The Prairie Thief

by Melissa Wiley

  The brownie spoke at last. “Wanted a proper house, me wife did,” he muttered. “Our folk have lived underground for time out o’ mind, but that was in the Auld Country, where we had neighbors aplenty. Not just the wild creatures—the weasels and owls and hares—but our own kind. Brownies, dryads, boggarts—nasty-tempered folk they are, but they kept things lively-like. There was a kelpie in the pool down the way, and betimes we rode owlback to the seashore to visit with me wife’s cousins—she’s got a trace o’ selkie blood, and I suppose that’s where the trouble came from. Selkies never could keep content wi’ their own lot. Always wantin’ to shed their sealskins and go mingle with the Big Folk, and gettin’ themselves stuck there and pinin’ away after the sea.” He gave a great sigh, staring down at the yellow chick. “Pinin’ away herself, she was. Me grand wife. Pinin’ away, and ’twas all my doin’, fool that I am!”

  “How?” whispered Jessamine.

  “Our Big Folk were leavin’, y’see. Packin’ their things in crates and chatterin’ about America this and America that. Our kind had tended their barns for hundreds o’ years, but now they were leavin’ with nary a thought for us. No more nice bowls o’ cream to thank ye for a night’s work. No more bowls o’ porridge. They sold off the livestock—our friends, weren’t they, that we loved like our own bairns? I still mind the day the cow was marched away down the road, bawlin’ her poor heart out. And me wife, cryin’ into her apron like a selkie who’d lost its skin. Och, those were dark days.”

  Louisa blinked away the tears that had come to her eyes. The brownie’s gruff voice was so soft, so mournful.

  “At last,” he continued, “I decided we ought to go wi’ them. Our Big Folk. Come to this America they were always goin’ on about. ’Twas the foolishest notion ever a brownie had in all o’ history. We nearly died on the sea voyage—no ventilation at all in the crate we were hidin’ in, and if the ship rats hadn’t gnawed us free, we’d have perished for sure. And then the weeks in Boston—wagons everywhere, and boots, and noise. And the worst blow came when our Big Folk decided not to farm anymore. Took factory jobs, they did, and rented squalid rooms in a tenement. No air, no stars. No creatures to care for. Mice and rats don’t need help from the likes of us, do they?”

  He gently placed the chick back upon the ground. It skittered to its mother’s side, and the other chicks crowded in close around it, cheeping wildly. The brownie watched them absently, stroking his beard back into one point.

  “Took a toll on the missus, it did. Neither one of us felt like we could get a proper breath of air. In the end, we left our Big Folk—them as we’d looked after for time out o’ mind. ’Twas terrible hard, but what could we do? They’d forgotten us, anyway. One day in the public square—we used to go sometimes, to visit some geese with whom we’d become acquainted—we heard a young man tellin’ a shopkeeper he and his bride were fixin’ to go west, to ‘carve a little farm out o’ the wilderness,’ he said. Well, I liked the sound o’ that. A young family, just startin’ out. There’d be a world o’ work to be done, plenty to keep a brownie busy. And he was a fine upstandin’ young man, I could see that. To be sure, he was an Irishman, and me a Scot. Och! But we could see he was mannerly and hardworkin’, with a spring in his step and a thatch o’ red hair that’d make anyone proud.”

  “My pa!” cried Louisa.

  “Aye. Your pa. And your ma, a sprightly thing she was. My wife took a shine to her right off. And so we decided to go west wi’ them. We crept into their wagon, and when they stopped and commenced makin’ a new life, so did we. Here we’ve been ever since.”

  “Did they know you were in their wagon?” asked Jessamine.

  “Of course not. What do you take me for, a leprechaun? A brownie never shows his face to a Big Person.” He scowled. “I’ve no business standin’ here talkin’ to ye now.”

  “But,” said Louisa, “where is your wife?”

  The brownie’s scowl deepened.

  “She was never happy here,” he muttered. “There aren’t any of our sort to be found. Not so much as a boggart. Our first year, me missus was that lonely, she near went off her head, poor lass. Och, sure and she tried to make friends, but the creatures here were distrustful at first. They’d never seen our like. Why, that first summer we were nearly gobbled up by an eagle, three snakes, and an owl! Impertinence. We soon set them straight. The mice and voles came around after we planted the hazelnuts we’d brought with us from the Auld Country and raised up that fine grove. And there was a crow who was quite neighborly. But it took longer for the pronghorn to trust us, and the mule deer.

