Steal Away Home Read online

  • • •

  By the tenth of December, the snow was packed into thick bales in the drifts, but the roads were fairly clear for travel—and brought Marshal Fain back. It was just luck that Miz Lizbet was down in the cellar when he arrived, and had the good sense to stay there when she heard voices.

  Marshal Fain stood in the doorway, waiting to be asked in. No one asked. Trembles arched his back and stared the marshal down. Finally, Pa said, “Well, it’s cold. Thee might at least close the door behind thee. What brings thee here?”

  “Just checking to see how you weathered the storm, Mr. Weaver.”

  “Well as to be expected.”

  Marshal Fain looked around the room, inspecting. “The wife back yet?”

  “We expect her as soon as the weather clears up.”

  The marshal tapped the toe of his boot on the floor, until Pa had no choice but to direct him to sit down. Solomon quickly left the table, knowing the marshal wouldn’t sit there with him.

  “Who’s this, Mr. Weaver?”

  “Now, thee knows who this is, Mr. Fain. Don’t toy with us.”

  The marshal squinted toward Solomon. “I don’t believe I’ve seen this individual before.”

  “Yes sir, you have, Marshal, last time you were here,” James said. “You studied his papers. He’s Solomon Jefferson, a free man, remember?”

  “Well now, I make a lot of stops on my circuit. Could be I remember, could be I don’t. You got those papers with you, boy?”

  “No sir,” Solomon said, his jaws clenched.

  Marshal Fain looked around the room. “It’s looking mighty orderly for a place where three men’s holed up in the winter. Hot pot of coffee on the stove, a pot of something tangy steaming. Sure smells good.”

  “My son James has become quite a cook since his mother’s been gone,” Pa said, with a twinkle in his eye. James smiled to himself, then took the cue and lifted the lid on the pot boiling on the stove, swirled the stringy gray stuff around with Ma’s big pewter ladle.

  “About done,” James said, though it might have needed forty more hours to cook, for all he knew.

  “Nice lacy doilies on the table. Sure looks like a woman’s touch,” said Marshal Fain.

  “Thee might get to the point, friend.”

  “Well, Mr. Weaver, folks say there’s a Nigra woman in and out of here. Folks saw her come in not long ago, never saw her go out.”

  James stole a glance at Solomon, and both of them stood frozen in place.

  Pa stood up and loomed over the marshal. “I have no use for thy accusations, sir, and I would appreciate thy vacating my home.” Pa’s voice was calm, but James read the anger soaring through him.

  Marshal Fain just crossed his ankle over his knee, as if he planned to stay a good long while.

  What would Will’s pa or Jeremy’s pa do at a time like this? Probably chase the marshal with a gun, fire at his toes while he hotfooted it down the front steps.

  “I do not lose my temper easily,” Pa said, “but thee is provoking me.” Pa snatched off the marshal’s hat, with the showy badge on it. “A gentleman takes off his hat indoors, sir.” He threw the hat down on the chair and sat on it.

  James could barely keep from laughing, especially when he thought of the joke that used to go around the Meeting House in Boston. A burglar breaks into a Friend’s house, and the pa catches the burglar red-handed. He grabs a hunting rifle and aims it at the man. Well, the burglar’s not expecting this, says, “You don’t scare me a bit. I know a Quaker would never shoot a man.” And the pa replies, “I have no intention of harming thee, friend, but thee’s standing where I aim to shoot.”

  James was remembering how all the men and boys used to laugh over this joke, when Marshal Fain turned pure mean.

  “I am warning you, Caleb Weaver, I’ll get you for hiding runaway Nigras. All I need’s proof, and I’ll get that. My men will be watching here night and day, and we’ll arrest you and any darkie that goes in or out your door. In or out, Mr. Caleb Weaver, night or day, you hear?” He got up abruptly and strode to the door.

  Outside, James spotted a posse of the meanest, dirtiest-looking Border Ruffians, sporting no telling what kind of guns, and all of them blowing into their hands to keep warm.

  These were the kinds of men Will Bowers was out hunting down.

