The musing began to crystallize into a plan. One way or another, Louisa would need some supplies before she could begin the long hike to town. Exactly what she’d do when she got there was another matter altogether; she’d ford that creek when she came to it.
She supposed Jessamine must be worried sick about her, out all night on her own. Louisa began to hope Jessamine would be on boy-minding duty at her place. If not, she ought to think of a way to leave a message for the little girl somehow, so she wouldn’t worry too much.
But how?
The brownie erupted from his tunnel into the living room, beard combed and brown cap brushed clean of the dirt and cobwebs that had adorned its peak last night.
“What? Not washed up yet? Och, I never saw the like o’ humans for lollygaggin’ and malingerin’. There isn’t another creature under heaven that stands around woolgatherin’ when there’s work to be done.”
Louisa tried to protest—it was not as if her host had shown where to find so much as a water basin, after all—but the brownie paid her no mind. He opened the front door and then turned back to shout something at the worms, and he stopped in the tunnel to have a long conversation with a dung beetle, all while Louisa crouched behind him feeling rather desperate. If she didn’t get to a privy soon—or the far side of a tree, or something—she feared she was going to have an accident. At her age! The thought was beyond mortifying. She didn’t want to know what the earthworms would have to say about that.
But at last the brownie finished his long-winded tunnel business and led the way down the dim corridor, emerging slowly into the sunlight after much careful listening and peering about. Louisa didn’t blame him for being wary. If Charlie and Winthrop ever caught wind of him, he’d never again know a moment’s peace.
He had dawdled so long that Louisa had no time for niceties. “I beg your pardon!” she gasped and dashed into the hazel grove, hiding herself where the bushes were thickest. Perhaps the brownie had sense enough to guess what she was up to, for he struck up a rather loud conversation with some creature Louisa could not see. The replies seemed to be of a hooing and oohing sort, so she supposed he was speaking to an owl in one of the treetops. She hoped the owl could not see her makeshift privy.
Her face was burning with embarrassment when she rejoined the brownie at the mouth of his tunnel. He took no notice of her, but went on hollering to the owl—a great horned owl, she saw now, peering up over the edge of a messy stick nest half-hidden by the leaves of the tallest cottonwood. It turned its large placid gaze upon her, blinking slowly, the bottom eyelids coming up to meet the top. A tuft of feather stuck up on either side of its head like ears. It clicked its beak, blinked again, and turned its head back toward the brownie.
“Hoowoo,” it said.
“I’m well aware of that,” said the brownie impatiently. “Just see that ye leave the chicks be, and pass the word to the other flyers. I suppose I’ll have to speak to the snakes meself. Sure and I shudder to think what she’ll have to say about that.”
Louisa wondered what on earth he was talking about. What she’d have to say about what? His speaking to snakes? It sounded rather interesting—quite a useful talent, in her opinion.
“Come on, then!” the brownie cried, startling her. He switched so abruptly from one thing to another. “We’ve got to hurry! Ought to ha’ been there half an hour ago!”
“Been where?” demanded Louisa in exasperation. “You don’t . . . I haven’t . . . oh please, I have to go home! I have to go into town to help my father, and I’ll need some things to help me get there, you see.”
She spoke in a rush, hoping to get the words out before the brownie hustled her off on some inscrutable brownie errand. He gave her a pop-eyed stare and pulled impatiently on his beard with both fists so that it wound up in two long neat points.
“‘Go home,’ she says,” he fumed. “Where in thunder d’ye think we’re goin’, lass! To see to things at yer place before that sour-faced, thatch-headed giant arrives and steals all me nice warm milk away.”
“Oh!”
Louisa hurried after him through the ring of trees toward the open plain. At the edge of the grove he veered east, skirting the Smirches’ land, following the curve of one of the low hills that undulated out from the creek bottoms. Louisa had never been here before, as far as she recalled. She thought of the view from her front porch at home, the broad flat plain that wasn’t really flat at all, but rather a vast expanse of land full of billows and wrinkles and flat places, like a bedsheet waiting to be smoothed. This hill must be, she realized, one of those billows in the sheet.
