It was the least he could do.
“Ranger?” Theresa called softly.
He cast a glance over his shoulder. “Yes?”
“Thank you,” she mumbled. Her voice strengthened, and even in the dimness of the candle’s glow, he could see a tear fall. She wiped it away with the corner of her apron and straightened her shoulders. “You’re the answer to a prayer. More’n one, actually.”
Jed ducked his head and made a quick escape as the walls threatened to close in on him. He attempted a prayer of his own several times during the night’s work—work he did with the help of Theresa’s husband, a fellow by the name of Shaw—but mostly he busied his hands and tried to keep his mind as empty as possible. Once they had the dead man buried, Jed said a few words of prayer but kept his own thinking out of it.
At daybreak, the thoughts finally caught up with him. He walked with them swirling around him to the river, where he watched the Brazos until the first of the day laborers arrived along with Shaw to open the landing. Jed’s shoulder pained him and his good eye scratched with the lack of sleep, but he could find no reason to rest.
Instead, he watched with interest as the first of the barrels were carried to the dock. Soon he joined the workers, handling small repairs and filling barrels—all he could manage with only one good shoulder. He continued laboring long past the time the others had stopped for water. At midday, Theresa found him and saw to his wound, fussing as she changed the bandage, then handed him his lunch.
“How is she?” he managed to ask, all the while pretending to concentrate on the chicken leg he held in his hand.
“Same,” she answered as she pressed a cold cloth to his useless eye.
His nod met her gaze, and no more words were necessary. She walked away and left him with the food still held in his fist. Unable to muster an appetite for anything but work, he tossed the best fried chicken he’d ever smelled over his shoulder and went back into the warehouse.
Over the next few days the pattern continued. While Jed worked his worries into submission, Grace Delaney lay behind a closed door Jed dare not open.
For all he knew, his idiotic plan to get rid of the intruder by luring him upstairs into what he thought were empty rooms had put Ben’s wife in that bed. Womenfolk were delicate and confusing creatures, and what went on in that hall probably caused her troubles.
Just another cause to believe he should do something to make up for his sins. To his mind, working his way out of the trouble at hand was the only thing he could do for her, so he spent all the time he could making himself as useful as a one-eyed man with a bad arm could.
The man called Shaw now ran things at the landing, although few along the river realized this. Most thought Jed had assumed the job, and the traffic began to increase. Men who refused to deal with a woman now returned, perfectly happy to do business with a man, especially one who happened to be a Texas Ranger.
In the back of his mind, as Jed hauled what goods he could and worked the small garden behind the house, he held out the possibility of making things right with the Lord and returning to the work he felt that God had called him to do. Someday he’d take care of himself, but for now he could only do this for Ben.
He spent Sunday morning in the ugly chair by the stairs reading the Bible and contemplating those scriptures that didn’t affect him personally. The others he skipped over, promising the Lord he would return to think on them soon.
Returning to the passages proved to be more difficult than he thought. Before the noon meal could be placed on the table, Theresa left to see to the missus, then returned to Jed and sent the family out of the house with a warning not to return until Ruth came for them.
Giving thanks to the Lord for the unusual warmth of the day, Jed led the children to the garden plot and set them to the task of pulling weeds. As he knelt beside the boy who bore his father’s stubborn expression and his mother’s good looks, Jed felt the urge to pray.
Not just the simple words he’d said over the past few days, phrases he’d once knew meant something but now doubted. While his fingers worked the loose, dark soil, his mind turned over the ideas he’d once believed in so strongly.
The Lord. The Bible. His call to ministry. His duty to the Texas Rangers. Each was given much consideration. Finally, he formed the words to speak to God about them.
Lord, I’m coming to You a broken man. I had You written all over my heart, but then I went and killed a man. I took his life into my hands and I shot him dead. Even if he did mean to hurt Ben’s wife and those babies, he was one of Your children and I ought not to have passed judgment on him. That’s Your job, not mine and I was wrong.