  CHAPTER TWENTY - NINE

  Up to the Tower

  With Lizbet Charles officially dead again and laid to rest, and the journal in Dr. Baxi’s hands, there was only one thing Dana still needed to do. She had to get into the house that James Weaver built.

  “You’ve got a key to Wolcott Castle, Dad, why won’t you let me in?”

  “Because the place is a death trap. Why do you think it’s going to take a quarter of a million dollars to restore it? You can poke your finger through the walls where the termites have feasted, and the floors collapse with the slightest pressure. There’s broken glass all around, and one more windstorm will send the roof flying to Nebraska. Flat-out no!”

  Which, of course, meant yes to Dana. There had to be away.

  “Simple,” Jeep said. “I climb that giant elm out there and catapult myself onto the second-floor flat roof.”

  “And then what?” Ahn asked.

  “Well, then it’s so easy my little brothers could do it. All the windows up there are broken out. You just find a jagged hole big enough to crawl through.”

  Ahn cried, “I don’t want to be shredded.”

  “Don’t you ever watch cop shows? I’ll just stick my hand in and unlock the window and push it up.”

  Dana said, “So, let me see if I’ve got this. You’re going to do all that, and then you’re going to come downstairs and open the front door for us poor helpless girls?”

  “Well, yeah, that’ll work.”

  “No way. I’m the one who’s going in through the window.”

  “We all go in through the window,” Ahn said, with a sigh. Jeep grinned. “Just name the night.”

  Friday. That gave Dana three days to gather supplies and plan the strategy, including what to tell her parents if they all fell through the floor and died.

  On Friday, Dr. Baxi phoned.

  “Dana? Thank you for giving us the journal—finally. We have all read it, the police and Dr. Fleicher and myself. Very interesting. But I’m afraid it’s not too useful in closing the case. There are still too many unraveling ends. Now, what to do with the journal?”

  Ahn and Jeep were arguing over what food to bring on the breakin. “Shh!” Dana hissed, covering the mouthpiece of the phone.

  “We have decided to give the journal to the Douglas County Historical Society.”

  Dana’s heart sank. It was hers!

  “The curator at the museum has promised that it will be exhibited as a gift from Dana Shannon. Very nice.”

  Well, better than nothing.

  By the end of the call, Ahn had everything—including a bag of potato chips and some onion dip—stuffed in a backpack, and now they only had to wait for nine o’clock when it would be dark enough to walk over to Vermont Avenue for their first breaking and entering into a castle.

  • • •

  As a big concession to his male ego, Dana let Jeep wear the backpack as they scrambled up the tree. But she was the first one to leap across space to the second-story overhang.

  They found the window with the biggest hole and least number of jagged edges, and they stuffed Ahn through it, so she could open another window from the inside. And then they were in a room covered with empty bookshelves and cobwebs worthy of a Halloween spook house.

  The floor seemed squishy, and the walls yielded like cardboard sets in a play. Something flew by. “What was that?”

  “Don’t ask.” Dana led the way. A huge white thing gleamed down the hall—an ancient bathtub that hulked along the bathroom wall on dragon’s claws, like a beast ready to strike.

  Ahn gasped. “Why did I listen to you guys?”

  “What are we suppo
sed to be looking for?” asked Jeep.

  “I don’t know—James-isms. Something that tells us what kind of a guy he grew up to be.”

  “Well, we have to go up to the tower.” Jeep swept his flashlight over the rounded walls of the main hall. Waist down, the walls were some dark kind of wood, and up to the ceiling, they were all peeling plaster and chipped paint. Two sconces that had once probably held kerosene lamps hung by a thread.

  “Nice place here,” Ahn said, as something furry with very short legs and a long pointy tail scurried past them.

  Finally, Jeep spotted a child-sized door open an inch or two. He yanked at the bloated wood, and the door creaked open just enough for them to slip into the stairwell. The stairs wound and wound upward, only wide enough for one person at a time.

  “Ladies first.”

  “Not me,” Ahn said, but Jeep reassured her. “Keep going. I’m right behind you.”

  The room at the top was so narrow that if you stood in the center and stretched out your arms, you could put your palm flat on each side.

