Blood of Pioneers Read online

  Blood of Pioneers

  Divided Decade Collection

  by

  Michelle Isenhoff

  Blood of Pioneers. Copyright © 2011, 2014 by Michelle Isenhoff. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Cover image by D. Robert Pease of www.WalkingStickBooks.com.

  All rights reserved.

  Edited by Amy Nemecek.

  Candle Star Press

  www.michelleisenhoff.com

  Table of Contents

  About the Divided Decade Collection

  1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

  8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13

  14 | 15 | 16 | 17

  bonus short: The Close of a Long Family Mystery

  Historical Note

  Divided Decade Discount

  About the Author

  Titles by Michelle Isenhoff

  Audiobooks by Michelle Isenhoff

  Emblazon

  Wayland, Michigan, 1862

  Chapter 1

  One honest glimpse of freedom has the power to twist life into a coyote trap. Routines that once gave Hannah Wallace a measure of contentment now ensnared her, dulling her imagination, chaining her painfully in place. In contrast, her brother bounded down the street like a rabbit freed from a cage.

  Hannah watched him with a mingling of jealousy and pride. He looked dashing in his Sunday best, buttons gleaming, hat set at a rakish angle, newly shined boots kicking up puffs of dust. He was young, handsome, confident, and off to save the Union. Oh, what she wouldn’t give to be leaving town with him!

  Seth had only been seventeen when fighting first broke out, not old enough to join up without lying like his friend Jamison Coops had done. Folks signed up in droves, afraid the war would end before they had a chance to make a name for themselves. Seth had begged and pleaded, cried and even swore, but Pa stood firm. War was dirt and illness and sweat and killing, and no underage boy of his was going to participate. Pa’s pessimism didn’t dampen Seth’s enthusiasm any, but his sharp eye did keep him from sneaking off, so the boy had to wait.

  Then early this summer the recruiters came back. Soon as Seth heard, he let out a whoop, dropped his pitchfork, and lit out for town. Hannah tagged along, positively green with envy, and watched him set his name down with a flourish. His lopsided grin sparkled with charm and innocence. “With a Wallace man in the mix,” he boasted, “the war will be over in no time.”

  “That’s the spirit!” the recruiter encouraged. After a year of fighting, volunteers had grown scarce. Returning veterans advertised the destruction of warfare too well. The dead spoke even louder. “I wish I had ten thousand more boys like you, son.”

  “Won’t need ’em, sir.” Seth swelled with pride and confidence. “I’ll lick those Rebs myself. All the way back to Richmond.”

  Richmond! How Hannah would love to see it. Washington, too. And Charleston and Montgomery and the mountains and the ocean and all the other places the newspaper filled itself with nowadays. They sounded so far away—exotic and exciting. And her crummy brother would probably get to see them all.

  She watched as Seth joined the gathering in the park square. A dozen recruits from the farms round about sat in the grass and on old stumps, rendezvousing for the first leg of their journey, the county seat in Allegan. Hannah knew many of them. Their number included a few older men, but most were young, raw-boned farmers leaving home for the first time.

  Her eyes flicked immediately to Walter Beasley, whose wrists poked a good three inches beyond his cuffs. He had sprouted up faster than a new row of corn, and his poor mama never could keep up. But his smile was open and friendly, and Hannah had always liked him.

  Next to Walter stood cocky little Tommy Stockdale, the blacksmith’s son and her own brother-in-law, with his bellyful of wild stories and a penchant for thinking up ideas fool enough to land an entire Sunday school class in trouble. Her oldest sister, Maddy, had run off and married Tommy as soon as she turned sixteen. Mama and Pa didn’t like the idea of her getting hitched so young, especially with a war on, but they figured stopping her would only push her into a peck of trouble, so they reluctantly agreed.

  Walter slapped Seth on the back. “Glad you could join us, Wallace. Gunna need you for my rear guard. When they slap a uniform on this fine-tuned body, every girl from Wayland to Washington is going to come begging me to marry her.”

