Prairie Rose

by Catherine Palmer

  He could hear Rosie sobbing as she tried to answer. By her despairing response he knew her message must be true. Jack Cornwall had found his enemy. He would take Chipper. Possibly he already had. Unless Cornwall was stopped, Seth would lose his only son.

  As the thought tore through him like a knife, he dropped Rosie’s hand and raced ahead. At the barn, the dance was breaking up. Women called frantically for their children to round them up and hold them close. Men were standing in clusters, forming search parties. When Seth got to the barn, Jimmy stepped out into the circle of light.

  “No one can find the boy around here, Seth,” he said. “We haven’t seen any sign of Cornwall either.”

  “What do the children say?” Seth asked.

  “They thought your son was playing with them, so they did. Erinn told her mother that when the music started up, she saw Chipper wander away from the others. But she lost track of him in the midst of their game.” Jimmy held up a lantern. “We’re going out in groups of three and four, Seth. Some of us will take the road to LeBlanc’s Mill, and the rest will head for Laski’s Station. Sure, Cornwall can’t have gotten far.”

  Seth agreed to the plan, and he watched as the men rode off into the darkness. The women bustled their children into the wagons. Seth went from child to child, asking what each one remembered about the evening. Chipper had wandered away. But where?

  “Why would he have left the others in the middle of a game?” Seth asked Rosie when she appeared at his elbow. “The music and dancing had just started up. Where would he have gone?”

  “You went down to the creek at the same time,” Rosie said. “Maybe he followed you. Why did you leave?”

  Seth rubbed a hand around the back of his neck. He could see that the question in her brown eyes was an honest one. “I wanted to think,” he said finally.

  “In the middle of a barn dance? Seth, you’re the host. You should have stayed among the company. If you had been there, Jack Cornwall wouldn’t have been nearly so bold. The first thing I knew, he had me by the arm and was asking all about Chipper.”

  “The first thing I knew, you were dancing with Rolf Rustemeyer. Why didn’t you ask your beau for help with Cornwall?”

  Rosie’s cheeks flushed a brighter pink. “Rolf didn’t have any idea who that man was. He doesn’t speak English well enough to understand.”

  “He must have spoken well enough to ask you to dance.” Seth spat the words and turned away from her. Rosie didn’t deserve his wrath, even though she was chastising him for not being in the barn when Cornwall appeared. She blamed him for Chipper’s disappearance.

  And he blamed himself. He had known good and well that Cornwall was lurking. Searching for him. Intending to steal the boy. Why had Seth relaxed his guard for a minute?

  Self-loathing tore at his gut. He could almost hear his father’s words provoking him. How could you be so stupid? You’re no good. …

  “No!” Seth shouted as he ran down the path toward the creek. I’m better than that. I’m better than you were. I’d never walk out on my family. I’d never abandon my son. I love my son. I love Chipper!

  “God!” He stumbled over a tree root and fell to his knees. Clutching handfuls of the moist, reedy river grass, he shook his head. “God, please help me find him. Show me where he is!”

  He climbed to his feet again and continued down the creek bank, peering into the darkness, calling his son’s name. In all the confusion, he hadn’t remembered his rifle. If he ran into Jack Cornwall, he would need to be armed. Let the man so much as touch Chipper, and Seth would blow his head off.

  No. Rosie had said that wasn’t the way. No violence.

  Then how was he supposed to win his son? Cornwall would never stop pursuing Chipper. Seth would have to kill the man to stop him.

  Kill Mary’s brother? Murder her beloved Jack? No, he couldn’t do that.

  God, help me! Seth’s heart cried out again and again as he wandered the creek bank calling his son’s name. In response he heard nothing but the quiet murmurs of the prairie. An owl hooted. A raccoon scurried from the water’s edge. Crickets stopped their chirping the moment they sensed his footfall. The moon rose in the black velvet sky, but even its bright light revealed nothing but clumps of bluestem grass and the trunks of cottonwood trees. It was no good. The boy was gone, and Seth knew he would have to ride after his son and the man who had stolen him away.

