Prologue

Boulderhill, Montana

April 1865

Lacey Malcolm looked up expectantly. “Was that better this time, Miss Rebecca?” she asked earnestly, her round brown eyes large and owl-like in her little face.

Rebecca Murphy bent down to gently cup the little girl’s cheek. It didn’t matter how sad Rebecca might be feeling; seeing Lacey unfailingly brought a sparkle to Rebecca’s blue eyes. All the children in the orphanage had found a place in Rebecca’s heart, but those like Lacey who had faced particular adversity were especially precious to her. “Lacey, you always sing well. Better for you is singing like the angels sing to God in heaven.”

Lacey smiled brightly. “Thank you, Miss Rebecca,” she said.

Reverend Daniel Swann entered the classroom unnoticed and smiled as he watched the scene. “Very nice, Lacey. I’m looking forward to hearing the whole song at the pageant in July,” he finally chimed in, making his presence known to the schoolteacher and her charge.

Lacey’s smooth skin turned a deep shade of red despite the traces of a rich mahogany hue that revealed her Blackfoot origins. “Thank you, Reverend,” she said before she scampered out of the classroom.

The minister and teacher watched her leave. “How is she faring?” Reverend Swann asked suddenly as he studied the well-known signs of worry on the teacher’s face. He had known Rebecca for a long time—long enough to detect the signs of worry and weariness beneath the teacher’s impeccable composure.

Rebecca pushed a wayward strand of brown hair that had come loose from the casual knot pinned at the nape of her neck. Her brown eyes did not conceal her thoughts. “She’s a dear child. When she sings, I think she almost forgets what she has seen.”

Reverend Swann’s gray eyes studied Rebecca, who knew better than anyone how a tragedy during one’s youth could continue to haunt the mind years later. “And what about you?” he asked, his question both compassionate and challenging.

“I am well, thank you, Reverend Swann,” Rebecca replied. Having grown up with the question from the well-meaning townspeople who knew of her losses, Rebecca had come to rely on the stock answer she gave whenever anyone—even the minister, who had saved her life years ago—asked her how she was. “The children will be ready for the pageant.”

Reverend Swann did not respond immediately. His kind gaze, which stored the remembered pain that everyone in his congregation had suffered in their lives, rested upon her countenance like a voiceless prayer. Then, as if he had heard an amen concluding the prayer, he pursued the topic that had been on his mind. “The pageant will be a blessed celebration of thanks to God for the peace that has come to our land. It is a blessing to celebrate the end of that dreadful war between the states,” he said. “We were spared the violence and death that our northern and southern brethren endured, but some of our men will be coming back and we must remain attentive to their needs.” He shook his head. “War is a fearsome curse,” he said.

Try as she might, Rebecca never could hide her emotions from the minister, and her gaze was dark with the sad shadows of loss that had struck people, even in Montana Territory, so far from the fighting. “I know,” he said, although she had not spoken. “There are widows in our congregation whose husbands are not coming back. Some women will bear their grief and move on. Others will need us.”

Rebecca nodded her head in agreement, unconsciously biting her lip as the faces of those widows came to mind. There were women who were emotionally spent from the burdens of raising their children in the absence of husbands who had perished in battle. The church was already responsive to those families, bringing the children into activities that connected them to something besides mothers grieving over husbands who had gone to war before their offspring were old enough to remember their fathers.

An image of Lacey came to Rebecca’s mind from when the child, a bereft toddler dazed by the loss of her mother, had arrived at the orphanage. The tragedy of the native tribes struck Rebecca’s heart when she considered the children orphaned by wanton slaughter. Lacey’s tragedy was different, for she was the daughter of a settler and a Blackfoot woman. Her father had gone off to fight, convinced it was his duty. He had failed to understand that animosity toward the native peoples in Montana ran strong enough for a community of settlers twenty miles away to inflict their hatred upon the women and children of the local Blackfoot settlement.

Reverend Swann, whose pastoral duties took him far beyond his home church of Boulderhill, had been prevailed upon by the soldiers at Fort Benton to bring a three-year-old survivor of the carnage back to the Boulderhill orphanage. Some in the community were affronted by the presence of the half-White, half-Blackfoot child in their midst, but Reverend Swann had been steadfast.

