Remember Me When: A Women of Hope Novel

by Ginny Aiken

  “Gentlemen,” she said in a low voice. “If you would excuse me, please? I’d like to serve supper for you.”

  With scarcely a nod her way, the men continued their discussion. They were talking about the few Indians still angry about the recent war between the Bannocks and the soldiers south of Hope County. By now, most had been removed to reservations, but a few had slipped through and stayed behind. The Army continued to help protect settlers in northeast Oregon in the hopes their fate wouldn’t be the same as that of her family.

  When the men finished their meal, she cleared the dishes and washed up, wondering all the time whether she should escape to the relative safety of the barn or if she should retire to the sleeping loft. As the captain brought out a pipe for himself and cigars for the others, including one for Roger, she came to an easy decision. She couldn’t abide the smell.

  “I’ll be checking on the mules.” Without waiting for a response, she ran to the barn and into the stall, easing in close to Maisie. She leaned on the animal, let the welcome heat seep into her, and sucked in large gulps of cold night air to catch her breath.

  Sooner or later, she’d have to go back inside. For the moment, she’d enjoy the safety of the barn, its comforting, earthy smells of hay and animal, and the relative safety it offered. Roger rarely went there.

  Faith stayed with the mules until she heard the military men head outside. While she couldn’t make out the words, she did hear a curt exchange between one of the men and Roger. She reckoned they had figured out her husband shorted their order by a good amount. Just as he’d done to Mr. Bartlett. She wondered who’d offered Roger a minor ransom for the goods this time.

  Eventually, she heard them all ride away. So as to not enrage Roger any more than he already would be, she wrapped the shawl more securely around her neck and returned to the house straightaway.

  By this time, Theo had come back and was in the process of eating a pile of bacon and beans and the last of the biscuits. He paused long enough to give her a rude stare, which made her draw herself up to her full height. With far more calm than she felt, she stepped past the brothers and to the ladder to the loft.

  “Don’t s’pose you got any more of this bacon, do ya?” Theo paused only long enough to voice the words, then shoveled more food into his mouth.

  “I served all I cooked, Theo. Sorry. Your brother had company, as I’m sure you noticed when you arrived, and I reckon they were hungrier than I’d thought.”

  Since he didn’t say anything more, she hurried up to the loft, crawled into bed, and pulled the heavy quilt over her head. In the middle of her prayer of thanksgiving, seeing as God had given her a reprieve brief though it might be, she dozed off. Hours later, she opened her eyes to find the house still pitch dark. The silence of the night enveloped her.

  Faith slipped out of bed, walked to the railing across the loft, and looked down into the sitting room. There, she found a too-familiar scene. Roger had fallen asleep in his large, overstuffed brown leather chair, while Theo lay on the old velvet sofa, legs crossed at the ankle, his decrepit, dingy-gray slouch hat over his face. Roger let out another of his stentorian snores.

  As she studied the man she’d married with an abundance of good intentions, she felt a wave of disgust and bitter disappointment so powerful it near to smothered her. A germ of a harsh emotion stunned her in the speed with which it flared into a searing red lump of hate lodged in her heart, as it had begun to do from time to time in recent months.

  Faith could honestly say she’d never known hatred until her wedding night. These days, however, it ebbed and flowed, and tonight it flowed like molten metal. The arrogance and prideful attitude of the Nolan brothers astounded her. After all the deplorable treatment they’d heaped on her, they believed her so incapable that they slept unguarded in a room adjacent to a kitchen where she kept a pair of sharp-bladed knives.

  She caught the glitter of their edges in the flicker of the flames in the hearth.

  She supposed many would consider whatever action she took with those knives justified, the harvest of what the men had sown. She took a step. Caught her breath. It was the first time that foreign notion had crossed her thoughts.

  Could she use one of those knives to rid herself of her tormentor? As quiet as she’d tried to be, Faith realized she’d failed when the brothers began to stir. Then Theo stood, belched, scratched his head, and shambled to the door. “Gotta go. Shouldn’t’a stayed so long.”