  “And all the while, me wife was pinin’ for some real conversation, she said. ‘All the prairie creatures want to chat about is eatin’ and avoidin’ being eaten,’ she’d complain. I tried to tell her she needed to give it time. The owls in particular have quite a lot to say, once they overcome their reticence. And yer father’s cow is as fine a storyteller as I’ve ever had the pleasure o’ listenin’ to. She can tell a ghost tale ’twould make your hair fall out.”

  “Evangeline?” said Louisa in surprise. “Oh, I wish I could hear her!”

  “Ye can hear well enough, ye just can’t understand,” said the brownie tartly.

  “But what happened to your wife?” asked Jessamine anxiously. “The snakes didn’t get her, did they?”

  “Och, nay, naught o’ the sort. But she sank into a great woe, she did. All the spark went out o’ her. She threatened to leave—said she’d had it up to here with the loneliness and the wailin’ wind, and the Big Folk never leavin’ out so much as a thimbleful o’ milk—”

  “You mean my parents! But they didn’t know you were there!” interrupted Louisa.

  “Whisht! Never you mind, child. Likely ’twouldn’t have mattered anyway. ’Twas plain homesickness that ailed her as much as anythin’. No kelpie in the pond, no pixies under the trees. No sea to call to her selkie blood. And the mean, cramped quarters there under the roots. Ye’ve seen them. Ye know. She said it was one thing to live underground back in the Auld Country, where ’tis so crowded, every nook and cranny home to some creature or other. But out here, in this wide-rollin’ land, she felt alone under the moon, she said. Alone under the moon. Wastin’ away, she was, and I thought for a time she might fade altogether.

  “But she perked right up after she met yer mother.”

  “What?” Louisa gasped. “My mother?”

  “Aye. She spied me, she did, for hadn’t I ventured out o’ cover to chase a fox away from the chicken yard?”

  The brown hen clucked appreciatively.

  “Ye’re most welcome, ma’am. Your great-great-great-great-great-grandmother, ’twas, and a fine bonny hen she was too. The fox was nigh upon her when I caught up to him. Grabbed his great bushy tail, I did, and gave it such a yank, he wound up an inch longer afterward. Och, he was that furious, I thought he’d gobble me up—him not havin’ learned yet the proper way o’ things twixt beasts and brownies. I gave him a right talkin’ to, and off he skulks, tail draggin’. And I turned around and there was yer ma, watchin’ the whole blessed thing. Standin’ in this very doorway, she was, a pan o’ dishwater in her hands and her mouth wide open. ’Course I ran for cover, but I knew it was too late. ‘We’re spied,’ says I to me wife, and sure if her eyes didn’t light up. She was glad, she was! ‘I’m goin’ right over there and make friends with her,’ says she. ‘Why, ye mustn’t, mistress!’ says I. ‘That’s nae the way things are done and ye know it.’ ‘What care I,’ scoffs she, ‘for the way things are done in the Auld Country. ’Tis a new world here, and new rules. I’ve liked the looks o’ that lass from the start, and I’m after intendin’ to befriend her.’

  “Well, I roared and raged, but ’twas no use. She trips over here, pretty as you please, and next thing ye know, she’s sittin’ in this very room, drinkin’ coffee out o’ that there tin cup.” He pointed at the shelf, his scowl reappearing. “Coffee, I ask you!”

  “My ma knew about you,” said L
ouisa. “All that time. Did my pa know?”

  “Nay, my missus hadn’t thrown every last scrap o’ caution to the wind. She told yer mother that if ever she whispered to a soul about us, we’d disappear like thistledown in a gale and she’d never see us again. Your ma promised, and she wasn’t a woman ever to go back on her word. She used to beg Mrs. O’Gorsebush, though, for leave to tell her husband. ‘Husbands and wives ought not to keep secrets from each other,’ she used to say. I’ve come to see she was right.”

  Louisa couldn’t help it: tears were spilling over and running down her cheeks. Her mother and the brownie’s wife, drinking coffee right here in this dugout. She swallowed hard.

