“No Uncle Donald and Aunt Maud?” Mrs. Beattie asked, obviously surprised.
“So you’ve heard of their aunt and uncle?”
“The children spoke as if they had an uncle meeting them in Battleford.”
“That was just wishful thinking, poor souls.”
“You say the boy is lost. What about the girl?”
“She’s working in the hotel in Battleford. It’s the lad I want to find.”
A sharp, heavy shower brought their interview to a close. Mrs. Beattie ran over to anchor down a corner of the tarpaulin that was blowing loose, and Dr. Wallace got back on his horse. He could have done with a hot meal, or even a cup of tea, but the idea of prairie hospitality didn’t seem to have spread to the Beatties.
Back at Headquarter’s Camp, Dr. Wallace felt discouraged. The only people left to interview who had known Robbie well were the Whitcomb brothers, but there was little likelihood that Robbie was with them. Apparently they had not had enough money between them to pay the ten-dollar filing fee on a claim, so they were doing odd jobs for other settlers. No one knew where they were working now.
Still, the doctor’s time wasn’t wasted while he was trying to locate the Whitcombs. He had been urged to set up a surgery in a tent, even if just for a few days, to take care of some of the emergencies that had arisen. There had been a rash of accidents—cuts from carelessly used axes and crushed limbs from fallen logs. Dr. Wallace had a steady stream of patients.
Late on the second afternoon, the doctor looked up to see a young man limping in. Another gashed leg from chopping wood.
“What’s your name?” Dr. Wallace asked.
“Arthur Whitcomb.”
“The very person I’ve been looking for!”
Arthur flinched as the doctor ripped off the dirty bandage.
“Why would you be looking for me?” he asked.
“What do you know about the MacDonald children?”
“We gave them a ride to Battleford. They’re all right, I hope.”
“The boy is missing.”
“Robbie? Isn’t he with his uncle? Their Uncle Donald was meeting them in Battleford.
“Their only uncle is in Manitoba.”
“Then why were they going to Battleford?” Arthur sounded genuinely puzzled.
“To escape the immigration people. I understand that the children paid you to take them along.”
Arthur squirmed, but it could have been from pain. Dr. Wallace was cleaning the wound. “We needed the money. We couldn’t have paid for the pony and cart without it. And they wanted to get out of Saskatoon.”
“Do you know if Elspeth had more money?
Arthur shook his head.
“She says she’s lost nearly eighty pounds. She claims someone stole it.”
“I don’t know what you’re getting at,” Arthur said abruptly. “But I’d say finding the boy is a higher priority than finding the money. And where is Elspeth?”
“She’s working in the Battleford hotel. She was very sick when I first saw her. It was then that Robbie was taken or ran off.”
“I thought maybe she wasn’t well.”
“Then why did you leave her?” the doctor asked.
“What else could we do? We had no money and no place to take her to. Besides, her uncle was supposed to be coming and we were in a hurry to get up here. God knows why!”
“You haven’t got land yet?”
“We never seem to get enough money together. This place runs on a barter system, but you can’t buy a filing fee with a pound of butter and a dozen eggs.”
The doctor pulled a crumpled bill from his pocket and said, “Get down there today and claim your land. You need something of your own that you believe in to survive in this country.”
“But I—I should be paying you,” Arthur stammered. “Not the other way around!”
“I don’t like to see you beaten before you start,” the doctor said gruffly. “Get along, and learn how to use an ax!”
Dr. Wallace watched Arthur go, and then turned down the paraffin lamp. What was the matter with him? he wondered, getting involved in his patients’ lives like this. For twelve years he’d lived alone, mostly among men who wanted to be left alone, but that was all changing. The country was being overrun by lads who didn’t know the sharp end of an ax and by girls hardly older than his own daughter. Maybe he should move on—or maybe it was time to go back to Scotland. . . . But first, he wished he could find Robbie MacDonald.
Could there be a connection between Peg, the money, and the boy? the doctor wondered. They had all disappeared at the same time. From what he’d seen of Peg Morgan, she might easily have been tempted by the money, but she wouldn’t have taken on the responsibility of a four-year-old boy. It was older boys she had an eye for. But his attempts to trace Peg came to nothing. She had vanished as completely as Robbie.
In the end he returned to Battleford, defeated.
