Love Inspired Historical April 2014 Bundle: The Husband CampaignThe Preacher's Bride ClaimThe Soldier's SecretsWyoming Promises

by Regina Scott

  “It’s like this, Lars…” he began, and the story came pouring out.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Lars was thoughtful after Elijah finished his recital of what had happened with Alice.

  “Do you think if I sent my sister to speak to her, this Peterson fellow would allow it?” Lars suggested. “Surely no man could refuse my sweet, innocent sister the chance to speak with her friend?”

  It meant a lot to Elijah that Lars thought Katrine would be willing to risk the rudeness that the New Yorker might offer her.

  “I don’t think Peterson would risk letting Katrine speak to her alone,” he said.

  “Then what should we do, Elijah? Call a meeting of the church to pray for her?”

  Elijah rubbed his chin. “I don’t know, Lars. It’s risky,” he said. “If this got back to Alice and she wants to be with Maxwell Peterson for whatever reason, she might be offended. And we’ve had a lot of new folks come in the last few days, folks I haven’t had a chance to get to know very well yet.”

  And that’s your own fault, he accused himself. You’ve been mooning about Alice and not tending to your calling, the shepherding of souls. No more! He’d make some pastoral visits this very afternoon and try to get better acquainted with some of the more recent attenders.

  Or was it pride speaking? Was he merely unwilling to show his weakness, his humanness, to his entire church, when they looked to him for guidance? Pride goeth before a fall…

  Lord, show me what to do.

  Lars was studying him, waiting for him to come up with an alternate suggestion.

  “What about if we had a prayer meeting later tonight at the Gilberts’, after Dakota has gone to sleep?” Elijah said. “You, me, Katrine, Keith and Cassie Gilbert? Winona can attend if she wants, of course—it might be well for her to see how Christians rely on prayer to solve a problem,” he said.

  “Ja, that is a very good idea,” Lars said, brightening. “I will let them know.”

  Elijah only wished that he could count on Gideon and Clint to be part of that number. He knew they wished him well, of course. But if his brothers didn’t believe that the Lord cared about His people, why would they think that group prayer would accomplish anything?

  *

  Alice watched Maxwell warily as Horst prepared another gourmet meal. He’d been in a foul mood ever since they’d left the office of Colonel Amboys.

  She hadn’t told Maxwell about her other expedition to speak to an army officer, and in any case, there was no reason for her to think that they would be speaking to the same officers she and Elijah had spoken to when they were inquiring about Dakota’s father.

  But they were directed to the same guard station to the same Major Bliss who had forwarded Elijah and her to Colonel Amboys, and sure enough, he referred Maxwell to Colonel Amboys again. Bliss looked hard at Alice before giving them directions, but Alice wasn’t sure if he recognized her or not. In fancier clothing, she knew she looked vastly different.

  Colonel Amboys definitely did remember her, however, and that fact was helping to fuel Maxwell’s temper now. Maxwell had introduced himself, and was about to present Alice when the colonel interrupted him.

  “Miss Hawthorne and I have met,” he said. “Nice to see you again, ma’am.”

  Maxwell’s eyebrows had risen nearly to his hairline. “Oh? And how did you happen to meet my fiancée?” he asked.

  Colonel Amboys narrowed his gaze at Maxwell, clearly disliking the other man’s high-handed tone. “Miss Hawthorne and Reverend Thornton were making inquiries about a certain officer in the army, on behalf of his son,” the colonel said stiffly. “Now if you would state your business, Mr. Peterson?”

  Just as Alice thought, the colonel had indeed scorned Maxwell’s suggestion that any officer of the U.S. Army had promised Maxwell early entry into the Unassigned Territories, even when Maxwell waved a letter purporting to be from the officer who’d made the promise.

  “I’ll take that,” Colonel Amboys said, neatly snatching the letter by one corner. “Army headquarters will be interested to learn that one of our officers feels free to grant such…favors.”

