Frontier Lady (Lone Star Legacy Book #1)
Page 37
“I should’ve felt relief that I had escaped alive, but as I stood there among all those bodies, I was suddenly sick—really physically sick, and also sick in my heart. That wasn’t the first time I’d killed anyone, and it wasn’t the sight of death that bothered me. But in that moment, I’m sure God opened my eyes. He made me see with such awful clarity what I was capable of. It scared me that anyone should be that good with a gun and be considered a ‘peace’ officer and a hero. And believe me, all of my comrades did indeed cheer me as a hero, as did all the local ranchers. Back in Laredo, they gave me a commendation. But despite the glory, God always kept that sight of them dead bodies, killed by my own hand, before me. I was kept awake for weeks with nightmares of it. My hand trembled every time I picked up my gun. Finally, my captain saw I was a wreck, though he didn’t know why, and he sent me home on leave.
“Everything kind of broke when I walked up to my house and my ma opened the door for me. Seeing her, the godliest woman I know, just did me in. I ran up to her, fell on my knees and wept. All I could say was, ‘Ma, I’m a killer!’” Sam paused in his recounting of his experience as the remembered emotion caught hold of him again. Tears welled up in his eyes, but he dashed them away and looked steadily at Deborah.
“Tell me, Deborah,” he said finally, his tone husky and taut, “what did I give up? Sometimes I still have nightmares about that day and about all the men I killed in the name of justice. At least now when I wake up I can give it all to Jesus and He makes me clean all over again. I shudder at what would have become of me if I had been able to shrug off that experience and continue on my same path. I believe I would have become a truly cold-blooded killer. As it says in the Scriptures, ‘What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?’ I think that’s where I was headed, Deborah. But I guess I ain’t giving you a chance to say what you think.”
Deborah sighed. “When you talk about it, Sam, it sounds so plain and simple. And as I learn about God I see it can’t possibly be any other way. He offers so much, He gives so much … what He asks in return seems so small by comparison.”
“It wouldn’t be fair if I misrepresented things here, Deborah. God asks us to surrender everything to Him. In the epistle to the Romans it says that we should present our bodies as a ‘living sacrifice’ to God.”
Deborah raised an eyebrow and half her mouth curved up into an ironic smile. “You are not going to make this easy for me, are you, Sam?”
“Somehow, I don’t take you for the kind of person who wants the easy, superficial road. I think you’d rather have the whole truth even if it hurts you a little.”
“You are right, I suppose.”
“Then the truth is, Deborah, that God isn’t satisfied with just a corner of your heart, or even half of it. He wants it all. Complete and total surrender, and absolute control over your life. It’s hard for me to say this because I know after all you’ve been through, you are afraid to trust that much to another. But it’s better to know this now than later.”
“Absolute control …” It was difficult, almost impossible, for Deborah to force out the words. It was the last thing she wanted to hear. She had spent the last few days learning to know a God of love, a God of mercy, a Comforter. That was the God she could easily accept. But a Controller? Wasn’t that what she had escaped when she fled Texas four years ago? The interim years with Broken Wing had begun to show her life could be different, that love and freedom were not always mutually exclusive. Could she now risk being thrust backward into a situation, the very thought of which sickened her?
Sam seemed to understand her hesitation, and when he spoke again it was with gentle entreaty. “Deborah, God does want complete control, but at the same time He doesn’t expect you to be a helpless weakling. Surely you have noticed in the Psalms the many references to strength—how He gives strength to His people. He wants us strong! But He is the only source of true strength. You spoke of independence, Deborah. Well, the book of John says the truth will make us free! I guess that’s the paradox of Christianity: strength through being made weak before Christ; freedom through surrender. And it only makes sense when you know, truly know, the God who makes such requirements of us.”
“The kind of God who leads us beside still waters …” mused Deborah.
Sam nodded, but suddenly he couldn’t speak as a well of emotion rose in his heart at the thought of this God whom he loved and to whom he had committed his life.
“I am beginning to understand now, Sam,” said Deborah.
Deborah was not finished with her struggle with these truths, but she was able to see clearly that it was a path worth following. And that day she chose to do so regardless of the risks. Once God had begun revealing His true nature to her, she could do nothing else.
God was no Leonard Stoner, whose purpose was to grind her down for the sheer sake of exercising his own power. God’s demands had only the result of growth and joy and contentment. Deborah understood now what had happened to Gray Antelope. And she understood that in giving everything to God, she would receive everything in return.
58
That summer two bits of good news came to Deborah’s ears and greatly heartened her as to the future of her Cheyenne people. In June, after the Indians began to show their good intentions by surrendering in greater numbers, Sheridan released the Washita prisoners. As the women and children rejoined their bands and began to migrate south to the reservation, Deborah was overjoyed to receive a visit from her dear friend, Gray Antelope. They had a wonderful day of sharing their new faith with each other as they had never done before. Deborah verbally translated some of her favorite scriptures into Cheyenne for her friend, who was thrilled to hear these things in her own tongue. It was a sad but hopeful parting, each at last assured they had chosen the right path.
