Kaki Warner by Miracle in New Hope Page A

others?”
    “Not particularly.” As he spoke, Jackson absently reached down to scratch Roscoe’s ear, who had become his new best friend ever since they had started sharing supper plates. “There were a couple of big Conestogas from Pennsylvania, but most were canvas-topped farm wagons like ours.”
    “And that morning you and Harvey were putting on the new wheel?”
    “That’s right.”
    “Could you see the store from where your wagon was parked?”
    Jackson looked at his sister and shrugged.
    “Not well,” Lacy answered. “And anyway, the wheel they were repairing was on the far side of the wagon.”
    Daniel nodded as his idea began to take shape. “So you wouldn’t have seen Hannah if she had left the store and followed the cat to the creek where the wagons were lined up?”
    “Well . . . no. Probably not.”
    “Oh, God.” Lacy pressed a hand to her throat. “Do think that’s what happened, Daniel? That she went to the creek and fell in and—”
    “No,” he cut in sharply. “I don’t believe that. Nor should you.”
    “She couldn’t have fallen in,” her brother protested. “We checked the creek. Up and down. Besides, the water was shallow enough that we would have seen her if . . . ” His voice trailed off. “We would have seen her,” he finished lamely.
    “If she didn’t fall in the creek,” Lacy said, “what do you think happened?”
    Daniel went through it in his mind. It was only a hunch. But there was some logic to it, and it all fit neatly together. He looked at the anxious faces turned toward him and hoped he wasn’t setting them up for another bitter disappointment.
    “I think when Hannah got separated from you in the store,” he began, “she wandered outside. Maybe she saw the cat and followed it to the creek, or went there looking for it. Either way, after a while, she probably got tired and cold, and seeing what she thought was the right wagon, she climbed in and went to sleep.”
    They looked at him in silence, then Jackson shook his head. “People searched all along the creek. Called her name. She would have heard.”
    “She’s a light sleeper then?”
    “Just the opposite,” Lacy answered. “Once she fell asleep, you could pick her up without even waking her. You often remarked on it, remember, Tom?”
    “But we checked the wagons. We would have seen her.”
    “Even curled up under a blanket?” Lacy’s voice rose on a wobble. “What if it’s true, Tom? What if some other people have her and she’s waiting for us to come get her, just like Daniel said?”
    “I don’t know, Sis. Seems far-fetched to me.” Jackson tossed a small branch onto the fire, then stared thoughtfully into the flames. “But for the sake of argument,” he said after a moment, “let’s say Hobart is right and Hannah fell asleep in a stranger’s wagon. Wouldn’t whoever owned it notice her and say something?”
    “You said a storm was coming,” Daniel reminded him. “Maybe they left in a hurry without even knowing she was back there.”
    “Maybe. But eventually they would have stopped or she would have woken up. Why didn’t they bring her back then?”
    “They might have thought she was with one of the other wagons heading west, like they were,” Daniel offered. “Maybe they planned to hand her over to her parents when they reached the fort.”
    “How?” Lacy looked from one to the other, her beautiful eyes awash with tears again. “How would they have known who her parents were? Hannah couldn’t have told them. She doesn’t speak, remember?”
    Yet she spoke to me.
But Daniel had no reasonable explanation of how that happened, or why she would appear to him and not her family, so he kept that thought to himself. These two were barely listening to him now. No use arousing more doubts about his sanity.
    The fire sizzled and hissed, the glowing bed of coals pulsing like a beating heart. Over on the picket line, a horse snorted and stomped. Merlin, probably, trying