Love's Last Stand

by S. B. Moores

  Justin’s sudden shift from pleasure to guilt left him confused and unable to speak. Thankfully, his own father appeared. “Is there a problem, Henry?” Walter Sterling asked, lighting his pipe.

  “Not as long as young Justin here can keep his hands to himself. I found the two of them embracing like animals.”

  “Father, it was nothing like that,” Abby said. “We were just watching the horses.”

  “You hush,” Henry said. He was about to continue his indictment but Walter Sterling spoke first.

  “The way I see it,” Walter said, lingering over his words, as if to slow down the confrontation, “it’s better we found them in a hug than in fisticuffs, like so many other children their age.” He straightened Justin’s jacket and brushed some imaginary dust from the lapels.

  “I’d rather have our children learn from the apostle Paul.” Henry pointed a finger at the heavens. “In Galatians, he said, ‘Walk in the Spirit and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.’ ”

  “I agree with you there, Henry,” Walter said. “And I can’t argue with good old King James, but these youngsters are hardly old enough to know what ‘lust of the flesh’ is. Don’t you think?”

  “Perhaps. But let’s you and I see to it they don’t learn about such things any time too soon, shall we?” He placed a firm hand on Abigail’s shoulder and guided her away from the corral.

  “And the pews are still warm from the service,” Henry grumbled.

  Justin watched as the Whitfields climbed into their covered carriage. Abby glanced at him behind her father’s back and, as she did so, Justin waved. She did not wave back.

  Abby’s hug had sent a thrill chasing through Justin’s body like a blazing meteor from heaven. But judging by her father’s anger, Justin figured he’d committed one more lascivious sin. He wondered how much patience God had for such a frequent and hopeless a sinner as himself.

  Two months later, Henry Whitfield took over as the community’s full-time preacher, after the regular circuit rider caught the pox and died somewhere in Missouri.

  Justin wasn’t sure whether he was at fault, but two more years passed before Abby got a horse for Christmas.

  CHAPTER THREE

  July 1828

  “Where should we go?” Justin whispered.

  “Follow me.” Abigail lifted her skirt over her ankles and ran toward the creek, suppressing the urge to giggle. She heard Justin’s padding footfalls behind her as he followed her on the narrow dirt path.

  She had discovered the low overhanging bank of the creek days earlier, and knew instantly that it would provide the perfect concealment from her friends in a game of hide-and-go-seek. And the idea of hiding with Justin stirred something deep inside her, something that hinted of danger and excitement. She started to zigzag as she ran, just in case Toby hadn’t completely closed his eyes again. She didn’t want to give away her special place too quickly, and she relished the idea that she would be alone with Justin, hidden from the world, if only for a few minutes.

  She ran through an opening in the tall grass and trees lining the creek. With Justin close on her heels, Abigail jumped down onto a small patch of sand where the cold, burbling water had undercut the curving creek bank, then receded with the spring rains. It left a short stretch of dry sandy beach. By crouching near the bank, they would be hidden from view, even from someone standing immediately above them. She sat down with her back to the water and reached up for Justin’s hand, pulling him down next to her.

  “Toby will never find us here,” she whispered.

  “No one could find us here,” Justin said. “Not without walking the length of the creek.” He gave her a knowing look. Abigail felt her chest swell, and she hooked her arm around his elbow, as if to keep him close.

  At that moment, a large gold and brown butterfly fluttered silently in front of their faces and landed on top of Abigail’s head. She stifled a giggle, not wanting to frighten the creature. It sat there, slowly fanning its wings.

  “I can feel it,” she whispered. Justin pulled close to her and watched the insect.

  “It looks like Mother Nature’s dressing you up,” he said. Then his gaze lowered until their eyes met. “Maybe she thinks you look a bit drab today.”