“Somethin’ wrong, Mr. Ranger?” the boy beside him asked.
“Wrong, little man?” He cut his glance to the side. “Naw.”
“All right, then.” The kid nodded and moved farther down the row to continue pulling weeds while his sister busied herself stacking twigs and leaves into some sort of creation.
Jedadiah Harte, you are one of My children, too, came the soft answer without warning. It is not up to you to pass judgment on yourself.
“But Lord, I…” The children both looked up in surprise and he shook his head. “Don’t pay any attention to me.”
Mary, the angel in muddy red curls, toddled toward him and settled against his side. “I talk to God, too.” Smiling, she messed up his precise lines with a chubby hand.
“You do?” he asked as he tried to repair the damage.
She nodded. “Sometimes He talks back.” Walking away, she took an oak leaf and buried it under a rock at the edge of the plot.
“Yeah, He does, doesn’t He?” Jed asked under his breath.
“Mama says I’m ’sposed to listen when He tells me somethin’,” the boy commented as he tossed something over his shoulder that looked more like a vegetable plant than a weed.
“Do you?” he asked.
To his surprise, Bennett Delaney, Jr., smiled. “I try,” he said slowly. “But Mama says I’m stubborn like my daddy.”
“Mine used to tell me the same thing,” Jed said, remembering the words of loving chastisement that would trail him until his dying day. “You need to be more like your heavenly Father and less like your earthly one,” his mother had said. Always, he’d pretended he hadn’t heard her. Never would he forget, though.
With those words in mind, he bowed his head and squeezed his good eye shut. Father, let me be more like You. Change my contrary nature and fix my heart so I can be the man You intend.
“You gonna stay with us, Ranger?” the boy asked, interrupting his prayers.
“I don’t rightly know,” was the only answer he had, and it surprised him. Until that moment, staying had been the last thing on his mind. He’d come to Delaney’s Landing on his way to go to work for the Lord. After he’d broken his promise to the Lord and turned his gun on a man, he’d pretty much decided he’d go back to San Antonio as soon as he was able and take back his captain’s job. Suddenly a third option loomed large. He could stay.
Lord, I need to know what You want me to do, so I’m going to need a sign. Tell me who needs me more, You or these kind folks.
Jed ducked his head and rubbed at his good eye. When his vision cleared, he saw Ruth running toward them across the field.
“Come quick, Ranger. Miz Grace be a needin’ you bad.”
Jed raced back to the house, unable to believe the Lord would make his path clear so soon. He burst through the door and down the hall, slowing only when he arrived at the closed bedroom door.
“Lord, make me ready for this,” he said under his breath as he resolutely pushed on the solid wood door.
Theresa stood beside the bed, hunched over a figure he hardly recognized as Grace Delaney. “He’s here, honey,” she murmured as she adjusted the wrinkled blankets and smoothed the woman’s hair away from her face. “I’ll be close by if you need me,” she said softly.
Like a man walking to the gallows, Jed approached the
bed. He stood near enough to touch her, near enough to watch her breath catch and her eyes close. Despite the chill in the room, beads of perspiration dotted her forehead and turned her hair slick and shiny.
She opened her mouth, possibly to speak, but instead began to make faint sounds, little whimpers like a child. Eventually her eyes opened. She fixed her gaze on him, making him feel like he’d just trespassed on a private moment.
“Ruth said you were in need of me,” he said, painfully aware of just how inadequate those words were.
This time she managed a complete nod. “Yes,” she whispered. “My children. Send word to my father.”
“Your father?” Jed shook his head. “About what?”
Grace shifted onto one elbow and made a swipe at the table beside the bed, knocking a paper to the floor. Jed bent to retrieve it. In a shaky hand, someone had written a name, The Honorable Thomas Edwin Beaudry, and a New Orleans address.
Jed offered the paper to her, but she waved it away. “You want me to see that this gets to your father?”
