High Desert Haven (The Shepherd's Heart)

by Lynnette Bonner

  “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; For you are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.”

  Nicki could remember like it had happened yesterday—Father Pedro from the mission school she had attended as a child, explaining those words. “The psalmist, he was a shepherd, no?” The class had nodded. “And when his sheep were in danger, what did he use to protect them, besides his sling shot?”

  “His rod and staff,” the class echoed in unison.

  “Good! You sometimes listen when I teach, eh?” He smiled good-naturedly. “Yes. The rod and staff, and in the same way, when death comes knocking on our doors,” he rapped loudly on his wooden desk for emphasis, causing several of the girls to jump and a titter of laughter to pass through the room, “we know that our Heavenly Father, who loves us much more than a shepherd loves his sheep, will come to our aid, yes?”

  Again the class nodded.

  “Good! God loves you. He is not going to abandon you to the wolves, and predators of this world. It says He will be with you! Imagine that: God with you, helping you, protecting you. Ahhh, now that is a God worth serving, yes?”

  The thunder of horses’ hooves in the yard brought Nicki back to the present. She frowned and stood to see who it might be. John was not supposed to be back from checking the ranch perimeter until later this evening.

  Jason whipped off his hat, taking the four creaky stairs up to Gram’s porch in two strides. The hinges groaned loudly as, not bothering to knock, he opened the door and entered the house where he had been raised. Excitement built inside him. Gram hadn’t changed a thing about the house since he’d left. Her rocker still sat by the front window with her worn Bible and spectacles on the table beside it. The woven rag rug that he and Marquis had spent all one winter creating still graced the floor in front of the fireplace. The settee still sported one of her handknit afghans draped across the arm, and the painting he’d done of a wolf pack when he was about thirteen still hung on the wall above the mantle in all its hideousness. He grinned. He’d tried to talk her into taking that down a number of times, but she had never done it. She said it was her reminder to pray for him. Well, he wouldn’t argue with that anymore. He could use all the prayers he could get.

  He made his way quietly through the house, anticipating the delighted surprise that would dawn on Gram’s face when she saw him.

  The living room and dining room were at the front, but at the back there was also a small parlor used just for family. It was there Jason assumed Gram and Marquis to be. If they were anywhere else in the house, they would have heard him enter through the squeaky portal.

  Jason stepped into the back hallway.

  “Jeff, don’t!” Marquis’ voice drifted through the door from the parlor.

  His heart seized in his chest. Don’t what? Jason had heard that strained tone before. She meant what she was saying.

  “Jeff, stop it!”

  Jason paused, wondering who Jeff might be. He eased the strap off his pistol and debated whether he should enter the parlor with gun in hand. “Jeff!”

  Marquis’ squeal sent shivers of alarm racing through Jason’s veins and, without further hesitation, he barged through the door.

  A man was leaning over Marquis, seated on the settee, about to kiss her! “What in—Marquis!” Jason lunged across the room, grabbed the man by one shoulder, spun him around, and smashed one fist solidly into his mouth.

  The man staggered and fell to the floor.

  Marquis screamed. “Jeff? What happened?” Hands outstretched, she felt swiftly for her cane.

  Before the man on the floor could even blink, Jason had the barrel of his gun leveled at his head. Never taking his eyes off the man on the floor, Jason said, “Marquis are you all right?”

  Marquis, one hand clutching her cane and the other on her chest, asked in a tremulous voice, “Jason?”

  “Don’t worry, Marquis, I’m here. This man won’t be bothering you again, ever.” The last word he directed at the man on the floor who now gingerly wiped the bloodied corner of his mouth. With a gesture of his free hand Jason directed the man to get up, but the barrel of his gun never wavered.

  Suddenly Marquis recovered from her shock. “Jason! Did you just punch Jeff?” Then her voice became truly alarmed. “Jeff! Are you okay?”

  “I’m all right, Marquis. Who is this madman? A jilted admirer?” Jeff was now on his feet but kept his hands carefully in sight.

