The Unplowed Sky Read online

  He didn’t grumble much while she washed his hair and scrubbed his neck and ears. She left him to splash, play, and perhaps scrub his knees and elbows while she did their laundry. When she hung it over the fence, she smiled at herself for arranging her underthings beneath her dress and aprons, but she did it anyway. She glanced up to find Meg watching her with narrowed eyes.

  How long had she been standing there? Hallie didn’t speak till she thought she could do so without sounding annoyed. “If you want to have a bath, Meg, Jackie’s almost through.”

  “I’m going swimming in the creek. Want to come along, Jack?”

  “Yes!” His delight changed to anxiousness. “Can I, Hallie?”

  “May you,” Hallie corrected automatically. “It’s nice of you to ask, Meg, but are you sure you won’t mind keeping an eye on him? I don’t think Jackie can swim.”

  “I can dog-paddle some!” he cried.

  “Except for the hole where I’ll be filling up the tank, the water’s not deep,” Meg said.

  “Please, Hallie!” Jackie begged.

  She was glad that Meg had decided to be nice to the little boy but she was still nervous about placing so much responsibility on a twelve-year-old. As if reading her mind, Meg curled her lip.

  “If Daddy can count on me to hustle water to the engine, looks like you could trust me with your kid brother for an hour or two.”

  It wouldn’t be healthy for either of them to tie Jackie to her skirts and he had been good about playing near the cookshack and resisting the lure of the big machines. “All right,” she consented. “But don’t get in the deep water, Jackie. Watch out for snakes. Mind Meg and—”

  “Holy smoke!” Meg interrupted. “We’re not going on an African lion hunt!”

  Jackie laughed and gave the water a gleeful splash. “No lions in the creek, silly!”

  Shaft came around the shack, Smoky cradled in one arm. He puffed out a cloud of fragrant smoke and eyed Jackie from beneath bushy gray eyebrows. “Boys don’t call their big sisters silly, Jack.”

  The child wilted. His lip quivered as his brown eyes came anxiously to Hallie. “Hallie not mad?” Behind the question she heard another: You won’t leave me like Mama did?

  Hallie swooped down to hug him in spite of his wetness. “Of course I’m not mad, honey! Maybe I was a little silly, but that’s because I don’t want you to get hurt. You’d better wear your clothes to the creek, but you can keep just your drawers on to play in the water.”

  They left him to dry off and dress. Garth was over doing things to the separator. It must be the most fussed-over machine in Kansas. “Lefty Halstead’s going to work with us,” Shaft said. “He’ll make a good hand. His dad’s had all those boys out in the fields soon as they could walk.” The cook’s gaze followed Hallie’s as she watched Jackie trot to keep up with Meg. “Don’t fret about Jack, honey. Meg’ll watch after him.” He stroked Smoky meditatively. The kitten swatted the side of his face lightly. “I’m kind of surprised she took up with Jack but since she has—”

  “I think she wants to get him to like her more than he does me,” Hallie said and hoped Shaft would contradict that.

  “Could be. You’ve put Miss Meg’s nose out of joint a couple of ways. Rory won’t let her drive the engine, but he’s teaching you. But the main rub, I reckon, is she’s scared Garth may get sweet on you.”

  “He’s barely civil!” Hallie unwound the towel, sat on the steps, and began to comb the tangles out of her hair.

  Shaft grinned and put down the little cat. “Maybe he’s scared, too. Say, would you like some music while you’re drying your hair?”

  “I’d love it!”

  He went in the shack where Henry still labored intently over his letter, and returned with his grandfather’s beautiful old fiddle. Cradling the mellowed wooden instrument as lovingly as if it had been alive, Shaft tuned the strings to his satisfaction and played. Smoky jumped up on the porch rail to listen.

  Hallie had expected backwoods songs, barn-dance music. Instead, Shaft played tunes she had never heard before except for Johann Strauss’s waltz, The Blue Danube. Swaying dreamily to the melody as she combed and fluffed her hair, Hallie said, “What are you playing, Shaft? It’s lovely.”

  “What does it put you in mind of?”

  “A river. A great, long, broad one with a current that sparkles and ripples and runs through fields and towns.”

