Chapter Two

 

No one knew if there was a Mrs. Johnson at their disreputable ranch. Those men were all anyone had ever seen. I backed away from them and looked for a way to escape but ran smack into the corral fence. Unless I wanted Ma's hand lighting up my backside for sneaking out, I couldn't let anyone know the Johnsons had shown up.

“Pa's...” I cleared my throat when a lump clogged it. “Pa'll chase you clear to Carson City if you don't leave. That is if my brothers don't do it first.”

The Johnsons laughed, and I took off at a run while they hung onto the fence to keep from falling over. Their futile attempts to grab me didn't slow my escape as I raced into the chicken coop. After slamming the door, I peeked through a loose board. To my surprise, those men ran past without slowing.

“Guess they're blind as well as stupid.”

I gathered eggs and thanked the Almighty for my narrow escape.

“Where are you, Abigail?” Ma hollered.

Snatching up the last of the eggs, I walked as quickly as possible, but made sure the eggs stayed in the oversized basket woven from reeds that came from a river far from the Nevada desert. Making another basket was impossible, since we had no river within several hundred miles, according to Pa and Adam.

“Please, God, don't let Ma light up my backside,” I prayed.

When I reached the kitchen, I ducked under my oldest brother's arm. He tapped the top of my head.

“Where have you been, short stuff?” Adam asked.

My guilty gulp echoed around the warm room. He shook his head and turned to Ma, but she kept her back to us as she flipped ham and stirred grits.

“Set the table, day's a wasting, and we have to do the wash,” she said.

Grits bubbled and ham sizzled on the stove while biscuits baked in the oven. I laid out bowls, plates, and spoons. Every single one of my brothers was already in the kitchen and ready to wolf down the good meal she had prepared.

“Saw you out the window,” Paul whispered. “I'm gonna tell Ma you went to the corral.”

“Nah,” his twin, Peter, said. “It's my turn to tell on the runt.”

Older than me by a year, they were the youngest of my brothers. Before I found a response to their threat, Mark settled between them.

“I'll let Ma know you balanced the water bucket over the privy hole if you do,” he said.

Peter and Paul blushed and stared at the table. The timing of their move couldn't have been better as Pa entered the kitchen. He adjusted his suspenders and looked over us with pride.

“Good morning, family,” he said. “It's getting late. No lingering over breakfast today.”

I helped Ma serve the food before sitting down. Quiet descended as we ate.

Right after everyone finished, we assembled on the front porch.

“Peter, Paul,” Pa said. “I don't want to hear about you goofing around while I'm gone. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir!” the troublesome twins chorused.

As soon as Pa turned to Ma, Peter nudged Paul. They grinned and glanced at me. Certain they had some kind of mischief planned, I shook a finger at them, but they kept smiling like silly fools. Their glee drove home how I would have to put up with their pranks without anyone around to keep me from going insane. Sniffing, I hugged Adam. At eighteen, he often helped me with my never-ending chores.

“I know you won't say anything to Pa,” he whispered. “Tell me if the monsters act up.”

“I will.”

“Be good,” Bart said.

He and Charles, seventeen, tugged out my hairpins and stuck them back in at odd angles. After straightening my hair, I retaliated by snatching their soft, floppy hats from their heads and hiding them behind my back.

“We'll leave anyway, but it'll get mighty hot on the ride if Bart and Charles don't have their hats.” Mark, sixteen, plucked the hats from my hands. “Sorry, Abby, we can't stay. Pa needs help with the herd.”

After Pa hugged me, he went to the corral with most of my brothers. I stood beside Ma while Peter and Paul leaned against the porch railing. The others rode past with the mustangs.

I waved at my menfolk, even though they didn't acknowledge my farewell. Before their dust cloud settled, she made a beeline for the kitchen door.

“Peter, stoke up the stove in the wash shack,” she called over a shoulder. “Paul, get water and don't be stingy with it this time. I don't want to have to stop in the middle of the rinsing to round you up for more water.”

I followed her inside, with nothing but chores in my future. Before the door closed, a voice hailed us.

“Morning, Miz Weston. Do you have a cup of coffee for a lonely old man?”

Trapper Andy, the biggest scrounge in the west, limped into the house. He took Pa's chair and regaled us with tales of misuse by trading posts and Indians until Ma handed him a plate of food. With him around, I'd never get my chores finished.

“Why just look at you, Miss Abigail,” Trapper Andy said. “I can't believe my eyes.”

Peter and Paul pressed their noses against the kitchen window when Ma faced me. The boys' merry expressions put deep fear into my heart.

“Don't swell up Abigail's head with outrageous compliments,” she said. “She's not used to men like you, Andy.”

“I never expected to see her looking so grown up.” Trapper Andy shoveled a forkful of ham into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. “I've never seen a prettier young woman.”

Delighted warmth bathed my cheeks. It turned into embarrassed, fiery heat when Peter and Paul hooted with laughter.

“Those chickens won't feed themselves,” Ma snapped. “I'll find my broom if I hear you two goofing off again.”

It was my turn to laugh when they ran off. Ma turned her anger on me.

“There's a whole basketful of sheets you didn't iron yesterday,” she said. “I've already put the iron on the stove.”

“Yes, ma'am.” I filled a water pitcher from at the pump on the sink, dunked a wooden dowel with a cone-shaped end into it, and snapped out the sheets.

As soon as she wiped the table, I laid a sheet flat, tested the iron, sprinkled on water, and set to work. The most awful stench of hot cotton hit me hard. I wrinkled my nose but nothing improved the horrific smell.

“Grace!” Trapper Andy gasped.

“Don't you dare!” Ma screeched. “Get outside right this minute, Andy.”

