Read Online Alice's Tulips: A Novel by Sandra Dallas - Free Book Online

that?” She waited, then says, “You in there. Git!”
    The hay moved a little, and pretty soon, a bony arm stuck out. Then came a girl behind it, wearing my brown dress! She sidled around the barn until she was out the door, us right behind her, and Mother Bullock pinned her against the wall with the fork. She was the sorriest thing I ever saw, so thin, the sun shone through her. It would take three of her to make a shadow.
    She looked as if she had been used hard, but she didn’t appear dangerous, and I was a little disappointed and says, “I misdoubt we caught the midnight assassin.”
    “You the one stealing from us?” Mother Bullock asks.
    The girl didn’t answer, just kept looking back over her shoulder toward the barn.
    “Girl, I asks you a question,” Mother Bullock says. But she stillwouldn’t say a word, just kept glancing from us to the barn door, scared green, acting rabbity.
    Then it came to me. “There’s another in there.”
    Mother Bullock jerked her head around and squeezed her eyes to see inside, but it was too dark to make out anything. “You go fire the shotgun in that hay,” she tells me.
    “Yes’m.” I started for the door.
    “No, lady!” the girl says, speaking for the first time.
    I stopped and looked to Mother Bullock, who says, “She’s got a man in there, and they’re up to no good, stealing from hardworking folks that have got a son in the army of the republic.”
    “Maybe her man’s a deserter,” I says. “Or a raider. Might be they’re the ones setting the fires.” I got all worked up and aimed the gun inside the barn.
    “No!” the girl cries. She moved so fast that in no more time than it takes to tell it, she had jumped away from Mother Bullock and grabbed the shotgun out of my hands. “Stand off. I swan, I kilt before,” she says real fierce. But she was shaking.
    “We wouldn’t have hurt you,” Mother Bullock says. “But I can’t abide a thief.”
    “Can’t help it. It’s steal or starve,” she says, then calls into the barn, “Come on out now.”
    We didn’t hear a sound from the barn, but of a sudden, there was a little girl standing in the doorway. She could have been six or four, just knee-high to a duck, and she was the prettiest girl ever you saw, with eyes cornflower blue and her hair the paler than pale yellow of buttercups.
    “Come here, Joybell. You’ns come right here.”
    Joybell ran forward—right into a fence post. She smacked her head so hard, she fell down and lay there as still as a rock. The string-bean girl set down the shotgun and ran to her. I grabbed the gun and pointed it at the two of them, but Mother Bullock shook her head at me.
    “Maybe there’s more in there,” I says.
    “If there was, they wouldn’t have sent the baby out. This girl-woman’sjust like a momma bird protecting her young. That’s how come she run out of the barn the way she did, to draw us away.” Mother Bullock moved toward the two of them but didn’t close in.
    “Keep away,” says the girl, putting herself between Mother Bullock and Joybell. “You don’t have no least idea what I’ll do if you touch her.”
    “I know some about doctoring. I could look, see how bad she bumped her head. We won’t hurt you,” Mother Bullock says. The girl-woman looked at Mother Bullock for a long time, deciding whether she could trust us. Then she shifted so that Mother Bullock could see the baby.
    “Joybell, is it?” Mother Bullock asks.
    The girl nodded. “Joybell Tatum. I’m Annie Tatum. Pleased to meet you.”
    Mother Bullock knelt down and turned over the little girl. She had a long cut on her forehead from where she’d snagged it on a nail sticking out of the post, and it oozed out blood all over her face. “We’ll carry her into the house, out of the sun. Alice here will help you.”
    I handed the gun to Mother Bullock and says to Annie, “You take her shoulders. I’ll carry her feet. How come she ran into that fence post? Was she looking at