by Ralph Cotton
Heady started to speak, but Orsen stepped in and gave him a shove backward and closed the door in his face.
The three stood in silence for a moment, then turned to Lexar when he returned with a receipt in his hand and handed it to Rudy. “Now then, gentlemen,” Lexar said, “we’ll go to the livery barn and you’ll be off. Fortunately for Father Jessup that someone witnessed this incident.”
“Yes, he’s a lucky man all right,” Rudy said, glancing toward the rear office door, where Jim Heady had stood a moment earlier.
“We can call it luck,” said Lexar, “but the fact is, it never hurts to have the Lord on your side, does it?” He grinned, sweeping a hand toward the door to the lobby and on out to the street.
“Amen to that, Brother Lexar,” said Rudy. “But what about our guns?” Rudy asked bluntly.
“I had them sent on to the livery barn,” said Lexar, directing the other men ever closer to the door with his gesturing hand, “Shall we…?”
Both horses had tired quickly in a high-paced sprint across the stretch of flatlands between Paradise and the narrow pass leading into Wolf Valley. Randall Turner slowed the spindly chestnut bay he was riding and sidled the horse up closer to Delphia, who sat atop a shorter roan gelding. Glancing back over his shoulder, Randall said hurriedly “Are you all right, Delph?”
Delphia tried to hide the fear in her eyes and the pain in her stomach. She swallowed once, hard, and replied, “I will be all right, as soon as we get clear of the valley.”
Studying her face closer, Randall said, “Delph, you look pale.”
“It’s the heat, Randall,” she said, turning her eyes away from him. “Let’s not stop again until we know we’ve gotten away from him!” She started to gig her horse forward, but Randall grabbed its reins and held her back for a moment. Lifting a canteen from his saddle horn, he shook it to see if it had water in it, then uncapped it and handed it to her.
“Take a drink, Delph,” he said firmly, “and cool this horse out a little. We won’t make anywhere if we blow these horses down. Getting clear of Wolf Valley is the thing that keeps everybody from getting away from Jessup. We have to pace ourselves. There’s no place in the valley to hide from him. The stretch of land is too long. Lose our horse, and him and the Brothers will ride us into the ground.”
Delphia knew Randall was right. She forced herself to calm down, take the canteen and sip the tepid water. After handing the canteen back to Randall, she wiped her dress sleeve across her lips.
Randall capped the canteen and looked back at his wife, seeing her turn her head to the side and clutch her stomach. Sickness spewed from her lips to the ground. “Oh, no, Delph!” said Randall. “You’ve got the fever!”
“No, I don’t!” Delph insisted. “It’s this heat, the hard riding! Please! I’ll be all right. Get me away from him!”
Randall sat for only a moment longer looking at her, knowing they had no choice but to run. “Hang on!” he said. After backing up his horse a step, he slapped her horse’s rump, sending it forward. He stayed behind, where he could watch about her.
For the next hour they pushed the horses until both animals were covered with white foam and slinging sweat from their wet manes. Feeling desperate, they both slowed to a halt at a turn in the trail and looked all around at the distant high rock walls surrounding Wolf Valley. “We’ve got to find a way to get out of sight! If not, we’re done for.” As she spoke he reached out and held her hand, feeling a clamminess.
“If that is the case, husband,” she said, “I’d rather die beside you than go back and live with him.”
“The only folks living around here are believers,” Randall said, shaking his head. “They’d never hide us from him.” He searched the distant walls more intently. “I’ve heard Falon’s trappers talk about the high trails up there. There’s a creek, a man named Sloane Mosely lives there. He has little to do with Jessup’s people.”
“That doesn’t mean he’ll do anything to help us,” Delphia remarked.
“I know,” said Randall, “but he’s our only chance.” They rode on, veering north toward the distant rocks. Before they had gone a thousand yards, Randall nodded at the hard ground beneath them where their horses’ hoofprints joined a dozen other sets of fresh prints filling the trail. “At least this is going to hide us some,” he said, grateful for this sudden stroke of luck. “If we can cut away from the trail high up in the rocks, maybe they won’t find our tracks.”
