by Janette Oke
Kathleen smiled. “He will, and that’s the truth of it,” she agreed, her voice filled with love and her eyes sparkling with honest pride.
“He’s growing so fast,” said Donnigan.
Kathleen was silent for a minute. Then her head came up and she spoke with a twinkle in her voice. It was the first Donnigan had heard her thick brogue for many months. “Sure now, and he’d better, I’m thinking. He’s going to be a big brother to someone before he knows it.”
Donnigan stopped still.
“You’re serious?” he asked, watching her face closely.
“I’m serious,” she replied, her cheeks warm with the excitement of her news.
Donnigan swung his small son in the air and cheered. “You hear that, my boy?” he asked the baby as he held him above his head. “You are about to be a big brother.”
“Hold on,” Kathleen laughed. “It won’t be for months yet. As I have it figured, Sean will be fifteen months old.”
They knew the baby had no idea what the celebration was all about, but they danced around the kitchen with him anyway. Sean laughed at all the merrymaking.
* * *
Good news came from Erma. Kathleen cried when she read her little note.
“Oh, I do hope it all works out fine for her this time,” she said to Donnigan as she blew her nose. “It would be terrible if she lost another.”
Kathleen cast a glance at Sean who slept peacefully in the cradle in the corner. He had almost outgrown the bed already—but then it wouldn’t be too many months until he would need to pass the cradle on to another. Kathleen smiled to herself. She and Erma were due about the same time.
* * *
“How will you manage with two babies?” Donnigan asked one morning as Kathleen tried to prepare the porridge while Sean thumped his spoon nosily, calling for his breakfast.
Kathleen attempted a smile. “If they are all as good as that one, I’ll have no trouble,” she answered.
It was true. Sean had been a model baby. His temperament was such that he was almost always happy. Rarely was he impatient as he seemed to be at the moment.
“I’m late this morning, that’s all,” Kathleen went on to explain away her son’s behavior.
“Aren’t you feeling well?” asked Donnigan with concern.
Kathleen shook her head. “Just a little queasiness. It’ll pass.”
“But you weren’t that way at all with Sean,” reminded Donnigan. He had been expecting morning sickness, thinking that it went naturally with pregnancy and was surprised when Kathleen had shown no signs.
“It’s different—with different babies,” said Kathleen lightly. “I remember Madam. She was so sick with Bridget and not a bit with Charles, and then she was sick again with Edmund.”
Donnigan nodded, but he still felt nervous about this second baby coming so close to the first one.
* * *
Without a conscious decision on her part, Kathleen was indeed changing the little cabin, making it into a home.
Perhaps small Sean had a part in the shaping. Baby things now appeared. A small blanket here, a pile of soft garments there, a warm wrap on the rocking chair in the corner to bundle him in while he nursed.
But other things had slowly happened as well. Soft curtains covered the windows. A geranium bloomed in a pot on the kitchen table. Warm rugs were scattered upon the floor. Pictures now broke the bleakness of bare wood walls. And always there was the warm, inviting smell of something cooking or baking or brewing. Donnigan loved to open the door and be welcomed in.
* * *
“I’ll meet you back at the hotel,” Donnigan said as he passed young Sean to Kathleen and moved to tie the team.
Kathleen nodded and they went their separate ways—she to do her shopping and then take tea with Erma, and he to make some necessary purchases at the blacksmith shop.
Kathleen hurried through her errands. She was anxious to spend as much time with Erma as she could. Now that Erma was expecting another baby, Kathleen was not so reluctant to visit her with Sean.
Not that she boasted of her small son—but then, Kathleen did not need to boast. Erma—or anyone—could see for herself what a bright and pleasant baby he was.
Erma was making progress. Oh, she still grieved of the past. She still trembled when speaking of Lucas’s dark mood at the loss of their child—as though it had been her fault. She still wept on occasion over the little chest at the foot of her bed—but she also had her cheerier times. She had even smiled slightly on one or two occasions. Kathleen felt encouraged.
