Robin Lee Thatcher - [The Sisters of Bethlehem Springs]

by A Matter of Character

  Then, once his business in Boise was done, he could return to Bethlehem Springs with a clear conscience and finish what that kiss had begun.

  TWENTY

  “I’m sorry, Joshua.” Kevin Donahue’s words were hard to understand over the static on the line. “Mary Theresa isn’t at home. She…she’s with her cousin Blanche.”

  Joshua held the earpiece to his left ear, pressed his index finger against his right ear, and raised his voice as he spoke into the mouthpiece of the telephone. “When can I call back, Mr. Donahue? I’m hoping to return to Bethlehem Springs in the morning, and I’d like to talk to her before then if at all possible.”

  “She won’t be back today. She and Blanche took a trip together. I’m not sure when she’ll return, but I’m certain it won’t be before the end of next week.”

  Mary Theresa hadn’t mentioned the possibility of going on a holiday in her letters. Had she spent Thanksgiving away from her grandfather?

  “Joshua, is there something the matter? Is it urgent you speak with her soon?”

  “No. No. Nothing like that.” But despite his words, it felt urgent. He wanted to speak to her. He wanted the matter settled. He wanted his conscience clear the next time he was with Daphne.

  “Then perhaps you should put it in a letter, my boy. It would be much cheaper than a telephone call.”

  Joshua couldn’t help smiling at that. Kevin Donahue was known for his ability to pinch pennies until they screamed for mercy.

  “I know, but I would like to talk with her. Sometimes the immediate is better than a letter.”

  “Yes, I suppose it is at your age. Is there somewhere I can have her—” He cleared his throat. “Can I have her call you?”

  “No.” He could have told Kevin to have her call him at the newspaper, but this wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have within hearing of other folks in Bethlehem Springs. “No, I’ll just call again when I have the use of another telephone.”

  “Very well. And how is your search going? Your last letter said you were told Richard really was a judge when he was in Idaho?”

  “Yes, it seems that part could be true.”

  “Never pictured him in that sort of role, but it makes sense. Your grandfather was a good and fair-minded man.”

  “Yes, he was.” But apparently not when he served on the bench.

  The static over the wire grew worse.

  “I’m going to ring off now, Mr. Donahue. Tell Mary Theresa I called and that I’ll try again soon.”

  “Of course. I’ll tell her. Good-bye, Joshua.”

  “Good-bye, Mr. Donahue.” He dropped the earpiece into its cradle.

  Feeling frustrated, he raked the fingers of one hand through his hair as he turned around. The small office was cramped and airless, just about every surface covered with papers of one kind or another. But it had given him some measure of privacy. He walked to the door and opened it.

  Kit Shepherd, the young fellow who’d been helping Joshua search through old newspaper records, spun his chair around and smiled. “Able to make your call?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “Great!” He turned back to his desk and grabbed a folder. “While you were in there, I found something. I think it’s what you’ve been looking for.” He held out the folder toward Joshua. “A couple of articles about the Honorable Judge Richard Terrell of Bethlehem Springs. Seems he earned quite the reputation during the three years he sat on the bench. Right about the time you were looking for too. Lots of trouble with law enforcement back then. All kinds of riffraff flowing into the territory. Crooked sheriffs. Plenty of thieves and ne’er-do-wells. Country still trying to heal the wounds from the Civil War. Lots of bad blood between supporters of the Union and supporters of the Confederacy. I heard tell the vigilante movement got its start right up in our mountains during the height of the gold rush.”

  Joshua took the folder and opened it to read the clippings inside.

  March 1868 to February 1871. That’s what the first article said were the years Richard Terrell had been a judge in the bawdy mining town of Bethlehem Springs, Idaho. His grandfather had returned to St. Louis in the early months of ’71. The timing was right, and with this information added to what the Coughlin brothers had told him, he was running out of reasons not to believe the less-than-flattering stories about Richard Terrell. The stories that had made their way into Daphne’s novels.

  “There’s times I’d give my eye teeth to have been alive back then. Bet I would’ve been a gunslinger.” Kit pretended to draw a gun from his hip, then laughed as he blew on the tip of his index finger.

  Joshua moved away from the younger man, trying to block out his incessant chatter so he could concentrate on the words he was reading. Could the man in these articles really have been his grandfather?

  Yes, it was him.

  The last of his resistance dissolved. It was all true. The man portrayed in D. B. Morgan’s McFarland Chronicles was the same man portrayed in these newspaper clippings. No wonder his grandfather had never wanted to talk about his old life. In his mind, he heard again the reply he’d been given when he’d ask the old man about the years he’d lived out West.

  “There I was, closing in on fifty years old, and God made me a new man. The old me, the old sinner, was gone and forgotten…Nothing before my life in Christ matters one whit to me. Everything good came after that.”

  Much of the meaning behind those remembered words had changed, now that Joshua knew a little of what his grandfather’s life had been like before he became a Christian. No wonder Richard Terrell left Idaho. God might forget the sins of a man’s past, but people rarely did.

