When John Jacob and Rachel had finished eating, they took their coffee out onto the porch. “It’s clouding up.” John Jacob frowned up at the sky. “I hope we’re not in for a rainy spell. The folks at the church have put a lot of work into the big to-do Sunday. And that steer Dylan donated is too good to waste if they don’t get a good turnout.”
“Well, at least your donation of spirits won’t be wasted.” Rachel gave John Jacob a teasing grin.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” he said, a frown appearing on his handsome face. “I hope we don’t end up with a bunch of drunks on our hands.”
“I’ve thought of that, too,” Rachel said. “Most mountain men like to drink and brawl, and pick fights.”
“If any fights break out, you and I are going to head for home.” John Jacob didn’t say so, but he was thinking there would be fights over Rachel. Suddenly he wasn’t looking forward to the festivities. He began to think that he and Rachel should go early to the picnic party, then leave before the men got quarrelsome. Before he could say anything, Rosie stepped out on the porch and said, “Iva wants to speak to you, John.”
“Iva? What could she want?”
John Jacob looked puzzled.
“I don’t know, but she’s mighty upset. You’d better see what’s troubling her. She’s been sick in her room for the past few days. Doc Johnson was here today to see her.”
John Jacob stood up and went to Iva’s room. He was startled to see how wasted the woman looked. Her body was rail thin, her shoulder-length hair a mass of tangles. He had not seen her for a week or so, he realized, and now it was obvious she’d been seriously ill.
It was clear that Iva was nervous, so John Jacob gave her one of his warm smiles and asked gently, “What can I do for you, Iva?”
When the woman cast an uneasy look at Rachel and began coughing, John Jacob said to Rachel, “Maybe you can bring us some of that cold spring water Andy just brought in.”
Rachel frowned. What was plaguing poor Iva? she wondered. She hurried off to the kitchen to give the woman the privacy she sought for her talk with John Jacob.
When Rachel returned with the spring water a minute later, Iva was nowhere in sight. Instead, her two little boys were sitting on chairs before John Jacob, their small fingers thrust into the pockets of much-patched homespuns.
John Jacob motioned Rachel closer and said, “You know Colby and Benny, don’t you, honey?”
“Why, sure,” Rachel answered, wondering what this was all about. “These two scamps are always pestering me to get one of Andy’s cookies for them.”
The boys ducked their shaggy heads in embarrassment.
“Well, boys,” John Jacob said, “do you know why I wanted to see you tonight?”
“No, sir.” The shaggy heads ducked again.
John Jacob stared out the window a moment. “Your mother has asked me to be your guardian. Do you know what a guardian is?”
“No, sir,” answered Colby, the older of the two. “We don’t know much of anything.”
John Jacob reached over and patted the child’s grimy fingers, which were now clutched together. “I doubt that,” he said. “You just haven’t had any schooling.”
“That is true. Our ma has learned us a few things, but she is so sick now, she can’t do it no more.”
“I’ll explain to you what a guardian is,” John Jacob said and smiled at the boys. “He or she is a very important person. When a child has lost all his relatives, someone becomes his guardian. Your mother has asked me to be your guardian if anything should happen to her.”
Colby and Benny lifted their heads and stared at him with wide eyes. “Are you going to?” Benny asked anxiously.
“I’ll be happy to. From now on you can call me Uncle John.”
Two pairs of brown eyes glowed brightly. It was plain to see the boys were relieved to know they had a protector.
The brightness dimmed then and Colby’s voice quivered when he asked, “Nothin’s going to happen to our ma, though, right?”
“I don’t know, child. Only the Lord knows that. You know that she’s been very sick.”
“Yeah,” Benny put in. “I heard the doc say she’s got lung fever. Is that real bad?”
“It can be, but I’m hoping she’ll get better,” John Jacob said gently. He stood up and pulled the two boys to him. Squeezing their narrow shoulders, he said, “But no matter what happens, Uncle John is going to take care of both of you.” He directed their steps toward the back rooms. “Tell you mother I’ll be in to talk everything over with her. I’d like to get you into school as soon as possible.”
