The Frontiersman’s Daughter by Laura Frantz Read Free Book Online Page A

She’d not thought of Neddy since Susanna had mentioned him in early summer and revealed that his land bordered Simon’s own. What would Pa think? Ma? Neddy’s face came to mind, more shadow than substance. She’d spent years trying to put his memory down only to have it resurrected twice now.
    Ever perceptive, Ma Horn studied her and said, “You still sore about it all?”
    Lael shrugged, her face as stoic as her father’s. The youngest of the Click clan, Neddy looked enough like Pa to be his twin, and some said this was the reason Ma ran off with him. But to Lael they were as different as sugar and salt. While Ezekial Click was taciturn and callous, Neddy was like his name, affable and dreamy, tending his crops by day and reading poetry by night.
    Ma Horn’s voice was gentle yet firm. “Your ma thought your pa was dead, understand.”
    But he wasn’t. She bit back the retort and stared straight ahead. If not for the Hayes clan, who would have taken her in when she’d been left at the fort? Though Ma had come to her senses in just a few days, the damage was done.
    “I remember how excited you was when it was your mother’s time,” Ma Horn said quietly, getting back on the trail. “I thought for sure the way she was carryin’ spelled a girl.”
    Lael smiled wryly. Ransom Dunbar Click was hardly the girl she’d been hankering for. Even Pa had seemed surprised, as if he thought such dallying was sure to produce a female. Recently escaped from the Shawnee, he’d come in and held the infant up to the light. The tiny boy grimaced and opened wide blue eyes. Looking on, Lael thought he was the handsomest baby she’d ever seen, no matter who’d fathered him.
    “One Click’s as good as another,” Pa had said with a shrug, handing him back to Ma.
    And so it was that Uncle Neddy, a bachelor recluse, fathered his first and only son. Pa’s revenge was to keep him.
    “I haven’t seen hide nor hair of Uncle Neddy since Ma ran off with him,” Lael told her.
    “Well, time’s a-wastin’, ” she said.

    The trip to Uncle Neddy was not a simple social call. As they neared his home place, Lael remembered he’d never married and rarely went to the fort named after his brother, even in times of Indian trouble. Though he’d once been a beloved uncle, Lael felt he was dead to them. His name was never mentioned, at least not in their own cabin.
    But now, riding nearer, the past was fast unfolding and curiosity overcame her with every step. “What’s ailin’ Uncle Neddy?”
    “Settlement fever.”
    Lael shuddered. The malady was generous with its misery, sapping the life from many a settler, fooling them into a period of wellness only to take them down at a later date. “You see him often?”
    “Often enough. He’s in need of an herb bundle now and again.”
    “What do you suppose he’ll do when he catches sight of me?”
    Beneath the black bonnet came a chortle. “What’ll you do when you catch sight of him?”
    Lael fell silent, unable to say.
    Ma Horn continued, her voice a bit hushed, as if sharing some family secret. “Neddy’s changed a mite. I give him a Bible sometime back, after all the trouble. He was always one for readin’, if you remember. Before long I began to see a change in him. Turns out he can quote whole passages by heart. All that bitterness toward your pa—his lonesomeness for your ma— just left him. I reckon if you spend enough time in the Word it changes you, just like Scripture says.”
    Lael thought of their Bible at home, rarely removed from its wooden box. Only in times of stress did Ma reach for it. And Pa, never.
    In the distance, Neddy’s cabin was nearly as small as Ma Horn’s, hemmed in by corn on all sides. Lael flicked a yellow jacket off her sleeve and tried to swallow, but her throat was so dry she felt strangled. The sun was directly ahead and heat shimmered all around them, the land giving off its rich, ripe scent. They dismounted and from somewhere—the