“Yes, you’re right!” said Delphia, sounding hopeful. “Hurry! We have to get up there!” She hammered her small heels to the tired horse’s sides. Randall did the same, his horse almost staggering a bit as it hurried along behind her.
Looking back over his shoulder at a long rise of dust on the distant sky toward Paradise, he whispered under his breath, “I don’t care about myself, God. Just let me get Delph away from this devil.”
But by late afternoon, when the prints of the trappers’ horses continued up the high trail into the rocks surrounding the valley, their own horses had grown too weak to support them any longer. At a spot where the hillside leveled onto a wide stretch of flatlands, they turned the horses loose atop a rocky ledge and watched them stagger off along the winding trail. From the ledge Randall and Delph looked down and halfway across the valley floor at the rising dust that had grown ever closer to them throughout the afternoon.
“Look at them, Delph,” Randall said. “They haven’t even had to speed their horses up any. They figure it’s just a matter of time before they’ve got us.”
Delphia heard the almost beaten tone in his voice. Taking his hand she said quickly, “But they figured wrong, didn’t they, husband?”
Randall found the strength to nod his head. He looked at her sweat-streaked face, her tired sunken eyes. “Yes, they did,” he rasped. Holding hands tightly, the two struggled away from the trail through a sparse growth of scrub juniper clinging to the rough ground. Above them the sky had begun to darken into night. “I’ve heard there’s a creek somewhere north of here. We’ll find it, get ourselves some water and see if we can find Mosely’s place.”
Chapter 11
Outside the small room where Dillard slept, Callie Mosely listened closely for a moment until she was satisfied her son had settled into his bed for the night. In her white cotton nightgown, with a candle in her hand, she walked softly across the rough wooden floor to the master bedroom, where CC Ellis lay beneath a blanket waiting for her. Upon seeing her enter the room and close the door behind herself, Ellis at first felt a bit awkward being in another man’s bedroom, ready to sleep with his wife. Yet, watching Callie move to the side of the bed, set the candle down, slip the cotton gown over her head and lay it on a chair, Ellis let the thought slip from his mind.
“Jesus…” he whispered, turning back the edge of the blanket for her and feeling her warmth move over him. In the candle glow she smiled and moved closer, their faces only inches apart on the soft pillows.
“I think we’ve done it,” she said, her voice sounding relieved, as if a terrible burden had been lifted from her shoulders.
“Yes,” said Ellis, “I think our showing up in Paradise will keep Jessup at bay long enough for us to leave here.”
They looked into each other’s eyes until at length Callie asked, “Where will we go once we leave here?” She reached out with a hand and brushed a strand of hair from Ellis’s forehead.
“I haven’t thought things out that far ahead,” he replied. “But I know lots of places we can go to. There’s good farmland in Oregon. We could take on a place, set out crops.”
“Farming?” She smiled and fondled his hand. “These don’t feel like the hands of a farmer.”
“But they could,” Ellis said, “given the right team of animals, a good plow and some land worth tending. I come from farming country.”
“Oh? And where is that?” she asked in a whisper, her hands moving to his chest, his neck, toying with the back of his hair.
Ellis
had to think about it for a moment, to make certain that he hadn’t already mentioned a place to her. Finally, satisfied that he hadn’t, he said with a slight shrug, “Missouri…but that doesn’t matter. Neither does farming as far as I’m concerned. I can make a life for us, Callie. Anywhere you want to live, we’ll live there. I always have a way to make us a living.”
A silence passed while her hand stopped and lay still on his shoulder. “What is it you do for a living, CC?” she asked quietly, but firmly.
“I’m a businessman, Callie,” he replied. “I do whatever suits me and turns a profit on my investment in it.”
“I see,” she said, seeming to think about his answer for a moment. “I trust you, CC Ellis…and I don’t give my trust easily. Don’t let me down.”
“I won’t,” he said, drawing closer to her. When the kiss ended, she turned from him long enough to snuff out the candle. Then she turned back to him with nothing more to say on the matter.
