Dorothy Garlock - [Wabash River] Read Online Free Page B

liked the soft wool socks, warm gloves, and muffler she had knitted for him.
    He had worked with a nervous energy that sometimes puzzled Addie. He had not been used to life on a farm, but once told what to do and how to do it, he had gone about the work as if his life depended on its being finished by sundown. And when they had some leisure time, they had laughed, sung, and played games like two children let out of school.
    One evening after many passionate caresses, Addie had given in to his sexual persuasion and allowed him to penetrate her. It had not been a pleasant experience for her, and afterward she had been riddled with guilt and fear. She had refused him further intimacy and they had quarreled. To Addie, conceiving a child out of wedlock was something akin to death. A week of misery went by before Kirby had agreed to go to Preacher Sikes and speak the vows. A month later he had gone to town to buy a well bucket and had returned as happy as a boy with a new slingshot.
    He had joined the Arkansas Regulars.
    Addie was left alone, pregnant and scared. Never would she forget that fall and winter. Knowing that she had no one to depend on but herself, she had worked tirelessly storing food for winter and dragging deadfalls from the woods for firewood.
    During those painful months her dream of belonging to a large and loving family had died a slow, agonizing death. She had brought out and pondered the thoughts that had lurked in the back of her mind since Kirby had come into her life. He was not a staying kind of man. Her brief time with him was over. Yet, she did not regret having let him into her bed, for he had given her the one thing she had desired above all others—a child to love.
    It was during the last month of her pregnancy that Trisha had come out of the woods and hidden in the chicken house. Thin and sick, she had fallen on her knees and begged Addie to hide her from the man she believed was hunting her. She had been sold, she said, to a man who planned to place her in a brothel. To Addie, Trisha was like a gift from heaven. The two women had comforted each other, depended on each other, and come to love and respect each other. No one had ever come looking for Trisha, and Addie figured the girl must have traveled so many miles after her escape that her owner had given up tracking her.
    Then, two years ago, Preacher Sikes had brought Colin and Jane Ann to the farm and asked Addie to take a turn at boarding them. She had taken the orphans to her heart, and, in a way she would never have imagined, she now had her family.
    The two women, with Colin’s help, had been able to raise enough food to see them through the winters. Addie and Trisha had brought down small game when they had the shells to spare. Because Trisha was adept at robbing the hives of wild bees, they were never out of honey for their biscuits and wax for their candles.
    Addie had managed to save two ewes and a ram. She taught Trisha how to wash the wool, card it, and spin the thread. She was surprised and pleased to discover how much the girl knew about drying the wool and how good she was at creating colors. From the yarn the women knitted socks, mittens, scarves and caps.
    Thinking about it now, Addie realized that they had fared better than some. Thankfully, only minor skirmishes had taken place in their section of Arkansas, and they had been forced to give up to marauders only a hog, a few chickens, and some cabbages they had not had time to bring in from the field. On one occasion they had hidden the horses in a thicket and brought the sheep into the house.
    The war was over—and now her worries were focused on keeping her family together and the riff-raff that prowled the countryside away from her door.
    Addie waited until the family was gathered at the kitchen table before she told them the news about Kirby. She had fired up the cookstove and made a batch of gingerbread while Colin and Trisha did the evening chores.
    “I have something to