The Preacher's Bride (Brides of Simpson Creek)

by Laurie Kingery

  Once, she dozed, only to jerk awake when a stolid-faced squaw pelted her with rotten meat. Some of the stinking mess clung to her ripped, stained riding skirt.

  Her captor passed by once, flanked by a trio of his friends. When he saw that she had seen him, he pulled out a knife and fondled it while watching her. He chuckled when she turned her head away.

  Faith hadn’t seen the inquisitive Indian boy who had come into the tepee her first night again, although a half-dozen boys of similar ages had passed by carrying bows and arrows. At first she thought they might be preparing to use her for target practice, but they kept walking until they passed by out of sight of the camp. Where had the boy with the crutch gone? Something about him—the apparent fact that he had met Gil? The kindness in his eyes?—had been comforting. Maybe her captor had punished the boy for entering his tepee and looking at her, and he had been forbidden to come near her.

  As the afternoon wore on, the tantalizing smells coming from the cooking pots began to taunt her, but no one showed any interest in feeding her or relieving her thirst. Laughter erupted from several sides when a boy walked past her, throwing a gourdful of red ants at her which he had apparently scooped up from an anthill.

  Most of the ants bounced harmlessly off her clothing and fell to the ground. A few, however, found their way inside the neck of her blouse, and Faith couldn’t help flinching and whimpering as she felt their tiny, vicious biting. Her audience seemed to find her flinches and outcries the height of amusement.

  Soon everyone took their cooked food and went inside their tepees, and she was left alone with her thoughts.

  Lord, I don’t understand why this is happening. Please, let Gil find me...

  * * *

  As soon as he reached Simpson Creek, Gil lost no time in delivering his message to the deputy and checking on his father. He didn’t tell Faith’s mother that they now thought Faith might have been taken by the Indians. It would have given her added anguish for no good reason, and he would have had to stay longer to try to console her. Instead, he let her believe he was rendezvousing with one of the search parties, and went to retrieve Milly Brookfield’s now-rested horse from the livery.

  What if he never found the camp? Gil wondered as he rode north out of town. He couldn’t be one-hundred-percent certain it wasn’t Merriwell who had taken her after all, and if Comanches had been the culprits, he had no reason to be certain it was even the same band he had encountered when he’d found the Indian boy. A raiding party from another band might be miles away with her by now.

  Or it might not even have been Comanches at all, Gil thought. Kiowas, enemies of the Comanches, raided in Texas from time to time, too.

  Lord, only You can help me find her, and only You can save her. Please lead me to the right place, even if it means I must die.

  He figured there was very little chance he would come out of this alive if he found Faith, even if he did somehow persuade the Comanches to release her.

  But if by some miracle I do survive—whether I’m able to find Faith, Lord, I know there is something I need to do—something I should have done a long time ago.

  He needed to tell his father about his long-ago sin with Suellen, and then confess it to the congregation. The Lord had long ago forgiven him, but because he had kept his sin secret, perhaps there would be some in Simpson Creek Church who would feel he wasn’t worthy to be their preacher after they learned what he’d done.

  But all that would take place in the future, he thought. He left the road and began to climb into the hills.

  * * *

  As the sun began its descent into the hills to the west, Black Coyote Heart took yet another look at himself in the mirror he had taken from the dead white eyes, and which he had yet to give Eyes of an Antelope. He was the best-looking male of his tribe, that was certain. No one had such a wealth of long, raven-black hair as he possessed. No one had such a fierce, eagle eye. He was taller than most and powerfully built. The many coups he had counted showed in his proud bearing.

  Grinning at his image, he dabbed on another slash of crimson war paint. When the white woman saw him, she would surely faint from terror.

  He heard the murmuring of the people outside the tepee, and the beginning throbs of the drum beating in a slow rhythm.

  Crow Echo, his sister, lifted the flap of the tent. She had painted her face in slashes of black, as was traditional among the tribe’s women when the scalp dance was to take place.

  “It is time,” she said.

  He lifted the flap of the tent, and saw that Panther Claw Scars sat in the place of honor, as befitting a chief. Black Coyote Heart’s fellow warriors and the young women were already dancing and chanting around the pole to which the red-haired woman was bound. She hadn’t seen him yet, but she already looked terrified.

  None of the warriors had died during the raid, so there was no clamoring for the captive to be killed. The purpose of the dance was to subjugate the woman with terror. After that she would be compliant and meek, always afraid that she could be tied to the pole again and killed the next time.

  The drum beat sped up. All eyes were on Black Coyote Heart as he stepped into the circle of dancers, pulling his knife from its sheath with a ceremonial flourish. The woman saw him now and the knife he held, and shrank back against the pole, her green eyes impossibly wide in a face leached of all color.

  Eyes of an Antelope saw him, too, he noted with satisfaction. She was staring at him as if she could not get enough of his magnificence, and her father also looked suitably impressed. Perhaps it would take only three horses instead of four—plus the captive woman, of course, to purchase his bride.