She reached for his hand and caught his wrist. He stared at the pale fingers encircling his arm, then slowly shifted his vision to her eyes. Feral, that’s what she looked like. Once on the trail Jed had run across a mama bobcat in the middle of birthing a brand-new litter. She’d worn the same look.
“If I die, you see to these children, Ranger.” Panic seemed to lie just beneath the words. “Don’t let my babies be orphans.”
Pure terror struck deep in his soul. His heart clutched at what he knew he had to do. He was a ranger, first and foremost, and a missionary of God to boot. He still hadn’t worked out how he would hold onto both these jobs, much less add another to it.
“Ma’am, I can’t—”
“You must. And if my father or brother refuse to come, you have to raise them. Theresa and Shaw will help. Ruth, too.” The grip tightened. “Before God, you have to swear it.”
Chapter 6
Jed closed his eyes, terror swimming like ice water in his veins. Father, I can’t even figure out what I’m supposed to do with myself, much less with a mess of strangers. Instead of a clear answer, Jed heard the laughter of children in the distance and felt a deep peace descend, only to leave a moment later. He opened his eyes. Grace Delaney looked back expectantly.
“I’ll stay,” he said, unable to believe he’d voiced the words.
“Thank you,” she whispered. For a moment, she lay back on the pillow as if all her worries had left her.
Something poured from those eyes besides the tears shimmering there, and whatever it was, Jed felt the impact right down to his boots. It seemed as if this woman had curled up behind his heart and settled there when he hadn’t been looking. A crazy thought, considering the only thing he knew about her was she’d been a mighty fine cook in her younger days.
He felt the need to say something, anything, to shift the focus from him, possibly to keep her from thinking he meant what he’d said. “But you’re going to be just fine, so there’s no need to worry about those babies of yours. Come spring, this one here’s going to be running around, and you’ll have three underfoot.”
“I can tell…” Her words trailed off as a wave of what must have been pain washed over her, tightening her features into a nearly unrecognizable mask that seemed to remain in place an eternity before it slowly ebbed away. “You haven’t been around many babies,” she finished.
“No, I haven’t,” he said, instantly grateful for the change in conversation. “See, I was the youngest of a mess of boys, and my mama said if I’d been first, I’d have been an only child.” Grace almost managed a smile, so he continued. “We were a lively group, and I’m sure we sorely tried my mother’s patience.”
“Your mother,” she whispered through parched lips. “Is she still alive?”
He shook his head. “The fever took her back in forty-one.”
“Mine, too.” A gut-wrenching scream tore any further conversation from her mouth.
Theresa came running, and he fully expected to be sent from the room immediately. Dashing his hopes, the woman ordered him to a place near the head of the bed.
“Grab her by the shoulders and shove hard when I say the word. This baby’s got to come or else we’re gonna lose her.”
In his lifetime Jed had seen many a man suffer. Never had he seen anyone in such a shape as this woman. Never did he intend to see it again, not even through one eye.
“The children,” she managed. “You promised.”
He slid into place behind her and rested his hands on shoulders too thin and delicate to bear the weight of her present troubles. The position pained his own shoulder a bit and made his wound ache, but he knew it was nothing compared to what the woman bore.
From deep within his soul came the urgent call to pray, which he answered with a desperate plea for help. After a moment, Theresa leveled a hard stare at Jed, interrupting his prayers.
“What did you promise about those babies?”
Grace’s cry of agony prevented his answer. What came next robbed him of the power to do anything but breathe, and he almost forgot to do that. From beneath the heavy quilt emerged something wet and bloody. It looked to be about the size of a fair to middling puppy, but without the hair and tail.
It was still and colored a pale blue.
Theresa swirled a length of toweling around it and thrust it toward Jed, her face without expression. Grace’s eyes slid shut, and her body relaxed as if all the life had gone out of her. Easing damp shoulders onto the mattress, Jed accepted the bundle and followed Theresa’s silent direction to take it and leave the room. On his way out, he slipped the letter in his pocket.
