A Log Cabin Christmas (37 page)

July

A
scream from the woods yanked Molly awake. Her racing heartbeat choked her as she stared between the unchinked logs. Dawn’s faint glow cast a blue-gray light over the clearing. Jamie sat up from the floor and grabbed his long rifle.

Another high-pitched cry shivered through the air. “Who is she?”

“No woman,” Jamie said. “That be a panther.”

Across the breezeway, the cow mooed in the north cabin where they had penned her for the time being. The half-dozen chickens clucked their worry. Belle howled.

Jamie pushed past the sleeping Andy and peered out. The screeching faded into the north woods, and Belle quieted. Andy muttered and rolled to his side, thumb in mouth.

“Dear, Jesus, please protect us,” Molly prayed.

“Always does, always will. I’ll be glad when we get the roof on, though,” Jamie said.

“You don’t think?”

“Panthers climb trees. Good thing the Ramseys are coming today.” He nudged her foot. “Are you sorry now you asked us not to finish the whole cabin when the Hanks boys helped me raise the walls?”

Molly pulled the quilt to her chin. “I figured we could live without a roof longer than most. With Lily’s pregnancy, the Ramseys needed a home before us. I’m glad you agreed. It was the right thing to do.”

Jamie grunted and poked at the white oiled canvas stretched across the top of the cabin as a makeshift roof. “We’ll need to get this down before everyone arrives.”

An hour after sunrise, Clay and Lily Ramsey rode up in a wagon with their three children. “Jamie, ready to raise a roof?” the red-faced Clay called in a cheery voice.

“We all are.” Molly took the toddler from Lily’s arms. “When is your next babe coming?”

“Fall.” Lily retied her bonnet. “We be blessed Jamie helped finish our place first.”

“Believers do good for each other,” Jamie said. “Willie and two Hanks boys will be here right soon. I figure to have the whole roof on today.”

Clay eyed the rough cabins. “What made ye build both rooms so soon? Couldn’t ye get along in one?”

“We built on the midpoint,” Jamie said. “Molly has her cabin, and I have mine.”

“And what happens when your sister marries and doesn’t want to share half a dogtrot with ye and Andy?” Lily asked.

Molly’s lips twitched.

“She hates to burden anyone. Molly can follow her new man home.” He winked at her.

Molly led Lily to a stump by the cook fire while she stirred up the corn pone in the three-legged iron frying pan. She slid a piece of fat around the inside and then mixed in water and cornmeal. Molly put on the lid and shoveled coals around the sides and top. The pone would bake into a brown cake by the time the menfolk got hungry.

“That Sarah’s spider ye cooking with?” Lily asked.

Molly couldn’t trust her voice. She nodded.

“Sure is something to see her babe running with mine.” Lily blinked rapidly. “‘Twas a bad night when we lost Sarah.”

Molly studied her. “Ye scared of the same thing?”

Lily’s eyes followed the children. “Ma Hanks will come; Pappy Hanks should be back from circuit ridin’, and he’ll pray. God numbers the hairs on our heads, and he knows Clay and the children need me. I’ll trust Him.”

“I be praying for ye, too.” Molly picked up the empty water bucket. “We need more water.”

Lily waved her away. “I’ll watch the young’uns and the cook fire.”

“Thank ye.” Molly collected two buckets and followed the thin path through the clearing’s coarse grass. She brushed at nettles and remembered her Scottish ma’s affection for tea made from steeping the flowers. Molly stopped and closed her eyes, willing a memory of her parents and four brothers sipping tin mugs of tea in the Tennessee cabin. The image shimmered like the wings of a dragonfly waiting to light, but then snapped shut, empty.

Molly sighed. “Thank ye, Lord, I’ve still got Jamie and Andy. Help me serve ‘em well.” She continued on her way.

Heat had risen with the sun, and Molly felt the cooling drop in temperature when she entered the dense wood. A hare startled and disappeared into thebrush. The chattering stream called greetings when Molly dipped the buckets.

She checked over her shoulder as she knelt by the water. She loved the leaf-patterned light and the splashes of wildflower color, but the thicket, for all it provided, could hide as well. A hoot, a whistle, the warble of sapsuckers, made her uneasy. Birdsong or man-made?

When both buckets were full, Molly stepped carefully in the direction of the clearing. She paused at the muddy path. A heel mark in the mud caught her eye; boots she didn’t recognize had passed this way.

Luis did not mean to spy on the woman with the corn-colored hair, but he needed to know what the Anglos were doing. Their shouts and thudding hammers rang through the forest, sending a tremor through the wildlife of his woods; indeed, even through his heart. The foolish girl had knelt before checking. He knew the hoot hadn’t been real and stepped behind a tree to watch.

