‘‘Well, the long and the short of it is, that’s where I am now. I been trying to tell them that I came back to make things right. But they don’t believe me, and as I’ve got no money to show I’m telling the truth, the sheriff’s determined to keep me here. It doesn’t help that the sheriff was in a poker game with me once and didn’t come out so good.
‘‘I’ll get it worked out and be back as soon as I can. But I’ve got to find some way to convince them that I’ve changed and that I mean what I say that I’ll pay back every dime, even if it takes me the rest of my life. Until then, I want to tell you how sorry I am that I didn’t come back soon like I said I would. But you two’ve been running the place all this time without me, so I imagine you’re doing just fine. I love you both more than I can tell you.
‘‘I’ll be back just as soon as I can get out of here.
‘‘Your uncle and papa,
‘‘Templeton Daniels’’
To hear him say he loved us like that, and to hear the word papa, couldn’t help but bring tears to my eyes. But Katie wasn’t thinking quite such sentimental thoughts. For once she was the practical one.
‘‘Oh no!’’ she moaned, setting the letter down on the table. ‘‘What are we going to do, Mayme? I was so sure he would come back in time to save Rosewood from Uncle Burchard. But now what are we going to do!’’
‘‘Why don’t we write back to him,’’ I said, ‘‘or maybe go see him ourselves!’’ I added, suddenly excited about the idea that had just come to me. ‘‘Why couldn’t we tell the sheriff that what he says is true?’’
‘‘Yes . . . yes, that’s a great idea, Mayme!’’ exclaimed Katie, grabbing the letter again and scanning it from top to bottom. But gradually a worried look replaced her expression of excitement. She turned the sheet over, then picked up the envelope from the table and looked at it again.
‘‘There’s just one problem, Mayme,’’ she said. ‘‘There’s nothing that says where he mailed it from. There’s nothing on the envelope but Templeton Daniels. There’s no place or town or return address or anything.’’
‘‘Maybe Mrs. Hammond would know,’’ I suggested.
‘‘She couldn’t know either,’’ said Kate. ‘‘Mail comes from all over and she just gets a bag full that might be from anywhere. Unless something’s written on the envelope, she’s got no more way of knowing than we do.’’
I picked up the envelope and looked at it. Everything was just like Katie’d said.
‘‘What’s that little mark over the stamp?’’ I said. ‘‘It looks like some kind of writing.’’
I handed it to Katie and she squinted as she looked at it.
‘‘I don’t know,’’ she said. ‘‘I can’t tell if it says anything. It’s too faint. It doesn’t look like anything.’’
We sat a few minutes thinking.
‘‘And you don’t remember your mama ever saying anything, or hearing your uncle say anything himself about where he was or had been or where he lived or anything?’’ I asked after a while.
Katie shook her head. ‘‘No,’’ she said. ‘‘I don’t remember hearing anything except that he and Uncle Ward had gone to California and that then he had come back, just like he told us.’’
‘‘I don’t know what to do, then,’’ I said.
‘‘What else can we do but wait,’’ said Katie, ‘‘and hope he comes back?’’
‘‘But what if we’re gone before he does?’’ I said. ‘‘Your other uncle isn’t going to wait—that’s for sure.’’
KATIE CRACKS THE SAFE
14
THE LETTER FROM MY PAPA CHANGED EVERYTHING.
Now there was no hope left, it seemed. When Katie’s seventeenth birthday came in May, she was too sad even to let us have a party for her, though Josepha baked a cake.
As the time got closer to when Katie’s uncle Burchard said he was going to take over Rosewood, he came around almost every day and acted like the place already belonged to him. He never spoke to any of the rest of us, only Katie sometimes. When he happened to look at me or Emma or Josepha, though he ignored us, you couldn’t help thinking that he hated us at the same time. I still can’t figure what it is inside a person that could make them hate someone else. I’ve spent a lifetime trying to figure it out, but never have.
Sometimes the man named Mr. Sneed came with him too. He carried a leather briefcase and papers and things and didn’t pay any more attention to any of the rest of us than Mr. Clairbornedid. The two men walked around the place keeping to themselves, talking and writing things down and making lists. I heard the word inventory once, at least I think that was the word, though I didn’t know what it meant.
