Carson's Christmas Bride (Hero Hearts; Lawmen's Brides Book 3)

by Natalie Dean

  Preacher Shepherd looked at her with admiration. “It’ll disguise him, too,” he said. “If they know what he looks like, they won’t be able to tell.”

  The two conspirators wore the same smile. But for the man named Lazarus, there was nothing humorous in the circumstances. “I’ll go see if Bessie can make some of her oatmeal,” he said, sounding equally dubious and desperate.

  “No . . . you must stay inside here and we need to make up a floorbed for you, as the others have. We should put you in the middle,” she said, “so that it’s less likely you will be noticed.”

  Preacher Shepherd went to deliver the message to the woman named Bessie so that she would prepare the oatmeal. When Sarah and Lazarus were alone, he said, “You think this gonna work?”

  It had to work. It simply had to. “Yes,” she said stubbornly. “Yes, I do. All you must do is imitate what you’ve seen the other patients doing.”

  “I seen enough of that, I reckon, to be a patient myself.”

  She wished that he had been vaccinated. He had been lucky thus far, helping care for the patients without falling ill. Who was to say why he had been spared, or why Preacher Shepherd had been spared? Perhaps God knew that these men were needed by a community so deprived of assistance that He would not take their leaders away. She wondered what the prayer group, now busy nursing the sick men and women in Dr. Darnley’s hospital, would think if she asked them to pray that a runaway slave might not be captured.

  What would she have done, back in Charleston, if she had heard such a prayer? Sarah didn’t want to think about it. Texas had changed her. She had seen the people of this small community in their suffering. They were not property, they were not owned. They were men and women who had very little except their freedom and they did not want to lose that precious blessing.

  Chapter 29

  It hadn’t taken the Louisiana slave hunters, who arrived the day before, long to irritate the Knox Mills lawmen. Jack Walker didn’t take kindly to anyone telling him how to do his job and when the two men began delivering instructions as if they had a right to do so, Jack had finally had enough.

  “We know the law,” he said, biting off his words like they tasted bad in his mouth. “We’ll go with you to where the freed slaves live. But you’d best remember that the law that says slaves are to be returned to their masters doesn’t say that all freed slaves are yours for the taking.”

  “You telling me that you believe they’re all free?” one of the men, Horne, sneered.

  “I’m telling you that you came here to find a single runaway. You think he’s here. We have no proof of that. So we’ll abide by the law that says you can take a runaway back and you’ll abide by the law that says freed slaves are free. Am I making myself clear?”

  “I didn’t know Texas was so rife with abolitionists,” the other man, Burke, said. Both men had introduced themselves and given their first and last names, but Jack hadn’t bothered to remember. Last names sufficed for two men who weren’t welcome.

  “There’s a lot to know about Texas,” Benjamin spoke up. “Texans don’t like strangers coming in and telling them what they ought to be doing. Louisiana doesn’t rule Texas.”

  “The federal government says—"

  “I know what the federal government says!” Jack snapped. There was something in his manner that made both of the slave hunters stand back as if he had suddenly become dangerous. What they didn’t know was that a Texas lawman was always dangerous if he thought the laws he enforced weren’t heeded by others. “And I’m telling you what I say. I’m the U.S. Marshal of this town and these are U.S. Deputies. They know the law too. We’ll all come with you and we won’t stop you from searching for this runaway. But that’s as far as the law goes.”

  “There are two runaways, Marshal,” Horne reminded him. “One is Lazarus. He’s a powerful, strong man. Cost a pretty penny. The other, well, let’s just say she’s pretty.” Burke sniggered. “Mighty pretty. Sister to Lazarus. Lazarus didn’t fancy his little sister ending up in the master’s tender care, you might say. So they lit out. Now, odds are she’s there, too, with her brother. So I reckon we’ll search all around until we find them. And then, we’ll take our leave and we won’t trouble you no more.”

  Jack was able to conceal his thoughts, but his deputies could sense his reaction. Two runaways! That complicated matters.