  Shaft nodded. “A Czech named Bedřich Smetana wrote the piece about Bohemia’s largest river, the Vltava or Moldau. Now let me play you my favorite, Antonín Dvořák. He used lots of folk music in his work.”

  Indeed, with her eyes closed, Hallie could almost see brightly clad young men and women laughing and singing as they clapped and danced. She leaned back and let the wind tug her hair, happier in a quiet way than she could remember being for a very long time, perhaps even since her mother had died.

  Oh, she’d had some good times with the MacReynoldses and enjoyed parties and outings with her classmates, but she’d always been aware that she had no real home, no real family after Felicity claimed her father. Oddly enough, this traveling cookshack, so unstable that it had to be tied down with ropes, gave her a sense of home, of belonging. Jackie was an awesome responsibility but he truly was her family, and she his, with Shaft a kindly uncle. She was beginning to know the crew and relax with them. With luck, now that Cotton was gone, there would be no more trouble.

  She was proud she was standing up to the work and surprised and proud that she knew a little about the engine. If Meg weren’t so difficult—if Garth weren’t so suspicious—

  Something came between her and the sun. She sat up straight and opened her eyes. As if her thoughts had summoned him, Garth looked down at her.

  VII

  For a charged moment, his eyes seemed warm and sunlit before they changed to thundercloud gray. “Hadn’t you better braid your hair before it’s all snarls and tangles?” His tone accused her of serious dereliction. She must have imagined that fleeting tenderness in his gaze.

  “Since it’s my scalp and my tangles, I don’t see why you should care.”

  “Don’t fuss, kids.” Shaft wagged a finger so drolly that they both had to laugh. “Have a step, boss, and let some good Bohemian music soothe your savage breast.”

  “I just came for a cup of coffee, Shaft. There’s been enough sand in the water to chew up the piston cup on the tank wagon pump. I’ve got to fix that and there’s the boiler to clean—”

  “That’s Rory’s job, ain’t it?”

  “He’s in town.”

  “I noticed.” Shaft’s tone was dry. “None of my beeswax, Garth, but if your kid brother gets the fun of running that engine, and the good wages, then it looks like he ought to do the messy chores, too.”

  “Oh, he’d clean the boiler when he got home.”

  “But would he go around to both sides to flush all the settlings out of the bottom?”

  Garth reddened, as if Rory had skimped this chore in the past. “He’s young, Shaft.”

  “Not as young as you were when you were ducking bullets in France.”

  “I promised our mother to look after him.”

  “Till he’s ninety?”

  Garth was startled into laughing. Strange how much younger that made him look. Shaft pressed on. “Your mother would want you to look after yourself, too, lad. Have a little fun. Take it easy now and then, at least on Sunday.” Shaft chuckled and swept the bow across the strings in a joyous ripple. “Drink your coffee sittin’ down. Listen to some music. Watch a pretty girl’s hair blow free, shinin’ in the sun.”

  Garth looked at Hallie. For a moment, she thought he was going to smile, sit down with them, and share the morning.

  Then his eyes veiled and his face hardened. “I’ve got work to do.” He got his coffee and strode back to the machines, followed by Laird, who enjoyed this day when the engine didn’t run and he could tag along behind his master.

  Feeling as rejected as if
Garth had slapped her, Hallie started to braid her hair, pulling the strands a good deal tighter than necessary.

  Shaft’s bow crowed another exultant trill. “Hallie, he sure does like you!”

  She gasped in disbelief.

  “Sure he does,” the cook insisted. “You’ve got him on the run!”

  “I’m not about to chase him.”

  “Don’t have to. When he’s plumb wore out, he’ll fall over his feet. While he’s layin’ there in a heap, give him a smile, a hand up, and he’ll be yours.”

  “I’m not sure I can stand that much good luck!”

  Shaft eyed her severely. “The woman that Garth can finally give in to and love will be durned doggoned lucky. Don’t you doubt that for a minute.” Shaft sighed and nestled his fiddle and bow into their velvet-lined case. “Well, drat! Guess I can’t put it off any longer.”