  “Well…this is Jason.” Then, “Jason, is it really you?”

  “Yeah, I came home to see you and Gram.”

  With more confidence this time Marquis said, “Jeff, I’d like you to meet Jason.”

  “Well, honey, I know you have a brother named Jason, but this tornado on wheels couldn’t be him, could it?”

  Marquis smiled. “I’m afraid so, dear.”

  Jason frowned, perplexed at Marquis’ endearment. “Marquis? You know this man?”

  At this Marquis giggled. “Jason, I would like you to meet my husband, Jeff Grant.”

  “Husband!”

  Marquis nodded serenely and Jeff, hands now resting on his hips, glared passionately.

  Jason glanced down at the gun in his hand and then back to Jeff. A slow smile spread. “Husband, huh?”

  Jeff nodded.

  Jason holstered the gun and extended his hand. “Sorry.”

  Marquis, hearing the whisper of metal on leather, gasped. “Jason! Jeff, was he holding a gun on you?”

  Jeff wiped the corner of his mouth once more, eyeing Jason’s extended hand. “Yes he was, Marquis.” Then a hint of a smile showed in his eyes as he spoke to Jason, taking his hand. “I guess you must love her at least half as much as I do.”

  Jason grinned. “What were you hollering about anyway, Marquis? With you yelling, I just assumed he was forcing his attentions on you.”

  A blush shaded Marquis’ cheeks. And Jeff took a step toward Marquis, resting one hand protectively on her shoulder.

  “Jeff was…tickling me.”

  Jason rubbed a hand across his mouth to hide another smile. Jeff tossed him an unrepentant grin as he gently squeezed Marquis’ shoulder.

  Irritation flooded in. “Well, you could’ve at least given me some warning. A guy likes to know when his sister is getting married. Or is married.”

  “Oh Jason, I’m so sorry. We didn’t know when you’d be able to make it home. When you didn’t respond to our first telegram, we sent Rocky to the Triple J to find you, but they said you had gone to Dodge City and they didn’t know exactly when you would be back. So we went ahead with the ceremony. But I sent you a telegram telling you all about it.”

  “To Dodge City! That was November! How long have you two been married?”

  “Two months.”

  “Two months! Marquis, I left in October. If you’ve been married two months that means you got married sometime in November and that means you couldn’t have known this man for more than three or four weeks before you got married.”

  Marquis’ unseeing stare was complacent. “Jason you’re starting to sound a little paranoid.”

  Jason opened his mouth to reply, then glanced at Jeff and snapped it shut. This man was his brother-in-law, after all. And he was already glaring at him like a mad bull about to charge.

  “For your information, dear brother,” there was an icy tension in Marquis’ words, “Jeff and I wrote to each other for two years before we ever met.”

  “You wrote to each other.” Jason turned to Jeff. “You know Braille?” Jeff gave a single nod.

  Marquis continued, “Jeff is a professor at a school for the blind in Portland. The school had some correspondence courses, one of which I enrolled in, and that is how we met.”

  Jason didn’t feel like talking about this anymore. “Where’s Gram?”

  “She went down to the mercantile to get some things,” Jeff answered.

  Jason spun on his heel. “I’ll get you some ice for that cut,
” he tossed over his shoulder as he stomped toward the kitchen.

  In the kitchen, Jason leaned his fists into the counter, hunching his shoulders as he stared out the window in thought. What was suddenly making him feel edgy? He trusted Marquis and knew she wouldn’t have rushed into marriage hastily. In fact, now that he thought about it, he remembered her mentioning she was corresponding with a man from a school for the blind. He hadn’t paid much attention at the time. But now she was married and he…

  He what? He hadn’t been there? He was the last to know? He wasn’t needed by her anymore? Was that it?

  Understanding hit him like a 2,000-pound charging bull. I’m angry, aren’t I, Lord?

  Banging through the back door, Jason headed toward the dugout, where he knew a block of ice would be. As he chipped away some of his frustration on the block resting in the dim, dank cellar, he chastised himself for being so temperamental. He should be happy for his sister; instead he felt a petty irritation over the fact that she no longer needed his support.