  He began to dance, weaving closer and closer to the white woman each time he passed in front of her, feinting at her with the knife as if he meant to cut her throat, pantomiming the act of scalping. Once he lifted a lock of her dark red hair with the blade of his knife, then cut it off. She’d had her teeth clenched before that, but now she whimpered with fear.

  Yes, the red-haired white woman would give him no trouble after this.

  * * *

  Gil thought he knew a little of what it was like for the Lord to wander forty days in the wilderness. He felt as discouraged as Jesus must have felt just before the devil showed up to tempt him power and worldly riches. Gil wasn’t being tempted with anything like that, of course, just to the possibility of giving in to despair.

  Lord, can it be Your will that I don’t find Faith, even though I’m willing to give my life for her? He couldn’t believe it could be so. Yet the sun was sinking and he had found no trace of horse tracks, no scrap of clothing clinging to a shrub, nothing.

  With God, all things are possible.

  And then the wind carried a snatch of sound to his ears—a sound so faint and so low that he couldn’t be sure that his mind wasn’t playing tricks on him, for it seemed to be coming from beneath the ground. A cadenced, low reverberation like the beat of a drum. He paused, listening, then inched the horse forward, his eyes scanning his surroundings for anything familiar.

  Seek and ye shall find.

  All at once he spotted a mesquite some fifty yards ahead of him and stared hard at it. Yes—he’d seen that scrubby tree, split down the middle by lightning, ahead of him before. While tied to the post in the middle of the camp, he’d spotted it perched right above the lip of the overhanging ledge that hung over the Comanche camp.

  Now Gil could hear the drumbeat clearly, a beat echoing in the thudding of many feet and chanting voices keeping time to the drum’s throbbing. Wanting to see what was happening without being seen as yet, Gil dismounted his horse, hoping it wouldn’t stray far. He crawled the rest of the way on his belly to the lip of the canyon and peered over it.

  At first he could make out nothing, for his eyes were blinded by the campfire, and then he spotted Faith, tied to the s
ame post he had been not so long ago. Painted savages danced around her, the firelight reflecting off their skin.

  He felt sick at the confirmation that she was exactly where he feared she would be. He was outnumbered perhaps forty to one. And that was just counting the young braves. There were as many or more women of various ages, and half as many older men, including one he guessed was the chief by his ceremonial headdress. Nowhere did he see Makes Healing or Runs Like a Deer. Had they been banished—or something worse—because the medicine man had aided him?

  As Gil continued to watch, unable to decide what to do, he was horrified and enraged to see a Comanche woman lean in as she capered past, jabbing Faith with a stick. He saw her flinch back, clamping her teeth over her lip to keep from crying out.

  He had to rescue her! How long before they would progress from torment to real torture? He had the will to do it, to ride in there and hope they would be willing to free her in exchange for him, but he had no reason to believe they would do anything more than laugh at him, then kill them both. Lord, why couldn’t he have been born to be a rough-and-ready cowboy or a soldier skilled in firearms? He’d left the pistol back in his saddlebag—he could get it, but what were six bullets against such a murderous horde below?

  All David the shepherd boy had were five smooth stones. And he felled the mighty Philistine giant. I will go with you.

  All right, then. There was nothing else to do but to attempt the impossible.

  He turned, intending to crawl back to his horse, remount, then ride boldly into the camp. He knew now where the land dipped, several yards to the east of the lip of the canyon, forming a narrow trail into the camp itself.

  He froze, for there were four Comanches standing just a couple of yards behind him, and a fifth holding the muzzle of his horse so the beast couldn’t nicker and warn him.

  * * *

  Faith had been so sure the only thing worse than the taunting and hideous pantomiming of her weaving, swooping captor and his dancing friends could be the time he would actually inflict a fatal wound or set her on fire with a burning brand. But the sight of Gil, his arms tied behind him, being pushed down the trail into the camp and into the circle of firelight was much, much worse.

  “Gil!”

  He heard her over the crackling flames nearby and the monotonous drumbeats, thumping feet and chanting, and raised his head. “Faith!”

  She could see that they had beaten him. Even in the flickering light she could see one eyelid was reddened and would probably swell shut soon. They had broken his nose. A thin trickle of blood ran down over his lips and onto his chin.

  Her captor had circled back around the pole and saw him now, too. He stopped in midstep, pointing at Gil and shouting a question at the Indians who had brought him into the camp.

  One of them pointed at the overhanging ledge above the camp, indicating, Faith thought, it was where they had found him.

  Rage suffused the hideous face of her captor at the interruption. Then, in a lightning change of mood, he laughed and pointed his wicked-looking knife right at Gil, calling out something to the others.

  Loud whoops lifted from a score of throats at whatever he had said, and they seized Gil, dragging him past her to the post in front of her and binding her so they faced one another about ten feet apart. She guessed he hadn’t seen the scalps that so hideously decorated the top of the post, but he had only to look up and he would.

  She had thought that she had lost every bit of moisture in her body, but impossibly, she felt a hot tear slide down one cheek, then the other. Was she going to be forced to watch him die before they killed her, too?

