Journey to Bliss (Saskatchewan Saga Book #3) (26 page)

Why hurry? Could one hasten the budding of the tree in spring, the hatching of an egg, the flowering of a rose? Only to its hurt, and the assurance that the result would be disastrous. Pearly was convinced that to everything there is a season—“a time to plant, and a time to pluck up . . . a time to weep, and a time to laugh . . . a time to embrace . . . a time to love. . . .” Pearly was convinced there was a God-ordained time to every purpose under the heaven. Such a conviction fostered peace and patience.

By faith Pearly saw her future here on the Schmidt homestead full of satisfaction and purpose, happiness and husband, fulfillment and children.

Her attention, sincere and rapt though it was, was childish enough to be drawn to the cuff of the sleeve on the wrist of the hand holding the pencil. The thrill was only slightly less than the one she felt when Frankie looked up, saw her through the window, and waved. (These were days of thrilling discoveries for Pearly Gates Chapel.)

The dress, one of three patiently and lovingly cut, sewed, and fitted by Gussie Schmidt herself while her “helpmate”—Pearly—put the house in shining order, was far and above all, her favorite of the lot. Not only was it the first, and never to be forgotten for that reason alone, but it was daintily made, with its turned-down collar, neat ruffles around the yoke in front and back and sporting serpentine braid; its skirt was full, with a wide hem; it was lined to the waist and girdle yoked in front. The color—oh joy of joys—was a sweet blue with small roses liberally sprinkled across its generous sweeping skirt and fitted bodice.

Pearly couldn’t remember ever having had a new dress in her life. Her mum had frequented the secondhand dealers who sat in dark basements, sorting through bags of rags and castoffs, offering anything useable for sale for a few pennies. Whatever fit each child of the large family was allotted to that one and always passed on when outgrown.

Dear Teerney and Ann
—Pearly watched the ruffled cuff as it moved across the paper, and almost lost her place, so entranced
was she with its beauty—
I am fine. How are
. . . Pearly paused. Spelling by sound dictated that “you” should be spelled “u,” but she felt it was not quite right—
ewe?

Pearly felt she had made a good start and was satisfied with it. Now, more laboriously, she continued, first licking the lead again in what seemed to her a businesslike manner:

Pearly was incapable of closing the letter without quoting Scripture. After serious thought, she inscribed:

And though she knew it was a small epistle and not large, she couldn’t refrain from adding:

It was the best letter Pearly had ever written. It was her hope that Tierney, having read it, would forward it to Anne, saving her doing it all over again. Once was difficult enough.

Receiving the letter several weeks later, Tierney laughed and wept, missing Pearly but almost seeing her and hearing her London-street accent. She wasn’t a bit surprised at the news concerning Frank Schmidt;
she had suspected as much when Pearly had so happily and blindly climbed into the wagon with him. And knowing Pearly and her prayers, Tierney had no reason to think Pearly was mistaken.

Pulling an envelope to her, Tierney addressed it to Anne. Before she folded Pearly’s letter again and enclosed it, she turned the paper over and wrote:

The following week was a busy one. The weather had indeed turned freezing, and Will Ketchum deemed it high time to butcher his chickens for market. A quick trip to Fielding netted several workers, most of them teenaged boys, some of whom had worked for Will before and knew the ropes of chicken sticking, bleeding, scalding, plucking, and gutting. Besides the chickens themselves, the feathers—or at least the small ones—would be garnered, packed into gunny sacks, and taken to town along with the frozen carcasses and sold for bedding.

When the job was completed, the chickens stacked in a shed awaiting transporting to the railway, Will announced at the supper table, “Well, girls, either or both of you ready to go to Saskatoon with me?”

He turned to Tierney. “Actually, the railroad is much nearer to us than Saskatoon. I could get my goods on a train about eighteen miles from here, at Hanover—”

“That’s where my friend Pearly is! Eighteen miles? Oh—”

“Yes, but I need to come back with supplies for the winter. And if I take the chickens to Saskatoon, it may be I can sell them locally rather than shipping them back east, saving money and time. I did that last year and I think the same sources will buy again. So sorry about your friend Pearly; maybe you can see her another trip. This time it’ll be Saskatoon. Now, how about it, ladies?”

Tierney’s hopes soared. It had been a long three months without seeing more than a scattering of people who had stopped by. Twice she and Lavinia had taken the buggy and gone to Fielding for certain limited supplies and for the mail, but ordinarily Will went and they stayed home. She awaited Lavinia’s response, fearing it would be negative on account of her pregnancy, now greatly advanced. There had been indications that all was not well, and Lavinia spent a great deal of time with her feet up, reading anything that was available, sewing some, sleeping a lot, thanking her lucky stars, she said, that Tierney was there to be a comfort and strength to her as well as carry the bulk of the household chores on her shoulders.

Now Lavinia was positive, though downcast. “I can’t possibly go, Will. I can’t risk jouncing all that distance over the frozen, rutted prairie. But how I wish I could! It would be such a great change. Next year for sure, though how I’ll manage with two children to care for on that long trip, I don’t know. I hope and pray,” she said, looking at Tierney rather anxiously, “that Tierney is still with us. I’d be lost without her, that’s for sure.”

Lavinia, knowing the dearth of women in the territories, had threatened Will with blacking and bruising if he dared bring bachelors around the place while Tierney was there. Tierney,
pledged to Robbie Dunbar now and forever, cared not a fig whether or not they came, to Lavinia’s great relief and Will’s disbelief. How any woman could stay true to a memory with flesh and blood suitors pressing their claim diligently, even feverishly, he couldn’t see.