  “Hey, I’m holding up the tower,” Jeep bragged.

  The red brick walls had tiny gold stars painted on them, and moons, and Saturn and comets and Jupiter. An ancient telescope stood with its eye to a window.

  “That’s to find the North Star,” Ahn whispered. “Well, this has been nice. Ready to go down?” She eagerly led the way back to the stairs, but one glance down into the dark pit of the stairwell and she begged, “Just toss me out the tower window.” But she followed Dana down the stairs, all of them in a tight chain.

  “What smells so ripe and musty?” Dana asked.

  Jeep knew. “Bat guano. Haven’t you ever been in a cave?”

  “Bats?!”

  “Quiet, you’ll scare the roaches.”

  “That’s it, I’m getting out of here,” Ahn said.

  “Weren’t you the one who wasn’t even scared at A Nightmare on Elm Street?” asked Jeep.

  “Yes, but this is real life. I’ll wait out on the front porch. Don’t leave without me.” And she rushed down the stairs, slamming the front door on her way out.

  Dana and Jeep crept carefully into a massive room that faced the rear of the house. Maybe it was once Edmund Wolcott’s bedroom. Dana imagined a huge four-poster bed with red drapes and a satin footstool, which Edmund, the cattle baron, must have used to mount his bed.

  Jeep whistled. “Check out this window.” It was about twelve feet high, floor to ceiling, swinging open like a door, and beyond was a small balcony. Jeep left the backpack in Edmund’s room, and they stepped onto the balcony, sucking up the welcome breeze after the stifling, dank house.

  Then, in a second, Jeep vanished, as if he’d fallen through a trapdoor. Something—probably his flashlight—dropped and shattered way below him.

  Dana’s flashlight darted around. There was no sign of Jeep, except for his hollering—“Ahhhhhhhhhhh!”—until she saw the tips of his fingers, bloodless white, clinging to the top side of the rotten floorboard. Jeep hung below, his feet thrashing around for something to glom on to. But there was nothing except deep space.

  “Hang on, Jeep!”

  “No other choice.” His words came in short bursts.

  The thing was to distribute her weight evenly so the rest of the balcony wouldn’t collapse. She lay herself carefully across what remained of the balcony floor and thrust her hands down into the darkness. “Can you see my hands?”

  “Sure, so what? You think I’m gonna let go of these boards?”

  “Wait, I’ll shine the flashlight down below you.”

  “Ahh, not in my eyes!”

  “Right. I’m going to see if there’s something soft you can jump down to.”

  Three floors below and sunk deep into the ground was an empty swimming pool. And that’s if he could slide like a missile through space, straight down. If he missed by a foot or two, he’d land on a wrought-iron fence that had lethal-looking keep-out points on it. “Hey, Jeep, don’t look down, and don’t jump. I’ll pull you up.”

  “Fast. My arms are getting awful long.”

  “Give me one hand. You hold on to the boards with the other one, just in case.”

  Dana plunged her hands down into the dark hole, grabbing one of Jeep’s wrists. But he weighed a lot more than she did, and it was hard to get any leverage, lying flat on her belly. She used her elbows, as if she were arm wrestling, but she wasn’t strong enough to lift him straight up. If she could wrap his’ hand around one of those sturdy posts … “Don’t let go of me!”

  “You kiddin’?”

  She reached for a low post on the balcony railing—and it broke off in her hand. But it was rounded on one side, flat on the other. Idea! “Okay, Jeep, listen up. I’ve got this thick piece of wood here. I’m going to lay it across the hole, and I’m going to support it with all my weight on both ends—somehow. When I say now, grab it and see if you can chin yourself up on it.”

  She straddled the post and willed herself to be worth at least 200 pounds. “Now!”

  Jeep grunted with his effort, but finally she saw the top of his head. Bending from the waist, still supporting both ends of the post with her feet, she reached down and grabbed Jeep around the neck.

  He came up like a jack-in-the-box. “You’re choking me.”

  “Well, you’d be dead if I weren’t.”

