A Log Cabin Christmas (36 page)

His heart pattered in disbelief. God had blessed him beyond measure and graced both him and Adie with everything they’d ever wanted. His throat clogged, but he squeezed out the words. “I love you, too. Marry me.”

She swept her fingertips across his temple, and he pressed her hand to his cheek. “We’re already married.”

“I want to be married the way two people should be.”

A soft pink touched her cheeks. “I do.”

He drew her close. “Merry Christmas, Adie.”

“Merry Christmas, my love.”

Liz Tolsma has lived in Wisconsin most of her life, and she now resides next to a farm field with her husband, son, and two daughters. Add a dog and a cat to that mix and there’s always something going on at their house. She’s spent time teaching second grade, writing advertising for a real estate company, and working as a church secretary, but she always dreamed of becoming an author. When not busy putting words to paper, she enjoys reading, walking, working in her large perennial garden, kayaking, and camping with her family. She’d love to have you visit her at
www.liztolsma.com
or at
www.liztolsma.blogspot.com
.
Soli Deo Gloria

by Michelle Ule

East Texas, June 1836

B
alanced on top of the sticky pine cabin wall, Molly Faires clung to the end of the log roof beam while Jamie fought to place it.

“Easy now. I think I’ve got it. Get down and out of the way.” Jamie didn’t take his eyes off the log as Molly scrambled down the unchinked walls to the ground.

Molly tucked a strand of blond hair back into her sunbonnet as she watched her brother wrestle the log toward the notches.

“Is it lined up?” he called.

“Almost there.” She held her breath. This was the first one. If the two of them could set the beams, they wouldn’t need to bother the neighbors for more help. Once they got the beams secure, Jamie could build a single roof covering the two small cabins and the breezeway in between: a “dogtrot” cabin.

When his straw hat blew off in the direction of the flourishing vegetable patch, Jamie stayed on focus, inching the heavy log into place. But then a swallow flit too close; he jerked and lost his hold. “It’s going. Watch out!”

Molly sprinted a dozen yards north to where she’d tied the young’un, Andy, to a loblolly pine stump already trying to sprout again.

The log shuddered down the side of the western cabin wall, landed on end, and fell forward with a mighty thud into the stump-studded yard. Belle, the yellow dog who had followed them all the way from Tennessee, hightailed it to the woods.

Molly hugged the toddler to her side while she gauged Jamie’s reaction. All around her the forest seemed to wait, too: the bobwhites in midcall and the mourning doves worrying in the underbrush.

From his perch on the cabin wall, Jamie snickered.

Molly bit her lip in hope.

He slapped his thighs, threw back his head, and laughed with a crescendo that exploded the world back into action.

Molly’s shoulders relaxed in relief. He hadn’t laughed since his wife, Sarah, had died in childbirth on the trail from Tennessee fifteen months ago.

Andy shouted his baby talk and raised his arms.

“I’ve got ye.” Molly untied the little boy and carried him to his father.

Jamie jumped down and examined the beam. “It’s too big for the two of us,” he said, taking the toddler. “I’ll have to ask Clay Ramsey another favor and get him over to help finish up. Ye may be strong, but setting roof beams is a man’s job.”

Molly surveyed the clearing they had grubbed together in the hill country full of piney woods. Most of the logs, fat ones as well as saplings, had gone into building the two small cabins. A stack of cedar shingles, about half of what they needed, waited for the beams and crosspoles to go onto the roof.

“Surely we can try again,” Molly said. “I’ll help. I know I can share the burden.”

Jamie shook his head. “The Good Lord’s been a’ watching out for us, but I don’t want ye to get hurt. I’ll ask Ramsey and Pappy Hanks’s boys up to help soon. I should have all the shingles made by then.”

The animation sagged out of his eyes, and his skin seemed to go thin as the bleakness he had worn for so long took hold again. “It’s not like she’ll be here to see it.”

“But ye picked a good site,” Molly said. “Just what Sarah wanted.” The living cabin was on the right, the cookhouse cabin ten feet away on the north side, leaving a space big enough for three dogs to trot between. She hoped one day to have a cabin like it with a man of her own.

“Aye, this style cabin works best in Texas. Soon enough, we can put up the roof to join the cabins, and this homestead will be done.”

Molly shook her head. “Maybe your part will be done, but I’ll be hauling mud from the stream to chink out those logs all summer.”

Jamie set his son onto wobbly legs and tousled his hair. “This young’un can help. He’ll like getting his hands in the mud. ‘Sides, he needs to start earning his keep.”

“You’re starting him to work young, like Pappy.”