That view of the broad billowing sheet, white as goosedown in winter, its ripples softened and blunted, or golden brown in the middle of a baking hot summer; or blue-green in the spring, sprigged with red and orange like calico—oh how she loved that view, loved to stand on her porch with Pa after supper, watching the sun sink, pouring its color into the sky and the clouds and the golden ribbon of the horizon. Pa would point out a flash of white, then another, and another, that meant a family of pronghorn antelope were streaking white-rumped across the prairie like low comets. A turkey vulture circling, circling, its huge wings tipped with broad feathers set wide apart so that they looked like fingers trailing in the sky. A ripple in the grasses, fat seedheads bending and quivering, where some small creature was trotting unseen—a fox, perhaps, or a jackrabbit, a coyote, a badger.
“This land is spillin’ over with secrets, Louisa,” Pa would say. “If we had eyes like one o’ them eagles up there, we might could read some o’ them.”
The brownie was moving forward between the tall grasses so rapidly that Louisa could hardly see anything of him but the tip of his hat. She quickened her pace, aching to stand on her own porch again, staring out at this view that held so many more secrets than she had ever imagined. I’m one of them now myself, she thought.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
A Very Good Question
THEY CREPT CAUTIOUSLY THROUGH THE CORNFIELD toward the barn, keeping a wary eye out for signs of Mr. Smirch. Close to the barn’s back wall, the brownie cocked his eye and held up a hand in warning. He seemed to be listening. Louisa held her breath, trying to hear what he was hearing.
“By the kelpie’s mane!” the brownie burst out. “He’s taken the cow, blast him.”
“Evangeline?” Louisa hurried around the corner of the barn behind the little man.
“Evangeline,” snorted the brownie, coming to a halt in the wide doorway. “Is that what ye call her?”
The barn doors had been left open, and the cow was gone. At first Louisa thought, with considerable alarm, that Mr. Smirch must have been careless enough to leave the doors open after he milked the evening before, allowing Evangeline to wander off—or worse, wolves to wander in. But the deserted stall showed no signs of unpleasantness, and a hasty conversation between the brownie and a meadowlark revealed that Mr. Smirch had returned to the farm in the dark the night before and gone all over the house with a lantern, hollering and clomping, making it altogether impossible for the lark to settle down for the night. After seventeen choruses of this unmelodic song (so the meadowlark explained), the man had clomped back to the barn and led the cow away.
“He must have been looking for me,” said Louisa, feeling a bit guilty that Mr. Smirch had had to hike the two miles over here and back twice in one evening, for he had scarcely returned from milking Evangeline an hour before his wife had insisted Louisa read to the family after supper. “I suppose he didn’t want to have to come back first thing this morning for another milking. He must have taken her to his own barn.”
“Impertinence!” said the brownie. “First the milk, and now the cow. I don’t suppose he asked her if she wanted to go traipsin’ off into the dark. And her so terrible afraid o’ the moon.”
“She is?” asked Louisa, but he had gone off, muttering in disgust, to tend to the chickens.
The brownie did not seem to want her help, so she went to th
e well and filled a pail with water for a wash. She longed to change her clothes, but her other work dress was at the Smirches’, and she wanted to keep her Sunday frock clean for when she got to town.
Town. It was thirteen miles away—farther than she had ever walked in her life. Her toes wiggled inside her tight boots. Pa had said he’d buy her a new pair of shoes after the wheat was sold. She added a pair of stockings to the small pile she was assembling for her pack: a sunbonnet, a wedge of cheese, a jug of water, some wrinkled ropes of venison jerky she and Pa had made the previous winter. She tied the pile up in a bedsheet. It was clumsy, but it would have to do.
The house looked dusty, neglected, lonely. Louisa ached to fly around with broom and dustcloth and make it look neat and lived-in again. Instead she took Pa’s comb and a basin of water and combed out her tangled hair, then braided it into two long plaits. She checked the comb anxiously for signs of yesterday’s unwelcome visitors and found nothing. That’s a mercy, at least, she thought.
She found the brownie in the barnyard outside the chicken coop, conversing with the brown hen.
