by Regina Scott
While Alice hesitated, obviously trying to think of a solution, Elijah knew it was time to speak up. “The church has some money to help with such things,” he told the man. “I’m going to give you twenty-five dollars, and I want you to buy a side of beef with it, and some liver, eggs and beans. Be sure and boil the bones to make soup, too. This money is only for nourishing food, mind you, so please use it wisely.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the money.
“Thank you, Reverend. Thank you, Nurse,” the man said, shaking Elijah’s hand, while the woman murmured, “God bless you folks for your kindness.”
When they took their leave, they intended to stop at the Gilberts’ campsite to check on the deacon’s wound, since it was nearby, when a young boy ran up to them, his face white, his eyes terrified.
“Preacher, is she the nurse?” he said, pointing to Alice. “My pa needs her powerful bad! We found him behind some tents, all beat up. C’mon, I’ll show you the way!”
They lost no time in following the boy and found the father, lying on a blanket by the wagon, just as the boy had said. One eye was swelling shut, his nose was bloodied and looked broken, and he had at least a dozen small cuts and as many scrapes.
“This is Miss Alice Hawthorne, and she’s a nurse,” Elijah told the man. “Miss Hawthorne, this is Abe McNally, and he attends our chapel meetings. Who attacked you?” Elijah inquired while Alice began to cleanse his wounds with a fresh cloth and some of that harsh-smelling disinfectant she’d used on Keith Gilbert’s leg.
“Three or four men, all in black bandannas and dark clothes,” McNally muttered, wincing as the carbolic acid stung a laceration on his hand. “I couldn’t tell who they were. They pistol-whipped me, then took my pocket watch and Nancy’s earbobs.”
A whimper escaped from the woman standing nearby. “They was just colored glass, those earbobs, but Abe’s pocket watch is gold. I told Abe he shouldn’t be flashin’ it around this camp. There’s too much riffraff around Boomer Town, too many people t’ keep in line.”
“I’m just glad young Tad was off playin’, or they might’ve hurt him, too,” the man said, then let out a groan. “Tarnation, Nurse. I appreciate what you’re doin’, but that stuff stings!”
“I’ll notify the Security Patrol about this incident,” Elijah said, hoping he could speak to someone besides the four who’d been ogling Alice yesterday. The Security Patrol was supposed to be watching out for the settlers to keep this sort of thing from happening, weren’t they? Elijah would have preferred to speak to someone from the army, but they were stretched too thin along the border at present, keeping settlers from entering too soon.
He was glad Clint planned to be the sheriff in the town they would found. He didn’t want their new home to be a lawless place like Boomer Town.
Looking up just then, he spotted a dapper-looking man in a derby hat watching Alice. The man held a small notepad and seemed to be sketching her as she tended the robbery victim.
What in the world? His hackles rose at the effrontery of what the man was doing and the avid, speculative look in his eyes as he watched Alice. “May I help you, sir?” he growled.
The man grinned and strode toward them, his air brisk and confident. “Robert Millard Henderson, of The New York Times. I was hoping to interview the lady everyone’s calling the ‘Florence Nightingale of the Oklahoma Territory.’” He grinned engagingly at Alice.
Alice, kneeling by the man who’d been beaten up, went as white as the anemic girl they’d just left. “No!” she cried, and there was an anguished note in her voice that made Elijah peer at her carefully.
She swallowed, regaining her composure. “That is, no, thank you, sir. I—I’d rather not. I’m not doing anything that anyone with an ounce of decency wouldn’t do, if they had the training.”
“Very modest and commendable, miss,” said the reporter. “However, our readers—and they include people throughout the whole country, you know—can’t get enough of human-interest stories about the Oklahoma Land Rush. I’ve been hearing all over Boomer Town about the nurse who saved the life of a man who was bleeding to death. That was you, wasn’t it?”
Elijah had never heard a man talk so fast. He was conscious of an urge to put himself between the reporter and Alice, and shove him all the way back to New York, if that was what Alice wanted.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Henderson. I’m busy here, and I don’t want to talk to you.” Alice went back to swabbing her patient’s abrasions and cuts.