  Now she had a good grip on his throat, so she could get off the post and give him a hearty yank until he bent his chest over the balcony floor.

  He lay across the floor, coughing and gasping for breath.

  “You okay?”

  “Sure,” he said faintly.

  They crawled back into Edmund’s bedroom and leaned against a wall. Assorted vermin scuttled across their feet, but it didn’t matter much anymore.

  Finally, Dana said, “What are we doing tomorrow night? Skydiving?”

  “This James guy, he didn’t do such an outstanding job in designing balconies.”

  “It’s not his fault,” Dana said. “It’s time and weather.” She rummaged around in the backpack, found the potato chips. “Want some?”

  “Leave ’em for the rats,” Jeep muttered.

  “What a guy.”

  “It’s true, I am.”

  “No, I meant James Weaver,” Dana teased, her mouth full of ranch-flavored chips.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Amen

  December 1856

  A few scrawny blackbirds fluttered past the window. It was getting to be nearly Christmas, and there was no sign of Ma and Rebecca. Jeremy Macon brought one letter out from town, though.

  December 12, 1856

  Dear Ones,

  My father has passed on to the next world. Mother kept him four days in the parlor until the snow lessened enough that we could lay him to rest in the Boston soil he dearly loved.

  Rebecca and I shall head home just as soon as weather permits, although it’s madness to travel in the ruin of winter. But we cannot bear to be away from thee on Christmas. Too much time has passed already.

  Keep our faces in thy mind’s eye, and our safe return in thy prayers.

  Pa read the letter aloud, emphasizing this part or that each time he read it. “Father Baylor gone. Four days, bless his soul. They’ll be heading home! Too much time indeed.”

  James couldn’t imagine a world in which he’d never see Grampa Baylor again. Sure, a man’s soul passed into eternity, but still, death was so unfair. Where was the justice in not having a grandfather to talk to? Grampa Weaver had died before James could even talk, and now with Grampa Baylor gone, he felt so … silenced. He thought of the sketch he’d done of Grampa’s dog Timbre.

  “Why, it’s the very likeness! Thee is a true craftsman.”

  “Naw, Grampa, it’s just a little old ink drawing. See here, the ears are too floppy, and I didn’t get the eyes just right. Timbre’s eyes, they laugh; here they don’t.”

  Grampa had picked up his walking stick, fancy with delicate carvings
of the Greek gods, and poked it in James’s ribs. “James, thee must look at the work of thy hands as a gift God has planted within thee, and thee must honor it by letting the gift pass through thy fingers.”

  “But I can’t do it right.”

  Poke, deep into his belly. “Does thee not think Michelangelo had a critical eye for his statues and paintings? And yet, see how they stand today.” He’d miraculously plucked the right book off his shelf of thousands of books and laid it open to a picture Michelangelo had painted up on the ceiling of some church in Rome, Italy.

  Breathtaking, impossible! “I’m no Michelangelo,” James had said, humbly looking at his feet but thinking, maybe I just might be!

  “No sir, thee is not a Michelangelo. Thee is a James Baylor Weaver. And I swear, I shall carry thy sketch of Timbre to my grave.”

  No one else had heard this conversation, and surely no one had thought to slip that old sketch in Grampa Baylor’s suit pocket before the coffin lid slammed shut. And now he was six feet under, and James was 1,500 miles away from him, and there was just no absolute guarantee, out here in this wilderness, that spring would ever come.

  Solomon peeked down over the railing of the steps. “Mr. Weaver, sir, Miz Lizbet’s taken sick.”

  • • •

  On the first clear day, Pa brushed past the two guards who camped outside their house in a buffalo-hide tent, cooking over an open fire, huddling under blankets to keep from freezing. Their sitting out there was pure stupidity, but it seemed that Marshal Fain was determined.

  “Where you goin’?” one of them asked.

  “To a quilting bee,” Pa said snidely.

  “Trying to slip a Nigra past us?”

  “No sir, trying to get into town to see if there’s any word from my wife, and to buy a cot for the man who’s stopping with us.”

  “That nigger?” The man’s nose was blue, would probably be frostbitten right off before long—at least James hoped so.