Mary Connealy (77 page)

Grace’s heart swelled with love as she leaned back against Daniel’s strength. Looking over her shoulder, she saw Daniel’s eyes burning with the cold fury she’d seen before. But now she knew it was all aimed at Parrish.

She folded her arms so she could hold his hands tight against her and realized she’d only begun to know the faithfulness of God. He’d brought her to this time and place for His purpose, and she’d do her best to be worthy.

“You stole a horse before you left town, Parrish,” Sheriff Everett said.

“Can our aunts and uncles come to visit, Ma?” Abe asked.

“Only aunts, Abe,” Grace said. “And I don’t know. I’ve kind of lost touch with them.” She wondered about Hannah and the little girls. Maybe Hannah could come. She’d write the second she could get a letter to town.

Clay McClellen scratched the side of his head. “Six children?”

“And horse thievin’ is a hangin’ offense in the West, Parrish.” Luther looked at the group of children.

Grace could see Parrish’s lips moving as he counted.

“Yeah,” the sheriff said, “but the horse bucked him off and it was heading toward home when we passed it. Don’t rightly know if we can hang him on that.”

“He needs hanging. I say we go ahead and call him a horse thief,” Luther said.

“Anyway, it don’t matter about our horse—he’s done a sight more ’n horse thievin’.” Sheriff Everett pulled some papers out of the pocket of his white shirt. He unfolded them, and Grace saw more wanted posters. “I’ve got posters here hunting for Parrish all over the West. You stole and cheated your way here, then lied your way into a job.”

“Why didn’t you notice them when he was working at the school?” Buff grumbled.

The sheriff looked sheepish. “It don’t look that much like him. And whoever thinks the schoolmaster is a swindler?”

“You hurt our children.” Clay’s voice was as cold as the grave. “You threatened Miss Calhoun.”

“Mrs. Reeves,” Daniel said.

“Now you’re going back to Mosqueros to face Texas justice,” Clay said with satisfaction.

“That’s if we can keep Sophie away from him until it’s time for a hanging,” Luther pointed out.

“She’ll mind me.” Clay said it with utmost confidence, but Grace thought his eyes wavered a bit.

Luther caught Parrish by the left arm. “We’ve got a long hike outta this canyon.”

Buff caught him by the right. “’N a long, hard ride home.”

“Parrish!” Grace shouted. Buff and Luther paused and turned so her father faced her. “You’ve spent your life hurting children. You, the father to so many, don’t know a thing about fatherhood. God is the perfect Father, Mr. Parrish. I commend you into His hands and hope you’ll give Him a chance to make the rest of your life a better one.”

Parrish glared at her as if she’d slapped him.

The two men dragged Parrish, limping and bleeding, up the hill.

“I’ll be over as soon as the pass is clear with Sophie and the girls for a visit,” Clay said. “It oughta be passable in another month or two.” Clay reached out his hand and shook Daniel’s firmly. “And congratulations about the baby.”

“Thanks kindly, Clay.” Daniel smiled.

A burn climbed up Grace’s cheeks at such a personal thing being discussed in front of these men. The embarrassment, combined with the fear, Parrish’s hard hand, and Daniel’s kind words, caused tears to fill her eyes.

Clay took one look at her watery eyes and ran.

The sheriff trudged after the others.

Grace wiped her eyes and turned to her family.

“He was your pa?” Ike asked.

Grace nodded.

“He was a mighty poor one,” John said. He came up and threw his arms around Grace’s legs, nearly knocking her over.

Daniel held on and kept her on her feet. “Amen to that.”

Luke came up and threw himself against Grace’s and Daniel’s legs. He hit a little too hard, and they staggered sideways down the hill.

“Watch out, stupid.” John turned and tried to club Luke with the back of his closed fist. Luke ducked and John hit Ike instead.

“Hey, you little runt.” Ike charged John.

Daniel tightened his grip on Grace and, with a fast swoop, spun her out of the way of the collision.

Grace’s stomach was left behind. She breathed quickly to control her nausea and stave off humiliation.

Ike slammed into John and Luke. They fell, sliding downhill. Shouting and threatening each other, they slid into Abe, who went down amid the flailing arms and kicking feet.

Mark started laughing uproariously. He bent over and grabbed a clod of muddy earth and heaved it onto Abe’s head. Abe shouted and jumped to his feet. Mark ran screaming toward the cabin.

“Daniel,”—Grace poked him in the stomach to get him to stop laughing—“make them stop. Someone’s going to get hurt.”

The shrieks were deafening.

“Oh, let ’em play, Gracie. It keeps ’em quiet.”

All five boys whooped like wild Indians. A scream that sounded like real pain made Grace jump. Daniel held on and firmly turned her around to face him.

She saw the love in his eyes and forgot all about the madhouse in the woods behind her. “I’m not going to die, Daniel. I’m a strong woman. Having babies is going to agree with me. I know it.”

Daniel’s eyes closed; then, after a moment, he opened them. “God has been faithful to us, to bring us together.”

Grace realized he’d been praying when his eyes were closed. “It’s a pure miracle is what it is. To think Parrish made me hide in your wagon, and it all led to this.”

Daniel pulled her close. “I don’t think of it as a miracle, I don’t reckon. I think of it as how everything was meant to be. God worked all the twists and turns. He was watching out for us, caring for us, without us even knowing.”

“He was faithful,” Grace said thoughtfully. “And remembering God’s faithfulness was what gave me the courage to fight Parrish. I knew that if God was with me, Parrish couldn’t stand against me.”

“And God
is
with you, Grace. He wanted you to come here and make our family whole again. He’s not going to take you from me now.”

Grace laid her hand on Daniel’s chest. “And even if He does—”

Daniel’s arms tightened on her waist. “Don’t say that, Gracie. I love you. It would kill me to lose you.”