“You don’t know how long you got with ‘em. We be blessed Ma and Pappy started us working young.”

The half-built cabins sat in a clearing that sloped gently down to a trail through the dense underbrush and woods that sheltered the watering hole. Green leaves stirred in a scrap of breeze and alerted Molly’s senses. Injuns raided this countryside. Her ma had warned many times—you never saw ‘em until too late.

Belle’s barking turned to a gruff bay, and Jamie thrust Andy to Molly. “Hie ye to the cookhouse, and bar the door.”

“Hush, Andy.” Molly scurried with him to the roofless cook cabin. Jamie grabbed his rifle.

She crouched beside Andy and stared through the log gaps toward the trail. Belle bounded from the woods, making enough noise to flush out every bird within miles. The dog paced before the cabins, teeth bared. Jamie waited in the breezeway.

A ragged, dirty Tejano man, dressed in the sort of clothing worn by Texas Mexicans, pushed out of the woods, leading a lame satiny black stallion. “
Vaya, perro
,” he shouted at Belle.

The dog paced left and right, growling and barking. The man stopped. “Qué
es eso?”

Jamie walked toward him cradling the rifle in one arm and holding up the other hand in greeting.
“Buenos días
.”

“Good day,” the Tejano’s deep voice held only a trace of Spanish accent. “Call off your dog.”

Jamie slapped the side of his right leg, and Belle joined him. The dog quieted but did not take her eyes off the stranger.

“I have been away. You are new here.” The man removed his faded cloth hat and untied the red scarf from around his neck. He wiped his forehead in the June heat, and Molly noted his handsome features. His blue-black hair shone in the sunlight as he glanced around the clearing.

Jamie shifted. “Ye be from around here?”

“I am Luis Vasco de Carvajal.” He gestured north. “My family has lived on this land for three generations.”

Jamie extended his hand. “Jamie Faires. Ye be our neighbor, then.”

The man’s eyes swept to Molly, and he nodded. She picked up the toddler and joined them.

“This be Molly and my boy, Andy.”

Luis Vasco de Carvajal swept into the bow of a Spanish gentleman. “The countryside always welcomes beautiful women.”

“Thank ye,” Molly said. His obvious weariness caught her heart. “Have ye far to go? May I get ye and your horse water?”

Coal-black eyes stared. “We drank at the stream.”

“Your English be very good.” Molly shifted Andy in her arms. “May he pet your horse?”

“Sí.”
Carvajal motioned the horse forward. “I had an American tutor who visited over the years. It is important to speak with Anglos in a language they understand.”

The horse’s tongue stretched to explore Andy’s fingers. He giggled. Mollysmelled the sweetness of the woods in the horse’s mane and sighed. “Don’t you miss having a horse, Jamie?”

He nodded.

“What’s his name?” Molly asked.

“Maximo.” Carvajal frowned. “How do you hold this land?”

Jamie set the rifle on the ground beside his boot. “Bought it. We traveled with a party from Tennessee and settled the land this spring.”

“How much land?”

“As head of household they only let me have forty-six hundred acres. I share with Molly.”

Molly watched the Tejano calculate their holdings. She wanted to grab Jamie’s arm and warn him not to say too much. But she was nineteen to his twenty-four; surely he knew better.

The man’s jaw tightened, and his dark eyes flashed. “This is fine property,” he said. “I have liked it since my father gave it to me.”

Jamie flushed. “We paid hard cash for this land.”

“Perhaps you paid money,” Carvajal said. “But you are squatters. I will have my land back.” He turned on his heel, tugged the horse’s bridle, and headed into the dense undergrowth.

Before they could reply, he disappeared.

W
ho did this?
Luis thought as he stalked toward the family
ranchero
he had left three years before. Who would have sold his property to Anglos?

He didn’t have to think long: Manuel.

Luis had received only one letter from Mamacita during his time in the south, and that letter had announced his father’s death and his teenage sister’s marriage to Manuel Gomez, a man ten years her senior. Luis knew in his absence Manuel would try to control the family property. But would Mamacita have allowed him to sell Luis’s land? Didn’t she follow the instructions he sent from Mexico City?

Anglos. Luis had had his fill of the greedy, proud Americans who had flooded his Texas the last fifteen years. To have them live nearby could be troublesome, even if the war was finally over and Texas a republic in its own right. Luis set his lips. The land belonged to him, no one else.

He paused when Maximo nickered. The stallion had carried him all the way to Santa Ana’s government in Mexico City and back. What a shame he’d turned up lame only half a day from home. “We will put you in the pasture and let you grow fat again on Carvajal Ranchero grass,” Luis said as he stroked the horse’s powerful neck. “I will find you beautiful mares, and we’ll live on our ranchero in peace.”

