Out of Innocence Read online

  A Novel

  Out Of Innocence

  by

  Adelaide McLeod

  Copyright © 2000 by Adelaide McLeod

  Many of the photographs in this book were taken by C. J. Schooler, the author’s father, circa 1915. All rights reserved. Cover design by Ryan Antista. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced or publicly performed in any form without permission.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Acknowledgments

  I WISH TO EXPRESS MY INDEBTEDNESS to Dennis Held for his encouragement and for editing my work; to Betty Penson Ward, my mentor, for her help; to Marie Lindsey-Rinard for proofreading; to Mary Jane Dobson and La Verne Young for historic information; to Ann Vycital for her confidence in this project; to N.D. MacKay for his book, Aberfeldy, Past and Present, used as a reference; to The Idaho Historical Museum Library for the pictures of the Natatorium and downtown Boise; to our Scottish cousins: Mary Powell, Isabel Lambert, Tillicoultry, Scotland, and Margaret Burgess and her son David Burgess, Stirling, Scotland for their kind assistance and critique; and especially to Jack McLeod for his caring support and who made a dinner reservation for three when I was totally entangled with my heroine.

  There are two ways of spreading light:

  To be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.

  --Edith Wharton

  Prologue

  Where the white water of the Payette River begins to gentle, in a place where the ponderosa pines start to disappear and the hills roll easy, remnants of the old ranch house remain. The river canyon flattens at the toe of the mountain, forming a long shelf with room for an orchard, a barn and a handful of outbuildings required to survive Idaho’s pioneer days.

  The ranch sits away from the rest of the world, yet is visible from across the Payette River where the highway curls its way upstream. It doesn’t look as it did when my parents homesteaded there, or even as I remember it in the early nineteen twenties, when I was a child. Now it’s cluttered with abandoned cars, trucks and farm machinery like broken and discarded toys, and much of what I remember no longer exists. An arch of yellow roses that trellised at the garden gate is only a memory.

  It was 1925, the summer before the fourth grade. My brother T.J. had gone to break wild horses that old man MacGregor herded up from Owyhee County to his Black Creek ranch. So T.J. wasn’t there when it happened.

  That blue-skyed morning, I wandered out to the shade of a sprawling cottonwood where an ice-cold creek flowed from the mountain. Placing wiggling and reluctant caterpillars on pieces of bark, I gave them a fast ride down to the chicken house. My red and pink hollyhock dolls waltzed in the swirling water. That summer day should have been perfect, but it was the day my world fell apart.

  I watched the bunkhouse for Hank, and then the kitchen door for Ma. I felt uneasy. My life had been sheer bliss since Hank came. In less than a summer, my every thought settled around him. He filled the vast emptiness left by a father I had never known. Hank stood even taller than the image I’d conjured up in my eight-year-old imagination--an image of what my father would be like, had he not died when I was three. Hank would hitch up the horses, throw me on Blue and we'd ride down the road, Hank holding one rein and I the other until I found the courage to ride by myself. In no time, I barrel raced with my brother.

  When Hank taught T.J. to target shoot with his pistol, he let me try it, too. Our neighbor, Mrs. Prichard, told Ma it wasn’t a fitting thing for a girl to do. But Ma said it was a good idea for a girl to be able to protect herself. She said Mrs. Prichard had highfalutin ideas about what a girl should be. Ma wished someone had taught her to shoot when she was my age.

  “Never point a gun unless you intend to kill something,” Hank said as he put a tin can on a fence post. If I hit it, he moved it down a post or two.

  Of an evening, after supper, Hank often sat on the porch and played his guitar. We’d sing with him and Ma sometimes did one of her Scottish dances. “Your guitar doesn’t sound much like a bagpipe, Hank, but if that’s the best ye can do,” Ma would say as she kicked her legs high. Her toes touched the porch floor between the crossed cattails that were supposed to be swords. Although she came close, her feet never touched the swords, as she descended so lightly, so gracefully, she barely made a sound. “If your feet touch the swords”--she loved the drama of telling it--“ye will die in battle!”

  We seemed almost like a family. T.J. felt it, too. One night, when we were getting ready for bed, I remember him saying, “When I grow up I’m going to be an engineer just like Hank. I’m going to learn how to play the guitar, too.”

  Sometimes, Hank made up ditties about people he knew. Ma and I learned the words and sang them while we did the supper dishes:

  Ol’ Zeke Ball is a mountain man,

  He cooks his grub in an old tin can.

  He kicks his dog and spurs his horse

  It’s no wonder he’s divorced.

  Effie Burns knows how to bake

  She’ll serve you pie, she’ll make a cake,

  No true love has ever found her,

  ‘Cause no man’s arms can fit around 'er.

  Old man Morgan has no mate,

  Eats his onions and garlic straight

  When he’s in the saloon

  We all move over and give him room.

  Jimmy Baer is a handsome man

  He chaws tobaccy from a can.

  Nellie says that she is smitten:

  Loves his looks, can’t stand his spittin’.

  Hank led his pinto from the barn. She was saddled. It seemed too early to be going anywhere.