But most of the time when Mr. Clairborne came he went upstairs to Katie’s mama’s office, sometimes with tools, and we’d hear banging and clanking and hammering and other noises coming from inside. Once he came with a man in a buggy that said ‘‘Locksmith’’ on the side of it. Katie and I watched through the crack in the door as the man tried spinning the dial back and forth and muttering various numbers to himself. ‘‘Right thirty-seven, left twenty-eight, right twenty-nine . . .’’ and even tried opening the safe with some sort of drill, but as far as Katie and I could tell, nothing he did seemed to work, and more often than not Katie’s uncle would come back down the stairs angry and swearing and muttering to himself.
One day Katie decided to try to open the safe herself. She was desperate, and it was all she could think to try. Katie told me she remembered enough bits of her parents’ conversations over the years to know they feared Burchard might try to take the plantation from them, but Katie said she didn’t know why.
‘‘I wish I could see that deed with my own eyes,’’ Katie said, hoping there was still some way out of our predicament.
We even looked in the cellar one night, thinking that if her mother had hidden the gold there, she might have hidden the deed there as well. But we quickly realized that the damp, musty hole was not a likely place to keep such an important piece of paper.
One morning Katie took my hand and led me up the stairs.
‘‘I’m going to try to open the safe, Mayme,’’ she whispered. ‘‘Maybe I can find something that will help us.’’
‘‘But, Katie, if the locksmith couldn’t open it . . .’’
‘‘I know. But it’s worth a try. You stand there by the window and watch for my uncle.’’
The picture was already off the wall from her uncle’s latest attempt with the safe. Katie stood in the middle of the office and stared at it. She told me later she was trying to remember if she’d ever seen her mother or father open it. She did remember something . . . some memory of her father and mother talking in hushed tones. Katie thought they might have been talking about Burchard . . . and . . . someone else, another uncle . . . Uncle Templeton maybe? But she didn’t think so.
Katie reached up and touched the dial, then quickly drew her hand back.
‘‘How does it work?’’ I asked.
‘‘I think you move it first one way, then the other, and back and forth like that. You have to stop on certain numbers.’’ ‘‘How do you know the numbers?’’
‘‘I don’t know. I guess you have to memorize them. I wonder what numbers my mama and daddy would have used.’’
Katie’s uncle Burchard had already scoured the place looking for a written combination—we knew that much. But he’d found nothing.
‘‘They would have used some numbers that they’d never forget,’’ said Katie. ‘‘What about . . . maybe their wedding anniversary? It was October 1, 1844.’’ She excitedly began turning the dial. ‘‘Let’s see. Ten,’’ she said, then stopped. ‘‘One . . . and forty-four.’’
‘‘What’s supposed to happen now?’’ I asked when she stopped and withdrew her hand.
‘‘I don’t know, I think the door is supposed to open.’’
She tried the handle, but it was still locked. Katie exhaled a long sigh of disappointment.
/> ‘‘Try something else,’’ I said, my own excitement growing.
‘‘But what, Mayme?’’
‘‘I don’t know. . . how about somebody’s birthday?’’
‘‘Mayme, that’s a great idea!’’ exclaimed Katie, bounding forward again. ‘‘Let’s see, my daddy’s birthday was December thirteenth . . . oh, but I forget what year he was born . . . hmm, was it eighteen-nineteen? I think so. I’ll try that.’’
Again she began turning the dial with trembling fingers. But still the handle was locked.
‘‘Uh . . . maybe my mother’s,’’ she said and tried again. But yet again the door didn’t budge.
‘‘It’s no use,’’ she sighed. ‘‘Why would it be a birthday . . . how could I possibly know what numbers they used?’’
‘‘Can they pick any numbers they want?’’ I asked.
‘‘I don’t know,’’ said Katie. ‘‘I figured they could . . . but maybe not.’’
‘‘What about yours?’’ I suggested.
‘‘Why mine?’’