“Ye dinna ken Robbie, and ye dinna ken me,” Tierney had declared stoutly when the subject came up, and Will respected her enough to leave it at that.

Perhaps because of Tierney’s fierce hold on her devotion to someone named Robbie Dunbar, perhaps because she knew and believed in Tierney’s trustworthiness, Lavinia had no hesitation in suggesting that Tierney go with Will to Saskatoon.

“After all,” she said, “I promised her a trip back to see her friend. If she doesn’t go now, she won’t get out again until spring. She never has had any decent time off. There’s no place to go, after all, and she’s just spent a few hours once in a while in her room, resting and writing letters or something like that, poor dear. Yes, I think you should go, Tierney. I’ll get along fine. There are no chickens to care for this time, and you’ll only be gone for three days. One day going, a day there for business, and another day to return. You can stay with your friend, I’m sure.”

“Buster?” Will asked. “Would you like him to go?”

“Not wise,” Lavinia said. “It’s too cold, for one thing, and you wouldn’t know what to do with him the day you hope to transact your business. No; Buster will keep me company and be the man of the house. Right, Buster?”

Buster, thus appealed to, looked uncertain—whether to go, or stay.

“And of course,” Lavinia said, “there’ll be a present for such a fine young man. Right, Daddy?”

And so it was settled. Lavinia worked on her lists; Tierney worked on her clothes.

“You better take my heavy winter coat,” Lavinia said. “It doesn’t go around me very well now, anyway. I don’t think I’d wear it even if I went some place, which I probably won’t. I’ll
just wrap a horse blanket around me in such a case! I’m about as big as one,” she said ruefully.

But it wasn’t true. If her due date was the first part of December, as she thought, Lavinia was undersized, or so it seemed to Tierney, who had to admit she knew little or nothing about carrying and birthing babies.

And that worried her too. Who would “officiate” at the birth?

“We have a midwife in Fielding,” Lavinia had assured her, “and if she can’t make it, Will can take care of me. Can’t you, dear?”

Will didn’t look much more confident than did Tierney. “Between us,” he said, “we’ll do fine.”

But Tierney wasn’t so sure. Prairie blizzards were legendary. But babies were born all around the world and in some mighty out-of-the-way places without doctors or midwives, and had, ever since time began. They knew instinctively how to thrust their way into the world.

And so serious plans were laid for the trip to Saskatoon.

Early in the morning, before the sun was up—it was coming later and slower now—Tierney climbed into the wagon and onto the wagon seat, wearing Lavinia’s coat and with a horse blanket wrapped around her dangling legs. Even so, it was nippy, and the tip of her nose was turning red before they were out of the yard.

Lavinia, waving good-bye, looked rather forlorn; but Buster would soon be up for the day and keeping things lively. Then too, their nearest neighbor, though he lived eight miles away, had promised to send his son to care for the milking of the cows and the watering and feeding of the animals. He would check on Lavinia; probably she would have cocoa ready for him and a snack of some kind before he started his trek back across the prairie.

“I hope the weather holds clear,” Will said, scanning the wide blue sky rather anxiously. “For Lavinia’s sake, even more than ours, I guess. It can change so quickly and with such drastic results. Fortunately we’ve never been caught out in a true blizzard. But I’ve
had to struggle back and forth to the barn through them, once for several days before it let up. It’s no fun, I tell you for sure.”

Colder than this? More wintry? It hardly seemed possible, thought Tierney, pulling a scarf up around her face, shielding herself from the winds that bent the brittle grass, heavily frosted though it was, to the ground. But as the sun came up the earth warmed a little, the wind abated, and she enjoyed the ride and the rest.

It had been a busy summer and fall. Will had brought wild plums from a nearby coulee, and these had been made into jam. There were beans and carrots and peas and tomatoes to can. Soon, she was told, Will would butcher one of the yearlings that had grown fat on the abundant grasses amid which it had been tethered, and she and Lavinia would put much of it up in jars for use next summer when it was impossible to keep meat from spoiling.

Tierney was tired of chickens! They were all tired of chickens! “Bring home a case of canned salmon, please!” Lavinia had implored as she prepared her massive list of needed supplies. With the long winter shutting them in, what they brought home now would probably have to do them until spring came, and the chinooks. This trip was imperative.

It was late afternoon when they reached Saskatoon; after all, they had bucked a considerable wind most of the way. Will deposited Tierney at the hostel and went on, promising to pick her up the day after the next one, early. Accustomed to buying the supplies and knowing how much he had to spend, Will would not need her help for that. Tierney’s shopping, what she needed to do for herself, she would do tomorrow while Anne worked.

The clerk remembered her. “Same room,” he directed and handed her a key.

Before taking off her coat, Tierney lit a fire in the small heater that had been brought in as soon as the weather turned cold. Annie, she knew, would appreciate the comfort and warmth when she came through the door.

It was almost ten o’clock before the door opened and Anne appeared, in a new coat and gloves and with a bright tam on her head. Seeing Tierney, a glorious surprise, brightened her weary face dramatically,
and before ever her wraps were loosened she flew into her friend’s embrace. Soft coos and murmurs of happiness filled the sparsely furnished little room as Tierney and Anne wept a few tears together, laughed at their own silliness, and finally drew apart to wipe their eyes and study each other fixedly.

“You look so good to me!” Anne declared unsteadily.

“You look . . . oh, Annie, you look so tired! Good, of course, but tired.”

“I
am
tired. I think I’m always tired. But oh, Tierney, guess what? I’m workin’ in the dinin’ room. Aye! I’m a waitress; can you believe that? I should have been off at nine, you know, having started at nine, but that’s the way it goes—twelve hours we work; only twelve, if we’re lucky. Mr. Whidby—”