  He turned back toward the soddy. By the time he reached the barn again, most of the families had packed up and driven away. Jimmy and some of the others were still searching the roads, Sheena told him as she herded her children over the bridge. The rest of the men had given up the hunt. The yard was empty of wagons. The fire had been reduced to ashes.

  Rosie moved out of the shadows into the moonlight. Her bun had come down, and the hem of her blue gingham dress was muddy. He could tell she had been crying.

  “Any sign of him?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “I’ll ride out at dawn. Cornwall will be heading for the Missouri border. After the war, the family was planning to move to the southeast part of the state. Jack’s father owns a little plot of ground near Cape Girardeau. At least I’ll know where to start looking.”

  “You’ll be going after him then?”

  “He’s my son.”

  She covered her mouth to stop the sob that welled up. “I’ll stay here. I’ll tend the homestead until you come back.”

  “I may be gone for months. You go on over to Rustemeyer’s place where he can look after you. He’ll find a preacher somewhere. You’d be better off getting married to him early in the summer when you can do him some good in the fields.”

  “Marry Rolf … but …” She knotted her fingers. “But … but you’ll want me to hoe your fields, won’t you? What about your crops?”

  “If need be, I’ll start over again next year.”

  “You won’t have seed money.” She followed him into the barn. “If you don’t bring in a harvest this fall, you won’t have the money to outfit yourself for next spring. And you’ll need cash to travel. Take the bridge tolls, Seth. Rolf and Jimmy won’t mind.”

  “All right. I’ll take my share. Divide the rest between the other two, but keep back some for yourself. You earned it.” Seth studied the interior of his barn and shook his head. Too bad Cornwall had spoiled the party. “Where did you move my saddle?” he said as he walked toward the back of the barn. “I’ll need to take both mules so I can travel faster. Did you get a look at what Cornwall was riding? Did he have a horse?”

  “I didn’t see him come into the barn. I just turned around and there he was.” Still searching Seth’s face, she stopped beside the large chest in which she stored the supplies she traded for bridge tolls. He could tell she was struggling hard to hold back her tears. “You must take some blankets, and there’s a little molasses. … Seth, before you go, I want you to know … I didn’t intend to dance the first dance with Rolf. I wanted to dance with you. But … but he pulled me into the barn—”

  “Never mind about what happened.” He looked into her brown eyes, wondering if this was the last time he would see her, trying to memorize those beautiful eyes and sweet lips. “You did right to organize the search and come after me.”

  “But I want you to understand. It’s not Rolf. It’s you. It’s you that I … that I care about. I never meant to—”

  “Don’t talk about it, Rosie. Rustemeyer’s a good man. You’ll be happy with him. He’ll take care of you.”

  “I know he would, but—”

  “That’s how it has to be. There can’t be anything else. I need to go, Rosie. Do you have any ammunition left?” Seth looked down into the open storage chest.

  There lay Chipper. Huddled into a ball. His cheek nestled against a wool blanket. Sound asleep.

  “Chipper! Chipper, you little rascal!” With a groan of disbelief, Seth scooped the drowsy boy up in his arms and hugged him tightly. “Thank God! Thank God, you’re here!”

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bsp; “Oh, sweetheart!” Rosie threw her arms around both of them. “We were so worried about you. We couldn’t find you.”

  “Really?” Chipper blinked sleepily and rubbed a little fist in his eye. “Were you lookin’ for me again?” He yawned; then he drew back and stared solemnly at his father. “Are you mad at me? Are you gonna yell an’ scold me?”

  Seth nestled his cheek against his son’s warm skin. “No, no,” he murmured, trying to dam the emotion that welled like a fountain in his heart. “Chipper, you had me so worried, Son. I walked up the creek all the way to Rustemeyer’s place looking for you.”

  “You did?” A smile crossed the boy’s mouth. “An’ I was right here in the blankets all along. I guess I fooled you, huh?”

  “I reckon you did.”

  Seth sensed that Rosie had moved away, and he missed her presence. Yet at this moment he wanted nothing more than to hold his son. Hold him on and on. He lowered the lid on the storage chest and sat down, cradling the boy against his chest. “I don’t want to lose you, Chipper,” he murmured. “You’re my only son.”

