Just as the uncle had promised, the sprawling farmhouse was only a short distance away. Loreli found the size of the place impressive. There were at least two barns that she could see, and the one and half story wood house stood like a sentinel in the rolling green fields surrounding it. The house had a fine sitting porch and screen-covered windows. Behind the house in a field of knee-high corn stood a set of towering windmills.
Lorlei’s attention was caught by a young woman with a worried brown face who stepped out onto the porch. Her severely pulled back hair and plain calico dress marked her as female of the plains. Her dowdy appearance gave the impression that she was older than Loreli guessed her to truly be.
“Oh thank goodness,” the woman gushed, sounding relieved. She hastened over to Reed and his mount. “You found them both.”
He slid from his horse like a man well acquainted with the move. “Yeah, I did.”
Ignoring Loreli, the woman came straight over to Dede and began to scold the child. “You should be ashamed of yourself, scaring everyone like this. I sent your sister to her room to think about what she’s done. I suggest you join her.”
Dede looked so dejected, Loreli wanted to sock the woman. Instead, Loreli took Dede’s cold hand in hers, and said gently, “Let’s go see if Bebe’s okay.”
Dede responded with a downcast nod. When she looked up, Loreli gave her a wink, and Dede returned a watery little smile.
Focusing on Loreli for the first time, the woman asked disdainfully, “And you are?”
“Loreli Winters.”
The sour face looking Loreli up and down was so disapproving, Loreli felt compelled to toss back, “The girls want me to be their mama. Isn’t that something?”
The woman’s eyes went wide.
Satisfied with the woman’s reaction, Loreli said to Dede, “Lead the way.” Loreli’s golden eyes flashed coolly at the uncle for not coming to his niece’s defense, then she followed Dede into the house.
Jake felt the sting of the woman’s glare, but supposed from where she’d been standing, he’d deserved it.
Loreli, entering the house with Dede, found the interior clean and sparsely furnished. This was a man’s place: no rag rugs on the floor, no crocheted doilies tossed around to add a softening touch. One would be hard-pressed to believe two little girls lived here. Loreli wanted to know why, but knew she wouldn’t be around long enough to have the question answered.
Holding on to Dede’s hand, Loreli let herself be led down a narrow hallway to a closed door. “Is this your room?” Loreli asked.
The solemn child nodded.
Loreli softly knocked and quietly called, “Bebe. It’s Loreli. May your sister and I come in?”
The sound of creaking floorboards and footsteps came from inside. The door was opened. A dejected Bebe stood in the portal. “Come in.”
She then looked at her sister and said apologetically, “I’m sorry for leaving you, De.”
“It’s okay.”
“Uncle didn’t make you ride Fox, did he?”
“He was going to, but Loreli let me ride with her.”
Bebe met Loreli’s eyes. “Dede doesn’t like horses.”
“I know. She told me.”
“Our mama was killed in a horse accident. Dede was with her.”
Loreli now understood. Had she been involved in such a tragedy, she wouldn’t want to be around horses either. She squeezed Dede’s hand reassuringly. “We’re all scared of something, Dede, so it’s okay. For me, it’s spiders.”
Dede asked, “Really?”
“Yep. Can’t stand them. They give me the willies.” Loreli shook her shoulders in a show of exaggerated revulsion and both girls giggled.
Outside the house, Jake Reed said to Rebecca, “You were hard on the girls, Rebecca.”
Rebecca turned his way. “Somebody has to be, Jacob. And what on earth was Dede doing riding with that fancy woman. Where’d she come from?”
“The wagon train.”
“She one of those mail-order brides?”
“She came with them, but claims she didn’t come to marry anybody.”
“Well, I’m glad of that. Can you imagine her married to someone we know? Let’s just pray she doesn’t stay around here long. Town like ours doesn’t need soiled doves.”
Jake wasn’t really listening. His mind was still on Dede’s reaction to being put on the stallion’s back. With her screams echoing in his mind, he wondered if she’d ever get over her fear. He was grateful the Winters woman had been there. He doubt he’d ever forget how tenderly she’d comforted Dede. Her tender handling was the kind of caring he wanted Rebecca to show the girls, but she seemed more bent on criticizing and correcting them than showing them kindness.
