As she looked down the full length of him, she knew that he had at one time been a very tall, and most likely a grand and handsome man.
“My father was tall,” she whispered to herself, taking a cloth from a basin, slowly wiping his sweating brow. “But my father couldn’t be this old. This man must be . . .”
Her thoughts were stolen away when the man slowly lifted his eyelashes and revealed entrancing violet eyes that mirrored Lauralee’s. She gasped and paled, then shook the hope from her heart that finally she had found her father.
And this was not at all the way she had wanted it to be when she found him. This man . . . was . . . dying. She could not bear to think that she might find her father, just to lose him again all that quickly.
Boyd Johnston blinked his eyes over and over again as he stared up at the lovely woman standing at his bedside caressing his brow. His pulse raced. His heart thundered within his chest.
“Are . . . you . . . real . . . ?” Boyd whispered in a voice that held no strength. He slowly raised a shaky, thin hand toward Lauralee’s face. “Tell . . . me . . . I’m dreaming.”
So used to the elderly men making over her, Lauralee laughed sweetly and softly. “No, sir, you aren’t dreaming,” she murmured. “And since you are awake, is there anything I can get you? Would you like to have a drink of water? Are you hungry? Perhaps eating would give you back some of your strength lost to the pneumonia.”
“No, I . . . don’t . . . want food,” Boyd stammered. “Let me look at you up close. Please. Go and lift the shade at the window. Let . . . me . . . see you . . . up close.”
Lauralee’s smile faded and her insides did a strange sort of flip-flop. This man. This stranger. He was not acting the same as the others had, after all, when they had opened their eyes and saw her for the first time. This man seemed to know her. He wanted to get a better look at her to be sure.
But it was foolish of her to make anything of this. She had been only a child when her father had last seen her. He would not recognize her now.
His eyes were the only characteristic that bore the slightest similarity between her father and this man.
And anyone could be born with violet eyes.
“All right, if you wish, I’ll raise the shades,” Lauralee said, feeling strangely weak-kneed as she went to each of the two windows and allowed the blaring sunlight to flood the room.
“Come to me,” Boyd said, his voice weak and gravelly. “Come now. Step up close. Let me see you.”
Lauralee hesitated, then went on to the bedside. “Sir, you are frightening me,” she said, as once again his fingers reached for her face and he ran them over her features. “Who do you think I am?”
“My wife,” Boyd said, a sob lodging in his throat. “Carolyn. My wife, Carolyn. Lord, how you look like my Carolyn.”
Lauralee almost fainted as those words sank into her consciousness. She steadied herself by grabbing for the bed. She peered more intensely at the facial features of this man. If he thought that she was Carolyn Johnston, that had to mean that he had known her. Lauralee did lay claim to being the exact image of her mother!
“You also had a daughter, didn’t you?” Lauralee asked, her voice quavering. She took his trembling hand and clasped it to her bosom. “You did, didn’t you? You had a daughter. Her name was Lauralee.”
She could feel the leap of his pulse as she clung to his hand. She knew that she had hit a nerve. She knew that she had found her father!
Tears flooded Boyd’s eyes. “Lauralee?” he whispered. He tried to raise himself on an elbow but his weakness caused him to fall back onto the bed. “Are you my Lauralee?”
Lauralee could not hold back her emotions any longer. She bent to her knees beside the bed and leaned over and embraced Boyd, her body racked with heart-wrenching sobs. “Father,” she cried. “Oh, Father. I never thought I’d see you again. I . . . thought . . . you . . . were dead.”
The dreaded word “dead” came to her like a bolt of lightning. Soon he would be dead. She had only a short time to be with him, to relish, to form remembrances that could last until her own dying breath.
Bony arms enfolded her. Boyd’s tears mingled with hers as she placed her cheek against his. They clung and cried.
They stayed that way until Dorothy entered the room, gruff and bossy.
“Heaven sakes, Lauralee. What are you doing?” Dorothy asked, gasping loudly. “Get away from the patient. Don’t you have any more control of yourself, than that?”
