Shelter from the Storm

by Patricia Rice

  The vigilantes didn’t interfere much when they heard of a planned lynching of a Negro worker, but to keep Cash on Marshall’s tail, they passed on the information to him. But even though he’d been able to prevent any immediate mayhem, his workers were nervous. Cash couldn’t blame them from talking of moving north, but they were good workers and he didn’t want to lose their labor if it could be prevented.

  So he had to put a stop to Marshall Brown and his gang. He knew it was they who had robbed the train last month. The sheriff hadn’t even bothered to hunt them, he was that terrified of the scoundrels. Being sheriff didn’t pay enough to lay his life on the line.

  Finding murdering thieves was a sight better than thinking about the woman waiting for him back at the house.

  ***

  Laura smiled in delight and invited Jonathan in, ushering him into the front parlor and calling a maid to serve them iced drinks. Although August was almost gone, the weather hadn’t eased, and the humid heat had everyone’s tempers on edge. The dim front parlor was the coolest room she could offer, but with the draperies pulled, it suffered from a stifling closeness.

  As they took their seats, Laura admired Jonathan’s newfound healthiness. A hint of gray streaked his hair along with the glints of sun, but it only made him look more distinguished. Without the harried look of worry to line his face, he appeared younger, and he smiled more easily. Whatever he was doing in Arizona, it served him well.

  He cocked the corner of his mouth in a slight grin under her observation. “Do you approve? There aren’t many women in the territory yet to burnish my pride, so I’m relying on you to provide the necessary polish.”

  Laura had forgotten how much she enjoyed Jonathan’s company. He was so easy to be with, unlike Cash, who drove her to the pits of despair. She tried not to think about the heights of ecstasy she knew he could also produce. “I approve. I was just thinking that you must be doing something right out there. You look wonderful.”

  “Thank you, madam.” He made a grave bow with his head. “It’s all for you, I hope you realize.”

  Laura wasn’t that vain. With a laugh she countered, “And because you’ve found some fascinating research that keeps you so occupied that you don’t worry about anything else. Tell me about it. Your letters don’t give enough detail.”

  With a sheepish grin, he agreed. “I didn’t think you’d be interested in the details. Little specks under a microscope and sick cows can’t be very appealing to a lady.”

  “But they might be interesting to me. Sick cows? However did you get involved with cows?”

  “Because they seem to be affected by tuberculin toxins too. Pasteur’s theories on the causes of disease offer so many possibilities . . . The scope is incredible. If someone could only make some breakthrough, show that the microbes we see in our microscopes are the reasons people and animals get sick, then maybe we will understand better why Jenner’s vaccine works and we can develop one for every disease known to mankind.”

  The excitement crept into Jonathan’s voice without his noticing, but Laura heard it, and smiled, except a part of her wept inside. He was happy, and she was glad for him. He had found what he needed. But what he needed wasn’t her. That was a purely selfish thought, and she shoved it aside.

  As they finished their cool drinks, a maid arrived to ask if they would like to be served lunch. Rising and taking Laura’s hand as she extended the invitation to stay, he shook his head.

  “I would like to share all my meals with you, if I could. But you haven’t given me that permission yet, and I don’t think now is the right time to press for it. I just want you to know that my offer still holds, Laura. I’ll be delighted to take young Mark as my son and you as my wife. The nights can be lonely in Arizona, as I imagine they must be for you here. I’ll be around until you decide.”

  Laura watched him go with a wrenching of her heart. Jonathan was a good man, the kind of husband every woman dreamed of. Why couldn’t she love a man like that, who would take care of her every need and smother her in love and protection? Some part of her must be deranged. Perhaps it ran in the family. She should try to overcome it, accept his offer, turn her back on the lush Kentucky fields that were her home and follow Jonathan’s sanity to an arid land, cleansed of the corruption of the past. And perhaps she would. It seemed the only sensible thing to do.

  But her heart wasn’t in it. Turning away, Laura went in search of lunch. She needed nourishment if she were to tackle the task of directing the elm tree’s removal.

