The Prairie Thief

by Melissa Wiley

  “To keep spiders from falling in the soup,” Louisa murmured, remembering what Ma had said the day they moved into the new house. Dimly she could picture a cloth stretched similarly above the table in the old dugout. Standing here in the brownie’s chamber, she had the strangest sense of being a very young child again—except in this dugout, her head nearly reached the cloth ceiling.

  “Ye can sit here,” said the brownie gruffly, indicating a chair made of polished wood and plump red cushions. “Ye’re tall, but ye’re not wide.”

  Gratefully Louisa lowered herself into the seat. She sank into the cushions, which were well stuffed with something soft and comfortable. The wood of the chair felt cool and smooth beneath her hands. A similar chair was drawn up opposite hers, that one upholstered in a lovely brown fabric that reminded her of a skirt her mother had worn.

  “I’ll fetch the tea,” said the brownie. “Don’t ye go touchin’ anything.” He glared at her in warning, then disappeared down a passageway Louisa had not noticed before. She wondered how many rooms he had down here and how far under the prairie his tunnels stretched.

  Despite his surliness, the brownie seemed to keep quite a cozy home. The room was crowded with furniture and other objects: fat canvas sacks; small round barrels; flickering oil lamps on sleekly polished tables; and small woven baskets filled with nuts, potatoes, turnips, and carrots. Everything was lined up neatly against the walls, so that the open center of the room was occupied only by the two cushioned chairs with an empty round table between them.

  The effect was peculiar and pleasant; it was like living in a patchwork quilt, Louisa thought.

  Most of the walls were draped with fabric, just like the ceiling—long strips and squares of cloth in a variety of colors and patterns, each tacked to the tree roots that snaked along the walls. The effect was peculiar and pleasant; it was like living in a patchwork quilt, Louisa thought.

  But who, she wondered, was the other chair for?

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Horseradish Tea

  THE BROWNIE’S “TEA” WAS LIKE NOTHING LOUISA had ever tasted before. Her father had brought real tea leaves, dust-brown and brittle, home from trips to town once or twice a year, when he could get it. The Fletcher mercantile had trouble with its supply lines when the weather was particularly bad or the bandits particularly good. But the tea barrels came westward often enough that Louisa knew the sweet, aromatic bite of tea, and she knew at first sip that this sharp, throat-burning liquid was no relation to the beverage brewed from those crumbled leaves shipped all the way from India.

  She tried to swallow politely, but it stung her throat and brought tears to her eyes.

  “What ails ye? Don’t ye care for horseradish?” demanded the brownie, bristling his brows in an offended manner.

  “What’s . . . horseradish?” Louisa gasped.

  “There’s no call for impertinence, lass,” growled the brownie, his glare so hostile Louisa felt rather like she’d stumbled into a badger’s den after all. “As if it didn’t come from yer own larder.”

  “What do you mean?” Louisa asked, more sharply than she intended. Her mouth was still on fire. The brownie gave a guilty start and turned hastily away, sloshing “tea” out of the cup.

  “Impertinence,” he repeated, but all the quivering indignation had gone out of him. He would not meet Louisa’s gaze, but instead stood staring at the dark splotch of liquid soaking into the earthen floor. “Bother,” he muttered, and then startled Louisa with a sudden shout. “DON’T COME UP! YE WON’T LIKE IT!”

  Louisa gaped, completely bewildered. The whole evening was beginning to seem like a dream, only more outlandish. Now the brownie was stomping and jumping, pounding his feet hard on the floor.

  “I SAID DINNA BOTHER COMIN’ UP! ’TIS NO FOR THE LIKES O’ YE!”

  “I’m sorry,” said Louisa, “but I don’t have the faintest idea what you mean.”

  “I’m no speakin’ to ye,” said the brownie. “It’s the blasted worms. They will come up for every wee drop o’ water, and horseradish tea gives them gout.”

  For a long moment Louisa said nothing. She sat in the plush red chair, her nose and throat still stinging from the terrible tea, and watched as the brownie continued to stamp and dance and bark his warnings to the worms. One hapless worm actually did break through the damp earth, rearing up and swaying from side to side in a manner Louisa had never witnessed in a worm before, his movements so agitated that it really did seem as though he were scolding the brownie.