But where? Luis had planned to clear the land and build his own house on the exact spot the boyish Anglo had chosen.

I will need a wife, too
.

But who? Would Carlita have waited for him? Did Carmen still flutter her fan with wanton skill? And what about a blond woman with bluebonnet eyes?

Luis stopped. What had made him think of the Anglo’s wife? He shook his head. He had been away from his people too long.

May I get your horse water?
He thought about her soft voice, a slight burr to her English words. It jiggled the memory of a story he had heard once, about a man who married a woman because she volunteered to water his animals.

Crazy Anglos. A horse requires much water. The Anglo girl would grow tired very quickly if she tried to water Maximo.

And why did her husband allow her to speak to him? A Mexican
señora
would have worn a
mantilla
veil across her face and wouldn’t dare address another man. Luis would deal with that boyish husband. They were children and he a man of horse and cattle, a
vaquero
. Luis would get his land back.

As he strode through the mottled sunlight of the forest floor, Luis tried to slough off the horror of the last years. He knew and loved this land, so very different from the dry, cactus-studded ground beyond the Rio Grande. Since the day he’d left, his soul had yearned for green woods threaded with streams and filled with game.

When the trees thinned, he came to a broad clearing dominated by a wooden ranch house with a deep porch and steep roof to keep off the east Texas rains. Smoke rose from the cookhouse chimney, and colorful lantanas grew below the porch in welcome. He sighed: El Ranchero de Carvajal, home at last.

Mamacita dashed from the house as quickly as her tiny feet could move. Tears streamed down her plump cheeks, and dazzling earrings caught the light. She clasped her hands before her heart and babbled his name: “Luis, Luis,
mi caro
, Luis.”

“Mamacita.” He kissed her on both cheeks and then knelt at her feet.

She dropped her hands onto his head and murmured,
“Gracias a Dios”—
thanks be to God—“who brought my son back to me.”

A squeal from behind announced his sister Maria. “You have returned, Luis! Where have you been? Why were you gone so long? We thought you were dead.”

“Dead? Did you not receive my letters?” Luis frowned.

“No, mi
hijo,”
Mamacita said. “Many thought you dead, but I prayed for your safe return. My heart, mi
corazón
, it overflows with gladness to my Creator.”

Maria grabbed her mother’s hands. “No, Mamacita, Manuel doesn’t like it when you talk about God like Anglos.”

Luis stood; he towered over the women. “You have spent time with Anglos? Who sold my property?”

“We thought you were dead,” Maria cried.

Mamacita clapped her hands. Two servants with narrow black braids scurried from the
casa
. Mamacita gave directions accented with cries of thanks to God. The women stared at Luis. Mamacita clapped her hand again, and they ran off.

“Mi corazón, I will have them kill the fatted calf.”

He scrutinized his mother. He had never heard her use such terms. The words reminded him of verses from the Bible his tutor Tomás had made him read all those years before.

“Dónde está
Manuel?” Luis scanned the area for his brother-in-law. Hensscratched near the fence. Several head of cattle foraged in the pasture near the cookhouse. The property appeared neglected; no men were in sight.

“He went yesterday to Nacogdoches to sell livestock. He will return soon, if God wills,” Maria said. “Where have you been, Luis?”

“I have been to Mexico City, Bexar, Coahuila, and other places against my will. I was forced to fight, drafted into a war I did not want. That is behind me now.”

“What happened in your battles?” Maria twisted the beads around her neck.

He shook his head. “I do not wish to talk of war. It is not safe with so many Americans around. I want to know why those Anglos are on my property. A boy has built a cabin.”

The women looked at each other. Mamacita wrung her hands. “We received no word, no letters in all these years. Manuel said you must be dead. He sold the property because he said we needed the money.”

Luis rocked back on his heels. All the politics, all the time he had been forced to fight when he wanted nothing more than to come home. And for what? To lose his land at the hands of a greedy brother-in-law and a young American?

“But I am not dead. Americans may have defeated Santa Ana at the Battle of San Jacinto, but they have no right to my land.”

“Manuel says many things are changing,” Maria said. “How will you fight the American for your land?”

Luis shook his head. “I am tired of fighting. I want peace.”

Mamacita touched his shoulder. “I am sorry, mi hijo. But if you do not wish to speak of war, perhaps we can talk of the greatest thing: love. Have you seen a woman to catch your eyes and steal your heart in all your travels? Perhaps a fair-haired
señorita?”

Luis stepped back in surprise. What had happened to his mother in the last three years? And could she now read his mind?