  The thunder rolled in late that afternoon. Laura threw a nervous glance toward the gathering clouds on the horizon and lifted her face to the wind. It came from the west. It was late in the season for the wicked winds that could tear a tree from its foundations, but Kentucky weather could never be counted on to do anything normal. At least she didn’t have to worry about the tobacco that wasn’t there any longer.

  That wasn’t much of a silver lining, but it was the only one she could conjure up as she ordered the horses inside and the house and barns battened down.

  The house was the weakest point if a true gully-washer moved in. The wind could rip that piecemeal roof right off the beams, and there was no tile to keep the water from dripping through the cracks in the sun-dried wood. This seemed to be a year for momentous thunderstorms.

  No wind came with the approaching storm. The sky gradually darkened, but it was as if the clouds trapped the summer’s heat on the ground, and the trees and grass bent under the weight of the humidity.

  Before he left, Cash had appointed Jake as his second in command, but the men grumbled under a black man’s orders, their tempers already riled by the heat and irritated further by the pressure of the clouds. Jake lost his temper and snapped at them, and several more threw down their pitchforks and hoes and walked out.

  They weren’t the first to leave, and Laura watched their departure with anxiety. She threw a glance to the corn ripening in the distant field. If the storm didn’t flatten it, it would be ready for harvesting soon. Cash would need all the help he could get to bring that corn in. And she didn’t like being left with only a small band of men to protect the house and outbuildings in case the Raiders decided to return.

  Surely they wouldn’t return so soon after Sallie’s death. But a thunderstorm had no respect for the dead. Ordering someone to chase the chickens back into their house, Laura started for the stables to make certain the horses were all in. Cash would never forgive her if any more of his precious horses were lost.

  The evening meal was consumed in tense silence. Mark cried and pounded fretfully at the mashed potatoes on his plate. Laura picked him up and comforted him, but there was little she could do to satisfy his complaints any longer. Her breasts had begun to dry up after Sallie’s death. She missed the closeness as much as the child, and she hugged him with an inward cry of loneliness.

  She wished Cash were here, even if only to rail at him and hear his furious replies. It would be some outlet for her frustration. She didn’t think the storm had anything to do with the emotions winding like a spinning top in her breast. It almost hurt her lungs to breathe, so tight was the cord. She was terrified of how she felt, and she wasn’t certain that she could keep a handle on her pain much longer.

  Knowing she was reaching some breaking point, Laura hastened up the stairs after the meal, seeking the privacy of her room with only Mark for company. She let him crawl about the floor as she pumped the pedal of the sewing machine, pouring all her energies into this motion as if it would solve the tension bursting her seams. The material couldn’t fly through her hands fast enough. She kept an eye on the window, waiting for the storm to break.

  But the window faced the wrong direction and Laura could see only the occasional flash of light, indicating the storm was moving closer. Lightning would be streaking the western sky, but from this angle she could see only its reflection. That was what the whole of her life had been like. She lived in the reflection of other people’s lives
. She wanted to race outside and confront the lightning and dance in the face of it. She was a person too. Why weren’t the tumult of the storm and the ecstasy of the sun for her? Why must she muddle along in the shadow of everyone else, everyone’s cousin but no one’s friend or wife? It wasn’t fair.

  Kicking the iron stand when the thread knotted and jammed, Laura stood up and pulled Mark from the draperies where he was clinging in his effort to see out the window. The wind was rising now; she could see the trees tossing their mighty heads. A horse neighed in its stall, but the sound was carried off before she could even register it fully. She remembered another night when torches had lit the fields, and she shuddered.

  The howling of the wind was worse in the hall when Laura opened the door to Jettie Mae’s knock. The cracks in the unshingled roof gave entrance to strange noises, and the remaining branches of the elm rattled against the wood. The men had been able to trim out only part of the branches before heat had taken its toll and they had quit for the day. The tree was too near the house to cut down and take apart on the ground, they had told her.

