Lost on the Prairie

by MaryLou Driedger

  Mr. Schmidt strides over to me. “How are you, son?”

  “Just fine, sir,” I say strong as I can. “My lungs still ache some from taking in all that smoke while I was fetching the animals, but each breath is feeling a little better.”

  “We’re much obliged to you, Peter, for saving the stock, but now we need to dig this trench around the barn. Think you can help me?”

  “I surely can,” I say.

  Eudora is headed our way, dragging a couple of hoes in one hand and two spades in another. She hands them to us and we get started on a trench around the barn.

  Minutes later we hear horse hooves, and two neighbours who have seen the blaze gallop into the yard. Without even a word, they pick up the pails Ellie has set out and head for the slough. They start filling the trench we are digging with water.

  “There’s no use trying to put water on that barn fire,” says one of the men. “It’s bigger than an elephant. All we can do is try and stop it from stomping across the yard to the house and hope it burns itself out.”

  Our trench is getting longer and deeper. We are digging like the blazes. My arms ache almost as much as my lungs.

  I look up and see Mrs. Schmidt has a scythe in hand and is swathing down the tall grasses a ways behind the barn. I know she is worried the fire might jump from the grasses to the corn and wheat fields and they would lose their crop. The only good thing about the fire is that it has lit up the night sky so it is easy to see what we’re doing.

  Just when I’m wondering if we few humans are going to be able to stop the fire monster, we get a miracle—a true and mighty miracle. It starts to rain. I feel the first drop on my sweat-soaked head and then another on my neck and then another on my ear and then another and another. Eudora drops the tablecloth she is wetting at the pump and shrieks, “It’s raining!”

  We stop digging. Ellie and the men, heading up from the slough towards the barn with full pails of water, stop dead in their tracks and turn their faces to the sky. Raindrops splash onto their noses and into their mouths.

  “Praise God!” Mrs. Schmidt shouts as she lifts one hand heavenward.

  Soon it is pouring. The fire in the barn starts to smoke and sizzle. Mr. Schmidt stands with his hands still on his spade and his head bowed. His shoulders shake. I think he’s crying.

  Mrs. Schmidt comes over, dragging her scythe. She drops it and puts a hand on her husband’s shoulder. He circles Mrs. Schmidt’s waist with his arms. They stand forehead to forehead holding each other. It brings to mind how Papa held Mama at Herman’s graveside. I wish Pastor Bartel were here now to say a little prayer of thanksgiving.

  The two neighbours come over, and Mr. and Mrs. Schmidt shake their hands and thank them for their help before they mount their horses to ride off. “After church tomorrow we’ll have a meeting to see about a barn raising for you,” one of the men says.

  “Let’s go inside and get dry,” says Mrs. Schmidt. “We can check out the damage tomorrow.”

  Violet makes hot cocoa and puts it out in cups on the kitchen table along with some of her quince pie, but we’re all too shook up and exhausted to eat or drink much.

  “I’m afraid I’ve got no blankets left, Peter. We wet them all during the fire, but I’ve put a nice soft pillow on the divan in the parlour for you,” Violet tells me.

  She ushers me into the parlour and I curl up on the divan, but it’s too short for me, and a mite hard. After tossing and turning for a time, I slip down onto the horsehair rug on the floor, slide the pillow under my head, and close my eyes.

  Chapter 12

  IT CAN'T BE. I WAKE to the smell of smoke again. I jerk upright on the horsehair rug where I’ve spent the night. I sniff. The smoke seems to be coming from the kitchen. I scramble up to investigate. Violet is at the stove, frying eggs. She looks ever so smart in a navy blue dress she’s covered with a big white apron. Ellie, Eudora, and Ettie are all sitting around the table. Mrs. Schmidt is poking curling tongs into the kerosene lamp to heat them and is crimping Ettie’s hair. Ellie and Eudora already have curls springing round their heads

  “There you are, Peter,” says Mrs. Schmidt, spying me.

  “I thought I smelled smoke again,” I say.

  “No need to worry,” Mrs. Schmidt replies. “Just kept the curling iron in Ellie’s hair a little too long and singed it some. She’ll be fine.”

