Taking a Leap of Love: An Inspirational Historical Western Romance Book

by Lilah Rivers

  Chapter 54

  Josh and Parker rode in fast, tearing across the Nebraska landscape on their way to the Barnock commons. It was ten-thirty in the morning, and they stood a good chance of getting to the commons perhaps before any of the warring parties, but certainly before any fighting began.

  Bella will be able to stall them, Josh reassured himself, taking a glance at the man riding next to him. Bristol seemed comfortable enough in the saddle, riding with some grace and élan. He had more grit than Josh had ever expected, and he anticipated good things from him in the conflict to come.

  He’d gotten the information they needed, and secured the homesteaders’ claims, so he was riding into Barnock a bona fide hero. Josh was glad to share the spotlight and glad to have a man of some authority, even one as corrupted as this. Even so, going in together, Josh felt strong, capable; capable even of saving all of Barnock and virtually everybody in it.

  In a flash, Parker’s horse rolled forward with a terrible cry, disappearing as Josh raced forward. Josh turned Patches as quickly as he could without grounding his own steed, then rode back to Parker.

  His horse recovered, shaking its head and huffing before running off into the plains. Parker lay on his back, arms at his sides. Josh tapped Patches to calm him, then climbed down and knelt to Parker’s side.

  “Parker, you okay?” But one glance gave Josh the answer.

  Parker shook his head, wincing in pain. “Something’s broke; ribs I think, back maybe.”

  “Lord,” Parker said. “Can you move your feet?”

  Parker nodded and moved both feet, his boots barely budging. His arms were already moving, so Josh knew the man wasn’t paralyzed. But if his ribs or his back were broken, the ride back to Barnock would surely kill him.

  Josh glanced back in the direction of Lincoln. It was another hour and a half back, and then he’d have to find a doctor and bring him back. Josh knew he’d never get to the commons by noon, and even Bella and her mother couldn’t hold back the warring factions for that long; a few minutes maybe, but not several hours.

  Looking down at Parker Bristol, Josh couldn’t hold out much hope. He looked around to see the tiny figure of his horse disappearing over the plain. Even taking the time to wrangle the horse and bring it back would put them fatally behind schedule.

  “Think you can stand up?”

  Parker said, “I can’t just lay here. We need to get you back to Barnock.”

  Josh opted to try to help Parker up, hopeful they could still make the trip on Patches’ back. Parker was slow to rise, wincing and grunting in pain, unable to rise past a certain point. Josh looked around, trapped between leaving his friends and family to slaughter one another, or leave that good and noble man to die.

  Parker reached into his jacket breast pocket and pulled out two pieces of paper, each folded several times. “Here are the claims, the charts, you understand the principle we’re dealing with?”

  “We’ve been over and over it,” Josh said, “so … no, not really.” They shared a little chuckle, Parker wincing in pain, Josh holding him up. “I got it, Parker, but … I can’t just leave you out here!”

  “I’ve got a gun; I’ll be fine.”

  “You’ll be food!” Josh glanced around, finding no answer.

  “Then I’ll ride in with you, tell them myself.”

  Josh looked him over. “You sure?”

  He shrugged, even that move bringing him some pain. “What choice does either of us have?”

  Josh nodded and led Parker to Patches, helping him up and into the saddle. Josh joined him, sitting in front and looking back to say, “I’ll try to ride easy.”

  “Just go, we’ve lost too much time as it is. I’ll be … I’ll be all right.”

  Josh sighed and took the reins, nudging Patches into a steady gate heading back to Barnock, time fast running out for them all.

  Chapter 55

  Otis Remington looked around the Golden Loon Saloon, virtually empty. It wasn’t unusual for there to be so few people there on a weekday before noon, but Otis knew what was happening at the commons. It was easy to see his empty saloon as more than just the ebb and flow of business traffic, but the shape of things to come.

  A lot of his clientele were homesteaders and ranchers, and they fed the businesses of the other citizens of Barnock, and they made up the rest of his business. It wouldn’t be long before the town collapsed, and Otis knew it.

  Memories of Saul Decker’s promises of greater fortunes, a bigger population of wealthier people to spend more money on his spirits and games of chance. But it was easier for Otis to imagine the new population as little more than traffic, herds of cattle trampling the land and moving on to earn and spend their money elsewhere.

  Lies, Otis told himself. But I should have known, the business I’m in.

  But there was little more he could do; he’d tried to spread the word as agreed. But he knew then it wouldn’t do much good, and he’d been all too right.

