by Linda Ellen
A second later, he heard Beth Ann’s piercing scream, as the morning air was rent with the sound of a pistol shot.
Sam shut his eyes tight and tensed every muscle, waiting for the pain to rip through his body...but there was none. Pandemonium had broken out after he’d heard the sound of the gun being discharged; shouts and jumbled words came from every direction. What happened? Did I blank out and not hear the ten shouted?
Opening his eyes, he turned around slowly, the pistol still aimed straight up next to his shoulder, at the ready, and tried to make sense of what he saw.
Fetterman was bent slightly over, holding his hand and moaning, while a man in the crowd directly across from his position was holding a smoking revolver pointed directly at him. Apparently the man in the crowd had shot the pistol out of Fetterman’s hand!
Instantly, at the sight of their boss blatantly cheating like a coward, the two men who were with him looked at one another, shouted profanities, turned, and took off running.
All of this had taken only seconds to play out. The voices came at Sam over his thundering heartbeat, and he began to understand their meaning.
“Well, I’ll be. He shot early!” yelled a voice in the crowd.
“He tried to cheat!”
“By rights, you can go ahead and take your shot, Sam!”
“Yeah, give him what for! He deserves it, the coward!”
Sam stood gripping the pistol, slack jawed and staring at the man who had caused all of this trouble. Should he take his shot? I would surely be within my rights according to that Royal Code of whatever that Fetterman had quoted from.
Slowly and deliberately, he leveled his arm and the gun and took aim. Jumbled thoughts and opposing opinions assaulted his mind. This man had had the audacity to threaten the woman he loved! If she hadn’t have been able to obtain a proxy marriage in Louisville, Fetterman probably would have caught her and made her his prisoner. Who knows what kind of abuse he planned for her, despite all of that grandstanding about jewels and furs and mansions. Beth Ann...sweet, wonderful, loving Beth...his Beth.
Righteous anger began rising in his chest. No man hurts my Beth. NO MAN. His hand shook for a moment as his emotions raged, but he steadied himself, glaring down the barrel at the pasty face and wide, feverish eyes that were staring back.
“Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!” the crowd chanted.
Suddenly, the expression on the face of his nemesis changed and started to crumble. Even from the distance of nearly thirty feet, Sam could see that all of the man’s bluster and cockiness had melted away. Fetterman had become scared. Scared all the way to his soul.
Inwardly, Sam shook off his natural compassion. No matter...he deserves...
His finger began to squeeze the trigger...
“Sam! Sam don’t!” From somewhere behind and off to his left, he heard her voice above all the others. Beth Ann. His sweet Beth...
He couldn’t let her see him kill a man...a man who was now unarmed. But he had to do something!
“Ahh, heck with this,” he growled. Carefully releasing the hammer of the gun, he threw it down in the dirt and then started toward the troublemaker like a locomotive at full steam. He’d be darned if the man got off scot-free after causing all of this ill wind!
He marched right up to Fetterman and before the man could move a muscle, Sam reared his right arm back and, with every ounce of his considerable strength behind the blow, punched him straight in the nose.
Fetterman flew back a good six feet and landed like a sack of feed, out cold.
The crowd roared.
As he stood there, panting with half-spent fury, faces and voices suddenly surged forward, congratulating him, thumping him on the back, cackling and howling.
He managed to turn in the midst and look toward the rise.
Through the sea of faces, he could see Beth running toward him, tears streaming, calling his name over and over—and his gaze connected with hers.
He pushed his way through the mass of humanity and caught her just as she launched herself into his arms.
As he held his sobbing wife, he shut his eyes and tipped back his head to thank the Man above for answered prayers.
Then looking back down into his wife’s tear drenched eyes as the peaceful hush of snow began to fall all around them, he murmured, “Darlin’...let’s go home.”
The crowd parted to let them through.
Epilogue
Six years later...
“S
weetheart, could you come here and help me a moment?” Beth Ann called to her husband, best friend, soul mate and life partner of six years.