“Don’t get yerself in a bother,” he said. “The bull snakes and the hognose snake have been warned. I’ll stop up their hidey-holes with cow dung if they so much as flick a tongue in yer direction. Mind, I’ve not found anyone willin’ to convey me message to that infernal rattler. Foul-tempered creature, he is; we don’t tolerate that kind o’ nasty temper in the Auld Country. But there’s no need to go rufflin’ up yer feathers worriting over him. Meadowlark says he gorged on a prairie dog and is too stuffed to move. ’Twill be the better part of a week before he’s back on the prowl. And the winged poachers have promised to mind their manners.”
The brown hen clucked and danced and fluttered her wings, and behind her a line of yellow chicks gave a simultaneous cheep. The brownie nodded in approval. “That’s the spirit, missus. ’Tis a fine handsome brood ye’re raisin’, and mannerly as well.”
Louisa nearly clapped in delight. “Can you talk to everything?” she asked. “Birds and snakes and mice and everything?”
“Mice! I’m glad ye reminded me. I must have a word with the field mice—I’ll not have them invadin’ yer pantry while ye’re away.”
“Will they obey you?”
The brownie snorted. “Obey me! Mice obey no master. Clever things, they are, however, and this lot are grateful ye keep no cats around. They’ll listen to reason. I’ll point out they don’t want ye bringin’ home any kittens from town.”
Town. Involuntarily Louisa gazed westward, following the trail of trees that marked the path of Spitwhistle Creek. She could see a long way across the prairie, but town was too far away even to glimpse.
“I ought to get started,” she said. “How long do you suppose it takes to walk thirteen miles?”
“Walk—” the brownie began, but a sudden shrill whistle from the mockingbird halted his words. The chicks peep-peeped in alarm, running to shelter under their mother’s wings. Someone was coming. Louisa’s impulse was to hide in the henhouse, but before she could move, a body came hurtling around the corner of the barn.
It was Jessamine, hair unkempt, feet bare, breathing hard.
“Louisa!” she cried, throwing her arms around the older girl. “Oh good, I was so afraid you’d be hidin’ somewhere,” she panted, letting go of the bear hug and leaning over with her hands on her knees, trying to catch her breath, “and I didn’t know where to look . . . I tried the hazel grove first because my uncle had already searched here and said you were nowhere to be found, and I looked in all the trees and you weren’t there, and I was going to look in the tunnel just in case, but—can you imagine!—a big old owl swooped at my head and wouldn’t let me go near it! Did you ever hear of such a thi—”
She broke off abruptly, staring with wide, unbelieving eyes at the brownie. He stood beside Louisa with his hands on his hips, scowling.
“You!” Jessamine gasped. “It’s you! I knew you weren’t a badger!”
“A badger!” snapped the brownie. “Ridiculous. Hmph. So I see it’s ye I have to thank for mixin’ me up in this business. This human business,” he added darkly.
Jessamine’s brow furrowed anxiously. “I . . . I did? I didn’t mean—”
Louisa interrupted her. “Don’t mind Mr. O’Gorsebush, Jessamine. You didn’t do anything wrong. Your aunt is the one who sent us to the hazel grove. I only ran there last night because I was afraid of wolves and thought I’d be safer in a tree.” She turned to the brownie, whom she was beginning to realize was a great deal more bark than bite. “And besides, you’re the one who got us mixed up in this business, remember? If you hadn’t hidden all those things in my pa’s dugout, he wouldn’t be sitting in jail right now!”
The brownie harrumphed and—in a rather astonishing display of rudeness, Louisa thought, even for him—turned his back on her.
“You’re the thief?” shrilled Jessamine. “You took my aunt’s doll? And my uncle’s hatchet? And the clock and everything? Whatever for?”
“That’s a very good question,” said Louisa, marching around the brownie until she faced him again. “You haven’t explained that part at all. I understand you were sore about our not being grateful for all the help you’ve given us. And now that I know, I am grateful, ever so much! But why did you put all those things in our old dugout? Why didn’t you take them to your, um, house, like our clock and my eggcup and the other things? Were you trying to get my pa in trouble?”