  She wrinkled her nose and gave him a look of mock irritation, but her heart skipped a beat when she felt Justin’s sweet breath mingle with her own. A sudden flush of embarrassment rose to her cheeks when she thought he might be going to kiss her. She held her head statue still, a temporary resting place for the butterfly, even though modesty told her to pull away from Justin. She knew that coming to this hidden spot with him might lead to trouble, either the good kind or the bad. Which was which, she wasn’t sure, but she’d wanted it, anyway. She’d been driven by an undefined longing for intimacy that only recently had begun to dawn in her chest. Now she felt caught between the sensual craving to feel Justin’s lips on her own and a sudden fear of the consequences.

  But the matter seemed out of her hands. She would not move and disturb the beautiful butterfly resting on her head, and she could only watch as Justin’s soft eyes filled her vision. Her breath stilled, her lips parted slightly, and she closed her eyes in anticipation.

  “Ow!” A young voice rang out in the field over their heads.

  “That’s Toby,” Justin said. “It sounds like he’s hurt.”

  Justin scrambled up the creek bank, and the butterfly flew away across the water. Abigail squeezed her eyes shut and let out a quick, low sigh. Had Justin really been about to kiss her, or had she simply imagined it? She might never know. Reluctantly, she opened her eyes and climbed up the creek bank. In the field they found Toby lying on his back, rolling to and fro, and holding his left leg. Through a ragged hole in Toby’s pants, Abigail saw an ugly but not very serious scrape on Toby’s shin. It bled slightly.

  “What happened?” Justin asked.

  “I fell over a stone,” Toby groaned.

  “It doesn’t look very bad,” Justin said.

  “Oh, but it must hurt like the devil.” Abigail bent down and lifted the flap of his pant leg carefully, to look more closely at his injury. Toby sucked in his breath, but let her do it.

  “That is going to leave a nasty bruise.” She ran her fingers through Toby’s hair to comfort him.

  Justin turned away and started walking in the direction Toby must have been running when he fell. He had gone only a few feet when he stopped and looked down at something hidden in the tall blades of grass. He knelt down and started pulling away grass from around a granite stone.

  “Would you look at this?” He had uncovered a gray stone with three flat sides, each about a foot wide. It had a peaked top and stood, or rather leaned, about two feet tall.

  “What is it?” Toby asked. He quickly got to his feet, injury apparently forgotten, when he saw the curious object he’d fallen over.

  Abigail took a sharp breath. “It looks like a tombstone.”

  “Yes,” Justin said. “It’s even got someone’s name carved into it.”

  “I hope I didn’t step on someone’s grave.” Toby shivered. “That would be bad luck.”

  Justin grinned. “A dead person might have reached up and tripped you when you ran by.”

  “Hush,” Abigail said. “What is the name on the stone?”

  Justin looked at the gray surface more closely, brushing away dirt, moss, and debris that must have been collecting for years.

  “It says ‘Johnson’!”

  “Oh, stop teasing.” Abigail stooped down and looked at the carving on the side of the stone facing her. When she saw the name it was her turn to shiver.

  “This side says ‘Whitfield,’ ” she whispered.

  “Well this side says ‘Sterling,’ ” Toby said with some satisfaction.

  After a moment of silence, Abigail said, “It can’t be a grave. They wouldn’t put three people in one grave. It would be sacrilegious.”

  “No,” Justin scratched his head. “If people
we knew were buried here, surely we’d have heard about it.”

  “Then what is it?” Toby asked.

  “It must be a marker,” Abigail said.

  “Maybe it marked the boundaries of our families’ property at one time,” Toby said.

  Abigail glanced at Justin. She knew his father leased land from her father, and she wasn’t sure the Sterlings actually owned any property in the valley, or how much.

  Justin arched one eyebrow. “Perhaps it marks the location of buried treasure.”

  “Really?” Toby’s eyes grew wide. “Like pirates? Why do you think that?”

  “Why else would such an odd stone be out here near the creek? It’s well inside Abby’s family’s land, so it can’t mark any kind of property line. And it doesn’t seem to have any other purpose.”

  Abigail considered this. She didn’t really believe there was any buried treasure, but the possibility of it excited her. “Maybe our families buried some money together, to keep it safe from Indians. Back then Indians wouldn’t be able to read the names on the stone, and they might think it was just a grave. If they were superstitious, they wouldn’t go digging around to find a buried treasure.”