An uneasiness slid into Colby’s dark brown eyes. “We wouldn’t know how to act, Uncle John. We ain’t got no clothes . . . or shoes.”
“Don’t you go worrying about that.” John Jacob ruffled the boy’s hair, then wished he could take his handkerchief and wipe the grease off his fingers. “More than half the other kids are in the same shape as you. But we’re going to buy you some new duds.”
John Jacob was grabbed and hugged on both sides. He grinned at Rachel as the two boys scampered away.
“What a softy you are,” she said, smiling. “I guess you just can’t turn away a youngun in need.”
“Guess not,” John Jacob answered gruffly. “Poor Iva—she’s in sad shape. I just couldn’t say no to her.”
“I’ll help you with the boys,” Rachel promised. “I know all about little ones. I practically raised my younger brothers.”
The following morning Rachel and John Jacob took a ride up to her old home place. It was the first time she had been back to the shack since her mother’s death. She wanted to cry aloud her grief but held it back until she saw the yellow rose bush in the chimney corner of the old log cabin. It was in full bloom. That sight brought a torrent of tears. “Mama loved that bush so,” she sobbed as John Jacob took her in his arms. “It was the one bright spot in her drab world. Taig threatened to chop it down if he ever caught her wasting water on it. But Mama would not let it die, and every time Taig was gone off somewhere, she would carry water from the stream and lovingly give it a drink.”
“Would you like me to dig up the rose bush for you, honey?” John Jacob asked gently. “You know I want to build you your own little cabin near the post. We could plant it there, in a chimney facing the mountain where your mother was laid to rest.”
“That would give me something to remember her by,” Rachel said, smiling through her tears. “I’ll go fetch you a spade.”
As John Jacob waited for Rachel to return, he recalled Ida’s deep love of all plants. He imagined that at an early age Rachel had gone with her mother to the woods to gather certain barks, roots and plants. Even as a girl, Ida had been what they called an herbalist. A very honorable occupation for a female.
He remembered that Ida always carried a notebook when she met him in the woods and was always jotting down notes about some plant or other. He had teased her about it, but she had only laughed and said that he’d be surprised how many lives had been saved by what he called weeds.
His musings had given him an idea. When Rachel came back with a rusty spade in her hand, he said, “I seem to recall someone mentioning that your ma was an herbalist. Was she?”
Rachel gave him a blank look. “I don’t know if she was or not. What is an herbalist?”
“An herbalist is a man or woman who goes into the woods and strips bark off certain trees, digs up special plants and roots. Life-saving medicine is made from those things of nature.”
“Oh, that.” Rachel smiled. “I guess you could call Mama that. Granny Hawkins taught her what to pick and what to use the plants for.”
“I guess you used to go with her to gather roots and such.”
“Yes.” Rachel’s eyes sparkled as she remembered those times. They dimmed a bit when she continued, “Since my earliest memory, unless it was raining or too cold, we went out every day, scoring the woods for Mama’s medicine plants. I think we covered every mile on the mountain, looking for special plants and roots. I remember Mama was always looking for ginseng. She was paid well for those roots.”
She paused a moment, then said, “Of course we never got to keep any of the money we made. Taig always took it and bought whiskey, even though we needed shoes or coats, or even food sometimes.”
John Jacob was silent for some time, giving Rachel a minute to forget those times. He asked quietly then, “Did your mama keep any notes about the plants she gathered?”
Rachel’s eyes sparkled again. “She kept every word she ever wrote about them. There are lots of them. They are all packed in a box in the cabin. Would you like to see them?”
John Jacob laughed softly. “Honey, I wouldn’t know one from the other. But I think it is important that you bring them down to the post. I have a feeling they are going to be very important to you. There’s a danger of someone coming here to your cabin to see what they can steal. And maybe out of meanness, someone will destroy all your mother’s work.”