  Roger shrugged. “So now you’ve slept on it some, brother, have you changed your mind? Toldja you were wrong all along. T’ain’t right, Theo. I always know what we ought and oughtn’t do better’n you.”

  On his way to the door, Theo shot Roger a belligerent glare. “Don’t hafta do what you want all the time, not on account of you being older.”

  A smug look on his jowly face, Roger scratched his rotund middle. “But you do hafta do what I want when it comes to my money.”

  Theo shoved an arm into the sleeve of his threadbare coat. “It’s my money, too.”

  “Then get yer sorry self outta here,” Roger growled. “Get moving, and go earn us some more, seein’ as you’re always being so quick to claim what comes in as yours. You said you were heading back to Bountiful tonight, and then tomorrow going on to—”

  “Well, well, well!” Theo’s small brown eyes narrowed to where they were mere slits in his plump face. “Lookee here, brother. Looks like yer missus is a-missing you, sleeping all alone up in that cold loft. Must get lonely of a night. Ain’t that right?”

  Faith shuddered. Now that the brothers had seen her, there would be no feigning sleep. It appeared the time to face the consequences had arrived.

  “Would either of you care for…for fresh coffee?” It was all she could think of at the moment. Coffee, of course, might do some good, if it served to help them fully sober up, maybe even work some of its civilizing gifts on the two louts.

  “Nah.” Roger stared at his brother. “Theo here was jist leaving, weren’t you, now, Theo?”

  Theo shrugged. “Why, sure. Sure, Roger. Too bad I won’t be having none of that coffee. You do make one fine pot, Faith.”

  She couldn’t remember ever giving her brother-in-law leave to call her by her given name, but he’d taken the liberty anyway. She nodded acknowledgment and descended the stairs.

  After Theo slammed the door shut, she turned to her husband. “Can I get you anything to eat?”

  “Nothing,” he said in a biting voice. “And you’d best sit until he’s had time to go down a ways. You and me…we have us some talking to do.”

  A real man didn’t do any kind of talking with his fists…

  The thought flew through Faith’s mind before she could catch it and turn it over to the Lord. It lodged in her heart like a lead ball, and she feared it might prove impossible to dislodge. One more truth she’d learned the hard way. One more reason to count herself a fool. She sank into the sofa, thankful, at least, for its proximity to the warm stone hearth. She felt iced to the depths of her being.

  It took no effort to follow Theo’s movements outdoors. He fancied himself quite the singer and filled the quiet night with the foul words of another one of his carousing ditties. She blushed, as she always did.

  For a while, she wondered if Roger had fallen asleep again. He sat in his chair, immobile, only his chest rising and falling with his breath. She daren’t try to climb back up to the loft, or even escape her fate, since she doubted she’d get far. More than likely, he was biding his time, waiting until Theo was far enough away. He never let his temper fully loose on her when anyone else was around.

  A short spell later, or so it seemed to Faith, he opened his eyes again and stood. “Didja think I wouldn’t know?”

  Faith stood as well, hoping the movement would disguise the shudder that ran through her. She’d never heard Roger speak in that slow, deadly low voice. And she didn’t need to pretend she didn’t know of what he spoke. “No. I reckoned you would notice q
uite fast.”

  He took a step toward her. “Then why’dja go and do something like that?”

  As she watched, he opened and closed his fists, his face growing redder by the moment. After she’d sent a prayer to heaven for help, she took a deep breath. “This was the second time the camp’s order had come in. Mr. Bartlett paid for it up front, Roger. It wasn’t right to keep him and his men waiting, especially for their food. It’s getting cold, and any day now the path will be too dangerous and slippery—icy, even—to take the mules up far enough. Those men work hard. They need that food. I did what my conscience demanded I do.”

  He came another step closer, so close that Faith could smell the sour odor of the spirits he’d consumed hours earlier. “So who’s more important? Your husband or your conscience?”

