by Regina Scott
“Preechah ’Lijah, haáahe!” the boy called out.
Alice turned her gaze away from the boy to see that Elijah had stepped up to his makeshift lectern.
“Hello, Dakota,” Elijah said, as others smiled and chuckled. “Don’t we love his enthusiasm, congregation? Did you know that the Lord longs for us to greet Him with that same childlike joy?”
“Amen!” Keith Gilbert cried, coming to the front to lead the singing.
Alice sang along with the rest, but she was hardly aware of the words. Elijah looked pale and tired, she thought. She’d have to insist he rest again today, and hoped he wouldn’t be a typical stubborn male and try to resist her advice. She’d seen right through his assertion that he was “fine” yesterday, and now she knew she should have left some willow bark tea with his brothers despite Elijah’s objection.
As the collection sack was being passed, she wondered why his brothers never came to chapel. Gideon and Clint Thornton were clearly good and decent men—surely they believed in God, didn’t they? How hard that must be for Elijah, not to have his brothers here. Did it make him feel as if he had failed in some way?
*
Elijah stepped forward again. “Before I start into my sermon today, about the shepherd with a hundred sheep,” he began, “I would ask your prayers for the Collins family. I was called to their campsite just at dawn for Mr. Collins’s elderly mother, who’d been suddenly taken with a heart seizure.”
Alice smothered a gasp. No wonder Elijah looked so worn. He hadn’t been well himself, but he’d been awakened to minister to one of his flock. She tried to remember if she had ever met the deceased woman.
“I would have sent for our nurse, Miss Alice, to see if she could provide any relief for the lady,” he went on with a glance at her, “but it was clear the elder Mrs. Collins had only moments left on this earth. As I sat at her bedside and prayed with her, she smiled and went Home to be with the Lord.”
Murmurs of shock and sorrow rose around Alice.
“Jerusha Collins had been eager to start a new life with her family on their homestead not long from now,” Elijah said. “Instead, she is starting a new life in eternity. In lieu of chapel tomorrow, I’ll be conducting her funeral service for those who would like to attend and support the Collins family in their grief.”
It had been like that when her father, also a believer, had died three months ago, Alice remembered. She’d arrived from New York City with only a few hours to spare before her father passed on. Though he had suffered greatly from the wasting illness that finally claimed his life, Hiram Hawthorne had smiled as he took his last breath.
Her attention returned to Elijah as she pictured the graveside service out on the prairie tomorrow. Again she noticed his pallor in contrast to his flushed cheeks. Lord, please restore Elijah to health so he can minister to others.
Elijah took a deep breath that was interrupted by a cough. “My sermon today…”
Just then Dakota tugged on her sleeve. “Preechah,” he said, pointing. Then he uttered several incomprehensible Cheyenne words.
Alice bent to listen. “What about Preacher?” she asked softly, but of course the boy didn’t have enough English words to tell her. As she watched, Elijah hesitated as if unsure of himself, then took a drink of water from a glass on his makeshift lectern. Beads of sweat dotted his forehead, which he wiped away with a handkerchief he pulled out of his pocket.
Was she imagining it, or did he sway slightly?
But others had noticed, too. “You all right, Reverend?” she heard Keith Gilbert ask.
Elijah seemed dazed as he turned toward the sound of his deacon’s voice. “I think…think I’m ill… Sorry…”
Without conscious thought, Alice jumped up and ran to the front. She and Keith Gilbert reached Elijah as he collapsed in a heap in the sawdust.
Chapter Twelve
Elijah passed out somewhere between the chapel and the Thornton tent as he was carried there by four men from the congregation.
Gideon, stirring something over the fire, stood as the little cavalcade approached. “What the—? Lije?”
“He collapsed at chapel, Gideon,” Alice told him. “He’s very ill. Help us get him into bed.”
Clint appeared at the tent flap then and, staring, held it open as Alice ran ahead to pull down the coverlet on the cot. The men eased him onto it, and Alice stepped aside while Clint and Gideon helped remove their brother’s trousers and shirt and pulled a sheet over him.
