The Prairie Thief

by Melissa Wiley

  “I can tell you it wasn’t my pa who took those things,” said the girl. “Nor I. But . . . but . . . I can’t tell you how they got into the dugout.”

  “You can’t, can you?” The judge’s voice was stern. “But you do know how they got there?”

  “Yes, sir.” The girl was looking him straight in the eye. He couldn’t fathom it. She was admitting right out that she was hiding the truth, but she behaved with the calm conviction of a person who knows she has done nothing wrong.

  The judge stared back at her, meeting her steady gaze. Then, suddenly, he banged his gavel on the table.

  “This court is in recess,” he boomed. “Child, I’d like a word with you in private.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Especially When It’s Hard

  THE FLETCHER COURTHOUSE WAS A ONE-ROOM affair, offering no such amenities as judge’s chambers.

  “We’ll just step across the yard into my sitting room,” Judge Callahan told Louisa.

  She followed him quietly to a small two-story house beside the courthouse. A crow perched on the roof, eyeing them alertly. The judge clumped up the porch steps and stomped his feet hard before opening the door.

  “Mud,” he explained laconically. “Now, we’ll just come right in here.” He spoke loudly, causing Louisa to wonder if he were perhaps a little hard of hearing. “SIT RIGHT HERE, YOUNG LOUISA.”

  He settled himself into a chair opposite her and leaned forward, eyeing her intently.

  “Now, I’d like to know what on earth you mean by refusing to take the oath in my courtroom. Do you know, lass, that in forty-two years of practicing law, I have never heard of a single instance when such a thing occurred? I’ve seen plenty of folks in a right hurry to take that oath and spew out half a dozen lies, but no one ever refuses to speak the oath itself!”

  Louisa swallowed. She did not know how she could possibly make him understand without giving away the brownie’s secret.

  “I can swear to tell the truth,” she began. “I will anyway, whether I swear it or not. My pa taught me to tell the truth always, even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard.”

  “And yet here you are, refusing to speak it.”

  “Not exactly, sir—your honor, I mean. I mean, I beg your pardon. Your honor.”

  The judge waved a hand impatiently. “Never you mind about the your-honor business. Speak plainly, child.”

  Louisa took a breath.

  “I’ll tell you the truth. I didn’t put any of those things in the dugout and neither did my pa. That’s the truth. And nothing but the truth.”

  “But . . . it isn’t the whole truth?”

  “No, sir.”

  Judge Callahan pursed his lips and stared off over her head with narrowed eyes and a creased brow.

  “But don’t you see, child, that I have to know the whole truth if I’m to help your pa?”

  “Well, I was thinking about that, and I don’t think you do,” ventured Louisa.

  “You don’t!” the judge exclaimed, surprised. “Explain yourself!”

  “I was thinking that even when people tell you everything they know—the whole truth—like my pa did, and Mr. Smirch, too, it doesn’t mean all the answers are there. Sometimes there’s a part of the truth that no one knows. Isn’t there?”

  “Hmm. I suppose there is. Go on.”

  “In this case, there’s a part of the truth that I know, but I can’t tell it without going back on a promise. And I mustn’t do that, because that’s a kind of oath just like the one I couldn’t take.”

  “Child, if you’re protecting someone . . . if you’ve made a promise under duress . . .”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s when someone forces you to promise something against your will. With threats, or . . . or mistreatment of some sort.”

  “Oh,” said Louisa. “No, it isn’t anything like that. No duress.”

  The judge sighed. He was staring off past Louisa again, gazing intently at the mantelpiece above her head. His eyebrows waggle up and down when he thinks, Louisa observed.

  “Is there nothing else you can tell me, child? Nothing at all to help clear your pa?” He looked at her shrewdly. “You’re sure you didn’t fix up the dugout yourself, as a kind of playhouse?”

  “Oh, no!” cried Louisa. “I hadn’t been inside it since before my mother died, when I was little. Until that day with Winthrop and Charlie, the Smirch boys. Mr. Smirch had come over to borrow my father’s hatchet because he couldn’t find his own. And then Winthrop got into the dugout—those boys get into everything—and he saw his father’s hatchet right there beside the door, and came running back to the barn, shouting about it.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “We all went up and looked inside, and Mr. Smirch came out with the clock and the doll.”

