The Preacher's Bride (Brides of Simpson Creek) (19 page)

Then it would have to be one of the spinsters. There were several of them whom she could trust to be discreet—probably all of them now that Polly was blissfully reunited with her beau from Austin—but who would be best?

Sarah or Milly. She had known them the longest. Sarah would listen sympathetically, but their conversation was too apt to be interrupted by the cries of her baby, or by her husband, who ran his doctor’s office on the other side of their dwelling. Dr. Walker had always seemed like a nice man, but perhaps he’d be so shocked by learning that his wife’s friend had been a secret heathen all this time that he’d refuse to allow Sarah to associate with Faith.

Whereas Milly’s husband was somewhere on the trail to Kansas with hundreds of longhorns, and would never know. And Milly had shown herself sympathetic to Faith and Gil by diverting Merriwell into having supper with her so Faith could sit with Gil.

Perfect. She would rent the gelding again and ride out to see Milly. It couldn’t be tomorrow because she’d be far too busy working at the newspaper office, but the next day for sure. She could hardly wait. As Faith lay there in the dark, she rehearsed ways to reveal her secret before asking Milly about returning to the Lord.

* * *

“This will do very well, Faith,” her father said, looking up from the sheet of paper he’d been peering at through his spectacles. “It shows compassion without being maudlin—although you still suffer from an injudicious use of commas.” His eyes twinkled as he said that, though, and Faith began to believe her father was finally coming to see her value. “Well, I’m off to the office to work on those wanted posters. If I had a little more money to spare, I’d put up reward money for that Georgian’s apprehension myself.”

Faith watched him go, relieved that he apparently hadn’t noticed she wore a split skirt for riding. If he had, he might have asked her destination and admonished her not to go alone. When her mother had left for the mercantile, Faith had told her she was going out to see Milly. Lydia Bennett had made some remark about Faith riding in the buggy with Gil, and Faith hadn’t corrected her assumption.
Was that lying?

* * *

Black Coyote Heart watched a departure, too. The stupid old medicine man blessed his son before mounting his spotted horse. He carried nothing with him but a knife—no food, no bow and arrow, for he was going to seek the will of the Great Spirit.

Black Coyote Heart had no use for such foolishness. The only will he cared about was his own, and it longed for blood to be spilled. He itched to take white men’s scalps and hear the cries of their women as he carried them away. He longed to possess some of their fine horses—he could use them to buy a wife. Perhaps Eyes of an Antelope would suit him, he thought, spotting that girl eyeing him over a hide she was tanning. He’d bring her a captive woman as a slave, and then Black Coyote Heart would effectively have two women to meet his every need.

He gestured to the other young warriors who looked to him as leader. “We ride,” he told them. “But let us say it is only to hunt,” he added, keeping his voice low. “The chief would have us wait on the advice of that stupid medicine man before raiding. We will take paint for our faces and our horses and apply it once we are away from camp. The people will thank us when we return with plunder, and then that old man Panther Claw Scars won’t dare to object.”

He became aware then of a boy standing nearby, leaning on a crutch, watching the braves gather with their horses. It was the medicine man’s son, Black Coyote Heart realized. It had been he who had caused the white man to ride close to their camp.

Seeing the wistful expression on the boy’s face, Black Coyote Heart called to him.

“You want to go with us, Runs Like a Deer?” Wouldn’t that put a frown on his father’s face when the old man heard his son had ridden on a raid, perhaps taken his first scalp?

“Where do you ride?” the boy asked.

“We will take horses and cattle, and spill the white eyes’ blood,” Black Coyote Heart told him. “There will be captives to torment afterward, and scalps. Are you ready to become a man, boy?”

Runs Like a Deer looked uneasy. “I have not gone on my vision quest yet.”

One of the other braves snorted, and mimicked what the boy had said, but in a high voice like a woman’s.

Runs Like a Deer’s face darkened and his black eyes flashed sparks.

“So? Maybe you’ll have a vision while you kill your first white eyes,” Black Coyote Heart said. “A vision of taking back our land for the people. Are you up for it, boy? Or do you want to stay with the women?”

The others hooted with laughter.

Runs Like a Deer turned, leaning on his crutch, and walked away.