“Have you heard from your sis yet?” Erma asked as they sat sipping tea and watching Sean devour a tea biscuit.
“No. I’ve tried twice more to get a letter off to her—and they both came back again,” Kathleen said, her voice filled with despair.
“It’s a strange thing, it is,” observed Erma, her eyes shadowed.
“I can’t understand it at all. I can get my letters to the school headmistress, so the address I was given is correct. But they insist they have never heard of her.”
“Oh look!” squealed Erma. “He shoved the whole thing in,” and Erma began to chuckle merrily over the small Sean who had pushed such a large bite of biscuit into his mouth that he couldn’t even chew.
It was so good to hear Erma laugh again—Kathleen felt like weeping. Instead she went to rescue her small son.
“You little piggy,” she scolded gently. “You’ll be choking yourself, and that’s the truth.”
But the laugh had been good for them both.
* * *
Donnigan’s eyes were dark with concern when he met her later on, and Kathleen braced herself to hear whatever bad news he carried.
“Risa is gone,” he said.
“Gone? What do you mean, gone?”
“She left. Left on the stage.”
Kathleen could only stare. She knew by Donnigan’s face that he wasn’t teasing.
“Did Wallis go?” she asked in a half whisper.
“Wallis? No. Not Wallis,” replied Donnigan.
“How—? What happened?”
“I don’t know. Sam only knows that she left—and that Wallis is nearly beside himself.”
Kathleen shifted the small Sean to her other arm. “That’s terrible,” she responded. “What can we do?”
“I’ve no idea—but I’d like to get home as quick as we can. I’ll have to go over and see Wallis.”
Chapter Seventeen
Understanding
It was true. Risa had left Wallis. She had gone to town to shop—she said—and not returned. Wallis went to look for her and was told that she had caught the two-o’clock stage heading east. Risa had talked to no one but the ticket agent. “She said she was going to Raeford to catch the train,” said the man. “Thet’s all I know.”
“But why?” wailed Wallis. “Why?”
Donnigan spent some time with his old friend, letting him talk, hearing him out, offering his help.
“Shore, we had our times,” admitted Wallis, wiping at unashamed tears. “All couples do I guess. But they weren’t of much importance—an’ they didn’t last fer long.”
Donnigan nodded. He and Kathleen had experienced their “times” as well. It took a good deal of adjusting to get things worked out in a marriage. There were still occasions when they seemed to look at the same situation with two different sets of eyes.
“She came from a big city. Didn’t care much fer the farm. She called it dirty an’ a weed patch,” went on Wallis. He sniffed forlornly. “I thought we was gettin’ things whipped into pretty good shape.”
Wallis stopped to look around his little cabin and Donnigan’s eyes followed his. The room bore the marks of a woman’s hands. An edge of lace curtain hung at the sparkling window. The cupboard shelves were covered with a ruffle of blue gingham. Woven rugs were scattered across the floor, and the crude table’s cracks were hidden by an oil cloth with sprays of bright yellow flowers. It certainly didn’t look li
ke the cabin Donnigan remembered. With a wry grin he noticed that there were no bridles or pieces of harness anywhere. Not on the pegs by the door—not on the chairs. Not even on the floor in the corner.
It was Donnigan who put on the coffeepot. Wallis didn’t seem to be thinking too well. He hadn’t eaten since he’d had the news.
Donnigan wished he could say, “She’ll be back,” but he wasn’t sure if it was true.
Instead he said, “We’ll see what we can find out. Surely there is some way to trace her. Find out just why—what it was that—” He didn’t know how to say it. Didn’t know how to go on with his thoughts. Wallis didn’t seem to even notice.
Wallis looked up at the smell of the boiling coffee. Donnigan went to the cupboard and found some bread and jam. It wasn’t much but it might get the man through the day.
But Wallis just looked at the bread and his face crumpled again. “She sure could bake good bread,” he said to Donnigan and the tears were running down his cheeks again.
