The Gift of a Child (10 page)

Turning back, he set Patches to a leisurely trot. The closer they came to the ranch house, the more unsettled Seth once again became. Something wasn’t right, and he was supposed to fix it. Where that idea had come from he couldn’t say, but the urgency of the message vanquished his peace of mind. Was it because his family hadn’t yet returned from town? As if reading the tension of his rider, Patches wheeled and began cantering toward Cottonwood Falls. In his heart, Seth knew he was supposed to be there, but that certainty arose from an inexplicable fear rather than rational sense.

Seth spurred Patches to a gallop, his mind echoing the prayer his lips couldn’t form.
Please, God, let everything be all right.

* * *

Rose and Lily sat near the riverbank under a shady elm as the strains of “Shall We Gather at the River?” filled the air. Aunt Lavinia had chosen to remain at home. As she put it, “I shall observe the Sabbath with my prayer book.” Pastor Dooley and Brother Orbison led those who wished to be baptized, now robed in white, to the river’s edge. Then, as the singing continued, the two preachers dunked the newly converted and shouted out the words of initiation. “Amens” and “Hallelujahs” provided a counterpoint to the singing. Caleb and the sheriff, along with some other men, turned away from the river following the baptisms and formed a circle near the horses, talking and swapping stories.

Rose fanned herself, loath to leave the comfort of their shady spot to begin setting out the food. Alf and Mattie had joined a group of children playing in the school yard under the supervision of several of the older church ladies. “It’s been a good meeting.”

“I agree. Eight new souls brought to Christ.” Lily yawned, and then stood up. “I swear I’ll fall asleep if I don’t move.”

Reluctantly, Rose got to her feet. “It’s been a joy, us all being together this weekend.”

“As much as I love Caleb, this place would have been far bleaker had not you and Papa moved here.” Then she leaned forward as if confiding a secret. “I think it’s been a good move for Papa. Look.” She tilted her head slightly in the direction of a small grove of trees.

Rose followed her sister’s gaze and gasped at what she saw—her father standing quite close to Bess Stanton, holding her hands in his and saying something in what could only be described as an earnest and intimate fashion. “Lily!”

“I know.” Lily giggled. “I’ve had my suspicions, but I do believe dear Bess is becoming very important to our father.”

Rose pondered sister’s remark. “They seem to work well together, but I thought that was all.”

“You’re too close to the situation. You see them every day, I, only on weekends.” Lily took hold of Rose’s shoulders. “Would you mind so very much?”

“Mind?” Rose wanted only good things for her father and for Bess, yet she had never considered a possible romantic connection. Was it selfish to wonder how that kind of relationship would affect Alf and her? “Honestly?” She hesitated, then plunged on. “I desire their happiness.”

Lily took Rose’s hand. “I didn’t mean to upset you. Come, let’s make our way to the church grounds to help with the supper.”

The rest of the afternoon was a blur of conversation, food and the conclusion of the camp meeting—one of the few occasions where the entire county came together for fellowship. Periodically, Rose glanced toward the school grounds where the youngsters were playing tag. Remembering Alf’s shyness when he had first come, she watched him now with pride and misty eyes—he was an outgoing, animated little chap, frolicking with the other children, with Mattie always following close behind. This time last summer Rose had been longing for a child, remote as that possibility seemed. And now...there was Alf, climbing aboard the seesaw. How richly he had blessed and changed her life.

She turned back to covering her leftover food and stowing it in the picnic basket. All around her, people were gathering their children and exchanging farewells. In the distance she saw Caleb tearing his sister away from a besotted Charlie Devane. Lily came up beside Rose with a sleepy Mattie holding her mother’s hand. “Where’s Alf? Have you picked him up?” her sister asked

Mattie rubbed her tired eyes. “Brudder, he gone wif a lady.”

Rose’s heart lurched. To reassure herself, she again looked toward the school yard—now empty. In the moment it took her to register the sight, she picked up her skirts and started running toward the school, knocking people aside, her attention riveted on the seesaw where she had last seen her boy. She stopped only when she came to the school ground, now eerily vacant. “Alf! Alf! Where are you?” she screamed. Her question reverberated off into the void. She searched the grounds in vain, then sprinted toward one of the women charged with tending the children. “Where’s my boy?”

“Alf?” The woman looked dazed. “Why, isn’t he with you?”

“With me? You were to watch him until I called for him.” Panic surged in Rose. What lady had Mattie meant?

“I’m sorry, Miss Kellogg, but I thought you had come for him. When I left, there were no children remaining at the playground.”

By now, Caleb, Lily, Mattie and Sophie had converged on her. Rose gripped Mattie by the shoulders. “What lady did you see, Mattie?”

The child buried her face in Lily’s skirts. “Nobody.”

