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get on with it.
    But when he thought of Camp McClellan, he couldn’t help shuddering with dread. Two hundred Dakota men had been transferred there from Mankato. In Mankato they had been shackled to one another and fenced in like cattle. Treated worse. Falling victim to disease and dying—a few every week. There was no reason to think Camp McClellan would be any different. But they needed him. For the first time in a quarter-century of Dakota mission work, the Indians actually wanted missionaries. And if it were not for his children, for Gen—
    If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple. All things work together for good to those who are called. And I am calling you to Mankato.
    Sighing, Simon stood up. He stared for a few more moments at the cross. Then he made his way down the aisle and out into the foyer. Shrugging into his worn coat he stepped out onto the front stoop and pulled the church door closed behind him and locked it. It had begun to rain. He turned his coat collar up against the light wind and headed up the street, past neat brick homes as far removed from the log cabins he had inhabited over the past few years as the moon above was from the earth. If it stopped raining, he would take the children fishing tomorrow. Perhaps Gen would go along. They could picnic beside St. Anthony Falls.
    Simon shoved his hands in his pockets and headed up the street toward the Whitneys’. When he arrived, he paused to look up at the rambling two-story frame house. It was another example of God’s blessing. Samuel and Nina had been sent west from Illinois to help with the relief effort for white refugees from the southwest corner of the state. They agreed to rent the house almost on a whim, simply because it was offered so cheaply they could not resist. But once they were ensconced in the small quarters at the rear of the first floor with their two small children, they began to wonder about the wisdom of taking on such a vast property. God verified their choice by proceeding to fill the rest of the house. Two displaced Dakota Mission teachers, Lizzie Huggins and Belle Stanford, arrived first. Next came Miss Jane Williams with young Rebecca and Timothy Sutton in tow. And, finally, Simon and company.
    Simon walked slowly up the steps and opened the door as quietly as possible, pausing in the entryway just long enough to hang up his coat and hat. At the bottom of the soaring staircase he removed his worn-out shoes. He looked around him, thanking God that his children lay safe in warm beds just upstairs. Then he felt ashamed, knowing that at this very moment Dakota children were dying of disease and neglect while their fathers and brothers were held at Camp McClellan. While they were still in Minnesota, the men had engaged in a lively correspondence with their families in Fort Snelling. Dr. Riggs said he once transported two hundred letters back to Fort Snelling in one week. Simon wondered how the two groups would communicate now that they were so far away from each other.
    At the doorway to what he had come to think of as “his girls’” room, Simon paused. He turned the doorknob slowly. Careful to stay mostly out in the hall, he peeked around the door and toward where his precious Meg lay asleep, her red curls spilling over her pillow. It had stopped raining. Moonlight poured through the one tall window in the far wall. Perhaps a picnic would be possible, after all.
    To his right, baby Hope lay asleep in the crib they had managed to cram between the doorjamb and the corner of the small room. A soft, rhythmic gurgling accompanied her thumb-sucking. Simon smiled to himself and started to back out of the room. But then he allowed himself one look back to where, next to Meg, lay the real reason he did not want to leave St.