River to Redemption

by Ann H. Gabhart

  She hesitated as though to say something, but then she merely smiled over her shoulder at him as she hurried toward the street. He watched her out of sight and then took the pie into the kitchen.

  Ruth Harmon. He sat at the table and wrote her name down in a ledger book. He added every other name he remembered of those he’d met in Springfield. A good pastor remembered names and learned about his congregation. Every name on the page had a story. His gaze lingered on Ruth Harmon’s name as he wondered what her story might be.

  He dipped a finger into the pie and licked the sweet cherry syrup off his finger. Then he got a fork and ate pie for lunch.

  Eleven

  Adria liked clerking at the store well enough, but she couldn’t imagine working there forever. If only she knew what she did want to do forever. She knew what she was supposed to want. Marriage and children. Sometimes that sounded right. She liked children, and she often considered accepting Carlton’s proposal and becoming Mrs. Carlton Damon. But then he would do something to infuriate her the way he had last night and she would be almost ready to point him toward Janie Smith’s house.

  Ruth said that they knew each other too well. That familiarity blinded Adria to Carlton’s good qualities. Perhaps she did expect too much. Still, if a person was going to pledge her love and life to one man, shouldn’t she expect much? Love. Understanding. Support. Adria could almost hear Ruth reminding her Carlton would expect as much in return, which was reasonable. But the problem was, Adria kept getting the idea that Carlton thought what he expected trumped anything she might expect.

  That morning Adria had gotten up extra early to slip out into the dawning light. The streets were nearly empty, with only a few shopkeepers unlocking their doors to prepare for the day. Lamps shone dimly through some of the windows. Soon the town would be astir, but Adria liked being out and about before that happened.

  For one thing, she had the cake for Louis, and that was easier to deliver before the hotel guests were up and moving. Bet could usually point Adria to wherever Louis was working. Bet had become the hotel cook after Aunt Tilda died. She was used to Adria and didn’t mind at all when she showed up at the kitchen door.

  Sometimes Adria thought Bet was making eyes at Louis, but if she teased Louis about it, he just laughed and shook his head. “Now you know there ain’t no truth to that, missy.”

  Today, Bet met her at the back door. “Miss Adria, you bringin’ something for that ol’ Louis again? Now if he ain’t the lucky one.”

  “It’s just a little cake,” Adria said. “If he’s not around, I’ll leave it here.”

  “Best not do that. I’ll have it all et before the sun comes up. You and Missus Ruth make fine cakes.”

  “It’s Aunt Tilda’s recipe.”

  “I’m knowin’ it is, but somehow I can’t get all them ingredients to line up right in my cakes. Massa George tells me to stick to cornbread and biscuits and he’ll buy cakes from Missus Harmon.” Bet’s smile disappeared. “The mister is sick. Louis tol’ me he feared Massa George done took a turn for the worse this day.”

  “Oh? I’m sorry to hear that. Nothing too serious, I hope.”

  “Appears to be plenty serious. Done had two doctors in. Massa George’s son come home from Louisville yesterday.” Bet looked over her shoulder toward the front of the building. “Might be for the best if that one don’t catch you in here. He’s not like Massa George. He’s all the time talkin’ about how much ever’thing is worth, and I do mean ever’thing.”

  “Maybe Mr. George will get better and his son will head back to Louisville.”

  “I’ve been prayin’ it so.” Bet rubbed her hands on her apron. “I ’spect you can find Louis out in the buggy house. Always somethin’ out there needin’ shinin’ up or fixin’.”

  Louis was happy to get the cake, but it was plain he was as worried as Bet about Mr. Sanderson.

  “I been prayin’, but things ain’t lookin’ good for Massa George. A person seen as much as me, they get a feelin’ for that kind of thing.”

  “Bet said they had two doctors in.”

  “Doctors can’t cure ever’ ill that ails a body.”

  “It’s not cholera, is it?” Adria lived in dread of another cholera epidemic.

  “You can rest easy about that.” Louis patted Adria’s hand. “Nary a sign of the cholera. Looks to be his heart failin’ him. He ain’t a young man.”