‘‘I don’t know—you just had your birthday—maybe they thought of it just like I did. Maybe they got the safe after you were born. I don’t know. Try it, Katie.’’
Again Katie reached out toward the dial. ‘‘Okay, then, May fourteenth, eighteen-fifty, so that’s five . . . fourteen . . . fifty.’’
As she reached the last number we both heard a click inside the door of the safe. ‘‘Oh!’’ exclaimed Katie, drawing in a breath of surprise. ‘‘What was that?’’
‘‘Maybe that’s it,’’ I said. ‘‘Try the door!’’
Katie tried to turn the handle, and this time it gave way. The door of the safe swung open toward her.
‘‘Mayme!’’ she said in astonishment. ‘‘We did it!’’
Then she paused and tears came to her eyes. ‘‘They used my birthday, Mayme,’’ she said. ‘‘They used my birthday to hide their most important things.’’
‘‘They must have loved you a lot, Katie . . . I know they did.’’
It was quiet a minute, and I knew she was missing her mama and papa all over again. But then finally she took a deep breath, straightened her shoulders, and stepped closer to the safe, swung the heavy door all the way open, and began to look inside the dim metal chamber.
Within a minute she was pulling out papers and envelopes and spreading them out on the desk.
‘‘Help me look, Mayme. See if you see anything with the word deed on it.’’
Together we dug through the pile. Katie found birth certificates for each of her brothers and herself. She opened a small leather box and there was a beautiful ring inside with a red stone.
‘‘Oh, Mayme! This ruby ring was my grandmother Daniels’. I forgot all about it. Mama showed it to me once and told me it would be mine when I came of age.’’ Katie pulled the ring from the box and tried it on her finger. It was too big for her, so she pushed it onto her thumb for safekeeping. ‘‘Well, this surely doesn’t belong to Uncle Burchard,’’ she said.
We looked for another few minutes but found no trace of the deed. Then Katie’s hurried search stopped. Suddenly her hand went to her heart as she picked up a large yellowed envelope. Written on the outside in old-fashioned script were the words, Last Will and Testament. Slowly she opened it. As she did, a single sheet of paper fell out. Two other folded documents remained inside. She picked up the paper and looked at it.
‘‘This is my daddy’s handwriting,’’ she said, then began to read it aloud in a soft voice:
‘‘To whom it may concern:
‘‘With this letter, you will find the Last Will and Testament of my father, Adam Clairborne. In it, my father bequeathed the home and plantation known as Rosewood, County of Shenandoah, North Carolina, to me, Richard Clairborne, rather than to my elder brother and his eldest son, Burchard Clairborne. His reasons for doing so, I will in this letter attempt to explain.
‘‘However, this present will, written in my father’s own hand, though signed by him, was not witnessed by legal counsel prior to his death. In this same envelope you will also find his original will, drawn up some forty years ago, which names Burchard as my father’s heir. Because of these irregularities, a new deed for the property was drawn up and put into effect. However this deed for Rosewood is not in my name. It has been—’’
Suddenly Katie’s voice stopped. We glanced at each other with wide eyes. Heavy footsteps had just sounded on the stairs.
‘‘Oh, Katie!’’ I whispered in alarm. ‘‘I’m sorry . . . I forgot to watch the window like you told me!’’
Already Katie was scooping all the papers into her hands and stuffing them back into the safe. I ran to the hallway, thinking that maybe I could delay Mr. Clairborne. But he walked right past me without even looking at me. Katie had just closed the door of the safe when he walked in but hadn’t had a chance to spin the dial to lock it again. When she heard his boots, she pulled her hand away and whirled around.
‘‘Kathleen . . .’’ he said, ‘‘what are you doing in here?’’
Katie stared back at him, and from where I stood in the doorway, I could see the guilt written all over her face.
He walked toward the desk and quickly surveyed its surface, then glanced over at Katie where she still stood beside the safe.
‘‘I asked you a question,’’ he said.
‘‘Uh . . . just reminiscing, Uncle Burchard,’’ Katie replied.
