Free Prairie Rose by Catherine Palmer Page A

house. Declaring the stove too filthy to use, its chimney blocked with creosote and its ash pit jammed, she fixed a lunch of cold smoked venison. She boiled greens on an open fire, along with a few potatoes and some coffee. After lunch she broke down the stove, dragged it out the front door piece by piece, and began to scrub and polish.
    While Chipper wandered the creek bank picking up kindling, Rosie scoured every pot and pan in the house. She hauled the mattress outside and threw it on top of a spice bush to air. Then she toted the sheets and bedding down to the creek and washed them in the cold water—declaring that she would do it again with hot water after she had the stove put back together.
    By the time evening rolled around, she had reassembled most of the stove and all of the bed. Along the way, she had managed enough chitchat to wear out any man’s eardrums. “Don’t you have a broom, Mr. Hunter? Never mind, I’ll make one tomorrow. I’m so glad you have a well. I thought sure I’d be obliged to make that trip to the creek five times a day. You need some new paper in your windows, Mr. Hunter. These oiled panes are all fly speckled. We had real glass panes at the Home, but I don’t see how a person could ever bring glass out here to the prairie. It would shatter the first time the wagon hit a bump, wouldn’t it? Don’t throw those ashes away! I’ll want to make lye for the soap. Have you seen any beehives around here, Mr. Hunter?”
    As he went back and forth from the house to the barn, Seth couldn’t help but marvel at his new employee. While he cleaned the cow stalls and checked on his chickens, the little brown-eyed twister sashayed around like there was no tomorrow. By the time she banged two pots together to call him to supper, he had to admit bringing Rosie Mills from Kansas City might not have been such a bad idea. The delicious aroma drifting through the front door of his house made his stomach groan in anticipation.
    Seth washed his hands and face in the pot of warm water Rosie had set on the front porch. Still dripping, he walked inside to find the long table spread with wilted poke salad boiled with chunks of salt pork, fried sweet potatoes, and a mountain of steaming scrambled eggs. Seated on a stump at the table, his hair combed and his cheeks scrubbed, Chipper regarded the feast with wide blue eyes. Slowly, half-unbelieving, Seth walked across the room and stared. He hadn’t eaten a meal like this in … in years.
    “Did you wash up, Mr. Hunter?” Rosie asked, breezing into the house carrying a plate piled high with turnovers. “I put a bowl of hot water—” She stopped and looked Seth up and down, breathless, as though the sight of a wet man had cast a spell over her. “I see you found it.”
    He raked a hand back through his damp hair. “Where did this come from? All this food?”
    “Here and there.” Coming out of her trance, she set the turnovers on the table. “You have a wealth of greens right outside the door. Poke, dock, plantain. I found some dried apples in the cellar. I hope you don’t mind—”
    “No, no. It’s fine. Use anything you want. I’ll make sure we always have fresh meat. Rabbits and quail, if nothing better. Anything in the smokehouse is yours. I dug a cellar when I moved out here late last summer. It still has a few things I managed to winter over.”
    “There’ll be twice as much next spring,” she said, sitting on a stump across from Chipper. “You’ll hardly believe how good I am at pickling and canning. My cheeses and sausages are wonderful— though at the Home we never seemed to have enough to go around. Everyone says my—” She stopped and clapped a hand over her mouth. “I’m boasting. You’d better pray quickly, Mr. Hunter.”
    She stretched out her hands to him and Chipper and bowed her head. Thrown off-kilter by her action, Seth cleared his throat. Across the table, the boy slipped one hand into Rosie’s, but he firmly tucked his