Her body stiffened as she grasped the bucket handles. She moved back to the trail with steady steps, before stopping and searching the clearing one last time. Her pretty face crumpled with uncertainty, and then she left.

Luis waited, counting to two hundred as his father had taught him. Soon a red man slipped out of the thicket, watched after the girl, and then blended back into the forest. Luis pointed his long gun north and followed the Indian; he knew how to hunt men.

Wild grapevines twined across the deer path Luis followed. He cursed when a pawpaw branch smacked him in the face and he lost sight of the red man. He shouldered the long gun and turned toward home.

The ranchero buzzed with activity. He stopped one of the servant girls. “What has happened?”

“The master has come; we must hurry.”

“Señor
Gomez?”

“Sí,” she said with wide eyes. “The master.”

Luis marched toward the house. Where had his brother-in-law been the three weeks since Luis’s return?

A bulky man with a bushy black mustache, Manuel leaned back in a chair on the porch, his feet on the railing and a pungent cigar between his teeth. Maria fluttered about him while Mamacita sat upright nearby. She beckoned to Luis.

“You are back,” Manuel growled. Two chair legs thudded onto the floor.

“Where have you been?” Luis kept his voice even but firm.

Manuel took the cigar from his mouth and picked at his teeth. “I ask you the same.”

“I have been to war. How did you come to sell my property to Anglos?”

The man shrugged. “You were not here. They wanted land. We needed money. Cash. Your father would have done the same.”

“My father never would have sold his land. Where is the money?”

Manuel gestured with his cigar. “Gone. The livestock has thinned. Things are not what they were.”

Luis narrowed his eyes. “Show me an accounting. Now.”

“Accounting is for Anglos.” Manuel dropped ashes onto the porch. “You were dead. I am the man of the ranchero, and I make the decisions.”

Luis glanced at Mamacita. With her eyes closed and her lips moving, was she praying? About what? He climbed the three steps to the porch and stood over Manuel. “I am Carvajal. These are my ancestral lands. I want an accounting, or you will leave.”

“But this is our home.” Maria clutched her husband’s broad shoulders so hard her knuckles turned white.

Luis raised his eyebrows. “Manuel owns land northeast of Nacogdoches. That became your home when you married.”

“Mamacita,” whined Maria.

Mamacita opened her eyes. “If you cannot answer Luis’s questions, you must leave, Manuel. A good steward provides an accounting to the owner. Luis is correct. You have a casa. With Luis returned, I do not need you to manage the ranchero.”

Maria fumbled for a handkerchief. Manuel’s face distorted into rage. “I cared for you, Mamacita. You cannot throw us out.”

“I asked God to send someone to help you see the error of your ways. A workman is worthy of his wage, Manuel. You have not been a good steward of our family property. Now you must return to your own.”

“You cannot send me away,” Manuel thundered.

Maria’s hands went to her belly. “What about my baby?”

Mamacita sighed and folded her hands. “If Manuel cannot explain how he has handled the ranchero’s finances, you will go in the morning.” She rose. “Dinner is served.”

W
ith the new roof overhead, the cabin was dimmer—light only shone through the gaps between the logs. Molly didn’t mind because now she had a place of her own. With winter still months away, she could take her time chinking the cracks.

On that July afternoon, however, she couldn’t imagine the cold and excitement of Christmas. Molly lifted the thick braid off her neck. Right now she’d be thankful for anything to stir the languid mugginess.

She moved about the small, square cabin setting things aright. Jamie had built a shelf on the long wall above her straw tick mattress. There she placed her mother’s thick leather-bound Bible, her oldest brother John’s drawing of the family, and her grandmother’s sewing kit, which had crossed the ocean from Scotland. Molly touched each precious treasure in turn, remembering.

When the pain of their loss finally eased to acceptance, she grabbed the twig broom and set to work.

Across the breezeway in the south cabin, Andy muttered. Molly stopped sweeping the hard dirt floor to check on him: still asleep on his father’s straw tick. Down the rise, she saw Jamie carrying a bucket of water in one hand, toting his rifle in the other. She went to meet him.

“A roof makes a difference, don’t ye think?” Jamie handed her the bucket.

“It makes the cabin more secure and finished.”

“I’ll cut windows soon.” Jamie removed his straw hat and fanned himself. “Raisin’ a cabin and startin’ a farm takes a lot of work.”

“Ye don’t remember building the claim in Tennessee?”

“I was a young’un, maybe three, afore ye were born. John and Samuel, they did most of the helping, even though they were young’uns, too. Billy was a babe,” he sighed. “All passed on to glory now.”

Jamie set his jaw, and Molly knew the bleak expression would thin across his eyes. She touched his sleeve. “They’d all be proud of your hard work. Ye be a good man, Jamie Faires.”