  “Sure,” Seth jibed, “until you open your mouth and start talking.”

  Walter grinned.

  “I’m sorry, gentlemen,” Tommy informed them with mock dismay, “but the war will be over before we can even muster in. Someone leaked to the press that I was joining up, and the South entered into immediate peace negotiations.”

  The others moaned and rolled their eyes, and Tommy punched Seth on the arm good-naturedly. “What a time we’re going to have, boys!” he whooped.

  Hannah’s attention was turned by someone calling her name. Wes Carver waved at her from across the street where he stood on a tree stump gawking at the new soldiers, plainly wishing he was among their number. His older brother had left several months before with a similar group of men. Since then his mother had discovered Wes drilling with a stolen kitchen broom more than once.

  Hannah skipped over to join her schoolmate, passing between storefronts draped with red, white, and blue bunting. “Isn’t this exciting?” she exclaimed.

  “Sure! It’s the only thing ever happens in this town. But don’t tell my father I said so.” He dropped his voice with a nervous peek behind him. “I’d catch it good if he knew I was here. According to him, all those fellows are off to certain death or dismemberment.”

  Hannah brushed off the dire prediction. “There wouldn’t be any glory without a little risk.”

  Of course war had casualties. Every week or so the Allegan Record published a list of county men who had died or been injured in the various conflicts. Hannah had known some of them, but tragedy hadn’t touched her personally. Death, for the greater part, remained distant and faceless. Stories of gallantry and bravery in battle, however, had grown in the telling until even a plucky girl could imagine herself a hero. Old men might complain of the war’s cost and its length, but not Hannah.

  “Danger just adds to the romance,” she concluded.

  “Romance!” Wes spluttered as if the word tasted of quinine. “You girls sure have a way of turning everything into ribbons and daisies. War is about honor! The South has challenged the North, and we have to fight them.”

  “Oh, blast your honor,” Hannah scoffed. “This isn’t a gentlemen’s duel. You and I both know the South is just a bunch of dirty rebels who chose to disregard the law and leave the Union. I wish I could be the one to teach them a lesson.”

  Wes bit back a devilish grin. He never could resist a provocation. “Aw, you’re just a girl.”

  Hannah stamped her foot with a crunch of gravel. “John Wesley Carver! I can shoot the eye out of a squirrel at a hundred paces!”

  He crossed his arms. “That don’t mean nothing. You couldn’t shoot a person.”

  Hannah missed the mischief in his eye. “I could so! They’re nothing but stinking Rebs who need shooting, and if I can’t do it, at least my brother can!” She could feel the heat rising in her cheeks and knew it wasn’t from the sticky August weather.

  Wes straightened, suddenly serious. “Is that your pa joining up with the boys?”

  Hannah had seen him, too, and some of the color faded from the banners. “What’s it look like?” she snapped.

  “Thought he didn’t hold with fighting any more than my pa.”

  “He
don’t.”

  “Then why’s he in there? The fellows rankle him too much?”

  Hannah didn’t answer. Pa had taken some ribbing off a few of the neighbors. They said his son was a braver man than he, but Hannah knew that wasn’t why he signed his name. The real reason was to keep an eye on Seth and make sure he didn’t “get his fool head blown off.” She had heard him say as much to Mama that very morning as they lingered alone at the breakfast table.

  “The wheat should pay off the debt, Amelia,” he had said. “Right now our son needs me more than this farm does.”

  “It’s not the farm I’m worried about, Henry.”

  Hannah had chosen that moment to barge into the room, causing her father to slosh his coffee. “It’s not fair!” she cried.

  Mama sighed. “Not you, too, child.” Her eyes were red.

  “You and Seth both get to go off and do something important, but I’ll be stuck on this farm for the rest of my life. I wish I was a boy!”

  Pa wiped his hand with a handkerchief then turned to face her. His voice was as rich and brown as soil. “First of all, you’re only thirteen years old. Too young for war even if you were a boy. And second, you’ve just named two good reasons why you’re needed here at home. With Seth and I both gone, your mama is going to need your help more than ever.”

