Promise Lodge

by Charlotte Hubbard

  * * *

  Deborah looked around the cabin’s main room, gratified at what a huge improvement a coat of paint made. Mattie and the Hershberger girls were planting peaches-and-cream sweet corn in the farthest plowed plot today, while Christine and Rosetta worked upstairs in the lodge sewing simple curtains for the rooms that would soon become apartments. They had all invited her to help them, but Deborah found a certain satisfaction in rolling paint on the walls, knowing the cabins would be ready for their incoming residents sooner.

  Every now and again, a little solitude was soothing. It gave Deborah time to review her recent fishing date with Noah . . . to think about how his attitude had improved now that they were friends again. She felt better, too—hopeful, now that they’d salvaged their relationship.

  Deborah stopped the rhythmic swish-swish-swish of her roller to listen. Had she heard voices? It was too early for the men to be back from their shopping expedition.

  She listened again, her roller poised on the partially painted wall. Nothing.

  As Deborah spun her roller in the tray to fill it with beige paint, however, a movement outside caught her eye. She froze on the ladder, gripping the roller handle, when one male face and then another appeared at the cabin’s open front window.

  “Well, well, well,” said Isaac Chupp in a sly voice. “Corbett and I watched the men drive off earlier—and the other gals are all real busy right now, working in that old lodge building or waaay out beyond the lake. Is this a gut time to talk, Deborah?”

  Why didn’t Queenie bark? How did Isaac and Kerry know where to—

  “Figured we’d find you here,” Kerry remarked with a smug laugh. He swung open the screen door and stepped inside, looking taller and stronger than Deborah recalled from her previous encounter with him. “Your old man said he didn’t know where you’d run off to, but we didn’t buy that for a second.”

  “Jah, we figured you’d come here to Promise to hang out—or hide—where all these other do-gooders would believe whatever you told them and feel sorry for you,” Isaac continued coldly. He and Kerry stopped a couple of yards away from her ladder, crossing their arms as they glared at her. “You’re really stupid, you know? Maybe too stupid to live.”

  Deborah’s body forgot how to function. And where could she go, even if her legs would move? The boys stood between her and the cabin’s only door. Isaac’s eyes narrowed as he sneered at her. A malevolent smile lit Kerry’s pale, freckled face beneath his shaggy carrot-colored hair.

  “Guess you know we’ve got a score to settle—not only for putting our names in the paper so the sheriff came calling,” Isaac said in a hard-edged voice, “but also because you made Kerry wreck his car—”

  “None of that was my doing,” Deborah rasped. She gripped the ladder, resting her knees against its wooden frame so the boys wouldn’t see how badly they were shaking. “You were both really drunk—”

  “Shut up! I’m not finished!” Isaac barked. He ran his hand through his blunt-cut blond hair, appearing eager to grab hold of her again. “I told you not to breathe a word about finding us in the barn, but no! You had to blab to your dat and get the law involved, so now my old man’s all hot and bothered—”

  “And fixing my car would cost more than it’s worth,” Kerry interrupted in a rising voice. “So now I’ve got no wheels, all because you wouldn’t give me a little payback for taking you home.”

  “So we’ll take what you owe us right now, while there’s nobody else around to get in our way.” Isaac looked her up and down as though he could see through her paint-splotched dress. “After all these years of wanting a sample of Schwartz’s little honey, I’m about to get one. Then Corbett will take his turn. Wonder how Noah will feel about you then?”

  The hairs on the back of Deborah’s neck stood up and every nerve in her body vibrated. Please, dear Jesus, You’ve got to help me. Without You, I don’t stand a chance.

  “Mostly, though, we want to make sure you don’t get any ideas about going back to Coldstream,” Isaac said with a nasty laugh. “As long as you’re not there shooting off your mouth, Sheriff Renfro has no proof of who was in that barn—except for you, of course. I told him to listen to the call the nine-one-one dispatcher took. Told him that was your voice on the recording, after you got so smashed while you were sneaking a beer in the barn that you knocked over a lantern,” he continued. “Then you felt guilty about starting the fire, so you called them and took off—because you knew you’d be in big trouble with your dat if he found out you’d been drinking.”

  Oh, this is worse than you ever imagined.