Donnigan supposed that the next days would hold many memories for Wallis. It seemed that everywhere he looked there were reminders of Risa’s presence in the home.
At length Donnigan faced the fact that there was really nothing more he could do for the grieving man, and he had a pack of chores waiting for him at home. He bid Wallis good-night with the promise that he’d be back the next day.
* * *
“How is he?” asked Kathleen.
Donnigan’s shoulders slumped in discouragement. He took off his broad hat and ran a hand through his hair. “He’s pretty badly shaken up,” he said wearily.
“I know—I know it must have been hard for her. But how could she do that to him?” said Kathleen, anger edging her voice.
“I don’t think Risa was ever happy there—and you must admit that Wallis wouldn’t be an easy man to live with.”
“No man is easy to live with,” said Kathleen.
“Even me?” he quipped.
But she was in no mood for teasing. He knew that her anger had to have vent. He only smiled to himself. Kathleen still had trouble with her temper.
“That doesn’t give one call to—to just pack up and leave,” Kathleen went on.
“No. No,” agreed Donnigan, “it wasn’t fair for her to just leave—without—without giving the man a chance—without saying her piece—or even saying goodbye. It wasn’t a good way to be doing it.”
He pushed his fingers through his hair again. “I need to get to the chores,” he said, weariness tinging his voice again.
“I slopped the pigs and fed the hens,” said Kathleen.
His eyes dropped to her waistline and Kathleen could read his thinking. “Kathleen—I wish you wouldn’t—” He was trying to shelter her again.
“I didn’t fill the pails to the top,” she argued. “And the pigs were squealing for their supper. And I had to go to the chicken pen to gather the eggs anyway.”
Donnigan nodded, but his thoughts were still heavy as he left the house. He ached for Wallis. The poor man was grieving as if he had faced a death. And maybe he had. How could a man lose what was a part of him and not feel that something—something real and important had died? And what on earth would he ever do if something happened to his Kathleen?
* * *
“Sure now, and that boy’s not an Irishman,” Kathleen commented as she and Donnigan watched their small son playing on the floor. “He’s even fairer than his father.”
Sean squealed as he batted at the new red ball that Donnigan had brought home from town.
“Well, he doesn’t have an Irish temper—and that’s the pure truth,” teased Donnigan and got the response that he had expected as a towel Kathleen was folding came flying through the air.
He caught it and tossed it back, grinning in playfulness.
Kathleen sobered. “You’re right,” she admitted. “He’s never had a temper fit.”
“Well, he is all of nine months old,” Donnigan reminded her.
“Sure—and a good Irish baby can be mighty good at screaming by nine months,” responded Kathleen, and they both laughed.
“I wonder what this new one will be like?” Kathleen wondered softly.
“You expect it to be different?”
The ball rolled away and Sean chased it across the floor and caught up to it under a kitchen chair. Donnigan watched as the small boy maneuvered his way between the legs and rungs to retrieve what he was after.
“He’s smart,” he boasted to the child’s mother.
“Sure now—and that’s Irish,” laughed Kathleen.
Donnigan turned back to his wife. “You really expect the next one to be different?”
“Well …” said Kathleen slowly as she lifted the laundry basket. “I’ve never met two people exactly alike yet. And from what I’m knowing—they mostly start out like they are going to be from the very beginning.”
Donnigan nodded.
Kathleen let her eyes return to her infant son, love and pride glowing in them. “If the good Lord sent another one just like him—I wouldn’t be complaining,” she said and she started toward the bedroom with her clean laundry.
* * *
There were clouds in the afternoon sky. Kathleen wondered if Donnigan might get rained on. He was working the far field and was a long ways from the shelter of the house.
“I think it’s going to rain,” she said to the small boy who had pulled himself up to a kitchen chair and was playing with a ball of Kathleen’s mending yarn. “Your father might get wet.”
Sean gurgled and grinned.