  “Did you go inside the dugout yourself?”

  “Not then . . . later.” Louisa’s voice was soft. She was terribly afraid of slipping and giving the brownie away. This judge seemed very smart. Surely he would see that Pa was innocent and there wasn’t a case against him, wouldn’t he? Even if he never got to the bottom of who the real thief was?

  “Tell me what you saw inside the dugout, child. Your pa said it was fixed up ‘pretty as you please.’”

  “Yes, sir, that’s right.” She described the oilcloth, the shelves, the jar full of buttons, her mother’s fine comb so carefully displayed.

  “And you have no idea who arranged those things so nicely?”

  Louisa clamped her mouth closed. She dared not say another word.

  The judge sighed again and struck his thighs with his hands. “Blast it, child! There’s something you aren’t telling me! It’s as if you’re protecting someone . . . wait.”

  He leaned forward. “You have a friend.”

  Louisa held her breath.

  “Someone you don’t want to get in trouble.”

  Louisa couldn’t help it: she looked away, afraid he would somehow read her thoughts through her eyes.

  “Aha! I know! Haven’t I heard that the Smirches took in a child? A niece, wasn’t it? Lass about your age?”

  Louisa quailed in alarm; it had never occurred to her Jessamine might be brought into this. But before she could utter a word, a shrill voice cut into the tense hush between Louisa and the judge.

  “Cornelius P. Callahan, you old fool! Are ye not satisfied with browbeating one child—ye’ve got to falsely accuse another?”

  “What—what—” choked the judge, rising to his feet. He appeared to be addressing the mantelpiece behind Louisa’s head. “What are you thinking, madam? YOU’LL BE SEEN!”

  Louisa whirled around. To her astonishment, there was someone standing on the mantel. A very small someone in a brown frock, with a tiny flowered apron tied around her ample waist—and a tall pointed brown cap upon her tiny head.

  “What?” she gasped, hardly believing her eyes.

  Judge Callahan sputtered. “Thunder and lightning, what more surprises can this day possibly bring?”

  He stepped forward, putting a hand on Louisa’s shoulder. “Child, allow me introduce you to my housekeeper, Mrs. Angus MacClellan Brody Callahan O’Gorsebush.”

  The brownie woman held out her hand.

  “How d’ye do, Louisa dear. You may call me Mrs. Mack.”

  “Thunder and lightning, what more surprises can this day possibly bring?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Potato Chowder

  LOUISA GAPED.

  “You’re the brownie’s wife!”

  “So ye have met my husband,” said Mrs. Mack. “I thought as much.” She looked at the judge. “That’s who she’s protectin’ here, the lamb. My fool of a spouse.”

  “I’d no idea you had one,” said the judge weakly. He flopped back into his chair.

  “He misses you,” said Louisa shyly, feeling an urgency to convey that important fact to the brownie’s wife. After all, he had done so much to help her, no
matter how grumpily. “He was fixing up the dugout for you. That’s how all this started.”

  Mrs. Mack snorted. “Misses my fine cooking, I suppose.”

  “No, ma’am, it’s more than that,” insisted Louisa. “He was sad that you were lonely. He said so. He was fixing up the dugout so you could be close to me, I think. Like you were close to my mother.”

  Mrs. Mack gave her a penetrating stare. The judge started to exclaim over the revelation that Mrs. Mack had known Louisa’s mother, but the brownie waved him silent.

  “What else did he say?” she asked at last.

  “That’s what he was doing all those nights when you thought he was out gallivanting.”

  Mrs. Mack emitted a kind of squeak and hastened to the far end of the mantel, twisting her apron furiously. Louisa and the judge exchanged embarrassed glances.

  “I, er, thought it was the niece,” said the judge. “The little girl who lives with the Smirches. Fixing up the dugout as a playhouse.”

  “Jessamine,” said Louisa. “No. But she’s the one who saw the brownie first. I’d never have known about him if it weren’t for her.”

  Mrs. Mack came striding back down the mantel, her eyes suspiciously red.