“I knew he was sick when Mr. Collins came and woke him up at dawn this morning,” Clint muttered. “But of course Lije just went to do what he could.”
Cassie Gilbert and Dakota had been part of the procession, and now Alice was distantly aware of Cassie Gilbert gently pulling Dakota away, murmuring reassurances he probably didn’t understand. Keith remained, standing in a corner of the tent, his eyes closed—praying, Alice guessed.
Elijah’s breathing rasped in her ears as Alice bent over and felt his forehead, and flinched at the burning heat. “He’s spiking a fever,” she told them. “I need cool water to bathe him.” She couldn’t give him the willow bark tea when he was too insensible to swallow.
“I just fetched some from the spring before you came,” Gideon said. “I’ll bring in a basinful.”
Moments later, using a bit of towel Clint provided, she bathed Elijah’s forehead, then his shoulders, arms and chest. She watched him start to shiver.
“Blankets…he needs blankets,” Gideon said.
“Just one light one, please,” Alice instructed, when Gideon had grabbed up the blankets on both his and Clint’s cots. “Anything more and his fever will only go higher.”
*
“I’m going to call a prayer meeting,” Keith Gilbert said, as the afternoon faded into evening. “What shall I tell them?”
Alice looked up from her camp chair by the cot. Elijah was cooler now, but his breathing had an ominous moist sound to it that she didn’t like, as if he breathed through water—rales, the doctors at Bellevue had called it. She didn’t have to pull out her stethoscope from the medical bag she’d had Gideon fetch from her tent to know that there was congestion in his lungs.
“Tell them Reverend Thornton has pneumonia. Tell them to pray like they’ve never prayed before.” She kept her tone matter-of-fact, not wanting to frighten the deacon or Elijah’s brothers and reveal the fact she was afraid for Elijah. He had no medical care but what she could provide. It wasn’t the first time she’d nursed someone so ill, of course, but it had always been with the guidance of a doctor and a head nurse.
Keith Gilbert closed his eyes for a moment. “I’ll tell them,” he said at last. “If the reverend comes around, you tell him that he’s not to worry—I’ll conduct that funeral service.”
Alice blinked. In the past few hours she’d forgotten all about old Mrs. Collins’s death. Dear Lord, don’t let Elijah die, too. Please spare him for all our sakes. Without Elijah, the new church and the community he envisioned around it would not happen. We need him—I need him, she prayed, and was stunned by what she’d just prayed and had never dared to completely admit to herself.
Despite all her determination, a bond had grown between Elijah and her, a bond forged while seeing to the spiritual and medical needs of Boomer Town, and in their mutual caring for the half-Indian orphan, Dakota. Elijah was the most honorable, caring man she had ever met. He served his fellow man because he loved God, and because she knew Elijah, she wanted to be a better person.
She’d come here wanting to hide, to pass unnoticed, to leave her nursing skills behind and just live on her land with no one but her mother. She’d been afraid to share her name. In getting to know him, she’d shed the fear that had ruled her life of late and had learned to want to share her nursing skills again. The Lord had called her to be a nurse, after all.
Please, Lord, save Elijah.
*
Searing heat, alternating with a cold that was the worst he’d ever experienc
ed, colder even than that first winter in Pennsylvania—when he’d been locked in the woodshed by Obadiah for some boyish infraction of his cousin’s endless rules… Stabbing pain with each breath, like a dozen sharp needles sticking in his ribs…
Elijah groaned, but it sounded like someone else uttering the noise. Each breath was made harder by the sludge that seemed to have coated his lungs, inside and out. Parched throat. So thirsty. Had he become lost in the desert? But Oklahoma wasn’t a desert…
He felt the presence of a darker shadow in the misty distance, a shadow that was pure evil. A voice inside him mocked, “You’ll never live to build your church. Your congregation will be scattered and forget the ways of righteous men. Gideon and Clint won’t ever find their way back to the Lord….”
No! He couldn’t allow it! He had to survive, to get well! God, save me!