  “What, Shaft?” Concerned at the note of dread in his voice, Hallie thrust the last pin in her braided coronet and jumped up. “Can I help?”

  His gloom disappeared in a broad grin. “Thanks, but I reckon you’d better not. I’ve got to take a bath and scrub my beard out so it won’t give Smoky fleas.”

  “Why didn’t you take a steam bath?”

  “That’s okay for them as is young and skinny, but when you got more flab than muscle, you’re not so keen on friskin’ around in front of everybody naked as a jaybird.”

  “Before you take over the bathroom, let me get my things off the fence. They should be ready to iron. You do have an iron?”

  “Sure. My last helper, the one who quit to get married, made us buy her two of the iron do-funnies that you heat over a burner—sadirons I think they call ’em. Reckon ironin’ all them ruffles on her aprons and skirts did some good ’cause she married the son of the second farmer we threshed. The irons and handle must be at the bottom of one of the benches.”

  Mrs. MacReynolds had an electric iron, of course, but once Hallie exhumed the heavy sadirons from the nethermost reaches of the bench from which she had to temporarily oust Henry, it was easy enough to figure out how to use them. The wooden handle was already locked into the top of the four-pound iron. She lit a kerosene burners beneath the irons, grateful anew that she didn’t have to contend with a coal stove that took a while to get going and then radiated heat long after the cooking was done.

  Folded sheets laid over one end of the table made a fairly good ironing board. Not that anyone could tell she’d ironed a dress or apron an hour after she put it on, but she’d know. One of the things she remembered about her mother was how perfectly Daddy’s shirts and her own small dresses were starched and ironed right up to the time Mama hadn’t been able to rise from her bed. It was too difficult to make starch here and go through all that extra bother, but Hallie found it was somehow a point of honor to iron her clothes and Jackie’s as smoothly as she could.

  “Am I in your way, Miss Hallie?” Henry asked, scooting his Big Chief tablet to the table’s far end.

  His face was as open and innocent as Jackie’s. It was hard to believe his mild blue eyes had glittered with fury that morning.

  “Of course you’re not in the way, Henry.” Hallie smiled at him and the pages accumulating under the tablet edge. “Anna will be thrilled to get such a nice long letter.”

  “I wrote her longer letters when I was in prison.”

  “Prison?” Hallie echoed. She couldn’t believe her ears. Of all the crew, this bashful unworldly young man seemed the least likely to do anything to deserve jailing.

  “My people do not believe in making war. I could not serve in the army.” His clear, candid gaze searched her face. “Do you think I was a coward?”

  “No.” She had been only thirteen when the war ended, but she remembered the frenzied suspicion directed at Germans, even though their families might have settled in Kansas two generations ago. Anyone accused of hampering the war effort was feared and hated, “slackers” or “yellow-bellies” most of all. “I think it took more courage not to serve. But I thought men whose religion forbade fighting were given noncombatant duties.”

  “Some were. But is not driving a munitions truck helping make war? Cooking for soldiers? Writing out their paychecks? Even nursing them if they will return to the front?”

  “Oh. That does make it complicated.”

  “I could not put on a uniform. So I was court-martialed and imprisoned at Fort Leavenworth. So were several hundred other Mennonites, Quakers, and Hutterites.”

  “Were you there long?”

  “It seemed long. I was sentenced to twenty years, but was let go after the war ended.” Henry stared out at a locust branch soughing in the breeze. “I was luckier than the Hofer brothers. They were Hutterites who were sent to Alcatraz and locked in solitary underground cells. They were beaten, starved, forced to sleep on the bare, damp concrete and got only half a cup of water a day. After five days, they were finally given a meal and allowed an hour’s outdoor exercise once a week.”

  Hallie stared in shock. “Are you sure?”

  “Too sure. After four months in Alcatraz, they were sent in chains to Leavenworth. Michael and Joseph were so sick, they died in a few days in spite of all we could do for them. David—well, when he was stronger, he was given a discharge and sent home to his parents in South Dakota. The Hutterites were persecuted so badly there that most of them moved to Canada.”

  “That’s terrible!”