  Deborah sucked in air, hoping to steady her nerves—trying to sort the truth from the lies Isaac could spin so effortlessly. Had he really given her name to Sheriff Renfro? Would he and Kerry take their revenge, or were they just hazing her? Deborah didn’t want to find out. She sensed that the hand-shaped bruise on her neck had been a minor injury compared to the pain they could inflict as a team.

  When Isaac stepped toward her, Deborah hurled the paint-saturated roller at him. As it hit him in the face, he and Kerry hollered obscenities and rushed toward her. With every last ounce of strength she had, Deborah jumped from the ladder and swung it at them. The paint tray flew at Kerry, splattering him, while the ladder struck Isaac on the shoulder. She didn’t wait around to see how either of them reacted.

  Deborah bolted out the screen door, hollering at the top of her lungs. “Rosetta! Christine!” she cried. She ran toward the lodge, hoping the women heard her through the open windows. “Help me! Isaac’s here!”

  As she sprinted up the stairs to the lodge porch, Deborah heard the boys’ rapid footfalls behind her but she didn’t turn around. Spotting the wire basket of eggs Rosetta had gathered earlier, she picked it up.

  “Rosetta!” she yelled through the screen door. “Christine, come quick!”

  Footsteps thundered on the lobby’s wooden staircase as Deborah turned toward Isaac and Kerry. Both boys were splattered with beige paint, still intent on getting their revenge. Deborah began pelting them with eggs, aiming toward their faces. “Don’t you touch me!” she cried.

  From the direction of the garden, she heard the Hershberger girls and Mattie hollering as they came running toward the lodge. Behind her, Rosetta and Christine rushed out onto the porch.

  “Don’t think for a minute you’re going to get away with this, Isaac Chupp!” Rosetta cried. She had grabbed the scrub bucket they’d used to clean the kitchen floor, and when she flung the dirty water in Isaac’s face, he sputtered like an angry cat—but it slowed him down. Christine, who had carried a bolt of blue curtain fabric downstairs, pitched it fiercely at Kerry, making him stumble and slip in the wet grass. When the redhead saw that Mattie, Laura, and Phoebe were rushing at them with their rakes and hoes, he fled down the gravel lane toward the camp entrance.

  Isaac seemed to think escape was the better option, as well. He was close on Kerry’s heels—until the Hershberger girls launched their garden tools at his feet and tripped him.

  “Don’t let him get away!” Laura cried as he hit the ground.

  “We can do this, girls! We’ve got him outnumbered,” Phoebe said as she and Mattie rushed around to either side of him.

  Rosetta hurried over before Isaac could get his feet under him and stuffed the plastic scrub bucket over his head. Deborah and Christine joined the fray, bringing along the partial bolt of fabric, which was coming unwound.

  “Roll him up like a rug,” Christine muttered. “I think we’ve got enough fabric here to do the job.” She tossed the bolt to the ground and began to unwind it on one side of Isaac while her sisters and daughters pinned his flailing hands to his sides and grabbed his feet. When they had shoved him onto the loose end of the fabric, Deborah tucked the sturdy cotton around him and held it in place. She pushed him from the middle while the others rotated him at the ends, until Isaac’s arms were bound close to his sides and he couldn’t move his legs. With a look of great satisfactio
n, Christine removed the last of the fabric from the cardboard center of the bolt.

  The bucket had rolled away, revealing Isaac’s paint-splotched, egg-smeared face and his saturated blond hair—not to mention his startled expression. Out near the campground entrance, a car engine roared to life. Tires squealed on the blacktop.

  “That jerk’s driving off in my car!” Isaac protested, struggling frantically to loosen the fabric that was bound around him.

  “Silly you, leaving the keys in it. So now you’ve missed your ride,” Laura remarked. “Fair enough, considering how you tried to hurt Deborah again.”

  “Get those bungee cords Amos keeps on the basement shelf,” Rosetta suggested. “We can secure the fabric with that and leave him here until the men come—”

  “You won’t get away with this,” Isaac muttered as he kicked and wiggled.