  “Well,” she said. “Well. This is all very interesting, it is.”

  “He’s worried about you,” said Louisa. “And he has your things just like you left them. Your chair, with the pine-needle knitting needles. You make the loveliest knitted lace,” she added.

  “He showed you our home?” asked Mrs. Mack, astonished.

  “He let me stay the night,” said Louisa. “When I ran away from the Smirches. It was very kind of him.” Mrs. Mack was staring at her with such astonishment that Louisa felt uncomfortable. “And he got a pronghorn antelope to bring me to town, so I’d be here in time,” she added, babbling a little to fill the silence because Mrs. Mack was looking at her so strangely.

  Now it was the judge’s turn to cry out in astonishment. “You rode an antelope?!”

  “Yes, sir. They’re very fast.”

  The judge snorted. “‘They’re very fast,’ she says, as if she’s passing the time of day. Child, you astound me.”

  “I was kind of astounded myself.”

  “I shouldn’t wonder.”

  “Well,” repeated Mrs. Mack. Her voice was bright and brisk, bearing no hint of the emotion that had been welling out of her eyes a moment before. “Well! This is all very interesting, and it melts my heart to see you again, lass, grown so big and looking like yer bonny ma. But we ought not to be standing here jabbering while yer poor pa’s over there worrying himself sick. The first thing to do is to get this child a bite to eat. Fair starved to death, she is, or I’m no judge!”

  She clambered down from the mantle by way of a conveniently placed hat rack. As Louisa followed Mrs. Mack to the kitchen, the judge bringing up the rear, she realized that the whole house was laid out with such conveniences in mind. A cunning arrangement of stools and flour barrels made it possible for Mrs. Mack to climb from floor to table with ease. A cracker barrel stood next to the iron stove, its flat top at the perfect level for the brownie’s wife to stand on while stirring the big iron pot that simmered on a back burner.

  The judge pulled out a chair at the table for Louisa and pushed it in behind her, just as if she were a grand lady. She smiled up at him in thanks. He gave her a solemn wink in reply.

  “How long have you lived here, Mrs. Mack?” Louisa asked timidly. There was something about the tart briskness of the brownie’s wife that was even more intimidating than the brownie’s surly insults.

  “Nigh on six months,” replied Mrs. Mack. “Came by crow, I did. I’d not seen this town since that first time yer folks came through, afore ye was born—and then only what I could spy from our hiding place in their wagon.”

  She ladled some kind of thick, fragrant broth from the big pot into two tin mugs. The judge carried them to the table and set one before Louisa.

  “Here you go, lass,” he said. “There’s not a finer potato chowder in all the world.”

  Louisa’s stomach was so empty she could almost have made a meal on the chowder’s aroma alone. It smelled delectable, but remembering the brownie’s terrible tea, she raised a small and tentative spoonful to her lips. At the first taste she nearly swooned. It was the most delicious stew she had ever eaten, rich and buttery with a whisper of nutmeg.

  Mrs. Mack beamed approvingly. “I’m glad to see ye’ve an appetite.”

  “It’s the best thing I ever tasted in my life,” Louisa said between bites.

  “Didn’t I tell you?” said the judge.

  “Pair of fools!” clucked Mrs. Mack, obviously pleased.

  Gradually, over the mugs of soup, the judge and the brownie’s wife unfolded the tale of how Mrs. Mack had come to be his housekeeper. At first Mrs. Mack had found the house empty—“empty of Big Folk, that is, but crammed with his books and triptraps”—because the judge had been out on the circuit, visiting the other towns he served. Mrs. Mack had enjoyed “queening it up,” as she said, in a house all by herself, with high ceilings and a proper kitchen. But it was lonely. And loneliness, Louisa gathered, was what had driven her to leave the brownie and their home under the hazelnut trees in the first place.

  “Then, one day, in clumps this great noisy brute of a man, tracking mud on my nice clean floors,” said Mrs. Mack.

  “Your floors?” said the judge, arching an eyebrow. Mrs. Mack ignored him.

