Texas Angel, 2-in-1

by Judith Pella

  There was no reluctance now as he prepared to meet Reverend Sinclair. He was just as curious as Lucie had been.

  Lucie was pouring tea for her guest when Reid came to the parlor. Lucie introduced the two men, and as they clasped hands, she noted how they appeared to size each other up, not in a hostile manner, but in the way of men gauging another’s merits and faults. She couldn’t tell for certain, but when they dropped hands, they both seemed satisfied with what they saw. At least they both relaxed and spoke in a friendly manner to each other.

  “I hope your visit doesn’t indicate bad tidings, Reverend Sinclair,” Reid said as he took a seat in a chair opposite Benjamin.

  “Not entirely,” answered Benjamin. “I was able to set your daughter’s mind at ease about that. I saw the official list of prisoners, and Micah’s name was on it. However, Micah and the other prisoners aren’t out of the woods yet, I’m afraid. They were initially marched to Matamoros, then to Monterrey. Now word has come that they are being marched once again to Saltillo, deeper into Mexico and further out of reach of help.”

  “Not that Texas can mount a rescue expedition anytime soon,” Reid added.

  “I am afraid not. President Houston is trying to use diplomatic channels. The United States and Britain have both made attempts to reason with Santa Anna.”

  “They can’t keep them in prison forever, can they?” Lucie asked.

  Reid and Reverend Sinclair exchanged looks. Lucie had seen such expressions often, though seldom from her father. They seemed to say, “This isn’t a matter for feminine sensibilities.” It must be ominous if even her father was reluctant to discuss it in her presence.

  “What will they do with the prisoners?” she persisted.

  “We must pray for their release,” Reid said.

  “I have been praying.” Lucie didn’t much like being put off, but she relented because she suddenly was afraid to know more.

  “Then you are doing the best thing possible for Micah and the others,” said Reverend Sinclair, who paused, though obviously he had more to say and was wondering how to proceed. After a few moments he spoke. “I want to say, Miss Maccallum, that I was most heartened when I received your letter. Over the years I have worried considerably about my son, so I was most pleased to see he had such a caring friend—a friend I now see is also a fine woman of faith. I want to thank you for reaching out to him.”

  Lucie’s cheeks flushed but not so much at the compliment as because she knew her involvement with Micah went so much deeper than his father could imagine.

  “Reverend Sinclair,” she replied, “it was no difficulty at all for me to . . . befriend Micah. He’s . . .” she paused, her cheeks heating even more. “He is a fine man. A good man. A . . . a . . .”

  “Micah?” Benjamin’s brow arched.

  It suddenly struck Lucie that both father and son must have perceptions of each other completely differing from reality. Micah saw his father as an unbending fanatic, a hard, unfeeling monster, while Reverend Sinclair seemed to see his son as a bad seed, an amoral rebel. The irony of it made Lucie’s heart ache for both of them.

  Forgetting her previous embarrassment at her barely concealed feelings for Micah, Lucie lifted her eyes to meet the reverend’s gaze. “Micah is a man with a tender heart, Reverend, a gentle soul. That’s what I see, what I know is there despite how he tries to hide it under his swaggering, uncouth demeanor. Do you know he saved my life once? That is how we met. He was in the process of stealing my father’s horses, but he risked his escape to safety in order to rescue me from attacking Comanches. He was always kind to me and gentle and honorable.” She paused as a lump rose in her throat. And she was courting another because she’d lost her faith in him, perhaps even lost faith in the belief that God could and would claim him.

  A long silence followed. The only sound was of the clock on the mantel ticking and Reid shifting in his chair. Lucie and Reverend Sinclair were both as still as a windless day. Lucie dropped her gaze to focus on the safer territory of her hands folded in her lap. She could not face Micah’s father. She did not want to confront his denial of her words. She did not want to think he had given up on his son. As she had?

  “Miss Maccallum,” Benjamin said finally. “I can’t . . . that is . . .”

  Lucie could not help risking a look at the man. His expression was a confusion of emotions. The muscles of his jaw twitched along with his lips, helpless, it appeared, to form the words he wanted to say. He released a ragged sigh.

