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.
Faith moaned in fear. Oh, God, I put my trust in You again, and this is the result? One minute I’m singing and praying to You, full of joy, the next I’m trussed up like a slain deer? Is that what You meant to happen?
Faith heard a sound in back of her, and then fresh air swirled around her, tinged with the smell of wood smoke and some sort of gamey-smelling grease. Someone had come in! Quickly she shut her eyes again, seeking safety in feigning unconsciousness. She heard footsteps nearing her on the hard-packed earth, and then someone knelt beside her, bringing the smell of smoke and grease nearer.
She felt a nudge on her shoulder, then another and another. A voice shouted in her ear, a female voice, guttural and insistent. Faith fought the urge to flinch, maintaining her stillness by sheer effort of will. Maybe if she continued to pretend to be unconscious, they would leave her alone—at least until later. She was merely postponing her fate, she knew, but every moment she could buy was a moment she was not being tortured.
Without warning the nudge became sharp, and aimed at her ribs, and was followed by a slap so hard she could not help but recoil.
Faith’s eyes flew open, and she beheld an Indian woman’s coppery face, framed by short-cropped raven-black hair, just inches from hers, the obsidian eyes full of curiosity—and malice, too. She called something over her shoulder, and another pair of moccasined feet neared Faith. As they came to a stop by her, she noted the beaded design on the moccasins resembled some sort of dog or wolflike gray creature with an irregular black-beaded shape midway between his shoulders and forelegs.
The wearer of the moccasins—a huge, powerfully built brave—bent over and stared at her, his gleaming long black hair, warpaint and hideous grin sending Faith into another paroxysm of terror.
Lord, if You love me—if You ever loved me, please help me!
Chapter Twenty
Her kidnapper spoke to her in Comanche, then leaned over and untied the leather thongs that bound her wrists and ankles.
Faith rubbed her wrists to bring back the circulation in her numb arms, never taking her eyes off the brave. She longed to rub her ankles, too, but dared not expose them to the big Indian, who watched her every move with avid eyes.
He said something to the woman behind him—his wife? Yet there was a similarity to their features, so perhaps she was his sister. The Indian woman stepped forward then, and Faith saw that she carried a leather pouch and a crude wooden bowl. She dropped the bowl in front of Faith, then upended the leather pouch over it. What fell onto the bowl looked like dried meat mixed with grease. She pointed at it, uttered another unintelligible word, then pantomimed picking up the stuff, putting it in her mouth and chewing it.
Faith’s stomach rebelled. It certainly wasn’t the savory-smelling meat she’d been smelling from the campfire outside. And even if she wanted to, she couldn’t eat with that grinning, evil-looking Indian man squatting inches from her and watching.
He barked what sounded like a command at Faith; then, when she just stared at him, he clenched a fist and boxed her left ear.
Faith straightened, feeling tears stinging her eyes, blurring her vision. The brave held a hunk of the meat mixture under her nose. He shouted the same word he had said before he’d hit her.
He was ordering her to eat, but was the meat poisoned? Would she feel it burning her throat as she tried to swallow, then double over in agony as the evil substance did its work?
He pulled a wicked-looking knife from a sheath hanging from the belt that held up his breechclout then, and waved it at her face. The message was clear—eat or die.
Perhaps it would be a quicker death than the fire...
The meat mixture was chewy and greasy, but intensely sweet and surprisingly palatable. Faith suddenly realized she was hungry, and so she chewed the substance and reached for more. This must be pemmican, the meat and honey mixture that frontiersmen had learned to make from exposure to Indian ways, and indeed she realized now that pemmican was the word the man and woman had been saying to her.
The brave relaxed somewhat then, sitting on his haunches and watching Faith eat. The woman brought Faith a gourd full of water, and Faith washed down her food, then watched the brave warily.
He turned on his heel, said something to the woman whom Faith had decided was his sister and left the tepee.
Sister muttered something, then took hold of one of Faith’s hands, yanking her to her feet. She brandished a knife from her own belt, then indicated Faith was to follow her from the tepee.
Would she be tied to a stake and burned now? The woman’s obsidian gaze was impenetrable and gave Faith no clue, but when she left the tepee, there was no gathered throng waiting for her. Comanche m
en sat eating, while half-naked children ran and played and women stirred pots. They looked up at Faith with mild interest, then went back to whatever they were doing.
Sister marched her out of camp into a clump of scrub, then barked something, pointing first to Faith’s riding skirt, then at the ground.
Faith finally understood she was to take care of her personal needs. Face burning with humiliation, she did so, and then Sister marched her back to the tepee and retied her, shoving her down on the buffalo hide she’d awoken on. She pantomimed closing her eyes, and left the tepee.
Sleep? How was she to sleep not knowing what her fate was to be? Gil, I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you sooner—then I wouldn’t have needed to go talk to Milly, wouldn’t have foolishly ridden out and back alone...
But maybe she’d been right all along about God, that familiar voice hissed inside her. Hadn’t that been proven by her present circumstances? If God existed at all, how could He care about His people when He allowed this to happen to her right when she’d begun to come back to Him?
No one would likely ever know for sure what had happened to her. They’d speculate certainly. Perhaps they’d think she’d been caught by Yancey Merriwell, and redouble their efforts to find the Georgian scoundrel. She wondered if he was even in Texas anymore.
She wasn’t sure if the savage who had brought her here had been out by himself, or if he’d been part of a raiding party. When Sister had taken her out of the tepee, Faith had spotted a makeshift pen full of milling, restless cattle, so perhaps there had been a raid. She hoped it wasn’t they hadn’t struck Milly’s ranch after she had left or Caroline’s. Perhaps one or both of them had been killed defending their homes.
She heard the tepee flap lift again, and she stiffened, but this time it was only a boy who stood there peering at her. He leaned on a crutch, though both feet were planted on the hard-packed dirt floor at the entrance of the tepee. There was no threat in his gaze, only inquisitiveness.
The Preacher's Bride (Brides of Simpson Creek) Page 20