Caleb supported Rose by the elbow, but she shook him off. “Alf’s lost. We’ve got to find him.” And on trembling legs, she began running about the area, shouting her son’s name. Others joined the search and “Alf” resounded through the community. Some of the men ran toward the river. Rose couldn’t let her mind follow them. Please, God, no! And yet, had the little tyke seen the white-robed figures entering the water in a kind of celebration?

It was not until her father appeared that Rose sank to the ground in despair, her chest heaving. “Oh, Papa, what has happened?”

Bess appeared then, wiping Rose’s tears. “The sheriff has organized a search party, Rose. There’s no more for you to do here. Let us take you home.”

When the word
home
registered in her brain, Rose seized on a shred of hope. “Home. He must be there.” She stood and started running the short distance toward the house, followed by Bess and Ezra. She tore open the back door and raced through the rooms shrieking Alf’s name again and again. Silence was the only response.

She swooned against Bess who helped her to the sofa. “I have to do something. Think, think. Where could he be? Oh, God, please.”

Her father entered the room, his face gaunt and drawn. He started to speak but had to clear his throat before he could choke out the words. “I found this in the barn. In exactly the same place we originally found Alf. Nothing else was disturbed.”

Stooping in front of her, he pressed a piece of paper into her hand, then bowed his head as if awaiting the guillotine.

Rose looked down, studying the words on the paper, her eyes blearing with tears. She read. She read again. Then she howled as only a wounded animal would. The paper fluttered to the floor, the message visible to all: I KUM FER ALF. MY BOY AGIN.

Chapter Ten

S
eth rode into a milling sea of his friends and neighbors, men shouting to their wives to herd the children into the church. In the growing dusk, it was difficult to distinguish the cause of such hubbub, yet the shrill cries and hoarse commands left little doubt that something was very wrong. He scanned the crowd for his family. Sophie was helping calm the children heading for the church. The sheriff was directing the men to gather by the schoolhouse, but Caleb, Lily and Mattie were nowhere to be seen. Nor were Ezra, Rose and Alf. He dismounted and hurried toward the group around the sheriff. “What’s happened?” he rasped out, breathless.

“It’s the half-breed brat,” one of town idlers said, his sly look causing Seth to clench his fists. “Missing. Good riddance.”

Before Seth could land a blow, Lars Jensen shoved through the crowd. “Montgomery, hold up.” With a satisfied backward glance, the mean-spirited informant slunk away. “Here’s the situation. When Miss Kellogg went to collect the boy after the supper, she couldn’t find him. We’ve been unable to locate him so far. All we know is that your little niece mentioned seeing a woman with him.” Seth reeled and the sheriff put a steadying hand around his shoulder. “I’m organizing a search party. We could use your help.”

“But Rose?”

“She went to look for him at Doc’s house. That’s where your brother and his family are, too.”

Seth shook off the sheriff. “I’ll be back.” He ran to Patches and headed for the Kelloggs’ home, his mind unable to accept the sheriff’s words. Alf, missing? How could that be? Rose was always so careful with him. How could he disappear in the midst of so many people?

His heart splintered with the admission he could only now permit into his consciousness. He should have been here. Not at the ranch indulging his doubts, not escaping into the land and not ignoring the hold Alf and Rose had on him. He stifled the sob catching in his throat. What kind of man turns his back?
God, forgive me, I should’ve been here.

Without pausing to knock, he burst into the house, stopping at the parlor door, his mind nearly unable to take in the scene before him: Lily, crying softly, stood in a corner, pressing Mattie’s face into her skirt; Caleb nestled Lily to him, his jaw working; and Doc slumped in a chair, his head in his hands. However, Seth scarcely registered any of them for the pathetic tableau of Rose, cradled in Bess Stanton’s arms, her face mottled and streaked with tears.

“I came as soon as I could.” His words mocked him with their impotence. He had never felt more the intruder than in this moment. Caleb moved toward him, while the others simply stared at him. “Is Alf here? Do you have any idea where—”

“Stop.” His brother’s quiet word was an imperative. “There is something you should know.”

Rose averted her face as Caleb crossed the room to retrieve a soiled piece of paper. Doc looked up at Seth and merely shook his head in an unspoken message of sympathy. Caleb clapped an arm around his shoulder, as if to brace him for what was to come, and then, without a word, handed him the piece of paper. I KUM FER ALF. MY BOY AGIN.

Rage, helplessness, despair—an eddy of emotion swept over him, so powerful it threatened to send him to his knees. He had never before been so thankful for his brother’s strong presence. Hardly able to process the crude message, he found himself crossing the room and kneeling in front of Rose. “I am so sorry.”

As if his words had roused her from some faraway place, she lifted her face to stare at him as if she’d never seen him before. “My fault,” she said in a monotone. “I should’ve kept him with me.”