  Daphne spun her desk chair toward the window. The wintery scene beyond the glass was picture perfect. A thin blanket of new snow lay upon tree branches, shrubs, and lawn. The clouds had long since moved on, and sunshine caused the icy crystals to sparkle and dance before her eyes.

  Had snow fallen in Boise as well? Was Joshua walking along a sidewalk on his way to the newspaper, his nose red with the cold? Had he learned anything new about his grandfather?

  “Who were you really, Mr. Terrell?” she wondered aloud.

  In The McFarland Chronicles, Rawhide Rick was a villain, pure and simple. A man without a single redeeming quality. How unrealistic. As a writer, she should have known better. Weren’t all people a combination of good and bad, saint and sinner? A mixture of black and white, true and false, better and worse.

  Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

  It seemed to Daphne that Richard Terrell had followed Paul’s words to the Philippians to the letter. He’d been a man with a past he’d wanted to forget, a man with secrets he’d wanted to put behind him, and that’s exactly what he’d done. He’d pressed on toward the higher calling in Jesus.

  Wouldn’t I have done the same, were my past as shady?

  She leaned forward and plucked her last book off the shelf, allowing it to fall open on her lap.

  “Monster!” Miss Claremont exclaimed. “Have you no shame? You know my father is not guilty of such a thing.”

  Rawhide Rick laughed. “But I’ll prove he did the very thing you claim he did not.”

  “You cannot prove what is not true.”

  His composure was exasperating to the extreme. “You might be surprised to discover how easy it is to prove as true that which is not.”

  How very close Miss Claremont’s father had come to the hanging tree. In the end, Bill McFarland had rescued him, but Rawhide Rick had escaped justice once again—in order to appear in the next installment of the chronicles, of course.

  She closed the book and set it onto her desk next to the typewriter, feeling oddly disquieted.

  Joshua’s voice echoed in her memory. “I believe you’re a naturally gifted storyteller. You sh
ouldn’t waste that gift. Your latest column is superior work.”

  He thought her gifted, but he didn’t think much of her published books. He’d made that perfectly clear. Was it only because of how she’d portrayed his grandfather in her stories or was it something more than that? She suspected the latter, although the former was incriminating enough in his eyes. Now she was inclined to believe he found her novels beneath her. But was it terrible to give the public what they wanted? Was it so awful to offer stories that let readers escape into another place, another time, for a short while? That was what her books did. Naturally they were high on melodrama. That was what made them fun to read.

  She rose and left her office, but doing so didn’t help her restless thoughts. For it was here, in the living room, that she had last seen Joshua. It was over there, by the front door, that he had gripped her arms and kissed her. A kiss that had lasted not nearly long enough to suit her.

  A sigh slipped between her lips as the memory of those wonderful-awful moments swept through her again. Never in her life had she been kissed like that. It had seemed to consume her. It had muddled her mind and left her both empty and filled at the same time.

  “I’m sorry, Miss McKinley. I shouldn’t have done that. Please forgive me.”

  Didn’t he realize she’d been a willing participant? Didn’t he know that she’d come to care for him? Care for him more than she’d realized before right this moment.

  “I must tell him. I must tell him what he means to me.” She inhaled deeply. “I must tell him I love him.”

  Oh, she wished he wasn’t in Boise. She wished she could pull on her coat and run down to the newspaper office and declare her feelings. And she wouldn’t care one bit what anyone who happened to overhear her declaration might think of her boldness.

  She hugged herself as she spun in a tight circle.

  So this was what it felt like, falling in love. She’d thought she knew. When she’d written about it in her books, she’d thought she knew exactly what love meant between a man and a woman. Hadn’t she witnessed it first hand between her parents, between Morgan and Gwen, between Woody and Cleo? But she’d been clueless. She hadn’t known the mere thought of the man she loved would leave her breathless and anxious and as giddy as a schoolgirl. How could she know until it happened to her?

  Dropping onto the nearby chair, she closed her eyes and pictured Joshua in her mind. He’d cared for her so tenderly during her illness. Was that when she’d begun to fall in love with him? When she’d awakened and there’d been only the two of them, and she’d realized all the tender care he’d given her.

  Her neighbor, Edna Updike, thought Daphne forever compromised—had even told another neighbor that she thought Morgan should have insisted Daphne and Joshua be married at once. Now Daphne almost wished her brother had done exactly that.

  Almost but not quite.

  No, she would much prefer that Joshua marry her because he loved her, not because someone forced him to. And she hoped he would realize he loved her soon.

  November 28, 1872

  A Day of Thanksgiving.

  I have lived the majority of life without being thankful to anyone for anything. I’ve taken what I wanted when I wanted it and how I wanted it. I doubt I gave a second thought to those who did me any sort of kindness. And when I look back, I can see that such people existed despite my indifference to them. There were men who gave me chances to choose a better way of life, especially in my youth. There were women who fixed me a hot meal and were kind to me. I was blind to all of it, but now I see.

