Prairie Romance Collection

by Cathy Marie Hake

  And then he’d said something about a machine that would finish the work.

  Or that’s what she thought he’d said.

  She raised her head and looked around her. The wheat was strewn here and there. The kernels had already fallen off most of it, and the blackbirds had quickly discovered what a delightful treat she’d provided for them.

  No machine invented by man could come through here and repair the damage she’d done. She had ruined this section entirely.

  Orion stamped his hooves impatiently, and she got to her feet. “I know, I know,” she told the horse, “I don’t quite have the touch yet.”

  The awful truth was that she didn’t have the touch at all. Orion had been nervous throughout her attempts to harvest the wheat, clearly recognizing her inexperience.

  The horse wasn’t that way with Micah, she thought somewhat grumpily.

  She unhooked Orion from the equipment, leaving it lying in the field, and walked him back to the barn, ignoring the wide swaths of clumsily mowed wheat that lay behind her like accusatory wounds on her brother’s land.

  After getting Orion cleaned up and fed, she trudged back into the house and cleaned and fed herself.

  There was more to this harvest thing than she’d allowed herself to admit. Why had the plow worked so well for Micah and not for her?

  She put her head back and shut her eyes. She visualized the equipment, pictured it working. And then she knew what she had done wrong.

  Quickly she jumped up and ran to the fields through the gathering darkness. Mosquitoes surrounded her like a biting cloud, but she ignored them.

  She leaned over and examined the rig where it lay on the ground. And then she stood up with a sigh of satisfaction. She’d been right. A piece had come unhooked.

  With a lighter heart, she walked back to the small house. Things were looking better already.

  The next evening, Catherine looked over a somewhat erratically harvested section of the field. It was uneven, to be sure, but the work was done.

  And in that she felt a measure of satisfaction that was almost overwhelming in its intensity.

  The next day she worked, and the next, and the next, and each day the rhythm got easier, and she and Orion wove through the field with the same cadence of her silver needle shooting through the cloth on the sampler.

  The rhythm is all the same, she thought. She simply had to tackle the task and do it to the best of her ability. All along, she had been embroidering it: “Only believe.”

  The field, when harvested, might not look as neat and tidy as Micah’s undoubtedly did, but to her it was quickly becoming a thing of beauty, as sure as her colorful sampler inside.

  Catherine smiled at the full moon that shone over the decimated part of the field. “I can do this,” she said aloud. “I really can do it.”

  The sun had just come up on the prairie. The early morning walk will do me good, he told himself. The long pace after the short start-stop rhythm of the early harvest was good exercise for a man.

  He didn’t have as much time as he would have liked to come by and check on her progress, so if his morning walk took him by her fields, all the better.

  It had been difficult, just watching and not being able to help as she tried repeatedly to get the binder to work.

  But she had accomplished the feat.

  He felt as proud as if he’d done it himself.

  Lord, every day is a delight with You. You are the sun on the fields, the rain from the heavens, the nourishment of the soil. May this harvest and all who work it be a blessing to You.

  Chapter 5

  She could hear his horse’s hooves on the ground even before she saw him.

  Sound carried with an astonishing intensity on the prairie.

  Something was driving him onward. He’d never ridden that fast or that

  furious.

  His horse had barely stopped before Micah swung his legs over the saddle and leaped off in a seamless dismount.

  In his hand he held a piece of paper.

  “This…came….” He was clearly winded.

  She took the note from him without wiping the rich valley soil from her hands. It was a telegram.

  Her eyes scanned it quickly. There were only a few words, but they were powerful ones.

  “Andrew is—?”

  Micah shook his head. “He’s alive, but his condition is worsening, Catherine. They’re…they’re concerned.”

  “Concerned?” She realized too late that she was shouting. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell at you. But he’s going to be all right, isn’t he?”

  She wanted to see him smile. She wanted to hear his laugh as he told her it was all a joke. But the look on his face told her that this was all grimly real.

  She looked again at the telegram. The words swam in front of her. Something about swelling in his brain…

  “I have to go to St. Paul,” she said. “I have to see him.”

  “I don’t think they’ll let you,” he responded gently. “He needs absolute quiet right now. He’s in a deep coma, and even if he could move, he shouldn’t. The brain does swell from trauma, and—“

  “How do you know all this? Are you a prairie doctor?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “Son of a doctor. Until he retired, my father practiced at St. Elizabeth’s, the hospital where Andrew is.”

  “Why did the message come to you rather than to me?” she asked.

  “I didn’t know that you were coming. I could only hope that you were. So I used my name as the contact person. I got this wire because I went into Fargo to pick up the harness bit that your brother ordered.”

  Catherine looked at the wire. It was dated four days earlier. “Look at this! By now he could be d—” She couldn’t bring herself to say the word.

  “He’s not dead. I sent a follow-up wire and waited for the response. It said simply, ‘No change.’ I did ask that if—when—Andrew awakens, that he’s told you are near. We can be there in a day, if we ride the horses hard.”