  “What are you doing here, Gil?” she cried, when the whooping died down enough that he could hear her. “You can’t help me—they’ll kill you, too!”

  Her captor apparently didn’t like her speaking to her fellow captive, for he ran at her with his huge palm open. His slap stung like a hundred red ant bites at once. He screamed something at her, his eyes bulging in his fury.

  She looked beyond those fiery obsidian eyes to Gil’s face, and saw him shaking his head at her, warning her not to anger the Comanche further. Resolutely, she looked away—away from the face of the man she loved, away from her captor whose evil face was only inches from hers.

  The drumbeat began again. Her captor whirled away from her and lunged at Gil, slashing with his knife. In a motion almost too quick for Faith to see, he jabbed at Gil, opening a diagonal slash in Gil’s right cheek. Pointing his knife, he screamed something to the men and women who had been dancing with him. He seemed to be trying to incite the others to do as he had just done.

  No! Faith wasn’t sure if she had shrieked aloud or silently inside, but the Indian in the headdress stood then and raised his ceremonial lance. The others paused, and the drumbeats halted.

  He said something in that impenetrable tongue of theirs and pointed.

  Riding down the narrow defile was yet another Indian, an older man like the chief, and following him on a smaller pony was the boy who had come into the tepee.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Now Faith saw frustration join the anger on her captor’s face, its focus shifting from her to the mounted older man riding toward them. The older Indian pointed toward them and shouted something that sounded like a command.

  The younger Comanche’s face darkened still further and he clenched the hand not holding the knife into a fist at his side.

  Now the chief barked something at him, and her captor went rigid. Jaw clenched, he sheathed his knife. He shouted something at the Indian on the horse, who by now had ridden down to the chief; then, raising a fist, shouting and gesticulating, he stomped over to the two older Indians. The other young warriors swarmed behind him, doing likewise, obviously enraged by whatever the mounted Indian had said.

  Was the newcomer disputing her captor’s right to do with her as he willed? She watched, but could glean no hint of what was being discussed, so she turned to Gil. Who knew how long the Comanches’ attention would be diverted?

  He felt her gaze and looked at her. “My darling Faith, are you all right? Have they— Has he—” he jerked his head toward her captor “—hurt you?”

  “Not really,” she said. None of her cuts and bruises hurt now that he was with her, even though there was nothing he could probably do but die with her. “But you—your nose...”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I had to find you. I didn’t know if I could locate this camp again, or if they’d even still be here, but I had to try...”

  “‘Locate the camp again’?” she echoed. “So you have been here. That boy knows you, doesn’t he?” She nodded toward the boy on his pony, who had followed the older man to the chief. He was looking over his shoulder at Gil now, worry etching his young features.

  “Yes...his name is Runs Like a Deer. I’m sorry, Faith, I didn’t tell you the whole truth about my encounter with the Indians,” he admitted, shamefaced. “I found him in the hills. He’d fallen from his pony and his leg was broken. I had to find his people—I couldn’t just leave him out there alone and in pain... Then those braves found us, and attacked me. I was taken back here.”

  She said nothing, just watched him steadily. Who knew how long they would have to speak together before the Comanches turned on the again?

  “Those young braves wanted to kill me that day. I was bound to the same post you’re tied to now. They would have, too, except that Makes Healing, there—” he indicated the older man who was now dismounting his horse “—stopped him. He’s the medicine man of this band, and Runs Like a Deer is his son. He was grateful that I had helped his son and interceded for me apparently, so they were forced to release me.”

  “But why...”

  “I didn’t feel I could tell anyone about this place,” he said, “because the cavalry would come down on them, an
d the medicine man and his son might well be killed. It seemed a poor thanks for the mercy he showed me.”

  How like Gil to return gratitude and mercy—even to an Indian—for the gratitude and mercy he’d been shown.

  “But it seems I was wrong,” Gil went on sadly, “because if the cavalry had eradicated this camp, they couldn’t have taken you. Or attacked a ranch out near Lampasas. Faith, I’m so sorry.”

  “You couldn’t have known this would happen, Gil.” The cattle she had seen penned up at the edge of the camp must have been from that attack. And so were the scalps hanging above him.

  Both fell silent, for one of the warriors was returning to them now.

  His face unreadable, the brave untied Faith, then retied the leather thongs behind her back. Keeping a hand on the binding between her wrists, he pushed her toward one of the tepees. Once inside, he pointed to a tanned hide on the ground, and when she had lain down, bound her legs, too, so she was once more tied and helpless as she had endured the night before.

  A moment later he returned, pushing Gil ahead of him. He was followed by an older squaw who seated herself across the floor of the tepee. In moments Gil was bound just as she was and lying a couple of feet from her, facing her.

  It suddenly seemed to occur to the brave that they might be thirsty. He offered water from a drinking gourd to first Faith, then Gil. They drank thirstily, as much as he would give them, even though it was awkward to drink in that position and much of it spilled.

  As soon as the brave had left, Faith darted a cautious glance at the older squaw, but she seemed much more interested in the bowl of stew she had brought with her than in the captives she’d been set to guard.

  “Gil, what will happen to us now?”