  “Okay, Lord,” he said out loud, pausing to glance out the door, “if you sent this man to Marquis, then he must be what she needed. Just help me to accept him. Open my eyes to his good qualities. And help me to know where I should go from here with my life.”

  Marquis had a husband. So what was he to do now? Truth-telling, there were virtually no jobs to be found in the little town of Shilo, and he had known it would take some doing to find work. He had planned on having Marquis move back into Gram’s room so he could stay in the second bedroom for a while as he searched for a job. But somehow he didn’t think that Marquis and her young husband would enjoy sharing a room with Gram.

  The thought brought a brief smirk, before he grew serious again.

  Marquis would no longer need his financial support…but Gram would. He’d start looking for work tomorrow. The Lord would iron out the housing situation. For now he could sleep on the floor.

  3

  Nicki rose from the table and hurried to the low door of the soddy. She had to stoop to get out the door, and the sun glaring off the snow momentarily blinded her as she exited the dim interior of the house.

  Shading her eyes, she squinted to see who rode into the yard at such breakneck speed. Looking past the neglected pole corral, she saw the dark shapes of three horses thundering toward the house. Two men were upright, but the third draped over the saddle, and as the men pulled up in a skidding halt she could see he was severely wounded.

  Blood dripped from a nasty, concave gash along his hairline, and one of his arms hung at an odd angle.

  Suddenly her neighbor, William, was beside her. “Nicki, don’t look. Come with me.”

  Nicki pulled her elbow from his grasp and did not move. She stared dumbfounded at the wounded man the other rider was easing from the saddle. One hand went to her mouth and she moved forward. “John!”

  The man carried John toward the soddy, but Nicki quickly took charge, lifting her skirts and heading for the bunkhouse. “No! Not in there, the baby is sleeping, and he does not need to see his Papa like this.” She gestured to one of the spread’s two ranch hands. “Ron, go into the house and get me a clean blanket. You,” she motioned to the man carrying John, “bring him over here to the bunkhouse. Conner, run clear a place to lay him.”

  Before they had moved the few yards to the bunkhouse, Ron was back with a blanket and hurried in ahead of them to lay it across the first bunk that Conner, the second ranch hand, had cleared off.

  Nicki spoke again as she entered the dim interior of the freezing cold bunkhouse, “Ron, go back to the house and bring me all the hot water on the stove, then put some more on in my largest kettle. Conner, go get some wood and get a fire going in here. Then ride for the doctor.”

  The men moved to do her bidding, and all the while the man who had first spoken to her stayed by her side. “Tell me what happened, William.” Nicki finally acknowledged her neighbor’s presence as she set to work cutting John’s shirt away from his broken arm.

  He ran a tired hand over his stubble-roughened face and glanced around the interior of the bunkhouse before he replied. “We were out checking the stock, like we always do after a particularly hard storm. John stopped in town early this morning. I happened to be there and needed to check my stock too, so we decided to ride out together. We had just come around a corner along the Deschutes River canyon…you know, that part along the edge of your place that is so steep.” William stopped, rested his hands on his hips, and shook his head. “It all happened so fast. One minute everything was fine, and the next minute his horse shied away from something and John lost his balance and went over the edge of the cliff. If I hadn’t had my hand Slim there to help me, he probably would have bled to death right there in the canyon bottom.”

  Nicki frowned. They had been riding so close to the edge that he fell off? Ron entered with the requested hot water, and Nicki used the opportunity to cast a look at Slim, who sat hunched on one of the bunks watching the proceedings with casual interest. He was a tall man, perhaps the tallest she had ever seen, which explained why he was hunched over the way he was. He was skinny too. Skinny as a corral pole. His boots were run down at the heel, and a drooping mustache completely covered his mouth. Slim nodded, indicating his assent to William’s story, solemn eyes meeting hers for only a moment.