  “I wasn’t lost. I was just sleepy.”

  “I bet you were.” Seth brushed a strand of hair from his son’s forehead. The baby-softness of the skin startled him. He ran a finger from the boy’s brow to his cheek. Soft. So soft. How was it possible this child was his own flesh and blood?

  Blue eyes that matched his own gazed up at him. “You sure you ain’t mad?”

  “Nope. Truth is, I’m mainly feeling real happy right now. I don’t ever want to lose somebody I care about as much as I care about you. See, when I was a little boy—not too much bigger than you—my papa decided to go away on a trip. And he never came back.”

  “Not ever?” Chipper pondered this for a moment. His long black lashes fanned his cheeks. “Like Mama did. She went away, an’ she ain’t never coming back.”

  “A little bit like that, I guess.” As he ran his hand over the boy’s dark silky hair, Seth turned over the comparison in his mind. Finally he decided it was accurate enough. His own father had left—run off and abandoned the family. Chipper’s mother had died. But the loss was the same. The emptiness was the same. The need for a parent’s love was exactly the same.

  “That’s why I left the other kids playing prisoner’s base,” Chipper said. “I heard that music, an’ I got to thinkin’ about my mama. She just loved to dance.”

  “I remember. I used to dance with her a lot.”

  Chipper glanced up, startled. “I forgot about that. You knew her too, didn’t you?”

  “I sure did. I loved her.”

  “Me too. I looked an’ looked for her in the barn, but then I remembered all over again that she wasn’t comin’ back. That’s when I got sad an’ grumpy an’ tired. So I thought about Rosie’s wool blankets that she traded for bridge tolls, and I climbed into the old storage chest to listen to the violin music and think about Mama. I wanted to cry where nobody would see me.” Again, the blue eyes searched Seth’s face. “Do you ever do that?”

  Seth nodded. “Yes. I do that sometimes.”

  At the admission, Chipper smiled and snuggled closer into his father’s arms. Seth could hardly believe the sensation. The boy’s little legs curled up tight, fitting perfectly into the curve of his father’s lap. A pair of matching bare feet—tiny toes peeping out from the hems of his overalls—rested on Seth’s denim jeans. Tentatively, the father reached out and touched one of those little toes. How small. Amazingly small. And as perfect as a pearl.

  Then his wondering gaze moved upward to the child’s thin arm. Lightly scattered with pale, downy hair, the arm was propped in perfect position to admit the boy’s thumb into his mouth. Was it all right for children to suck their thumbs? Seth had no idea. But something told him that a little boy whose mama had died deserved whatever comfort he could find.

  Poor Chipper. Again Seth stroked his fingers through his son’s soft warm hair. The scent the boy carried on his skin drew the father like the aroma of baking bread. It was the smell of little boy—of sunshine, winds, dust, green grass, and puppy dog. Two months Seth had lived near this child, and he had never come close enough to smell that smell. That wonderful smell. Seth laid his cheek on his son’s head and gathered him tightly in his arms.

  “I’m sorry, Chipper,” he began, and then he realized he couldn’t go on. “I’m sorry I—”

  “It’s okay.” The boy laid a small hand on his father’s arm and caressed the coarse dark hair in the same tender way his own arm had been stroked. “You know something?” he said. “You gots a lot of hair, Papa.”

  Seth gulped back the lump that threatened. Papa. Chipper had called him Papa. Amazing.

  “You’ll have a lot of hair, too, when you get bigger,” he managed. “Will I look like you when I grow up?”

  “You already look like me.”

  “Do I?” Chipper examined Seth’s face. “I don’t think so. You gots little black whiskers all over your chin.”

  “You’ll have whiskers, too.”

  “You reckon?”

  “You’re my son, aren’t you?” “That’s what everybody tells me.” Chipper snuggled back into the fold of his father’s arms. “You know something else? I don’t think you’re too bad of a Yankee. I bet Gram an’ Gramps just didn’t know you very good.”

  “They didn’t know me very well at all. They were scared I wouldn’t make a good home for your mama and you. If things had turned out differently, I would have brought both of you out here to live.”

