by Emily Woods
The muscles in his jaw clenched, and she wondered if she’d said too much.
“I wish I didn’t have to, but I have no choice,” he muttered so quietly that she wasn’t sure she’d heard him.
“We all have a choice,” she replied softly and slowly, not wanting to say too much.
“No, I don’t. If I go back to Italy without you, I am risking not only my own life, but my family’s as well. If I let you go, what will Salvatore do? Send another man to bring you back. It is hopeless.”
Her mind ran in ten directions at once. Clearly, whatever John had said to him had some effect. “What if you say I ran away and you couldn’t find me? What would he do then?”
A small look of hope lit his face, but then it clouded again. “He would interrogate me and find out the truth. I would be killed and my family would be in danger.”
She tried a different approach. “What if you just didn’t come back? What would he do then?”
Again, he shook his head. “Already I sent him a telegram saying that I found your ranch. He will send another man, and then what should I do? Live here my whole life?”
It did seem hopeless, but she refused to give up. However, she was out of ideas for the moment. Closing her eyes, she prayed fervently, asking the Lord for direction and wisdom. Then, an idea so bold came to her that she couldn’t believe it was from God.
“I think I should send a telegram to Salvatore telling him that you were killed by falling off the train, that I pushed you, and you died.” Her enthusiasm for the story started to gain momentum. “I can also write that I am leaving America and will go to Canada to make a new start.”
For a moment, he seemed to consider this. “Really? You would do that?” But then he shook his head again. “He may still send someone to find you. I’m sorrier than I can say that I told him where your cousin’s ranch is.”
She thought about it some more, refusing to give up. “Then John will send the telegram,” she said, not immediately realizing what she was saying. “He will tell Salvatore that we were struggling and both of us fell out of the train and died.”
The idea seemed plausible, but when she looked at his face, she saw that his features had hardened.
“Who will send this telegram?” he asked, his voice cold as ice and his eyes glinting dangerously.
Fear shot through her, and she began to tremble. “I— That is…”
“I will send the telegram,” John said calmly from the door of their car. Evidently, he’d been listening to their conversation and had decided that he needed to intervene. “You can be angry that we tricked you, but I promise that everything I told you was the truth. I did have a terrible job, suffered a nervous breakdown, threw my life away on drinking and gambling, and then gave my heart to Jesus. I never lied to you about one thing.”
“You do lie,” he hissed back in English. “You come for Elise.”
John entered the car and sat down, leaning back and relaxing as though in the company of great friends instead of a criminal and the person he’d kidnapped. “Yes, I did, but then I realized that God sent me here for you. Now, you have a choice. Do what’s in your heart because you know it’s right, or try to carry on with what your boss said. But I promise you that you won’t be successful.”
Something in John’s words must have angered him because Alfonso reached for his gun under his jacket. Quick as a flash, John sprang across the short space and relieved him of his weapon before it was even completely out of its holster. Dumbfounded, Alfonso found himself staring down the barrel of the weapon in a matter of seconds.
“How…?” He was so surprised that he couldn’t even form the question. Elise was also rendered momentarily speechless.
“You…were police?” she asked finally.
“Everything alright in here?” the conductor asked, poking his head in. “Another passenger reported hearing a ruckus.”
In the time it had taken for the conductor to open the door, John had managed to conceal the weapon under her skirts, but she could see that it was still pointing at Alfonso.
“Quite fine,” John replied. “Right, my friend?” He gave Alfonso a cool look, and the man looked up at the conductor and smiled.
“Is fine. Grazie.”
The man looked unconvinced, but couldn’t do anything more. “Alright then, but let’s keep things quiet. Some people are trying to rest.”
Once the coast was clear, John moved the gun slightly to show Alfonso that he was still very serious. “I wanted to give you the opportunity to make the right choice when you had a chance, but I guess you weren’t ready. So, what do you say now?”
With a short bark of laughter, Alfonso replied, “Okay. Your way. I no have choice, sì?”
“Sì,” John replied with a grin. “Now, I’m going to throw this gun out the window, and we’ll carry on as friends. What do you say to that?”
Elise wanted to object, but before she could utter a word, John sent the gun flying and then reached out to shake Alfonso’s hand. “You’re a good man,” he told him solemnly. “You just needed to see it. Now, let’s plan what we’re going to say to this DeLuca, okay?”
A half-hour later, the three of them had composed a very reasonable and innocent seeming telegram that merely said, “Elise and Alfonso are lost to you. For more information, please contact Detective Inspector Irving, New York Pinkerton Agency.”
With a grin, the three of them got off at the next station, sent the telegram from the nearest post office, and bought return tickets.
They were going home.
