A Log Cabin Christmas (31 page)

A
die plunged her hands into the hot dishwater. She hated this part of her job. Stacks of tin plates and cups surrounded her, topped by a load of greasy pans. When she completed this chore, a mound of potatoes waited to be peeled. The loggers called them murphies, which made no sense whatsoever. Over the years she had come to understand the jacks’ lingo but refused to speak it.

Her hands stilled in the water as she wondered about the big, tall man who came to her defense. No doubt, he was a gentleman with perfect manners. They called him Preacher Man. Daddy told her he wanted to go to seminary someday. She didn’t know his name. No one called him anything else, not even her father.

He sure was handsome—broad and strong, with brown eyes that made you think of things that caused Adie to blush. He talked like a preacher. Where did he come from?

She sighed. Her pile of dishes had not grown one inch smaller. The cup in her hand went into the rinse water.

She longed for a view of the majestic pines just beyond the log walls of the camp kitchen. Having something beautiful to look at would make her work seem to go faster. She could stand here and gaze at the snow sparkling in the sunlight.

A commotion clamored in the dining hall, jarring her back to reality.

A shout came from outside the swinging doors. “Bring him in here. Lay him on the table. Be careful. He’s bad off.”

Men yelled back and forth to each other.

Adie’s heart rolled over.

An accident. There had been an accident.

Please, Daddy, be all right. Be safe
.

She swiped her shaking hands on her apron as she hustled to see who had been injured. With every breath, she prayed she wouldn’t find her father on the table.

A large crowd gathered around the wounded lumberjack. The flannel-covered backs of tall, brawny men blocked her view. Adie couldn’t see who they’d brought in. She searched the sea of hats, the various sizes, shapes, and colors making it possible to distinguish the wearer. She spied Preacher Man and Derek Owens. Where was her father’s dark-blue felt cap? He would be in here with the men, wouldn’t he?

It doesn’t mean anything that I can’t find Daddy
. Maybe he stayed outside with the horses. Maybe he had run to fetch the camp boss, who acted as physician. Willing her stomach to cease its jumping, she stepped into the crowd.

The noise around her ceased.

The men parted.

Her father lay, unmoving, on the table.

Everything around her became hazy. Through a narrow tunnel of light, she spied her father’s pale face. Blood coursed from his temple, but his chest still rose and fell. She rushed to his side.

“Daddy.”

His eyes remained closed. He lay still. So still.

Too still.

“Daddy?”

She rubbed his cold hand.

No, God, You can’t do this to me again. You can’t take him from me, too. Do You hear me?

She turned and found herself staring into Preacher Man’s warm, brown eyes. They filled with unshed tears.

“The tree split and fell. The trunk clipped him. I yelled, but he couldn’t get out of the way quickly enough. I’m so sorry.”

He reached out to her, but she shoved his hands aside. “He’s not dead. Look, he’s still breathing. Why are you standing there? Run and get Mr. Larsen. Help my father.” Why was no one doing anything?

“Someone went for him, but there’s not much anyone can do.”

Adie stamped her foot in frustration. “Don’t say that. Nothing is going to happen to him. Now do something. Anything! Boil water, or tear sheets for bandages or whatever you can think to do.”

A moan sounded from beside her. She turned back. Her father’s eyelids flickered.

She leaned over the man who had always been there for her and stroked his whiskered cheek. “Shh, everything’s going to be all right. You’ll be fine.”

He parted his lips, but no sound escaped.

“Don’t try to talk. Save your energy. You’re going to need it when you get back to work in a few days.”

Her father’s mouth moved again, and this time he croaked out a word. “Noah.”

Preacher Man leaned in. So his name was Noah.

“I’m right here, but Adie’s right. Conserve your strength. Whatever you have to tell me can wait.”

Daddy moved his head from side to side, wincing. “No.” He took a shallow breath. “Take care of her.”

Noah’s big hand covered her father’s. “I will. I promise.”

She didn’t like the direction of the conversation. Everyone talked like her father was dying. “Why would you say that, Daddy? You’re not going anywhere. We’ll be together like we always have been. Come spring you’ll hire on and help someone with their planting. But it will be the two of us, looking out for each other, like you said it would be, forever.”

Daddy gave her hand a small squeeze. “I love you, Adie.”

The lines in her father’s face softened, and his hand went limp. His eyes stared blankly.

“No! Daddy, no!”

Strong arms enveloped her and kept her from falling to the floor. Noah whispered in her ear. “I’m so sorry.”

She couldn’t speak, couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe.

She was utterly alone.

Little light filtered through the cracks in the chinking of the cabin. A frigid wind blew, and ice built up on the inside of the walls.

