Wishes on the Wind (4 page)

    Frowning as his uncle's tirade continued, David Lang shot an anxious glance toward his aunt's stricken face where she stood a few steps to his rear. Her fading blond hair unbound, a powder-blue dressing gown that accented her delicate coloring hastily thrown over nightclothes, she appeared unexpectedly fragile as her gently rounded body trembled with anxiety. Beside her, his fifteen- year-old cousin, Grace, stood silent, fear and curiosity equally mingled in her wide-eyed expression.

    David stepped toward his aunt and slipped his arm around her shoulders. His whisper bore true concern as she looked up at him with a bewildered expression that bordered on tears.

    "Aunt Letty, why don't you take Grace back upstairs with you and try to go back to sleep?"

    "Oh, David, I couldn't!" Her pale blue eyes wide with uncertainty, Millicent glanced again at her husband's flushed face as his ranting continued. "Martin is so upset. I fear he'll go into apoplexy if I'm not here to calm him."

    David suppressed the smile his aunt's response elicited, despite the gravity of the moment. The woman had raised him from childhood after his parents had been killed. She was endlessly kind and generous, and treated him as well as she did her own child. He loved her dearly, but he knew that she concerned herself with little outside of the workings of her lovely home and the education and future of the children consigned to her care. For five years she had managed to divorce the Mollies' acts of terrorism and murder from her own personal world, fearful only for her husband's "state of mind."

    Realizing at the moment, as the volume of Uncle Martin's voice rose another notch behind him, that there was much to be said for her fear, David forced his most reassuring smile.

    "Uncle Martin will probably stay up the rest of the night, Aunt Letty. I can give him all the help he needs right now."

    Aunt Letty blinked and a weak smile touched her pale, gracefully aging face. "Do you really think so, David?"

    "I'm sure of it, Aunt Letty." Taking Grace's arm, aware that his cousin was too curious for her own good, he drew her forward. "And I think it's best if you take Grace upstairs. She looks frightened."

    Her momentary bewilderment apparently past, Aunt Letty nodded and took Grace's arm firmly. She ignored her daughter's protests as she ushered her up the staircase, and David found himself hoping the time would never come when the dear woman would be put to the test of truly trying circumstances. He doubted she would be able to survive.

    "David."

    Turning at his uncle's summons, David followed as Martin Lang gestured the uniformed police captain and him into the study. Not for the first time, David felt a flush of pride at the    unspoken confidence that caused his uncle to request his presence whenever matters of importance at the colliery were discussed. He had long ago resolved to be worthy of that confidence.

    Inside the elaborately paneled room, Martin Lang turned toward the big, dour-faced captain of the mine owner's private police force. Barely waiting until David closed the door behind them, he questioned the man sharply.

    "All right, Captain Linden, I'm anxious to hear what you have to say that's so secret that it can't be discussed openly in the foyer of my own home. It'd better be good. I'm tired of dancing to the Mollies' tune!"

    "I'm well aware that the Mollies accept only Irish Catholics within its ranks, sir. And I know you employ neither Irish nor Catholics in your household, but that doesn't mean their ears aren't within hearing."

    "Not in my house, Captain!"

    Dark eyes sober under unruly brows, the huge Scot shook his head. "I wouldn't be so sure, sir. The Mollies maintain such a degree of secrecy that even members of the fellows' families are uncertain of their membership."

    "Hogwash!"

    "Not so, sir."

    "I tell you, it's hogwash! It's a pretended ignorance. They either fear for their own lives or share the guilt! How many murders have there been in the past two years alone? Henry Dunne in Pottsville was killed in broad daylight on a well-traveled road by five armed men yet no one saw or knew anything. Dunne's mistake was in urging publicly that the draft laws be enforced, when most of the Irish want nothing to do with fighting any war but their own.

    "Then this official of the Glen Carbon Coal Company was shot to death a mile from his home after having fired a trio of Irish miners. The damned bastards shot out his eyes! In Ashland there was that fire boss and the dog he took on his rounds. They disappeared the night after he had a run-in with some of the Irish under him, and neither have been seen since. And Henry Johnson, poor fellow, was bludgeoned to death by four Irishmen! Those are just a few. Murders, atrocious assaults, colliery and mine fires of suspicious original directly attributable to the Molly Maguires! And now sabotage."

    David took a deep breath, realizing how close his uncle had come to losing control. He agreed completely with his uncle's     opinion of the Irish element in the mine fields. With few exceptions they were ignorant, lazy, and dedicated to drink.

    David frowned as the girl on the hillside appeared unexpectedly before his mind's eye. It was unfortunate. For all her spirit and obvious intelligence, that sassy little chit would probably go to seed sooner or later, just like the rest of her kind. It was inevitable.

    "David."

    Silently cursing the small, angry face that had popped into his mind at such an inappropriate time, David replied, "Yes, Uncle."

    "The papers we were looking at earlier the superintendent's reports on men reprimanded or fired within the last few months where are they?"

    "In your bottom drawer, sir."

    Taking a few steps to the massive desk that dominated the center of the room, Martin Lang retrieved the file he sought. Lowering himself into the high-backed chair behind the desk, he looked up at Captain Linden and David in turn.

    "Draw chairs up to the desk and make yourselves as comfortable as you can, because I tell you now, we're not going to budge from this room until we've found a link to tonight's heinous crime."

    "Mr. Lang"

    "No excuses, Linden! The Coal and Iron Police is a private police force. We mine owners pay your salary, you know!"