  “Ye’ve only yerself to blame!” barked the brownie in reply. “Only a fool drinks first and asks questions afterward.” He gave a last stomp, and the worm hastily retreated into the earthen floor.

  “I thought,” ventured Louisa at last, “that gout was to do with feet.”

  The brownie snorted. “For them as has feet. A worm’s whole body may as well be his foot, so ye can see why they get so cross.”

  A clock chimed. Louisa began counting automatically, but by the fifth bell it struck her that she knew that chime—knew it in the beat of her heart, the rhythm of her breath. She had marked her hours by that clear-toned bell-song as long as she could remember; she had lain in bed at night counting nine bongs and knowing Pa would be banking the hearthfire and pulling in the latchstring on the front door. The chiming was coming from the opposite side of the room, but even as she turned to search for its source, the brownie was scurrying across the room toward it. She watched in astonishment as he snatched at one of the cloths tacked to the earthen wall and flung it, dirty as it was, over what could only have been the clock.

  Her clock—hers and Pa’s. Louisa was certain of it.

  “Balderdash!” cried the brownie, as if Louisa had spoken her accusation aloud.

  “I didn’t say anything!”

  “What? O’ course ye did. Impertinent, that’s what ye are!”

  “But really,” protested Louisa, “I didn’t say a word!”

  “Oh, a word, is it,” sneered the little man. “As if words are the only things you Big Folk use to say with. Ye with yer humphings and yer sighings and yer everlastin’ gaspings! I never heard the like o’ humans for gaspin’. Ye’re the only creatures under heaven that do it, ye know. I don’t mind tellin’ ye the rest of us find it quite annoyin’.”

  Louisa drew in an indignant breath and then choked on it, realizing it might be considered a gasp. She had risen to her feet in search of the clock, but now she flopped back down in the red-cushioned chair, completely exasperated.

  “I know that’s our clock you’re hiding,” she said. “Pa’s and mine. I suppose you took the rest of it too. You’re the reason my pa got thrown in jail.”

  The brownie said nothing. He had set the pewter teacup down while he was shouting at the worm, and now he picked it up and absently drank from it, a furrow-browed sip, then the whole cup, tipping back his head to get the dregs. Louisa wondered how his hat did not fall off. He smacked his lips and, banging the cup down hard upon a little side table made of a tree stump, became suddenly very busy wiping his bristling beard and mustache.

  “That’s my eggcup!” cried Louisa. She had not recognized it at first because everything was so strange in this strangest of all dwellings, but now that she saw it on the table, she knew it for what it was. She had thought it odd that the brownie’s teacups had squatty stems instead of handles, but filled with liquid (even nasty horseradish brew), it looked rather like a goblet, only very small. Now she saw that it was one of the four little pewter eggcups from her mother’s sideboard. Most days Louisa scrambled three or four eggs for breakfast, or else she fried them in the big cast-iron frypan. Pa liked them hard-boiled, too, especially during a plow time or harvest when he had to work from sunup to sundown; Louisa would carry his dinner out to the fields in a tin pail or basket, tucked under a bright napkin. But once in a while, on a Sunday, Pa would make soft-boiled eggs for breakfast and serve them in eggcups. It always made Louisa giggle to see him tapping daintily
on the shell with his spoon, prinking his little finger for a joke.

  All of a sudden Louisa was boiling mad. Up till now she had felt too muddled to take it all in properly; the dizzying events of this strange evening had unfolded too rapidly, been altogether too much. Head lice—scissors—wolves—brownie—tunnel—spiders—gouty earthworms—stolen clocks—too much! But now, faced with the pewter eggcup, a thing so familiar she could almost see Pa’s face above it, she felt a rush of fury.

  “You’re the reason my pa got thrown in jail!” she repeated. “How dare you! How dare you take our things!”

  “Ye’d better mind yer tone, Miss Impertinence,” snapped the brownie. “’Tisn’t I who made the laws bindin’ Folk Big and Wee. I’ve tradition on my side goin’ back two thousand years. Ye’re lucky I didn’t do worse than borrow a few old things ye didn’t never use nohow. ’Twas within me rights to curdle yer cow’s milk and stop yer hens from layin’, and worse than that, for what ye done to me!”

