Prairie Rose (2 page)

“Your sister married me, whether you believe it or not,” Seth Hunter snarled. “I’m this boy’s father, and I mean to take him with me.”

“I didn’t track your worthless hide all the way to Kansas City to let you just ride off to the prairie with my nephew. No sir, Chipper’s going south with me. My pappy’s not about to let you work his grandson to the bone on your sorry excuse for a farm.”

“I told you I don’t plan on working him. In fact, I’m headed for this orphanage right now to hire me a hand.”

“Hire you a hand,” Jack scoffed. He spat a long stream of brown tobacco juice onto the dirt road. “What’re you aiming to pay him with—grasshoppers? That’s all you’re going to be growing on your homestead, Hunter. Grasshoppers, potato bugs, and boll weevils.”

“I’ve got a house and a barn, Jack. That’s more than a lot of folks can say, including you. And any young’un would gladly trade that orphanage for a home.”

I
would
, Rosie thought. She was beginning to side with Seth Hunter, even if he had stolen the little boy. The other man was big, rawboned, and mean-tempered. For all she knew he planned to shoot Seth dead with his shotgun. And right in front of the child!

The branch she was straddling bobbed a little from her weight as she inched along it toward the stick. Truth to tell, it was the boy who stirred her heart the most. Neither man had even bothered to ask the child what he wanted to do. And where on earth was the poor little fellow’s mother?

“A house and a barn,” Jack said, his voice dripping with disdain. “What you’ve got is dust, wind, and prairie fires. That’s no place to bring up a boy. Now let me have him peaceful-like, and I won’t be obliged to blow your Yankee head off.”

“You’re not taking my son.” Seth stood up on the wagon. His shoulders were square and solid inside his homespun chambray shirt, and his arms were roped with hard muscle and thick veins. Badly in want of cutting, his hair hung heavy and black. His thick neck was as brown as a nut. With such a formidable stature, Rosie thought, he should have the face of the bare-knuckle fighters she had seen on posters.

He didn’t. His blue eyes set off a straight nose, a pair of flat, masculine lips, and a notched chin. It was a striking face. A handsome face. Unarmed, Hunter faced Jack. “I already lost Mary, and I’m not—”

“You never had Mary!”

“She was my wife.”

“Mary denied you till the day she died.”

“Liar!” Seth stepped over the wagon seat and started across the bed. “If your pappy hadn’t tried to kill me—”

“You ran off to join the army! We never saw hide nor hair of you for more than five years till you came sneaking back and stole Chipper.”

“I wrote Mary—”

“She burned every letter.”

“Mary loved me, and none of your lies will make me doubt it. We’d have been happy together if your pappy would have left us alone. He ran me off with a shotgun. I was too young and scared back then to stand up to him, but I’ll be switched if I let him do it again. Or you, either.”

“I’ll do more than that, Hunter.” Jack steadied the gun. “Now give me the boy.”

“Over my dead body.”

“You asked for it.”

He pulled back on the hammer to set the gun at half cock. Rosie held her breath. No. He wouldn’t really do it. Would he? She reached out and grabbed onto the stick.

“Give me the boy,” Jack repeated.

“If you shoot me, they’ll hang you for murder.”

“Hang me? Ha! You ever hear of Charlie Quantrell, Jesse James, Bob Ford? They’re heroes to me. I’ve joined up with a bunch down south to avenge wrongs done in the name of Yankee justice. Nobody messes with us, Hunter. And nobody hangs us for murder. Besides, I’m just protecting my kin.” He pulled the hammer all the way back.

Seth stood his ground. “People are watching every move you make, Jack,” he said. “They know who you are. Don’t do this.”

“Chipper, come here, boy.”

“Stay down, Chipper.”

“Hunter, you Yankee dog. I’ll get you if it’s the last thing I do.” Jack lifted the shotgun’s stock to his shoulder. As his finger tensed on the trigger, Rosie gritted her teeth and swung her club like a pendulum. It smashed into the side of Jack Cornwall’s head and knocked him sideways. The shotgun went off with a deafening roar. Like a hundred angry hornets, pellets sprayed into the street.