Now, the little girl, who knew nothing of Blackfoot customs, called the orphanage home. She was shy and awkward, well aware that she looked very different from the other children in the orphanage. But when she sang, her shyness disappeared through singing for God and His angels, as Rebecca had taught her.

***

As she left the orphanage after sharing the evening meal with the children, Rebecca mused thoughtfully about Lacey’s talent. The child’s gift of music was a way for her to leave behind all the doubts and unspoken fears that she had stored in her young mind. Was it easier or harder, Rebecca wondered as she entered the little cottage built on the church property where she lived, to be so young that the imprint of such losses was blurred?

Rebecca’s losses came at the age of fourteen, and she remembered them well. They invaded her thoughts during the day, even while teaching the children of the orphanage. They haunted her while she slept until the nightmare of the fire that consumed her family roused her into terrified wakefulness.

As she lay in her bed that night, the haunting images of the past interrupted her prayers: the prim little house where she had lived with her parents on a small farm that provided for their needs, the side porch where she and Ma had done their sewing or sat on the steps, snapping beans into a bowl or waiting for Pa to come in from the fields for supper; the chickens cackling as they roamed the yard, their jerky movements comic in the search for corn that had spilled onto the dirt; the mellow lowing of Patience and Joy, the two cows whose milk provided the family with butter and cheese, and the benign comfort of their complacent acceptance of their lot; Ossie the hog, whose noisy brood added to the daily chorus that Rebecca, at fourteen years of age, had associated with her familiar routine.

The peaceful image did not last. As the night plunged deeper into darkness, the pleasant little farmhouse so cherished by Rebecca’s memory was brutally set on fire in the nightmare that waited for her to fall asleep so that it could ignite.

Flames, orange and angry, wriggled out of the windows and writhed the roof like mad dancers. Her screams tore through the air, but could not reach the door to summon help. The window of her bedroom shattered suddenly, and Reverend Swann inexplicably appeared from the side porch roof, his lean face framed by shards of cracked and broken glass.

He told her to take his hand. She stared at the long black sleeve of his arm as it reached into the hole left in the broken window and watched in bewilderment as he used his arm to break the rest of the window.

He shouted again so that he could be heard above the volume of the flames that overwhelmed the beloved little farmhouse like a cacophonous orchestra. Rebecca stumbled from her bed and rushed to the window.

It seemed to her that everything, including the minister’s face, was engulfed by flames; only the black sleeves of his coat were not on fire. Those strong, sure arms reached inside, and Rebecca fell into his grasp, gaining her footing on the porch roof as, all around her, flames grew higher and higher.

“Ma! Pa!” she screamed, struggling to make her voice louder than the vicious snapping and crackling of the flames that by now had reached the porch roof. Reverend Swann handed her down to someone waiting below, then descended the ladder.

“We can’t leave them in there!” Rebecca screamed to the reverend. She recognized Ames Carlton and his son, Ames Junior, among the men standing in a semicircle around the engulfed house. They belonged to the same church. She saw the glow of the flames reflected on Ames’ face and on the face of Ames’ friend, Samuel Knox, as they stared, horror vivid in their expressions. “Don’t let them die!” she screamed at the two boys.

Reverend Swann’s black-sleeved arm enfolded her. “They’re gone, Rebecca,” he said gently. “The fire moved so quickly, there was no time to save them. The Carltons saw the flames all the way over from the Knox Ranch.”

“We came as quick as we could, Rebecca,” Ames said. Samuel said nothing, but he was a silent boy even during more upbeat times.

“It’s you being on the second floor that saved you,” his father explained.

The harsh glare of the fire transformed the sympathy on their features into something garish and demonic, a caricature of kindness as its malignant light altered the contours of their faces and lent a cruel glow to their eyes. In the background, young Samuel Knox stood outside the satanic wreath of illumination, dark and still.

Rebecca bolted upright, her heart beating at a crazed pace and her breathing ragged. It was always the same dream. Eighteen years later, the fire that left her an orphan returned almost nightly to taunt her with the repeat of its menace.

