The Prettiest Girl in the Land (The Traherns #3)

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The fiddle music zinged its song up my spine, an insistent call
to dance. I scooted deeper into the shadows, making sure some mountain lad
didn’t see me and pull me into the noisy fray. We’uns know how to have a good
time, whether it be a barn raisin’, a Bible meeting, or in this case, a
wedding. I knew how to dance, but my heart wasn’t into it.

They were shaking the barn roof, a’stompin and a’dancin all get
out, with my brother Jonas Trahern and my younger sister, Mary Elizabeth, being
in the middle of it.

I watched Mary, a smile lighting her face, being spun around the
circle of men. Most of them had courted her, trying to catch the most popular
gal in this neck of the Tennessee woods.

Well, my brother had finally gotten her married off. And to a
Yankee, of all things. Charles, a ship captain, whom Jonas had business with.
He come through, set eyes on Mary, spoke some sort of witchery to her, and she
up and gave him her hand.

She had always been the prettier sister, and able to talk a bird
out of a tree. I was the plain sister, and overly shy around boys my age. I
knew it was my fault, because now and then some lad would try sparkin me, but I
didn’t know what to say to ‘em and would turn them away.

“Ruth?” It was Jonas standing there, his face all crinkled up.
“There’s lots of fellers here, more than gals. They need you to join the
dancin.”

Jonas had stayed home with us girls while the rest of our
brothers taken’ off over the years. Now Jonas only had me to marry off, then he
could go into the world himself.

I felt sorry for him. He’d be stuck here with me the rest of his
life.

But the loud, boisterous, drunken group of boys had no appeal to
me, who loved the quiet of the woods, and I shrunk away. “Please, Jonas, don’t
ask me.”

He shook his head and rejoined the wedding party. I saw Mary
leave her new husband and come my way.

“Come on, Ruth. People want you. I want you. I’ll be leaving in
a bit, and you’re all the sister I got. They’re a’goin to start the toasts.”

She took my hand and pulled me into the more crowded area of the
barn.

They toasted the couple and I smiled and wished them well,
feeling the emptiness of her going already. She called to me to help her
change, which I did.

We walked up to the house together and I helped her take off her
frillery and pack it away. She stood there admiring her traveling dress, which
had come from Paris, a gift from Charles. Then she turned to me and hugged me
tight, like she warn’t going to leave after all.

“Ruth,” she said, “you can come visit me, later on, if’n you
want to. Charles says there are plenty of extry rooms in our house. You’re
welcome to come and stay for a bit. Our family would be your family.”

I just nodded. I wanted a man and a family of my own. I had my
own dreams. I just didn’t know how to open my mouth and make them happen.

“Thanks, Mary.”

“You know, I need to tell you one thing before I go. While we
were growing up, I gave you a rough time, when you made me do things I didn’t
want to do. It took me a long time before I realized how hard it was on you,
with Ma gone, to have to take her place in our house. Cooking and a’cleanin and
helping Trey and Harrison take care of the other boys until they became men.
They helped each other, doing Pa’s work, but I would run off and play, while
you couldn’t. I’m sorry about that.”

“Don’t be. You brought sunshine into our lives. Your happiness
made everyone happy. Including me.”

“I saw my suitors as an excuse to leave you with the work.”

“But look at the fine husband you ended up with.”

“Ruth, you’re a wonderful person, and there’s going to be men
coming here to see you. You have a tender heart. Don’t settle for second best.
Promise me.”

“I don’t think I would.”

“You undervalue yourself.”

“Where did you get that?”

Charles said so. He said you were the most worthy woman he’d
ever met. I’d be jealous of you, except he fell in love with me.”

“You, jealous of me?”

“Yes. You have the respect of the entire settlement. It took
Charles to open my eyes. I don’t think you realize it. That’s why I don’t want
you to settle for just any ole man who asks you to marry him. He’s got to be
someone special. Like my Charles.”

“Well, I never.”

“I’m a’goin to miss you.”

“I’ll miss you too, Mary.”

“Promise me. Only the best.”

“I promise.” I said it, but I didn’t believe her. I’d be lucky
if old man Thorn proposed to me. He had seven kids, chewed tobacco and could
never hit his spittoon,

That was one thing many mountain men—and some of the
women—did that really jerked a knot in my tail. I couldn’t take the
spittin. Jonas smoked a pipe and I could stand the smell of pipe smoke, but
spittin was downright unclean looking. It stained everything.

Before Pa passed, he spit, and I could never get the rugs to
look clean. I’d scrub them and beat them and the stain stayed, mocking me.

To me, a chewin, spittin man was lower than the low. I decided
then and there that I warn’t a’goin to settle for no man who spit. If’n he
couldn’t keep from doing that, I didn’t need him.

So I said to Mary, “I promise.”

She was openhearted, the goodness of our family. She made
everyone welcome, and now I was losing her.

We returned to the barn and her new husband. Their marriage had
been fast. Onct she declared she chose him, they tied the knot. I know I wasn’t
the only one in shock. Those boys had been fighting over her for as long as I
could remember.