  Jettie grimaced at the sound of the rising wind. “You’d better get downstairs. It sounds like dis old house gonna rip apart any minute now.”

  The house had stood up to thousands of storms in the past, but Laura was eager for any excuse to escape her lonely thoughts. Gathering up Mark and his bedding, she followed Jettie down the back stairs to the kitchen, where the house servants had gathered to sip coffee and whisper among themselves.

  They grew silent when Laura entered, but Jemima filled a cup for her and a new subject was found, and soon the younger maids were giggling among themselves while the adults exchanged desultory conversation over the events of the last few days.

  The hurried knock at the back door was almost lost in an abrupt change in the wind, but someone heard it and ran to answer it. The young maid screamed as large black man rushed into the cozy kitchen.

  Seeing Laura, he gasped almost incoherently, “They back! They back in the cornfield!”

  Laura paled before Jake’s wild terror. And then it occurred to her what he was saying, and rage replaced any fear. The Raiders weren’t going to satisfy themselves with waiting for the storm to demolish the cornfield, they meant to take credit for it themselves.

  Rising from her chair, she handed Mark to Jemima and calmly ordered, “Get the guns, Jake. We’re going after them.”

  Chapter 32

  The wind tore at Laura’s hair as she ran outside with the rifle in her arms. The ancient long-barreled Kentucky weapon was almost as tall as she was, but it was slender and lightweight and she knew its deadly accuracy. She scarcely paid attention as Jake ran after her, holding a heavier shotgun. While Laura ran for the stables, he ran for the cabins, intent on waking the men within.

  What she was doing wasn’t fully sane, Laura realized, but it didn’t stop her from yelling at grooms and stablehands and hauling out the horses. She took the first horse saddled, a large mare with the strength and endurance Cash favored in his animals. She would go mad if she stayed in the house while those criminals destroyed the fields and their lives. She wouldn’t waste away without a fight, as so much of the countryside was doing.

  Mounting a man’s saddle in long skirts was a hindrance, but Laura didn’t care if her petticoats were rigged up over her ankles. The clouds finally released the rain. The downpour pounded the barn roof as she rode out. She was soaked through before she could leave the stable yard, but she didn’t falter.

  There were no torches to guide her this time, but she knew where the cornfield was. Through the gathering darkness and the gray veil of rain she could discern the trees marking the fence line. Checking the gunpowder pouch she had tied to the saddle and kept dry beneath her skirts, she kicked the mare in the right direction.

  The men in the paddock grabbed guns and horses and headed out after her.

  Laura paid scant attention to the horses following her. She had never known such fury in her life. Marshall had done his best to maim and kill her and her child when she had been in his care. If Cash were right, Marshall must be bent on finishing the job now. Well, this time she wasn’t eight months pregnant. She would give him the battle he was looking for.

  The wind jerked at her skirts and her horse grew skittish. She hauled on the reins and kept it galloping, even when lightning struck ahead and thunder cracked. Never before had she carried murder in her heart, and the rage terrified her, but she let the emotion out, letting it take over and carry her along beyond sense and reason. By the time she reached the cornfield, she was as elemental as the winds and rain, flying into the countryside bent on havoc.

  Once she reached the field, the trampled corn that had once towered well over her head now crunched underfoot, but her entire being focused on the men wreaking the destruction. Before she had even raised her weapon, the marauders began firing.

  Choosing as a target a black shadow rearing his horse away from her army of field hands and grooms, Laura took aim and fired. The smell of sulfur disappeared into the wind and rain. She let her men surge around her as she stopped to reload. Blasts from a shotgun were followed by a scream of pain and the frightened whinny of a horse. One down, she thought in satisfaction as she jammed the shot down the barrel and caught up the reins again.

  And then strong arms ripped her from her horse, and she was jerked against a masculine body. Laura struggled, using every ounce of her pent-up fury, but the familiarity of the arms depleted the fight. Cash.