“Oh, John,” Rachel said, settling down on a rock to watch him put the spade to work. Her eyes were wide with alarm. “I couldn’t bear that. Her notes and this yellow rose bush are all I have left of her.”
As John Jacob began carefully digging around the roots, Rachel said, “Rosie told me my cousin Jassy came down to the post to get a decent dress for Mama to be buried in. I’m glad about that.”
“Yeah, that poor little gal came all the way down the mountain barefoot and in the dark.”
“I’m surprised Granny Hawkins let her come alone. She’s always afraid something will happen to Jassy.”
“Do you mean other children will tease her, maybe hit her?” John Jacob asked.
“No, I don’t think that’s her worry. The young’uns know better than to tease or hit Jassy. Number one, she’s an awfully sweet girl, and number two, both the children and their parents are afraid of old Granny. Some think she’s a witch because she knows all the old remedies,” Rachel explained.
“You don’t believe such nonsense, do you?” John Jacob asked, puffing a bit from his digging. The soil was hard and rocky.
“Of course not. Granny is the sweetest old soul you could ever meet. She always says she’s glad the mountain people fear her, for that means they respect her too. I don’t know what Mama and I would have done without her.”
“Who does Jassy belong to?” John Jacob asked.
Rachel shrugged. “Granny Hawkins, I guess. She always says she found her under a tree that had been hit by lightning during a storm. Jassy was only a few hours old.
“I guess there’s some mystery about who her real parents are, but Granny’s the one who raised her. They sure love each other.”
John Jacob paused in his digging. “But why is Granny afraid to let Jassy go about by herself? She’s old enough not to get lost.”
“It’s the mountain men she’s afraid of,” Rachel said. “She always warned Jassy and me to keep our distance from them.”
“She’s a wise one, that Granny Hawkins,” John Jacob said. “I’ve been told the mountain people have their own rules about courtship. Sometimes if a man wants a girl for his wife, he rapes her. Then the girl has to marry him or be an outcast in the mountains the rest of her life. I’ve heard that all too many mountain wives were forced into marrying a man they didn’t love.”
Rachel was silent for several seconds. Had her mother been raped by Taig? Surely gentle Ida couldn’t have loved such a man. She looked down at her clasped hands and said quietly, “That’s what Homer tried to do to me, but I hit him over the head with a tree branch. And he wasn’t the only one.”
“You’re quite a scrapper, aren’t you, honey?” John Jacob said.
“I had to be, growing up with seven brothers and sisters. I’ve bloodied a few noses.” Rachel gave a tickled laugh. “Those mountain boys run away when they see me coming. I’ve watched them fight, and I can fight as mean as they can now. I know the best place to kick them, to stamp down hard on the arch of their feet, how to press my elbow into their Adam’s apple and keep it there until their faces turn red.”
She held up her slender fingers. “See these nails? I grow them long just so I can scratch the skin off their faces.”
“Goodness, honey, that’s not very ladylike,” John Jacob said, half joking, half serious.
“Yes, I know, but Mama said it was necessary if I was to protect myself and make sure I wouldn’t be forced into marrying some man I didn’t like.”
John Jacob nodded solemnly. “I expect she was right. If you couldn’t hold your own in a fight, there’s no telling who you might be married to now.”
Rachel shivered. “But in the end Homer got me anyhow. He threatened Mama, you know. That’s why I had to marry him.”
John Jacob swore and kicked a rock. “I wish that bastard Homer were still alive so that I could shoot him dead. At least he can’t hurt you anymore,” he said, wrapping an old piece of sacking around the roots of the rose bush. “Come on,” he said, “let’s go get your mother’s notes.”
When Rachel stepped up on the porch of the old cabin where she had been born and raised, the familiar odor of pork belly and greens of all kinds hit her in the face.
“I’ll be right out, John,” she said, stepping inside the shack and hurriedly shutting the door. She was too embarrassed for him to see how she had lived.