Rebecca got out of her bed. Jarred into abrupt wakefulness, her shoulders hunched over, she padded into the main room of the little cottage that the men of the church had built for her when she turned eighteen—a symbol that she was no longer an orphan but a teacher at the orphanage. The cottage, small but serviceable, was where she slept. The orphanage was where her life unfolded, for Rebecca had no faith in homes anymore. Here in the cottage, she had what she needed, and that was enough.

Yet deep in her heart, Rebecca still yearned for the cozy touches that had made the farmhouse an intimate setting for the Murphy family. The care and decorating Ma had done to ornament the farmhouse with her housewifely arts had been useless against the flames. The painted daisy and bleeding hearts flowers from the garden that Ma had tended with such loving care, then dried and put in vases to brighten the house during the long Montana winters were defenseless against fire.

The painting of Jesus welcoming the children to come to Him, once the focal point of the Murphy parlor, had gone up in flames. Ma’s quilts for the beds and knitted antimacassars for the sofa, done in bright reds and brilliant blues to compensate for the plain wooden floors and walls, had been devoured in the blaze.

Rebecca poured a glass of water from the pitcher on her kitchen table. The water was cool, and she drank it greedily as if the fire of eighteen years ago still spawned her thirst. The floorboards were cool against her bare feet. The window in the main room, opened enough to let in a breeze, shared the coolness of the night with the inside air.

When her heart had resumed its normal beat, and she no longer felt as if she were encased in flames, Rebecca returned to her bedroom and got into bed. She struck a match and lit the candle by her bedside. Then, as if she were reaching for the safety of Reverend Swann’s rescuing arms once more, Rebecca reached for the Bible on the stand by her bed; it had been her mother’s.

The genealogies of the Murphy and the Clyde families were recorded in the Bible, the only remaining remnant Rebecca had of her family.

She turned to the Book of Psalms. The pages opened on their own to her mother’s favorite verse, the one that she had recited every night after Pa led the family in prayers before bedtime. Rebecca read aloud in a voice still trembling from the nightmare she had suffered. “Surely goodness and mercy shall fallow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” Rebecca softly closed the Bible. She knew all the verses of Psalm 23 by heart. Still, it was a comfort to pen the Bible that she remembered so clearly in her mother’s work-worn hands, to repeat the verse as if her mother was still with her, saying it.

Rebecca put the Bible away and extinguished the candle, pinning the wick firmly between her thumb and finger to ensure the flame was doused and no spark was left. Fire was a fiend; it could spring out of nowhere and destroy everything within minutes, and there might never be an explanation for what had ignited it. Satisfied that the flame was indeed out, Rebecca laid her head back on the pillow.

Yet sleep would not return; the nightmare had robbed her of restful slumber. She stayed awake, burdened as always by the remorse she felt at having survived the fire that had killed her parents. There were some nights when the memories were so vivid that she wept when she awakened because she had not died with them.

When the first silver glimmer of dawn began to appear through her window, she got out of bed, relieved that the day was about to begin. Her life was tied to the orphanage now; the children needed her and would be expecting her. She needed them as well. At the age of thirty-two, Rebecca harbored no illusions that she would ever have her own children. In fact, Rebecca harbored no illusions at all. The flames had taken those girlish dreams.

Chapter One

Rebecca applied hairpins to her brown hair, more for the purpose of keeping the strands out of her way than for any particular devotion to adornment. Impatient with the results, she stabbed the pin into the thickness of her hair to subdue the wayward strands that sought to be free. The somber woman in the mirror looked tired and worn.

I look like what I am, Rebecca thought without sentimentality or regret, a thirty-two-year-old spinster too plain to attract a husband and not far from an age when childbearing would be beyond my body’s abilities, even if I were married. Her brown eyes, her mother’s eyes, were expressionless.

She was slender and taller than average, wearing a dress not designed to showcase buxom contours from a physique derived from her father’s leanness rather than her mother’s soft roundness. When she remembered to do so, she tried to stand straight, but her shoulders were often slumped forward by day’s end as if she had physically carried each orphaned child on her back during her labors.