Chapter Nineteen

W
hoever had said “The road to a friend’s house is never long” had never ridden under a hot Texas sun on a cranky, swaybacked mare that seemed reluctant to go any faster than a jarring trot. The amiable smooth-paced gelding she’d ridden out to find Gil two days ago had been taken out by an earlier customer at the livery. It was just as well she met no one on the road who would have witnessed her battle of wills with the obdurate beast.

She soon forgot her discomfort once she arrived at the Brookfield ranch, however, for Milly was delighted to have an unexpected guest. Her thirst soon quenched by some of Milly’s delicious lemonade, Faith spent the first half hour of her visit admiring baby Nicholas’s progress in walking and improvements inside the ranch house and out of it. Then she helped her friend take a pot of soup and sandwiches out to the bunkhouse for the ranch hands before they sat down for their own meal—a peach pie which Milly had just taken from the oven.

They ate with relish, feeling like schoolgirls who’d stolen a treat because they were making a meal out of dessert.

“Mmm, this is wonderful,” Faith murmured. “I can’t believe Sarah used to do all the cooking here. It’s the flakiest crust I’ve ever eaten.”

Milly grinned. “Thanks. Be glad you never tasted my earlier attempts. It took a lot of patient teaching from my sister and even more practice before I deserved any praise. I’m afraid, though, that I’ve gotten into some lazy cooking habits I’ll have to break myself of before my husband gets back from the trail drive,” she said, with a rueful nod toward the toddler, who was smearing mashed peach all over his face. “It’s just gotten too hot to eat a heavy meal at noon, though of course the cowhands still need one, because they work up an appetite.”

Faith pretended to concentrate on cutting a second piece of pie, wondering how to broach the main purpose of her visit. She’d just finished telling told Milly about the dreadful murder of the saloon girl and Merriwell’s subsequent disappearance, and her father’s plan to use her assistance more.

“So what’s on your mind, Faith?” Milly asked suddenly. “I can tell something is, and I’ve been waiting for you to spill it. Is it about Reverend Gil?”

Faith nodded, grateful for her friend’s perceptiveness. “I don’t know how to begin,” she said at last. “I have something to tell you about myself, and afterward you may never see me the same way again. You may not want me as a friend anymore.”

Milly’s eyes widened. “I can’t imagine anything you could tell me that would make me feel that way—”

“Milly, I’ve been keeping a secret. An awful secret.”

“I hope you know you can rely on my discretion, Faith,” Milly said. “Don’t worry about how you’re going to say it. Just blurt it out.”

So that’s what Faith did, although she had to wait a moment while Milly wiped her protesting son’s face with a damp cloth and set him down to play. She told Milly everything, how she had stopped believing in God when her little brother had died and had faked her conformity with the faithful of Simpson Creek to the point that Gil had believed she would make a perfect preacher’s wife. She told her about confessing her disbelief to Gil, and how Gil had told her he loved her and wanted to court her, but he could not marry a nonbeliever.

Milly nodded as Faith spoke, occasionally encouraging her to go on.

“Then Dovie, the girl at the saloon, was killed and...” Faith stopped, remembering she could not break Gil’s confidence about his late wife. “Well, somehow that tragedy reminded him that he must not court me, not as long as I’m not a Christian. And I know the most awful thing I could do would be to
pretend
to believe just so I could marry Gil.”

Milly nodded, her face thoughtful. “And how did you respond?”

“I told him I
wanted
to believe...believe again, that is...I
did
believe before Eddie died, Milly. I was baptized in Simpson Creek by Pastor Detwiler before he passed on, remember?” She hadn’t thought of that day in so long.

“You wanted to believe, but?”

“But I don’t have enough faith,” Faith said, her voice almost a whisper. “My name is ironic, isn’t it?”

Milly smiled. “How much faith do you think you need to have, dear friend?”

Faith shrugged her shoulders. “More than I have anyway. I’m so afraid of trusting in the Lord again, only to have some awful thing happen.” Milly hadn’t sent her from the house in outrage, she thought in amazement. Instead, she’d called her “dear friend.”

“Faith, tragedies happen in life. People we love die of old age or illness or accident. Danger threatens—from animals, natural disasters, outlaws, Indian attacks—but we know that through it all, God loves us and we will be with Him in Heaven someday. If you were a Christian, you would see your brother again one day.”

Milly got to her feet then, went to a cabinet and rummaged among some small bottles that appeared to be spices. She brought one of them to the table.