Sam turned from placing more wood on the fire in the homestead’s massive fireplace and his mouth dropped open.
“Beth! Darlin’, what are you doing? You know you shouldn’t be climbing or doing things like that right now, you’ve got to be careful!” he scolded as he charged over to where she stood on top of the seat of a chair, poised on her tiptoes as she attempted to reach something in the back of a kitchen cabinet. She turned just as he skidded to a stop and reached out to gently steady her somewhat teetering motion.
Smiling down at him and thinking how much she adored her husband, and how cared for and treasured he always made her feel, Beth reached to lovingly caress the back of his head as he stretched up to give her a soft kiss and lightly placed his hands on either side her extended belly. His gentleness made her tear up a tiny bit. Then he playfully rubbed his nose against the material tightly stretched across and spoke to the babe nestled inside.
“Now you listen here, little one. You tell your mama not to do dangerous stuff like this, all right? She don’t listen to me.”
Beth laughed and allowed him to help her step down onto the floor. “Oh yes, I do, sweetheart. It’s just sometimes I get in a hurry and forget I’ve got another loaf in the oven—until he kicks me, or stretches out an arm or leg,” she snickered.
“Still saying it’s a he, huh? Darlin’ you have more faith than me,” Sam chuckled and turned to the open cabinet door. “What’d you need up there, anyway?”
“I believe in thinking positively,” she quipped as she indicated toward a large vase at the very back, which he retrieved and set on the counter. “Charise asked to borrow this vase and I...”
Just then, they heard a knock at the door and two tinny voices yelled, “I’ll get it!” as two sets of feet came charging through from the second bedroom, heading toward the door at full speed.
Loretta Charise was the oldest at five years, three months, and named after Sam’s mother and of course Beth’s best friend. She was an inquisitive and precocious child who never seemed to remain still, other than when she was sleeping. Cynthia, named after one of Beth’s childhood mentors, the head cook at the orphanage, was just three years old and a bit more sedate than her older sister who she idolized and consequently wanted to do everything she did.
Lately, one of their favorite things to do was answer the door before their parents could beat them to it. Beth and Sam figured it made them feel grown up to welcome visitors into the house the way their mama and papa did.
“Loretta Charise! Cynthia Ann!” Beth called to her two auburn-haired, green-eyed daughters as they slid to a stop at the closed portal. They turned toward her as a unit and gave her their most innocent stares, complete with wide, blinking eyes. Beth steadfastly ignored her husband’s choked back chuckle and didn’t dare look at him as she stifled a laugh at their daughters’ antics. She knew both of the girls had their papa wrapped securely around their respective pinkies and sensed he would be of no help in this instance.
“Ladies do not run in the house,” she admonished, giving them her most stern mama scowl, and shaking one finger at them for good measure.
“Yes, Mama,” they chorused as Loretta swung the door wide.
“Not fair! Was my turn!” Cynthia loudly complained as their Uncle Finn and Auntie Charise, along with Grandpapa Hinkle, swept in with a gust of cold wind, followed by two boys
just a little older than their female cousins, and a baby boy snuggly wrapped in Charise’s arms.
Sam surged forward to assist as Beth fussed and Zebulon closed the door behind them. Greetings were made, wraps were discarded, and kisses and hugs abounded as the loving family made themselves comfortable in Sam and Beth’s warm, inviting homestead.
“Oh my stars, that was a cold trip!” Charise laughed as she pulled the mittens off of the baby’s tiny hands. “But at least last night’s five inches of snow gives us a chance to use the sleigh these two made last winter,” she added with another chuckle. Beth shared a proud smile with her husband as she thought about all of the work he and Finn had put into creating and building the snow trekking conveyance—only due to illnesses the previous year and a less than normal amount of the necessary white powder, the opportunity never arose.
“I wondered about this planned visit after last night’s snowfall,” Beth Ann commented, meeting her friend’s eyes. “If the sky does what it’s threatening, it could add up to be a repeat of six years ago.”