  “That happens to Mama too sometimes when she curls her hair,” I say.

  Mrs. Schmidt finishes Ettie’s hair, ties her curls up with a gingham bow. “Violet’s making you children some eggs and fried bread. Once you’ve had that you need to get ready for church.”

  “I kind of figured after last night’s excitement we wouldn’t be going to church this morning.” I say.

  Mrs. Schmidt looks shocked. “Goodness me, Peter! After what the good Lord did for us last night sending that rain shower, going to service and thanking him is the least we can do.”

  Violet puts a platter of fried eggs on the table.

  “Go on and eat, children, and then, Peter, you can wash up at the basin on the back porch. I’ve left some old Sunday meeting clothes of Henry’s there for you to wear. Violet got up early this morning and shortened the pant legs and shirt sleeves some. Should fit you just fine. Cinch your waist with the leather belt I found. You can’t go to church in your buckskin clothes. They reek of smoke from the fire. Violet will clean them for you.”

  Mr. Schmidt comes in as I’m washing up on the porch. He walks right by me into the kitchen as if he doesn’t even notice I’m there. His face is white and his moustache is quivering.

  “Why, Henry, you look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Mrs. Schmidt says as her husband slides down onto a chair. “What is it? What’s happened?”

  “You know how Peter helped me get all the animals in the corral last night? Well, after I’d fed and watered them best I could this morning and hitched up the horses to the wagon for going to church, I thought I’d just poke around in the ashes of the barn a bit to see if I could find any clues as to how the fire got started.”

  “And did you find anything?” Mrs. Schmidt asks.

  Mr. Schmidt’s voice cracks and quavers. “Yes, I did. I found a body. I found a skeleton in the ashes. There’s a dead person out there in our barn.”

  “Do you know who it is?” I ask coming in from the back porch where I’ve overheard everything.

  “No idea, Peter. The clothes have all been burned, and the hair too, so I can’t really tell even if it was a man or woman.”

  “What are we going to do, Papa?” asks Eudora.

  “I’ll speak with Sheriff Stevens directly after the church service. Maybe he can ride out here and take a look and tell us what we ought to do.”

  “Don’t forget they were going to have a meeting about a barn raising for us after the service, Henry,” says Mrs. Schmidt.

  “Yes. I know.”

  Mr. Schmidt points to a stack of thick ledgers teetering on the table. “I couldn’t sleep last night. I was toting up the accounts for the mill and the millinery over and over, trying to figure out where we can find some extra dollars to buy enough wood from the sawmill to rebuild the barn. It could start snowing in a month’s time and we’ll need a place for the animals.”

  “Perhaps we should build in a different place,” says Mrs. Schmidt. “What with a dead person in the barn and all, the old spot might just be haunted.”

  After my night in Sica Hollow with Joe, I’d be the last one to discount the presence of ghosts or spirits, but Mr. Schmidt doesn’t agree with me or his wife.

  “Now don’t you talk crazy, Euphemia. You’ll scare the children. First things first. We need to find out who the poor person is lying dead and charred black as night in our barn, and I want to know whether or not they started the fire. Maybe the sheriff can help us find out who it is.”

  The ride to church is strangely quiet. Even the Schmidt girls, who usually jabber on non-stop, hardly say a word. I suspect we are all tired fro
m last night’s adventures and all wondering about that dead body in the barn. We stop at Violet’s church to let her off and then continue on into town.

  As we pull into the churchyard, everyone is circling around talking excitedly and the church bells are ringing.

  A man strides over to our wagon before we can even get out. He is holding a Bible and wearing a white shirt and a black suit coat.

  “Morning, Pastor Kraybill,” Mrs. Schmidt says.

  “Morning, Euphemia. Morning, Henry. Heard you had quite the night at your place. So sorry to hear about the barn, but glad you are all safe.”

  “Thanks, Pastor,” says Mr. Schmidt.

  “Now I hate to add to your troubles with some more bad news, but it seems as if your brother Ben has gone and disappeared, Henry. Your sister-in-law Martha went to see Sheriff Stevens this morning. Ben’s not been home in three days and she’s mighty worried. Sheriff’s brought Martha to church and has let everyone know he’s going to mount a search party directly after the service.”