  “Then maybe it’s his time to go.”

  “That’s what I’m feared of. Things is liable to be turned upside down ’round here if Massa George passes on to glory.” Deep lines formed between Louis’s eyebrows.

  “Whoever takes over the hotel will still need you.”

  Louis shook his head. “Hard to know about that. I reckon I’ll just have to depend on the Lord the way I’ve always done, no matter what comes my way. Ain’t no need you worryin’ your head over it anyhow. You need to get on to the store and I need to get back to work. You tell Mistress Harmon I appreciates the cake.”

  “What about me? I was the one who did the frosting. Just the way Aunt Tilda taught me.” Adria gave him a mock frown. “And carried it over here to you.”

  “Now you knows you rememberin’ ol’ Louis always makes me happy.”

  “You’re not old.” Adria had thought him old when she first knew him. That had been because she was so young, but now she had clearer eyes. Louis didn’t have the first gray hair, and his shoulders were just as broad and strong as the day he’d carried her to the hotel after her family died.

  “Turned thirty-nine in January, best I can figure. Not but a short step to forty.”

  “That’s not all that old. You’re still in the prime of life.”

  “Maybe so, but that can be a good thing for a man like me or a bad thing, accordin’ to what else is goin’ on.” His smile disappeared.

  Adria didn’t try to get him to explain what he meant. Even if he told her what had put the worry in his eyes, she had no way to make it disappear. All she could do was bring him some sweets now and again, and that did no good at all for the real problem. Him being a slave. She had told him more than once that she’d heard of people willing to spirit slaves to freedom, even if doing so was against the law.

  But Louis refused to listen. He always waved away any mention of heading toward that river Aunt Tilda had talked about. Adria knew now she’d meant the Ohio River that, once crossed, meant a better chance for freedom in the northern states that didn’t allow slavery.

  “Matilda shouldn’t have filled your head with her freedom talk,” Louis had told her once.

  “Don’t you want to be free?” Adria asked.

  “I reckon a man can’t help but think on freedom now and again.” A look of yearning flashed across his face before he rubbed his hands hard over his cheeks. A frown made furrows on his forehead then. “But some things ain’t meant to be, and I’m just thankful not to be shipped down the river where a slave ain’t nothin’ but hands to pick cotton in the hot sun all the livelong day.”

  “Mr. Sanderson wouldn’t do that after all you’ve done for him. During the cholera and all.”

  “Sometimes it’s best to depend on nobody but the Lord. You can be sure he won’t never do you wrong.” Louis had dipped his chin and looked at her through lowered eyebrows. “Now no more of this kind of talk before you gets the both of us in a heap of trouble.”

  Trouble. Ruth told her the same. Trouble not just for Adria but for Ruth too. She worried that if the Springfield citizens heard Adria speak out against slavery or knew she wrote anti-slavery letters to the papers, they would withdraw their children from Ruth’s school. Sadly, that was probably true, but it was also true that few people cared what any woman said. Even the northern abolitionist groups refused to let women speak at their conventions. Some free-thinking women formed their own groups, but when they met, people stirred up protests against women speaking in public that led to riots in the streets.

  So even if Adria did speak out and stop h
iding her written words behind a fake name in letters to the city newspapers, nobody would listen. Women were supposed to let men do the thinking for them. As Ruth often cautioned her, it was a man’s world. A woman couldn’t vote to change things. A woman was expected to stay in her place and agree with whatever her father or her husband said.

  Adria supposed living with Ruth with no men in their lives since the cholera epidemic had skewed her thinking. Made her believe a woman could make her way without a man. But did she want that? Surely it was better to have love and a family. She remembered how her mother had laughed and sung while taking care of her family. She saw how sad Ruth was when she sometimes picked up her husband’s Bible and held it as though she were still holding him.

  Yet, was it too much to hope for a man to accept you as you were instead of as he thought you should be?