  But Maxwell hadn’t smelled defeat yet. “Colonel, we’re reasonable men,” he said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a roll of bills. “I never meant that you wouldn’t benefit from helping me and my lady,” he said, with a meaningful glance toward Alice.

  Colonel Amboys’s face went purple. “You’d try to bribe an officer in the United States Army? Listen, you self-important windbag! The only reason I’m not clapping you in irons is the presence of Miss Hawthorne—though I also deplore her unfortunate choice of friends, in this instance,” he added, aiming a sour glance at Alice herself. “Now get out of here and take your chances with the rest at noon on the twenty-second if you want—though I think Oklahoma would be better off if you never lived there.”

  Now, hours later, Maxwell hadn’t gotten over his humiliation in front of her, and that made him dangerous, Alice thought. It was probably in her best interest to say as little as possible until Maxwell’s temper cooled.

  He’d been this way since they were growing up together in the same farming community in upstate New York. He had tried to court her, but she had always kept him at arm’s length, liking neither his possessive attitude nor the rudeness and disdain with which he treated others.

  “The gall of the fellow, to suggest I should have to run with the rabble, as if I were one of them,” Maxwell muttered now.

  Alice didn’t know what to say to that, but Horst, hovering nearby as always, did. “If I might take the liberty to point something out, mein Herr? Your horses are vastly superior to any the rabble are likely to have. You will leave them all in the dust.”

  “True,” Maxwell said, grudgingly mollified. Horst set their meals in front of them then, and Alice hoped that, with his hunger satisfied, Maxwell would mellow. And he might have, if he had not drunk so deeply of the wine. She had refused it, as always.

  “Don’t think I’ve forgotten that you lied when you left me in New York, Alice,” Maxwell said suddenly. “You told me that you were just going home to settle your affairs, and then you vanished. I finally had to track you down in Oklahoma.”

  “But, Maxwell, if I’d told you where I was going it would have spoiled the surprise, remember?” she said, hoping to appease him with his own words.

  “Well, you shouldn’t have worried me like that,” he groused. “We could have planned it together—or better yet, I might’ve talked you out of such a hare-brained scheme.”

  “It’ll be all right after next Monday, you’ll see,” she said. “As Horst said, you have the best horses. We’re bound to get excellent homesteads.” Dear Heavens, am I in for a lifetime of this pacifying?

  For a moment, she thought her words had satisfied him, but in a lightning change of subject, he snarled, “So before I came, you’d been out gallivanting with that Bible-thumping parson, according to that pompous fool of a colonel.”

  Lord, give me the right words to calm him. Don’t let me somehow say something that endangers Elijah.

  “The preacher and I were making an official inquiry,” she said with a calmness she didn’t feel, “on behalf of a boy named Dakota, who had shown up here looking for his father, a captain in the army. We were trying to assist—”

  “‘Dakota?’ What kind of outlandish name is that for a boy?”

  “Dakota’s half Cheyenne,” she explained, knowing that would only make things worse.

  “So you were out traipsing around on behalf of some half-breed kid, some captain’s by-blow with a squaw? How cozy.”

  In spite of her resolve to soothe him rather than exacerbate the situation, Alice felt her own anger kindling at his unfair insinuations and his cruel words about Dakota.

  “We weren’t traipsing, and Dakota is a nice boy who doesn’t deserve to be called such names—”

  She never saw the slap coming.

  “I won’t have my future wife com
promising her reputation by going off alone with any man, reverend or not!” he roared, as she cringed on her chair.

  All at once Horst was there, interposing himself smoothly between them, facing Maxwell as if he was the same size as his employer and had done this before.

  “Go to your tent, Miss Hawthorne,” he said without turning around. “I will handle this. He won’t even remember it in the morning.”

  “Yes, I will!” Maxwell shouted, his face infused with blood, his eyes red as a stampeding bull’s. “Don’t think I can’t send word to New York and make your mother pay the price!”

  Alice fled.

  *

  “Lord, help us to remember that where two or three are gathered in Your name, there are You in the midst of them,” Keith Gilbert prayed to begin their meeting. “You have said also that if we agree here on earth on something within Your will, it will happen.”