  “What happened next?” Jessamine pleaded. “Please!”

  “Och, for a time things went on well enough. Especially after the bairn came—that’s ye, child.” He eyed Louisa with apparent hostility, as if her growing older were another impertinence in his view. “Och, but me missus was fond o’ that bairn. Ye. I expect she’d ha’ given yer ma leave, sooner or later, to tell ye about us. Else she’d have had to go back into hidin’, wouldn’t she, when ye grew into a spyin’ little rapscallion like all the Big Folk’s small fry!”

  He humphed, startling the chicks, who had found a line of ants snaking across the dugout’s dirt floor and were busily snapping them up with their tiny beaks. Louisa felt a powerful longing to run away somewhere and have a good cry. Her ma’s loss had never struck her so deeply as it did now. It was as if she could see, in her mind’s eye, the life she might have had if Ma had lived: learning to make tiny clothes for the brownies, sitting in the afternoon shade having a chat with the brownie’s wife . . .

  “But what happened to your wife?” asked Jessamine, growing impatient.

  “Och, well. After the young mistress died—beggin’ your pardon, lass,” he added gruffly, “I don’t mean to grieve you—the heart went right out o’ me wife. She began to fade again, worse than before. By then, o’ course, the young master had built the fine frame house, and this house was sittin’ empty, gatherin’ dust. Me wife used to come and sit inside, still and silent for hours at a stretch. And she lost all caution; yer pa must have walked right by her here a dozen times, in broad daylight. But he always kept his eyes straight in front o’ him, he did, on this part o’ the path. Happen the dugout reminded him too painful-like o’ yer ma.”

  “Yes,” murmured Louisa. “I used to ask if I could bring my doll here to play, and he never let me. He said he wasn’t sure it was safe anymore, that the roof might cave in someday.”

  “Aye, well, he’s got sense, he has,” said the brownie. “Needed a powerful lot o’ shorin’ up, this place did, when I first came to fix it up for me wife.”

  “When was that?” asked Jessamine. “Was it a surprise?”

  The brownie gave a bitter laugh. “Ye might say that. I worked and scraped for weeks on end, firmin’ the walls, evictin’ the rodents, sweepin’ and shinin’ and cuttin’ shelves. And I went to no end o’ trouble huntin’ up nice things to cheer the place with. Almost broke me neck gettin’ that fool dolly down off yer Missus Sour-Smirk’s mantel.”

  “You mean Mrs. Smirch?” asked Louisa, clapping a hand to her mouth.

  Jessamine giggled outright. “Mrs. Sour-Smirk. It fits her.”

  “My kind always know the true name o’ things,” said the brownie. “That woman’s glare would curdle milk!”

  Louisa turned away so he wouldn’t see her smile. The brownie hardly seemed one to talk about glares.

  “Well, in the end ’twas all for naught. I never got to show her the surprise. One mornin’ I come home from a hard night’s work over here—gettin’ that fool oilcloth into place over the ceiling, and no easy time of it did I have, let me tell ye—and she bursts into tears at the sight o’ me and says that’s it, she’s had enough, it’s bad enough havin’ lost the society of everyone else she ever cared for, now I’m out gallivantin’ all night and sleepin’ all day, and never a nice word do I have for her, and—” He was so worked up that he actually gave a little hop, frightening the chicks so thoroughly that they all poured out the open door at once. The brown hen clucked reproachfully over her shoulder as she hastened after them. “Gallivantin’! Me! I ask you.”

  He snorted in disgust.

  “And so she left?” asked Louisa softly.

  “That very morn. Half a year ago, ’twas. I’ve nae seen her since. I’ve asked every flyin’ thing for ten miles round for word o’ her, but the last anyone saw o’ her, she was trippin’ toward the Big Folks’ town with a bundle on her back and her skirts tucked into her apron. Six months, and nary a word. Six months!”

  And suddenly he grabbed the edge of his cap in both hands and yanked it down hard, so that it completely covered his face. He wheeled around, turning his back on the girls and making peculiar choking sounds inside his cap.

  Is he crying? mouthed Jessamine, and Louisa nodded: I think so.