    "I'll not argue that point, sir." Nodding, the big Scot added quietly, "But I've an appointment that might net me more than studying files at this moment."

    "An appointment?"

    "It's a matter to which I must swear your utmost secrecy."

    "You have my word as well as my nephew's, so out with it, man!"

    "We've succeeded in putting a man undercover in the Mollies organization."

    Martin Lang's expression tightened. "And do you expect he will remain
alive
long enough to do us some good?"

    "I do."

    "Is that what you called me in here to say?"

    "Yes, sir."

    "Then get to your meeting. And report back to me as soon as you find anything anything at all, do you hear?"

    "I'll do that, Mr. Lang."

    The door closed behind Captain Linden, and Martin Lang    shook his head and sighed. ''Two good men were killed tonight. It never ends."

    Finding words inadequate, David solemnly took the folder from his uncle's hand. He picked up a nearby pen as he opened the file.

    "Michael O'Toole, fired on the first of the month for drunkenness on the job. Shall we start with him?"

    A faint smile touched Martin Lang's lips as he looked into his nephew's young, handsome face.

    "I suppose that's as good a place as any."

    "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned…"

    A familiar warmth stirring inside him as he recognized the voice of his youthful confessor, Father Matthew directed his response through the confessional screen separating them.

    "How may I help you, my child? How have you sinned?"

    A short pause, and then came a soft response bearing a note of shame. "I'm unable to forgive, and I have hatred in my heart."

    "God understands your human failing, and He'll forgive you if you strive to overcome these weaknesses. You must pray for the strength you need. Hatred is a sickness that can consume your soul. You must put it out of your heart. You must look into the eyes of those you hate and try to substitute understanding for your darker feelings. Will you try to do that?"

    "Yes, Father."

    "Is there anything else, my child?"

    "Father, I…" The girl's voice dropped lower. "I saw the train wreck a few nights ago. I know who caused it. Two men were killed, Father, but I haven't told anybody, and the men who caused it are still free."

    Father Matthew inhaled sharply, but his hesitation was brief.

    "The sin is theirs, not yours, my child. In confession your sin of omission, you have relieved it from your soul and the Lord forgives your weakness."

    "But the men are still free, Father."

    "They aren't free, my child. They carry the yoke of their sins on their shoulders, and it's a heavy burden indeed. You must pray for them as I will, and together we'll ask God to forgive and strengthen them so they'll never sin in this way again."

    "Yes, Father."

    "Is that all you have to confess now?"

    "Yes, Father."

    Reciting the prayers of absolution a few moments later, Father  Matthew heard Meghan O'Connor's voice join his own as she spoke her Act of Contrition. He warmed to the sound.

    Meghan rounded the corner of the house at a breathless pace and entered the yard. Halting abruptly, she brushed the perspiration from her forehead with the back of her arm and ran a smoothing hand over her hair. Taking a few moments for her breathing to return to normal, she then approached the kitchen. Two steps inside, and she knew all her efforts had been for naught.

    "All right, miss, where've ye been when ye should've been helping yer aunt with preparation for the evenin' meal?" Uncle Timothy's hard eyes pinning her, he continued tightly. "With yer mother upstairs, lying abed like a queen, and ye out on a lark, yer aunt's been takin' up the slack, and she's had a hard day of it, too!"

    Meghan lowered her gaze at the censure in her uncle's tone. Uncle Timothy's anger had become familiar to her in the two months she had lived in his home, and she was well aware that there was little that Sean, Mother, or she could do, short of leaving, to satisfy him. Glancing at his narrow, lined face, she saw his small, yellowish eyes still pinned her. His wiry brows had furrowed into a straight line over his sharp nose, and his thin, bony frame was hunched into an aggressive posture that never failed to put her in mind of an angry bantam rooster about to attack. She knew from experience that his tongue could cause as much pain as physical abuse, and that at moments like this, Aunt Fiona silently shared the distress he evoked.

    The advice Father Matthew had given her in the confessional a short time earlier returned to mind, and Meg raised her head to look directly into his eyes as Aunt Fiona spoke nervously in her behalf.

    "The child was gone a short time, Tim, and only left after she finished both her mother's and her own chores."

    "I won't stand for yer shielding the girl's laziness, woman! She'll do her part here or find another roof to cover her head. And she'll answer me questions, too!" He turned sharply beck to Meg. "I asked ye where ye was, wastin' yer time when ye should've been here with yer mother's kin, workin'."

    "I… I was in churchin confession."

    "That so? Well, it'll do ye well to remember that idleness is a tool of the devil. Now get ye to work and help yer aunt with them  potatoes! We've boarders that'll be expectin' a good meal
payin'
boarders, too, and don't forget it!"

    Turning on his heel, Uncle Timothy stomped out of the room and down the hall on wobbly legs that would have betrayed his extended stay at Murphy's Pub, even had not Meghan's nose warned her of his condition as soon as she had walked into the room. Meghan turned to her aunt's flushed face.

    "I'm sorry, Aunt."

    "Aye, but ye have a right to yer consolation, m'dear. Yer uncle's a hard man. Sometimes he's not very understandin'." Her round face flushing even darker at her own soft words of criticism, Aunt Fiona darted a guilty glance toward the doorway through which her husband had disappeared. "But he's a good man. He's not laid a hand to me in all our years of marriage, despite his threats. So I ask ye to be patient with him, and kind in yer thoughts."