  “Amen,” Elijah murmured.

  They were gathered in a circle around the Gilberts’ campfire—Keith, Lars and Elijah sitting on hay bales; Cassie and Winona on camp chairs. Dakota had gone to sleep an hour ago in the wagon.

  “Reverend, Lars told us you had a weighty matter bothering you, and you needed prayer, but he said you would explain,” his deacon prompted.

  As concisely as possible, Elijah explained about Maxwell Peterson, and how the man had caused Alice to stop coming to the chapel or making calls on the sick with him.

  “Now, if this man is her choice and Alice truly wants to absent herself from us, I can accept that,” Elijah concluded several minutes later. “But she didn’t look happy, and I can’t help feeling like this man has some hold over her somehow, and it’s not right that she be forced into a situation against her will.”

  “That’s awful. That sweet girl,” Cassie murmured. “I agree. Something isn’t right here, Reverend. We have to think of a way to help her.”

  “But how can we do this, if this man will not allow anyone to speak to her?” Katrine asked. “Such things should not happen in this free country, America.”

  “The reverend’s heart is wounded, too,” Winona said. “You care much for Alice Hawthorne, yes? I see it in your eyes, Reverend Elijah.”

  Elijah blinked. He had made no mention of how Alice’s apparent rejection had hurt him personally. Was it so obvious that even a relative newcomer from another culture could see it? Looking around the circle, he saw heads nodding in agreement at the Cheyenne woman’s words. They all knew it.

  “I’d begun to believe that Alice might come to care for me as I do for her,” Elijah said carefully. “But I’ve gone back to believing that the Lord means for me to be single to serve Him. And how I feel isn’t important, anyway. I just want to make sure Alice isn’t being compelled to do something she doesn’t want to do.”

  No one looked convinced at his assertion about his own lack of a stake in this, especially not the women.

  “Reverend, why don’t you bring it up for prayer at chapel tomorrow?”

  As he had with Lars, Elijah told them why he hesitated to do that, because of the possible repercussions.

  Keith rubbed a hand over his balding head. “Seems to me you could ask for prayer for a situation, saying that the Lord knows all about it, but it’s a private matter that you don’t feel free to divulge—something like that.”

  Elijah stared at his deacon. That could work. God knew what they needed before they asked for it in any case, and he could gain the prayers of everyone without revealing details that weren’t his to reveal.

  “All right, I’ll do that,” he said. “Thanks, Deacon.”

  “Tomorrow bein’ Friday, it’s the last regular prayer meeting, you know, before the big day,” Cassie observed. “There’ll be just one more service on Sunday, and the next day will be the Land Rush.”

  It was a startling thought.

  “So the time is short,” Keith said. “But we can spend the next few days praying and trusting God for a solution.”

  *

  Alice lay on her cot, staring into the darkness. Her cheek still stung, and when she had looked in her hand mirror, she could see the red imprint of it. By tomorrow’s light there might very well be a bruise there.

  She had seen abused women before at Bellevue. They had crept into the dispensary where the poor were treated, casting furtive glances behind them, their faces full of shame and decorated with black eyes, split-open cheeks and worse. Some had whispered about liquored-up spouses, out-of-work husbands taking out their frustrations on their wives, men insisting their women knew where the last coins were hidden so they could go gambling. Some women even insisted the beatings were their own fault for arguing.

  Was she about to become one of those women? Horst had saved her tonight, but he couldn’t be with them at all times, and Maxwell was his employer. He couldn’t intervene in every situation.

  No, she couldn’t live like this. She had to run!

  But she could hear Maxwell’s last words before she’d run from the tent, mocking her desire to escape. Don’t think I can’t send word to New York and make your mother pay the price.

  She could see no way out of the situation, no solution but to stay with Maxwell and marry him after the Land Rush. She would remain until she heard of her mother’s death, and then she would find a way to disappear so completely that he’d never find her.

  Chapter Twenty

  The response to Elijah’s request for prayer for “a matter known to the Lord” was everything he could have hoped for. Every one of his long-term attendees came up to assure him that they’d be praying and most of the newer ones, too.