At the end of the limb, Rosie swayed down, lurched up, and swung down again. Acrid, sulfurous-smelling smoke seared her nostrils. As screams filled the air, she heard the branch she was clinging to crack. She lost her balance, tumbled through the smoke, and landed smack-dab on Seth Hunter. The impact knocked them both to the wagon bed, and her head cracked against the wooden bench seat. A pair of startled blue eyes was the last thing she saw.

“Glory be to God, she’s awake at last! Jimmy, come here quick and have a look at her.”

“Aye, she’s awake, that she is.”

The two pairs of eyes that stared down at Rosie could not have been more alike—nor the faces that went with them more different. The woman had bright green eyes, brilliant orange-red hair, and the ruddiest cheeks Rosie had ever seen. The man’s green eyes glowed like twin emeralds from a gaunt face with suntanned skin stretched over sharp, pointy bones. He sucked on a corncob pipe and nodded solemnly.

“Seth Hunter, the lass has come round,” he said. “Better see to her. She’s a
frainey
, all right. She’s so puny she’ll keel over if she tries to stand up.”

Her head pounding in pain, Rosie was attempting to decipher the lilting words her two observers had spoken when Seth Hunter’s blue eyes—now solemn—appeared above her for a second time that day. He stroked a hand across her forehead. His hand was big and warm, his fingers gently probing.

“I don’t feel right about us leaving her here, Jimmy,” he said. “She’s still bleeding pretty bad from that gash on the back of her head. But if we don’t take off soon, I reckon Jack Cornwall will be back on my tail. I’ve got to get Chipper out of town. I want him home and settled as quick as possible.”

“Sure, the wagon’s loaded down with our tools and seed we came for,” Jimmy said. “The
brablins
have their peppermints, and they’ll be eager to start licking on them. If we set out now, we’ll be home not a day later than planned.”

“I know, but I just …” Seth touched Rosie’s forehead again with his fingertips. “Ma’am, can you hear me? I want to thank you for what you did. I never expected such a thing. I owe you, that’s for sure. If I had any money, I’d give you a reward, but—”

“Home,” Rosie said. She didn’t know where the word had come from. She’d never had a home, not from the very moment she was born.

“We’ll see you get home, ma’am,” Seth said. “The delivery boy for the mercantile here said he recognized you. He’s gone to fetch your mother.”

Mother?
Rosie studied the rows of canned goods, bolts of fabric, and sacks of produce that lined the floor-to-ceiling shelves in the mercantile. She knew the place well. She had been here many times, shopping for the orphanage’s kitchen. She gradually recalled how she must have come to be lying on the sawdust-covered floor with her head throbbing like a marching band. She even knew the name of the man bending over her. But how could the delivery boy be fetching her mother?

“I don’t have a mother,” she said.

“No mother!” The ruddy-cheeked woman leaned into view and clucked in sympathy. She placed a clean folded cloth over Rosie’s gash. “Can such a thing be true? Aye, lass, you’re cruel wounded in the head, so you are. Perhaps you’ve lost your wits a bit. Sure, we wouldn’t want you turnin’ into a
googeen
now. Can you recall your name at all?”

“Rosenbloom Cotton Mills.”

“She’s disremembered the sound of her own name, so she has!”

“No really, that’s who I am. Rosie Mills.” She struggled to sit up, and the woman slipped a supporting arm around her shoulders. “My mother … you see … she put my name on a piece of paper.”

“But you just told us you didn’t have a mother.”

“I don’t. Not one I ever met, anyway. The piece of paper with my name on it was inside the stocking with me when I was discovered.”

“You were discovered in a stocking?”

“I was a baby at the time. Newborn.”

“A baby!
Ullilu
, Jimmy, did you hear the wee thing? She was left in a stocking.”

“A foundling.”

Jimmy pronounced the word Rosie had despised from the moment she learned its connotations. For nineteen years she had worn that label, and it had barred her from adoption, from marriage, from all hope of a family and a home. Taking no notice of the expressions on their faces, she pulled her pouch from the bodice of her dress.

“I keep the paper in here in this little bag I made from the toe of my stocking,” she said. “As you can see, my name is written out very clearly: Rosenbloom Cotton Mills.”