  He cursed her with every vile epithet she had ever heard, and some that had never scorched her ears before. Riding away from the fight, he dropped her on the grassy stretch beyond the field, leaving her standing in the drenching rain while he reared his horse to return to the brawl.

  She could hear the shouts and cries of angry men even over the furor of the storm. Unaccustomed to riding or rifles, many of the field hands would be resorting to knives and fists by now. She had done a horrible thing by leading them on, but it was too late to recall them now. Even as she thought this, a fierce gust of wind ripped at one of the outbuildings, lifting the tin roof and crumpling it like a piece of paper, flinging it in the direction of the pond.

  Terrified, Laura glanced to the sky for some sign of the twisters that often fell from a storm like this. Although the temperature had dropped to the point where she was shivering, no hail rained from the clouds, and she heard nothing of the deadly wail that signaled a tornado. Still, it was no night for man or beast. Lifting her skirts, she ran through the muck and gray rain toward the house.

  Men might die tonight, and it was all her fault. That thought ran senselessly through her head as she ran, stumbling, falling into the wind, hitting the ground on her hands and knees, and struggling up again, terrified the storm would take out the roof over her son’s head.

  A mighty blast rocked Laura back on her heels. She watched in horror as the sky ahead flared brighter than day and the hair on her arms and head stood straight up. The stench of smoke and electricity scorched the air even as another loud crack followed. Struck by lightning, the charred elm sundered in two and fell toward the house. She screamed, but in the chaos of the storm, all sound became one. She staggered under the impact of the crash.

  Mark! Screaming, weeping, tripping on her skirts and petticoats, Laura crossed the remaining distance to the house. She might as well be dead if anything had happened to Mark. Breath rasping in her throat, she stumbled up the stairs.

  The air was filled with the odor of hell, but the thunder was moving away as she wrenched open the door. Oil lamps still burned in the kitchen as she fell in, and a steadying hand grabbed her before she could hit the floor.

  “Jemima! Where is everybody? Are they all right? The tree. . .” She gasped for air, unable to speak coherently.

  “They down in the basement, chile. I just come up to see what done hit us. Lawd A’mighty, you a sight! You’d best get yo’sef up them stairs and into dry things while I warm up this coffee
. Where them men? They be needin’ to dry out too.”

  Laura brushed off the cook’s attentions and wrung her skirt out on the brick floor while she tried to gather her wits. “Send someone up to see if the lightning started any fires. The men are still out there. Cash is out there. There’s going to be wounded. We need bandages, hot water . . .”

  She was thinking out loud, but the worried old woman responded as quickly as she talked, throwing wood in the stove, pulling out pails and bowls.

  Hearing Laura’s voice, Jettie appeared at the top of the basement stairs. Other voices followed. Feet scampered in different directions at Jemima’s orders. A quiet panic filled the kitchen, but a fire was stirred, water was pumped, and footsteps echoed on the floorboards overhead.

  Laura scarcely had time to ascertain that Mark was safe and sound asleep in the schoolroom below before the first horses thundered into the yard. Fighting a growing panic, she ran down to greet them.

  There were shouts, but she couldn’t understand them over the howl of wind and the roar of rain. She didn’t recognize the man who nearly fell off the first horse, but she identified the slight man remaining in the saddle of the second as one of the grooms. He grabbed the loose reins, and giving her a tip of his head, steered the nervous animals back toward the safety of the stables. Laura caught the injured man as he staggered, guiding him with an arm around his waist to the safety of the lighted kitchen.

  Jemima clucked and muttered as the man was deposited on the kitchen bench, but more horses were riding in, and Laura didn’t linger to hear her complaints. This time Jettie Mae joined her in the drenching rain as she ran out to sort the wounded from the wet.

  They came in erratic shifts, the terrified horses kicking and shivering and swarming in the yard as experienced and inexperienced riders alike strove to bring them under control while they clung to the reins with weariness and pain. Some staggered in on foot. Others came with bodies draped over the saddles. Little by little the less injured dragged the animals to their stalls, while Laura and Jettie sought out the wounded.