  The streets were beginning to fill as she hurried toward the store. Dust rose up from a line of wagons leaving town on their way to Louisville. She waved her hand in front of her face and was glad to step into Billiter’s Mercantile Store. Not that some of the dust didn’t seep into the store or fly in whenever the door opened. Plus, the wagoners and drovers carried plenty in with them when they came to buy supplies for their journey.

  Ruth worried about her being around the rough drovers, and Carlton was forever after her to quit. It wasn’t a place for a lady, he said. She needed a job, she told him. She wouldn’t if she’d come to her senses and marry him, he said. She supposed that was true, but she rarely had trouble with any of the men at the store. Mr. Billiter didn’t abide rough talk or actions in his store, and he showed them the door out if they appeared to have partaken of too much of the wares from the taverns down the street.

  But he wasn’t about to bar them completely from the store. They brought ready money and he never had to worry with them asking to put their purchases on the books until they could pay. The drovers were here today and gone tomorrow. A different bunch coming through town each day in the summer. The new road built a few years ago with bridges over the Salt River made Springfield a convenient stop during the hauling seasons for wagons going to or from Louisville.

  Adria didn’t mind totaling up the men’s purchases. They might be rough, unshaven, and not too clean from the dusty road, but at the same time, they appeared to be so free, ready to go wherever the road took them, with nothing to tie them down. Now and again a woman rode in one of the wagons with a man, but most of the men seemed to have few attachments to anyone or any place.

  It was a busy day for the wagons, and by the time Adria headed home after the store closed down, the dust was so thick it almost choked her. She could feel it settling in her hair and on her dress. She was anxious to leave Main Street and the wagons behind and head down Elm toward her house where the air would be clearer.

  She was halfway across Main when men began shouting. She froze at the sound of thundering hooves coming straight toward her through clouds of dust. All at once, somebody barreled into her, shoving her out of the way. She hit the ground hard next to the hitching posts as horses and a wagon pounded past. The horses’ heavy breathing, the creak of the wagon, and the shouts of the wagoner seemed almost on top of her. Adria tried to scramble away, but she couldn’t move. Whoever had pushed her out of the road was now a dead weight on her back, pressing her down into the dirt.

  The man groaned and rolled away from her. Adria sat up and tried to see him through the thick dust stirred up by the horses and wagon.

  “Are you all right?” she asked as she got to her feet and leaned down to look at the man. She didn’t know him. He must be one of the drovers.

  “That’s what I should be asking you.” He sat up, holding his head. “I thought you were going to be run down by that cart for sure and certain. Old Mac let his team get away from him.”

  “I would have gotten out of the way.” Adria brushed off her skirt. It was useless. She was covered with dirt head to toe. Some even in her mouth. And her hat was completely gone, lost with her hairpins somewhere in the dust.

  “Didn’t look like that to me, my lady.”

  The dust cleared a little and she could see blood oozing between the fingers he held to his forehead. “You’re hurt.”

  “Appears I might have cracked my head on the hitching post there.” He grinned at her as he got to his feet. “A small price to pay for keeping such a beautiful lady from being trampled, because whatever you say, you were about to get run down and meet your Maker.”

  Adria pulled a handkerchief from her pocket. She wanted to use it to wipe the dust out of her mouth, but instead she offered it to the man. He was young and still smiling in spite of the blood trickling down his face. “Here. Use this to stop the bleeding.”

  “Bleeding, am I? Won’t be the first time, I can assure you. My mother used to say I could find a way to bang myself up in a church pew.” He laughed and waved away the handkerchief. “But she’d have had nothing bad to say about me banging up my head helping out a lady such as yourself.”

  “Take it.” Adria pushed it into his free hand. “And come with me. Our house is right down the street. That wound needs to be cleaned up to see if you should find a doctor.”

  He took the handkerchief and held it to his forehead. “Our house? Could be your husband won’t appreciate you dragging home a piece of road trash.”

  “Could be.” Adria wasn’t about to tell this man she wasn’t married. “But it’s the least I can do after you saved me from what you thought was sure death.”