Gray Antelope also brought greetings from Stone Teeth Woman who, upon release from Fort Hays, had been secretly met by her husband. Stands-in-the-River had joined the Dog Soldiers and had only been waiting for the release of his family before accompanying the other renegades in continuing to wage war against the whites. Deborah was not surprised to hear this, and though she wanted all the fighting to end, she held a secret hope that this last stand of the Southern Cheyenne might not be entirely in vain. Perhaps through it, they might somehow win a fairer settlement from the government.
The next positive news came from Washington a few weeks later. President Grant signed a bill that made the “Society of Friends” the official overseers of the southern Plains Indians. Deborah knew something of these Quakers and their fine Christian principles and hoped that at last the Indians would be cared for with compassion and justice.
But the summer drew to a close on a note of tragedy with the Battle of Summit Springs, the culmination of a campaign designed to halt the flight of the Dog Soldiers north. The great Dog Soldier chief, Tall Bull, was killed; and though some Cheyenne managed to escape, the battle did effectively end the Cheyenne occupation of the region between the Platte and the Arkansas Rivers. Stands-in-the-River and his family apparently survived the battle and took up residence with other renegade bands, but Deborah would not hear from them again for many years.
Besides the far-reaching political changes touching Deborah’s world, a change of a more personal nature was about to enter her life. It appeared in the person of a Tennessee migrant named Calvin Farley who, one scorching hot day in late August, bounded noisily into the Sutler’s store.
“I’ve had it!” he declared to any who cared to listen. “Heat and wind, a belly full of dust, Comanche raids, the stink of them cursed—”
“Whoa, feller!” interjected Hardee quickly. “Watch your tongue; we got a lady present.”
Farley swung his head around till he spotted Deborah talking with a pair of Arapahoe traders. “Pardon me, ma’am,” he said, tipping his grimy, sweat-soaked hat toward her. “But if you knew what I been through lately, maybe you’d forgive a couple slips of the tongue.”
“Beer, if’n it’s all the same to you,” said Farley with an appreciative grin toward Deborah.
Deborah shrugged noncommittally, deeming this an inappropriate time to harangue the poor man about the evils of liquor.
Farley gulped down half the glass with relish before speaking again. “Oh, ma’am, that’s the best thing that’s happened to me all week!”
“It must have been a pretty bad week, then,” offered Deborah, sensing the man wanted to spill out his woes.
“Been driving my herd north—”
“You’re a mite off’n the track for that, ain’t you?” asked one of the other customers milling about the store. “It’s Abilene you oughta to be heading for.”
“I know that,” said Farley, “and that’s where I was, and where my cattle still are, and no doubt losing money for me with every passing day. My wife is the one that got herself mixed up. She sent me a letter here, which I didn’t find out about till I got to Abilene and an army fella said there was a letter for me at Fort Dodge. It was just a coincidence he bumped into me a’tall. Of course, he didn’t have the letter with him, and I had to ride all the way here to get it. But my spell of bad luck began long afore that. I lost half my herd on the way to Abilene in a stampede when some cursed redskins spooked ’em with their yelling and carrying on. But before that, before I even left my place in Texas, we was raided by Comanche and lost more’n fifty head of cattle. At top dollar, that’s twenty-five hundred dollars! I was willing to take my losses and plug away ‘cause there’s money to be made in cattle. Even when one calamity and another held us up on the trail and we got to Abilene behind the other drives, and found out we’d missed getting top dollar, I still wasn’t inclined to give it up.”
“You mean you have now decided to give up?” asked Deborah.
“I ain’t no quitter, ma’am, but a man can take only so much. The letter in Dodge finally decided me.”
“From your wife?”
“That’s right. But if I don’t do something quick, she ain’t gonna be my wife for long. She’s done left our place in Texas and gone back to Tennessee. Said she couldn’t take another minute of that—and these is her words, ma’am—’living hell.’ Seems the Comanche attacked again. Killed two of our hands and mighta got her and the young’uns ‘cepting there was a couple of ex-Rangers living in the area that came and scared off the Injuns. Well, while the Rangers were still there, she packed up and had them escort her to Fort Richardson, where she wrote me this here letter—” He paused and waved a crumpled sheet in the air. “Then she joined an army convoy to Fort Worth, and then home.”
“I’m sorry for you, Mr.—” Deborah paused, realizing she now knew nearly everything about this stranger but his name.
“Name’s Calvin Farley, from Decaturville, Tennessee, and bound directly back there soon as I can unload the shackles of Texas from ‘round my neck!”
“I suppose you are quite justified in doing so.”
“Justified or not, I got me a pretty little wife and three fine young’uns to think of, and my wife said I got to choose between her and Texas. Well, it ain’t no contest, far as I can see.” Calvin Farley gave the room a quick survey, noting two soldiers, three or four settlers, two Indians besides the white woman dressed like an Indian, and a smelly, hairy mountain man. “I don’t reckon anyone here is interested in a piece of land down Texas way?”
“You ain’t givin’ it much of a sales pitch,” said one of the soldiers.