Dorothy went to Lauralee and grabbed her by the arm and jerked her to her feet. “I’m going to report you,” she snapped in a disgusted tone of voice. “We don’t need someone like you sobbing and weeping over men you don’t even know. What has gotten into you, anyhow?”
Lauralee jerked away from Dorothy. “Get out of here,” she said, leaning to speak into Dorothy’s face. “Do you hear me? Get out of this room.”
Dorothy paled and stiffened. “What did you say?” she balked. “Are you actually ordering me around?”
“It’s time somebody did,” Lauralee said, taking Dorothy by the arm. She ushered her toward the door. “You are the one who is going to go on report. And as far as my father is concerned, never enter this room again. I forbid it.”
Dorothy stopped and glared at Lauralee. “You are not in the position to forbid me anything,” she snapped back. Her mouth dropped open. She turned and stared quickly at Boyd, then back at Lauralee. “Your father?” she said in a drawn out whisper. “This man . . . is . . . your father?”
Lauralee smiled down at Boyd. “Yes, after all these years, I’ve finally found my father,” she said, then glared at Dorothy again. “Now please, leave us alone. I’ll see to his needs. I’m aware enough about pneumonia to know what is required to make him comfortable.”
Lauralee closed the door, then went and sat at her father’s bedside. She wondered about the gleam in his eyes, and the smile fluttering along his pale, thin lips.
“My daughter has grown into a little spitfire, I see,” he said, reaching for her hand, patting it. Then he grew somber. “I imagine you had to learn how to protect yourself after what you must have been through.”
He swallowed hard. “Tell me, Lauralee. Tell me all about it. And I don’t have to ask to know that your mother is no longer alive. I sense it in your behavior. When did she die, Lauralee? Where is she buried?”
Lauralee could hardly find the words, or the courage, to tell him everything. But she knew that he deserved to know. Due to fate, he had not been able to return to his family before the Yankees destroyed everything that had mattered to all of them.
“Mother?” Lauralee managed to say. She rubbed tears from her cheeks with both hands. “Her grave is on the hillside overlooking the house. And even though I was only five, I knew to say a prayer over her grave.”
Tears rolled down Boyd’s cheeks. “She died when you were five?” he gasped out.
“Yes, not all that long after you left, Father,” Lauralee said, her eyes taking in his gauntness. He scarcely resembled that once powerful, muscled man. “The soldiers came. One in particular was the worst of the lot. His hair was red. His eyes were piercing blue. He . . . he . . .”
She hung her head, then blurted out the rest of the truth of that dreadful day. “Oh, Father,” she groaned. “The red-haired, blue-eyed Yankee raped Mother, then . . . then . . . killed her. I was hiding. He didn’t know I was there.”
After she finished her tale, she wished she hadn’t told her father the most brutal part. His color had worsened, as well as his breathing.
Lauralee moved from the chair and sat down on the side of the bed. She swept her father into her arms. “Please don’t blame yourself,” she sobbed, as she could hear him beneath his breath cursing his absence that day, and all the days since. “You were called to duty. How were you to know that the war would be so horrible? And that the soldiers could be so devious? Please, Father, don’t blame yourself. Don’t you see? Your daughter is fine. I was r
aised in the orphanage that sits on the grounds of this hospital. The priests and nuns were good to me.”
“An orphanage?” Boyd said, peering up at Lauralee as she moved out of his embrace. He could not get enough of her. Her face was exactly the same as her mother’s. Small, oval, and exquisite, her eyes veiled with thick, dark entrancing eyelashes.
Yet there was something in her eyes that cut him to the very core—the lack of peaceful happiness.
“Yes, I was taken to the orphanage by a kind man,” Lauralee said, nodding. “There I have lived until now. Soon I will be twenty. Then I will be expected to leave. Father, you and I will leave together. I will make you well again. We will be a family!”