  “I think,” Jack said, “we’d best have Mayor Winslow with us.”

  “What’s the Mayor good for?” Burke demanded. “We don’t need a mayor on hand to help us. We’ve got a U.S. Marshal.”

  “Carson,” Jack said, ignoring the slave hunter. “Go tell Mayor Winslow that we need him to come with us. Explain the circumstances.”

  As he hurried down the street to the mayor’s office, Carson wondered what it was that had Jack alarmed. That the slave hunters were lowdown was not to be disputed. This was an unwelcome task but there was no avoiding it. The country was being held together by a slew of compromises and decisions designed to give neither the abolitionists nor the slaveowners reason or cause to feel that their views were not being heeded. It wasn’t going to last; Jack said that often enough. Carson didn’t pay much attention to politics, and lately he’d been so occupied with Sarah and the Boone children that he was barely aware that Mr. Franklin Pierce had been elected president in the November election. Political matters seemed far away once a man had a family, Carson thought.

  Carson knew what Jack had meant by his instructions to explain. The expression on Abe Winslow’s face as he listened revealed that he, like Jack, viewed the arrival of the Louisiana slave hunters with distaste.

  “It’s the law,” he said with a heavy sigh. “But those folks in East Knox Mills don’t bother a soul and it surely doesn’t seem right to go in there as if their papers don’t mean anything.”

  “What if their papers are torn up?”

  Abe shook his head. “I have copies here in this safe,” he said. “My predecessor thought it was worth having them locked up. You weren’t here when Mayor Stratton was in office, but he didn’t hold with slavery at all. He would go to East Knox Mills with a clerk and copy out the papers proving that they were freed slaves. He said that one day, it might make the difference between a grave wrong being done.”

  “This might be one of those days,” Carson warned.

  The two men walked back to the office. Abe Winslow, his solemn face wearing its habitual gloom, merely nodded when Jack introduced him to the two slave hunters.

  “We obey the law here in Knox Mills,” Abe said. “We don’t go beyond it.”

  “We find us those two runaways, Mayor, and we leave your fine town happy.”

  “Is Aurelius Jameson coming?” Abe asked as they began to leave the office.

  Jack shook his head. “He’ll be here,” he said. “There’s plenty to keep a lawman busy these days.”

  “There he is,” Carson spied the man by Babbage’s saloon. He was standing on the street. In front of him, right in front of the saloon doors, was Emma Tudor. As a widow, she wore black but she wore it the way Queen Victoria wore royal robes. Her hat bore an impressive black plume that swayed with her movements

  “Is she preaching?” Burke asked; stopping as he saw the scene unfolding.

  “You might call it that.”

  Emma Tudor was undaunted by the presence of Aurelius Jameson, a former U.S. Marshal now helping out as a deputy while Carson and Benjamin, although mostly recovered from the smallpox, continued to regain their strength. She was deliberately, supremely oblivious to Aldous Babbage, the owner of the saloon, who was remonstrating with her to go somewhere else. A crowd had begun to gather, entertained and intrigued by the sight of the late Doc Tudor’s formidable wife lecturing the men in front of her and any who would enter the saloon. Her theme was not the evils of drink, although she managed to work in a reference to drunken wastrels now and again, but to the merits of vaccination.

  “No man, lest he be kin to Lucifer himself, shou
ld go forth into sickness when the Good Lord has given healing unto us,” she declared. “No man, rich or poor, saint or sinner, temperate or drunkard, should allow the terrible, needless journey to the grave to take hold of him when God has provided the means to a cure for this hideous death. Why should any man allow the disease to take hold of him, to disfigure his face with the unsightly blisters which will, if untreated, turn him into a grotesque imitation of what he once was? Why would a man, gifted with the senses that the Good Lord bestowed upon him, permit rank stupidity to be his guide? Vaccination, good people, is the answer—"

  “Mrs. Tudor,” Aurelius stepped forward. “This is not the time nor the place—"

  “It’s certainly not the place!” thundered Aldous. “Not in front of my saloon.”