He felt the presence of warmth, and Scripture came to him. My grace is sufficient… My power is made perfect in weakness. The words encouraged him to let go and sleep.
I can’t sleep, Lord! he protested. I have to guard my flock against those who would tear it apart!
Then he remembered that Jesus was the Good Shepherd, not him. Again he felt the presence of the Light encouraging him to let go and rest.
Elijah slept.
Even in his dreams he could feel cool, soft hands touching his forehead, bathing him with blessedly cool water. A soft, murmuring voice read the Psalms aloud near his ear. Was it Marybelle? Or Alice?
It was Alice. He could picture her, brisk and professional, but with a caring in those sky-blue eyes that had reassured everyone he’d seen her nurse. He could see her reaching down to check a pulse in a wrist, listen to breathing with that wood-and-metal contraption of hers…
He had to live…had to get better so he could tell her how important she was becoming to him….
*
“Alice, go get some rest. I’ll watch over Reverend Elijah for a while.”
Alice roused from her stupor at the gentle touch of Cassie Gilbert.
“Wh-what time is it?” she asked, even while her eyes flew to Elijah.
He was sleeping, his chest rising and falling. His respirations still rattled as he exhaled.
She reached out an unsteady hand and touched him. He was still hot but cooler than he had been.
“It’s midnight, child—at least, according to your own timepiece on your dress,” Cassie said with a soft chuckle, pointing to it.
“I can’t leave. Not with Elijah like this.” Five campsites away was too far if Elijah took a turn for the worse. Dazedly she looked around, expecting to see Clint and Gideon asleep in their beds, but the cots were vacant.
“I can watch him,” the older woman insisted. “I’ve done some nursing—though not with formal training like you had. You can sleep right over there,” the older woman insisted, pointing to one of the cots. “Clint put fresh sheets on it. He and Gideon are sleeping outside by the fire. Go get some rest, and I promise I’ll call you if Reverend so much as twitches the wrong way.”
“Dakota?”
“Sleeping, too, at our campsite. I didn’t leave till Keith was back from the prayer meeting, of course. Just imagine—he says there’ll be some keeping vigil in prayer all night for the reverend. Lars talked to Dakota, explained that you were a medicine woman and that ‘Preechah ’Lijah’ was in good hands.”
A medicine woman, Alice thought, and couldn’t help but smile a little.
“The boy’s been chanting—I think that’s how he prays.” Cassie’s smile was fond. “Now shoo, girl,” she ordered, making swishing motions at Alice in the chair.
She’d just lie down for a few minutes, Alice told herself. She could listen to the quality of Elijah’s breathing with her eyes shut so Cassie would think she was sleeping….
*
She woke at dawn, hearing birds beginning to chirp and the other two Thornton brothers talking softly outside the tent. How had she slept so long? How could she have slept at all, with Elijah in such danger?
Throwing her legs over the side of the cot, she sat up, her eyes going to Elijah’s bed. Cassie. The older woman was bending over Elijah’s forehead, but at the sound of Alice’s cot creaking, she turned around.
“I was just about to rouse you,” Cassie said. “I think his fever’s starting to climb again.”
“You shouldn’t have let me sleep so long,” Alice mumbled, then hoped her tone didn’t sound accusatory.
“You needed it,” Cassie said imperturbably. “And he didn’t start getting hot till just a few minutes ago. I’ve been feelin’ his forehead every little while through the night.”
Alice flew to the bedside and confirmed Cassie’s assertion with a shaking hand. Elijah’s skin was fiery.
“Help me sponge him off again, Cassie,” she said, and the older woman went to get some water.
*
Hot. So hot. How had he gotten trapped inside his cousin’s furnace? Surely even Obadiah wasn’t that cruel…. His brain felt as if it was on fire. If he looked hard enough, he could just see the flames….
Incredibly, he saw Marybelle Atkins, his lost fiancée, walking amid the fire, her eyes sad as she met his gaze. Her blond hair was loose, floating around her shoulders. She shook her head at him and walked away.