“Lauralee, don’t fool yourself into believing this ailing man will ever leave this hospital alive,” Boyd said, coughing into his cupped hand. “As for you, I must find a way to see to your future before I die. It must be a future with family.”
He paused, then grabbed her hands. “Sweetheart, you are such a beautiful young lady, as you surely were as a child growing into maturity,” he said, his voice growing much weaker as he spoke. “Why is it that . . . no . . . one ever adopted you?”
“Father, I’m not sure if I should tell you.” She smiled sheepishly at him.
“Tell me,” Boyd said. “I want to know everything about you. Everything. Tell me, Lauralee, why you were never adopted? When you were placed with the other children, for people to choose from, surely you stood out from all of the rest as something sweet and beautiful.”
Lauralee reached for a cloth and dipped it into the water basin, then began absorbing the sweat on his brow into it as she caressed his clammy flesh.
“Sweet?” she said, laughing loosely. “No. Not many saw me as sweet when I was at an adoptable age. Instead, as a small child, I was labeled a ‘rebel’ and troublemaker. When people came to the orphanage to choose a child, I always hid away in a closet, the way I hid when the soldier came into our house that day during the war. After a while I had those in charge of the orphanage convinced that I didn’t want to be a part of anyone else’s family. Not when I had my own true Papa out there somewhere who would come for me one day.”
“I would’ve had I known,” Boyd said, choking back more tears. “Oh, but if only I had known where you were. I searched forever for you, Lauralee. But never as far as Saint Louis.”
He coughed again and hugged his chest with his arms in an effort to ward off the pain. “And now that I have found you, it’s too late,” he said, giving her a look that caused her whole insides to ache. “I know my condition. I’ve had pneumonia before. This time I’m not strong enough to get well.”
“I will make it so,” Lauralee said determinedly. She rose to her feet. “I shall go and get Doc Rose. He’ll make you well. I know it.”
“Lauralee, come back here and sit down,” Boyd encouraged, patting the bed at his side. “We’ve got your future to discuss, and we must do it while I am lucid enough.”
Lauralee sat down beside him again. Her eyes were wide as he told her his plan.
“You have been alone without family long enough. You need to be with family,” he said. “And I must arrange that before I die. Then I can die with a smile on my face.”
“Father, I know you mean well,” Lauralee said, knowing that she must face up to the fact that he was dying. All of the forceful intentions of telling him that he was going to live would be foolish, and would make it harder on him to know that she could not face up to the truth. “And I am touched by your concern. But I am no longer a child. No one would take me in at my age.”
“Lauralee, I know that you are no longer a child,” Boyd said, his voice sounding more and more drained. “But family is important. You need to experience the warmth and love of family.”
“Father, perhaps that is true, but I know of no one who would wish to take me in, as family. And I want you to know that I have dreamed of being a part of a family for as long as I can remember. But I only wanted it to be with you. Not strangers.”
“The people who I have in mind aren’t total strangers,” Boyd said, patting her hand. “Darling, I have a distant uncle. He and his wife are childless. When Abner and Nancy were young, Abner was too busy to get involved in adoption proceedings. And now they feel they are too old to adopt a youngster. Sweetheart, you aren’t a youngster, and you are true family to them. We just never got together so that you would know them as a child. I’ll wire Abner and Nancy. I’ll tell them about you. You will have an immediate home to go to.”
He paused, then placed a finger beneath her chin and drew her face down so that they were eye to eye. “You must promise to go to them,” he said thickly. “Lauralee, promise me?”
“Only if you will go with me,” Lauralee blurted out.
“Lauralee, you know as well as I that I have seen the last of my traveling days,” Boyd said wearily. “And you know enough about things to realize that I am not on this earth for much longer. Promise me, Lauralee, that once I am gone, you will go and live with your Uncle Abner and Aunt Nancy.”
“But I do not know them at all,” Lauralee said, sighing heavily.
