The Preacher's Bride Claim

by Laurie Kingery

  Something flickered in the depths of Winona’s black eyes as Lars translated. “Us—you mean the Great Spirit loves all Christians?”

  “Not just Christians,” Alice said. “Everyone. God loves you, just as He loves me, Winona.” Elijah had told her that he hoped to help Winona know Jesus through her English lessons. Maybe she could help with this, too.

  “It is surprising. The Great Spirit—” Winona paused, clearly trying to express the vastness of the Deity “—is over all things. You say the Great Spirit loves me, too? Winona, a Cheyenne woman?”

  It sounded as if Winona found the idea impossible to fathom.

  “I do, Winona. I believe it with all my heart.”

  Winona sat back, looking thoughtful.

  * * *

  They decided to share potluck that night—the Thornton brothers, Alice, the Brinkerhoffs, the Gilberts, Winona and Dakota, each bringing something to eat at a communal dinner at the Thornton campsite. Gideon and Clint had gone hunting that morning, so the Thornton brothers contributed a side of beef that had been roasting over a spit all afternoon, and the Brinkerhoffs brought flødekartofler, scalloped potatoes, and Dansk rødkål, which was pickled cabbage. Alice brought yeast rolls and freshly churned butter. The Gilberts came bearing a chocolate cake, which Dakota proudly proclaimed he had helped to frost under Cassie’s direction, but he confessed he had eaten a good bit of the frosting, too.

  The evening breeze was balmy, a welcome relief from the heat of the day.

  “We are so blessed,” Elijah said, as he stood to say grace over the food, “to have come so far and made such good friends—a solid foundation for the town we’re going to build, with God’s help. Just think, all of you—in just over a week we’ll race to stake claims in the Land Rush, God willing, and be setting up homes on our claims within days afterward. I pray that the Lord will bless this food and keep us close together.” And that I will find a way to speak to Alice about a shared future, he added to himself.

  “Hear, hear!” cried Clint, raising his glass of cider.

  “Amen,” murmured Keith Gilbert.

  “Amen,” said Lars and Katrine, for it was the same word in Danish.

  “‘Amen’ mean is okay to eat?” Dakota asked, pointing at the bounty that had been laid out in front of them.

  Everyone laughed except Winona, who looked embarrassed for her nephew, and said something in Cheyenne in a reproving tone.

  “Yes, it is okay to eat,” Elijah told the boy, as everyone began to dish food onto their tin plates. He noticed Dakota hung back until the adults had served themselves, though—waiting for one’s elders must have been part of his aunt’s admonitions.

  Later, as everyone leaned back, their stomachs full to bursting, Keith pointed to yet another heavily laden wagon making its way down the narrow dirt road between the rows of tents and wagons. “Good thing the run’s going to be over pretty soon, Reverend. If Boomer Town got any bigger, we’d be able to elect our own representatives to Congress.”

  “Yes, we’re certainly bursting at the seams,” Elijah agreed.

  “If there are so many tent towns just like this all around the perimeter of the territory, there can’t possibly be enough land for everyone who has come wanting a hundred and sixty acres,” Alice fretted.

  Elijah wanted to say that, if she wasn’t able to stake a claim, she could share his homestead, but he sensed how much it mattered to her to have land of her own. And of course he knew better than to make such an offer in front of the others when he had come to no understanding with her privately. Instead, he murmured, “There’s a verse in Psalms that says that the Lord will give us the desires of our hearts.”

  “We will all help each other to get our claims,” Lars assured her. “Remember, Katrine is going to stay with the wagons, so we are not encumbered by them. Afterward, we’ll take turns getting back to our wagons and driving them to our claims.”

  Lars had been translating the conversation to Winona, and now, through him, she said, “It is the white-eyes way to think of ‘claiming’ pieces of land. The Cheyenne—and all of our red brothers—believe the land belongs to everyone and is not a thing that can be owned. Once we roamed the plains and prairies freely. Now we must live on the reservation, the White Father in the East says.”

  It was something to ponder, Elijah thought, the way the Indians looked at things differently. “It is my hope, Winona, that the red man and the white man—men of all colors—will live side by side some day in peace, as the Lord wants us to,” he said.