  “I am not finished speaking, gentlemen,” said Mrs. Tudor with a winnowing glance from her commanding eyes.

  She wasn’t a bad-looking woman, Carson thought, for a woman likely in her forties. She was buxom and full-hipped, attractive in a matronly way with a form that was a womanly trophy to her years as a bearer of children, helpmeet to her husband, leader in the church and the community. She was the kind of woman who carried herself with a regal grace that would have appeared arrogant in someone else. But Mrs. Tudor was not arrogant. She was just always right.

  The slave hunters seemed entranced by the scene, having forgotten their haste to capture the runaways. Then Carson noticed that Benjamin was walking back from the hospital, and Dr. Darnley was at his side. But not for long. At first, Carson wondered if Benjamin had fetched the doctor to present some kind of medical excuse for getting Mrs. Tudor to be silent. But as he watched, he saw the doctor get on his horse and head out of town, toward the east. It was the direction he would take if he were on his way to East Knox Mills.

  Chapter 30

  Sarah was astounded to hear the pounding of hooves approaching. She was outside the church, filling a bucket with water from the well. She swiftly turned to see who had arrived.

  “Dr. Darnley!”

  The doctor was dismounting from his horse while it was still moving. “The slave hunters are coming,” he said breathlessly. “Jack Walker sent Benjamin to alert me. He wants me up here. I don’t think he knew that you would be here.”

  That was true. Carson didn’t know she was here. But there was no time to consider how he would react to her presence when he assumed she was home with the children. Quickly, she updated Dr. Darnley on the circumstances.

  “Yes, he’s here,” she said in response to the doctor’s dismayed expression. “The lawmen have to uphold the law, as they are sworn to do. But we are held to a higher law.”

  Dr. Darnley nodded. “It sounds as though you’ve been clever in disguising him. Is he in there now?”

  “Yes, he’s on the floor along with all the others. He’s not happy about it, but we can’t let him be taken back.”

  “You don’t have to convert me to that view,” the doctor said. “I’m fully determined to see the slavers go back empty-handed.”

  Preacher Shepherd appeared at the front of the church. “Doctor!” he greeted him. “I didn’t expect you.”

  “The slave hunters are on their way. Mrs. Harlow has been alerting me—"

  “Who? That’s Mrs. Baker,” Preacher Shepherd said.

  “She’s remarried.”

  “Harlow? Isn’t that the deputy?”

  “Yes, but there’s no time for discussion.”

  Preacher Shepherd turned to face Sarah. “You didn’t tell me you was married to Deputy Harlow.”

  “I told you that I am married to a lawman. My husband, as I also told you, does not know about Lazarus. It is our duty to make sure that none of the lawmen find out. They must follow the law set by the government. We must follow God’s law. But if we stand here talking about it, we shall be caught unprepared. Let us go inside and tend to the patients, just as we would do if this were a normal day.”

  The church was still crowded with the ailing patients. The air of the church was stale from the closed windows and the combination of so many people clustered in such close quarters. Dr. Darnley proposed that he, Preacher Shepherd, and Sarah should go up and down the rows, tending to each patient, while making certain that there was always one of them in proximity to Lazarus, ready, if circumstances required, to do whatever needed to be done to keep him from attracting attention.

  Lazarus was on the floor, covered with a blanket. The oatmeal on his face, painstakingly applied by Sarah, gave his features a grotesque appearance. Preacher Shepherd had shaved his head to disguise his appearance. He had submitted to all that they had proposed, but it was easy to see that he feared the slave hunters. Sarah forced herself to maintain her composure, but she was very far from feeling composed. However, the routine of nursing was, in its way, an antidote to the trepidation that she felt. Because all of the patients were on straw mattresses on the floor instead of beds, it was necessary to kneel down beside each one as she washed their faces, tried to help them drink from a cup, and murmured words of comfort to each one.

  The violent pounding on the church door was startling, but at least it got rid of the terrible suspense which had encased them.

  Preacher Shepherd went to the door. “There’s sickness here!” he exclaimed in his booming voice. “What do you seek in the Lord’s house?”