  “Pastor, we all know Ben can drink more liquor than he should and he sometimes wanders off,” says Mrs. Schmidt.

  “But he’s never been gone this long before,” says a man striding up to us. He is wearing a gun belt and has a silver star on his vest. I guess this must be the sheriff.

  Just then, Mrs. Schmidt gasps in a horrified sort of way. She covers her mouth with her hand. She looks at Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Schmidt looks back at her.

  “That search party may not be necessary, Sheriff,” Mr. Schmidt says. “I think I might just know where my brother Ben is.”

  Chapter 13

  THE CHURCH SERVICE SEEMS TO last forever. I was sure when Mr. and Mrs. Schmidt shared their suspicion that the dead body in their barn might be Mr. Schmidt’s brother Ben we’d all head right on back to the farm. But no such thing!

  “The body will still be there after the service,” the sheriff comments. “And we might need a little divine help getting to the bottom of things. Won’t hurt for you to stay here for some praying and singing. I’ll be waiting right outside.”

  “I agree,” Pastor Kraybill says. “Henry, I’ll meet with everyone after the service about a barn raising for you come next Saturday. The snow could fly any day now. You never know. And those animals of yours need to be sheltered.”

  “Thanks, Pastor Kraybill,” Mr. Schmidt says. “I’ll order the lumber for the barn first thing Monday morning before I open the mill.”

  “Do you need us to have a special offering this morning to help you pay for that lumber?”

  “No, thank you, Pastor,” says Mr. Schmidt clearing his throat and adjusting his bow tie. “I think we can manage, but you might want to think of taking up a collection for Martha and the kids. If Ben is really and truly gone, they are going to be suffering some.”

  Mrs. Schmidt lays her hand gentle-like on Mr. Schmidt’s arm and says softly, “It’s not like you haven’t helped them out plenty in the past, Henry. You did your best. You know Ben wasted most of the profits from his farm, and that’s why his family is in the poor house the way they are. Your father did the right thing leaving you the mill. Ben just couldn’t have handled it.”

  Mr. Schmidt puts his hand over his wife’s. “Now, Euphemia, there’s no good comes speaking ill of the dead.”

  “We don’t know for sure he is dead,” Mrs. Schmidt says. “Maybe the man in the barn is someone else.”

  I sit between Ettie and Eudora during the service, but it is hard for anyone to really listen to the pastor because Martha, Ben’s wife, is sobbing the whole time. Quiet-like, mind you, but still everyone can hear her.

  Her two sons sit on either side of her. They seem a little older than me and they look straight ahead, their faces as empty as the blackboard at the end of the school day. They don’t even seem to notice their mother is crying.

  I’m not sure I could sit still in a church service if I thought my Papa was dead, but then my Papa is hardworking and has always looked after our family, and the only time he takes a drink is to have a glass of Grandpa’s homemade wine at Christmas. Would you still love a parent that drank too much and couldn’t put food on the table or keep a job? I suspect you might, but I reckon it would be harder than loving a parent who took care of their family proper.

  Growing up in Newton, I don’t recall anyone’s father being like that. But maybe some of those men I saw going into the saloon in Omaha were not doing right by their families because they liked to drink and gamble more than was good for them. Maybe that’s why Pastor Bartel back home talked about saloons as dens of sin.

  Thinking about Omaha reminds me of Annie and how her Papa rescued us and all those other people from the broken roller coaster. Would my Papa have climbed fearlessly into the air like that to save me? Or would he have jumped into Enemy Swim Lake to help a stranger the way Mr. Little Thunder did? I think he would have.

  There are lots of different kinds of people in the world. Makes me wonder what kind of grownup I might be someday. In Captains Courageous, Harvey turns out to be a real different person because of his unexpected adventure. Will that happen to me too? At any rate, this adventure of mine is surely making me ask lots of questions that never even entered my brain before.

  During the church service we sing “Amazing Grace” and “We’re Marching to Zion,” and during the offering “Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory,” and if I close my eyes I can hear Mama’s voice soaring up high on those hallelujahs.

  I wonder if she is singing right now, in a church in Saskatchewan?