  President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the final Thursday in November a national Thanksgiving Day, and so it has been from that day to this. Last year was my first Thanksgiving as a follower of Christ, but this year, I truly have begun to understand all that I have to be thankful for—my wonderful wife, my beautiful daughter, my new friends, our warm and welcoming home, my legitimate business enterprises, the opening of the SLMA. But above all that, I am thankful for God’s mercy and grace, for the cleansing of my sins in the blood of the Lamb.

  Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all ye lands. Serve the LORD with gladness: come before his presence with singing.

  Know ye that the LORD he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

  Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.

  For the LORD is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.

  Psalm 100

  Amen.

  TWENTY-ONE

  As the team of horses pulled the sleigh along the road to the Arlington ranch, Gwen repeated a sentiment that she’d already voiced twice that day. “I can’t believe the difference a couple more days have made in your recovery. You look wonderful, Daphne. Positively in the pink of health.”

  Daphne smiled. Everything inside of her wanted to burst forth with the reason that she looked well—because she was in love. But Joshua should be the first to hear those words, and so she remained silent.

  Let him return today, Lord. If I don’t tell him how I feel soon, I think I’ll burst.

  She folded her hands inside her muff and turned to look at the passing countryside. It was unusual for the extended family not to dine at her brother’s home on Sundays after church, but on Thanksgiving, Cleo had insisted that everyone come to the ranch for dinner today.

  “It’s my turn to play hostess,” Cleo had said. “Believe it or not, I’ll be preparing the meal. I’ve been getting lessons from Cookie.”

  As the sleigh crossed the bridge over the river, Andy exclaimed, “Daddy, look!” and pointed at a herd of elk near the edge of the forest. Morgan reined in, slowing the horses.

  Daphne remembered the day she and Joshua had driven to Stone Creek and how they’d stopped the motorcar to watch another small herd of elk. She remembered standing above the river’s edge and marveling at the beauty of the stag with his great rack. How could she have not known even then that she was falling in love with the man who stood at her side?

  Her gaze returned to her brother. His arm was around his small son’s shoulders, the two of them on the front seat of the sleigh. He held the reins in his free hand as the horses finished their walk across the bridge. Father and son looked so very right together. A perfect picture.

  She hoped Joshua wanted children. She did. She hadn’t known how much she wanted children until she’d fallen in love. Loving Joshua made her long for things she hadn’t given much thought to before now. Was it that way for all women?

  When they could no longer see the elk, Morgan clucked to the horses and slapped their backsides with the reins, and the sleigh took off again. A short while later, they entered a long valley. Now they were on Arlington land, although it would take awhile before the ranch complex would come into view.

  Daphne had often imagined what it must have been like when Griff and Elizabeth Arlington first lived in this valley—a two-room log cabin, cooking over an open flame, miners for their nearest neighbors, Bethlehem Springs a much rougher place than the bucolic town it was today. What a great adventure it must have been for the two of them.

  Sometimes she thought she had been born a generation or two too late. But then she would have missed loving Joshua Crawford. No grand adventure would have been worth that.

  She was still lost in thought when the sleigh pulled into the yard and Morgan stopped the team near the porch of the ranch house. Before they had time to throw off the lap robes that had kept them warm for the journey, the front door opened and Cleo and Woody stepped onto the veranda. Cleo had changed out of her church clothes and into her standard Levi’s, boots, and shirt, but today she’d added a white apron.

  “She was serious,” Daphne said. “She is cooking our dinner.”

  From the porch, Cleo called, “Don’t look so scared. I don’t reckon I’ll poison you.”

  Joshua went straight from the Beth
lehem Springs train depot to the newspaper office. He wanted to make certain all was ready for the Monday edition of the Herald to go to press. Despite it being a Sunday afternoon, he wasn’t surprised to find Christina Patterson there as well.

  “My goodness,” she said, her gaze darting to the clock, “I had no idea it was that time already. Was your trip successful, Joshua?”

  “I suppose so.” He shrugged out of his coat and hung it on the rack.

  Christina didn’t seem to notice his enigmatic response. “You had a visitor yesterday.” She held out a small envelope. “She didn’t leave her name but she asked that I give you this when you returned.”

  Daphne’s image sprang to mind, causing his pulse to quicken. But would Christina have referred to Daphne as “a visitor”? He walked to his boss’s desk and took the note from her hand. His name was written across the front of the envelope in a hand that looked familiar, although he couldn’t place it. He turned away as he opened the envelope and withdrew the slip of paper.

  Joshua dearest,

  I am here in Bethlehem Springs. Imagine my disappointment upon my arrival when I learned you were away from town for a couple of days. My cousin Blanche Collins (you remember Blanche, don’t you?) and I are staying at the Washington Hotel. Please hasten to see me as soon as you receive this note.

  Yours,

  Mary Theresa

  Mary Theresa? In Bethlehem Springs? He couldn’t believe it. She’d never said a word about coming to see him, and he’d never indicated he would want her to come either. Why hadn’t Kevin Donahue told Joshua that Mary Theresa was coming to Bethlehem Springs? Or hadn’t Mary Theresa told her grandfather where she was going? But that seemed unlikely. Mary Theresa wouldn’t have undertaken this kind of trip, even with her widowed cousin along as a chaperone, without getting her grandfather’s permission first.