  Suddenly she understood why he was so cross and hostile all the time. He’d been living with a knot of loss and fear inside him for all those months. She knew what that felt like. When she thought of Pa, it was like a stab to her heart.

  Shyly, carefully, she laid her hand on the brownie’s shoulder. He stiffened at once and his choking sounds ceased abruptly.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “You must miss her very much.”

  “Impertinence,” came the gruff voice, muffled by the cap, but for once it didn’t sound hostile.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Sudden Moves

  SUDDENLY JESSAMINE GASPED. HER EYES WENT wide with horror.

  “Louisa!” she cried. “I came all the way over here to tell you, and I forgot!”

  “Tell me what?”

  “The sheriff came to our house this morning! They found enough men for the jury. Your pa’s trial starts tomorrow!”

  “What?” Louisa felt drowned by panic. “Tomorrow? I have to go! I have to be there!”

  She would have run out the door right that second, but the brownie took hold of her skirts.

  “Now don’t be hasty,” he said, shoving his cap back into place with his free hand. His eyes were bright and wet. He turned to Jessamine. “What exactly did the sheriff want with yer uncle?”

  “He wanted him to come to town. They’re all going, Uncle Malcolm and Aunt Mattie and the boys, they’re packing up to leave right now. I’m to stay behind and see to the chores. The sheriff needs my uncle to bear witness at the trial. About the stolen goods he found in this dugout—” Her eyes went wide. “Oh! You can save your pa, Louisa! Just go tell them about the brownie, and how he was only borrowing things to cheer up his wife. I don’t think they can send a brownie to jail, can they?” She wrinkled her nose doubtfully.

  Louisa and the brownie looked at each other. For one flashing moment hope welled up inside her, but it ebbed away just as quickly. The brownie glowered at her with the same surly hostility as always, but she saw, now, that behind it was something else. He was terribly, terribly afraid.

  “I can’t tell about him,” she said at last, turning to Jessamine. “They might not put him in jail, but they’d try to catch him for sure, and study him, and keep him for a pet, like as not. No.” She shook her head. “It wouldn’t be right. My mother wouldn’t have done it.”

  The brownie gave her a long, sharp stare.

  “Ye know,” he said, his voice so gruff it was nearly a growl, “ye look just like her. The spittin’ image.”

  Louisa smiled, but in her heart the fear was stabbing again. Winthrop’s taunt came back to her: Your pa’s gonna hang. . . . She couldn’t save Pa by telling who the real thief was, but she couldn’t let him be hanged, either. She tried to think of what she could do, but nothing came to mind. Nothing at all. Except to go and be with him, and to beg the judge to be merciful.

  “I have to go to town,” she said. “I have to see Pa.”

  “But you’ll never get there in a day,” Jessamine said. “Not on foot. Thirte
en miles. It’s too far.”

  Louisa swallowed back tears; she needed to be there. Suppose she was too late, and they convicted him? Sentenced him? Carried out the sentence?

  Suppose she never saw him alive again?

  It was not to be borne.

  “I have to get there,” she said. “I’ll walk all night if I have t—”

  “Pish, tosh, and horsefeathers,” interrupted the brownie. “There’s no need for ye to walk anywhere, goose. I’ve arranged a ride for ye. Ye’d ha’ been on yer way half an hour ago if ye’d not tricked me into tellin’ ye me life story. Impertinence. I’ll see to it ye get there in time—if ye’ll mind yer manners and speak softly. And make no sudden movements,” he added as an afterthought.

  “A ride?” Louisa began, but before she could ask any questions, the brownie put his fingers in his mouth and whistled loud, sharp, and long. He stared out beyond Pa’s fields into the southern prairie, squinting. Louisa stared too, and in a moment she saw a dark blur of movement, growing larger: something was rushing toward them, rapidly, in a gallop. A horse? A stab of thrilling joy went through her: had the brownie summoned a wild pony? There were herds of them out on the open prairie, Pa said. I can’t possibly, Louisa thought. Oh, how lovely, I’m going to!

  But the blur sped closer and it wasn’t a pony at all. It was lean and bony, with coarse-looking brown-and-white fur and black horns curving up from a long, tapered head.

  A pronghorn antelope?

  “I’m going to ride a pronghorn?” she asked in disbelief.