  Winona studied him for the longest time. “It is what I wish, too, Reverend Elijah.”

  “You Thorntons always did keep odd company,” drawled a voice behind them, and Elijah looked up to see three men on horseback in the road, looking down on them. They were brothers, judging by a similarity of features—the exotic slant of their eyes and an olive tone underneath their weathered faces—and somehow he knew he’d met them before. The man who’d spoken had a Southern accent—a Virginian, if he didn’t miss his guess. The man jerked his head toward Winona and Dakota, and then at Lars, whose long blond hair was in contrast to his Indian-style fringed buckskin trousers.

  “Everyone here is our guest,” Elijah told him, trying not to sound defensive. He wanted to tell the newcomers it was none of their business with whom he broke bread. “But I fear you have the advantage over me, gentlemen.”

  It was a polite invitation for the strangers to introduce themselves, but it didn’t garner a polite response. “I wish we’d ever had the ‘advantage’ over you cheatin’, Yankee-lovin’, traitorous Thorntons,” one of the other mounted men sneered, his drawl as Virginian as the first man’s.

  “Chaucers,” growled Gideon beside him, and suddenly he and Clint were standing protectively, fists clenched, in front of the women.

  Chaucers. Of course. Elijah recognized them now—Theo, Brett and Reid. He hadn’t seen them since he and his brothers had made their abortive attempt to move back to their plantation in Virginia, only to be rebuffed by the hostility they had encountered there, stirred up by these three men. It had been Brett who’d just called them names.

  “Yep,” said Reid. “I reckon it was too much to expect we could move some place and not have to be reminded of how y’all prospered and caused us to lose our home. Now you’re takin’ up with redskins, I see.” He pointed a long finger at Winona and Dakota. “And outlandish foreigners,” he added, jabbing his finger in Lars’s direction.

  Elijah saw Winona put a protective arm around Dakota. The boy huddled against her, not understanding much of what the Chaucers said, but comprehending the hostile tone perfectly.

  “Get off your horse and say that, Chaucer,” Gideon ground out, rigid with fury as he took a couple steps toward the trio on horseback.

  “Gideon, no, that’s not the answer.” Elijah said, aware that Clint was just as angry. Lord, help me. I can’t hold back both of them and my own temper, too. He turned back to the Chaucers. “If you can’t be civil, I’ll have to ask you to ride on—”

  But he was interrupted by Alice, who had moved around Gideon and Clint and now stood facing the horsemen, bristling with indignation. “How dare you say such things?” she cried. “No one here asked for your opinion, let alone your rude remarks about these people who’ve never offered you any offense.”

  “Thornton, you got yourself a spitfire, I see,” Brett responded with a smirk. “Good for you.” He tipped his hat to Alice. “Brothers, we’ve got better things to do. Let’s go.”

  To Elijah’s immense relief, the Chaucer brothers kneed their mounts into a trot and disappeared around a corner.

  What could he possibly say after what had just happened? Elijah stood there for a moment, staring in the direction the Chaucers had gone, shaking with the emotions rocketing through his body—fury, embarrassment, regret. He’d already told
Alice about the feud, but now Brett Chaucer had compounded the problem by verbally assuming Alice was Elijah’s woman. Had the idiot ruined his chances of making that true?

  “Just so you know, brother, I’m not ever gonna back down from them again if they challenge me,” Gideon muttered.

  “Me, either,” Clint said. “If they’re smart, they won’t try it a second time.”

  Elijah made a gesture to indicate he’d heard them. They could talk about it later, but for now he was more concerned with those who had been the main targets of the Chaucers’ gibes.

  “I’m sorry you had to witness all of that,” he said at last, addressing their guests. “There aren’t words to express how much I regret that. Obviously ill will has followed us here to Oklahoma. I regret that those men let their hatred spill over to you.”

  “I did not understand the words he said, but the tone made the meaning clear,” Winona said wearily. “The day of harmony between all whites and red men seems a long journey away.”