“You’re not worried?” Kathleen gently scolded. “Well, I guess I shouldn’t worry either. He is a big man—he can take care of himself.”
But in spite of her words, Kathleen found her eyes kept going back to the window and the approaching storm.
Then the thunder began to roll in the distance and sheets of lightning danced across the darkened sky.
“It’s going to rain for sure,” said Kathleen to her son. “I wish he would come in.”
But Kathleen knew that Donnigan would likely stay in the field for as long as he could—fighting to beat the rain.
The storm moved in rapidly. The thunder now cracked and crackled overhead. The lightning zigzagged across the sky, ripping open the dark, tumbling clouds. Kathleen waited for the sound of rain, but there was only the angry thunder and the slashing, rending light.
An unusually loud crash of thunder shook the little cabin and Sean looked bewildered, then frightened, and his lip curled and he began to cry. Kathleen crossed quickly to him and scooped him into her arms.
“That was a close one and that’s for sure,” she said as she rocked the wee babe in her arms and tried to soothe him. Inside, her own stomach was churning with fright. She had never been in a storm that had struck so close. She did wish that Donnigan would hurry.
She crossed back to the window to peer out and see if he might be coming, but a frightening sight met her eyes. The nearby haystack was in flames.
“Oh, merciful God!” cried Kathleen, “we’ve been hit.”
She wasn’t sure what to do. She was thankful that the stack was far enough away from the barn and corrals that it shouldn’t be a concern.
“Oh, Donnigan,” she cried as she clutched Sean. “Hurry!”
And then, to Kathleen’s horror she saw the little fingers of hungry flames that were reaching out from the stack and igniting grass as it moved from the stack to the ground around. The rivulets of flame were moving directly toward the house. Kathleen clutched Sean closer. What should she do? Flee—or fight?
Without time for more thought, Kathleen hurriedly placed her son on the floor and ran from the cabin. She stopped only long enough to grab a gunny sack from the nearby root cellar and dip it in the trough, then hurried toward the flames. Each time that she beat one back, another seemed to stream toward her. The heat from the burning stack was almost more than she could bear. But she had to save her home. She had to save
her son.
Tears streamed down her face as she fought on. They were the only moisture with which she fought—for the rains had still not come.
“Oh, God!” cried Kathleen. “God help me. Help me.”
But even as she cried she feared that it was a losing battle. The flames that reached toward the cabin seemed to be stronger than the frail woman who fought against them.
Just as she was about to faint from her exertion, the heavens opened and the rain came pouring down. Kathleen lifted her eyes to the darkened skies and cried a thank you, then returned to her fight with renewed determination. With the help of the rain, she should be able to win her war.
“Kathleen. Kathleen!”
Kathleen heard his call but she didn’t answer. She didn’t stop beating at the flames that were now slowly retreating.
“Kathleen,” he said and he grabbed her shoulders and pulled her toward him.
Kathleen’s face was white except for the streaks of dirty gray from the soot that floated around her. Her hair was dishevelled, her dress torn at the hem. She was drenched from head to toe with the rain she had prayed for, and her eyes were so filled with terror that she looked like a wounded thing—caught in a trap from which she could not flee.
Donnigan pulled her close for one brief minute and held her. “It’s all right,” he tried to comfort her but his own body was shaking. “The rain will stop it. It’s all right.”
He smoothed her hair back from her face and then moved his hands to hold her head, touching the dirty cheeks with his thumbs.
“It’s all right now,” he comforted again.
Kathleen nodded dumbly, the tears mixing freely with the rain on her face.
“You go in,” he said. “See to Sean. I’ll watch this.”
Kathleen noticed that he was soaked through. Near the barn the team stood—in harness and untethered. Donnigan never left the horses like that.
Then Kathleen thought of her young son. He had been terrified by the storm. What would he be feeling now, being dumped quickly on the floor while his mother fled the house? He must be frightened half to death being left alone in the cabin.