But nothing compared to the chill in Adie’s heart. When Mama had died seven years ago, she hadn’t thought anything worse could happen. Well, it had. Both her parents were gone. She closed her eyes to shut out the reality of her father dying. Maybe, just maybe, when she opened them she would find this had been an awful nightmare. She would wake up, and everything would be the way it should be.

But when she did, nothing had changed. Outside, men continued to chisel her father’s grave from the frozen earth. Sawing and hammering came from the blacksmith’s shop next door as the jack-of-all-trades smithy constructed the coffin.

Her father’s smiling eyes looked down on her from a photograph in a wood frame. Adie took the daguerreotype from the crude shelf above the stone fireplace. His hair was slicked back. She ran her finger over the glass above his image. Her mother sat beside him, prim and proper, a cameo at her delicate throat. Every chance he got, Daddy reminded Adie what a wonderful person her mother had been. He’d never stopped loving her. His grief over her death caused him to sell their farm. They became nomads, working wherever work could be had.

She couldn’t blame him for wanting to escape the memories inhabiting their little log cabin. Right now she wanted to run as far from this place as her legs could carry her and never look back. Of course, it was impossible. Winter had settled into the Wisconsin Northwoods. No one would come or go for a long time.

And Adie had nowhere to go anyway. What could one woman do alone?

She sighed and replaced the picture on the shelf. Her numb mind couldn’t make such decisions now. At this moment she needed to focus on getting through the next few minutes and hours. She’d worry about the future when it happened.

The cold of the room seeped into her bones, and she shivered. Without kicking off her high-button shoes, she slid under her brightly colored patchwork quilt. With frozen fingers, she traced the stitching. Her mother had sewn this quilt for her bed under the eaves in the attic. She had allowed Adie to do some of the work. Together they had chatted away the hours.

Her memories took her to the day she and her father had packed their belongings and moved from their home. They’d left so much behind, but Adie had insisted she take the quilt. Since that day it had traveled with them from place to place. Some nights it covered her in cabins such as this one, some nights in haylofts, some nights on a blanket of pine needles beneath the stars.

Always her father had been nearby. Not tonight.

Tonight she would be alone.

At last she permitted herself to grieve for all she had lost. She cried and cried until her pillow was soaked and her body exhausted.

Work stopped for only a brief time after the accident. Trees needed to be harvested, after all. The lumber company didn’t want work to slack off, even because of a tragedy.

Noah sawed trees with Butch, his new partner, pulled from the swamper crew cutting limbs from trunks. Usually, the steady back-and-forth motion of the two-man crosscut saw soothed him. Now he couldn’t keep his attention on his task. Despite the danger it posed for him, his thoughts returned time and again to Adie. His heart ached for her. Quinn had told him they had no other living kin, and Noah imagined how alone she must feel. He wanted to comfort her.

She’d felt so good, so right in his arms when he’d caught her. A wren weighed more than she did. But she was soft and warm and curved in the right places. He longed to hold her forever, to shield her from more pain.

The saw caught in the tree, and worked paused. Noah closed his eyes for amoment and erased his thoughts. He had no right dreaming about Adie like that. Her father had died a few hours ago. And he had to take care of her.

Butch yanked on the saw, and their rhythmic work started again. Noah’s promise to Quinn came to mind. Even before the accident, he’d been concerned for his daughter’s well-being if something should happen to him. His anxiety deepened when Derek Owens began making advances toward her.

Without her father there to watch out for her, she became a prime target for Owens and women-thirsty jacks like him. Unfortunately, there were too many unprincipled men in a logging camp. They wouldn’t see another woman all winter long, so they’d try to take advantage of the one in their midst.

Noah wanted to see her protected. The thought of her falling into the clutches of someone like Owens disgusted him. She made clear her distaste for the man’s suggestions.

Early on, Noah and Quinn had formed an unlikely friendship. Quinn was the only lumberjack who didn’t ridicule Noah for his beliefs, the only one who listened to anything Noah had to say. So when Quinn asked Noah to make sure no harm came to Adie if anything happened to him, Noah had agreed to it without much thought. Right before he passed away, Quinn had reminded him of his promise.

He shook his head and wiped his forehead with the back of his sleeve, his plaid flannel shirt and woolen long johns damp with perspiration. His nerves were as jagged as the saw blade.

He stepped back to watch Butch hammer a wedge into the saw cut with the back of his axe. The tree creaked and moaned, then leaned.
Tiiiimberrrr
.

It plummeted to the earth with a crash.

No problems. Not like this morning.

Noah groaned. He had an obligation to the one man who didn’t laugh at him or put him down. He knew he needed to keep his promise to Quinn. But how? What might be the best way of going about it? Noah felt inadequate.

