Providence (14 page)

Kate and Jo planted row after row
of snap beans, carrots, peas, tomatoes, peppers, onions, and many other
favorites. The strawberries in beds along the front of the house had already
shed their pretty white blossoms and the green berries that appeared in their
place were growing plump and shading to red. Wild plum and choke cherry trees
were laden with new buds, promising a fruitful harvest later in the summer.
Kate watched with thanksgiving in her heart as her family blossomed into life
in imitation of the world around them. It was as if a shroud had been lifted,
and the darkness surrounding them in the months since Will’s death was pierced
by the brilliant light of life.

Kate arose early on the morning
of the proposed trip to Fallis. She dressed quickly in a blue cotton skirt and
fitted white shirtwaist. Taking a warm shawl from the peg near the fireplace
she hurried out into the early morning mist before anyone else awoke. Walking
silently along a seldom used path from the house, she came at last to a willow
tree growing alone in a secluded area. Beneath the tree was a small picket
fence surrounding two graves, each covered in new spring grass and adorned by a
simple cross.

Kneeling, she prayed openly,
lifting her face to the heavens, a prayer of thanks and praise. Turning her
eyes back to the graves, she still felt the burden of grief, but it had
changed. It was no longer a bitter gall, but now a sweet aching memory of her
husband and their baby son, who had died in infancy three years earlier.

 “Oh, Will, there’s so much
I want to tell you, to share with you. Jo is growing so big, and more beautiful
every day. She still looks just like you. How I wish you could see her grow and
change. Are you there with our son? How is he? I’ll bet he’s big and strong and
handsome. I’m so glad he has his daddy now. I never thought of it that way
before, but Caleb isn’t alone anymore, is he? I miss you both so much, but I’m
glad you have each other.” Her tears flowed freely now, but they were the tears
that brought with them healing and peace.

She rose from the peaceful garden
and felt the burgeoning of joy beginning anew in her soul as she walked
serenely back down the path toward home. The early morning sun was playing hide
and seek behind a bank of large white clouds that held the promise of more
rains to come. Kate hoped that the rain would hold off until after they
returned tonight. The air was already tinged with warmth, and it promised to be
a very hot day.

Jake had her buggy hitched up to
one of his mares by the time she returned. Only she and Jo would be making the
trip today, and the buggy made better time, while still having enough room for
the supplies she would purchase. Jo had climbed the garden fence and was
swinging on the gate. Her brilliant white apron covered a worn calico dress,
and she wore a simple sunbonnet tied tightly over her red curls. She was
altogether charming. Kate scooped her up off the gate and covered her face with
kisses while tickling her ribs.

 Jo squealed with delight,
squirming to get away from her mother’s tickles, and they both ended up in heap
on the grass. Kate lay on her back laughing and gasping for breath. Seizing the
opportunity, Jo pounced and began tickling her mother until they were both
exhausted and lay together quietly, eyes closed, giggling sporadically.

Opening her eyes at last, Kate
found herself staring up into Luke’s handsome smiling face, green eyes alight
with suppressed mirth. She could feel the heat rise in her cheeks as she
quickly sat up, pulling her shawl around her and straightening her disarrayed
skirts.

“Oh, hello, Mr. Josey!” Jo piped
up beside her. “Have you come for breakfast? Nana made oatmeal, and I got the
milk from the spring house all by myself. I found enough red strawberries for
us each to have two on our cereal. Do you like strawberries? Momma says they
taste like sunshine melting in your mouth.”

“Does she now?” Luke asked,
offering his hand to Kate. “I don’t believe I’ve ever tasted sunshine before,
but I am partial to fresh sweet strawberries.”

She took his hand and he lifted
her to her feet as though she weighed nothing. His hand was large and strong,
sending sweet warmth coursing through her. Instead of releasing her, his eyes
held hers as he tucked her arm beneath his and escorted both mother and
daughter to breakfast.

