Free Emma's Gift by Leisha Kelly Page B

keep a special eye on Harry, who was hardly ever in one place more than half a minute straight. I could see how that boy alone could weary Wilametta or Lizbeth, or both. But his older brothers paid him almost no attention.
    Harry was out the door twice in the time it took me to button my top shirt, the heavy double flannel I’d used for a fall jacket. I pulled him off the porch rail, and he kicked me and told me he was a wild Indian on a horse and I couldn’t stop him with all the soldiers in the county.
    â€œScoot into your teepee,” I told him. “And stay out of the weather till you’ve got extra leggings.”
    He laughed. “I’ll go upstairs. It’s a mountain. And you can’t climb it.”
    â€œFine.”
    Sarah came to the door for a hug. I thought at first she was going to protest me going, but she was still wrapped up in the fun of having her best friend overnight. “Tell Mama we’re playin’ school today,” she said. “Me an’ Rorey is taking turns bein’ teacher.” I smiled and nodded, and she made me promise to give Juli a kiss from her.
    Franky asked to come along, and Joe adamantly refused to let him. I had to agree, though I felt sorry for poor Franky. He was the only one taking our departure gravely, except maybe Lizbeth, but she was so busy with a houseful of kids around her that it was hard to tell.
    â€œTell Pa I didn’t mean to break the clock,” he whispered to me.
    â€œI doubt he’s fretting over a clock today, son.”
    He shrugged, doubting my words and still stewing. I could see it in his eyes. “Help your big sister,” I said. Then I turned to Kirk, the oldest of the boys that would be left. “You too.”
    â€œI need water in,” Lizbeth said. “Gonna have to boil the diapers I brung and hang ’em by the fire. All right with you, Mr. Wortham, if I use a dishtowel to put Emma Grace in till the others is dry?”
    â€œDo what you need to. I’ll get some more from your mother while we’re over there.”
    â€œAin’t many clean,” she admitted. “I was fixin’ to wash yesterday.”
    I wondered what Juli would think of diapering the baby with dishtowels. Probably wouldn’t bother her. She was always making do. I tried to think if there’d be anything they’d need from over here, but I couldn’t figure what it might be. So we left, Joe Hammond and me, making just as quick of tracks as we could into the timber.
    It wasn’t long before I realized that most of the landmarks I knew in these woods were covered in snow. I might’ve gotten lost if Joe hadn’t known his way so well. He never wavered from his direction, just pressed on through the drifts, and I did my best to keep up.
    More snow was fluttering down on our faces, and I groaned inside, thinking of the long wait they’d surely had for the doctor, and were probably still having. Coming clear from Belle Rive by the road, the doctor would encounter even more difficulty getting through than we were having, if he’d attempted to venture out at all.
    The pond lay buried and invisible, and I wouldn’t even have known it was there if Joe hadn’t pointed out the top corner of Willard Graham’s grave marker on the hill above it. About then, the snow stopped coming down. Joe pulled his coat tight and hurried even faster. Lord, may it warm enough to start things melting, may the doctor have a sleigh, or better still, may Wilametta have no need of him now.
    It was almost spooky when we finally broke through the trees into the Hammonds’ field. The house and all the outbuildings stuck up from the drifts, stark and gray, as if they were features of the nature-claimed landscape, hugged in by the snow. The place looked like it had been long abandoned, silent as the timber we’d passed through.
    â€œPa must’ve fed the stock already, or they’d be