Her hesitant manner must have aroused his suspicion. He turned from the desk and walked toward her, then stopped right in front of her. He looked down at her with a mean look on his face. From where he was standing, he could have reached out and turned the safe handle right then and pulled the door open. Then his eyes drifted toward it.
‘‘What have you been up to?’’ he asked slowly. ‘‘Are you getting curious about that safe there?’’
I saw Katie force a smile on her face. ‘‘Uh, yes, Uncle Burchard,’’ she said, like she was admitting something mighty foolish. ‘‘I was just thinking of giving it a try myself.’’
Oh no, Katie, I winced. What did you go and tell him that for!
But Mr. Clairborne seemed kind of amused, then began to chuckle. ‘‘You think you can open it when I couldn’t!’’
‘‘I suppose it was a pretty silly idea,’’ said Katie. ‘‘But suppose I did want to,’’ she added, turning her back toward him and facing the safe. ‘‘What do you do—would I just turn the dial . . . like this?’’ She reached up and spun the dial a few times.
‘‘That’s right, missy—that’s all you do!’’ laughed her uncle. ‘‘But just remember, anything you find in there is mine.’’
Katie kept spinning the dial. Then I saw her try the handle. I could tell she was nervous, and that she breathed a quiet sigh of relief when it didn’t open.
‘‘You don’t even know how a combination lock works, do you, girl?’’ laughed her uncle.
‘‘I guess not, Uncle Burchard. It was silly of me.’’
‘‘Sometimes I don’t know how you kept this place running, Kathleen,’’ said Mr. Clairborne. ‘‘Didn’t your mama and daddy teach you anything?’’
Not to trust you, I thought to myself.
But Katie only shrugged and said, ‘‘Not enough, I guess.’’ Then she turned and left the room and we walked downstairs together.
Downstairs, we talked quietly in the kitchen, all the while listening for Mr. Clairborne to come back down.
‘‘At least you found out that Rosewood was supposed to belong to your papa and not to your uncle Burchard,’’ I whispered.
‘‘But I don’t think it helps us, Mayme. If my uncle finds those papers, all he’d have to do is burn the new will and show the original one to Mr. Sneed. Daddy even said the deed wasn’t in his name. I wonder why.’’
‘‘Does that mean your uncle Burchard’s name is on it?’’
‘‘I don’t know, Mayme. I didn’t even see anything in there called a deed. Wherever i
t is, let’s just hope he doesn’t get his hands on it.’’
FROM OUT OF THE PAST
15
WE DIDN’T KNOW IT AT THE TIME, OF COURSE, but about the same time all this was going on, a man was walking down the boardwalk of a busy street.
He paused at a store window to look at a pair of boots. However, it was the stack of newspapers in a stand next to the window that caught his eye a minute or two later. He had merely looked toward it, absently glancing at the headlines. Then suddenly a brief article at the bottom of the page arrested his attention. The single word ‘‘Rosewood’’ jumped off the page and jolted him between the eyes. He grabbed the top paper and read the article even as he walked inside the store to pay for it.
By the time he emerged back out onto the street two or three minutes later, a sober expression had come to the man’s face—sadness tinged with a shadow of guilt.
He knew what he had to do. And apparently he had better waste no time doing it.
FINAL NOTICE
16
ADAY FINALLY CAME WHEN KATIE’S UNCLE BURCHARD arrived, and he wasn’t alone. There were several wagons and three or four other men following him.
We watched as they rumbled toward the back of the house and stopped by the barn. They all got down and Mr. Clairborne began pointing and giving orders to his men. One of them went and opened the barn doors, and for the rest of the day they were moving equipment around, taking some things out of the barn and putting in the new equipment they’d brought with them. More wagons arrived the next day, and for the rest of the week, full of machines and contraptions the likes of which I’d never seen in my life. By the end of that week, Rosewood was starting to look mighty different. Yet we didn’t really have much choice but to go on with our work every day like always. We had to eat, and the cows had to be milked, and the pigs and chickens had to be fed. So we ignored the men, and the men ignored us. But it was almighty strange and sure didn’t seem like it could go on forever.
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