Finn took the baby from his wife and snorted. “Well, not quite a repeat, dear sister-in-law. At least this time, no Lloyd Fetterman is here to give Sam fits.”
“You’ve got a point, there,” Beth replied as Zeb chuckled, “Indeed.”
“Don’t remind me,” Sam groused as he headed to the master bedroom, loaded down with their visitors’ coats and outerwear to place on the bed.
“What happened six years ago, Papa?” six-year-old Phineas Oliver, Jr., who insisted he be called Ollie, inquired as he peered up at his father.
Loretta, always feeling the urge to compete with her male cousin, chimed in, “Yes, Uncle Finn, what happened then?”
“Who’s Lo’eed Fat-er-man?” queried Ollie’s nearly identical, four-year-old sibling Larry—Lawrence Lovell—named after both of Charise’s brothers. The boys were chips off the old block, having inherited their papa’s wavy, brown hair and dark blue eyes—even the shape of their chins and noses—were miniature Finns. The baby, eleven-month-old Samuel Zebulon—affectionately called Sammy Z—however, had received his looks and coloring from his mama, with hair of a darker hue that seemed as if he would be without the commonly inherited Finny waves, but with dark brown eyes.
Beth and Charise shared a grin and then Beth offered, “Just a man who...turned out to be both a blessing and a...pain...for all of us.”
The four young cousins peered up at her, waiting for more, but when they saw no more information would be forthcoming, they looked at one another and shrugged before scampering off—hollering like wild Indians—to find something to play with together in the girls’ room.
The five adults laughed out loud at their antics as they fondly watched them go, and then began offering their own memories of the day they would never forget...the infamous duel that the townspeople still occasionally talked about. Beth tried not to think about it, but it seemed as if, all too often, someone decided to dredge it all up again. With a sigh of resignation, she knew this would be one of those times.
“I’ll never forget the look on Sam’s face when he realized Fetterman had taken the coward’s way out and jumped the count, not to mention the man’s own henchmen deserting him like rats from a sinking ship,” Finn snorted.
“What about the look on your face when you found out who it was that blasted the gun out of his hand!” Sam shot back, snickering as he rejoined them. He looked over at Beth and she knew he was scanning her face to make sure she would not be upset by the talk of what could have been a terrible tragedy. She smiled at him reassuringly, and he responded with a soft chuckle and a rascally wink.
Zebulon shook his head in remembered awe. “I’m sure my expression rivaled yours. Frank James? I would never in a hundred years have expected that, especially after setting the type over the years on so many newspaper stories chronicling that gang’s escapades. Why, his and Jesse’s legends are larger than life. They never quite seemed real to me...I’d even read dime novels about them. And yet there Frank was in the flesh, just another gawker in the crowd—until he decided to intervene.” He shook his head again with a snort. “To think, he was only in town for one night, just to bring their cousin, Dottie, and the wife of the sheriff no less—don’t even get me started about that!—a gift from Frank and Jesse’s mother! You know he had drifted over with the crowd just for sport to watch the duel, having made a bet on the outcome, but said he couldn’t abide a, ‘Skunk like Fetterman shooting a man like Sam in the back’!”
“And praise God for that!” Beth rejoined. She wrapped her arms around her husband and refrained from admitting that she shuddered to think what might have happened if Frank James hadn’t taken that initiative. If Fetterman had been a good shot, her husband might well have... She determinedly shook off the thought as she felt Sam hug her a little closer.
The others nodded in response to Zeb’s retelling. They all knew the story well, but it was like chewing on a lump of honeycomb to rehash it all.
“To me the best part was the snowstorm that came, preventing the train from returning from Nebraska City, and Elvira volunteering to take care of Fetterman as his hand...and his nose...recovered,” Charise reflected on the last bit with awed amusement. “And what happened as a result of that was so amazing...who would have thought?”
“You said it,” Sam agreed with a hearty laugh. “The two of them stranded together—well, chaperoned by Sally and a few others at the boarding house, but still—Elvira got on Fetterman’s nerves so bad, he blasted her about her incessant talking and for once in her life...she took it to heart!”