  “Dear God! I always knew in my heart Micah could not be lost completely. But I . . . I have seen Micah once in the six years since he left home, and that was only a few months ago when he was in jail—I believe it was for stealing your father’s horses. Over the years I have heard things, distressing things. I could never know how deeply his unsavory actions went to his heart. I tried never to give up hope, but I could never know. I suppose in six years I should have made a more concerted effort to find him and bring him to his senses. But a large part of me was afraid to find him, afraid that my worst fears would be realized, that my son was beyond help. When he was home, he was filled with such anger. I just did not know if that anger had finally consumed him.”

  Benjamin stretched out his hands in front of him, gazing thoughtfully at his fingers. They were large hands, brown and work worn, with nails broken and perpetually stained with earth. They seemed to conflict with the refined formality of the man’s bearing, just as the man himself conflicted with all Lucie had heard about him from Micah.

  Shaking his head, Reverend Sinclair continued. “I am afraid part of me gave up on him. Oh, I prayed for him and hoped he would turn around, but I was too afraid to believe. Yet here you are, a mere friend, and you have faith in Micah—”

  “Please, Reverend Sinclair, I . . .” Lucie forced herself to look into the man’s eyes. “I gave up on him, too. Before he went to fight, I told him I could not see him again.”

  “But you saw to the core of him and found him to be a good person?”

  “Yes, I did. I still do. I don’t know what happened. I suppose I gave up on God as well.”

  Benjamin returned a sympathetic look. He seemed to know exactly how she felt.

  “It must not have been easy for you to maintain a friendship with one of differing beliefs”—he gave a dry chuckle—“with little or no beliefs at all, if I have a clear perception of my son’s spiritual values.”

  “I was uncertain if I should,” Lucie said. “But I feel strongly that Micah has not completely abandoned God. It’s just that—” she stopped. How could she tell the truth, that Micah’s faith had been trampled by his own father?

  Sinclair shook his head, a sad smile on his lips. “I know, Miss Mac-callum. I know I destroyed my son’s faith.” The man’s pain was palpable, despite the fact that Lucie sensed this was not a man to bear his inner soul to strangers. It spoke more than anything else about the true nature of this man, Micah’s father.

  “I’m so sorry,” Lucie said gently.

  “As am I.”

  Reid shifted once again in his chair. Sensing he wished to speak, Lucie turned toward him.

  “I, too, have had difficulty with my son,” Reid said, catching Benjamin”fs gaze and holding it. “Fathers and sons are such strange animals. Fathers tend to invest their hearts and souls in their sons, perhaps more so than with daughters, because they feel so much more is required of them. Sons, for their part, want to worship their fathers. Both are doomed to fail in attaining the other’s expectations. Accepting or laying blame is pretty futile in such a situation. It helps neither party.” He paused and took a breath.

  Lucie could tell such a long speech was taxing him. But he continued.

  “I have come to believe it is the heart of a man that matters. Certainly it is only the heart that God himself sees. How many times do we want only good for our children, and yet our actions to achieve this blow up in our faces like a touchy musket? And the worst of it is that our children are the l
ast to credit our good intentions.”

  “My father used to tell me, ‘Boy, the road to nowhere is paved with good intentions,’ ” Benjamin said.

  “Ah yes . . .” Reid smiled. “But the road to perdition is paved with evil intentions. I would choose the former. And I would keep hoping that one of those good intentions would get me on a path to somewhere. Life, and especially child rearing, is essentially a guessing game. Just when you think you have the rules figured out, they change, or your children change on you. If we do the best we can, how can we do more?”

  “I only wish I would have known these things when my son was young,” Benjamin said. “Unfortunately, I made rules for my children and my family, and the rules were like iron—no bending at all. Of course, something had to break if the rules would not. What broke was my son’s heart, his spirit, I suppose. He has every right to resent me, even if I have changed now.” Pausing, he glanced back and forth between Reid and Lucie. “I do not expect I will be the one to reach my son. Yet my faith has been greatly renewed by you folks. God has clearly shown that He is faithful to my prayers and to my son. He has brought you good people into Micah’s life, and that restores my hope.”