  “I did, didn’t I? Very well. Lead the way. A drink of water will be welcome at any rate to wash away the dust.” He walked beside her away from Main toward her house. “Logan Farrell at your service, ma’am.”

  He waited for her to say her name back, but she saw no reason to tell him that. She was going to wash out his cut and send him on his way. He was a drover. He wouldn’t be in town more than a day.

  After a minute, he said, “I guess it isn’t exactly proper for a lady like you to share your name with the likes of me. Even if we have been down in the dirt together.”

  “I think you should choose your words a bit more carefully, Mr. Farrell.” She gave him a hard look.

  “Indeed. Forgive me. That was ungentlemanly of me, but then no one’s accused me of being a gentleman for a while now. Not since I took to the road.”

  His words made Adria curious. “Were you once a gentleman?” She gave him a closer look. Under the dust, his features lined up nicely with a generous mouth that hadn’t quit smiling since he sat up out of the dust. His blue eyes sparkled with amusement. She had no idea what color his hair might be, since somehow he hadn’t lost his hat. She touched her head. She should have looked for her hat.

  “Being a gentleman is way overrated. Trust me on that, my lady. Do you think your husband will mind me calling you my lady?”

  “I doubt that will be a problem.” She wouldn’t think about what Carlton would say if he saw her taking this drifter into her house.

  She went through the gate into their yard and led him around to the back door. No sense tracking through the sitting room. She stopped before she stepped up on the porch to knock as much dust as possible off her dress. With his free hand, the man took off his hat and hit it against his pants. In spite of herself, she couldn’t keep from laughing at the cloud of dust they were raising.

  “The only thing better to see than a beautiful woman is a beautiful woman with a smile on her face.” Logan Farrell laughed with her as he corralled his dark blond curls under his hat again.

  Twelve

  In the years she’d been with Ruth, Adria had brought home plenty of strays. A few dogs that eventually found their way back to their owners. A bird with a broken wing once. Somehow they kept it alive until its wing healed and it flew away. A minor miracle. Then the children around town had learned if they followed Adria to the house, she’d give them a cookie. So it wasn’t unusual to see eager young faces, both white and black, peering through their
kitchen door.

  To Ruth’s relief, Adria had not yet brought home a runaway slave, but Ruth worried she might someday. Should that happen, Ruth would pray for divine guidance. Or maybe another miracle, one far from minor.

  All that should have prepared Ruth for the stranger at their table pressing a bloody handkerchief to his forehead, but it didn’t.

  “I didn’t know we had a visitor.” Ruth stopped in the kitchen doorway and looked from the man to Adria and back to the man.

  He looked up at Ruth with a smile that flashed teeth in his dust-covered face. He was a young man, with eyes that made Ruth take a second look. Very blue with that sparkle she often noted in her most mischievous students. This man was hardly a boy. Or anyone they knew. A drifter. Maybe one of the rough drovers who disturbed the peace of the town during hauling season. She wouldn’t be surprised if his bright eyes were because he had imbibed too many spirits, but she didn’t smell alcohol on him.

  “Sorry, ma’am, but my lady here insisted I come with her so she could tend to my head.” His smile was infectious, and in spite of reservations about him being in her kitchen, an answering smile curled up Ruth’s lips.

  With a shrug, Adria turned from the wash pan where she had pumped out water to dampen a cloth. “He insists he saved my life and in the process knocked his head against a hitching post. The least I could do was bring him home to see how badly he’s hurt.”

  “Very kind of her too.” The man flashed those eyes Ruth’s way again and then back at Adria. “And I did without a doubt save her from being run down by Mac Ritchey’s horses. That scalawag Mac can’t handle that team, and your sister here must have been blinded by the dust and didn’t realize how near she was to death. No way could I stand idly by and watch her trampled.”

  Nothing was really wrong with his words, and yet there was, as he sat brazenly at their small table. Adria could be foolhardy at times. Opening their door to a complete stranger was proof of that. Ruth had to wonder who the really dangerous scalawag was. Mac with the horses or this man in front of her. He was indeed a charmer. She had noted how he named her sister instead of mother.