She hurried across the room to the rudely built bunkbed that she had shared with three young sisters the first seventeen years of her life. As she knelt and lifted a loose plank in the floor, she wondered about those siblings. Were they well?
She decided that they would be treated well enough living with Taig’s parents. Her sisters and brothers all had black hair. They wouldn’t be referred to as white-haired little bastards.
Rachel held her breath as she untied the string that held the old cracked leather box together. Her hands paused a minute on the thin strip of rawhide. What if her mother’s notes weren’t there? She prayed that the secret place she and her mother had used for years hadn’t been found by someone who had maliciously destroyed them. Jenny Quade would do that in a minute.
Rachel took a deep breath and slowly lifted the lid. A breath of relief whooshed through her lips. Everything was there, just as her mother had left it. She lifted the box to her chest and hugged it tightly, a tear slipping down her cheek.
Rachel swiped a hand across her wet cheek and stepped out onto the rotting porch. She handed the chest to John Jacob when he straightened up from his lounging position against the porch post.
“Honey,” John Jacob said, taking one of her fine-boned hands, so much like her mother’s, “it is my firm belief that you can pick up where your mother left off. Since you don’t want to go East to attend school, I’d like to see you become an herbalist. You will have your mother’s notes to go by, and I’m sure Granny Hawkins will help you all she can. She will be happy to turn some of the doctoring over to you. She is getting old and can’t walk all over the mountains like she used to.”
Rachel sighed deeply as she looked at the leather box. “For you, Mama, I will do the very best I can.”
“That’s all I ask, Rachel. I know you’re going to be the best medicine woman in all the territory.”
When they turned toward the horses, John Jacob paused in surprise. As if she’d appeared out of thin air, Jenny Quade was standing in front of them.
Her hands on her hips, she demanded of Rachel, “What business do you have going into Taig Sutter’s house? What’s in that box you just handed to John Jacob?”
Rachel looked at her and, lifting her lips in a taunting sneer, said, “You’ll never know, will you Jenny.”
“That’s what you think, Miss High-and-Mighty,” Jenny snarled, and with that she lunged for the box.
While John Jacob was debating how best to handle the situation, Rachel was suddenly all over Jenny.
At first John Jacob could only stand and stare at the infuriated Rachel. It was one thing to hear her claim to be a good fighter, quite another to witness just how well she could defend herself. He had had no idea how strong she was. Aware now that she could take care of herself, he leaned back against the cabin post and enjoyed the thrashing Jenny was getting.
He stepped in, however, when Rachel knocked Jenny to the ground and began laying into the woman with her small, hard fists.
John Jacob bent over the two women and laughingly said, “You don’t want to kill her, Rachel. Let somebody else have the pleasure.”
Jenny scrambled to her feet. She was panting for breath, and her nose was bleeding. It was plain that by nightfall she would have a black eye.
“I wonder how she’ll explain her battered face,” John Jacob laughed as he and Rachel started down the mountain with the leather box tied behind Goldie’s saddle and the rose bush on Prince’s.
“She’ll probably say that a bear took a swipe at her,” Rachel suggested.
“I’d say that a wildcat attacked her. But I don’t think anybody will believe that she was attacked by a bear or a wildcat.”
“Whatever they think, all I know is that she deserved everything she got.” She looked up at John Jacob and gave him a shy smile. “I’m not Taig Sutter’s white-haired bastard anymore. Since I came to live with you, I don’t have to be afraid of anyone.”
“That you don’t, honey.” John Jacob gave her shoulders a hug. “If you can’t take care of yourself, I’m here to do it for you.”
Rachel was still smiling when they came in sight of the post. “Why don’t you go inside and look through your ma’s notes,” John Jacob said to her. “I’m gonna go over to the carpenter and see how long it will take to have that little cabin built for you.”
John Jacob’s lips twitched in amusement when Rachel made no response to his remark. She was deep in thoughts of the notes lying inside that leather box.