Rebecca’s voice cut into his thoughts. “Did you hear me, Jake?”
He looked down into her scolding brown eyes and confessed, “No, sorry. I was thinking about Dede.”
“Were those girls mine, I’d take a strap to them for running off that way. Anything could’ve happened to them. I sent them into the house this afternoon to read from the Bible. Next I knew they were gone.”
Jake realized that this strident, rigid young woman would make a poor mother to his sister’s twins. Having lived his life under a parent who did nothing but criticize and berate, Jake did not want the girls to suffer the same fate. “You’re right about the dangers, Rebecca, and thanks for looking after them while I was gone, but they’re both safe now,” then he added, “And I’m not strapping them. They’re still trying to adjust to my sister’s death. They’ll settle down.”
“When?”
He shrugged.
“Those girls are willful; they don’t mind, and I have to stand over them to make sure their chores are done right. Spare the rod, spoil the child, Jake Reed. A good strapping never hurt anyone.”
Her litany of the girls’ sins did not sit well with him. They were eight years old, for heaven’s sake. “I’m not strapping them, Rebecca. Leave it be.”
Her chin tightened as it was wont to do when they butted heads over an issue, particularly issues relating to the twins. Rebecca believed that a woman shouldn’t read anything but the Bible, and thought it scandalous that he allowed the girls to read the newspapers and political broadsides that came to him via the mails. She also thought he should make Dede get on a horse—tie her to the saddle if necessary to cure her of what Rebecca called “willful tantrums.” Jake, knowing why horses set off such a strong reaction in his niece, refused.
Rebecca then said, “Well, how was the meeting?”
Jake sighed with frustration. “A waste.” The meeting in Lawrence had not gone well. It had originally been convened to talk frankly about the rising distrust between the White and Black wings of the Republican party. On a national level the Republican party had been slowly but surely distancing itself from its Black constituency, and the issues that affected them. In some areas Republicans were even siding with Redemptionist Democrats to deny the right to vote to the very people who’d helped get the Republicans elected. Black members of the party wanted answers, but the meeting in Lawrence, tense from the opening gavel, had disintegrated into name-calling and threats. Jake had returned home angry and disappointed that nothing had been resolved.
“Papa thinks race shouldn’t be involved in politics at all,” Rebecca said. “He thinks we should tend our farms and churches and leave the politics to those who know better.”
They’d had this discussion many times before. Jake didn’t feel like arguing with someone who had no faith in the abilities of her own race. “I should go in and see what the girls are doing.”
He went inside.
Rebecca followed.
Loreli and the girls were giggling over things that scared them when Bebe’s attention fixed on something by the door. Loreli turned and saw the uncle and the sour-faced woman standing there. “You know,” she said, “I didn’t get your name.”
“Rebecca Appleby.”
?
??Pleased to meet you.”
Apparently, Rebecca didn’t share the sentiment because she turned away from Loreli and addressed the twins. “Girls, you have chores. Tell Miss Winters good-bye.”
Bebe looked resigned, then offered up quietly, “Good-bye, Loreli.”
The sadness in the twin set of brown eyes pulled at Loreli’s heartstrings again. She said to them, “It’s been nice meeting you.”
“We liked meeting you too,” Dede responded. Dede looked up into Loreli’s face and asked earnestly, “Are you sure you can’t be our mama, Loreli?”
Loreli tried not to be moved by the plea in the little one’s eyes and voice, but failed. She stroked Dede’s hair. “I’m sure, pumpkin.”
A tight-lipped Bebe told her sister. “Come on, De. Let’s go out to the barn.”
Loreli watched their exit with a lump in her throat. She then trained her eyes on Uncle Jake, and told him warningly, “Find those girls a mama.”
She gave his sour-faced companion a short dismissive glance, dearly hoping Rebecca wasn’t a candidate; faces with that much vinegar had no business being around children. “I’ll be heading back now. Nice meeting you both.”
The uncle stepped back so she could leave the room. Their eyes met, but she had nothing else to say.