  “You don’t have a leg to stand on, and we’re all witnesses to what you’ve tried to do to Deborah today,” Christine replied. She and her sisters and Deborah stood along either side of him, pinning him with their feet while Laura ran to fetch the cords. “So tell me this, Isaac. Was it you who set the barn afire at our place, too?”

  Isaac’s eyes widened in his eggy, paint-splotched face, but he quickly resumed his defensive attitude. “You’ve got no proof about any of—”

  “Well, God knows,” Rosetta interrupted him. “And Deborah witnessed your latest escapade, too.”

  “I’m calling your dat,” Mattie said. “We’ll see how eager the bishop is to come get you after I tell him what you’ve done.” She wrapped an arm around Deborah’s shoulders. “Come inside with me, dear. You’ve gone through enough for one day.”

  Deborah didn’t realize how tightly wound she was until she nearly stumbled trying to keep up with Mattie’s stride. Noah’s mamm slowed her pace then, lowering her voice as they ascended the stairs to the porch. “You’re shaking like a scared rabbit, and it’s no wonder,” she murmured soothingly. “Let’s sit you down with a glass of lemonade while I make that phone call.”

  Deborah nodded mutely, allowing Mattie to steer her through the lobby and the dining hall toward a stool in the kitchen. She was still horrified at how Isaac and Kerry had sneaked up on her—how they had carefully checked everyone else’s whereabouts before they’d trapped her. How long had they been at Promise Lodge? Had they made it all the way upstairs without Rosetta and Christine becoming aware of them? Or had they heard the women’s voices and continued their search for her?

  She didn’t really want to know. Deborah sipped gratefully at the lemonade Mattie had poured, but she had no appetite for the brownie Noah’s mamm put in front of her.

  Mattie opened a kitchen drawer near the wall phone and pulled out a small directory. “Gut thing we brought this with us from Coldstream,” she remarked as she thumbed through the pages. “Obadiah’s most likely at the auction barn, so I’ll call there first.”

  Resolutely, Mattie gazed at the phone, gathering her thoughts. Then she punched the number buttons and waited.

  “Jah, Mose, this is Mattie Schwartz,” she said brusquely. “Put your dat on . . . no, I won’t give you a message for him. Get him now. Your little brother’s in big trouble.”

  Deborah’s eyes widened as she broke off a corner of the brownie. She’d never heard Mattie speak in such a sharp tone—and to a man, no less. Mattie squared her shoulders, gripping the receiver. “Obadiah, this is Mattie Schwartz and we’ve got Isaac here at Promise Lodge,” she said. “He came after Deborah, to hurt her again—still up to no gut, after he set the Bender barn afire. If you’re not here by one o’clock to fetch him, we’re turning him over to the sheriff.” Without waiting for the bishop’s response, she hung up.

  Deborah let out the breath she’d been holding. “So, what’ll we do with Isaac?”

  “Leave him right where he is,” Mattie replied. “We’ll let him sweat it out until his dat gets here—or the sheriff comes.”

  Mattie’s shoulders relaxed. She reached for the pitcher of lemonade and another glass. “I hope to gutness Amos and the boys come back before Obadiah arrives,” she murmured. The stream of lemonade shimmied as she poured it. “We’ll hear no end of the bishop’s accusations and threats if it’s just us women here. That’s a sad thing to say about the leader of our home church district, but it’s true.”

  Nodding, Deborah took a long drink of her lemonade. “I—I was never so glad to see you three sisters and the girls,” she murmured. “What’s scary is how Isaac and Kerry watched Amos and the boys leave, and then figured out where all the rest of you were, so they found me painting by myself.”

  “Which tells you how smart Isaac is, but in the wrong ways. We fixed their wagons, though,” Mattie replied with a shaky laugh. “I’m not quite sure how we did it, but the Gut Lord was working right alongside us or we’d never have caught Isaac.”

  Deborah breathed deeply, finally able to believe she was in no further danger today. “Let’s take the lemonade and brownies out to the porch. The others have surely worked up a thirst.”

  Once the six of them had placed the wicker porch chairs around the table where the treats were, they were smiling again.

  “This was a fine idea,” Laura said as she took a second brownie. “We planted a lot of sweet corn this morning, and it was getting hot out there in the garden.”

  “Christine and I were making gut progress on our curtains, too,” Rosetta said.