  Henry gave a faint smile. “You have to remember that Theodore Roosevelt said we should be sent to dig trenches at the most dangerous front lines or be put on mine sweepers. He said we shouldn’t be American citizens. Besides, we speak German in our homes and churches. That was the language of the enemy. And though we gave heavily to relief work and the Red Cross, we wouldn’t buy war bonds.”

  “All the same—”

  “If there is another war ever, which God forbid, it will be better. Our elders and those of the Quakers and other conscientious objectors kept going to Washington to try to work out an answer. In the summer of 1918, the Adjutant General ordered that objectors could be assigned to nursing soldiers who would not be fighting anymore. And other kinds of service were agreed upon.” He nodded. “Yes. It will be better.”

  “You fought your own war,” Hallie said. “I respect you for going to prison for your beliefs. But I do think a country must defend itself.”

  “We have always believed war—any killing—is wrong. That is why our people came from Russia, because the czar would no longer excuse us from military service. And we went to Russia in the first place because Catherine the Great promised that we would not have to be soldiers.”

  “You don’t believe in fighting no matter what the reason?”

  Henry grinned sheepishly. “I don’t believe in it—but sometimes, like this morning, the Devil seizes me. The more shame because I had just read the Scriptures and prayed. I will study my Bible and pray more this afternoon. Next time I am tempted, I hope, with the Lord’s grace to be able to resist. I should have admonished Cotton with love, not my fists.”

  The blond young giant meant it! Hallie frowned as she bore down on the iron to erase a stubborn wrinkle in Jackie’s denim playsuit. “I don’t think that would have done much good.”

  Henry ducked his head. “I provoked him to attempt murder. He might have killed or been killed. His soul is poisoned with hatred. No. I did a bad thing.”

  “It might have been worse if Cotton picked a fight with Rusty’s brother-in-law.”

  Henry cheered up at that. “I am glad that Garth will hire an Indian. But, after all, he hired me, and he knew I wouldn’t fight in that war in which he was wounded.”

  “Wounded?”

  “Shrapnel is still buried in his shoulder.”

  Henry turned back to his letter. Betrayed into a rush of sympathy for Garth, Hallie concentrated on her ironing. How much like closed books the lives of other people were! And Garth seemed determined to keep his locked.

  Had he loved his wi
fe so much? Did he see her constantly in Meg, so the wound couldn’t heal? When Hallie felt that sweet lightning flash between them, did he experience it, too, or was it only her heart that raced, her bones that melted?

  Garth haunted her thoughts that day though now and then she had an ugly flash of Cotton’s distorted face as he moved toward Henry with the razor. She fervently hoped he was on a freight train headed far away; but, like Pat O’Malley, he might try to work for Raford.

  Raford. What was he willing to do to punish Garth for not knuckling under to him? Refusing to let him thresh Raford’s fields and those he had bought from bankrupt farmers would seriously cut Garth’s profits. But what if Raford set up a rival outfit, as he had threatened?

  The thought chilled her. Raford apparently had enough money to do just about anything he decided to try. In Shaft’s words, Garth was trying to pay off “a two-bits-a-bushel mortgage with ten-cents-a-bushel fees.”

  By taking a job with him while rejecting Raford’s proposition, Hallie had undoubtedly magnified Raford’s grudge. This made her feel a certain responsibility for the result, though there was no way she could work for Raford once he made his intentions clear.

  She burned with humiliation. How could he have thought she’d accept? Jackie, of course. Did Garth believe that, too—that the little boy was hers? Still, it was small wonder that people had trouble believing that Jack’s mother had abandoned him. Especially as she grew closer to the vulnerable child, Hallie could scarcely credit it herself.

  Well, she wasn’t going to get a copy of Jackie’s birth certificate to wave at people. Garth seemed to want excuses to think ill of her. As for Raford, if he gave Sophie that “position” at the hotel, he might be so occupied with her that he would forget what could only be a whim.

  Jackie was so happily exhausted after his “swim” that Hallie set up her cot for him between the shack and the locust trees. He devoured a thick slice of bread and butter and went to sleep with Lambie tucked against his cheek. His pale skin was starting to tan, and he had a few scratches, but he still looked like a small, dark-haired angel.