***

Luke watched as Kate and Jo
settled themselves into the buggy for the drive to town. Kate picked up the
reins, clucked once, and the mare trotted off. Jo waved merrily goodbye,
clutching her only doll tightly in one hand. They would be gone most of the
day, and Luke felt an unexpected sadness at their leaving. Shaking his head, he
realized that he was becoming far too attached to these people. Jo had his
heart wrapped around her little finger. He found himself looking for her in the
mornings, smiling at her fresh innocence as she gathered eggs in her basket, or
rolled on the dew wet grass with her pup. He thought about the small unfinished
doll cradle hidden beneath his bunk. It was slowly taking shape as he carved a
little more each evening on it. He couldn’t wait to see the look on her face
when he surprised her with it. Perhaps he could enlist Mrs. Insley’s help to
fashion a small blanket and pillow for the cradle.

How will I ever be able to leave
Providence
? Luke
thought with a stabbing pain of regret. He had only been hired through the
fall, and was planning to leave then, head on to a larger ranch down south
somewhere, hire on as an outrider. It would be better, then, if he could remove
himself from these growing feelings for Jo, the Insleys, and Kate. At the
thought of her name, an image of Kate rose in his mind so real and intense it
made him shudder. He could see her face, calm and strong, but always with that
undercurrent of emotion held so tightly in check, yet every so often breaking the
surface of her features like ripples on a pond, sometimes bringing tears, other
times that radiant, glowing smile. Will had been a lucky man, a very fortunate
man.

 Jon appeared from the barn
leading two horses already saddled and a third pack animal loaded with tools
and other supplies. “Luke, are you ready?” he called.

“Just coming, Jon.” Luke replied,
striding toward the boy. They mounted up and started off.

“Where are we riding today? And
why so many tools and such like on old Maude?”

“First, I want to check the west
herd, then I have a bit of a surprise for you.”

“Oh, what is it?”

“Patience, Jon!” Luke laughed.

They rode to the west, Jon’s dog
Smokey bounding ahead, until the herd was sighted grazing in a meadow far
beyond their normal range.
Something must have spooked them in the night,
Luke thought,
for them to have moved this far.

“Why do you s’pose they’re way
over here?” Jon asked, echoing Luke’s thoughts aloud.

“Hard to say. Something moved
them, though, that’s certain.”

“Look, over there!”

Luke peered in the direction Jon
indicated, at first seeing nothing out of the ordinary. Riding on a short
distance, he could see Smokey worrying over something. Then he saw it, the
carcass of a small calf, torn, bloody, and badly mangled.

 Luke searched the ground in
vain for any traces or signs of what attacked the poor calf. The thick grass
and hard ground yielded no testimony to what had transpired.

“Wolves?” Jon asked.

“It would appear that way.”

“Miss Kate sure ain’t gonna like
this.”

“No, I don’t expect she will.”
Luke paused, “Have you had problems with wolves before?”

“I can’t rightly recall. I
believe Mr. Will shot a few when they first come here. That was a long time
ago, and I was jest little then, but I remember my Pa sayin’ something about a
big hunt. All the neighbors got together and killed ‘bout forty of ‘em at one
time. Don’t recall any trouble in recent times.”

“I didn’t think there were any
around. Guess I better start carrying my Winchester, just in case.” Luke
sighed. “We’d best bury the rest of the carcass so as not to attract any other
vermin.”

They worked silently, digging a
pit, and hauling the remains into it. When they had filled the hole, they found
as many large rocks as they could to cover it further, thereby discouraging
other scavengers from digging it back up.

“Nothing else we can do here for
now. Let’s go.” Luke said dryly.

They rode back in the direction
of the ranch, until Luke spotted the tree he was looking for.

“Jon, do you see that, about
halfway up the trunk?”

“What is it?”

 “Bee tree!”

“Honey! Let’s cut it.”

“No, I’ve got a better idea.”
Luke rode ahead into a small clearing he had scouted out previously. There he
found an old deadfall. The tree had obviously been down for several months. “Do
you know what this is?”

“No.”