He squinted toward the sun. “Thank ye for coming with me, Molly. I talked to Steele Hanks back in Tennessee about leaving ye behind in Tennessee. But Sarah said family needs to stick together. She said it was the right thing to do. I’m glad I listened to her.”

“Aye. Sarah was a wise, godly woman.”

“But she’s dead gone like all the rest. It be time to move on.”

Molly shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

“Ye be a fine sister, but a man gets lonely.” Jamie tucked the rifle under his arm and reached for his ax. “Ye remember to carry Samuel’s long rifle with ye into the forest, ‘specially when you start chinking. I’m going to clear more trees. Belle?” He paused and looked around. “Where be that hound?”

She watched him return to the woods. He’d deal with his sorrow by work. “Help him to fear no evil, Lord, for thou art with him.”

Molly hauled the water back to the cabin and poked her head into the south side of the dogtrot. The toddler slept, but between the unchinked logs, a sinewy hand stretched through to pat Andy’s back. As Molly reached for Samuel’s rifle, the figure on the other side of the log wall shrieked. The savage laughter ricocheted through her skull, driving out everything but the high-pitched horror.

Andy rolled over.

Her heart racing and feet tripping in panic, Molly snatched the rifle. By the time she got to the corner of the cabin, however, only the fluttering branches of the undergrowth indicated where the Injun had fled.

Late in July, Luis crept along the stream on the side opposite the trail and heard singing from the water hole. He did not understand the words, twisted as they were with her “ye” and “thee.” The Anglo, Molly, had hitched her skirts high and waded into the middle of the stream, where she doused a faded rust-colored dress in the water. Luis frowned at the immodesty of her bare legs and told himself not to stare.

A hoot pulled his eyes away, and he scanned the brush. She heard the call and stopped, and then she stepped toward the bank. Luis saw the action before she did.

The red man snatched up the
niño
and dangled him by the heel. The child screamed, and Molly flung the dress at the shore. “Put him down!”

The red man advanced toward her, chattering in a guttural tongue. The child wailed, and the red man swung him like a pendulum.

“What do ye want?” Molly staggered to the embankment and reached for the child, but the red man wrenched him away.

He pushed his lips into a pout and pointed at Molly.

“Give the baby to me,” she shouted.

With a hissing laugh the red man swung the boy’s head close to a nearby tree trunk.

Luis raised his rifle and stepped from the shadows.
“Alto.”

“Thank ye, Jesus,” Molly said.

In the seconds they glared at one another, Luis registered the sturdy length of the Anglo’s white legs, the red man’s scrawny strength, the niño’s terror. He felt the weariness of his own soul; he didn’t want to shoot anyone ever again.

“What does he want?” Molly’s voice quavered.

The red man righted the child and clutched him to his chest. As Luis stepped closer, he smelled the red man’s rank skunk scent.

The child whimpered. Molly frowned. “He’s thin. Do ye think he’s hungry?”

Luis steadied his rifle. Were Anglos so foolhardy they didn’t recognize danger?

As she gazed at the red man, Molly’s lips moved, but Luis couldn’t hear anything. He stepped into the stream.

“Do ye speak his language?” Molly asked. “I got hot corn pone at the cabin. I’ll feed him if he’ll give Andy back.”

“
Comida
?” Luis tried. “
Maíz
, casa.” He pointed in the direction of the cabin.

“What did you say?” Molly released her skirts.

Luis watched the red man. “Food, corn, house.”

The red man secured his hold on the toddler and whispered to him. When Molly reached for the child, he shook his head and gestured toward the clearing. She patted the boy’s back.

“Ye be safe, Andy. The Injun will carry ye home.” She picked up her woven laundry basket and walked up the trail. The red man followed.

Luis did as well, rifle at the ready. When they reached the clearing, he saw the boy-man cutting a window in the cabin wall. Jamie flung away the bow saw, grabbed his firearm, and started in their direction.

“We be fine, Jamie. I’m going to serve tea,” Molly called. “What?”

“I met our neighbors in the woods and brought them home. Nettle tea and corn pone. I know ye be hungry, too.”

Luis heard the tremor in her voice, but Molly appeared calm when she lifted the lid from the iron skillet. The red man dropped the child and snatched the corn pone. Before anyone could react, he sprinted away.

Molly soothed the little boy with kisses. She matched her cheek to his and closed her eyes on a moan. Luis saw tears slip.

“Did he hurt ye, Molly?” The boy-man hovered, his hands apparently not sure what to do.

She shook her head, swaying with the child. She cleared her throat. “I guess the Injun be hungry.”

Luis nearly dropped his long gun.

“Will ye join us, Mr. Carvajal,” she said, “for a cup of nettle tea?”

Louis’s mouth dropped open in surprise. “Yes.”