A Sweetness to the Soul by Jane Kirkpatrick Read Free Book Online Page A

teach me how to use the Kentucky. It was a huge, long rifle that he’d brought with him from Virginia. Many of the settlers preferred more modern weapons, but Papa liked a rifle he could fix himself if something went wrong with it. He also liked finding flints from the hillsides rather than worrying about spending precious potato money on manufactured percussion caps that the newer rifles required. He was frugal that way.
    He’d offered to teach me, said with the Yakimas unsettling up north and our living so close to the reservation, I should learn to help patch at least, in case there was some kind of argument. The Warm Springs Indians, Sahaptin-speaking people, had yet to even disagree about the weather with their neighbors, but one never knows the future. I wanted to shoot more to know I could bring in game if needed or chase off cougars that frequented the timber and terrified the stock. Either reason, Mama had to grant permission for such “unlady-like” lessons.
    On the big day, she was mixing up gingerbread cookies, the scent of molasses seeping through the logs to the open air. It was early August and the weeds were coming on thicker than a bee swarm on the lilacs, and Mama said I had to work the potatoes before I could shoot.
    Then she did the worst: made me choose which of the girls I’d take with me. Rachel could weed good when she wanted but she was a scamp. She usually found something else to do. Once she started digging in some soft dirt near a hole in a hillside, shoveling sand between her legs like Hound would if he’d been with us. It struck me funny until I spied a striped animal with rolling fat moving quickly toward us like he was the landlord and we were about to be visited with an eviction! He stopped and rose up on his toes and I saw that he was huge, weighing more than either Rachel or me. “Rachel,” I whispered as loudly as I could. “Back up slowly and stand behind me.”
    She must have heard the fear in my voice because she actually listened and did just that. I caught a glimpse of her eyes as she turned and saw the animal which we later learned was a badger. It stayed where it was and we backed away. Then Rachel lunged for it, teasing. I could have hit her.
    It hissed at us and we took off running like newly weaned puppies until we reached a rock pile. There we sat for a long time, hunkering our feet up, until that badger changed his mind. He headed straight into the hole Rachel’d been invading.
    We were late getting home that day, and Mama had words for usand Rachel told about the animal and Papa said what it was and shook his head, amazed. Mama said she was glad Hound hadn’t been with us as the badger would have sliced him alive with its claws and teeth. Us too, Papa said, if the Lord hadn’t provided us with the rock pile.
    Mama said the Lord should have provided us with better sense. Mama often brought up the incident to remind us of our foolishness. Mine, mostly, as I was the oldest and responsible and “should have known better.”
    What I should have known was that Rachel would tell. She was sassy, that girl, and she couldn’t keep a secret. But she had a quick mind and the cutest dimples where she wore her charm.
    Usually, she had more charm than ambition, though. She’d drift off from the potato patch into the fir trees or she’d stop by the privy on the way to the field and snatch hollyhock blossoms and beg me to make her little dolls from the blossoms and buds. Taking her with me that day would have been interesting; who knows how much work we’d have done.
    Pauline on the other hand was still a baby, really, just six, but I confess, she was my favorite. While she cried a lot after she ate, it seemed to me, she was generally easy to entertain in the field. Not so at home. Curious, she was always getting into things, wandering too close to the river, pawing at the ashes Mama set aside for soap.
    So when Mama made me choose who to take with me that summer day, I chose