Adie needed someone to watch out for her and to keep her reputation from being sullied by men like Derek Owens. A logging camp was no place for a woman alone. But what could he do?

A
fter work halted at nightfall, and with a hearty dinner behind him, Noah knocked on the back door of the wanigan, the company store, where Mr. Larsen slept.

“Come in.”

Noah entered the boss’s small and sparsely furnished lean-to. A narrow but neatly made bed occupied one wall, a colorful quilt tossed over it. Mr. Larsen sat in a straight-back chair at a long table on the opposite wall. That left little space for even as simple a task as turning around. Noah could just step inside and still have room to close the door behind him.

Mr. Larsen looked up from the books and papers spread over his desk, his glasses on the very tip of his hawk-like nose. He was probably somewhere around forty, but his importance in the camp made him seem much older. He nodded in Noah’s direction. “Mitchell. Have a seat.” He motioned to the bed.

Noah sat, the corn husks in the mattress rustling as he settled into position.

“I’m sorry about O’Connell. What exactly happened?”

Noah shifted, those horrible images of Quinn’s accident repeating themselves in his mind. The eardrum-busting crack of the tree. The men rushing to insert wedges, racing to control the fall of the pine. The sight of the tree leaning directly over Quinn. The look of surprise, horror, fear on the man’s face. The icy cold that shot through his own veins.

“It’s like I told you. The tree split. Why? I don’t know. We tried to wedge it to no avail. I yelled to Quinn, but it was too late.” Noah closed his eyes and took a couple of quick deep breaths, trying to dissolve the lump in his throat. “He did nothing wrong. None of us did. The Lord called him home today. That’s all.”

“I’m sorry, Mitchell. I know you two got along real well.”

“Thank you, sir.” Noah cleared his throat and twisted the end of his mustache. “But I didn’t come about that. Well, maybe in a way it is. I have a problem. I was wondering if I could ask your advice.”

Larsen removed his spectacles and placed them on the desk. “What is it? Owens bothering you? You know, he’s done nothing illegal. There’s not much I can do about him. You two’ll have to work it out yourselves.”

The man sounded exasperated. Noah wondered how many others had complained about Owens.

“No, sir, it’s nothing like that.” He shifted, the mattress crunching beneath him. “In a way it is, though. I mean, it does involve Owens. Sort of.”

Larsen tapped his fingers on his desk. He was getting impatient.

“Sir, what is going to happen to Miss O’Connell? Quinn’s daughter.”

“Happen to her? What do you mean?”

“She’s a beautiful young woman. Some of the men have made advances toward her. Inappropriate advances.” He wished he could halt the progress of the heat up his neck and into his face.

The boss leaned forward and rubbed his chin. “Go on.”

“Quinn always watched out for her. Protected her. When he was around, none of the men dared to even look at Miss O’Connell. Without him here, I’m afraid of what some of them might do. She’s vulnerable.” A vision of Adie, her slender white hands grasping a sweating water pitcher, a red curl falling across her pink cheek, crossed his mind. “She needs someone to watch out for her.”

“And you propose to do the job, Mitchell?”

“I promised Quinn several times I would take care of his daughter should something happen to him. I didn’t ever think …”

Larsen slapped his knee. “No one ever does. And you’re right. Miss O’Connell needs a protector. All the women I’ve ever run across in a logging camp have been married. And matronly. Never had one young and single like she is. O’Connell was a good worker and a leader. He kept the men in line, and they respected him. That’s why I allowed him to bring her along. But now—well, what she needs is a husband.”

Noah didn’t like the way Larsen looked directly at him. His mother had that same I-have-a-chore-for-you-that-you-won’t-like kind of look. One that usually meant he was about to muck out stalls.

He swallowed. “A husband?”

“If someone married her, she would come under the protection of her husband. While the men here might be wild and some would say uncouth, they wouldn’t dare touch a married woman.”

“Who?”

Larsen laughed. Actually laughed. The crinkles around his eyes deepened. “Seems to me, Mitchell, if you made the promise to O’Connell, it ought to be you.”

Noah stood so quickly the room spun. “Me? Marry Miss O’Connell?”

“She is beautiful. Maybe a bit spirited for a quiet man like yourself, but you could do worse. Much worse.”

The world tilted, and Noah reached for the rough lumber wall to steadyhimself. Him? Marry Adie? Couldn’t he just treat her like his sister? That’s what he’d had in mind when he’d promised to protect her. Not marry her. That hadn’t come to mind at all when Quinn asked.

His plans did not include a wife. A spouse would change his future. With someone else to support, he would never be able to save enough money for seminary. Later, maybe, there might be room for a wife, but not now. He needed to scrimp and save every last penny to pay tuition, not have it frittered away by a woman buying lace, ribbons, and other frippery. He hadn’t seen any of that on Adie, but his sisters liked those sorts of things.