Only after she’d driven out of sight of the house did Loreli let her melancholy have its head. What she wouldn’t give to have daughters as fine as those two. Even though she’d only been with them a short while, Loreli liked them both. Remembering Dede’s screams filled her heart and made her want to turn around, and go back to give Dede one last hug. The child needed it, Loreli sensed. Getting a mother might help ease her over her fears, as long as the mother wasn’t that Appleby woman. Loreli thought back on Bebe too. With the right guidance, Bebe had the potential to grow into a fearless and formidable young woman, full of spunk and determination. Loreli wondered what it might be like to wake up to their smiling faces every day, to share their secrets and watch them grow into women. To have experiences as precious as these would be worth whatever she’d have to give up in return. Not that it would be much. In the last ten years, she’d accumulated enough wealth to live however she pleased, but she had little else. She had no family, no roots, no church. Her faith in God and in herself had been all she’d ever had, even back during the lean times. Like Bebe and Dede, she too had grown up without her mama; and like them, had wanted one desperately. Had Halle Winters lived, she’d be an old woman now. And under her loving guidance, Loreli’s life might’ve been different. She might’ve learned how to cook and sew instead of how to perform card tricks and the fine art of picking pockets. Maybe she’d even have a husband and a passel of kids by now, instead of memories of every gambling den from Louisville to Atlanta. Being with Bebe and her sister, Dede, made feelings well up inside Loreli she didn’t even know she had. She blamed it all on the wagon train. The journey had changed her. Admittedly, she was still her old sassy self, but she’d noticed a new layer forming beneath the cynicism, a layer that seemed to be softening her outlook on life. Lady gamblers seldom rubbed shoulders with good women, but the good women of the train had taken her in, shown her love, respect, and she now called them friends. The brides had come to Kansas filled with the hope of new possibilities. Some of that thinking must have rubbed off, because Loreli wanted that too, but with such a checkered past, she’d never have the slow, traditional life other women took for granted. She put the twins out of her mind and concentrated on driving.
As he did every night, Jake looked in on the girls before heading off to his own bed. As he listened to their soft breathing and gazed down on their sleeping faces, he thought about his sister, Bonnie. Each small face held remnants of her—the shape of her brow, the curve of her chin. Dede had her sweet nature, Bebe her zest for life. Today’s escapade had scared him. Coming home and finding them gone was not an experience he wanted to repeat. He’d been frantic. Although he prided himself on the hold he usually kept on his emotions, not knowing their whereabouts had shattered that control. All he could think about was finding them, and finding them safe. Then to learn they’d gone after a mama—well, he could see that the years ahead weren’t going to be easy ones.
Jake was a farmer, and his brief stint at Howard College qualified him as the closest thing the area had to an animal doctor, but he wasn’t wealthy by anyone’s measure. The corn and hogs he raised brought in money at harvest time, and although his neighbors rarely paid for his medical services in coin, Jake managed to make sure the girls were clothed and fed. All that aside, today proved that they needed more than just food and clothing. Had Bonnie not lost her life in the carriage accident, she’d be the one raising them, but they were now his to look after. He’d initially wanted to blame the girls’ sudden quest for a new mother on the organizers that brought in the mail-order women; after all, they were the ones responsible for the hubbub that had been sweeping the colony for the past six weeks. If the twins’ friends hadn’t been so excited about getting new mothers, today’s incident might not have happened. But Jake knew such blame was misplaced. Nothing was that simple. They were girls, and one day would grow into women. They’d be needing guidance along the way, and he didn’t know a thing about getting them to that point. He couldn’t even take them shopping in town because he knew nothing about buying their clothes, and so rather than ask Rebecca to handle the tasks, he kept them in boots and denims. Neither of the girls seemed to mind, at least so far, but he knew that would change. Soon, their heads would be filled with the yearnings and urges of adolescent girls, and he’d be about as much help to their maturation as a Klansman at a Black Republican rally.