Charise sat down at the kitchen table as Finn handed her the baby again. Resuming the tale, she grinned from ear to ear. “Then when Sally caught them asleep in one another’s arms in the parlor, and despite their repeated protests that nothing untoward had happened, the reverend, the townspeople, and the sheriff descended on the man like ants on a picnic lunch and—since he had utterly ruined her reputation—insisted that he marry her or suffer the indignities of literally being tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail. Then, to everyone’s everlasting disbelief...he agreed!”
“Maybe she played the piano for him and it got him all moony-eyed, like a snake charmer,” Sam snorted.
Zeb shook his head again. “I still can’t believe that Lloyd Harold Fetterman the Third allowed them to, pardon the pun, railroad him into marriage—and that he took her to Louisville with him when the snow melted enough for the train to get through. You know, by the time they left she was still quite...loquacious...” he hesitated as they all laughed, “but when he would give her a certain look, she would shut right up! Apparently they actually felt sparks for one another. The entire matter was nothing short of a miracle, that’s all I can say. Wonders never cease.”
Finn, wiping a cheery tear from the corner of his eye, put in, “And don’t forget that the sheriff and Sam put the fear into him that if he ever harmed Elvira and they found out about it, it would be curtains for him. He was a changed man when he left, though. Besides...we grew up with her and we knew she could take care of herself.” Beth gave a silent chuckle remembering a few of the stories the brothers had told over the years.
“Yes, well, he’d had an epiphany out there on that dueling field when our Sam here had that gun trained on him and started to pull the trigger,” Zeb pointed out. “Before they left, Elvira told me that Lloyd admitted to her he saw his whole life flash by in a series of despicable actions and that he was heartily disgusted with the way he had lived his life. He told her he begged God to let him live and that if He did, he would change his ways. Obviously, he meant it, cause the first thing he did when he got back was wire Bethie the money from her savings account—with interest. I’ll say it again—for a Fetterman to willingly give up money took an intervention from the Almighty, and it truly satisfied my faith.”
“You’re so right. It’s all so downright amazing,” Charise mused. “The last time Elvira wrote me, she
sent me a daguerreotype of the family sitting at her brand new grand piano. She looks so happy and well cared for...and she told me about ways that Lloyd is quietly going about helping those who are downtrodden. She adores him and apparently he feels the same. He even calls her Vi, dresses her in furs and jewels, and he completely dotes upon their children. Can you believe they already have five and she’s expecting again?”
Finn snorted, “Triplets, if that don’t beat all.”
Zeb got Beth’s attention and pointed out with a fond smile, “Remember when we said God had plans that were way beyond our scope of imagining?”
“Yes, I do. You and Charise were both right and I had so little faith. It was all so extraordinary...but all I could think of was possibly losing my brand new husband,” Beth Ann reflected quietly as she tipped her head back and her eyes met those of her husband. She reached up and caressed his jaw, her fingertips lovingly ruffling his beard. “What I remember most was how I almost fainted with relief when I saw that Sam wasn’t hurt by that shot...”
Sam wrapped his arms more snugly around her and leaned down to give her a warm kiss.
Then, he murmured, “Well, darlin’, I was a bit relieved myself when I realized I wasn’t feeling any pain.” Looking around at the group, he added with a wink, “However, my knuckles did hurt some when it was all said and done.”
They all laughed together at that, before changing the subject for good.
THE END---for now
But coming in March of 2019 – A BRIDE FOR TOBIAS.
Author Notes
While doing preliminary research for this series and trying to decide just where my heroes would live and my girls would have to travel to, I came across Brownville, Nebraska. Immediately, I fell in love with images of the quaint little town, which is still in existence. Many of the town’s original buildings are still there and the history is well preserved. They have a website and it seems that it would be a wonderful place to check out on vacation. In my story, I used as much of their real history as I could. Here is their website: Welcome to the Merchants of Brownville