  “Whatever did we do to you?” asked Louisa, utterly mystified.

  The brownie snorted. “Humph! What didn’t ye do is more the tune of it. All these years I’ve worked for ye, savin’ yer chicks from the hawks and yer wheat from the blight, and not once since yer mother died has anyone left me a drop o’ cream in a saucer, though saucers ye have aplenty!”

  “Do you mean you’ve been helping us all these years? Did you really watch over our chicks?”

  “Did a great deal more than that, I did, as sure as me name is Angus MacClellan Brody O’Gorsebush.”

  “Brody? That’s my name! I’m Louisa Brody.”

  “Dinna ye think I know that?” barked the brownie. “Where do you think me name comes from? We brownies always take the name of the Big Folk we help. ’Twas the MacClellans afore you, in the Auld Country.”

  “You were helping us,” said Louisa slowly. “I . . . I didn’t know. Nor did Pa; he’d have told me. He’d have wanted to thank you. My pa always pays his debts.”

  “Harrumph,” said the brownie, looking uncomfortable. “’Tisn’t a matter of debt. It’s Tradition. Since time out o’ mind, brownies have been lookin’ after things on Big Folks’ farms, and the Big Folks show their appreciation by leavin’ us a bite to eat.” He glowered at her, but there was something softer in his glare. “I do love a nice smack o’ cream.”

  “People can’t show appreciation if they don’t know you exist,” said Louisa. “I never heard of brownies before.”

  “Never . . . heard of . . . brownies!” sputtered the little man. “That what comes o’ livin’ in the middle o’ blasted nowhere! No proper bringin’-up, that’s what. No auld grannies to tell ye the way o’ things. Why, we’ve been lookin’ after the Big Folk in Scotland for time out o’ mind. Centuries upon centuries.” He grumbled into his eggcup and took a sip of his tea. “Yer mother’d ha’ taught ye, I’ll warrant, had she lived. She may ha’ been Irish, but she was a fast learner, she was.”

  “Wait,” gasped Louisa. “Do you mean my mother knew about you?”

  “Whisht!” interrupted the brownie, holding up a hand. “D’ye hear that?”

  For the second time that day someone leaned close, peering at Louisa’s head with scrutinizing eyes. She was about to burst out in an exasperated protest—if she did have head lice, it had to be entirely the fault of that dirty, lumpy straw tick she’d been forced to sleep on at the Smirches’ house—but before she could speak, the brownie began to whisper.

  “Hush-a-marra, wee ones,” he murmured. “I’m sure ’tis clean and cozy there, but ye’ve no call to go bitin’ a poor bonny lass. Off wi’ ye, now. There’s a coyote den just down the river a bit—plenty o’ nice eatin’ for the likes o’ ye.”

  Louisa’s scalp began to itch. She raised a hand automatically, but the brownie stilled her.

  “Just ye bide a moment. ’Twill tickle, but they mean no harm.”

  It was the creepiest feeling Louisa had ever felt. Something—things—were walking across her head, down her neck—she shuddered, longing to slap and scratch them away—across the shoulders of her dirt-stained dress, down her back, and down to the floor. Mrs. Smirch had been right: she had head lice. And now?

  Now they were leaving because the brownie had asked them to.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Spilling Over with Secrets

  THE STRANGEST DAY OF LOUISA’S LIFE SO FAR ended more strangely than the strangest thing she could ever have imagined. The brownie showed her to a small rounded chamber that opened off the main room where he had served her the atrocious horseradish tea. In the dim light she had not seen that one part of the living-room wall rose only partway to the cloth-covered earthen ceiling. There was a small alcove above the wall, framed partly by tree roots and partly by large flat slabs of stone. The brownie had climbed up first by way of a small wooden ladder and rummaged around out of sight for a few minutes, his feet in their soft red boots still tiptoed on the bottom rung—preparing her bed, he explained. Then he had backed down the ladder and spent some time in considerable consternation at the realization that Louisa was far too big for the ladder, which seemed to be made of tree branches bound together with ropes of braided grass. At last he settled upon a solution that involved hauling the tea table over to the wall beside the ladder, from which Louisa was able to reach the lip of the alcove and pull herself, to the peril of her dress, into the little shelflike room. There was indeed a fine bed awaiting her there, comprised of a length of fabric spread over a soft, heaping pile of reasonably clean carded wool. Mrs. Smirch, she recalled, had complained of losing a sack of wool, and Louisa could not help but take some satisfaction in the suspicion that this was that stolen fleece. Then she recognized the bedsheet as one of her own parlor curtains, and did not know whether to scream or laugh.