  “It’s not your fault, Reverend,” Keith chimed in stoutly. “I’ve learned fools will be fools.” His wife nodded their agreement.

  “There is a Danish saying,” Lars began, “Han skal have meget smör, som skall stope var mans mund—it means, ‘Pigs grunt about everything and nothing.’”

  Elijah heard chuckles, but the buoyant mood of the evening had been spoiled, and soon everyone said good-night and gathered up their dishes.

  “I—I’ll walk you back to your tent,” Elijah said to Alice, who’d been quiet since her outburst.

  “It’s not necessary,” she said quickly. “It’s just a short distance.”

  “Nevertheless.” After what had just happened, and after his earlier talk with Clint about the assaults and robberies around Boomer Town, he wasn’t about to let her—or any woman—walk by herself. And he wanted to say something about Brett Chaucer’s disrespectful remark.

  “All right,” she said, and they headed down the road.

  “I’m sorry about what Brett Chaucer said. He had no right to make such an assumption,” he said.

  “I think Lars’s proverb pretty much summed up what I think about what he said,” Alice murmured, with a weak attempt at a smile. “I certainly don’t hold you responsible.”

  Thornton, you’ve got yourself a spitfire. Good for you.

  What if he wanted Alice to be his, in truth? Now probably wasn’t the time, though, to let her know he’d been giving serious consideration to deepening their relationship past friendship—if she was willing, of course. “I—I appreciate that.”

  “Gideon and Clint seemed pretty angry,” she commented then. “I thought for a moment there was going to be fisticuffs.” She gave him a wry look.

  He sighed. “They’ve both got hot tempers,” he said. “Especially Gideon. I worry about him sometimes. He...he holds too much inside.”

  “You’re afraid the cauldron will boil over one day,” she observed.

  What a wise, insightful woman she was, to put a voice to his inner fears. “Yes. Though I was rather angry myself tonight, I must admit.”

  “It’s understandable. You’re human, after all, Elijah.”

  He nodded. “But what kind of ‘man of the cloth’ would I be if I gave way to an impulse to yank that smirking Chaucer off his horse and rub his face in the dirt?”

  “You had the impulse, but you didn’t give way to it. You’re the most honorable man I know, Elijah.”

  “Thank you.”

  Their gazes met and held for a long moment. Should he say what he’d been thinking about saying? Or had this night been too tainted by negative emotions to have a chance of succeeding?

  But he’d waited too long, and Alice was already turning to go inside.

  “Good night, Elijah. I’ll see you at chapel tomorrow.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Excitement buzzed inside the chapel tent Monday morning as Alice took her place on a bench. Over and over she heard folks say “One more week” and “A week from today, we’ll be there.” Anticipation was colored by a tinge of wistfulness and uncertainty, though, for with the Land Rush this close, members of the congregation realized they wouldn’t always be together like this in a canvas tent-chapel in Boomer Town. Though they longed to be settled in their new homes, there was no guarantee of being able to settle near one another, or even that they would be able to stake a claim at all.

  How far she had come in two weeks, Alice thought, from a timid mouse afraid to give anyone her real name to a woman with friends sitting all around her—the Gilberts, Winona and Dakota, the Ferguson sisters; and the men, women and children she had met while nursing them who had become her friends, too.

  And there was Elijah, of course, who at this moment was stepping up to his makeshift lectern. Her life had certainly become richer after meeting him, Alice mused. He had influenced her in so many ways. He’d encouraged her to give of herself, and now she couldn’t imagine why she’d wanted to leave nursing totally behind. She’d no longer tread a hospital’s halls, but she gained so much more than those she helped. It was a gift to be needed.

  Through Elijah’s example, she had learned to trust God to calm her fears. She no longer looked over her shoulder, fearing Maxwell Peterson was right behind her. How silly it had been to think he’d given her a thought after she’d fled New York. He had always wanted power and influence, so it had been a mystery why he had wanted her. No doubt he was pursuing some heiress by now.

  She’d only received one letter from her mother—postmarked during the time Alice had been traveling to Oklahoma—but her mother hadn’t written anything to make her think Peterson had gone ahead with foreclosure on their farm, despite the farm’s ongoing shortfall. His threat to do so had apparently been a figurative saber to rattle over Alice’s head, and once she had disappeared, he’d lost interest.