Jake reached down and gently stroked Bebe’s brow. Lord knows, he’d already decided to get married just for their sake, but suitable women were hard to find out here. He knew folks in the area were putting money on Rebecca Appleby saddling him. Rebecca had emigrated here ten years ago with her preacher father. She was a decent, churchgoing woman who could cook, sew, and at twenty-five years of age still young enough to bear children of her own, but the fact that the girls didn’t care for her or she for them stood as a formidable barrier to asking for her hand. If he married for the sake of the girls, Jake thought it only right that the future Mrs. Jake Reed be a woman they could love, and be loved by in return. Rebecca’s preacher daddy had instilled a lot of fire and brimstone in her, and every now and then it raised its righteous head. Like today. Yes, he’d been angry at the girls for disobeying her and leaving the house, but not angry enough to take a strap to them. He didn’t know when they’d finally be at peace with Bonnie’s death, but the girls seemed to believe that finding a new mother would solve all of their problems. He wasn’t naive enough to believe that, but there was nothing wrong with hope.
Chapter 2
When Jake got up Saturday morning, the girls were gone. Their empty bed filled his insides with the same stomach-roiling panic he’d had yesterday. Hoping against hope that they’d just gotten up early, he ran out to the barns and pens, calling their names. Silence. He stood in the center of the front yard and yelled across the plains, but received no reply.
He hurried into the barn to saddle Fox, and found a piece of paper nailed to the stallion’s stall. He snatched it free and read the childish handwriting.
Dear Uncle,
We will come back when we find a mama.
Beatrice and Deirdre Case
After saddling his horse, a tight-lipped Jake rode hard towards the rising sun.
His first stop was the Gibson place. Agatha Gibson was Bebe’s best friend. Their pa Arthur, was a big-boned man from Tennessee, and the colony’s blacksmith. He’d gotten himself a mail-order woman two years ago. Her name was Denise and she seemed a perfect fit for the giant Gibson and his two little girls. Art’s first wife, Jeanette, died giving birth to their youngest daughter Charlene.
Jake’s hard knocks brought Arthur to the door in his union suit. His large hands were cradling a shotgun, but upon
seeing it was Jake on the porch, the big man visibly relaxed.
“Thought it might be trouble,” Gibson said, in explanation of the gun. He looked back over his shoulder and called, “It’s only Jake, Denise.”
Gibson, like some of the other colonists, had come to Kansas as part of the famed Exodus of ’79 to escape the bloody Redemption being waged by the South’s Democrats. As a result, he was constantly on alert for anyone bent upon harming him, his family, or his rights as a citizen. “What’re you doing out this time of morning, Jake? The sun just got up.”
“Are the girls here?”
Gibson looked puzzled. “Yeah, my girls are here. They’re ’sleep, though.”
Jake held on to his patience. “Not your girls, Arthur. Mine. Are they here?”
“Why no. They missing?”
Jake nodded tersely, then gave him a quick account of the twins’ quest for a new mother. “This whole bride thing has them on a wild streak.”
“Girls need a woman.”
“I’m finding that out.” Jake ran a frustrated hand over his short hair. “I’m going into town. If the twins show up here, make them stay put. I’ll stop by on my way back.”
Arthur nodded. “Sure will. If you need help searching, just come on back and let me know. Hope you find them.”
“Thanks. Me too.”
Jake mounted Fox and continued the ride to town. As the big stallion ate up the distance, Jake tried to think like an eight-year-old. If he were the girls, where would he go? He was only a few miles from Rebecca’s house, but he doubted they’d go there, so it made no sense to stop by to see. He also had no desire to hear Rebecca’s, “I told you sos.”
At the train station, the driver finally got all Loreli’s trunks, valises and hat boxes unloaded from his hack. She tipped him generously for his help, and he departed with a friendly wave.
The train tracks were located about eight miles west of town. The depot was nothing more than a shed but Loreli didn’t care as long as she could purchase a ticket. There were about ten people waiting for the train. According to the hand-lettered sign on the depot it was scheduled to arrive within the hour. Loreli, dressed in an emerald green traveling costume and matching hat, spotted a uniformed ticket agent seated behind a table. She headed over to purchase her ticket, and suddenly froze with surprise. In conversation with him were Bebe and Dede. What are they doing here? Loreli scanned the area for their uncle or the sour-faced Rebecca Appleby, but saw neither. Leaving her piled-up trunks and hat boxes, Loreli hurried over to get an answer to this early morning mystery.