“Now why in thunder would I want to do that?” exploded the brownie. “It’s cost me a world o’ trouble, him bein’ arrested.”
“Then why?”
The brownie murmured something too soft for Louisa to hear.
“Beg pardon?”
“For her! ’Twas all for her, d’ye understand?”
“Who?” asked the girls in unison.
The brownie, his face turning tomato-red with emotion, grabbed handfuls of his beard with both fists and tugged with a rather alarming intensity.
“Who d’ye think, ye great, green, giddy, gallumpin’ geese! My wife!”
CHAPTER TWENTY
In the Dugout
“YOUR WIFE?” LOUISA GASPED.
The brownie’s beard was quivering in two pointed chunks, his nose and cheeks quite purple above the snowy forks of it. He strode across the barnyard, beetle-browed, arms crossed over his rounded middle. The brown hen’s chicks chased after him in a stumbling, fluffy line, peeping frantically. Jessamine and Louisa exchanged baffled glances.
“Well,” called the brownie over his shoulder, having stopped suddenly, which caused the line of chicks to collapse in on itself and then erupt in a fresh frenzy of peeping. “Are ye comin’ or are ye not?”
By now Louisa knew better than to ask, Coming where? Taking Jessamine by the hand, she followed the brownie out of the barnyard and up the path toward her father’s old dugout.
The door stuck. Louisa had to yank it hard before it swung open, knocking her off balance and causing another chain reaction among the chicks, who were sticking close behind the brownie. He was still scowling, as if someone had done him wrong and not the other way around. Jessamine, on the other hand, was eager-eyed and red-cheeked, as if she were going to a party where there might be lemonade or even ice cream.
It was dark in the room cut into the hillside, darker even than the brownie’s house had been. Louisa remembered the shafts of sunlight filtering down through the knot of tree roots overhead; she supposed the brownie had worked out some kind of skylight system for ventilation and light. The dugout had had a window-hole next to the door once, covered over with oiled paper, but in the long years of its disuse, the buffalo grass of the hillside had put out runners across the small opening.
With the door open at its widest, there was a long plank of sunlight laid on the floor, above which swirled a dim galaxy of dust motes. Louisa stepped into the dugout, swallowing past the burning in her throat. The last time she’d been here was that da
y with Mr. Smirch and the hatchet, her last full day with Pa.
Jessamine had slipped inside and was spinning slowly round, like the dust motes, exploring the room with her eyes.
“It’s a home,” she said. She turned to the brownie. “You were going to live here. With your wife.”
The brownie scowled harder, staring at the ground. Around his boots, the chicks eddied and peeped.
Louisa saw now what she had not noticed that day with Mr. Smirch. She had seen the things he named with such fury: his hatchet, his clock, his wife’s doll. She had not seen that the dugout was not the dusty bare shed it had been for most of her lifetime. It was a room, half-furnished and lovingly decorated. It lacked a bed, table, chairs—things the brownie must have been planning to move from the tunnel-house after he’d sprung the surprise on his wife. But there were wooden shelves mounted on the wall, carefully arranged with objects: a canning jar filled with buttons, an eggbeater, a tin cup. Her mother’s tortoiseshell comb. There were spaces where the Smirches’ clock and doll had been.
“You were setting up housekeeping!” she said to the brownie.
Jessamine clapped her hands. “It’s lovely, what you’ve done.”
The brownie’s frown was carved so deep he looked made of stone. He bent and lowered a hand, palm outstretched, and one of the chicks clambered on, peeping ecstatically. Silently, he stroked its small fluffy head with one gnarled finger.
Louisa saw that he’d tacked a cloth into the earthen ceiling overhead here, just as he had in the tunnel-house. Her throat burned; she could remember standing in this very spot, staring upward at the checked oilcloth, hearing Mama hum behind her at the squatty iron cookstove. The stove was in the frame house now; Louisa had cooked hundreds of meals on it. She turned around to look at the empty space where it had lived when she was little, following the path of the absent stovepipe up to the low ceiling. The stovepipe hole had long since disappeared under the thick mat of grass above.
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