  “I don’t think Mama would have liked it out here too much. No mirrors.”

  Seth laughed at the image of Mary Cornwall attempting to dress herself without a gold-framed pier mirror. “That might have been a problem.”

  “There’s not even a town with sidewalks where she could say hello to everybody an’ show off her new dresses an’ bonnets.”

  “Well, that’s true, too.”

  “Now, Rosie is really different from Mama. Rosie don’t care about mirrors an’ showin’ off. She fits just right out here on the prairie.”

  “She sure does.”

  “Rosie gots lots of good ideas about things. Like bridge tolls. An’ barn painting. An’ cooking squirrels. An’ making clothes out of grain sacks. I love Rosie a lot. Do you?”

  Seth looked around, saw that Rosie had left the barn, and nodded. “I reckon she’s a pretty special lady.”

  Chipper leaned around and looked into his father’s eyes. “Maybe you ought to marry Rosie and get you an’ me another good mama.”

  “I might just do that, Chipper,” Seth said softly. But as he spoke the words, he read the pain of loss in his son’s eyes. Taking a wife would bring Chipper the comforts of a mother’s love. It would bring Seth the joy of marriage. But it would also bring the risk of loss. For a woman, life on the prairie meant hardship, disease, and the dangers of childbirth. Could he and Chipper bear to lose another love? Was the hope worth the risk?

  And what about Chipper himself? Seth had no guarantee that he could keep his son nearby. Cornwall threatened that hope for happiness. If the man stole Chipper, life would seem empty—all but unbearable.

  “How come you’re always thinkin’ you lost me?” Chipper piped up. “How come you always go runnin’ up an’ down the creek like a chicken with its head cut off? You don’t let me go nowhere by myself. Not even to sleep in the old storage chest. How come?”

  Seth lifted his son’s chin. “You know your uncle is looking for you, Chipper. He wants to take you away with him. But I don’t want you to go.” He gently kissed the child’s forehead. “I love you, Chipper. I love you very much.”

  Chipper wriggled around in his father’s lap until he could slip his arms around Seth’s neck. “I love you, too, Papa.”

  When Seth lifted his focus, he saw Rosie had returned to the barn. She was standing in the doorway, a lantern in one hand and a pitcher of milk in the other. Her brown eyes were misty as she studied the father and son.

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nbsp; “I thought we might as well make use of some of this food that was left behind,” she said softly. “Chipper, would you like a big slice of strawberry pie before bed?”

  “Strawberry pie!” The child slid off his father’s lap and raced across the floor. “I was sleepy before, but now I’m hungry.”

  Seth stood. As he watched Rosie cutting pie and pouring milk and as he studied his son’s dark head and bright, happy eyes, he knew the answer in his heart. Yes. He wanted to marry Rosie. He wanted to take the risk.

  But as he approached, she leaned toward him. “Seth, Jack Cornwall was inside the soddy while we were all out searching,” she whispered in his ear. “He’s stolen your rifle.”

  CHAPTER 12

  ROSIE?” Sheena’s high-pitched voice rose at the end of the word. “Rooo-SIE?”

  Rosie watched through the soddy’s open front door as her friend came scurrying over the pontoon bridge like a mama duck with her five little ducklings in tow. Bonnet ribbons flying, Sheena waved a sheet of white paper over her head. “I’ve had a letter from Ireland! All the way from God’s country. Rosie, where are you?”

  Rosie wedged the final loaf of bread into the hot oven and pushed the door shut. The little soddy felt warm enough inside to bake bread without the oven, she thought as she mopped the back of her neck with a cool, damp handkerchief. It would be a welcome break to talk with Sheena for a few minutes—even though it was less than an hour to lunchtime and Seth would be looking forward to a meal.

  “I’m here, Sheena.” Wiping her hands on her apron, she stepped out of the soddy. It was almost July and not a breath of breeze stirred the still summer air. Across the prairie, the tall grass stretched out like a vast, golden-threaded blanket shimmering in the heat. The limitless surface was marred only by the small green patches that made up Seth’s fields. Rosie mused that even though the cultivated acres broke the God-created symmetry of the prairie, they offered the promise of food and sustenance for his people.