She started the day with no particular reason to smile. Yet by the time she had closed her door, crossed the churchyard, and turned the corner, she felt herself smiling as she approached the orphanage. The children restored to her what the nightmares took away—it was this way every day.

Reverend Swann was already at the orphanage, bringing up water from the well to help prepare the morning meal. He greeted Rebecca with a gentle smile, but she couldn’t help but notice the lines etched on his face from what, she guessed, had also been a sleepless night for him.

“Did you get a letter from the mother church?” she asked him. Rebecca’s work with the orphanage made her familiar with the details regarding its operation. She knew that Reverend Swann had sent a letter to the Lutheran Church in Philadelphia, pleading for more funds to support the orphanage’s ongoing mission. Hostile raids by both the settlers and the tribes had orphaned more children, straining the resources of the Boulderhill orphanage. Boulderhill was not a wealthy town, and its residents struggled to finance their expenses. Nonetheless, they did the best they could to help fund the orphanage.

Yet it simply wasn’t enough. Rebecca could and did pour out her affection on the children. There were no coins or bills disbursed for the hugs, encouraging pats, and smiles that she gave to the orphans. Still, she felt the void of what she could not give. Love did not show up in Mr. Crider’s ledger; the children needed shoes, clothes, pencils, and sugar for the baked treats Ella loved to make for them.

Before losing her family, Rebecca had known an abundance of love, along with ribbons for her hair, the new dresses her mother sewed as Rebecca grew, and the doll that Pa had bought for her. She at least had those recollections of a happier time. These children did not.

“I did,” Reverend Swann replied as he endeavored to smile. “They are unable at this time to provide help. They are, as is expected, facing great need as the communities do their best to meet the needs of families who are reuniting after the war. Or,” he added realistically, “asking for help in bringing back the remains of loved ones who died in the south. But God will provide,” he added as he always did. “What of you? Are you managing? You work so hard on behalf of the children and we pay you nothing. It troubles me.” He studied her. Rebecca supposed that he was worried about her thin frame and pale skin. She was healthy enough, but no one could describe her as lively. At the age of thirty-two, Rebecca felt that the accumulation of years had left her with nothing but weariness.

Rebecca shook her head. Several strands of brown hair came loose from their pins. Absently, Rebecca tucked the stray locks behind her ear. The subject was too important for her to waste any time with futile vanity. Unconscious of her actions, Rebecca extended her open hands as she spoke and leaned forward, her shoulders straight as she spoke earnestly. “The church provides everything for me, Reverend Swann. I have a house because the men of the church built one for me. I take my meals with the children at the orphanage. When I have needs, there is always someone in the congregation who is willing to share what they have. Please don’t be troubled on my account. The children are everything to me. God has given me a purpose and I am grateful every day that He allows me to be with them.” She finished speaking, feeling as if she needed to say more but lacked the words. She was grateful to the bottom of her broken heart for the purpose that the orphanage provided. She had survived the fire as her parents had not. This bewildering result, her life, did not belong to her anymore. It was God’s to use.

Reverend Swann was much older now than he had been when he climbed to the porch roof to rescue her from the flames. His shoulders were stooped, and his once-black hair was a mixture of white and gray, as was his beard. But his kind gray eyes had lost none of their warmth. “You are a blessing to the children,” he said. “Shall we pray?”

The minister always resorted to prayer as readily as he spoke or breathed. Perhaps he knew what God knew, and that was the burden of being alive when the parents she loved were dead. Her parents had taught her that God always had His reasons.

She had never understood the reasoning for her beloved collie’s death when she was five years old or the purpose for her baby brother dying on the day he was born. Ma and Pa knew how to accept that grief and faith were linked. She wondered if they were all together in heaven now—Ma, Pa, the infant Joseph, dead before he could be baptized, and Laddie, the dog. Were they all together, and she was the one left behind?

Rebecca needed to pray so that she might understand why she had lived, and her parents had not, and why the family home was lost and she depended upon the church’s benevolence for her home now. She bowed her head; perhaps, this time, she would know God’s reasons.