Then in a flurry of well wishings, the new couple was gone.

I moved to the back of the room and sat on a bundle of hay next
to three women who were twattling about their neighbors. I ignored them and
thought about my brother Jonas. He was puttin’ off marryin’ Josephine, the gal
two hollers over from us, and that warn’t right. No one should have to wait for
me. But I warn’t no gold key on a ribbon, to be won at the fair. Jonas would
probably have to see what he could get in trade.

“Ruth?”

I looked up. It were the preacher man, the one who had married
off my sister. He rode the circuit on a small spotted pony, staying at
different homes along the way. We put him up many times, and I’d fed him and
even helped him by listening to him practice his sermons.

He was so old, I didn’t think he’d need practicin, but he said
you needed to work out a speech before making it, lest you opened your mouth
and no words came out.

He was a friend, and I’d never had no trouble talking to him. He
also knew his Bible inside out and backwards and when he spoke of Bible folks,
he spoke of them as good friends.

“Remember Rachel and Leah?”

“Yes. The sisters. The plain one and the pretty one.”

“You make too much of the fact that Mary is pretty. You are a
good-looking woman yourself, it’s just that you always compare yourself to her.
Now that’s she’s gone, I want you to promise me something.”

Another promise?
“What,
Preacher Rowe?”

“I want you to live up to your name, and go out into a foreign
land and look for your Boaz.”

“Foreign?”

“Just get out of these mountains and look around.”

“I don’t know...”

“I believe that for every Ruth, there is a Boaz. For every good
woman, God has a mate. You are a good woman. You just need to go forth and let
God lead you to your Boaz.”

“How?”

“Pray for guidance, and follow where He leads.”

“You sure about that?”

“Very sure. Let me know when the wedding is, I’d love to do it
for you.”

He smiled and squeezed my hand, then left me thinking there.

I knew he was happily married. Did he consider himself to be the
Boaz to his wife?

Where could I go and how would I feel like it was the right
thing to do? I’d never prayed for God to guide me. How would He show me what He
wanted me to do? It were a puzzlement.

I prayed, “Lord, show me where my Boaz is.” It was the first
time I prayed that little prayer, but not the last.

That next day, the preacher held a gospel meeting. Most of my
kin were still in the settlement, so they joined the others who lived in that
area for four hours of preaching and three hours of baptizing.

We were all making a day of it when my cousin, Luke, brought a
tall man over to see me.

“Ruth, remember Gage Courtney? One of Abigail’s sons? He’s looking
for her.”

“Hello, Mr. Courtney. I remember you.” Of course I remembered
him. He was so handsome he’d made all the girls swoon. He was a mite older than
many of them, but that didn’t matter in the hill country.

“Hello, Ma’am. Call me Gage, please.”

“You’re barking up the wrong tree, searching this part of the
country, Mr. Courtney. Your ma done headed out to California. With your pa.”

“Pa? He’s alive?”

“Tweren’t his haunt I saw. He was a’standin there as straight
and tall as those trees he kept talkin about. Left their cow and pigs with the
Higgins family and the goose with me. Have you ever been to California?”

“No. Guess I’m going there next. I never believed anyone could
get Ma to leave here. Y’all can stay in these mountains, if you please, but I’m
a’tellin you, there’s a big country out there, full of wonders, if’n a body has
the courage to take a looksee.”

“Where all you been?” I asked. So he commenced telling me, about
the canyons of the Colorado and the Great American Desert, of the Indian Territory
and the Canada Rockies. “There’s talk of building the railroad from one ocean
to the other. I don’t know if it would follow the Butterfield trail or not.
They have to get across the Rocky Mountains at some point. There’s places that
would be too steep for a train.”

“Someday,” I said, “I’d like to see some of these things you
speak about. They don’t sound real.”

“If you wait for someday, you’ll never see them,” Gage said.

“But how would I go, if Jonas refuses to? He’s taken’ over the
farm. I expect him to take a wife soon.”

“Go without him.”

“A young woman, traveling alone? It’s not proper.”

“Did you know Mally Buchanan?”

“No. Just her name.”

“Well, let me tell you that she left these hills with a gun and
her wits, and ended up marrying as fine a man as you’ll chance to meet. Your
brother.”

“Which one?”

“Trey.”

“Trey is married?”

“Yep. Living in Washington territory. Place called Walla Walla.”

“We all figured Trey would be the last to get married. She
must’ve been a special girl.”

“Aren’t you?”

“Nothin special ‘bout me.”

“Who told you that?”

“Nobody in particular. Everybody. I’m just Ruth.”

“Then prove them wrong, ‘just Ruth.’”

“I’m not brave enough.”

“Aren’t you the gal who took a rifle and held off wolves from a
newborn foal till her pa could get to them? And you all of six years old?”

“Well, yes. But I had to. That there foal’s mama had died, and I
warn’t gonna let no wolves eat her.”

“And was determined enough to git some schoolin, that you walked
that mountain trail every winter, whether they be sun, rain, or blizzard?”

“Yes, but...”

“We loved to tease you, but you could out-do any of us boys in
numbers.”