He would have to give up so much to marry her.

Yet his loss couldn’t compare to Adie’s. He had a choice in the matter. She didn’t choose to be brought to this camp, didn’t choose to lose both her parents, didn’t choose to be stranded, alone, and defenseless. The apostle Paul commanded Christians to care for orphans, and he supposed she fit that category. And her father told him she knew the Lord.

“Mitchell? You all right? You need a drink of water?”

Larsen’s voice pierced his thoughts. For a moment the room was so silent he could hear nothing but the sputtering of the oil lamp.

Noah shook his head, clearing his mind.

He trembled at the thought of what the Lord wanted him to do. His life was about to change forever.

“I’ll marry her, sir. If she’ll have me.”

Adie stared at the mountain of dishes that awaited her this morning.

This morning, like so many other mornings, yet so different. In one day her father had laughed with her, died, and been buried.

Everything was different.

Everything was the same.

Cookie had told her she didn’t need to come to work today. If she didn’t work, though, what was there to do?

She scrubbed the egg pan, telling herself her tears came from the ache in her knuckles, not from the pain in her heart.

A soft knock sounded at the swinging door. “Miss O’Connell?”

She recognized Preacher Man’s—Noah’s—soothing tenor voice.

She swiped away her tears with the back of her hand. “Yes.”

He came through the swinging door, tall, lean, but somehow soft. Maybe it was the look of compassion in his golden-brown eyes. “I’d like to speak with you, if you have a few minutes.” He shuffled his weight from one booted foot to the other.

“Just a few. I need to wash all of those.” She tilted her head toward the pile of dishes.

He held the café door open for her and gestured for her to sit on one of the benches in the mess hall while he stood, then paced, rolling one end of his mustache between his fingers.

He stopped in front of her and looked straight into her eyes. “I’d like to extend my sympathies to you on the loss of your father.”

She dug her ragged fingernails into the edge of the wooden bench, willing herself not to cry. After last night, she thought she had cried all the tears in the world. But today, if she let herself give in to the grief, she knew she would weep and weep and never stop.

“Thank you, Mister …”

“Mitchell. Noah Mitchell. Please call me Noah.”

“Thank you, Noah.”

“He and I were felling the tree together yesterday. I don’t know why it happened. He did nothing wrong. But he loved you very much.”

She bit her lip. She couldn’t speak, so she nodded. He was sweet and thoughtful, but she didn’t want to talk about this.

He resumed his pacing, and she relaxed her grip on the bench. Without warning, he spun around.

“He was always concerned about you. Wanted to make sure nothing happened to you. He loved you very much and felt bad about dragging you all over the state, never giving you a place to call home.”

She couldn’t take any more. She rose and touched his upper arm, surprised by the firmness of the muscles. For a moment she forgot what they were speaking about. Then it rushed back.

“Mr. Mitchell—Noah—I want to thank you for your sentiments.” She didn’t know how many more words she’d be able to force through the narrow opening in her throat. “But truly, I need to finish the dishes and start peeling potatoes for supper. Cookie will be upset with me for wasting so much time.”

She started toward the door, but he caught her by her wrist. Though his grip was firm, he didn’t hurt her. She paused and turned, her face so close to his she could feel his rapid, warm breath on her cheek. “Mr. Mitchell, please.”

“Miss O’Connell, I promised your father that I would be the one to take care of you if anything happened to him. For some reason he felt I could be trusted with his most treasured possession.”

His eyes turned dark, and she couldn’t tell what he thought.

“A lumber camp is no place for a beautiful young woman all alone. There are men who … who would do things.”

“I assure you, Mr. Mitchell, that I can hold my own with the jacks. They don’t frighten me in the least.” Well, none of them but a certain Derek Owens. The man disgusted her and yes even caused her to tremble. But her father was always there to keep him in line.

Her father. Who wasn’t here any longer.

Noah touched a curl that had strayed from her pins. The hairs on her arms stood up straight. This big room must be cold without the ovens going. She took a step back, and he released her wrist.

“I don’t think you understand. Some men might try to take, well, advantage of you.” A blush heightened the ruddy look of his face. “You need someone to take care of you, to protect you. A husband.”

“A what? A husband? You have to be kidding me.” Where did he get such a ludicrous suggestion? “I have no need of a husband. Besides, who would I marry? One of those ill-mannered jacks you mentioned?”

Noah turned, walked to the end of the table, gripped the edge, and then faced her. For some reason she held her breath. He put his hand over his heart and pressed his chest. “Me. You could marry me.”