  “I’ve never heard about this,” Toby said, as if he were giving the idea great weight. “Our parents would have told us about that, too, wouldn’t they?” He looked worried, as though he still might have committed some indiscretion by tripping over the stone.

  “Maybe they’ve forgotten about it,” Justin said.

  “Maybe it was buried by our grandfathers, and they all died before they could tell anyone,” Abigail added.

  “All of them died of the pox, didn’t they?” Justin asked.

  “Yes,” Toby said, “and I think they all died at the same time, more or less.”

  “So that’s it,” Justin said, crooking a finger on his chin. “I wonder exactly where the treasure is buried.”

  “We should ask our parents before we go digging up Henry Whitfield’s land,” Toby said.

  “You’re right about that.” Justin had been the subject of Henry’s angry gaze more than once.

  The three of them leaped to their feet and ran in the direction of the Whitfield home, since it was closest. They found Henry in the horse barn with his field hands, tending to a mare lying alone in its stall. From the looks on the men’s faces and their muttered conversation, it was clear that something was wrong. Justin and Toby stopped a few yards shy of the stall and the knot of men, cautious of Henry Whitfield when he wasn’t in a good mood. Abigail went ahead.

  “What’s the problem, Father?”

  “It looks like she’s eaten nightshade. She’s dying.”

  Abigail gasped and put her hands to her mouth. “How could she do that?”

  “I have no idea,” Henry growled. “We should have no nightshade on Whitfield land. I’ve tried to be sure of that.”

  He looked up and saw Justin and Tobias, and Justin felt the man’s stony gaze linger on him longer than he thought it should.

  “Somehow the gates were open, letting the cattle out,” Henry said. “It’s happening more and more these days.”

  “I’m so sorry.” With tears in her eyes, she knelt beside the dying horse and gently stroked its neck.

  Justin and Toby gave each other a wary glance. They put their hands in their pockets and went their separate ways, each toward his own home.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  June 1830

  Abigail closed her copy of The Mysteries of Udolpho and set the book in her lap. She gazed out the bay window of her second-floor bedroom, thinking about the story. The heroine, Emily St. Aubert, was only slightly older than she, but she had already lost her mother and father. How horrible. As if that weren’t enough, Emily’s guardian aunt married a scoundrel who stopped at nothing to keep the love of Emily’s life away from her. Where did authors get such fanciful ideas?

  Abigail’s own parents were, so . . . so stable. Not dull, exactly, but so much the same from day to day. Then again, nothing exciting ever happened to anybody she knew in Ridgetop. That was a good thing, she supposed. Her life wasn’t nearly as difficult or dramatic as Emily’s. Still, sometimes Abigail wished for a dashing young hero like Valancourt, to sweep her up and take her away to an exotic castle where all of her dreams came true. How lovely that would be. She sighed but shook her head. She wasn’t a storybook heroine, and life wasn’t a novel. In reality, Abigail’s future in Ridgetop seemed awfully limited. All that was truly expected of a woman was to get married and have children. That was fine, as far as it went. She would be lucky if she were ever allowed to raise horses, with or without a man like Valancourt to help her.

  When her eyes focused, she found herself looking at a small gray smudge in the distance. She realized it was the slate roof of the Sterling farmhouse, up the slope of the Ridgetop Valley, more than two miles away. She wondered what Justin Sterling was doing at that moment. Could he see her bedroom window from there? That idea made her blush, and she turned her head away from the view.

  At school and elsewhere, most of the boys she knew would act the fool around the girls, tease them or try to impress them with their skill with a knife or a horse. Every so often, some poor boy got all moon-eyed over a particular girl. It was the source of great amusement among the girls, except for the girl who was the object of the boy’s awkward affection. Usually nothing came of it. But the Ridgetop Valley was sparsely populated, and it dawned on Abigail that all of the boys and girls she knew might eventually pair off with each other in marriage. The idea that she already knew the boy she’d marry distressed her. At that moment, she’d rather some handsome stranger like Valancourt come to the valley and find her. Sadly, that wasn’t likely. Still, there were a number of boys living around Ridgetop who might interest her. Could any of them capture her heart?

