“Don’t blame me.” Karl folded his arms over his chest. “You’re the one always telling me not to waste the batteries.”

Jill shook her head and continued. “So as he was taking his memorized path down to the barns, he found an armadillo.” She looked directly at Karl. “By stepping on its tail.”

Karl’s eyes widened. “Do you know how high those things can jump?” He threw his arms back into the air. “Almost as high as I can jump!”

Dulsie chuckled with the rest of the family. “What were you so spooked about? The armadillo’s the one who got stepped on.”

“For all I knew it was gonna turn in midair and fly toward my jugular – or somewhere worse!”

“So you were wanting a big white dog for protection about then?”

“I wanted a crucifix and a silver bullet about then. But what would Sadie do with an armadillo? It’s not a predator unless you’re a bug. Would she just bark at it or try to make it into armadillo burger?”

Dulsie thoughtfully rubbed on her chin. “Hmm. Interesting question. I can tell you this for sure.” She grinned at her dad. “She’d have sense enough not to step on its tail.”

A geriatric gentleman who was one of the church elders walked to the center of the chairs and spread his arms apart as he glanced around at the scattered groups.

“Friends.” His tone was warm and solemn.

That single word was all he needed to say. The talking throughout the room quickly subsided as some of the members took their seats and a couple of adults led about half a dozen kids through the door on the back wall. It led into a smaller room that was also used as an office. As Shad approached the chairs the entire family sat in a predictable order. Dulsie took a chair to one side of him, and today it was Pap instead of Mam who sat on Shad’s other side. Karl took the chair on Dulsie’s other side and Jill sat next to her husband. It was the farthest she could sit from Shad while remaining with her family.

One of the changes initiated by the Osage Friends was they now began each meeting with about thirty minutes of discussion on a scriptural passage. Karl was usually very active in these examinations, sometimes earning a dig in the ribs from Jill’s elbow. The congregation had long ago surmised that Karl’s decision to become “convinced” as a Friend after he left the Catholic Church had more to do with Jill than with God. Only immediate family members knew the real reasons why Karl had left his church of origin in the first place.

After the discussion the children and their keepers returned to the main room, and everybody settled into worship for around an hour. This was when silence reigned, to be broken only when someone was inspired to reveal the word of God. This belief of the Society of Friends that what they spoke and wrote was as true a declaration as any part of scripture was part of what led to their persecution hundreds of years ago. Even the founder, George Fox, wound up in jail a few times for his beliefs. But there was also much about this faith that people found appealing, causing it to once be the third largest religious group in the colonies before the American Revolution began.

The original congregation that settled here less than a decade before the Civil War broke out were adherents to the teachings of Elias Hicks, a man whom many people claimed had strayed from orthodox Quakerism. His ideas were popular enough to become fairly widespread, especially among rural folk. No sooner did the congregation get established in their new location than Quaid Delaney made his appearance.

And he’d made quite an entrance. One October morning three Friends who were traveling together found an unknown man lying in the middle of the road. His spent horse was standing, barely, nearby, and Quaid had been shot five times. They hauled him to the nearest house and brought in a doctor, who dug out three bullets that were still lodged in his flesh. Next the congregation held a meeting in order to decide what to do with the stranger.

There was not a line of volunteers eager to keep Quaid while he either recuperated or expired. They suspected he was a man of violence, and the people who shot him up might come looking to finish the job without regard to anyone they thought was in their way.

But Grace Riggs offered to take him in. She was a widow whose husband had died of lockjaw while Grace was still pregnant with their daughter, who upon Quaid’s arrival was less than three years old. And because Grace had a problem, her charity was not altruistic. Her late husband’s family never liked that he became a Friend, and his brother claimed the man had borrowed money from him. In his effort to obtain repayment of a loan Grace was certain never happened, the brother-in-law was in the process of taking her farm away. Grace hoped that keeping a convalescent in her home would buy her some time, especially with winter coming on.

The brother-in-law remained obstinate. But luckily for Grace the burly Irishman under her roof decided to come to her aid. Quaid, it turned out, was a riverboat gambler and a conman’s conman. His victims were other miscreants whom Quaid felt obliged to relieve of their ill-gotten booty as he traveled up and down the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. His current predicament was the result of his latest scam not going entirely the way he’d planned, especially the part about getting shot.

Grace figured out that Quaid’s apparent hedonism had roots in more noble sentiments. He was mad at God for allowing his mother and siblings to die of starvation in Ireland. He was mad at his father for abandoning them. And Quaid was mad at himself because he questioned his decision to come over to this country when he was only thirteen in order to earn money that would bring the rest of his family out of Ireland. But the person to whom Quaid entrusted the money had instead taken off with it.

So Grace’s brother-in-law fit right into Quaid Delaney’s grudge.

For years afterward people in the community would theorize what it was Quaid did that made the brother-in-law pack up and leave town. What made their tongues wag faster, however, was the news Quaid and Grace were going to marry immediately. After all, why else would Grace burden herself with the whiskey-drinking, gun-toting, smoking and gambling Irishman? Some gossip mongers were no doubt disappointed when their first child was born more than a year after the wedding.

Quaid, who was neither a drunkard nor an addict, had given up gambling and used his gun only for hunting and dispatching varmints ... except for that one time during the war he had to take out some two-legged varmints, as his descendants liked to refer to the incident. He embraced his second chance to take care of a family, and although many in the community considered Quaid to be quarrelsome, he had one trait nobody could fault him on and it undoubtedly helped the Friends congregation tolerate him better. Quaid was a very generous man.

Pap’s Grandpa Ward confirmed to him that the rumors were true about Quaid having amassed a small fortune during his riverboat days. Quaid’s own family never directly benefited from the defiled money – Grace wouldn’t allow it – but he was quick to help anyone, known or stranger, who was in need. And Quaid was especially fond of giving support to widows and orphans.

Four generations later when a woman from the respectable Leeds family married a man from the suspect Delaney clan, the old people who remembered childhood stories told to them about the exploits of Margaret and Quaid jested it could only signify a beginning and an end to both ancestral legacies. Shad wasn’t entirely sure what that was supposed to mean, but he did know the first born child of that union was instrumental in changing his life completely. Had Erin not intervened in her unique, divinely inspired fashion, Shad was certain that if he survived childhood he would have become someone horrifying as an adult.