Mary Connealy (67 page)

When they reached the shelter of the canyon, Adam guided his horse toward a sunny southeastern slope and swung down. “I’m putting the house right here.”

Tillie slipped to the ground and Adam tied the horses to a low shrub.

“A perfect spot, out of the wind, with good sunlight all day long.” Tillie nodded as she looked at the grassy valley sweeping for a mile before the canyon walls sprung up, rugged and majestic. The sky was white. Wind brushed across the waving grass like the hand of God. A sharp cry far overhead drew Tillie’s gaze. A bald eagle soared the length of the valley, free and strong and beautiful. “This must make you so proud, Adam. To own this, to have a place of your own.”

Adam nodded. “It’s a dream come true. I owned a herd before but lost it to rustlers. It was in Indian Territory, and I could never call the land my own. Now I’m ready to settle down, and being this close to family makes it the next thing to heaven.”

“Family?” Tillie looked away from the panorama. “What family?”

Adam smiled, his white teeth making his skin seem darker, the strong lines of his face sculpted as if carved from shining black marble. “I mean Sophie and her young’uns. Clay, too, come to that. I consider Sophie my next thing to a daughter. I worked for her pa when she was growing up. Then when her first husband headed toward Texas, I came along to see that everything was taken care of in order.”

“First husband?”

Adam nodded. “She was married to Clay’s twin brother, Cliff. Cliff is the girls’ father.”

“I’ve never imagined Clay wasn’t the girls’ father. They all seem to love each other so much.”

“Yep, it’s worked out mighty well. Cliff was long on dreams but short on backbone, to my way of thinking, and I knew before she married him, Sophie’d need help.”

“But how does that make her your daughter?”

Adam pulled his Stetson off his head and ran a hand into his tight curls. “She was always underfoot in the stables as a child. I found her tagging me almost as soon as she could walk. She was an only child, and her pa couldn’t deny her a thing, so she ran like a tomboy from the first. He liked having her around when most men would have shooed her off to the house to keep her skirts clean. Her pa trusted me to take care of her, too, and it was a good thing, because it took us both to keep up with her. Between us, she learned horses and cattle and she worked the fields as much as we’d let her. I taught her carpentry, hunting, and tanning hides. You should see that woman shoot. It’s a humbling thing to know she’s bested me in nearly everything I taught her.”

Adam curled both hands around the brim of his hat and looked away from the land to Tillie, his kindness shining from his dark eyes. “I do think of her as a daughter. God has given her into my care, and I’m thankful for finding land that will keep me near her.”

“You credit God with giving you a white woman as a daughter? And yet He left me imprisoned in Virgil’s house for years.” Tillie shook her head. She had to clear her throat to speak the heresy that she’d accepted in her heart. It sounded horrible, but Tillie refused to live with the lie. “There is no God, Adam.”

Adam’s smile returned so brightly it reflected the sky. “Oh yes, there is, Till.”

Adam’s reaction startled her. She’d expected shock or maybe an argument.

“I believed all that once, but no more. Let’s pace off your house and head home.”

She took one step before Adam’s hand descended on her forearm and pivoted her gently but firmly.

“I know there’s a God because He spoke to me.”

Tillie opened her mouth to brush aside Adam’s nonsense, but there was something alive and vital in his expression.

“He came to me and called me here, home, when Sophie needed me.”

Tillie shook her head.

Adam pulled Tillie closer. “It happened. As real as I’m standing here in front of you. I knew Sophie needed help and I headed out. No one can ever tell me there’s not a God, because I
know
. Do you hear me? I heard His voice. I had my own miracle.”

Tillie wanted to challenge him, but his voice filled with a conviction that seemed to break the chains that had bound her soul ever since she’d found out the depths of Virgil’s evil.

“Really?”

Adam nodded, and his hand relaxed on her arm. “There’s a God, Till, and He loves you.”

“He forgot me.”

“He never forgets His children.”

“He left me in chains.”

“Virgil left you in chains, not God. God was with you the whole time, keeping your soul safe.”

“No.”

“We’re from a people that have known chains for centuries, and yet I’ve seen a powerful faith in slaves, captured or free. Our people have always been too wise in the ways of hardship to believe God exists to make sure the world treats us fair. Instead, He comes to us in the midst of great misery and ministers to our souls. Don’t tell me He waits until we’re free any more than He waits until we’re happy or healthy. God comes all the way to you, wherever you are, and all He asks is for you to accept Him.”

“What about what I ask, Adam? What if I ask more of God than just to be in my soul? What if my prayers are ignored and my abuse is ignored? Why do I want a God like that?”

Adam was silent for too long, looking off in the distance. Tillie saw contemplation in his eyes. She’d spoken the truth to him, and now he’d have to admit that her truth was the correct one. But God had spoken to Adam. Was it possible? Tillie felt the wonder of it.

Finally, his eyes focused on her, and that shining smile returned. “What kind of world have we got if you don’t have God? Your suffering on this earth is for nothing. Your living is for nothing. You live, you die, they throw dirt over you—is that all life is? God put a yearning in everyone’s soul, crying out for more. You feel it—I know you do.”

The eagle screamed again. The beauty of creation surrounded her. She did yearn for God. She’d been heartbroken—no, soul-broken—ever since she’d given Him up.

“He really spoke to you?”

Adam nodded. “Not just me, either. If it was just me, we could call it my own desire to see Sophie again. But he spoke to Buff and Luther, too.”

Tillie had met the gruff old mountain men who worked with Clay. They seemed to be unlikely men to receive a miracle. “Really?”