  She thought again of Justin Sterling. Justin was no stranger, and she surely noticed the way he looked at her. It wasn’t the same looks she got from the other young men. Their intentions were obvious from their childish grins. They would steal a kiss, or more, the first chance a girl gave them, and they wore this urgent desire on their sleeves for everyone to see. But Justin didn’t grin at Abigail. He had a way of smiling that took her off guard. He made her feel that she was his equal. It was more than the look she might get from a friend. Much more. But Justin didn’t make her feel she was the object of an adolescent courtship. She felt his quiet strength in his smile. He knew what he wanted, and it wasn’t to play games. It was an unexpected maturity at such a young age, but Abigail only saw it when she was alone with him.

  With his male friends, Justin was as much an unruly boy as any of the others. Oddly, it was his quiet demeanor that drew her to Justin, made her want to know him better. Where did he find that strength, his sureness? Did he ever think about her, as she was thinking of him now? And who would Justin Sterling marry? She looked out the window again at the small gray smudge in the distance.

  “What do you want out of life, Justin Sterling? Will you live your whole life in Ridgetop, get married and have children?”

  If only life were like a novel, one with a happy ending. She picked up her book and started reading again.

  Justin had finished his chores for the day. Now he reclined on his favorite flat rock, next to a relatively quiet pool on the edge of the Little Elk Creek. He kept one eye on the line angling down from his fishing pole and the cork bobber as it drifted among a few floating leaves. A fish could strike at any moment. He already had four fat bluegill and a smallmouth bass on a stringer to bring home to his mother to cook up for dinner. If he caught a couple more fish, they would eat well and maybe salt a few for later. He liked the way his mother hugged him when he came home with his catch. It was just fishing, after all, but she made him feel like he’d done something important, like they might have had nothing at all for dinner if he hadn’t gone fishing. He sensed that might have been true, once. Still, they always ate his catch.

  His father said he had
a knack for fishing, said he could talk a bass into biting the hook. He’d tried that a couple of times, but it never worked as well as a wriggling earthworm, so he wasn’t sure his father understood the mechanics of fishing.

  Every few minutes the sun peaked through the trees overhead, warming his arms and legs in the humid summer breeze. The sound of the water burbling down the creek next to the fishing pool soothed him, lulling him until his eyelids drooped. He propped his pole up between some rocks and lay on his back with his hands behind his head. Then he tilted his hat over his eyes to shield his face from the sun, the way he’d seen some Whitfield farmhands do when they napped behind the tobacco barn and they thought no one was looking.

  He let his mind drift and he idly wondered if Abby Whitfield ever went fishing. She was a girl, so he doubted it. But if she did, she might be fishing on the very same creek, only farther downstream. He pulled his hat from his eyes, sat up, and glanced downstream. He could walk in that direction a ways. If he found her, he could say he was looking for a good fishing spot, not for her. Then he remembered that the Whitfields had a big fish pond all their own, right in front of their house, which they kept regularly stocked. He couldn’t imagine fishing in a pond next to his house. How sporting could that be? You might as well catch the poor fish in a net and harvest them like you would corn or potatoes.

  Still, if he could fish with Abby, it might be worth trying once or twice in an open pond. He lay back and put his hat over his eyes again. Thinking about Abby, his eyelids drooped and he felt he might take a nap. Then he heard a splash. Something had taken the bait. He leaped up and grabbed his pole. Sure enough, a fish big enough to be a smallmouth thrashed through the water, trying to lose the hook.

  “Not today,” he said. “You’re coming home with me.” He carefully played the fish as much as he could, pulling the line closer to the rock when the fish gave it slack, letting the line out when the fish struggled enough that the line might break free. Finally he managed to pull the fish out of the water. As he watched it wriggling on the end of his line, he saw two kids watching him from the bushes. They stood next to a tree, partially hidden by the undergrowth, about twenty feet away. They were Indians. Surprised, his blood surged. He almost dropped his pole in the creek and ran.