She unfolded the tiny scrap that was her only treasure. Everyone gathered around. As it turned out, there were many red-haired, green-eyed visitors at the mercantile that day, and most of them weren’t more than three feet tall. Clutching red- and white-striped peppermint sticks, they elbowed each other for a better look.

“Appears to be a stocking tag from that mill over on the river in Illinois,” Jimmy said. “You remember, Sheena? We passed it on our way west, so we did.”

“
Whisht
, Jimmy. If the lass says it’s her name, who are you to start a clamper over it?” Sheena gave Rosie a broad smile that showed pretty white teeth. “Now then, we’re to set out on our way home to Kansas in the wagon—Jimmy O’Toole and me, our five children, and our good neighbor, Seth Hunter. We’re most grateful to you for the whack you gave that
sherral
Jack Cornwall. We never met a man as fine as our Seth, God save him, and we won’t see him come to harm. So, if you think you’ll be all right now, we’ll—”

“Rosie? Rosie Mills?” A woman who had just entered the mercantile spotted the injured girl and clapped her hands to her cheeks. She glanced at Sheena O’Toole. “I’m Iva Jameson, the director of the Christian Home for Orphans and Foundlings. What on earth has happened to Rosie?”

“I … I was up in the oak tree,” Rosie said meekly, dabbing at her wound with the cloth, “and then along came Mr. Hunter’s wagon … and I—”

“You should have outgrown tree climbing long ago.”

“But it’s where I pray, ma’am.”

“Rosie, shame on you for such tomfoolery—and at your age!”

“Maybe I should explain, ma’am.” Seth stepped forward. “What happened was mainly my fault. I’m Seth Hunter, and I was on my way to your orphanage with my son this morning when things took a wrong turn.”

“I see, Mr. Hunter.” Mrs. Jameson eyed the little boy standing forlornly beside him. “Would this young man be your son?”

“Yes. This is Christopher. They call him Chipper.”

“Chipper. Now, that’s a fine name for such a strong, handsome lad.” The director knelt to the floor. “And how old are you, young Chipper?”

“He’s five,” Seth said. “Listen, ma’am, we don’t have much time here. The O’Toole family and I—we’ve got homesteads waiting for us over in Kansas, and we need to get on the trail.”

“Are you a widower, sir?”

There was a moment of silence. “Well, yes,” Seth said finally. “I reckon I am a widower.”

“You’re uncertain?”

“I just hadn’t thought of it that way. My wife … Chipper’s mother … I went to fetch her and I learned she had died.”

“I’m very sorry about your loss, sir,” Mrs. Jameson said. “These are difficult times indeed. I’m assuming you were planning to ask the Christian Home for Orphans and Foundlings to look after your son while you find another wife.”

“A wife?” Seth’s voice deepened. “No. Absolutely not. No, I’m taking the child with me.”

“Oh, I see.”

“I was on my way to the orphanage because I’m in need of a strong boy,” Seth told Mrs. Jameson. “Maybe you can still help me. See, I want somebody who can work with me on the homestead. There’s plowing and planting and such, but I wouldn’t push him too hard. In fact, if you’ve got a boy who’s good with young’uns, I mostly want him to keep an eye on Chipper. I can’t offer pay, but I’ll give him room and board. I’ll give him a home.”

Rosie stiffened and took Sheena O’Toole’s hand. Holding the cloth to her hammering head, she pulled herself to her feet. What had Seth just offered?
A home. I’ll give him a home
.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Hunter,” Mrs. Jameson said, “but we’re not an employment agency. Why don’t you place an advertisement in the newspaper?”

“I don’t have time for that. I’ve been away from my claim more than two weeks already, and my fields need plowing. Don’t you have somebody who could help me out?”

“I understand your predicament, truly I do,” Mrs. Jameson said. “But all our oldest boys went off to the war. We don’t have anyone at the Home much over twelve, and I don’t believe—”

“Twelve would do. If he’s strong, it won’t matter how old he is. Look here, ma’am,” Seth said, “I’m an honest man, I’m a hard worker, and I won’t do wrong by anybody. I’m offering the boy a chance to get a good start on life. A home of his own.”

Rosie sucked in a breath.
A home
. A chance to make her unspoken dream come true! She was strong enough to do most any job. She could learn to plow. She could plant and dig and hoe. And she knew she could look after that boy.