  “Go on, William,” Nicki said quietly as she dipped a rag Ron had thoughtfully brought into the water and washed the deep gash on John’s brow. She could see the white of bone where the flesh was missing. He groaned, but he did not come to.

  “Well, there’s not much else to say. We got a rope around him and pulled him back up to his horse and then rode here as fast as we could.”

  Nicki frowned. John was a good rider. It wasn’t like him to lose his balance in the saddle.

  But if Nicki had learned anything in her young life, it was that the west was a brutal place. Accidents happened often here. The year she turned fifteen her brother Juan had lost his hand when he cut it on a rusty hay fork. And just last week at church the Snows had reported that their neighbor’s wife had been killed when the cow she was milking kicked her in the head. The family planned to move back east, and their land would revert to the bank. Things happened that could not be foreseen or prevented.

  Nicki pushed away her niggling questions about the accident. William had been their friend and neighbor since just after they moved into the valley. She knew he would have done everything in his power to help John.

  Conner brought in the wood, but Ron took over building up the fire and soon Nicki heard Conner’s horse galloping out of the yard. Looking at the bone protruding from John’s arm and the nasty bowl-shaped laceration on his forehead, Nicki prayed the doctor would come in time to save her husband’s life.

  She gently smoothed his sweat-soaked hair away from his brow and considered their relationship. Although they had been married under unusual circumstances to say the least, she had come to depend on this man. He did not love her, only lusted after her, but he had treated her better than most, she knew. No, she didn’t love him, but he was the father of her son, and he had been good to her. She shivered and felt William’s warm leather jacket settle around her shoulders. She glanced up. He smiled reassuringly and rested his hand gently on her shoulder. “I’ll send for Tilly to watch the boy for you,” he said before heading out the door into the late afternoon gloom.

  She tended John through the night as best she could, praying that Conner would be able to find Dr. Rike in time. But it was not to be. Nicki had just pulled the sheet up over John’s face when Conner and Doctor Rike hurried through the bunkhouse door.

  Conner grimaced and snatched his hat off his head in a gesture of frustration.

  Without a word Nicki brushed past the two men and headed for the house. She could think of only one comfort she needed at this moment. And it wasn’t until she took a sleepy Sawyer from the arms of Tilly Snow, the young girl from church who had come to sit with him, that the tear
s came. As Sawyer laid his little head on her shoulder she rested her cheek against the soft hair at the back of his neck and let the tears fall. How was she going to raise this precious child alone? His papa had been the world to him, for although John had not loved her, he had doted on his son. and Sawyer was going to be lost without his papa. She rubbed his little back, listening to his deep, even breathing. So innocent and unaware of the gaping, black valley that had just opened up before them.

  She allowed herself to close her eyes for a minute, then reality rushed in. Her eyes snapped open. “Tilly, I hate to ask, but do you think your mother could spare you for a couple of days?”

  Tilly’s tender, brown eyes glistened, and she blinked rapidly. “I’m sure that would be fine, Mrs. Trent.”

  “I’ll send Conner over to tell her. I really appreciate it.”

  Setting Sawyer into his high chair, Nicki busied herself getting his breakfast. If she worked, she wouldn’t have time to dwell on her loss.

  “I can do that, Mrs. Trent. Why don’t you sit down and rest? You’ve been up all night.”

  “Thank you, Tilly. If you will get Sawyer some breakfast, I’ll head out and send Conner to your parents’ place. And then I need to talk to Ron Hanson about a couple of things. Would you be all right in here with Sawyer for a while?”

  Tilly nodded, and as Nicki moved out of the house, she prayed for strength.

  Nicki found Ron and Conner standing together next to the jumbled heap of the rundown corral, arms folded against the cold.

  Walking up quietly, Nicki tucked a curl behind her ear and fleetingly realized she had not combed her hair yet today. She was still wearing William’s leather coat, the sleeves rolled up, and her back ached as though someone had taken a sledgehammer to it.

  The two men turned toward her. She stared off into the distance, trying to gather her thoughts and come to grips with the fact her husband was dead.