“Well, ‘cepting for the Injuns, it’s a right tolerable tract of land, purely for grazing, mind you. Can’t grow nothin’ on it. It’s in the Brazos valley, near Fort Griffin.”
“You got water?” asked one of the settlers.
“The Brazos runs right through it. I grazed me four hundred head of cattle on it. Bought most of them cows in Texas for four dollars a head. But I got me a goodly number of longhorns that was just wild, roaming free and all I had to do was round ’em up. Coulda had horses, too, if I’d a had a mind to round ’em up and herd ’em. Well, what with them cattle the Injuns stole and what we lost on the trail, I still brung three hundred head to Abilene. In dollars and cents, that’s a profit of seventy-five hundred dollars.”
Someone in the store gave a low whistle.
“For that kind of money, I’d get me another wife!” said the mountain man.
“I don’t care if it was seventy-five thousand dollars!” said Farley emphatically. “I’m for Tennessee!”
“What’d you want for the land?” asked Hardee.
“I got me five thousand acres I bought for five cents an acre, but I’d let it go for four cents. You interested?”
“Naw, just curious.”
“Well, if any of you are interested, I’m only stickin’ around here for a few days. I can sell it just as well back East.”
“Yeah,” observed Hardee, “where they think Texas is the same as freedom and adventure and you can’t convince ’em about the heat and the dust and the ‘skeeters.”
“And the Injuns!” added a settler who was relieved that the pesky Indians near his Kansas home had finally been subdued.
The lively conversation waned. Farley made a few purchases and left the store, while those who remained turned their attention to other topics. Only Deborah continued to ruminate over the preceding interchange. And her pondering thoughts jumped from the Tennessean’s hardships directly to his statement about selling his land. It made her think of how she longed for a home of her own—not merely a roof over her head but her own place where she might earn a living for her children so they wouldn’t always have to depend on others. She didn’t think this conflicted with her commitment to God. Sam said God wanted her to be strong as long as she acknowledged exactly where that strength came from. She couldn’t see anything wrong with wanting a home of her own. But it suddenly occurred to her that she ought to pray about it just the same.
Thus, that night, after the children were asleep beside her on the big straw mattress, Deborah closed her eyes and turned this desire over to God.
“Dear Lord, I want my own home. I want to be settled so my children will feel secure. I know you are our security, but I guess you have provided homes and such things for a reason. So, if it is your will for me, could you provide a way for this? I have no money, no possible way on my own, even if I wanted to buy Mr. Farley’s land. It’s only two hundred dollars, but I barely have ten dollars saved from what Hardee pays me.
“But, Lord, it doesn’t have to be Mr. Farley’s land, or even land at all, though how I would love a place where I could raise horses, with acres of pasture to ride them on!
“If you truly want me to spend my life here with Hardee at the store, I will try to be content with that. But if you want something else for me, show me like you showed me your nature when I asked. Could it be that for this very reason you brought Mr. Farley into the store? Oh, how I wish Sam were here to help me discern better what you might be saying!”
Deborah lay awake for some time, her mind as skittish as a newly broken stallion. She fantasized about herself as a Texas rancher. It seemed the most outlandish possibility, yet she never would have guessed she’d be a Cheyenne squaw either, or a storekeeper’s assistant on an army post. But perhaps all those years since leaving Virginia had been preparing her for this very thing. She could still close her eyes and recall vividly the broad, grassy prairies she had traversed on the Stoner Ranch. The memory still gave her a peculiar thrill, totally detached from the horrors of life with Leonard himself. Deborah remembered also the time she had been stranded and lost on the prairies of Indian Territory. Never once during that time had she feared the land itself, for it had always seemed to offer a kind of security.
Life with the Cheyenne only deepened her appreciation for the plains. She doubted now that she’d ever be stranded there
again, for she had learned how to survive by becoming a partner with the land, not its enemy—a skill unfortunately lost to most whites.
A Texas rancher … ?
It seemed farfetched, but not impossible. What did it say in the Bible? “With God nothing shall be impossible.”
“Whatever you wish, Lord,” Deborah finally sighed as her eyes grew heavy and sleep seemed not far distant. “Anyway, it’s silly of me to even think of buying land since I have no money and no prospects.”
“With God, nothing is impossible….”
Deborah’s eyes grew heavier, the colliding thoughts growing sluggish, marching like foot-heavy soldiers through her sleep-benumbed brain until the landscape of her mind was no longer real but rather the images of dreams.
A broad, golden plain, broken only by an occasional grassy hill with the bright stalks of bluebonnets bending in the wind … the inevitable dust risng, floating in the warm air as a splendid horse traverses the expansive scene … not one horse, but many … a herd of mustangs … like none ever seen in Virginia … all riderless, save for one, a mighty gray … its rider, with golden hair flowing behind her, does not even need a bridle; she is one with the gray….
“What a fine dream,” murmured Deborah groggily as she rolled over to sleep.
But with a sudden jar, sleep instantly fell away from her. Deborah’s eyes flew open.