  Hannah crossed her arms spitefully. “She’s got Joel and Justin,” she said, naming her older and younger brothers. “And Maddy’s moving home, too. They can help her.”

  Pa stood and rested his hands on Hannah’s shoulders. “It’s noble of you to want to fight, honey, but the North is going to need a different kind of help from you. The Union will need what this farm can produce. How do you think the army gets its bread, its meat, its horses? You will be serving your country right here.”

  She had looked up at her father with tears brimming in her eyes, and it hadn’t taken him long to discover the real reason for her outburst. “Aw, Peanut,” he said, pulling her against him in a tight embrace. “I’ll miss you, too. More than anything.”

  That made the tears overflow. “Don’t go, Pa.” It was one thing for Seth or Tommy to go seeking for adventure, but Pa? He belonged here with his family. Here with her.

  Pa pulled her chin up and wiped her eyes with his sleeve. “I won’t be gone forever, darling. I’ll be home before you know it. And it will help me to know you’re being brave.”

  She had promised. But now, watching her father join the others, her resolve felt as fragile as straw.

  “Your pa should have stayed home.” Wes frowned. “He’s thirty-nine, for crying out loud. My brother says the old ones are the first to get sick.”

  Tears burned Hannah’s eyes. “Shut up, Wes Carver! You don’t know anything!” She punched him hard and flew across the fields toward home as her father took his first step down the long, long road to Allegan.

  Chapter 2

  Hannah dumped the pail of wood ashes into the barrel. A puff of fine gray powder rose up, filling the shed and making her cough. The morning lay thick and steamy, with a haze blurring the edges of the fields. It was the kind of morning that felt so much like the afternoon before that it was easy to forget there’d been any night to mark the passing. She slammed down the barrel lid and set the ashes to swirling. Then, wiping her hands on her trousers, she placed the pail inside the back door.

  In the week since Seth had gone, she’d taken to choring in his clothes. Mama didn’t like it much, but they were a sight easier to move around in than a skirt. And for some reason they made her feel closer to Pa, like the work she did in them was more important.

  Hannah reached for the hoe just as her youngest brother tumbled from the house and grabbed it. “Mama said I have to work the garden today.”

  Hannah snatched it away. “Then who’s going to feed the chickens and collect the eggs?” The garden had been her responsibility for three years now. She wasn’t about to entrust her vegetables to an eight-year-old.

  “Me,” Justin sneered, jerking the hoe out of her hands. “And you won’t hear me complaining like you always do, because I know what it takes to run this farm.”

  Hannah wrinkled her nose in disgust as she watched him march away. Since the men left, chores that had been as predictable as daybreak were being shuffled like a game of Old Maid.

  “Don’t you kill any of my plants, Justin Wallace!” she yelled.

  He stuck his tongue out at her.

  Hannah yanked open the door. On her left was the “gathering room,” as Mama called it, where the family assembled around the fireplace at the end of every day. But even at rest hands were kept busy. A sewing basket and knitting needles always sat tucked away behind Mama’s rocking chair. And the pile of wool that needed to be carded before it could be spun into yarn was a permanent fixture in the back corner. No matter how many hours Hannah sat brushing pieces of it between the two hand paddles, the pile never seemed to grow smaller.

  The kitchen opened to the right. Hannah found her mother inside frying bacon and eggs that fragranced the whole house. The woman’s face looked weary even though the day had just begun, but her spine was as straight as the pines growing along the river. Hannah wondered if she had a bout of the ague last night. The dreadful shakes were endemic this time of year, followed closely by fever. Everyone got it, but Mama suffered more than the rest of them.

  “Did you send Justin into my garden?” Hannah accused.

  The grease sizzled in the big cast iron griddle as Mama flipped an egg. “Yes. I need you to do the laundry.”

  “By myself?” she groaned.