“But my readers would be fascinated with your story, Miss…?” Henderson let his voice trail off, inviting Alice to supply her name.
She ignored the unspoken request. “I said, I don’t want to talk to you, sir. Please. Would you allow me to go on with what I’m doing, without your interference?”
“But, miss—” the reporter pleaded, coming a step closer.
Now Elijah did step between them. “You heard the lady,” he said firmly. “I’m Reverend Elijah Thornton, if you must have a name, and I’m asking you to respect this lady’s privacy and that of her patient. Take yourself off, please.”
Henderson scowled and drew himself up to his full height—which had to be almost a foot shorter than Elijah’s. “It’s a free country, Reverend Thornton,” he huffed, “and one, moreover, with a free press. It’s not against the law, as far as I know, for me to just move back a few paces and finish the sketch I was completing. That’ll be for Harper’s Weekly—I write articles for them, too, you see. I’ll get this put on the cover, and the public will eat it up, this portrait of a heroic, self-effacing nurse serving the public.”
Elijah felt his temper kindling at the man’s self-important pushiness and his fulsome compliments, but Robert Henderson was well within his rights. Elijah felt Alice’s urgent gaze on him, so he turned his back on the reporter and looked at her.
“Ignore him, Elijah,” she whispered. “Let me just finish up here, and we’ll move on.”
Her movements quick and efficient, she bandaged the man’s cuts and told him the signs of infection to watch for and advised cold compresses for his developing black eye. Then they left, heading for the Gilberts’ as they’d originally planned.
The reporter had been an obnoxious popinjay, but Elijah was conscious, as they walked away from him, of an overwhelming curiosity to know why Henderson’s request for her name had upset Alice so much. But now was not the time to ask her, not while she remained white-lipped and anxious. Her apprehensive expression, and the way she kept glancing over her shoulder until tents and wagons hid them from the reporter, made him ache with compassion for her and with that same desire to protect her that he had felt before.
Why was she so frightened? Was she hiding from someone? Had she committed a crime back East, so she was now running from the law? Or was she running from a husband?
It was best if the truth came from her. He had no right to demand it of her—that would make him no better than the pushy reporter. They were not courting sweethearts. Hadn’t he resolved to commit himself to the work of the Lord, and remain unmarried? But since he’d met Alice, he’d begun to wonder if that resolve had been born out of grief and not the Lord’s will.
*
Alice woke in a tangle of sheets in the middle of the night, knowing the scream that had awakened her had been her own. She sat up and lit the kerosene lantern, needing to banish the middle-of-night shadows within her tent.
She had been dreaming, she realized, as the warm light bathed the tent, illuminating the shape of her trunk and the camp chair on which she’d dropped her clothes last night after returning from her nursing rounds. Maxwell Peterson had been chasing her, his eyes red as burning embers, a ghastly smile curling his lips, revealing bright fangs for teeth. He waved a piece of paper written in blood, which she knew without seeing was her parents’ mortgage.
“I’ll tear it up!” he cried, his voice like the baying of a fantastical hound. “Just come to me, my pretty Alice, and I’ll tear it up! But if you don’
t, you’ll have nothing! Nothing!” He bayed a maniacal laugh.
It didn’t take much thinking, even in her shaky post-nightmare condition, to realize that her encounter with the nosy reporter had precipitated the dream. She poured herself a cup of water from the pitcher she kept on an upended crate by her cot.
It was silly to let the reporter’s question worry her. She hadn’t given the over-inquisitive fellow her name, so she had no reason to worry about Maxwell finding her here in the midst of the overcrowded tent city. He had no reason to suspect she’d even left New York, let alone come to this place in hopes of a homestead he couldn’t touch.
A glance at her watch showed her it was yet hours till dawn. It was best to get some more sleep. She’d need her energy for the new day. She lay back down on her cot, pulled up the covers and closed her eyes again.