“They know of you,” Boyd said, patting her hand. “On my brief visits to Mattoon during my travels away from you and your mother before the war, I spoke of you to them. They hungered to see you then. But time was against those sorts of wishes. The travel time from Tennessee to Illinois is not a pleasant thing for a frail woman and small child.”
“You say they make their residence in Mattoon, Illinois?” Lauralee asked, a part of her thrilled with the idea of becoming a part of a true family. Another part of her ached, now truly knowing that it would never be with her father.
“Yes,” Boyd said, sighing when he saw that she was actually considering what he asked of her. “And Mattoon is such a lovely city. Abner Peterson. Judge Abner Peterson and his wife Nancy could be your parents until you find a nice young man with whom to make a family of your own. I know that even before I send the wire their answer will be yes. They will welcome you with open arms and hearts.”
“Father, I don’t know . . .” Lauralee said, still battling with herself over what she must do.
“You will go,” Boyd said flatly. “And when I send the wire to Abner and Nancy, I shall at the same time see that a wire is sent to my friend Joe. He owes me a favor from way back. I am going to ask him to escort you to Mattoon.”
“An escort?” Lauralee said, arching an eyebrow. Her jaw tightened. “I need no escort anywhere. I can very well take care of myself.”
Boyd patted her hand again. “Honey, I know how you must feel about men,” he said softly. “After what you went through, who wouldn’t understand? But believe me when I tell you that you can trust my friend Joe. There’s no other man on this earth like him.”
Lauralee grew silent, fighting off remembrances of that fateful day of her mother’s rape and murder. Men. She had grown up wary of most men.
Father Samuel had managed to change much of those feelings for her. When he had encouraged her to work at the hospital, where she was faced with men every day, gradually she had become less wary of them.
But to take a long journey with a total stranger?
The thought made cold chills ride her spine.
Boyd was lost in his own thoughts—of a young Cherokee warrior. Joe Dancing Cloud. He was now thirty-three, a mature man, and extremely handsome. Surely Joe would come and see to this old dying man’s last wishes. He and Joe had been so much to each other through the years. They had met often to keep their special bond between them, a bond that would give Joe cause to come at Boyd’s request.
I’m sure he will, Boyd thought to himself. He smiled slowly and looked up at his ravishing daughter. And wait till he sees my Lauralee.
Just maybe, he thought, just maybe his daughter and Joe might happen to fall in love?
Lauralee smiled back at her father, wondering what was on his mind that would make him take on such a glow, and make his eyes
dance so?
Chapter 3
Above the wind and fire, love,
They love the ages thru!
—R.W. RAYMOND
The wrinkled hills were alive with the yellows and blues of wildflowers. Joe Dancing Cloud tossed another rock into the creek that murmured and meandered through shallow, gravel-filled riffles behind his log cabin. Torn with what he should do, he was going over and over again in his mind the message that he had received from Boyd Johnston.
The message had said, “Please come. I need you. Boyd.”
The address where Boyd had sent the letter from was a hospital in St. Louis, Missouri.
The fact that Boyd was in a hospital made Dancing Cloud realize the urgency that was needed to heed his friend’s bidding. Perhaps he was dying. Boyd had not been all that strong since the Civil War; not since he had been wounded by the red-haired, blue-eyed Yankee.
The wound had not been life-threatening, but because Boyd had taken so long getting medical attention it prevented him from fully recovering.
And Dancing Cloud knew that in Boyd’s weakened state he had fought pneumonia more than once these past years. Boyd had nearly died from pneumonia only a few moons ago while visiting Dancing Cloud.
Perhaps he was ill once again with the lung disease.
Perhaps this time he might not recover.
Ii, yes, Boyd just might . . .
Dancing Cloud did not want to think further about his friend possibly dying. They had kept in touch through the years since the war, their meetings always filled with peace and harmony. They had talked often about the war. Boyd had told Dancing Cloud that people are not destroyed because they are wrong; only because they are weak.
Joe Dancing Cloud had helped Boyd get over the loss of his family.
Dancing Cloud had in a sense became Boyd’s family.
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