  Lucie smiled. “My hope has also been restored, Reverend—by you! From all Micah has told me of you, I fully expected to meet a . . . uh . . .”

  “A monster, Miss Maccallum?” Benjamin’s tone revealed a hint of wry amusement.

  Lucie’s smile relaxed. “Yes, if you’ll forgive me for thinking such a thing. But I find that is not true at all. I doubt it ever was, even if you might have been a strict parent. I know now you always loved Micah, though he might not have perceived it. And because of that, I know with more certainty than ever that there is indeed hope for Micah.”

  An hour later while Reverend Sinclair was washing up, Lucie went to the kitchen to help with supper preparations. Sinclair would sup with them and bide the night at Reid’s invitation. As Lucie cut up vegetables for Juana’s delectable rosemary stew, she felt absolutely buoyant. As never before, she had an assurance that Micah would be all right, spiritually at least. With a man like Benjamin Sinclair for a father and with friends like her and her father, Micah must eventually come to see the love of God.

  There was still much uncertainty about her own relationship with Micah. But she knew she could not give up quite yet. How she would break the news to Grant, she did not know. But she did know she would not marry him now or ever. The visit with Reverend Sinclair had helped her understand her own father a bit better, and Lucie was now sure he would never ask or expect her to make such a sacrifice.

  Still, Micah’s captivity created a pall over Lucie’s renewed spirit. Anything could happen to him in Mexico. Reverend Sinclair had not said as much, but Lucie had heard rumors that Santa Anna wanted to execute all the prisoners. That could not happen. She would not accept the possibility. God had plans for Micah. She knew it. Plans that did not include an early death in a Mexican prison.

  CHAPTER

  27

  THE LAND BETWEEN SALTILLO AND the Rio Grande was a desert so barren, so desolate, it might have been forsaken by God as well as man.

  The captives had known that much, but none had ever traversed it, so they imagined it could not be any worse than other deserts they had seen. At any rate, they had chosen to risk the unknown rather than suffer further at the hands of their Mexican captors. When the opportunity for escape had arisen, they had taken it. That chance had come in the spring of 1843 when they were to be moved from Monterey to Saltillo. They managed to overpower their guards on the road, capture some weapons and ammunition stores, and make a break. They had lost five men in the process, and only God knew how many more they would lose before they set eyes upon Texas again.

  Jed stumbled over a rock and crumpled to his knees. Instead of pulling himself back up, he just sat on the dry, crusted ground, letting his head drop into his hands.

  “That’s it for me,” he mumbled thickly.

  Micah shuffled to a stop beside him. “What you talking about?” he said a bit gruffly, but who could tell with his throat parched and raw and his tongue so thick he could not keep his mouth shut.

  “I tell ya, I ain’t moving. I’ve had it!”

  Micah sank down beside him. “All right, you said we’re sticking together, so guess I’ve had it, too.”

  “Get out of here! I don’t know how ya do it, but you got miles left in you.”

  Micah shook his head. “What difference does it make if I die here or in a couple of miles?”

  They had already spent days in this desert. They had abandoned the road, hoping to elude pursuit, but had become hopelessly lost instead. No one had any idea, not even Big Foot, how far it was to the Rio Grande. They had no food and had long since tossed aside their weapons to spare the weight, so they couldn’t hunt, not that they’d have the strength to do so anyway. They had tried eating insects and snakes when they could be caught with their knives. But there had been no way to cook anything. Micah had become violently ill trying to choke down a grasshopper.

  There hadn’t been a watering hole in two days, and the last one, if the moist hole in the ground could be called that, had provided enough only for the men to dampen their tongues. Some had tried drinking their own urine, but the results had been disastrous. Several men had been lost thus far on the desperate trek. There were now fewer than two hundred prisoners left. A look at the ragged line of stumbling men stretching out over the desert said there would be fewer than that by tomorrow.