She shooed him out the door. I kept ironing but listened hard to figure out what had just happened.

“She looks like my Grace,” he said in a broken voice.

“You can't talk about that with Abigail,” she said. “Don't break your word, Andy, or I'll have to tell you to stay away.”

“I miss them so much,” he moaned.

“Hush!” She peeked through the window.

I pretended to be very busy.

“She doesn't remember,” she said. “Don't remind Abigail about that time. It's hard enough on her, being a girl on the frontier. Don't make her life more difficult by making her remember she was the only one to survive that day.”

I couldn’t help eavesdropping but stilled at my mother’s words. What? Who does she mean?

A mystery had just appeared in the middle of my boring life. My mind whirled with how to solve this mystery, which apparently had a lot to do with me remembering something that happened a very long time ago.

There was no time to worry about mysteries now. Ma would come inside soon, and I needed to have at least four sheets ironed and folded before she did.

* * * *

The next three days, I wondered about the mysterious conversation between Ma and Trapper Andy. Why did he call me Grace? That was my middle name, but my family avoided calling me by it no matter how bad I messed up.

A hint pushed through the murky memories of my childhood, I must have been about five. At some time, there were two other children in the house. I remembered laughing with them, and running around the corral after Pa brought home a large group of mustangs with Adam, Charles, and Bart. Some of the horses had screamed with what sounded like terror. Pa, Ma, and a couple of other adults had shouted. Flying hooves had descended toward my face and then there was nothing but blackness and incredible pain. Without thought, I rubbed the side of my neck, where I had a scar no one had ever explained.

“How did I get this?” I whispered. “What happened?”

The scar was shaped like a horse's hoof, actually more like the shoes all horses wore. The impression of the steel shoe was only half there, as if only part of the foot had hit me. A horse had never hurt me, as far as I remembered.

Lost in thought, I stared out the kitchen window and tried to drag those memories out of my brain.

“Best get moving,” Ma snapped as she trotted past with a load of men's underwear. “I don't want to have to remind you about putting up those beans and peas Peter and Paul brought in from the garden.” She paused at the door. “Don't step outside until I have these unmentionables decently hung.”

She never called underwear anything but unmentionables. Ma even went so far as to forbid me from touching any of them but the bloomers she and I wore. According to her, I had time enough for handling men's unmentionables as soon as I had my own home and children. It was one of the many things I couldn't know about—as if it didn't exist until after I had a husband.

I went into the pantry and found the canning things. After lugging crate after crate of glass Mason jars into the kitchen, I pumped water into a large pot and set it to boil, and then used a knife to scrape lye soap into the dishpan. On the counter beside me, a mountain of beans awaited my attention. All of them needing their ends snapped and then I'd have to break them up into mouth-sized bites. An even bigger pile of peas filled half a dozen buckets beside the door. I had to shell those before putting them in jars. My fingers ached thinking about this chore. If I was very lucky, I might finish in time to fix supper and clean up afterward.

“It isn't fair.” I poured some of the now boiling water into the sink and swished until bubbles formed, and then I started washing the jars and lids. “Boys get to have all the fun.”

The kitchen window offered the only escape I had from my boring existence. I stared out at the desert landscape while cleaning every inch of the jars. If I missed one single spot, the food inside them would go bad, and we might not have enough to eat. Despite that, I couldn't help looking at the only thing in the world I wanted to do, and fume about how Peter and Paul ignored the horses.

“Pa'll land on them like a duck on a June bug,” I said. “He'll want those horses trained when he gets back, but Peter and Paul won't work unless he's out there with them.”

Mustangs capered around the corral, testing the fence's strength and rearing up. I lost myself in memories about the two children, and the day I received the scar on my neck. Trapper Andy's broken voice came back to me, only it was stronger, happier. He sounded like a man satisfied with his life, a man with nothing to lose. There was a woman beside him, next to Ma and Pa on the porch. They smiled at us as we scampered around in the yard. Warnings came when we moved too close to the corral.

“Don't upset those horses,” Pa had called. “I have to start working with them in the morning. A couple of ranchers offered me a good price.”

“Mayhaps I should join you,” Trapper Andy said. “Sure don't have much else to do these days. Everyone in these parts is far too healthy.”

It almost sounded as if he was a doctor. Now if that wasn't ridiculous, I had no idea what was. Shaking off my dreamy attitude, I dried the jars and set them on a clean cloth. One look at the beans reminded me of my chores, and I sighed.

“Nothing stops those darned beans from sprouting more and more. It's like they hate me.”

I cleaned out the sink and pumped cold water into it. After scrubbing dirt and grit from the beans, I started snapping off the ends and tossing them into a bucket at my feet. The chore occupied my hands, but it left my mind free to drift to another day, one where all I had to worry about was playing. The woman with Trapper Andy had come off the porch to adjust the hair ribbons on the girl with us. The other child was a boy.

“Don't mess up your Sunday dress, Grace,” the woman had said. “Your pa and I bought it special for you.”

The little girl was Grace, and she wore a store bought dress. I'd never had a store bought dress in my whole life. Ma said they were too expensive, but this daydream was so real I took in every detail of that store bought dress Grace wore, the bright blue satin, shining white lace, and buttons in the shape of little flowers.

Thinking about that brought great pain in my head and neck. I shook off the remembrance and stared at the pile of snapped beans. It didn't seem like I had taken that long dreaming, but sure enough the worst part of the chore was over.

“Well, if that don't beat all,” I said with a smile. “I'll have to remember that from now on. Work sure doesn't seem hard when my mind is occupied.”

As I reached for a pot, the sound of laughter outside distracted me. Jealousy rose in my heart along with black hatred for Peter and Paul. They were having fun while I sweated buckets canning food they'd gobble down without tasting.