“Wait, Marybelle!” he called. “Wait, I want to talk to you!”
But his dead fiancée kept walking, the smoke—or was it mist?—swirling around her, hiding her…
“We’ve got to get this fever down,” he heard Alice say. “If we don’t, I’m afraid he’ll have a seizure.”
He heard his brothers’ muttering voices, near but not as near as the soft voice. Talking about him—worried, fearful. Gideon, Clint, I’m here! Don’t give up on me!
It was so hard to breathe. Each breath was such an effort and an agony….
The cold cloths landed on his skin again, but the touch wasn’t soft and gentle as before.
“Come on, big brother,” he heard Gideon say. “Don’t give in. We all need you, Lije…” His strokes with the cold, wet cloth were insistent.
Then Clint’s voice said, “Lije, come back from wherever you went. There’s too much for you to do here, brother. Neither of us wants to run for those homesteads without you, and it’s for sure neither of us can run a church. You’ve got the congregation scared witless, brother. Get better, please…”
I’m trying, Clint…
And then he was cold, colder even than before. The cold was so frigid it burned. It wasn’t smoke that whisked around the evil darkness now, but snow.
Blankets! He needed blankets. Why was everyone letting him freeze like this? He reached out with flailing arms, desperate to grab at least the one blanket he always left rolled up at the foot of his cot.
“Easy, brother. Don’t be striking out at Miss Alice, she’s trying to help get your fever down, Lije!” he heard Gideon say.
Why were his own brothers telling lies? He didn’t have enough breath, let alone the energy, to strike at her, even if he wanted to. And of course he didn’t want to. He loved her!
“He’s delirious,” he heard Alice say. “He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’ll calm when the fever goes down.” If the fever goes down, he heard her say within her mind.
And then he slept again.
*
He’d called for Marybelle. That had been the one sentence Alice could understand amid all his incoherent mumbling. Who is she? His voice had been anguished, the voice of a man who loved deeply, a man who loved only once. She’d been a fool to even begin to think she could matter to him the way Marybelle must have.
“How’s he doing, Miss Alice? Is he any better?”
She hated to quash the hope she saw in his younger brother’s eyes as he gazed down at Elijah, but it would be wrong to lie.
“No better, no,” she said, avoiding Clint’s gaze.
“But no worse?” Gideon asked, coming to stand by Clint at their brother’s bedside.
&
nbsp; “No worse.” They didn’t understand, Alice thought. To Gideon and Clint, if their brother was no worse, that was encouraging news. They didn’t understand the toll that fever and congestion took on the body, drying it out and making it so hard to keep air flowing through, depriving the body of the ability to fight. And if nothing interrupted that, unconsciousness would progress to something deeper, to coma.
“Is he…is he…going to make it?” This came from Clint, and she heard the fear in the question, that even asking it was letting in the possibility that Elijah might not survive.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m doing everything I can.”
“What can we do? Is there anything else we can do?”
“Pray.”
Gideon uttered a smothered sound that might have been disgust, might have been despair. “I prayed once before, and it didn’t do any good. Sorry if it offends you, Miss Alice, but I don’t think anybody up there cares what happens here on earth.”
Alice gazed at him, knowing this wasn’t the time to argue. What had happened to this man to make him so cynical? Whom had he lost, despite his prayers? Was he speaking of the loss of their parents, in childhood, or was this a more recent raw wound of grief?
She turned to look at Clint. Did he feel the same way?
Apparently feeling her scrutiny, he said, “I believe there’s a God, Miss Alice. I just don’t know if we’re on speaking terms, after what I’ve seen Him allow to happen.”
She was too bone weary, despite the restless sleep she had gotten, to counter that in any convincing manner. She wanted to rail at them: Don’t you know praying is all you can do? If there’s even a chance it will work, why aren’t you besieging Heaven with your prayers?
Elijah would have known what to say, but Elijah was lying insensible on the bed, balanced so precariously between life and death.
Cassie Gilbert might have known the right words, but she’d gone home to be with Dakota while her husband was conducting Mrs. Collins’s funeral.