  The alcove was wide enough, but not nearly long enough, for a tall human girl. She lay with her legs curled, her toes right at the edge of the chamber, listening to the soft noise of the brownie padding around in the living room below. She wondered how many rooms he had here under the hazel grove. Surely there could not be much more to this cavern space above the riverbank, or else he would have put her in a proper room instead of this lumpy rock-ledge where the tree roots caught at her hair when she rolled over. There was precious little room for rolling, anyway.

  She tried not to think about the weight of the earth above her or the creeping things in the crannies all around. At least it was not pitch-dark, as one might expect an underground chamber to be in the dead of night. There was a glow of dim light coming from somewhere, a pale, white light, but no matter how she craned her neck around to search, she could not tell where it came from.

  There was a small alcove above the wall, framed partly by tree roots and partly by large flat slabs of stone.

  SHE AWOKE in panic and pain, having banged her head on a rock or a root or possibly both in her sleep. The light was just as pale and dim as it had been when she drifted off. She could not tell whether it was morning yet; she only knew that she was cold and hungry and needed most urgently to find a privy, or some reasonable substitute. She hoped the brownie would not expect her to use a chamber pot. She would rather slip away to the creek alone. And then she would find him and thank him for the night’s lodging, and figure out how to get herself the thirteen miles into town to clear her father’s name before the circuit judge returned and had him hung.

  First things first, she told herself, struggling to combat the towering fear that rose up within her at the thought of her father’s dangerous situation. A privy.

  She began to back out of the alcove, her feet jutting out into empty air. She hoped the brownie had left the tea table in place below the opening.

  “Hello!” she called. “Mr. O’Gorsebush, sir? I’m coming down, please.”

  Her feet scrabbled for the table. She was holding herself on the ledge by her elbows, her face smushed against the cold rock shelf. One foot found a surface down below. Gingerly, she put weight on it. The brown
ie let out a yelp, and the surface moved out from under her foot.

  “What d’ye think ye’re about?” cried the brownie. “Steppin’ bang on me head. And me wi’ me nightcap on! Is it a ladder ye think I be?”

  Louisa had to stay there hanging by her elbows, her legs dangling down, until the brownie dragged the tree-stump tea table underneath her feet, grumbling all the while. Really, she thought, he was as disagreeable in his way as Mrs. Smirch was in hers—and a thief to boot. Although the brownie had helped her last night—saved her life, even—Louisa could not forget that it was his fault she was in this scrape to begin with. He had taken things from her house and Mr. Smirch’s. He had, for reasons Louisa could not begin to fathom, stored the stolen goods in her father’s old dugout. He had done nothing when the sheriff came and carted her father away. And what good would it do now for Louisa to explain, even if she could hike thirteen miles to town in time to save her father? Who would believe her when she explained about the brownie?

  After all, she herself had not believed Jessamine’s account of seeing a strange little man in a pointy brown cap.

  The cap, as far as Louisa could tell, seemed to be the brownie’s prized possession. He had hastened out of the room while Louisa climbed down from the tea table, barking out to her not to turn around until he said it was all right. He appeared in mortal dread of being seen without his brown cap.

  Perhaps, Louisa thought, his head was as pointy as the cap.

  The tunnel-house was not much brighter in the daytime than it was at night. At least, Louisa assumed it was morning; she was hungry enough that it might well be noon. She ached to be in her own home, where she could have fresh clothes, a bath in the big tin tub, a nice plate of cornbread with molasses, some of Evangeline’s good, fresh milk. Maybe she could sneak over for a little while, she mused. After all, the Smirches might look for her there, but they could hardly spare a whole day’s work—though Louisa wouldn’t put it past Mrs. Smirch to plant Winthrop and Charlie on her doorstep as lookouts. Well, they would never stay put without Jessamine to keep watch over them, and Jessamine, Louisa knew, would help her. She’d think up some excuse to distract the boys away from the house, for sure.