Elise could hardly fathom all that had happened in the past twenty-four hours. First, she’d been about to confess her past to Kate and her family, then she was abducted and rescued, and now she was sending Alfonso to Toronto, Canada. He said that his grandfather’s brother had immigrated there years before, and he might be able to find him. Elise generously gave him the money from her skirt toward his new start. He tried to refuse it, but John pressed it into his hands.
“This is what you deserve. Make a new start and be a good man. Hopefully, you can start a business or something. Go with God.”
“Sì,” he replied with tears in his eyes. “With God. Grazie.”
Elise and John bade him farewell with smiles and good wishes for the future, promising to pray for him. He promised to contact them when he’d settled down and to change his life. He would follow God now, and leave his old life behind.
“Now,” Elise started, turning toward him with mock suspicion, “do you have anything you want to tell me?”
He laughed lightly and reached for her hand. “So many things,” he said with a grin. “But first…” Ever so slowly, giving her every opportunity to turn away or step back, John leaned down and gently placed the softest kiss on her lips. It was so light that she might not have felt it except every nerve in her body was singing. She could barely comprehend what he said next, but was glad that she did. “I had to do that. Now, I will answer any and all of your questions. After all, a woman should know about the man who intends to marry her.”
Words froze on her tongue, and all she could do was stare. Finally, a smile blossomed across her face, and she stood on tiptoe to press a longer kiss to his lips, making sure that he could feel it and not caring about the handful of onlookers who tittered behind their backs. “Questions later,” she murmured, enjoying the look of surprise on his face. “But first, an answer. Yes.”
With a whoop of joy, John lifted her off the ground and spun her around. Although he was nearly crushing her ribs, joy rippled up through her chest and burst forth from her mouth in the form of a laugh.
She was finally free.
Epilogue
After arriving home, much to everyone’s great relief and delight, John and Elise announced their intention to marry. Every person present either gaped or gasped, but after a few seconds, most of them rushed forth to offer their congratulations. Only Thomas held back. When the congratulations subsided a little, John approach
ed him.
“I hope that we can still be friends,” John murmured, pulling him away from the joyful throng. “I value your work here, and I’d be sad to lose you, but I understand you probably want to move on.”
Thomas’s expression changed from downcast to shocked. “Are you firing me?” he worried. “I promise I won’t bother Miss Elise or nothing.”
John gave a little laugh. “I’m not worried about that. I just thought you might find it hard to stay on, knowing how you felt about her.”
Giving a little shrug, Thomas replied, “Aw, that weren’t nothing but a little crush. I see that now. Besides, I’m too young to settle down.”
Now John laughed for real and gave him a hearty clap on the back. “That’s the spirit! Good for you. Have a lot of fun while you can before you…” John caught Elise’s eye at the moment and he spoke the truth instead of the trite words that were about to fall from his lips. “Before you find the love of your life. She’s out there, Thomas. You have to have faith.”
Later that day, Elise asked him what he’d been talking to Thomas about.
“I just told him that he has to be patient and keep believing that God will reward him one day.”
“Oh,” she replied, a sparkle in her eyes. “Is that what happened to you?”
“Yes,” he answered warmly, lowering his head to capture her lips with his, warming them both from the inside out. “That is exactly what happened to me.”
Thank You
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Thomas Wells put down his mallet, yanked the checkered bandana from around his neck, and passed it over his neck and face. Hot, grimy, and sweaty, he reached for the canteen lying near his feet and took a long drink of water. The liquid soothed his parched throat, but he berated himself for leaving it out in the sun. Tepid water was not invigorating. Hard work like building a fence required something more refreshing.
“Hey, Carl,” he called out to the other young man who was pounding a post into the scorched and unforgiving Montana ground. “Need a refill? I'm headed over to the river.” He was eternally grateful that Triple Range Ranch was located close to the cool waters of Sun River. After grabbing his friend's canteen, he jogged down to its banks and knelt to soak his head before filling up both containers.
He would have liked to stay a while, perhaps do some fishing, swimming or just nothing at all, but that wouldn't be fair to Carl. The foreman of the ranch had assigned them both the task of building a paddock for the horses they were going to be training to be ridden, a job he was looking forward to with great excitement.
Thomas loved everything about life on the ranch—riding out in the open range, feeling that he was one with nature—but the prospect of doing something a little different was likewise thrilling. John Porter, the foreman, felt Thomas had a special affinity with horses and had invited him to take part in the training.
Walking back to the barn, Thomas considered the homestead. Not only did the ranch have over five hundred head of cattle, they also bred horses to sell back east, but the Eastern gentlemen wanted well-broken horses and would pay handsomely for them. Triple Range was expanding, no doubt. And he hoped to expand right along with them.