“It’s a black gum tree. If we cut
through, you’ll see it’s hollow.”

“So what?”

“We can set up a bee gum.”

“What’s that?”

Luke though for a minute. “Kind
of like farming your own honey, you might say.”

“Really? You mean have honey
anytime we want it?” Jon’s sweet tooth fairly ached at this idea.

“Pretty much. If we do it right,
you can rob it a couple times a year and get near fifteen pounds of honey at a
time.” Luke unloaded a crosscut saw from the pack on Maude, and he and Jon set
to work on the trunk. They soon had a section of hollow trunk about thirty
inches long. “Now we need a couple of sticks, nice and straight, about as big
around as my finger, and maybe two feet long. You find those while I smooth the
inside out.”

“Yes, sir.”

 By the time Jon returned
with the sticks, Luke had finished smoothing the inside of their new beegum and
had bored four holes opposite one another about half way down. Taking the
sticks, he fitted them into the holes, through the trunk at right angles to
each other. “This is where the bees will hang the brood combs. They’ll keep the
honey comb up top where we’ll be able to get it out, nice and clean. See, we’ll
take this, fix it over the top, “ Luke pulled a plank from the pack and fit it
over the top of the gum, “and they’ll hang the honeycomb right from here.”

“You knew we was going to do this
today?” Jon said with awe as Luke seemed to have everything they needed packed
in those bags.

“I spotted that tree a few days
ago, been thinking on it.” Luke grinned.

“How’re we gonna get the bees in
there?”

“That’s the tricky part,” Luke
agreed. “See, I’ve cut a notch here at the bottom. That’s their door, you might
say.”

Jon nodded, “But what’s gonna
make ‘em come in here?”

“We’re going to put them in there.”

Jon’s eyes grew very round.

 They set to work, first
building a smoky fire, then felling the bee tree. Using some old rags, they
began smoking the hive to pacify the bees, though they both suffered a few
stings. As they cut into the trunk near the opening, they found the brood
combs. Luke stood, victoriously holding the queen carefully in his hand. Other
bees began to swarm and light on his hand, and he carried them reverently to
the new bee gum, shaking them off on the base in front of the notch. The queen
and several attendant bees immediately entered their new home. Luke and Jon
wore identical smiles of triumph as they placed a covering over the gum to keep
off rain and other predators, and carefully lifted it up onto a platform
resting in the remains of the fallen black gum.

“We’ll check it once a week or
so, and in a couple of months we ought to have our first batch of honey. For
now, go find that tin in the pack. We’ll take Nana a heap of comb and honey
from the old hive.”

“I brung the biscuits from our
lunch, too,” Jon said returning to the fallen tree where Luke was busy widening
the opening to find the clean honeycomb.

“Well now, biscuits and honey
sound mighty fine right about now, don’t they?”

They quickly scooped the golden
liquid and bits of broken comb into the clean tin until it was nearly
overflowing. Licking their fingers of the sticky treat they dipped their
biscuits right into the hive and bit into the sweet satisfying flavor.

***

The buggy bounced along the
rutted paths on the way to Fallis. The birds were chirruping in the trees, but
the gray, lowering clouds obscured the sun. Jo chatted incessantly commenting
on everything she could see.

 “Jo, what do you think of
Mr. Josey?” Kate asked taking advantage of one Jo’s infrequent lulls in her
nonstop dialog.

“What do you mean? He’s
wonderful, of course!”

“Well, I mean.... I don’t know
what I mean. Forget I asked!” Kate laughed.

Jo shrugged. Adults could be very
strange sometimes. “Are we going to eat lunch with Mrs. Jansen today?”

“I would think so. I have some
shopping to do there, and she usually invites us, doesn’t she?”

“Yes, and she always has candy
for me. Do you think she’s ever going to have a baby? I think she really wants
one. Mrs. Hall is going to have another baby. Kathy told me so.” Jo paused to
take a breath and clutched her little doll close to her breast. “I miss our
baby sometimes.”