“Wild mustard seeds,” she said, holding out the bottle for Faith to see. “Look at how small they are.”

Faith waited.

“In the Bible, Jesus tells us that our faith need only be as big as a mustard seed. You can manage that much faith, can’t you?”

Slowly, tentatively, Faith nodded, then more emphatically, as tears of joy trickled down her cheeks. She was laughing and crying at once.

Milly embraced her, laughing and crying, too. “Just believe that little bit, Faith, and ask for more faith, and I promise you He’ll give it to you,” Milly said. “You’ll still have questions, there will be things we can’t understand in this life, but Gil will answer what he can—and I will, too, as best I am able.”

“Yes, he will,” Faith said, beaming through her tears. “Oh, Milly, I can’t wait to tell him! You...you wouldn’t mind if I went on home now, would you? I want to see him as quickly as I can!”

“Of course I wouldn’t mind for a reason like that,” Milly said, smiling. “Why don’t I ask one of the hands to ride back with you? There hasn’t been any more trouble with the Indians, but—”

“Oh, I don’t think that’s necessary,” Faith said. “I didn’t see a soul on the way here after all. You see, I’d really like to do some praying aloud, maybe even some hymn singing on the way back,” she added, when she saw that her friend was about to argue. “I can’t very well do that if one of your men rides along.”

“I don’t know, Faith...I don’t feel right about letting you go off alone,” Milly said, her eyes troubled.

“But I’ll be talking to the Lord,” Faith reminded her. “When could a person be safer than that? Besides, like you said, there hasn’t been any more Indian trouble. I’d feel silly taking one of your men away from his work to escort me.”

Milly sighed. “I can see you’re determined. All right, then. I can’t wait to hear what Gil says.”

* * *

He heard her before he saw her, singing in that peculiar out-loud way of the white eyes. It was not a low religious chant such as the shaman would sing, but somehow Black Coyote Heart thought it had something to do with the white eyes’ religion. Perhaps it was one of the songs he’d heard escaping from the open windows of white men’s worship houses when he’d crept up to them in times past to see how close he could come to them without being discovered.

And then he saw the woman, riding around the bend below him on the road, singing as if she didn’t have a care in the world—or any need to be wary. No woman of the People would have worn such a ridiculous hat which blocked the sides of her vision. She did not even compensate by looking around her, or she would have easily seen him sitting on his horse at the edge of a clump of juniper on the rock- and cactus-strewn hillside. The whites were so foolish. What man would let one of his women ride out alone without protection, whether she was a wife, a daughter or a sister?

She had dark red hair, he saw, as a breeze blew her bonnet off her head and sent it bouncing from its strings on her shoulders. Not as prized as yellow hair, he thought, but even from here he saw that it shone as if fire danced with the sun on it.

Perhaps she was mad, he thought, as she switched from singing to talking out loud. He was even surer of his theory when he heard her laugh out loud. Yes, mad, but he could discipline that out of her.

He’d stayed behind to guard the rear after he and the other braves raided a ranch of its horses and cattle, but so far there had been no pursuit. The fire arrows that had set the ranch house ablaze, and the knives that had shed the blood of the white men who had swarmed out like ants to protest the destruction of their anthill had apparently terrorized anyone left alive there. Black Coyote Heart had been just about to ride after his fellow warriors, who were herding the stolen livestock toward the camp. He’d been hoping he could catch up so he could bask in the admiration of the people when they admired the booty. He thought perhaps Eyes of an Antelope would appreciate the silver-backed hand mirror he’d taken from the ranch house before they’d burned it.

He was glad he’d remained behind. Now none of the other braves could dispute his claim to the woman. He could take her red hair, but he decided he’d rather make her his captive. He’d beat her into terrified submission before presenting her to Eyes of an Antelope as a slave. The white woman could serve his sister, Crow Echo, until Eyes of an Antelope became his wife.

The horse the white woman rode was hardly fit for even a pack horse. That was another mystery to Black Coyote Heart—why would a white man allow one of his females to ride such a beast? Surely it weakened his medicine. He’d take the horse along with the white woman. They could load possessions on it when it came time to winter on the staked plains, and then slaughter it when the People grew hungry.

Black Coyote Heart grinned at what he was about to do, then uttered a blood-curdling scream and charged his pony down the slope toward the white woman.