She and Elijah were going riding soon, Alice reminded herself. She was to try out her new mare to see if she could run, but all that came to her mind were images of Elijah—Elijah preaching; Elijah favoring a worried member of the congregation with a kind smile; Elijah laughing with his brothers, humor crinkling the corners of his twinkling hazel eyes. After a while, she fell back into sleep, this time a dreamless one.
Chapter Seven
They couldn’t have picked a better afternoon to go riding, Alice thought. The sun beat down warmly on them, but the endless wind that seemed as much a part of central Oklahoma as its red soil prevented it from getting too hot.
The country was gently rolling, with flowers of every color dotted among the waving bluestem grasses. Alice recognized some of the flowers—wood sorrel, violets, fleabane, vetch—but others were unfamiliar to her. Trees—cottonwood, hickory and walnut—clustered near the occasional stream, along with clumps of blackberry bushes.
The Appaloosa mare was everything Elijah’s brother had said she would be—good-natured, well-mannered and responsive, needing only a touch of Alice’s heels to speed her from a sprightly trot to a smooth rocking-horse canter. But Alice sensed the mare was politely waiting for the command to go faster.
“Would you like to try a gallop? See if she’s got the speed Gideon promised?” Elijah asked, reining his bay gelding closer to her.
“I thought you’d never ask,” Alice said with a smile. “Shall we make it a race? Say, to that rise over there?” She pointed to a bluff protruding from the prairie about half a mile away.
“Why not? It’ll be good practice for the big day coming up,” Elijah said. “Just be careful, and watch for gopher holes. Ready? Hyaaah!” He dug his heels into the bay, and the gelding rocketed out in front of the mare.
Alice touched her booted heels to Cheyenne’s side. It was all the mare needed, and she took off like a shot, soon catching up with Elijah’s gelding. She was glad she’d worn her divided skirt and had tied her bonnet on firmly, for there was no way she could have kept it on otherwise. Nor would she have wanted to try to cling to the pinto’s back using a sidesaddle, even if there had been one available. She bent low over the mare’s neck, savoring the rush of the wind in her face and the company of the man beside her.
Alice and Cheyenne reached the rise first. “I won!” she cried, swiveling in her saddle to see Elijah reach the finish line and rein his gelding in. “Though I suspect you were holding your horse back, weren’t you?”
He smiled and raised his hands in mock surrender. “Guilty as charged, but in my defense, I wanted to be sure to see if the mare stumbled or gave you any trouble.”
She smiled, touched by his consistent thoughtfulness. Elijah Thornton always considered others first.
“Well, I’m very impressed with Cheyenne so far,” she said. “Gideon and Lars chose well. I’m sure she’ll have enough speed to get me to a perfect claim.” She wheeled the mare around so that they faced west and, holding her hand up to further shade her eyes, peered into the distance.
“I wish we could go look over the Unassigned Lands, figure out the best spots,” she mused aloud. “How will we know which way to head, after the rifle shot sounds, and we’re all running at once?”
“Lars has explored and hunted there, and knows the territory like the back of his hand,” Elijah told her. “He said he had a map he made while he was with the Cheyenne that he’ll show us and advise us where would be best for us, based on what we’re wanting. I’m hoping everyone going to the tent chapel will be able to find a homestead in the same general area, if they wish.”
His steady hazel eyes gazed down at her from his taller mount. Was there more to what he meant than what he said? Did he hope she would find a homestead near his? Did she want him to hope that? she wondered.
“Shall we ride back to that creek we passed about a hundred yards ago?” he suggested, pointing to it. “I’m thirsty, so I imagine these horses are, too.”
They rode back to the stream at a walk, letting the sweaty horses cool down. Once there, Elijah assisted her to dismount, and they led their horses to drink. Then Elijah pulled a canteen from his saddlebag, knelt and filled it from the stream. Straightening, he handed it to her first, and she drank, enjoying the cold water.
“Shall we sit for a few minutes in the shade and let the horses graze?” he said. “They won’t go far—Gideon said your mare’s been trained to ground-tie.”