Grace said firmly, “Even if He does, it will be His will, His time. He will still be faithful to us and we will be faithful to Him in return, whatever this life holds.”

Daniel shook off the sadness of her words and nodded. He lowered his head. Grace closed her eyes and stood on her tiptoes, reaching for him.

A crash from behind them sounded as though the boys had brought a tree down on their heads.

“We’d better go see,” Grace said.

“I can tell by the screaming it’s nothing serious.” Daniel pulled her back and kissed her.

The boys kept screaming, but now Grace was happy for it because it kept them busy while she kissed her husband fervently.

He was right.

The screaming did keep them “quiet.”

1.  Who was your favorite character in
Calico Canyon
and why?

2.  Do you think the book looked unfavorably on men considering the unruly Reeves boys and Daniel’s hostility, or was the treatment fair and were the men given sufficiently good qualities? Could the ill behavior of the male characters have been a cover for their emotional scars?

3.  Are the boys treated fairly in
Calico Canyon?
Have you known little boys this rowdy? How can their extremes be managed?

4.  Did you find Daniel loveable despite his fairly uncivilized manners and opinions? What were his most endearing qualities?

5.  Discuss the way boys and girls are different by what is taught to them and what is natural to their sex. How can we nurture our children and demand discipline while respecting their fundamental differences?

6.  Have you ever noticed that most of the great child rearing books are written by people with only one kid? How does having more than one child awaken you to a new understanding of how a child reacts to discipline based not just on whether they’re boys or girls but also based on their individual personality?

7.  Discuss childbirth in earlier times and how dangerous it was.

8.  Family trees are full of grandfathers and great-grandfathers who remarried after losing a wife in childbirth. Do you have ancestors who died in childbirth?

9.  How does facing her cowardice change Grace? How does her courage make her more appealing to Daniel?

10. Discuss how Daniel was struggling just as much from a lack of courage as Grace was.

11. Grace makes an attempt in the end to reach out to Parrish—not as a daughter but as a child of God. How do you deal with forgiveness in your life when the one you need to forgive doesn’t ask for it, want it, or admit wrongdoing?

12. What does Jesus demand of us when it comes to forgiving people who want no part of our forgiveness?

13. Does Tilly’s struggle for freedom from slavery reflect Grace’s struggle against child labor? How so?

14. In your opinion, is Tilly’s attitude a fair representation of how a person who has been enslaved would act? Discuss the impact of physical slavery upon emotional slavery.

15. We all know how hard it is for people raised a certain way to truly change their outlook. Becoming a Christian is a life-changing event, but it isn’t a personality change. It’s a soul change. In the case of Grace’s childhood of abuse and Tilly’s enslavement, could these women overcome the emotional scars of their upbringing through new life in Christ? Did the author lay a good foundation in the story for these characters’ change?

16. Does the comedy of
Calico Canyon
pull you deeper into the faith story, or do you think Christian fiction needs more solemnity to honor God?

Gingham Mountain
is dedicated to my mom, Dorothy Moore. She and my father, Jack Moore, raised me and seven other children in a two-bedroom home. I love all my brothers and sisters (Ruth, Nila, Don, Lois, Dwight, Linda, and Jackson Jr.) and am proud to be related to them.

Two bedrooms was a bit of an exaggeration though. It was actually a
one-bedroom
home with a fold-out couch in the dining room. When my sixth sibling, Dwight, was born, my parents added on to our house—but they also quit using the teeny attic as a bedroom until Don moved up there a few years later. So the
almost
two-bedroom home became a (brace yourself for the excitement)
three-bedroom
home.

Though we lacked in material things, we never lacked in love. My mother’s greatest gifts were her beautiful ability to love us and the gracious life of faith she lived in God.

“Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.”
J
AMES
1:27

Sour Springs, Texas, 1870

M
artha had an iron rod where most people had a backbone. Grant smiled as he pulled his team to a stop in front of the train station in Sour Springs, Texas.

She also had a heart of gold—even if the old bat wouldn’t admit it. She was going to be thrilled to see him and scold him the whole time.

“It’s time to get back on the train.” Martha Norris, ever the disciplinarian, had a voice that could back down a starving Texas wildcat, let alone a bunch of orphaned kids. It carried all the way across the street as Grant jumped from his wagon and trotted toward the depot. He’d almost missed them. He could see the worry on Martha’s face.

Wound up tight from rushing to town, Grant knew he was late. But now that he was here, he relaxed. It took all of his willpower not to laugh at Martha, the old softy.

He hurried toward them. If it had only been Martha he would have laughed, but there was nothing funny about the two children with her. They were leftovers.

A little girl, shivering in the biting cold, her thin shoulders hunched against the wind, turned back toward the train. Martha, her shoulders slumped with sadness at what lay ahead for these children, rested one of her competent hands on the child’s back.

Grant noticed the girl limping. That explained why she hadn’t been adopted. No one wanted a handicapped child. As if limping put a child so far outside of normal she didn’t need love and a home. Controlling the slow burn in his gut, Grant saw the engineer top off the train’s water tank. They’d be pulling out of the station in a matter of minutes.

“Isn’t this the last stop, Mrs. Norris?” A blond-headed boy stood, stony-faced, angry, scared.

“Yes, Charlie, it is.”

His new son’s name was Charlie. Grant picked up his pace.

Martha sighed. “We don’t have any more meetings planned.”

“So, we have to go back to New York?” Charlie, shivering and thin but hardy compared to the girl, scowled as he stood on the snow-covered platform, six feet of wood separating the train from the station house.

Grant had never heard such a defeated question.

The little girl’s chin dropped and her shoulders trembled.