Elspeth was in the hotel kitchen washing dishes when Dr. Wallace broke the news that he hadn’t found Robbie. She turned away from him staring out the window. Across the flat land behind the hotel was a stand of willows clothed in bright spring green, and beyond the willows, the glint of the river, reflecting the red evening sky.
“You don’t suppose—you don’t think—the river . . . .”
“I just don’t know,” Dr. Wallace answered in a tired voice. “The lad could have wandered there unnoticed that evening. I think you should go away from here—maybe even back to Scotland. I’ve been thinking—“
Elspeth turned on him, her eyes blazing with anger. “That’s all you can say! Go back to Scotland! Back to Scotland, so that you can forget about me and my troubles! Well, I’m not going! I’m going to stay right here till Robbie comes back, because this is where he’ll expect to find me.”
It was her determination that Dr. Wallace admired most.
Chapter 12
“Hard work and plenty of it”
JUNE, 1903
Elspeth turned fourteen in the middle of June, and almost overnight she seemed to grow up. The brown dress was so short and shabby that Mrs. Morgan, complaining that Elspeth was hardly fit to be seen in such a rag, found her a dress that Peg had outgrown. It was dark green calico with tiny white buttons from the collar to the waist and matching buttons on the cuffs.
But it wasn’t the dress that made Elspeth look older. It was more the expression in her eyes. After Papa’s and Mama’s deaths, she still had something to hold on to—Papa’s dream and her own promise to Mama to look after Robbie. With Robbie gone, she had failed them all. The empty ache of missing him was always there. The sound of a child’s voice crying in one of the rooms, or the sight of a tousled blond head, brought with it a surge of hope that was followed by the agony of the loss all over again.
She lived from day to day, waiting on tables, washing dishes, making beds. Occasionally Mrs. Morgan sent her down to the store, but Elspeth took no interest in the raw, bustling town. The stores were crowded, and the lumber mills were doing brisk business, but Elspeth caught none of the excitement.
Mrs. Morgan soon took Elspeth’s presence for granted. The girl worked hard and kept to herself and that was how Mrs. Morgan felt it should be. The only person who took an interest in Elspeth was Dr. Wallace. He used to drop in at the hotel sometimes. But there was a constraint between them now. He felt that he had failed Elspeth by not finding Robbie, while she found his kindness harder to bear than other people’s indifference.
One afternoon, when she was dusting the tall Chinese vase in the hall, she heard a shrill voice on the stair above her. “Elspeth! Elspeth! What are you doing here?”
Elspeth looked up and saw two girls running down the stairs, pushing each other in their eagerness to reach her. She knew them at once, although they no longer had their jaunty braids. Their heads were covered with a soft fuzz of orange-red hair, cut shorter than any boy’s. But they still looked exactly alike.
Rebecca covered her head with her
hands, saying, “Isn’t it awful? They cut it all off. We were sick and they cut off our hair.”
“We had scarlet fever,” Rachel explained. “We had to stay in Saskatoon with Mama for weeks, and nobody could come near us. Papa and Matthew went on up to the colony to claim land. They’re coming here to get us.”
Rebecca interrupted to tell about the house that Papa had built for them.
“Where Robbie? Where’s Robbie?” Rachel wanted to know.
Rebecca, looking carefully down the shadowy hallway, asked, “Can we play Shadow Bairns again?”
The girls’ voices trailed off as they looked up at Elspeth’s face—the white, strained face of a stranger.
“Robbie’s not here,” she said. “I’ve lost him.”
“Did they get him?” Rebecca asked in a hushed whisper.
Elspeth sat down on the bottom step of the stairs, her head leaning against the smooth wood of the newel post, and began to sob, deep searing sobs that wracked her thin body. A frightened, questioning look passed between Rachel and Rebecca. Tentatively, Rachel put her arm around Elspeth’s shaking shoulders, while Rebecca ran back up to their room to fetch Mama.
It took a long time to explain to Mrs. Galbraith about Elspeth and Robbie. Although she had heard about them on the boat, she had been too seasick to pay much attention to Rachel and Rebecca’s chatter. The twins had rambled on about Elspeth and Robbie when they had scarlet fever, but Mrs. Galbraith thought they were characters in a game, the way Shadow Bairns were.