“Thanks,” Carl said, accepting the canteen. “Sure is hot for early June, huh?” His friend took a long swallow, removed his large hat, and dumped a little over his head. “Whew! That feels mighty good.”
Two years his junior at nineteen, Carl was still considered a greenhorn by most men since he'd only been on the ranch about a year. Thomas, however, had come when he was sixteen, although he'd lied about his age at the time. He worried that the owners, Luke Winston and Marge Tanner, wouldn't hire a teenager, so he'd told them he was eighteen. Not too long ago, he'd confessed his fib, but they just grinned and said they knew it all along.
“Just about a year for you here now, isn't it?” he asked Carl. “How's your ma doing? Still pining for you?”
It was a bit of a joke that Carl seemed to be there almost against his will. His father couldn't afford to feed all the kids they had, so he'd sent Carl out into the world to find his way the day after his eighteenth birthday. John had found him rattling around Miles City after completing a cattle drive and invited him to work on the ranch. Since he'd arrived, the young man had matured a bit, but still suffered from homesickness time to time.
“She's alright,” he replied with a good-natured grin. “My second brother is keeping her mind off me. What about you? How are your folks? Don't think I've ever heard you mention them.”
The smile slid off Thomas’s face, and he gave a little shrug. “Don't know,” he mumbled. “Haven't heard from them in ages.”
It was his own doing, but he wasn't about to tell Carl that. He didn't share personal information with anyone. His past was his own business, and if he wanted to keep living the life he had now, he had to keep it that way. No one from back home knew his whereabouts, something he'd worked hard to make sure happened. The one and only letter he'd sent them was posted in Minnesota on his way west, and he'd only sent that out of consideration for his mother who would have worried otherwise. His father would have only been worrying about the family business, the very thing Thomas was trying to escape. The man wasn’t likely to be pining over his wayward son, at least not emotionally. He thought of his sons as future workers, men to one day take over and maintain the work his grandfather had started. Thomas didn't begrudge the man his priorities. That was the way it was in their world. Men were groomed to take over for their fathers and then trained their sons to do the same. But from an early age, he knew that that would not be his life.
“Just about done here, I think,” Thomas said, looking with satisfaction at the work they'd done. It had taken them three days, but as a result of their labor, a fifteen-square-foot paddock stood ready for the first horse.
“I dunno.” Carl looked around the fenced-in area, his brow lowering in doubt. “Guess it will be up to Luke and John to say.”
At that moment, the clanging of the dinner bell resounded from the house, causing both men to smile. Whether or not the paddock was up to their bosses’ expectations, their work was done for the day. The bell regulated their life that way.
After putting their tools in the barn and washing up in the rain barrel by the side of the house, the two young men scraped their boots on the porch and entered the house. The aroma of fried chicken greeted them, making their mouths water.
“First in again?” Kate, Luke’s wife, commented with a teasing smile. “Guess it pays to work so close to the house.”
“Not necessarily,” Marge answered. She was the real boss of the ranch, but no longer wanted the burden and had passed it on to Luke. Approaching sixty, the
older woman was happy to have the young people take over and help out with the cooking for them all. “They have to wait around smelling it for longer. I'm not serving you two one morsel of this chicken before each man's feet are under the table.”
Her tone was fierce, but her eyes twinkled as she nudged a plate of cookies toward the two young men. They needed no further encouragement, but fell on the treat and devoured them all within five minutes.
“Is there anything that needs doing around here?” Thomas asked after he'd wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “We should keep busy until the others come.” He knew that the other men wouldn't be there for another thirty minutes or so, and he didn't enjoy just sitting around. Over the past five years, he'd become a man who enjoyed manual labor, something which would shock his father.
“If you are very sure you want to work more, the chair in the front room needs attention,” Elise, John's wife, indicated with a wave of her hand. She'd been busy setting the table, but paused to press a hand to her back, most likely to compensate for the weight of the child she carried up front. Her Italian accent was still pronounced, but her English had improved remarkably over the past ten months. She'd married John just one month after arriving, and now their first child was on its way.
A wail from the corner indicated that baby Lucas was awake, but Kate had barely turned her head when eight-year-old Maddie was by her little brother's side.
“Peek-a-boo!” she exclaimed, popping up by his side. The little boy stopped crying immediately and clapped his chubby hands together. “Peek-a-boo!” she repeated. “I see you!” Thomas saw Kate smile tenderly at the scene, and he felt his own throat close. In moments like this, he missed his own mother. She hadn't doted on them the way Kate did on her children, but she'd clearly loved all four of them. It was his father who kept her from being more affectionate, saying that she would spoil them, especially the boys, with too many hugs and kind words.