  “You gotta keep going, Micah,” Jed was saying. “You got your gal waiting for you back home.”

  “I ain’t got no gal,” Micah insisted with as much force as he could muster. “Lucie and I . . . well, she ain’t my gal, that’s all. But don’t you have no reason to live, Jed?”

  Jed shrugged. “Sometimes . . . I don’t know . . . I get tired of it all.”

  Suddenly he looked old and even wise, not at all like the boy Micah knew.

  “Sometimes I get a strong hankering to see my ma and pa again.”

  Some of the other men had come up and dropped to the ground as well, this seeming as good a time as any to take a rest.

  “There you go,” Bill McBroome said. “You got your folks to go home to.” McBroome was faring better than many of the men. He’d lived on insects and wet dirt before, years ago when he’d been a captive of the Comanches. He’d survived once before and knew he could again.

  “Jed’s parents are dead,” Micah said.

  “Oh, didn’t know that,” McBroome said.

  “Guess I’d have to go to heaven to be with them.”

  “That what you want, Jed?” Micah asked.

  “No, but I don’t want to get up neither!” Jed took off his hat and wiped a hand across his face. He was so dehydrated he was no longer even sweating. “I might if I had a pretty gal like Miss Lucie to get to.”

  “Who is this Lucie?” Big Foot asked.

  “Micah’s gal.”

  “No, she ain’t,” Micah said.

  “Tell us about her, Micah,” Big Foot said.

  Micah would have refused because the last thing he wanted to think of then was Lucie Maccallum and all he’d never have with her. Even if he made it back to Texas, she would never be his. Why, he wouldn’t be surprised if by now she was married off to that Grant Carlton. But as he looked around at his companions, he realized they needed to be reminded of home. They needed to be reminded about why they were suffering so to get back.

  “She’s the prettiest gal there ever was,” Micah began. He closed his eyes, and it wasn’t hard at all to conjure an image of the sweet and beautiful Lucie Maccallum. He almost thought he caught a whiff of rosewater instead of the stink of filthy men. “She’s got hair like black silk caught on fire—”

  “Silk caught on fire?” questioned McBroome. “That don’t sound pleasant at all.”

  Jed amended, “That’s his way of saying her hair is dark, nearly black, but with lots of red in it.
”

  Micah rolled his eyes. “You want me to tell y’all about her? Or maybe you could do a better job of telling me.”

  “You’re doing a fine job,” encouraged Big Foot. “Go on.”

  “Well, there ain’t much more to tell. She’s just pretty, that’s all. And sweet. And when she laughs . . .” Micah’s chest clenched as the memories were released. He should never have gotten started. “Hey, Charlie,” he said to one of the other men, “you got a sweetheart, don’t ya? Tell about her.”

  Dreamily, Charlie complied. “She’s pretty, too, of course. ’Cept her hair’s yella’, like gold. No fire, just shining gold. . . .”

  Soon everyone was telling about someone special back home, and in a half hour they all found the strength to rise to their feet and trod on.

  Into the heat, into the blinding sun, into the stinging wind. They ate sand and grit when they longed for an apple pie baked by a sweet woman of their dreams. They swallowed thick saliva when their mouths ached for a cup of springwater from a slim, smooth hand.

  Time slipped away until even the rising and setting of the sun meant little to them. When the Mexican army finally caught up with them, they could not have fought them even if they’d had weapons. As it was, some considered it more rescue than capture.

  Santa Anna had enough of his own problems just trying to stay in power, without dealing with those pesky Texans. He was fed up with them and prepared to execute the lot of the prisoners. But when the ministers from both America and Britain learned of his decree, they raised such a protest that Santa Anna had to back down. He could never win a war against both Britain and America.

  Instead, the Mexican president decided to deal with the prisoners in the Latino way. Every tenth one would be shot, to be decided by a simple lottery. The commander of the prison would place one hundred fifty-nine white beans and seventeen black beans, representing the number of the remaining prisoners, into a jar. Each prisoner would then draw a bean. Those drawing a black bean would die.