He met Shaw on the porch. “Ruth fetched the children down to pick pecans,” the older man mumbled.
Jed nodded and shifted the bundle to rest against his chest. Instinctively, he wrapped the jacket he realized he’d never taken off around the lump of toweling.
With his free hand, he fished out the letter and handed it to Shaw. The elder man’s dark gaze scanned the writing, then looked up to lock with his. A wave of recognition passed between them.
Shaw looked away to study the porch rail. “I believe I’ll saddle up and ride to town,” he said as he placed the letter gingerly in his coat pocket. “Ain’t no boats today, and the hands can manage what might come. Lord willin’ I’ll be back by breakfast.”
“That’s a fine idea,” Jed answered. “Did you say Ruth had the children down by the pecan tree?”
Their eyes met, and understanding dawned on the gentleman’s wrinkled face. He allowed his gaze to fall to the bundle in Jed’s arms.
“I believe I’ll have her fetch them back to the house. They can busy theyselves upstairs here jest as well as they can play at pickin’ pecans.”
Jed passed by the elder man, studying first the ground and then the horizon as he went. It looked to be a few hours before sunset, plenty of time to lay this soul to rest while there was still light left in the day.
Pulling his coat a little closer against his chest, Jed set off. From his wanderings, he knew where to go with the child, and from his dealings with the inquisitive Bennett and Mary, he knew to be careful to stay out of sight lest they be nearby.
The wind blew across him then abruptly shifted and stalled just as he entered the clearing where the pecan tree stood. Warmth flooded his bones and made his weary heart want to lay down his burdens right where he’d stopped. Instead, he clutched the bundle of blankets tighter to his chest and hit his knees like a preacher late for church.
“Lord, I aim to give this little one over to Your care.” The prayer seemed lacking in something, and frustration brought tears to his eyes. Or maybe it was the body in his arms. He cleared his throat and tried again. “You took him before he even got started, but if You could, give him a warm bed and a full belly tonight in heaven because he’s a scrawny little thing.”
Carefully, he unwrapped the bundle a bit to show the Lord. Shock rendered him s
peechless when he saw two dark blue eyes looking back at him from a tiny face just as pink as the evening sky.
The war whoop he’d perfected riding with Jack Hays’s First Texas Division during the Mexican campaign back in forty-six echoed across the trees and seemed to shake the very ground on which he knelt. The babe he held in the crook of his arm began to cry, and so did he as he raced toward the house and the woman busying herself at the stove near the window.
“You hush yourself. Can’t you see Miz Grace is trying to—” Theresa flung the back door open and froze when she heard the baby’s cries. “Oh praise the Lord! Ranger, you done saved us again.”
“I didn’t do anything,” he said, though he knew she took no heed of his words as she collected the child and ran to reunite him with his mother.
Bone tired and weary beyond description, Jed sank into the rocker beside the fire and let the warmth seep into his soul. A floor above him, the children played, while down the hall, women wept aloud.
But there in the kitchen, Jed sat alone with his thoughts. He’d promised the state of Texas to be a ranger, the Lord to be a mouthpiece of the gospel, and Grace Delaney to be the keeper of her children until her father came to claim them. Only a miracle would allow him to do all three.
And if anyone could be counted worthy of a miracle, it sure wasn’t him.
It was a miracle, pure and simple. Through the agony of childbirth, her baby boy had been taken away, and through the grace of God and the work of a single Texas Ranger, he had been returned.
Grace blinked back the tears to focus on the man who’d brought her son back. Every evening for more days than she could count, he had come to her room bearing his leather Bible, just as he carried it now.
At first, he merely sat quietly in the corner, dragging her favorite Empire chair from the parlor to sit quietly and read. Theresa said he’d maintained the habit of guarding her door during the dark days following Adam’s birth, a birth she had little more than a dim memory of.
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