  This time, he didn’t stop coming. She had to take care how she answered that question, now that he stood but steps away. But no matter how she answered, she feared the outcome would be the same. Roger’s face had twisted into the familiar enraged contours, and his nostrils flared with each sharp gust of breath he drew in.

  The hands never stopped fisting.

  “Both.” She held her chin high, kept her eyes on his, made her voice as firm as she could. “Both are equally important, but…at times one outweighs the other, as it is with anything in life. I had to consider the men’s lives—”

  “NO!” He dropped hands like hams on her shoulders and gave her a shake. “No! Your husband is the only thing what matters, ’specially when it’s something ’bout his store.”

  He shook her again, calling her by a vile name.

  She winced, but let her body grow limp, since she’d learned the buffeting shakes would leave her in less pain that way. Sometimes, a fair amount of shaking and yelling would satisfy him. She prayed that would be the case again.

  But he continued his assault, and instead of purposely emptying her head of any thought, as she usually did, this time, something inside her snapped.

  Enough!

  Faith would never know if she cried out or if she only thought the word, but she did know she fixed her eyes on his, brought her hands up to shoulder height, and clasped his thick wrists. With reserves of strength she’d never known she had, she yanked sideways, and pushed his hands away from her body. The shock that registered on his face allowed her to spin away.

  She didn’t get far.

  He grabbed her braid. “Git back here!”

  Immobilized by the pain in her scalp, she glanced everywhere, hoping to find something, anything to help. Holding her breath, she realized she stood only a step or two away from the hearth where Roger kept the fireplace tools. One of them, a heavy iron poker, leaned against the stone face. Faith summoned that foreign strength again, rotating her body away from her husband, gritting her teeth against the pain of her aching head, swerving back toward the hearth. By the grace of her merciful Lord her outstretched fingers made contact with the poker, and she clung fast.

  “Let me go!” Her plea rang out raw and rough, unrecognizable even to her. At the same time she voiced her demand, she swung her arm up and around.

  Roger caught the poker on its downward sweep. “Never! Let me have that you…you—”

  But Faith didn’t give up quite so easily this time. She clung to the metal with all her will. Roger did as well. They fought for the weapon, pulling, twisting, tugging, and wrenching it back and forth.

  Her unexpected rebellion against his domination only enraged him more. On her part, he had pushed Faith well past her limit. She couldn’t surrender to this life for another moment. She fought on.

  Roger soon had enough of Faith’s efforts to protect herself. With the hand holding the poker, he yanked her toward him, breathing hard…grunting, then with the other he reached out and gave her a breath-stealing shove. She flew backward…stumbled…lost her footing.

  The metal piece slid across her palm, out of her grasp.

  She fell…into utter dark.

  Chapter 5

  When Faith opened her eyes, it was still night. She blinked, and although she lay motionless, a piercing stab in the back of her head cut through her disorientation, serving to rouse her fully. The deep silence pressed down on her like the heavy weight of an anvil. In seconds it became a smothering force all around her. Her head pounded; she felt a great deal of pain, right in the back where it rested against what she thought must be the stone hearth. She reached a hand to rub at the ache, but found the throbbing spot unexplainably damp.

  She brought her fingers forward to see if she could identify the moisture, and by the light of the still-glowing embers in the fireplace, she saw the dark stain on them. The rusty odor of blood struck her right away.

  In the relative dark of the room, she looked around to orient herself, moving her head as little as possible. She lay on the floor by the fireplace, right where she last remembered…oh! The memory of the fight blazed into her mind, the expression on Roger’s face vile and vicious. Faith couldn’t quell the wave of shudders that wracked her.

  Drawing on her last ounce of strength, she pushed up on her elbows, slowly rising in spite of the overwhelming pain in her head. She blinked in an attempt to focus her eyes, especially on the large, dark form stretched out like a mountain range at about the halfway point across the large room. When her vision cleared, she almost wished it hadn’t.

  Roger lay sprawled facedown, out cold, as far as she could tell.