Gradually, she pieced together the story of the children traveling alone, Elspeth’s illness, Robbie’s disappearance, and the doctor’s search in the colony. It was all incredible. She remembered the ordeal of her own violent sickness and fear on the boat. She couldn’t imagine children managing alone.
“What are you doing now?” Mrs. Galbraith asked.
“Waiting for him to come back, ma’am. I’m waiting here for wee Rob.”
“But it has been weeks, Elspeth,” Mrs. Galbraith said gently.
“Someone took him, you see,” Elspeth answered. “I had this dream, so I know he’ll come back. I’m waiting for him.”
Mrs. Galbraith looked helplessly at Elspeth. What could she say to the child? She wasn’t much older than the twins. Suppose when they were ill there had been no one to care for them? She wished her husband John were here so she could discuss the suggestion she was about to make. But surely he would agree.
“I’m expecting a baby soon, Elspeth. I want to get up to the claim to be near John when the baby is born, but sometimes I wonder how I’ll manage the work. Would you come and stay with us and help with the girls and the washing and so on?”
Rachel and Rebecca immediately began to plead with Elspeth to come, but their mother told them to be quiet.
“Think it over,” she said to Elspeth. “I’m sure it would be no more work than you do here. It will be crowded, though, and I don’t know what John’s going to say.”
“She can sleep with us,” Rebecca said eagerly.
Elspeth didn’t know what to think about Mrs. Galbraith’s offer. Sometimes she wanted to stay in Battleford, sealed inside the routine and the shell of work she’d built around herself. Here no one made demands of her beyond the household chores. No one tore open her wounds with works like “Remember when . . .” or questions about the future. Here she truly was a Shadow Bairn, unnoticed by the stream of people who passed through the hotel. The Galbraiths would ask for more than that.
Their demands started right away. Mrs. Galbraith asked Kate Morgan if Elspeth could be spared to take the girls out for a walk on the prairie while she rested. Grudgingly, Mrs. Morgan said she could go, then reminded Elspeth when she was leaving that there would be sheets to iron when she got back.
The prairie in June was breathtakingly beautiful. White, blue, and yellow flowers sprinkled the ground like confetti, and the wind rippled through the grass so that Elspeth found herself thinking of the dancing waters of Loch Nevis. On a bank near the Battle River, they discovered a huge patch of wild strawberries.
“There must be a million,” Rebecca said, falling to her knees and cramming sweet berries into her mouth.
“We should take some home to Ma,” Rachel suggested.
The following afternoon, when Mrs. Morgan told Elspeth to run down to the store to buy some lard, she asked the twins to go with her. When they stepped outside the hotel, they saw a crowd of people coming from the opposite direction, two mounted on small ponies, the rest scuffing through the dust in soft moccasins. Black hair hung straight to their shoulders, and they wore ragged, ill-matched clothing.
“Indians!” Rebecca said in a breathless whisper.
When the Indians turned into the store, the children followed them inside, but Rachel was mortified to find that she and Rebecca were the center of attention. One of them touched her soft orange-red hair, and her head tingled as if the Indian was going to scalp her. She ran outside and across the road, where she waited for Elspeth to come out with her purchases.
“I don’t like Indians,” she said. “I don’t like how they looked at us.”
“We were staring at them too,” Elspeth pointed out.
“I thought they were going to take us away. Do you think they steal children?”
“Of course not,” Elspeth answered.
“Maybe they stole Robbie,”
“Don’t be silly!” Elspeth said sharply. She wished the twins wouldn’t keep reminding her about Robbie, although to be fair, she had been thinking about him too. How he had always wanted to see Indians. Suppose he had wandered onto the prairie that day and had been found by some passing Indians. Would they bring him back to town? Or would they just keep him?
When the Indians left the store, she followed them to the edge of town where their women waited patiently, while the children romped and played. Elspeth looked at the children eagerly. They stopped their tumbling about and gazed back at her with bright black eyes—not a blue pair among them. The Indians filed out onto the empty prairie. Elspeth watched them until they were just small dots in the distance, then turned back to the hotel discouraged. With so much land out there, what chance was there of finding one small boy?
That same evening, Dr. Wallace came into the hotel dining room and ordered coffee. “I notice you’ve found friends,” he said to Elspeth, who was clearing tables.