  Has my Papa started building our sod house yet, or have he and Sylvester and Levi gone off to look for me?

  Is little Alvin missing me? Does he ask Mama, “Where’s Peter?”

  Has Mama written a letter to Grandpa back home in Newton to tell him I’ve gone missing?

  The sheriff follows our wagon home. One of his deputies is riding with him, and we’ve taken the girls’ cousins—Ben’s sons, Orrin and Leander—along with us. The distance between the church and the Schmidt house seems twice as long this time and we drive in a silence only interrupted by Mr. Schmidt clearing his throat regularly as if he might be getting ready to say something.

  It starts to rain again right after we pick up Violet from her church, and it isn’t long before we are soaked and shivering. As we pull into the Schmidt’s yard, the downpour suddenly stops.

  “Girls, you come inside with me and Violet and set the table for lunch,” says Mrs. Schmidt as I offer my hand to Ettie, Eudora, and Ellie to help them out of the wagon. “Nice to see your mother’s raised you to be a gentleman,” Mrs. Schmidt says to me.

  The menfolk all head towards the barn. Halfway across the yard, Orrin shouts, “Look over there.” He’s spotted something caught in the tall grasses Mrs. Schmidt left off cutting down when the rain started last night. Orrin strides over and plucks a piece of white cloth from the browning sheaves. “This here is my father’s.” He walks back and shows us a large blue S embroidered in the corner of a dirty handkerchief spattered with snot that’s gone running again in the rain. “Ma gave it to Pa last Christmas.”

  We all study the handkerchief as if it might be able to speak to us.

  “Henry, when’s the last time you saw Ben?” the sheriff asks.

  “Yesterday,” says Mr. Schmidt. “He came by the mill in the morning.”

  “What did he want?”

  “Wanted me to lend him some money.”

  “And did you?”

  “No. I didn’t.”

  “And what happened then?”

  “Ben stalked off without another word to me. I felt real bad. He’s my brother and Pa left me everything. I helped Ben buy his farm after Pa died, but he just hasn’t made a go of it and I can’t keep lending him money. Times haven’t been easy for us lately either.”

  “Well, let’s go take a look in the barn,” says the sheriff.

  I’m not sure I want to go, but everyone seems to be expecting me to follow so I do. The last
dead body I saw was my brother Herman’s, and he was frozen solid cause it was February and we’d kept him out in the summer kitchen till we buried him. Now I’m going to see a body that’s been burned to the bone. I’m not sure I’m ready for that.

  The rain has made a mess of things, and we pick our way through the ashy muck that covers what was once the dirt floor of the old barn. When we reach the spot where the feed room used to be, we see the skeleton. It has no skin on it at all and the bones are a kind of grey colour. I feel like throwing up, but I swallow hard and stand my ground.

  Orrin inhales a sob, turns around and strides away back to the wagon. No wonder. Imagine looking at the burned skeleton of what might be your father. But Leander walks slow and steady over to the body and hunkers down beside it. He looks carefully at the skull and then reaches out and ever so gently touches one of the teeth.

  “Hi there, Pa,” he whispers. “You rest easy now.”

  Leander stands up. “This is my Pa. His one front tooth is broken off, kind of jagged-like. Happened when he got in a fight with a wanderer he owed some money to. I went to the wanderer camp to fetch him after they sent one of their kids to our place. Pa was pretty beat up after the fight and his tooth was broke.”

  The sheriff clears his throat. “Mighty sorry for your loss, son. You have any idea what your Pa was doing here? He was a smoking man, weren’t he? Could he have started the fire by accident with some burning tobacco from his pipe? Or, Henry, do you think he was angry enough to start a fire on purpose?”

  Mr. Schmidt puts a hand on Leander’s shoulder. “Sheriff, I don’t think I need to know. What’s done is done. Whether the fire was set on purpose or it was an accident don’t make no never mind now. I need to bury my brother and build a new barn. If you don’t mind taking my nephews home, Peter and I will load up the body on my wagon and bring it into town. I’ll arrange with Pastor Kraybill to have a service, maybe Wednesday. Leander, tell your mother I’ll come over to talk to her directly after I’ve left your Pa’s body at the undertaker.”