They made love until the two of them drifted to sleep in each other’s arms. In the middle of the night, while Callie slept on his shoulder, Ellis was awakened by the sound of the dog growling toward the front door. After lifting Callie’s head gently, he slipped from the bed naked and stepped into his trousers, whispering to her as he took his gun from the holster hanging from the bedpost, “Callie! Wake up! The dog’s growling. There’s somebody outside.”
Callie stirred, then sat upright and hurried quietly from the bed and into her gown. “Are you going out there?” she asked.
“Yes, I am,” said Ellis. “Get your shotgun in case you need it. Wait until I’m out the front door before you light the candle. As soon as you light it, hold it over in the window where it can be seen.”
“Be careful,” said Callie, watching him slip out the bedroom door. When he closed the door behind himself, she hurried to a wooden wardrobe, took out the ten gauge, checked it and held it poised, waiting before lighting the candle, the way Ellis had asked her to do.
At the front door, Ellis held the big hound back with the side of his leg as he eased quietly out the front door and down off the porch into the dark yard. He hurried across the yard and out into the darker shelter of an overhanging spruce, where he could see the window clearly. He waited, his eyes studying the darkness until the light of the candle glowed in the window and cast two black hovering silhouettes on dim-lit ground. With his Colt out and cocked, he moved forward silently. Ellis managed to get within six feet of the two dark shadows before he stopped, pointed the gun and said, “Raise your hands real easy-like. I’ve got you covered.”
Randall and his wife turned with their hands chest high, their faces sweaty, covered and streaked with trail dust. Randall spoke on both of their behalf, saying, “Please, Mr. Mosely, don’t shoot! We mean you no harm! We need your help awfully bad!”
Hearing the man call him by Sloane Mosely’s name, Ellis eased his finger on the trigger, but only slightly. “What kind of help are you talking about?” he asked. “Are you on the run from somebody?”
Before Randall could answer, Delphia stepped forward and said in a shaky voice, “Mr. Mosely, we’re running from Father Jessup and his Brothers. This man is my husband, Randall Turner. He and I are just trying to get out of this valley alive! I’ve heard that you are a freethinking man who follows his own mind in spite of Jessup’s believers. Is that true? If it is, you have to help us.”
Ellis looked them both over closely again while Callie saw what was going on, opened the window and stood with the candle in one hand the shotgun in her other. “Who are they? What do they want?” she asked.
“They say they’re running from Jessup,” said Ellis. He made a gesture for Randall to turn around with his gun barrel. Randall did so reluctantly, revealing that he had a length of a white oak limb shoved down in his waist. “Said they mean us no harm.” Ellis grinned slightly. “But when I see a man carrying a club down his trousers, I have to wonder about him.”
“Mr. Mosely, let me explain, please!” said Randall, his back still turned. Ellis reached out, pulled the oak limb from his trousers and pitched it away.
“I think I already understand,” said Ellis. “You figured you’d come here, ask for help, and if you didn’t get it freely, you’d get it at the end of that club. Isn’t that about it?”
Randall sighed deeply. “Yes, you’re right. I meant to get what I wanted one way or the other. There’s no denying it. But that’s the kind of straits we’re in, my wife and I. Jessup has forced my wife to become his property, like he has so many other women in this valley. I mean to take her away from here, no matter who I have to knock in the head. There, does that satisfy you?”
Ellis and Callie looked at their tired, frightened faces and realized that what the man said was probably true. The two bloody strips from Jessup’s whip showing through the back of his torn shirt confirmed his story to them. “Yeah,” said Ellis, “that satisfies me. Both of you lower your hands.”
“Mr. Mosely,” said Delphia, letting her hands fall to her sides, “thank God for you. Thank God for both of you!” Tears fell down her dust-caked cheeks. Callie stepped over to her and directed her toward the house.
“Do you have a horse?” Ellis asked Randall Turner.
“No, sir. We rode them down, just like Jessup knows everybody will do if they try escaping this blasted valley!”
“You were going to take ours then?” Ellis asked.