“The Galbraiths want me to go up to the colony with them so I can help Mrs. Galbraith with the work after the baby comes,” Elspeth said. “But I’m not sure I should go.”
“It sounds like an ideal arrangement,” Dr. Wallace said enthusiastically.
“You’d let me know it Robbie ever came back?” Elspeth asked quietly.
“I might not be here, Elspeth. I’ve been thinking of moving on myself.”
“Up to the colony?” Elspeth asked, her face lighting up.
“I thought I’d go west. This place is changing so fast—all these people moving in.”
“But that’s just why you’re needed,” Elspeth said. “People like Mrs. Galbraith need you.”
“We’re both better at giving advice that taking it,” Dr. Wallace answered, smiling. “But I’ll think about what you’ve said. If I went up to the colony, and things didn’t work out for you with the Galbraiths, I could give you a job as a maid. I’m sure Kate Morgan would furnish you with a good reference!”
“I don’t have to go with the Galbraiths,” Elspeth said. “I could work for you now!”
Dr. Wallace was taken aback by Elspeth’s eagerness. He had spoken lightly, yet he did have a feeling of responsibility for the child. All the same, he wasn’t sure that he wanted Elspeth under his own roof as a constant reminder of his daughter, Megan. “You go with the Galbraiths, lass,” he said gently. “I imagine if I do go up to the colony, I’d be living in a tent for the summer. A maid to answer the door might be a bit pretentious!”
Elspeth smiled, then became serious again. “If you leave here, who’ll let me kno
w if Robbie comes back?”
“You could ask Mrs. Morgan,” Dr. Wallace suggested. “But you shouldn’t go on expecting him—not after so long. . . .” Dr. Wallace stopped abruptly. It was easier to give advice than to take it.
Elspeth’s face lost its animation. Picking up a tray of dirty dishes, she went though to the kitchen, her gray eyes blank and defeated, her face pinched and thin.
Mrs. Galbraith and the twins had been in Battleford for a week when John Galbraith came down from the colony. Matthew had stayed up on the claim to take care of the animals, so the Galbraiths were anxious to get started on the return trip without any unnecessary delay. The girls, who had been beside themselves with excitement at the prospect of seeing their father again after two months, were subdued and shy when he actually arrived. He teased them about their short hair, and they stood there, shuffling, eyes downcast, with nothing to say. But when he began to tell their mother about the house and the sod barn and their new animals, they interrupted with a stream of questions. Rachel suddenly blurted out that Elspeth was going to live with them.
“That is something I planned to talk to you about, John,” Molly Galbraith said. “She’s on her own, poor lass, and she’d be a help with the housework and the children.”
“I don’t know where we’ll put her,” John Galbraith answered doubtfully. “And we can’t pay her much in wages, with what I’ve already spent on lumber and animals. But if you think she’d be a help for you. . . .”
When Elspeth told Mrs. Morgan she was going up to the colony with the Galbraiths, she was unprepared for the outburst of annoyance that greeted her news.
“After all I’ve done for you!” Mrs. Morgan raged. “Downright deceitful, I call it—going off and getting another job just like that.”
“But I thought—I thought you were just letting me stay here. I wasn’t getting paid—”
“I treated you like my own daughter! I even gave you the dress you’re wearing.”
Elspeth turned away and went through to the bare back bedroom to bundle up her blankets and pack her few clothes. She didn’t bother to ask Mrs. Morgan to let her know if she ever heard anything about Robbie. She did wonder about giving Mrs. Morgan back the green dress, but she couldn’t bear the thought of wearing her old dress again and shoved it into the traveling bag. In the bottom of the bag, wrapped in a piece of soft flannel, she still had Mama’s cairngorm brooch and Papa’s watch. With no money, she knew that the day would come when she’d have to sell those to buy new clothes. In the other side of the traveling bag were Robbie’s clothes—his extra socks, his underwear and trousers, and a ragged, blue jersey. She wondered if she should leave them behind. But she was going to find Robbie up there in the colony, and he’d need those extra clothes! That was the best reason of all for going with Rachel and Rebecca—so that she could look for Robbie herself. She snapped the traveling bag closed and ran out to join the Galbraiths.
The Journey of the Shadow Bairns Page 10