Ezra spoke then, his slumped shoulders squaring with resolve. “No, Rose, no. You can’t blame yourself. All of us were there, too.”

Seth hung his head.
Except for me, except for me.

Ezra continued. “If Alf’s mother—and we certainly hope it was his mother—was determined to snatch him away, she would’ve found an opportunity somehow. It will be important to learn if we’re dealing with a parent or someone more sinister. All we can do now is depend on the search party and pray.”

“No!” The force of Rose’s one word set Seth back on his heels. “No, I’m through praying. A God who could take Alf from me is too cruel.”

Lily joined Seth in front of her sister. “Then we will do the praying for you. Grieve as you must, but don’t lose hope. Don’t ever lose hope.”

Seth stood and backed away. “Rose, we will find him. I promise.”

Even as he uttered that pledge, his heart sank. If Alf truly was with his mother, how could he—or anyone—wrest him away?

“I’ll come along,” Caleb said, then turned to Ezra and asked to borrow his horse.

Ezra rose and came to the two men, placing a hand on the shoulder of each. “God be with you,” he whispered.

As he waited impatiently for Caleb to saddle his mount, Seth seethed. How could God be with them? It was pretty clear He was with whoever it was that skulked away in the night with the dearest of boys and not with Rose, whose whole being had been shattered by that act.

Even after midnight, he rode, although most of the others had given up the search. He combed the stream beds for footprints, looked for a swath of bent prairie grass, climbed the highest hill to search the horizon for movement—all in vain. As if the earth had swallowed him up, Alf was gone. Finally, drenched in sweat, Seth slumped over Patches’s neck and gave in to despair.

Caleb, who had trailed him all the way, giving him the distance he needed, rode up beside him and laid a hand on his heaving back. He waited for Seth’s paroxysm of grief to pass and then spoke. “You have always been full of love, brother. You set me the example. Sometimes, though, like now, love hurts. And sometimes it even seems as if God has abandoned us.” Caleb’s voice trailed off, and Seth wondered if his brother was remembering the unmerciful conditions of his service in the Civil War and his participation in the Battle of the Washita River. “But I am here to tell you that God is with us in our struggles and pain. He is with you now. Don’t ever forget it.” Then Caleb turned his horse and galloped into the night, leaving Seth sitting astride Patches staring at the moonlit landscape stretching out endlessly before him.
I should’ve been there.

* * *

“Ezra, leave everything to me.” Lavinia’s tone was one that brooked no argument. “I will be in charge.”

Rose tried to swim up from the depths of the dark sea holding her in its grip. Her head felt heavy on the pillow. She couldn’t imagine why Aunt Lavinia was in their house bossing her father around. A dream? She felt something beneath her fingers—the edge of a blanket? She struggled to open her eyes, but they refused her bidding. So sleepy. Wasn’t she supposed to be doing something? But her consciousness, as if it existed in limbo, refused to consider the question. Then she was once more dragged into the depths.

A bird pecking at her window was the next sound she heard, followed by the sensation of a presence standing nearby. This time she succeeded in opening her eyes, nearly blinded now by the glare of the sun on her face. Quickly she closed them again, but in that instant of vision she thought she had seen a woman, a familiar woman. She tried to speak, but her throat was too dry to form the words.

“Rose, don’t try to talk. I’ll fetch you some water.”

Had it been Bess? Lily? She couldn’t tell. Why were her limbs useless? Her mind so bleary? She relaxed against the mattress and wished herself back into the blackness.

“Here, drink this.” Rose felt someone raising her up and holding a cup to her lips. She took a sip, grateful for the coolness of the water, then took another and another. “Your father gave you a sleeping potion. That’s why you’re so thirsty.”

It was Bess helping her drink. Rose licked her lips and croaked out, “Why?”

“You were distraught, my dear. Sleep knits up the raveled sleave of care, as Shakespeare tells us.”

Distraught? Raveled sleave of care?
Rose batted the cup away. There was something vital she must remember. She struggled to recall that something. Turning her head, she tried to focus her vision. Then she saw it. Alf’s trundle. All made up. His stick horse lying across the blanket. Then she heard, as if from a great distance, her own voice keening in terrified recognition. “Alf!”

Immediately, she felt Bess lowering her into the down of the pillow and placing a cool cloth on her forehead. “Shh, there’ll be time later for that. Sleep, Rose, sleep.”

When she awoke again, Rose figured it was late afternoon because the east-facing room was in shadows. Once again she tried to focus her mind, to remember the reason she lay in her bed instead of preparing supper in the kitchen. She shoved herself to a sitting position and studied Alf’s bed. Where was the boy? Was she sick? Is that why he wasn’t cuddled next to her?