  “We’re looking for a runaway slave, you let us in or you’ll face the law.”

  “There’s no slave here, only free men and women, praise God,” the Preacher replied. He went to the door of the church and opened it.

  Two men entered, followed by Jack Walker, Benjamin Graves and Carson, who saw his wife on her knees before one of the recumbent patients on the floor. His first reaction was anger. Why was she here? She was supposed to be at home.

  “Have you been vaccinated?” Preacher Shepherd asked the men.

  All of the lawmen nodded. The slave hunters appeared to find the question insubordinate.

  “Don’t you be telling us what to do,” one of them said.

  “This is a house of sickness,” Preacher Shepherd said calmly “There are new graves for those who have passed from suffering to glory and I dug two more graves last night, because we know we will lose more.”

  “You ain’t burying white men in a slave graveyard!”

  Jack stepped forward. “Do what you came to do and be gone,” he said. “The preacher told you there is sickness here. You are at risk. He warned you of illness. He cannot prevent you from dying.”

  There was a moment’s pause as the slave hunters considered what he said. Then, “I ain’t gonna catch no disease from a slave,” said one of the men.

  Sarah held her breath. Would they leave, rather than risk catching the smallpox?

  “I reckon we’ve got the strength to stay alive,” the other man said. “We’re going to look at these slaves—"

  “They are all freed men and women,” Preacher Shepherd repeated.

  “Don’t you sass me!”

  “He’s telling you the truth,” Abe Winslow had followed the lawmen in. “I have their papers in my safe in town.”

  “All you abolitionists would lie to God Almighty just to let one of these slaves go free,” sneered the slaver.

  “Get on with it,” Jack said. “We don’t have all day to babysit you two. We have work to do.”

  “There’s a runaway here!” the slaver called out. “We’ll get you, and when we do, we’ll put chains on you and take you back to your master. You won’t escape a second time. And that pretty little sister of yours, we’ll be taking her back, too.”

  Sarah moved to another patient. The motion caught the eye of the taller of the slavers.

  “What’s a white woman doing here?” he asked.

  “That’s Sister Sarah,” Preacher Shepherd answered. “She’s a nurse.”

  Sarah kept her head down, avoiding Carson’s gaze and praying that he did not call attention to her. If the slavers knew that she was his wife, they mi
ght become suspicious of his integrity as a deputy, putting the lawmen at risk.

  “She should be nursing her own kind. And what are you doing?” he demanded of Doctor Darnley, who was tending to the patient next to Lazarus.

  “I’m a doctor.”

  “You shouldn’t be here, getting slave diseases and bringing them back to white folks.”

  “I have been vaccinated. I will not catch the smallpox and I will not carry it.”

  Slowly, plainly with reluctance, the two men began to walk on the outside perimeter of the sick area, peering down at the patients, but not bending down low enough to breath air that might be infectious.

  “They don’t look like much,” said one of the slavers in disgust.

  “If the pox break out on you,” Dr. Darnley warned, “you will look the same.”

  They were closer. Sarah took her basin and moved to Lazarus. “Close your eyes,” she whispered in a very low voice.

  He did so. She touched his forehead. Then she felt his pulse.

  “Dr. Darnley,” she said. “I’m afraid we’ve lost another one. Preacher Shepherd, will you carry this one out to the graveyard?”

  The slavers backed away as if, in death, a patient would be more of a threat than in life.

  The doctor came closer, met Sarah’s gaze, then nodded. “Preacher, wrap him in the linens, as you have the others,” he directed. “They shall be his grave shroud, I’m sorry to say.”

  “We’ll bury him tonight, as we’ve been doing,” Preacher Shepherd carefully rolled the bedlinens around Lazarus’ entire body, concealing his face. Then he lifted him and, carrying him in his arms, took him out of the church.

  The slavers paid no mind as they continued to search for the runaways. When their first perusal of the patients yielded nothing, they overcame their dread of the disease and stalked up and down the rows of patients, most of whom were too ill to even realize what was taking place.