  “Well, youngun,” Hank said to me as he led Rosie to the creek for a drink. “I’m leaving this morning. I have to tell you goodbye.”

  My worst fears were realized and my fists hit at his long legs. Picking me up, he hugged me. “Don’t go, Hank. Ma needs you,” I pleaded.

  “I know, Hannah, but it has to be this way.” Hank tied his pack behind Rosie’s saddle. “You take care of your ma, you and T.J. Be good to her.”

  Ma came out with some lunch tied in a salt sack. Hank thanked her and they stood facing each other for a long time. Ma extended her hand and Hank took it in both of his. His eyes, full of caring, sent a message to her. She held it for a moment and sent it back wrapped in tears. His lips moved as he whispered something I couldn’t hear and without another word he became a cloud of dust. When the dust cleared, he was gone.

  Ma went back into the kitchen. She mumbled over a big iron pot on the Majestic range. She was rendering lard. With all that had happened, she had forgotten about it.

  I slid the wooden crate filled with baby kittens out from under the fire box. A varmint had killed Bethesda, their mother and our best mouser. Satisfied they were still asleep, I pushed them back.

  Ma's face was leathered from the life she lived. She pulled her copper hair back tight in a casual knot and held it with celluloid hairpins, yet wisps fell about her face. Bloody scars pocked her hands where laying hens had pecked her as she gathered the eggs while the hens sat on their nests. Though she wasn’t beautiful, there was an elegance about her high cheekbones, ready smile, and blue, blue eyes that danced with mischief. I was her shadow. I loved being near her.

  “What ye been doin’ this morning?” she asked.

  “Playing in the creek,” I said, holding a tin cup under the pantry sink and pumping until the water came. “Why did Hank go?”

  “Lass, I think ye know why.” Her eyes flooded with tears and I was sorry I asked. I couldn’t hold back. I cried like a baby. She
pulled me so close I shared the pain surging through her. Finally, we wiped our eyes on a flour-sack tea towel. “We can’t cry anymore, Hannah. It will not help a thing.”

  She looked at me squarely. “What did ye see last night?”

  I didn’t want to lie but I didn’t want to say, either. I didn’t want to think about it. Out behind the ice house, in the middle of the night, Ma had held the coal oil lamp while Hank struggled with the wheelbarrow as they made their way down the hill. I could see them from the shed where I sat on the metal seat of the sharpening wheel, hiding. When they disappeared below the barn, I followed them.

  Ma sobbed and Hank stopped and put his arm around her. I watched until they were on the bank of the river and Hank dumped something big out of the wheelbarrow and into the rushing water. They stood there clinging to each other for a long time. When they finally started up the hill, I ran to my bed and pretended to be asleep, but sleep came hard.

  What had I seen? “It was dark. No moon,” I managed.

  “Aye, then Hank was right when he said he thought he saw ye out there. Listen t’ me, pet. Something very bad happened. It was no person’s fault--it just happened. Some things ye can’t prevent. Ye must never talk about it. It could cause terrible trouble. For Hank’s sake, we must carry this secret to our graves.” Ma twisted the towel in her hands into a tight wad. “I don’t like asking ye to lie, lass, but if anyone asks about Hank, just say ye haven’t seen him for a spell. He might have gone up the canyon for a couple of days and hasn’t come back. He wasn’t here last night. Do ye understand?”

  I nodded. And, I vowed to keep the secret. I would do anything for Hank. Ma took me by the hand and led me into the parlor. I sat on the brown leather fainting couch, a place no one sat for long. Curled up at one end, with its base and feet elegantly carved wood, it was stuffed with horse hair and hard as a rock. On the ranch, with all we had to do, there wasn’t much sitting around time anyway.

  Ma wound up the Edison phonograph and we danced together. Not the wild and crazy dance we so often did--it was a dance of mourning.

  Chapter One

  On the thirtieth of May 1914, the spring of Isabelle Mackay’s fourteenth year, she and her classmates were dismissed from Breadalbane Academy in Aberfeldy, Scotland, for their summer holiday.

  In a dead trot, Belle tried to keep up with her long-legged brother. Tommy’s well-chiseled features, freckles, and ruddy cheeks were framed by a mop of unruly dark red hair. Many a young girl had befriended Belle and her sister Meg in the hope that they might be invited into the Mackay household where, with luck, they could exchange glances with Tommy and possibly even a few words. He was jaunty, proud and sometimes almost arrogant and that made him irresistible.

  When Tommy was a wee laddy he’d had “the fever” and an irregular heart beat ever since, but it didn’t slow him down. He was big for sixteen and his coloring was like their dear mother's (gone to heaven, God bless her). Their father once told Belle that her hair was the color of a new penny and the blue of her eyes came from the summer water of Loch Katrine where she was conceived.

  Belle could feel Tommy’s excitement and was caught up in it. The last day of school was over and after the ceremonies at Breadalbane Academy, Tommy would leave Aberfeldy for Glasgow to board The Caledonian, bound for America.

