton Mills. Look here.”

  He reached into his glass case and brought out a pair of cotton stockings the exact shade of gray as the one Rosie had been put into as a baby. He tunneled his hand down to the toe and pulled out a scrap of white paper.

  “See there, it’s right on the label: Rosenbloom Cotton Mills. They make stockings, underwear, and gloves. I’ve been ordering from Rosenbloom Mills for fifteen years.” He shooed the children away from his cases, and they scampered outside. “Now what’s your real name, missy? I don’t know nobody in their right mind who would give a skillet as good as this one to a passel of worthless urchins. Half of them is of indecent birth.”

  “But, Mr. Holloway—”

  “It ain’t right even to look at them devils—born to loose women and not worth the food that’s fed ’em. Even God don’t want nothing to do with the likes of foundlings. Ain’t you read what the Good Book says? The book of Deuteronomy: ‘A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the Lord.’”

  Rosie caught her breath. “No … the children … we—”

  “Who are you, anyhow?” Holloway went on. “The way I see it, anyone who goes by an alias is hiding something.”

  Her heart hammering, Rosie touched the small pouch she wore on a string around her neck. The toe of the stocking … and inside it, the square of neatly printed paper. Rosenbloom Cotton Mills. For years, she had convinced herself her mother had written out that beautiful name for her newborn baby. Hadn’t she tucked the tiny child into the stocking so her daughter would be safe and warm? Hadn’t she cherished the child she had been forced to leave behind? Didn’t the silent, long-lost mother mourn for her daughter every day—wondering where she was, praying for her safety, aching to hold her again, just as her child ached to be held?

  The image Rosie had denied all her life burst into her thoughts with the force of an exploding bullet. She had been conceived by accident. Born unwanted. Stuffed into a sock. Abandoned on a stack of moldy hay in a livery stable. Expected to die.

  The name was not a precious gift. It was a stocking label.

  “You gone deaf, girl?” the stationmaster spoke up. “If you want me to send this skillet to Kansas City, you’d better give me your true name.”

  “Rose Mills,” Seth said, stepping up to the counter and jabbing a finger into the man’s chest. “That’s who she is, and it’s as good a name as yours or mine. Now send that skillet to the Christian Home like she said, or I’ll see that nobody the other side of Bluestem Creek ever stops at your station again.”

  “You look here, Mister—”

  “Now then, Seth.” Jimmy O’Toole put an arm around his friend’s shoulder. “Sheena’s got her pickles, and the brablins are already climbing onto the wagon. Let’s be on our way, shall we?”

  “The sooner the better.” Seth gave the stationmaster a final poke. Dropping his hat on his head, he grabbed Rosie’s arm. “Let’s go.”

  She barely had time to lift the hem of her skirt as Seth propelled her out the door onto the rickety front porch. She half ran to keep up with his long stride, and Jimmy hurried his wife along behind them.

  “By herrings, that Holloway is a wicked fellow,” Sheena puffed. “I hope it gets
there. The skillet, I mean.”

  “It will.”

  When they reached the wagon, Jimmy helped Sheena climb aboard. As he pushed his wife from behind, the three oldest O’Toole children pulled on their mother’s arms. Sheena couldn’t hold back a giggle at her family’s arduous effort, but Seth was in no mood to join the fun. He swept Rosie off her feet and tossed her over the side of the wagon like a sack of seed. Climbing onto the front, he flicked the leather reins. As the wagon began to roll, Jimmy gave his wife a final shove. Then he scampered around to the other side and climbed aboard.

  “Whoa, Seth!” Sheena called, thumping him on the back. “You’ve nearly gone off hot-foot without my Jimmy! What’s got you so scalded?”

  “Holloway. The man doesn’t deserve the privilege of running a station. Someone ought to take away his post office commission.”

  “Aye, he charges double what the merchants get in Kansas City,” Sheena said. “Two dollars for a gallon of molasses. Seventy-five cents a pound for butter. Did you see his eggs? Sixty cents a dozen. Sure, the man ought to be strung up for highway robbery.”

  “He’ll charge what the market can bear,” Jimmy said. “Holloway’s got a good location, so he does. Hardly a soul can make it from Fort Riley to Kansas City without stopping at his station.”

  “Of course, if we had a better crossing at Bluestem Creek,” Sheena suggested, “we could cut off Holloway and his high prices. We could—”

  “Now you’ve done it.” Jimmy shook his head at Seth. “Her blather won’t let up for hours. ‘If you would only put in a ferry, Jimmy. If you’d just build a bridge, Jimmy.’ Seth, why don’t you give my wife an answer, and see if you can put a stop to her ballyragging.”

  As the adults talked on, Rosie leaned her head against a keg of seed and shut her eyes. She couldn’t make herself care whether some Kansas creek had a ferry or a bridge. She didn’t even mind that Mr. Holloway overcharged for molasses and butter. Her head throbbed where she’d hit it, but the pain was nothing compared to that in her heart.