  “Och! I hastened into hiding but ’twas clear to him someone had been in his house while he was away. He searched the place, but I stayed out o’ sight.” She sighed. “After that, for a while, things was like they used to be in the Auld Country. He lived here, and I helped out in wee small ways, but ’twas frankly unsatisfying for both of us. What use had I for his silly dishes o’ cream, I ask ye?”

  “You knew, then?” Louisa asked Judge Callahan. “That you had a brownie? And you knew what to do?”

  The judge nodded.

  “Aye. I grew up in the Auld Country myself, didn’t I?”

  “How did you finally happen to meet?” Louisa asked.

  “It was my doing,” said Mrs. Mack. The judge grinned. “One day I just grew weary o’ always having to scuttle about, sewing on his loose buttons without being caught, choking down his god-awful bowls o’ porridge . . .”

  “You cooked for her?” asked Louisa, giggling. It was comical to think of the judge making porridge for someone who could cook as marvelously as Mrs. Mack.

  “Aye,” said Mrs. Mack. “And one day I couldn’t bear to think o’ choking down another bite. So I crept in here early one morning and made a nice mess o’ grits and eggs, and fresh blackberry muffins. I laid it out on the table all nice and hid over there behind the teakettle to watch him. He walks in, he does, and takes a good long sniff, and he says—”

  “I said, ‘Begging your pardon, madam, what took you so long?’”

  Louisa burst out laughing. Chuckling, the judge scraped up a last spoonful of stew and swallowed it with a satisfied sigh. “Delicious as ever, Mrs. Mack. But I ought to be getting back. They’ll be wondering what has happened to us.”

  “Aye, Cornelius,” said Mrs. Mack. “You go back over there and settle matters with yer courthouse tomfoolery. I’ll look after the lass.”

  The judge nodded and rose from the table. “Take your time, Louisa. It’ll take us a while to round the jury back up. I shouldn’t wonder if half of them have gone home for dinner.”

  He paused at the door. “I ought to retire after this case,” he added. “I’ll never have one to top it.”

  Louisa watched him go, gulping down the last of her soup. The burst of merriment was gone; she was thinking about Pa again. She was no longer worried that he would hang, but it struck her that even if Judge Callahan found a way to settle the trial without convicting Pa, people would always suspect him. His reputation would never be the same.

  “What ails you, child?” asked Mr
s. Mack.

  “People think my pa’s a thief,” she poured out. “They’ll go on thinking it always, even if the judge doesn’t convict him.”

  “Perhaps. And that husband o’ mine doesn’t seem inclined to do anything about it.”

  “Well, he helped me get here for the trial,” said Louisa.

  Mrs. Mack snorted. “I’m afraid that wouldn’t have helped overmuch if the judge hadn’t already been acquainted with me.”

  “That’s true,” said Louisa.

  “My husband,” said Mrs. Mack. “Always so cautious. Hidebound, that’s what he is. This is a new country, that’s what I told him when I met your ma. A new country with new ways o’ doing things. Why should we creep around a farm in secret, way out here in the middle o’ nowhere, where neighbors are scarcer than hen’s teeth? I like a nice chat over a cup o’ tea now and then, I do! But there, lass, how I do go on. Och, look at you. You’re pale as flour.”

  “People will always think Pa’s a thief. Mrs. Smirch will never let it go.” Louisa sighed miserably. “I bet she’ll never let Jessamine visit me again either. I’m a thief’s daughter, as far as she’s concerned.”

  Glumly she stood and began to help clear the dishes off the table. She found Mrs. Mack’s dishpan and placed the tin mugs inside with the soup ladle.

  Suddenly she had an idea.

  “Mrs. Mack,” she gasped. “I know how to clear my father’s name. If only—how fast do you think a bird can fly?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Elflocks

  AS THE JUDGE HAD SUSPECTED, MOST OF THE JURY had taken advantage of the recess to slip home for dinner. It took over an hour to round them back up again and settle the noisy crowd. The courthouse was fuller than ever.

  Jack Brody was scanning the room in visible alarm, obviously wondering what had become of his daughter.

  “Don’t you fret over your lass,” said the judge amiably as he took his seat behind the table. “She was in sore need of a good meal. She’s over at my place now, tucking into a dish of the best potato chowder this side of the Atlantic.”