  She ran her hand across her forehead, aware that she was probably wiping a streak of dirt across her sweat-soaked forehead but not caring. “Let’s go now.”

  “We can’t. We couldn’t do anything anyway. We can best serve Andrew by bringing in his crop. Knowing that his crop is safe will speed him to recovery more than anything when he comes out of the coma.”

  He moved toward her. “Let me help you, Catherine.”

  She shook her head. “No. This is something I have to do myself. And right now, Micah—” Her voice faltered, and she paused before continuing. “Right now I think I need to be by myself.”

  He nodded. “I understand. If it’s all right with you, I’ll stop back by tonight to see if there’s anything you need.”

  She looked at him sadly. “The only thing I need is my brother with me, whole again.”

  “Have you taken this to the Lord?” he asked.

  Catherine shook her head mutely.

  “He made the blind see and the deaf hear,” Micah said. “You might ask Him to help Andrew.”

  She could only nod numbly before running into the house.

  The tears would not come. She would not allow that. That would be a sign of weakness, and she could not permit herself even a moment of weakness.

  Catherine paced the perimeter of the small house, picking up this and studying that.

  This was Andrew’s, all Andrew’s. She was the caretaker, custodian of everything he owned.

  The house was small, but it was more than most people had on the prairie. She knew that. If the crop didn’t come in, if the money from it wasn’t realized, everything would be lost. The house, which she was sure had been built with borrowed money, would go back to the bank. The land would go back to the government.

  And Andrew would come back to her.

  How long she stood in that spot, she had no idea. Micah must have taken Orion in, curried him, and fed him, because she heard his soft whinny from the barn in res
ponse to the early evening hoot of an owl.

  The August days here in Dakota were long, providing an astonishing number of hours of daylight. But twilight, when its time did arrive, fell quickly on the summer prairie, and darkness raced across the flat land.

  She moved to light the lamp, and as she did, her glance fell upon the sampler, long forgotten as she’d focused on bringing in the harvest.

  She picked it up and, after moving the lamp closer to her elbow, began the stitching again.

  “Be not afraid, only believe.”

  Her needle moved in and out of the cloth, pulling this time an orchid thread the same hue as the last traces of the prairie sunset.

  I’ll finish this one word, she told herself, and then I’ll lie down and try to sleep. She needed sleep to finish the harvest. And Micah was right—having the harvest done would be a powerful medicine for her brother.

  Over and down, across and up. Over and down, across and up. The words her grandmother had taught her so long ago came back to her. They were the pattern of cross-stitch.

  The orchid was a beautiful color in the skein, but it paled as a single thread on the off-white background. But, she reminded herself, other colors would come in that would work together. No one would even notice that the orchid thread was there. Instead, there would be a glorious display of purples and golds and greens, all blending together as completely as a sunset.

  There. She had finished the first part of the word. Andrew would be proud of her work.

  She buried her face in the sampler. Andrew. She wanted him to live more than anything. He had to live. He simply had to.

  She could not cry, especially into the sampler. She smoothed it over her knee, forcing herself to check the stitching on the letters.

  The pale thread caught the lamplight and seemed to make the word she’d just stitched glow: “Believe.”

  Believe? In what? That he would live?

  Or that he would die?

  She couldn’t bear the thought. She arose, snatched her shawl from the post by the door, and walked outside.

  Autumn was coming on the wind. She could smell it. She could hear it. The sharp edge of the yet-warm wind whipped her skirt around her ankles. Winter would soon follow, carried on the crisp promise of icy crystals.

  The harvest couldn’t wait. No matter what was happening with Andrew in St. Paul, she had to bring in the crop.

  She walked out into the partially harvested field, remembering her early flippancy about getting the crop in. She had stood here, at the edge of this very field, and asked herself, “How hard can it be?”

  Now she knew.

  The night wind carried the sound of hoofbeats. Micah was coming. She recognized his approaching figure in the bright moonlight.

  He was at her side quickly. “Are you all right?”

  She nodded. “It’s so warm, and yet I can’t stop shivering.”

  “Winter will be here before we know it,” he said, and she glanced at him in surprise.

  “How odd. I was just thinking about that,” she said.

  “You’re becoming one of us.” His dark eyes twinkled.

  “One of you? In what way?”

  “A farmer is always thinking about the weather.”

  She laughed, grateful to have her thoughts shifted away from her troubles. “I don’t think that I will ever be a farmer.”

  “A farmer’s wife, perhaps?”

  She whirled to face him. “Excuse me?”

  “I wondered if you’d be a farmer’s wife someday.” His voice was bland.

  “Why do you ask?” Her voice sounded shaky and high-pitched to her ears.

  “I simply asked to ask, that’s all.”

  Her heart was racing as fast as the prairie wind. “Then I will answer to answer. I will marry the man I love, and if he is a greengrocer, then I am a greengrocer’s wife. If he is a carpenter, then I am a carpenter’s wife. And if he is a farmer, then I am a farmer’s wife.”

  He didn’t respond, and Catherine knew she may have said exactly the wrong thing, but she didn’t know what else she could have said.