  Cautiously, she worked her way up onto her knees, never looking away from her husband’s prone figure. A sick sensation swirled in her middle, and dizziness threatened to topple her back down again. But something about the sight of Roger on the floor like that felt dreadfully wrong. She had to see why he was there, what had happened while she’d been unconscious.

  The thought of having lost consciousness made her feel faint once more. But she couldn’t. She bore a responsibility toward her husband; she had to see what was wrong with him, even if he hadn’t earned one bit of her concern. She fought her body, and by sheer willpower remained steady.

  When she tried to stand, the room whirled around her. It appeared she wasn’t ready to walk yet. Very well, then, she would have to crawl, and like a child make progress from creeping to crawling to walking and more. Her conscience wouldn’t let her do otherwise. No matter what stray and sinful thought she might have entertained during the wee hours of the morning.

  By the time she’d almost reached Roger’s side, she began to tremble, wishing somewhere in the most lily-livered corner of her being that she hadn’t started the effort in the first place. Evil filled the place, as surely as the dreadful smell that assaulted her senses. That coppery tang was one you never forgot.

  Blood.

  And not only her own.

  At the same time she drew a deep breath, Faith pushed herself up to her feet. She immediately wished she hadn’t. Oh, Father in heaven…

  She would never forget the shadowy sight that met her gaze. The poker she’d tried to use in her own defense had somehow found its mark. At that moment, it protruded at a hideous angle from the back of Roger’s head. A pool of blood had gathered on the floor beneath the wound.

  Faith stumbled backward, hand over her mouth to cover the scream that fought to escape her lips. “Dear Lord…what happened here?”

  How could she not know how something like this had happened?

  The last thing she remembered was Roger shoving her, then falling against the hearth. The blow to her head had shot a bolt of pain through her, and darkness had consumed all her senses. How had that poker found its way from Roger’s hand, where she’d last seen it, to his head? Two things she knew without any question. She could not have done it while unconscious, and he hadn’t put it there himself. But then, who had struck her husband?

  Not just struck him. That much blood…

  Who had killed Roger?

  As she stood, frozen in place, her grip on sanity suddenly weak, she became aware of a panicked shriek outside odd
ly blunted by a strange crackling sound. At almost the same time, she noticed another acrid odor, faint but growing stronger, and more familiar than that of blood.

  Smoke!

  And it didn’t come from the fireplace.

  Faith spun on her heel. Dizziness struck. She extended her arms in search of balance, and as she did, she noticed the reddish glow outside the kitchen window. Oh, sweet heaven…Almighty Father. How could that be?

  As her husband lay murdered at her feet in their sitting room, something was burning out back behind the cabin. Close. Too close.

  She had to get out of the house or risk dying herself. In jerky, uneven motions, she turned to look for the old coat. She’d worn it out to the barn. She’d come back inside…where had she put it—there! She’d hung it on one of the hooks by the back door.

  She ran to get it, and the closer she got, the redder the glow outside appeared. With an economy of motion, she pulled the garment on and around herself, then wrapped the warm woolen shawl over her head and across her chest. As a final precaution, she snagged Theo’s old cap, a musty-smelling dun-colored thing. She crammed it down over the thickness of the shawl to hold the heavy knit closer to her head and ears. In a moment of what she vaguely recognized as hysteria, she reckoned she’d never looked odder than at that present time.

  The smell of raging flames outside grew more pungent by the second. She had to get out of the cabin. Since the flames were at the rear of the structure, Faith ran to the door from the living quarters to the store. But before she reached it, she pulled up to a halt. Smoke, thick and gray, seeped in through the gap under the door. Crackling…the hiss of consuming flames sent her back a step. Escape by that route would be impossible.

  “Father God…please don’t leave me now.”

  She would have to get out from the back, even though that was where she’d first noticed the blaze. On that side, she had only two possible means of escape. She would either have to go out by the door or she would have to climb onto the counter where she kept her dishpan, throw open the window, and climb out, coat, shawl, hat, and all. It was too cold outside to consider leaving any of that behind, even if it would make her exit much easier.