Then, as if lightning had sparked inside her skull, awareness returned. Alf, her beloved boy, was gone. Someone had taken him. His mother? She struggled from the bed, her hair streaming down her back, her bare feet cold against the floor. She had to do something. She stumbled down the hallway into the kitchen. Bess rushed to her side to support her. Her father sat at the table and Aunt Lavinia stood commandingly by the door. “Where is he?” Maybe they hadn’t heard her, so she shrieked her question again. “Where is he?”

Her father raised red-rimmed eyes to her and said in a forlorn voice, “Oh, Rose.”

Aunt Lavinia, however, marched right up to her. “Rose, you must get hold of yourself. Your boy has been kidnapped, probably by his mother. Do you remember?”

Moaning, Rose sank against Bess. The note.
I kum fer Alf. My boy agin.
She shook her head frantically. “No, no!”

Lavinia was unyielding. “Denial will serve no purpose, my dear. Now that you’ve slept, you must eat something and let us care for you. Grief has its own manner and time, and we will respect that. If there is anything to be done to ascertain Alf’s whereabouts, rest assured, it will be done.”

As if moving under the hand of a master puppeteer, Rose allowed herself to be ushered back to the bedroom, where Bess washed her face, dressed her in a clean shift and coiled her hair into a bun. “Live, Rose. Live. That’s what we must do, with God’s help.”

Rose only briefly reflected on Bess’s widowhood and her presence at the side of so many dying soldiers, before she whispered the only words she had left. “I don’t know how to live without Alf, and as for God’s help, where is He now?”

Bess looked at her with sad, knowing eyes. “With you, dearest, with you. And with your precious Alf.”

Rose felt the emptiness gnawing at her. “If only I could believe that were so.” It would be all she could do to put one foot in front of the other and endure the passing of the minutes, hours and days ahead, much less turn to the God who had abandoned her.

* * *

When Seth finally rode into the ranch barnyard after a sleepless night on the prairie, he found no comfort in the smells of hay and horseflesh or in the sturdy limestone house he had helped build. It was as if a permanent gray cloud had settled over all he had worked so hard to create. It was said one could find solace in hard work. He doubted it, but toil was all that could keep him from rash actions he might come to regret. Murder would be too good for whoever had crushed Rose’s spirit and had stolen Alf away from the home in which he was thriving.

He stabled Patches and stomped toward the house, pausing to strip to the waist and wash up before going into Sophie’s kitchen, where, no doubt, he would have to endure her reaction to the events of the previous evening.

The aroma of fried potatoes and salt pork drew him inside where Sophie stood, her back to him, stirring the contents of the skillet. His father was noticeably absent. “Where’s Pa?”

Sophie turned to face him, her eyes soft with concern. “Out looking for you. He knows how much you care for Alf.”

Seth slumped into a seat at the table. “Sorry if I worried you or Pa.”

“We understand. You needed to be part of the search.” Then as if she already knew the answer, she asked, “Any leads?”

He shook his head.
Leads?
The boy had vanished, simple as that.

Sophie poured him a cup of coffee and then dished up the potatoes. “You must be starved. Eat while it’s hot.”

He had thought he wouldn’t be able to swallow a bite, but hunger took over and he plowed into the food set before him.

“Do you want to talk about it, or are you going to stifle your feelings as usual?” Sophie poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down across from him. “It’s not unmanly to grieve. Discussing your thoughts can help.”

Irritated at her intrusion, he said, “Nothing to discuss.”

“Balderdash! I’m your sister and you’re not fooling me for one moment with that strong, silent type pose. You’re hurting, Seth. I know I can’t change things for you, but I can listen. Go on, what’s eating at you besides the fact that Alf is gone?”

He picked up his cup and drank deeply, all the time eyeing Sophie over the rim. He didn’t want to admit his guilt in front of another human being, even one as close as his sister. Yet, setting down the cup, he knew the confession was too corrosive to contain within himself. He couldn’t look at Sophie, didn’t deserve the compassion pooling in her eyes. “I should’ve been there,” he mumbled, staring down at the plate of congealing potatoes. “God help me, I should’ve been there.”

Sophie studied him, letting several moments pass. “Perhaps. Hindsight tends to cause us all to question our actions. In truth, would your presence have made any difference? The children were being well cared for. Rose checked on the boy throughout the day. He and Mattie seemed to be having a great time. Would your vigilance have been any greater than that of all the rest of us? The abduction undoubtedly occurred in the blink of an eye. Perhaps Alf recognized his captor and didn’t cry out. It happened, Seth. Now it’s up to the sheriff to resolve the situation.”

“How can I possibly sit by and let time pass?”

“Because you have to. Just like you had to go on each day taking care of Baby Sophie and becoming a parent to Caleb at an age when you should have been carefree. We go on, Seth, doing what we can, what is needed.”