  Otis asked himself, What am I supposed to do now? Go down there and shout them down? I’ll only anger at least half of them, probably all! Then what? They string me up before they tear each other apart? I didn’t survive this long, stand up against that many cheats and scoundrels and cutthroats, just to be devoured by some unruly mob! I’ve done all I can, now it’s for the others to do their part.

  But a guilty silence filled the saloon, young Travis sweeping up the main floor beneath Otis on the upper floor.

  Not that I’m afraid, Otis reassured himself, I’ve seen more death than any of those rubes gathering at the commons. But I’m smart, too smart to throw my life away on that! Bristol’s got it covered, and that Callahan kid. If anything, I’d be better off going up and taking care of Decker myself! I could get in through the front door, knowing him as I do. Come in with a story about having some news to tell him, then stick him like a pig!

  Otis worked it through in his imagination.

  It could work.

  Otis tried to imagine himself escaping that big ranch house after doing the deed. He’d have to make sure it was done quietly, that meant doing it close-in and in private, then getting out fast.

  But they’ll know it was me, and they’ll find out in short order. They’ll come for me, hard, and I’ll never survive.

  Unless … Otis pictured the many servants and staff and underlings of the great rancher turning their backs on the man once he could no longer support them, leaving him and ransacking his property and making off in whatever direction they pleased.

  Perhaps … perhaps I could work with Bristol in securing those lands for ourselves? It’s audacious, and Bristol has pretenses toward righteousness, but … isn’t this the righteous thing, to rid the good people of Barnock of the tyrant in their midst? Decker means us all total destruction, or as close as he needs to come to it.

  Yes, yes … now is the time, now is the only time! And if I don’t act, what will Decker finally do with me? He’s already made his first play against me, it won’t be long before he comes back to finish the job.

  Better that I strike first.

  Otis was decided and walked quickly to his corner office to gather his best knives, as many guns as he could secret on him, and a rifle for his saddle in case they gave chase and pinned him down. Five minutes later he walked out of the Golden Loon Saloon without telling anybody anything as to where he was going. He stopped and turned to give the place a good look, up and down, nodding as if to say goodbye to his oldest and dearest friend in Barnock, or anywhere ever.

  Chapter 56

  The men from both contingents gathered on each side of Nelson’s Creek, just north of the homesteaders’ claimed grounds, used by both ranchers and farmers to neither’s benefit.

  They came slowly in two massive swarms of men, armies of cavalry, some men sitting in carts to jump out and attack on foot, a ready infantry. The sides seemed to be equally matched, with no less than a hundred or so property owners and their families and faithful hands o
n each side of the creek.

  Elroy and his twin sons led the homesteaders, Elroy certain to take position directly in front. If any blood was to be shed, his would be first; Elroy was determined. The boys seemed ready; walking beside him, each gripping a Winchester, faces bent into manly grimaces.

  Elroy could see traces of fear in their eyes, recognizable if hard to describe; he hoped they didn’t see the same in his own, though he knew they must have been there.

  Elroy spotted Barton Callahan on the other side of the creek with his young son, Hugh. Poor boy’s barely sixteen, Elroy thought, so young to die like this.

  Elroy noted that Josh was not there, and he wondered where the boy had gone, or if he’d come back to the fight at all. He assumed Josh knew the appointed time; he’d have to, Elroy reasoned.

  Elroy was torn between conflicting emotions, between pitying the Callahan boy as a coward, or being grateful for him getting his daughter and wife even further out of harm’s way.

  Well, go then, Elroy thought, take care of her; take care of them both.

  Elroy approached the banks of the creek on his side, Barton doing the same just thirty or so feet away on the opposite bank. The two men looked at one another, each glancing around and reading the expressions of the other. There was little for the men to say to one another, but there was still a chance to get through to the others.

  Elroy turned and said, “Friends! Let us take one more opportunity to reconsider this! It’s madness; it’s murder!”

  “It’s war,” Jesse Hayden called out, “war to the death for all of us!”

  “But we should be allied,” Barton shouted, “against a common enemy!”

  Somebody shouted, “Decker? How can we go against him?”

  “We’re two hundred strong,” Barton said, “that’s a small army! Even Decker couldn’t stop us.”

  “From doing what? We can’t touch Decker!”

  “So we turn against each other?” Elroy pleaded, “Neighbors, we’re stronger when united! Remember what the late, great President Lincoln said; ‘A house divided against itself cannot prosper!’”

  “Look what happened to him!” Some chuckled, others booed the ugly joke.