  It was all arranged. The Doigs, Scottish friends who had gone to Idaho, had written Angus Mackay about the wonderful life they had made for themselves. They had offered to help any of Angus’s children get started in Idaho if they had a desire to go to America. Angus responded and asked them to sponsor Tommy. Nothing, nothing at all, stood in his way.

  It would not be easy leaving Aberfeldy, a little town pinpointed on a map by a line drawn from Cape Wrath to the uppermost reaches of the Solway and from Duncansby Head to the Mull of Galloway. The lines crossed at a point so near Aberfeldy as to scarcely matter; so, it fell out the heart of Scotland was not far away.

  Tucked in a gently rolling valley, Aberfeldy nestled against the winding waters of the River Tay. A meandering road, single carriage wide, led across a small stone bridge that arched half-moon-like over a bubbling burn.

  Beyond the ancient Aberfeldy Water Mill, where oats had been ground for centuries, stood other buildings as old or older. The butcher shop, steam laundry, post office, and bakery clung one to the other in an effort, it seemed, to hold each other up.

  Up a cobblestone street stood Aberfeldy’s Distillery with its distinctive roof-line, like an upside-down funnel. Beyond was The Square, an open area, surrounded by the Breadalbane Hotel, with its polished door and shiny brass hardware, the town hall, Bank of Scotland, and Comrades’ Club.

  Not far away, stood the ivy-covered Free Church with its tall bell tower and graveyard grown heavy with tombstones. Other churches: the Roman Catholic, the Original Congregational and the Congregational which sat side by each, had been a part of the village as long as anyone could remember.

  Much of the high quality tweed and tartan wool that dressed Queen Alexandra, King George, Queen Mary and other British Royalty had been spun and woven in Haggart Mill over to the left on Moness Street. There too, sat the Masonic Temple and the clock-maker’s shop.

  Thick-walled sandstone dwellings flanked the narrow winds over uneven terrain. One could count their rooms by the number of chimneys that sprouted from their rooftops as each room was heated by its own fireplace.

  Front doors sat incredulously close to the cobblestone carriageway, leaving only enough room for a single row of colorful flowers inside the cottage gates.

  Now, skirting the town, Tommy and Belle walked by the slaughter house to a tree-lined path that wound against fields of grain and pastures separated by low stone walls. Long-haired Highland cattle and wooly sheep grazed on tufts of grass that sprouted between a scattering of rocks.

  “I think I might go with ye.” Belle looked up at Tommy for his reaction.

  “You’re bare old enough lass. Father’d not hear of it. With Ian and Norman off fighting in the war, and me going to America. No, lass, too many leaving the nest. What would father say?”

  “He’d say, ‘Go, Isabelle Mackay, seek your fortune in the new world--there’ll be one less mouth to feed here,'” she blurted dramatically.

  As much as Angus Mackay might dislike thinking in these terms, Belle was not far from the truth. Scotland, despite its ethereal beauty, was a poor country with little opportunity for its young people. The exodus of Scottish youth might not match the wholesale way people were crowding into steerage from other countries such as Russia and Italy, but young Scots were leaving nonetheless.

  Scottish folk migrated to Australia, South Africa, Canada and the United States looking for a way to make a living. They had little more than hope to take with them.

  “Tommy, boy, me heart will break if I have to live me life away from ye.” Belle danced backwards away from her brother.

  “It won’t be an easy life, Belle. Hard work. If ye miss the family and get heartsick, what then?”

  Isabelle hadn’t considered a possibility of never seeing her family again. “Maybe, they’ll all come some day. Besides, Tommy, I’ll always have ye."

  “No telling what it’s really going to be like living there,” he said.

  “Are ye afraid, Tommy? Do ye fear going?”

  “Don’t be silly. I’m a Mackay; I fear nothing. I can do what there is to do.” Excitement rang in his voice. “Think of the adventure! A new land that’s not all used up, where crops will grow and I hear say there’s a wilderness where people are given land to farm and there’s precious gold just for the digging.”

  “Tommy! Tommy! Say I can go with ye,” Belle pleaded. “I want to see America with me own eyes. You’d not be so lonely.”

  “Listen!” Tommy interrupted. “Hear that?”

  “Sounds like an ailing animal.”

  “Aye. Something’s caught in Ferguson’s wolf trap again,” he said as they ran toward the howling. “Maybe Ferguson got
his wolf.”

  Belle sucked in her breath as she raced after her brother.

  Out in the tall grass, they found a half-grown dog struggling and whining, writhing in his attempt to pull his leg out of a rusty trap. Tommy, quick to the rescue, sprung the trap while Belle freed its leg.

  “Its leg is broken,” he said.

  “What are you going to do?” Belle asked.

  “Take him home and fix him.”

  “He’s a mutt,” Belle said. “Not a well-bred dog.”

  “But he’s hurting just the same.” He carefully hoisted the animal up on his shoulder.

  Once they reached their home on Dunkeld Street, they knelt over the beast on the kitchen’s cold stone floor as Tommy splinted the dog’s hind leg with wood staves and rags. Belle fed him some scraps from the supper table.

  “What are ye going to call him?” Belle asked

  “Friend. I’ll dub him Friend.”