A Man for Temperance (Wagon Wheel) by Gilbert Morris Read Free Book Online Page B

Timothy Dutton. Martha died this morning at two o’clock.”
    “What in the cat hair are you going to do with a baby?”
    Temperance Peabody had an even temper as a rule, but suddenly all of the fatigue and the worry over Martha and Clyde and the care of the baby seemed to make her boil over. “Don’t you have an ounce of goodness in you?”
    Brennan stared at her. “No, not an ounce. That kind of thing can get people into trouble.”
    “You’re hopeless, Thaddeus Brennan!” Turning around, she walked into the house.
    Brennan watched her, then walked slowly back to the mule. “She’s crazier than I thought. She’ll probably take that baby and raise it.” He unwrapped the lines and began plowing again, but the scene had troubled him. “I guess I can feel for people as well as anybody,” he addressed the mules. “What does she want me to do—make my voice quiver and bust out crying?” He slapped the mules with the line, cussed them, and the startled animals broke into a stumbling trot.
    * * *
     
    THE FUNERAL OF MARTHA DUTTON had been one more in a long series. Temperance had stood beside the open grave and watched as the casket was lowered. The men had uncovered the wooden coffin of Clyde Dutton, and she had watched as they had wedged the coffin containing his wife beside him.
    The March wind was cold as she stood there, holding Timothy, who grew fussy halfway through the closing remarks. Looking around the small crowd that had gathered, she realized how the cholera had decimated the community, the whole area it seemed. People who would have been there were now under the sod themselves. Others were home taking care of the sick.
    When the service was over, Pastor Blevins asked for a meeting of the men to discuss the fate of the children. They went to the church, and Temperance attended the meeting along with the pastor’s wife. They were the only women there. She listened as Pastor Blevins outlined the situation and explained that now there were three children who had to be taken back East.
    “Couldn’t we find someone here to take them in?” Joe Smedly said. He was a short, barrel-shaped man who had lost two of his own children to cholera.
    “Not Timothy,” Temperance broke in. “I promised his mother I’d see that he got to her sister.”
    “Well, I don’t know how you’re going to do it.” Smedly shook his head. “Who’d take on a chore like that?”
    “That’s right,” Pastor Blevins said. “The trains are all coming this way, not going back. The only wagons going that way are freighters. Mule skinners are a rough bunch.”
    Joe Meek had attended the funeral, and he listened for a time, then said, “Well, I hate to tell you about this, but Sadie Overmeyer died last night.”
    “Poor soul,” Blevins said, his voice tinged with compassion.
    Indeed, the Overmeyers were both poor souls. Everyone in the room was thinking about Fess Overmeyer, who was serving a life term in prison for murder and would never see a free day.His wife, Sadie, had always been a rough woman and turned to prostitution. She had three children.
    “What about those kids of hers?” Smedly asked. “How old are they?”
    Meek shrugged his shoulders. “There’s one girl just a year old. The boy is six and Rena’s the oldest at twelve.”
    “Nobody’s going to take them in,” Tom Finley said. “The oldest two are wild as outlaws.”
    “Sadie left a note. Said she’s got relatives in Louisiana, a sister and her husband. Name’s Maude Slaughter; husband’s name is Ed. They live in Baton Rouge.”
    “Might as well be on the other side of the world,” Smedly said. “It looks like we’re just going to have to farm those kids out.”
    No one had any solution, but as Temperance left the meeting, she had a burden such as she had never felt before. Six children—all orphans, all needing to go thousands of miles away. God, she prayed, I just can’t do this thing!

Chapter Four
     
    SILAS SATTERFIELD LIFTED HIS