She nodded, knowing the term meant that once the reins were dropped, the horse wouldn’t wander more than a few steps while she cropped the grass.
They sat in the grass in the shade of a cottonwood tree, and for a moment neither spoke, enjoying the quiet, which was broken only by the soft soughing of the breeze and the call of a mockingbird perched on a bough above them.
She’d missed this, Alice realized—the peace of being in the country, far away from the constant hustle and bustle of city traffic at all hours, with its streetcar bells, cries of newsboys calling out the big news stories, the ever-present noise outside that penetrated even the busy wards of Bellevue. All that time she’d spent in New York City, pursuing her dream of a nursing career, she’d missed this peace, she knew now. She should have left as soon as she had finished her nurse’s training and sought employment with some country doctor near her parents’ farm, she thought. Then she would have seen that her father was ill, and even if she couldn’t have saved him, the place might not have fallen to rack and ruin.
But she wouldn’t have come to this peaceful, beautiful countryside and been sitting here, the tall grass giving her and Elijah a pocket of privacy that made her feel as if it was their own world.
“We should have packed a picnic,” Elijah said all of a sudden.
She was so surprised she dropped the sprig of bluestem grass she had been chewing.
Why had he said that? They weren’t courting—were they? Did he think they were? Oh, why had she gone on this ride alone with him? It had caused him to misconstrue their relationship, imagine their friendship was something more…. Yet she wanted it to be something more, she realized. But, no, it couldn’t be. He would only turn into Maxwell and try to control her every move. Better to remain as she was, alone.
“Wouldn’t that have been nice?” he murmured, apparently unaware of the tension that gripped her. “Fried chicken, fresh bread, cheese, pickles… Something other than Gideon’s endless corn bread and beans.” He chuckled, then noticed that Alice was silent. “What’s wrong, Miss Alice?”
She made a waving motion with her hands. “Nothing,” she said with an airy assurance she didn’t feel. “I—I didn’t sleep well last night, that’s all.”
Elijah looked unconvinced. “You looked happy before I spoke.”
Just as on the day they had met, she thought those hazel eyes saw too much. “It’s nothing.”
“Miss Alice, why did that reporter’s request for your name make you afraid?”
It was eerie how he had keyed into what had precipitated her nightmare. “Who says I was afraid?” she said quickly. “My name just wasn’t any of that nervy fellow’s business, that’s all.” Her words came out m
ore sharply than she’d intended. “I’m sorry, Elijah. I—I just don’t like the idea of my name being plastered all over some newspaper back East.”
“You’re not—and please believe me, I only want to help—in any trouble, are you? Back East, I mean?” His tone was gentle and uncondemning, but there was disappointment in his eyes.
Her throat felt thick with unshed tears and regret that she had spoiled the serene atmosphere of this place. And what he must be imagining…
“No, Elijah. I didn’t rob a bank, or murder anyone,” she said. “I’ve committed no crime. I just don’t want my name in some newspaper, that’s all. My mother always said a lady’s name didn’t belong in a newspaper except when she was married or when she died.”
“All right, forgive me for asking,” he said, his voice a little stiff.
The moment between them had been spoiled, and it felt as if there was now a wall between them.
He took a breath and looked away. “I suppose we should be getting back,” he said, rising. He held out a hand to help her up, and she took it.
She couldn’t leave things this way, not with this feeling of strain. “Elijah, there’s nothing to forgive,” she said softly, looking him in the eye.
Impulsively she laid a hand on his wrist, and the warmth of his skin gave her courage. “Please, I’m sorry if I sounded cross. I don’t want anything to spoil our friendship—or the partnership we have to help the people of Boomer Town.”
His stiff posture relaxed some, though his eyes still held a wary watchfulness. “I’m glad to hear you say it,” he said at last. “In these few days I have come to value both things highly—and hold you in a position of great esteem.”
So formal. So careful. But she supposed he was only trying to stay within the boundaries she had set for them. Friendship, not courtship.