  She took a deep breath. “I think I will go inside now. I would like an early start tomorrow.”

  He caught her arm as she turned to leave. “Catherine, would you do me a favor?”

  “What?” she responded numbly.

  He probably wanted to borrow a tool or perhaps have her mend a torn seam in his jacket. This was an odd time to make such a request.

  But she was not ready for his response.

  “Pray with me.”

  A thousand questions collided and shoved their way around her bruised and battered heart. Pray to God? Why? What had God done for Andrew? Injured him and then put him in a faraway hospital to die?

  Why should she pray to this God who did such terrible things to good people? Andrew hadn’t deserved this fate. He was a man who loved his Lord, who tithed not only his money but his time in devotion.

  It seemed to Catherine that God had allowed someone as caring and kind and gentle as Andrew to suffer. She wasn’t inclined to offer Him her prayers.

  But Andrew would be so inclined if the situation were reversed, she heard her heart say.

  Suddenly all her resolve, all her opposition, melted away with a flood of tears.

  She opened herself to what was true and real. She could no longer avoid the truth.

  The raw wounds on her soul were nothing compared to those of her Lord. Jesus had died for her. He had borne her sins and promised her life eternal.

  With a force more powerful than she had imagined possible, she understood about this God whom Andrew and Micah worshipped.

  The words she had been stitching on cloth were now embroidered onto her heart: “Be not afraid, only believe.”

  Her worries were His, and He could shoulder them when her endurance was taxed to the limit.

  She just had to ask. The solution was that simple.

  “I am Yours, God,” she said, and with those words of surrender, she became a new being.

  Micah’s arms were waiting for her, and together they dropped to their knees.

  There, in the field amid half-harvested wheat, with the warmth of summer and the promise of autumn around them, the two offered to God their most fervent prayers for Andrew’s healing and recovery.

  As the words flowed from their hearts and lips, Catherine felt a release such as she’d never known before. What they said didn’t seem to matter as much as what they felt, and the power around them was so strong that she was sure it could be felt in St. Paul.

  There was a special warmth in Micah’s touch as he helped her to her feet, and although neither said much of consequence before he left, much had indeed been said between them.

  God was with them both. And yes, she could be a farmer’s wife.

  Both he and his horse were thirsty, and the creek ran clear and cold. He swung off the saddle, and both horse and man drank deeply from the refreshing stream.

  The horse was content to graze a bit, so he sat under the lone cottonwood and looked out over his prairie, for that was how he thought of it.

  His prairie. It was as if he and the rich soil, the blue sky, the astonishingly white clouds, were all one.

  It was good.

  It lacked only one thing. Someone to share it with. And now Catherine was here. Was she the one?

  His prayer was short: “Lord, am I seeing only what I want, and not what I need?”

  Chapter 6

  Nothing seemed to ease Catherine’s mind except focusing solely on the harvest. Daily she strained to finish the reaping, always reminding herself to take it slowly and carefully.

  The ruined section lay as a mute testimony to her earlier rashness. It looked to her, for all the world, like a bad haircut—stalks left standing here, others leveled to the ground there.

  Two weeks later, she stood at the house, her noonday meal in hand, admiring the work she’d done. She could see the improvement in the way the stalks lay neatl
y, ready for sheaving. That would be the next step.

  The news from St. Paul was patchy, at best. Updates had arrived, and the news was not good. Andrew’s condition was worsening.

  Once the crop was in safely, once the harvest was done, she would go to St. Paul and see him.

  It might be her last chance to see him alive.

  Stated so baldly, the realization was terrifying, but she’d thought the words often enough to blister over them. She centered on the word alive rather than last.

  Jesus had brought the dead to life; that was true. But she did not expect such a miracle. If only Andrew lived—that would be a true miracle for her.

  She sat on the step by the door and stared at the midday sun contemplatively. Her life had changed so much. Not just by coming here to the Dakota Territory, but because of what she had found. Micah, with his compassion. Her inner strength, which had probably always been there, but buried. And most of all, the real living God, the ever-present author of compassion.

  Her eyes shut in prayer as she thanked God for all she had discovered out here; then she asked for His guidance concerning Andrew.

  Her prayer was interrupted by the sound of Micah’s arrival. She opened her eyes and was surprised to see that he had brought a thresher.

  “Catherine, there’s a storm coming. We have to hurry.” The urgency in his voice was clear. “It looks bad.”

  “What kind of a storm?”

  He brushed off her question. “We’ve got to move quickly or we’ll lose the crop.”

  “I can do it.” She laid her meal aside. “I’ll go now.”

  “No, Catherine, we will do it. I’ve brought my own—“

  “You don’t understand,” she said. “I have to do this—myself.”

  “Listen,” he said, taking her arm, “I don’t know why you feel this need to do all of the work by yourself; however, I respect that. I wouldn’t have given you a plug nickel’s chance at first, but you’ve done it and done it alone. Now I’m going to make this quick because we don’t have time to waste. If we do this together, we can do it faster and better.”

  “But—” she began.