  “You’ve been praying for us and our dreams, Reverend,” Cordelia Ferguson said, pumping his hand fervently. “The least we can do is pray for you.”

  “Well, it’s not for me exactly,” Elijah told her carefully, “but thank you. I know your prayers will be heard.”

  He couldn’t help but hear her sister, Carrie’s, overloud whisper as the two siblings walked away, though. “I think it’s a matter of the heart, don’t you? Think it has something to do with Miss Alice no longer coming to chapel?”

  He winced inwardly and fretted over his transparency all the way to his campsite. There he found his brothers checking saddle cinches for signs of wear, part of their preparations for Monday. It could be fatal to have a cinch break as one of them was galloping along in the midst of other racing horses and careering wagons. He’d be thrown down into the path of the stampede.

  “Find any problems?” Elijah asked Gideon when he saw his brother set aside his saddle.

  “No, it should get you there all right,” Gideon said. “Your bay’s legs and hooves are fine, too, no problems.”

  “Appreciate you checking.”

  Clint looked up from the saddle he was looking over. “Lars was just here. He thought we ought to know what all of you have been praying for.”

  Even if we’re not exactly praying men ourselves was the unspoken finish to that sentence.

  “We just wanted you to know we’re behind you all the way, brother,” Clint added. “If you can think of anything we can do to help Alice, we’ll do it.”

  “We sure will,” Gideon put in. “Though I think the simplest solution would be to go over to that Eastern dude’s tent, knock the stuffing out of him and tie his ears into a bowknot.”

  “Don’t worry, Lije, we know you wouldn’t want us doing that,” Clint assured him.

  Elijah couldn’t help but smile at the image, however. “That’s just the trouble,” he said. “I want to do exactly that myself and let you two mop up what’s left.” He was quiet for a moment. “All I need from Alice is the slightest hint that this man isn’t what she wants. Any little sign would be enough…”

  He decided he’d ride out onto the prairie tomorrow, when there was nothing going on at the chapel, and pray until he couldn’t pray anymore. Jesus had always retreated into a solitary place when He’d needed to seek His Father, hadn’t He?

  *

>   Maxwell had been on his best behavior in the past two days since he’d slapped her. He couldn’t have been more attentive or more thoughtful. Last night he’d presented her with an engagement ring, an ornate ruby set in a gold band. Alice could barely repress a shudder when he’d slipped it over her finger. To her the stone looked too much like blood.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” he enthused, beaming at her.

  “Thank you, Maxwell,” she said automatically, glad that he didn’t notice she was gazing anywhere but at the jewel.

  “If you think that’s something, just wait till you see your wedding ring I had commissioned to go with it,” he boasted. “Solid gold, wide, engraved on the inside.”

  With what? she wanted to ask. Property of Maxwell Peterson?

  She was too well aware, after treating the injuries of scores of abused women, that such sweet behavior didn’t presage a permanent change of character. The monster inside Maxwell was still lurking, to return again someday soon.

  “So what would you like to do today, my sweet? Shall we go for a ride? Horst found a fellow willing to rent out his surrey and pair—that would be different. Better protection for that lovely peaches-and-cream complexion of yours, eh?”

  “I believe it’s too hot,” she murmured. She’d happened to look out of Maxwell’s tent just in time to see Elijah riding past, clearly headed for the prairie. The last thing she wanted to happen was to run into him out there. Then she thought of something she did want to do. Did she dare ask? Was he still contrite enough after hitting her?

  “Maxwell, there’s something I would like to do tomorrow, however,” she said.

  “Oh? What’s that, my dear? You have but to name it,” he proclaimed in his grand manner.

  “Tomorrow’s Sunday, and it’s the last service at the chapel. I’d really love to go and see my friends one last time. I’m sure it’s not likely I’ll ever see them again after the Land Rush on Monday. Come with me, Maxwell,” she added, and saw the expansive, genial expression fade.

  “No. Anything but that.”