Randall nodded, looking ashamed of himself. “You have to understand, Mr. Mosely. This man is living with my wife! Making her his own! No man should do that to another man, should he?”
Glad that Callie had stepped out of hearing range, Ellis said quietly, “No, no man should. Now come on. Let’s get you inside and get yours and the woman’s footprints hidden. If Jessup and his men are on your trail, they can’t be far behind.”
After helping the worn-out man limp into the house and collapse into a chair, Ellis hurried outside with a broom in one hand and his Colt in his other. He had already begun sweeping away the couple’s footprints when Callie joined him, carrying a lantern now instead of the candle. “We’re so close to getting out of here,” she said. “I hope this isn’t going to ruin our plans.”
“What could I do, Callie?” Ellis asked. “You heard him say what Jessup did to them. It’s the same situation you was afraid he’d put you in if we hadn’t done something about it.”
“I know,” said Callie. “We’ve got to help them. I’m just so afraid.”
“Don’t be,” said Ellis. “We’ll be all right.” He swept the broom back and forth, fanning the ground to get rid of the prints without making the ground look too recently swept. “If our trip to Paradise was worth anything at all to us, I can handle Jessup one more round before we clear out of here.”
Looking off across the night sky in the direction Jessup and his men would be coming, Callie said, “God, I hope so.”
Inside the house, Delphia huddled at her husband’s side, sharing a dipper of cool water with him. “We’re safe now, Randall,” she said with tears in her eyes.
“Not yet,” Randall said, placing a hand on hers, “but we’re better off now than we were, thanks to Sloane Mosely and his wife. If he can turn Jessup and the Brothers away, we can slip along the creek until daylight, hide in the cottonwoods by day and travel by night until we’re shed of this valley.” He squeezed her hand, reassuring her.
Delphia took a deep breath and said, “Randall, I have to tell you something and this might be the only chance I get.”
As if in fear of what she might say, Randall said, “No, you rest and save your strength. There’s nothing you have to tell me right now. We’re going to be together the rest of our lives. Whatever you need to tell me can wait until we’re away from here.”
But Delphia pulled her hand from his. “No, I must tell you now. Don’t stop me.” Then before Randall could say anything, she blurted out, “I’m carrying Father Jessup’s baby, Randall.” Her voice turned shaky and tearfu
l as she spoke. “I’m afraid you won’t want me after hearing this.”
“Oh no. God, no. Please don’t think that, Delphia,” Randall said in a whisper, pulling her face to his chest as he shook his head. “Don’t ever think that I wouldn’t want you, no matter what.”
“I prayed every night that God would keep me from being with child, but God just didn’t listen to me, Randall.” She sobbed quietly.
“Delph, it will be all right. I swear to you it will,” said Randall, feeling tears well in his eyes. “There’s nothing that devil has done to us that we can’t undo. Maybe God didn’t hear your prayer. Maybe He did. We can’t say what God is up to…only how we can bear up under it and not let this destroy us. I’m your husband, Delph. So the baby in your stomach is my child, even if it is begotten by Father Jessup. It’s not his, it’s yours and mine.”
“I suppose I knew you’d say that, my good and decent husband.” She stroked his cheek and sobbed against his chest. “I want you to know that every time I lay with him, as far as I’m concerned, I was violated. I know it’s something that maybe you can’t understand.”
With tears in his own eyes, Randall said, “Of course I understand. Delph, you are a part of me. Every time he violated you, he violated me as well. I nearly lost my mind, knowing what he was doing to you, knowing that you didn’t want him doing it…couldn’t stand him doing it. More than once, God forgive me, I came near taking my own life rather than live with the thought of it.”
“Thank heavens you didn’t do it.” She raised her face and looked into his eyes.
“This minute right here is the only reason I didn’t,” said Randall. “The only thing that kept me going was knowing that this minute would come, and that someday I’d look into your eyes again before I died. I believed that, Delph. I had to believe that.” They held each other’s hands tightly. “I don’t know what God means by all this…by putting this on us.” He shook his head.
“There must be a reason, Randall,” she said. “We mustn’t question what God puts upon us.”