  But the most important impact Elijah had had on her life was simply that she was no longer able to imagine her life without him in it. Her independence no longer seemed like such a thing to be prized. She’d begun to think a life without this man’s love would be a lonely, gray void, even when her mother came to join her.

  And she was realistic enough to know that, as much as she loved her mother, Mary Margaret Hawthorne would not be with her forever. Then there would be nothing to give life joy, nothing to make life more than a hardscrabble existence just to scratch a living from the prairie.

  Last night’s confrontation with the Chaucers had been painful for everyone who’d been there but especially for Elijah, she thought. She hoped what she’d said to him outside her tent had helped soothe his lacerated spirit. But she could tell that Elijah had more on his mind than just their enemies’ ugly jeers. She’d sensed he had wanted to say something that had nothing to do with the Chaucers and everything to do with the two of them. She’d waited, and finally bid him good-night in hopes it would spur him to speak and reveal what was in his heart.

  But he hadn’t. No doubt he was wearied by the incident and thought another time would be better. That was all right—they would have time, and maybe what he had to say was better said without a cloud hanging over it. Perhaps tonight he would tell her.

  “Friends, it is our final week here in Boomer Town!” Elijah said, lifting his arms jubilantly, and the whole congregation cheered.

  “Amen, Reverend!” someone cried.

  “In seven days we’ll be in the Promised Land!” another shouted.

  Elijah grinned at their enthusiasm. “Just think—in a week, God made something from nothing. He created the earth and all that is in it, the land, the water, the animals that creep on the earth, fly through the sky and swim in the rivers and oceans. And He created mankind to rule over it all.”

  He paused and took a sip of water. “Yes, in a week, our lives will all be changed, one way or another. For
some of us, it will be the first time in our lives we have a plot of land to call our own. Others have owned land but simply need a new start in life in a new land. And yet God is always willing to give us a new start in life, and it’s not dependent on a government somewhere opening up a territory, or some specific time and date. It’s there for the asking, whenever we want it.”

  After the service, Alice was just as surprised as Elijah when Horace LeMaster, followed by his wife and all four of their stair-step boys, stood in line to shake his hand.

  “I’ve been watchin’ you, Reverend, the way you conduct yourself around Boom Town and all, and I’d just about decided I was wrong about what I said to you. But then I heard how you responded to those Chaucer boys last night, and I became one hundred percent convinced. I was wrong, Reverend, and I hope you’ll forgive what I said a coupla weeks ago to you.”

  “Of course, Horace,” Elijah said, beaming. “I’m happy to see you back.”

  * * *

  Rounds had taken a long time this evening—not because there were a lot of new illnesses or injuries, for other than a child who’d developed a nasty chest cold, there was no illness to speak of. It was as if the population of Boomer Town was buoyed by anticipation of what was to come and had no time for sickness. Mainly folks just wanted Elijah to pray with them individually for their success on the day of the Land Rush and in the future.

  They’d stopped by to check on Beth Lambert, the girl who’d been weak and pale from anemia, and found her blooming with health—rosy-cheeked, happy and energetic.

  “We’re so grateful for the advice you gave us, Nurse Hawthorne,” her mother said. “To see our Beth bloomin’ again—why, I just can’t thank you enough. I don’t mind saying me and her father feel better, too. I’m glad you stopped by. I made you somethin’ to thank you.”

  Mrs. Lambert climbed inside the wagon, and in a moment she was back, holding out two folded pieces of cloth.

  Alice took it and unfolded one of the cloths, and saw that a beautiful design had been embroidered into the plain cotton, that of the medical caduceus—twin serpents twining around a staff, next to a woman who had clearly been made to look like her, down to her auburn hair and blue eyes. The woman wore a navy blue cloak with a red cross on one shoulder. The other towel depicted a little house at the end of an enormous flower-sprigged field, with a sun rising behind it. Underneath the design, she’d stitched the words Best of luck in Oklahoma.