“Great God, bless this woman, Rebecca. Our ways are not Thy ways, God, and we know not Thy reasons for what befalls us. We know that her parents, gone from earth, are with Thee and Thy saints in Thy heavenly abode. We thank Thee for the work that Rebecca does here in this orphanage, for despite her loss, she has found spiritual gain through her love for the children who have no parents to love them. We thank Thee, God, for safeguarding these children so that, even without their parents, they are beloved. We pray in the name of our Redeemer, Thy Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.”

Reverend Swann continued the conversation with Rebecca as if his interlude of praying had simply been part of it. “Ella has come over to help you with breakfast.” Ella Swann was the minister’s third daughter. Unlike her talented and lovely sisters, who were now married with families of their own, Ella was twenty-six and saw herself as short-sighted, stocky, and plain-featured, showing every indication of ending up a spinster.

To be unmarried in the Montana Territory, where women were severely outnumbered by the ranks of unmarried men longing for wives, was a remarkable occurrence. Rebecca was well aware of the inherent shame of being a spinster, and she tried to be sympathetic to Ella’s plight. Yet part of Ella Swann’s dilemma was her determination to emphasize her shortcomings.

Many an unwed rancher or a widowed farmer might have courted the young woman had she been less belligerent and less likely to lecture others on viewpoints with which she disagreed. Nonetheless, she was a strong proponent of the orphans’ welfare, a hard worker, and efficient. She was also a friend.

Rebecca went into the orphanage, through the parlor where prospective parents would first meet the child they wished to adopt, and crossed the dining room, which was already set for breakfast with bowls, spoons, and cups. She then found Ella, who stood in the kitchen, stirring oatmeal cooking in the big black cauldron over the fire.

She squinted, her eyeglasses steaming from the heat of the simmering oats, as Rebecca went in and then smiled when she recognized her up close. “I’ll be glad when the berries start growing on the bushes,” she said. “Oatmeal is so bland.”

With funds low, Rebecca and Ella—and everyone else working at the orphanage— knew they needed to ration their supplies, including the sugar, carefully. They submitted their financial accounts to the church council every month, and Mr. Crider, the church treasurer, reviewed the numbers “like he expected to find a missing fortune in the grocery bill,” Ella had once complained.

It was Rebecca’s role to moderate the tension between the two. “We’ll have berries in a month or so,” she offered in an attempt to placate the strong-willed Ella, who was so passionate in her dedication to the children that she often gave way to belligerence and abandoned the tact that Rebecca employed. “I don’t think a bit of sugar and cinnamon in the meantime is going to do any great harm. We’ll be needing less firewood for fuel now that it’s getting warmer, so that will help.”

Ella brightened. “I’ll tell him so, too, if he scolds us for extravagance.”

“It’s better to say nothing,” Rebecca cautioned. “We know what he will say. All we can do is assure him that we spend with thrift and care and will continue to do so.”

“You’re much more tolerant than I am,” Ella admitted. “I believe he speaks to me thus because I’m not married. He thinks me still a child.”

Aldridge Crider regarded all women as frivolous spendthrifts, a view he had honed from his years as the proprietor of the Boulderhill General Store. He still ran the store, although his daughter Ida and her husband, Milo, did the actual work of storekeeping.

Rebecca guessed that it was because Mr. Crider was no longer the main force behind the decision-making at the store that made him so invested in his work as the church treasurer. She resolved to try to be extra kind to the cantankerous old man when she saw him in church on Sunday if only to make up for the sharp-tongued response that he was likely to receive from Ella Swann if he lectured her father about the orphanage’s expenditures. If only Ella would be less strident, Rebecca thought, there might be less friction involved in the bookkeeping review.

“I came over early,” Ella went on as she stood by the fire, stirring the oatmeal. “I couldn’t sleep. I have four apple pies ready to be baked for dessert tonight. I used the last of the dried apples from the fall.”

And butter and sugar and flour, Rebecca thought snippily. But wasn’t using them worthwhile if they brought pleasure to the children? She then considered avoiding trading barbs with Ella. Baking for the children brought Ella pleasure as well. There was no doubting Ella’s devotion to the orphans. Sometimes, in her less charitable moments, Rebecca could not help wondering what it would be like to say what she thought and show what she felt rather than functioning as the diplomat.