  Elroy said to all, “There has to be some other way, friends, please! We should go to the government, over the head of this bought-out land official!”

  “They’ve all sold out to somebody,” Samuel Meyerson shouted. “Who knows how bad the next one will be?”

  “Right,” somebody shouted from the ranchers’ side, “better the devil you know than the devil you don’t, right?” The others threw up a shout of angry agreement.

  “Then we agree at least on that,” Barton said. “It’s not much, but it’s a start. Can’t we give ourselves a chance to find more common ground … and where better to do it than here, on this common ground?”

  “But it’s not common,” Jesse Hayden shouted, “it’s ours, ours by right!”

  “So you say,” another rancher shouted, “we’ve been grazing here for decades!”

  “Things change!”

  “Like day into night … or life into death!”

  The men’s tempers got the better of them, rising up in a sea of shaking fists, rifles pointing, death looming above them all.

  “Please, friends,” Barton said, “take hold of your senses!”

  “We’ll take hold of your throat, you traitor!”

  “No, gentlemen, no, that’s the way of —”

  “Hold your tongue, Archer,” Samuel shouted, “or we’ll have to do with you as well; you and your partner in secret, that rancher Callahan, string you both up.”

  “Touch one rancher’s hair and you’re dead!”

  “Come and get me then!”

  The men threw up a great cheer, their horses clopping nervously beneath them, both anticipating and signaling the slaughter that was about to occur. There would be blood enough to drown them all.

  Elroy looked at Barton from across the stream. Each gave the other a nod and a solemn smile. They’d be fighting one another to the death in a matter of minutes, and there didn’t seem to be a single thing on God’s green Earth to prevent it.

  “Wait, stop!” The waves of men hungry for battle paused before charging across the creek to engage the other as two riders approached. “Hold your fire!”

  Chapter 57

  Bella and Sybil rode up to the commons, plowing their horses into the water, shallow with the midday current.

  Elroy shouted, “Bella, Sybil, what are you doing here? Get back to town!”

  “No, Father,” Bella said as they positioned their horses in the stream directly between the homesteaders and the ranchers. They traded grumbled frustration, shaking their heads, horses clamoring beneath them. But none of them were willing to charge or fire on two unarmed women, and that was just what Bella and Sybil were counting on; they were betting their lives on it.

  Bella’s heart was pounding hard in her chest, faster than it seemed her body could stand. She wondered if she wouldn’t just burst like a tick from the sheer pressure bearing down on her and her mother from all sides; from each side of the creek, and from within as well. Bella felt propelled by duty, by faith, by destiny. She was just where God wanted her to be, whatever was going to happen as a result.

  “Get outta the way, girl!”

  “You watch how you speak to my daughter,” Sybil said, new strength in her quivering voice.

  “Both of you then,” somebody called from the other side. “We’ll mow you down!”

  “No, you won’t,” Bella said. “And we’ll ride up and down this stream to keep one side from crossing to or shooting at the other.”

  Meyerson shouted at Elroy, “This is your doing, Elroy! A ploy you thought would outsmart us!”

  “I would not enlist my daughter in such a thing,” Elroy said, which was true; she had insinuated herself into it quite against his preference and specific arrangement. “I’d hoped to keep them both out of this mess!”

  Jesse sneered, “So you say!”

  “You call me a liar?”

  “I do,” Samuel shouted, “and there’s only one punishment for such a crime in a time of war!”

  “You’ll have to kill me to get to him,” Bella said. “If you think he’s committed a crime, bring in the law … if you dare!”

  The men grumbled but said nothing until one shouted, “We won’t be stopped by a couple of women, now stand down or we’ll gun you down!”

  “We’re not just a couple of women,” Bella said, looking at both sides of the creek as she called out her diatribe. “We’re all women, and you will be stopped by us, one way or another, at one time or another. You can’t keep shunting us aside, sending us back to the kitchen, the laundry tub, the bedroom!”

  Sybil dipped her head, sheepish at the reference before Bella went on, “You’re going to start treating us with some respect or we will rise up!”

  “Then rise up out of that saddle,” Jesse shouted, “so we can do what we came to do!”

  “Kill your neighbors,” Sybil said, “slaughter your friends.”

  Samuel said, “They’re no friends of ours!”

  “But you’re wrong,” Bella urged him. “They are your friends, or they should be! You both live in the same town, you share interests, a church, other entertainments. Your sisters and brothers and sons and daughters may meet and marry. Love you neighbor as thyself!”