  Deborah sighed as she gazed beyond the bushy trumpet vines toward the line of brown cabins. “I’d better mop up that paint I threw at Isaac and Kerry. It’ll be drying on the floor—”

  “Phoebe and I can help you with that,” Laura insisted. “With some scrub brushes and elbow grease it’ll look gut as new.”

  “You were mighty quick-thinking, to slow those boys down with your paint,” Christine remarked with a nod. “It’s a gut thing you hollered for us when you did, too. Out here where we don’t know many folks yet—and where we’re a distance from the Wickey house—we’ve got to watch out for each other.”

  “Hey!” Isaac hollered from his spot in the yard. “I have to go.”

  The women and girls glanced at him. “How’s that, again?” Rosetta asked.

  Isaac glowered. “I need to use the bathroom.”

  “Nice try, but we’re not about to turn you loose,” Phoebe said.

  “Jah, don’t let us stop you,” Laura chimed in. “We won’t watch, we promise.”

  When Isaac smarted off in protest, Rosetta stood up to glare at him, placing her hand on her hip. “High time you got a taste of humiliation, even if wet pants aren’t half of what you and that redheaded friend of yours heaped on Deborah,” she said sternly. “Consider this fair warning that we folks at Promise Lodge won’t tolerate your lies and wrongdoing.”

  “Puh!” he replied, struggling against the fabric and the bungee cords. “When my dat sees what you’ve done to me, he’ll—”

  “He’ll be getting a head-on dose of the truth about the trouble you’ve been stirring up,” Mattie informed him in the same tone her sister had used. Then she looked out toward the road. “And here come Preacher Amos and my boys. I’m sure they’ll want to hear every detail of your visit.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  As Noah listened to the women’s account of how Isaac and Kerry had slipped onto Promise Lodge property, catching Deborah unaware, his heart rose into his throat. It was all he could do not to kick at Isaac as the blond troublemaker lay in the yard wrapped in the wet blue fabric that was secured with three bungee cords. While the chain of events his cousins and aunts had described was almost comical—wrangling Isaac with a scrub bucket, their rakes, and a bolt of fabric—Noah was gravely aware of what would have happened had Deborah not gotten away from the intruders.

  Preacher Amos was interrogating Isaac about the Bender barn fire, gazing sternly down at the bishop’s son, so Noah joined Deborah, Laura, and Phoebe as they went to clean up the paint-splattered cabin. “All thr
ee of us fellows probably shouldn’t leave the property at the same time anymore,” he remarked. “At least until we’re sure Chupp and Corbett won’t be back.”

  “Jah, that might be wise,” Phoebe replied. “The way we women were all spread out, busy at our projects, it’s a wonder we got to Deborah in time to help her.”

  When Noah stepped inside the cabin, he stopped immediately so he wouldn’t step in puddled paint. His eyes widened as he took in the ladder on its side, the overturned paint tray in the center of the room, the roller lying a few feet away—and beige paint flung in so many directions, it appeared that Deborah had thrown an entire gallon of it.

  “Oh, my,” Laura murmured. “I’ve never known you to be so messy, Deborah.”

  Noah smiled halfheartedly at his younger cousin’s attempt to lighten the impact of the struggle that had taken place in this room. He put his arm around Deborah’s shoulders. “I don’t know how you kept away from them,” he said earnestly, “but so help me, if those guys had gotten hold of you—”

  Deborah placed her finger across his lips. Her green eyes were wide, as serene as a shady glen on a summer day. “It’s behind us now,” she said. “I prayed for Jesus to help me, and He came through. ‘God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.’”

  “Can’t argue with that,” Phoebe remarked. She went down on her knees to sop up the nearest pool of paint with an old towel.

  Using steel wool pads, scrub brushes, and lots of water, the four of them made good progress at cleaning up the cabin. As they worked, Noah described the many items for sale at the mercantile. He was answering the girls’ questions about other places to shop in Forest Grove when raised voices drifted through the screen door from the yard.

  “I don’t know what you people think you’re doing, holding my boy hostage,” Bishop Obadiah said hatefully. “And I will not tolerate any more phone messages from you in such a tone, Matilda Schwartz. You know better than to address me—”