Day by Day

Day by Day**REWRITING COMPLETELY

Okay, so I'm rewriting this story, completely, but I'm going to keep this up until then! Thanks!

Chapter One

The warm breeze was blowing through the opened doors of Redbud Mission Church on that shockingly calm June day in Indian Territory, but Caroline Freewill didn't seem to notice. Either she didn't notice-or she wasn't paying any mind.

  She sat, brown head hanging over the church piano, as she attempted to master a new church hymn. Her fingers worked quickly over the keys, until she struck a wrong one.

 For nearly an hour, she had been working on this one..and she couldn't seem to get it. She scratched at her chignon in which her long brown hair was held in, sighing, and leaning back on the hard wooden bench. Her pink cotton dress crammed against her ankles as she swung her feet back and forth, back and forth, as she absently stared up at the ceiling.

  Pip asked her to try to have it mastered by Sunday, so she could play it for the folks who came. And judging by the nice weather they had been having, plenty of them would attend. The summertime weather in Indian Territory was normally fast as lightning- and changing every minute.

  Caroline rose, smiling at the girlish whish of her pettycoats. Mimma said that only young ladies were to wear pettycoats, and Caroline was fourteen- had turned fourteen in March, to be right. She felt extremely grown up, and important when Mimma had told her that. She looked around the empty little church building, and straightened a stack of worn Bibles she saw. The clock said it was almost three, and Pip told her to be home by three-thirty. Well, she had a few minutes before she headed back. Might as well make the most of it.

   She saw the light pouring in through the windows, above where Pip stood to preach every Sunday afternoon and evening. A verse came to her mind, one that had come to mind often those days:

   "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord,"plans to prosper you, and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

   She knew that she would need to remember that, with all the talk of war. The Federals and the Confederates were constantly at each other’s throats, always threatening war. After the slip at Saratoga, people were figuring that there would be a war. Caroline hoped not. She didn't want a war. At any cost, she hoped that the war wouldn't come. It seemed silly and useless to her- except when she thought of the slaves. But there had to be some other way than war, to set them free. Couldn't there be? The South keeping slaves was ruining them as a nation, a prime example of that verse. She couldn't think of all of it, but she knew it said something about the little foxes. Stop the little foxes before they ruined the whole vine. Something like that.

  Shaking her head as a finalization, she took to dusting the window panes when she saw somebody on a horse come riding up. When the tall figure neared, she saw that it was Orry Roberts.

  He leapt off his gasping horse, and let out a whoop as he ran around to the open doors of the church.

 "Caro! Caro Freewill! Have ya heard? Have ya heard?" he asked excitedly, staring down into her blue-green eyes, his own brown ones dancing.

  "Heard what? I haven' t heard anyth-"

 "War!"he cried, jumping. "War! Samuel Gist tole me! Idn't that a hoot? He tole me that Mr. Lincoln called out tha soldiers last month!"

 "War? Oh, dear." She placed a hand on her cheek worriedly, then looked up again at Orry Jay Roberts. He had his pa's  looks- half Cherokee Indian, half white. He was a good-looking boy, and everybody said he was sweet on her. But he was almost sixteen and she was only fourteen. Pip thought he was a nice boy, naturally, and he was. Though not for her. Pip said he was older than her- by two years, and two years was an awful long time when she was only fourteen.