  “With Maddy. The hay is dry and Joel and I have to get it stacked before it rains.”

  “Maddy! Mama, I can’t—”

  “You can and you will.”

  “But Mama, you know how bossy Maddy gets. I’d rather hoe the garden.”

  “You’ll be doing both if you don’t stop arguing—with the memory of Old Hickory on your backside.”

  Hannah glanced at the wooden rod hanging behind the stove. Only twice had she needed an application. The smoothness of the grain was owed mostly to Seth’s stubbornness, though Justin was doing his fair share to maintain the polish.

  “While you’re standing there, you may set the table.”

  As she worked, Joel came in with the milk and set it on the sideboard. Sandy-haired, patient, and shy, every girl in the red schoolhouse had a crush on him, especially Sue Ellen Huseby. Hannah made a face. Joel had never even met Old Hickory.

  “Did you turn the cows loose?”

  “Yes, Mama.”

  Mama set the eggs on the table with a clatter. “Very good. Go call your brother. Breakfast is ready.”

  The kitchen was Hannah’s favorite room. Mama’s pretty china decorated the corner shelf Pa had carved for her. The cook stove threw off a pleasant warmth, and the rich, smoky smell of bacon set her mouth to aching. As the family gathered around the table and bowed their heads for grace, Hannah thought to herself that any meal in this room was the best time of the day. It would have been perfect, except for two empty seats.

  Hannah missed Seth and Pa. Life went on much the same, but the flavor was all wrong, like tea without enough honey. She missed her father’s easy grace and the sense of security she felt when he was near. And she missed the fire and energy that made Seth so darn disagreeable but so much fun.

  That same restless fire burned in her own veins, often blazing to life at the most inopportune moments. She wasn’t like Joel, who could bury his feelings beneath a cool exterior. The apocalypse could happen in the backyard and Joel would go on milking the cows with hardly a lift of his eyebrows. No, Hannah favored Seth. Emotions flowed through her as powerfully as the waters of the mighty Kalamazoo River. And like Seth, her deepest, strongest current was a voracious appetite for adventure. A desire made so much worse by the boredom of everyday life.

  Farm work was just plain dull. All the local adventures had dried up long ago, soon after her parents unpacked their wagon
. At that time, Michigan was mostly just wilderness. Mama didn’t much like to talk about those days, but Pa would. Hannah loved to sit before the fire of an evening and listen to him tell about their journey from Vermont to Michigan.

  Soon after he and Mama were married, Pa got the itch to go West. So they packed up everything they could carry and floated down the Erie Canal on a line boat pulled by two mules. Then they boarded a steamship for Detroit. There they had purchased a team and a wagon and followed the old Indian trails to Allegan County. How Hannah wished they would have waited a few years so she could have shared in the adventure!

  Back then, the farm was still a forest. Pa had purchased it with a mind to try farming. They had built a little log cabin where Seth and Maddy and Joel were born. Seth remembered hearing packs of wolves howling outside the cabin when he was little, and Pa had once shot a panther where the hen house now stood. One day a band of real Indians had walked through the farmyard, stopping to trade dried meat and colorful baskets for some of Pa’s pipe tobacco and a length of woolen cloth.

  But Hannah had missed it all. By the time she came along, the family had already moved into the new frame farmhouse. Most of the wild animals had been killed or driven away, and the Indians who hadn’t moved kept mostly to themselves. The county was getting downright civilized and it didn’t suit Hannah one bit.

  The old log cabin still sat on the edge of their farm, but it was only used for storage now. Hannah spent hours in it as a child, coercing Joel to play the part of her husband as they braved many dangers on the frontier, but it had all been make-believe. Every last real adventure had been used up, and Hannah had resigned herself to living with it.

  Until war flared up in the East.

  Now Hannah’s head swam with new stories and ideas. Marching, camping, fighting, traveling to new places, maybe even seeing Mr. Lincoln himself! It sounded far more exciting than slopping the hogs, but once again she was doomed to miss it all.