* * *

Gil and his father had just sat down to a late supper—he’d been making wedding arrangements with Polly Shackleford and Bob Henshaw and had lost track of the time—when the knocking sounded at the door.

Gil smiled ruefully at his father. “I guess getting interrupted at meals is part and parcel of being a preacher, isn’t it?”

His father smiled back and nodded as Gil went to the door.

Robert Bennett stood on his doorstep, his face anxious, his fist poised to pound at the door again.

“Is my daughter with you?” he demanded before Gil could even open his mouth to greet the man.

“No,” Gil said. “I haven’t seen her all day. Have you checked with—”

“Didn’t you go out to the Brookfields’ with her today? My wife said she was going out there with you to visit Milly.”

Gil stared at the frantic-eyed man. “No, we had no plans to do that.” This certainly wasn’t the time to explain to Faith’s father why he and Faith wouldn’t be going anywhere together as things stood now. “She didn’t ask me to go anywhere with her, Mr. Bennett. Perhaps she went with one of her spinster friends, and they decided to stay the night?”

“She wouldn’t do that,” Bennett argued. “Not without telling us first, and I sure wouldn’t have given her permission to go out there with just another female or two. Not with Yancey Merriwell on the loose. Anyway, we’ve checked with her friends in town, and they’re all here...” His wide eyes begged Gil to give him reassurance.

Gil’s blood ran cold at the thought of Faith in peril, but he kept his voice calm for Bennett’s sake. “Why don’t we ride out to the Brookfield ranch? She’ll be there, you’ll see. Surely there was some reason she had to stay, for I know she wouldn’t make you worry without a good reason.” He didn’t really believe what he was saying, but his words seemed to reassure Faith’s father.

“I’m sure you’re right, Reverend. I’m going to give her such a talking-to when we find her there for scaring us so! Yes, let’s do that.”

“I’ll go get the buggy,” Gil said, knowing Bennett wasn’t much of a horseman. “Do you think your wife could stay with Papa till we get back?”

* * *

When she came to, Faith found herself lying on her side on some sort of fur rug with her arms tied together at the wrists behind her, and attached to her bound feet so she was arched like a bow. Her mouth was full of a foul-tasting gag and her head ached as if it was trapped inside her father’s Washington press while it printed.

Where was she?
Faith looked around as much as her bindings would allow, which wasn’t much, and saw that the side of the dwelling appeared to be of some sort of hide stretched over poles. A faint light filtered in from the open top of the dwelling where all the wooden poles met.

She lay in a tepee.
Now it all came back to Faith in a rush of terror—the sudden, out-of-nowhere spotted horse charging down the hillside, its demonically painted rider shrieking like a banshee before he wrenched her off her mount. She’d struggled frantically, and then there had been a sickening blow to her head and everything went black.

She’d awakened in a head-down position, felt a rocking motion and seeing the ground blur by her as the horse’s legs gathered, then extended, below her gaze. The knowledge that she was being carried away to an unknown fate by the Indian who had seized her was enough to convulse her with such unreasoning panic that she struggled to throw herself off the galloping horse.

It was then that she discovered her wrists were bound to her ankles beneath the horse’s belly, and that she couldn’t fling herself off if she tried. The Comanche leaned down and shouted something at her, then struck her head with the heel of his hand so hard that she surrendered to the blackness once more.

And now she had awakened in a Comanche tepee, alone—as far as Faith could tell. She could hear voices outside, speaking in their incomprehensible tongue, and the crackling of a nearby fire. The hide wall was thin enough to faintly see the light cast by the dancing flames.

She could smell meat cooking over the fire, but the savory smell evoked no answering growling in her stomach. Hunger was impossible, because of her overpowering fear.

The day of the Comanche attack on Simpson Creek a couple of years ago flooded her brain in vivid detail—the sudden appearance of the first bloodied, arrow-studded victim tied atop his horse appearing in the midst of their Founder’s Day celebration, the townspeoples’ panicked run to the recently built fort as mounted Comanches poured across the creek, the savages’ blood-curdling war cries as they galloped their ponies around the fort, shooting fire arrows and stolen rifles at the defenders shooting back from inside, the desperate prayers of the women and the men too old or injured to fight. And then, the sound of hooves pounding away from the town, the sudden quiet. And the discovery of mangled bodies in the street.