Adam nodded. “This life is hard enough without giving up our only unshakable source of comfort.”

Comfort. Odd he should use that word. How many times in the darkness of Virgil’s cellar had she thought she could bear the loneliness no longer and a Comforter had come to her in the night, giving her the strength to face another day?

God’s own Holy Spirit. She’d forgotten about that in her rage over Virgil’s injustice. “I want to believe, Adam.”

Again that easy smile. There was no doubt in Adam. Not one tiny shred. He lifted his hand from her arm and nodded at the piece of flatland where they stood.

“I’ll tell you the whole story while we pace off the house. How Sophie spoke a prayer to God and He carried it on the wings of the wind to my ears, hundreds of miles away.”

Tillie sighed from the wonder of such a thing. “I’d like to hear it.”

Adam turned her toward his plot by resting his hand on her back. “Which side should we put the kitchen on? The east or west?”

She felt his strength, and though no man had touched her in kindness before, she didn’t flinch away. In fact, she leaned a bit closer. And it seemed very logical that he’d ask where she wanted the kitchen.

“Ma, come quick!”

John’s voice. This was it. She’d been terrified of it since the beginning. One of them had managed to break a leg or otherwise permanently damage himself with the doctor out of reach.

Grace flew toward the door, tearing off the oversized apron she’d found among Margaret’s things. “What happened?” She ran out into her front yard.

“We’ve got the first new calf of spring, Ma.”

The triplets fussed around the new calf and the cow, thankfully one they milked, because the rest of the herd didn’t like the boys hanging around them.

Grace marveled at the competent way the five-year-olds handled mama and baby.

There was plenty the little boys could do. Daniel wouldn’t let them near an ax, which Grace approved of. But all three had wickedly sharp pocketknives and were talented whittlers.

Later Daniel set them to making spindles for the backs of the chairs and even let Mark, who had a knack for fine work, turn his hand to carving fancy curls and whatnots on the wood he’d use atop the spindles.

“There has to be something I can do.” Grace plopped herself onto the floor in front of the fireplace, her legs curled up under a bluish dress dotted with yellow flowers.

“These legs need to be braced.” John scooted next to her, holding a chair seat with the legs attached. “Here, I’ll show you how to tighten these strips of bark. It keeps the legs from spreading.”

Grace loved working right alongside them.

They had three chairs done by bedtime.

“Time for bed, boys.”

The groans of protest were so predictable Grace couldn’t hold back a grin. She looked up and caught Daniel’s eye. He looked disgruntled at the whining. She smiled and one corner of his lip curled up.

“No sense getting upset about it, Grace. Boys just naturally don’t wanta go to bed.”

“Nor girls, either, as I recall.”

Mark jumped up from the floor with fire in his eyes. “I forgot my pocketknife in the barn.” He dashed out the door.

“Mark, wait,” Daniel called.

“I’ll help him hunt,” Abe hollered.

“Boys, you get back here.” Grace’s voice nearly echoed in the empty cabin.

As quick as a flash of lightning, all the boys disappeared from the cabin.

Daniel shook his head.

“What are they up to?”

Daniel shrugged. “Maybe Mark’s really looking for his knife. Maybe they’ve got something else up their sleeves. Don’t worry about it. They’ve run these hills since we moved in last summer.”

Grace got up from the floor.

She saw Daniel watching her.

“You sat on that floor as long as the boys. You’re as limber as a child, Grace.” Daniel gathered up wood shavings to throw in the fire.

She stared after the complaining boys. “I am most definitely
not
a child. I’m seventeen now.”

Daniel dropped his wood curls. “
How old?
”

The boys came dashing back in at that instant and froze at the sound of their father’s voice.

Grace turned, shocked at his outburst.

“S-seventeen,” she repeated.

“Seventeen? And you were a schoolteacher, alone out here in the West?”

“Well, actually, I was sixteen when I got the job. But that doesn’t mean I’m a child. Sixteen is old enough—”

“What were your parents thinking to let you come out here?”

“Ma don’t have no parents, Pa.”

“John,” Grace said quickly, “don’t—”

“She’s an orphan.” John charged on without hearing the warning in Grace’s voice.

She looked at Daniel, who was glaring at her for no reason she could understand.

“Chalk up another secret for my wife. How many more do you have?”

“She didn’t have no ma.” John looked at his brothers, fairly bursting with pride that he’d known something no one else had.

“Just like us?” Mark asked, his eyes wide with amazement.

“I don’t want to talk about—”

“And she was raised by a mean man who ‘dopted her and made her make rugs while he starved her and her ten or twenty brothers and sisters.”

“Ten or twenty?” Daniel looked at her.

“O-only sisters,” Grace corrected. “It’s not like it sounds.”

“And you’re only seventeen?” Daniel’s eyebrows met between his eyes as they furrowed. “Did the school board know your age when they hired you?”

With a weak shrug, Grace said, “It was no secret. I don’t recall them asking, exactly. Girls start teaching school young.”

“Boys, go to bed.”

Grace recognized the voice Daniel kept in reserve for when he wanted the boys to mind.

The boys didn’t utter so much as one “I’m not sleepy.” They disappeared into their separate rooms like a flash.

Daniel could almost see them pressing their ears to the doors.

He marched over to Grace, took her by the hand, and dragged her into the bedroom she’d been sleeping in alone. It was empty except for a bed on the floor that was little more than a couple of tanned cow hides sewn together and stuffed with hay, then covered by a white sheet and a blanket.