by Regina Scott
“It’s understandable. You’re human, after all, Elijah.”
He nodded. “But what kind of ‘man of the cloth’ would I be if I gave way to an impulse to yank that smirking Chaucer off his horse and rub his face in the dirt?”
“You had the impulse, but you didn’t give way to it. You’re the most honorable man I know, Elijah.”
“Thank you.”
Their gazes met and held for a long moment. Should he say what he’d been thinking about saying? Or had this night been too tainted by negative emotions to have a chance of succeeding?
But he’d waited too long, and Alice was already turning to go inside.
“Good night, Elijah. I’ll see you at chapel tomorrow.”
Chapter Sixteen
Excitement buzzed inside the chapel tent Monday morning as Alice took her place on a bench. Over and over she heard folks say “One more week” and “A week from today, we’ll be there.” Anticipation was colored by a tinge of wistfulness and uncertainty, though, for with the Land Rush this close, members of the congregation realized they wouldn’t always be together like this in a canvas tent-chapel in Boomer Town. Though they longed to be settled in their new homes, there was no guarantee of being able to settle near one another, or even that they would be able to stake a claim at all.
How far she had come in two weeks, Alice thought, from a timid mouse afraid to give anyone her real name to a woman with friends sitting all around her—the Gilberts, Winona and Dakota, the Ferguson sisters; and the men, women and children she had met while nursing them who had become her friends, too.
And there was Elijah, of course, who at this moment was stepping up to his makeshift lectern. Her life had certainly become richer after meeting him, Alice mused. He had influenced her in so many ways. He’d encouraged her to give of herself, and now she couldn’t imagine why she’d wanted to leave nursing totally behind. She’d no longer tread a hospital’s halls, but she gained so much more than those she helped. It was a gift to be needed.
Through Elijah’s example, she had learned to trust God to calm her fears. She no longer looked over her shoulder, fearing Maxwell Peterson was right behind her. How silly it had been to think he’d given her a thought after she’d fled New York. He had always wanted power and influence, so it had been a mystery why he had wanted her. No doubt he was pursuing some heiress by now.
She’d only received one letter from her mother—postmarked during the time Alice had been traveling to Oklahoma—but her mother hadn’t written anything to make her think Peterson had gone ahead with foreclosure on their farm, despite the farm’s ongoing shortfall. His threat to do so had apparently been a figurative saber to rattle over Alice’s head, and once she had disappeared, he’d lost interest.
But the most important impact Elijah had had on her life was simply that she was no longer able to imagine her life without him in it. Her independence no longer seemed like such a thing to be prized. She’d begun to think a life without this man’s love would be a lonely, gray void, even when her mother came to join her.
And she was realistic enough to know that, as much as she loved her mother, Mary Margaret Hawthorne would not be with her forever. Then there would be nothing to give life joy, nothing to make life more than a hardscrabble existence just to scratch a living from the prairie.
Last night’s confrontation with the Chaucers had been painful for everyone who’d been there but especially for Elijah, she thought. She hoped what she’d said to him outside her tent had helped soothe his lacerated spirit. But she could tell that Elijah had more on his mind than just their enemies’ ugly jeers. She’d sensed he had wanted to say something that had nothing to do with the Chaucers and everything to do with the two of them. She’d waited, and finally bid him good-night in hopes it would spur him to speak and reveal what was in his heart.
But he hadn’t. No doubt he was wearied by the incident and thought another time would be better. That was all right—they would have time, and maybe what he had to say was better said without a cloud hanging over it. Perhaps tonight he would tell her.
“Friends, it is our final week here in Boomer Town!” Elijah said, lifting his arms jubilantly, and the whole congregation cheered.
“Amen, Reverend!” someone cried.
“In seven days we’ll be in the Promised Land!” another shouted.
Elijah grinned at their enthusiasm. “Just think—in a week, God made something from nothing. He created the earth and all that is in it, the land, the water, the animals that creep on the earth, fly through the sky and swim in the rivers and oceans. And He created mankind to rule over it all.”
He paused and took a sip of water. “Yes, in a week, our lives will all be changed, one way or another. For some of us, it will be the first time in our lives we have a plot of land to call our own. Others have owned land but simply need a new start in life in a new land. And yet God is always willing to give us a new start in life, and it’s not dependent on a government somewhere opening up a territory, or some specific time and date. It’s there for the asking, whenever we want it.”
After the service, Alice was just as surprised as Elijah when Horace LeMaster, followed by his wife and all four of their stair-step boys, stood in line to shake his hand.
“I’ve been watchin’ you, Reverend, the way you conduct yourself around Boom Town and all, and I’d just about decided I was wrong about what I said to you. But then I heard how you responded to those Chaucer boys last night, and I became one hundred percent convinced. I was wrong, Reverend, and I hope you’ll forgive what I said a coupla weeks ago to you.”
“Of course, Horace,” Elijah said, beaming. “I’m happy to see you back.”
*
Rounds had taken a long time this evening—not because there were a lot of new illnesses or injuries, for other than a child who’d developed a nasty chest cold, there was no illness to speak of. It was as if the population of Boomer Town was buoyed by anticipation of what was to come and had no time for sickness. Mainly folks just wanted Elijah to pray with them individually for their success on the day of the Land Rush and in the future.
They’d stopped by to check on Beth Lambert, the girl who’d been weak and pale from anemia, and found her blooming with health—rosy-cheeked, happy and energetic.
“We’re so grateful for the advice you gave us, Nurse Hawthorne,” her mother said. “To see our Beth bloomin’ again—why, I just can’t thank you enough. I don’t mind saying me and her father feel better, too. I’m glad you stopped by. I made you somethin’ to thank you.”
Mrs. Lambert climbed inside the wagon, and in a moment she was back, holding out two folded pieces of cloth.
Alice took it and unfolded one of the cloths, and saw that a beautiful design had been embroidered into the plain cotton, that of the medical caduceus—twin serpents twining around a staff, next to a woman who had clearly been made to look like her, down to her auburn hair and blue eyes. The woman wore a navy blue cloak with a red cross on one shoulder. The other towel depicted a little house at the end of an enormous flower-sprigged field, with a sun rising behind it. Underneath the design, she’d stitched the words Best of luck in Oklahoma.
Alice felt tears stinging her eyes. “These are beautiful,” she breathed. “Mrs. Lambert, thank you so much.” Impulsively she gathered the woman into a hug.
The woman was flushed with pleasure. “Aw, they’re just dish towels, Miss Alice. It was somethin’ to work on of an evenin’. Think of us when you use them.”
“Oh, but they’re too pretty to be used. I’m going to frame them and hang them in my new house,” Alice told her, her heart full because of this woman’s gift, and all the thanks and smiles she’d garnered because she’d agreed to help Elijah with the medical needs of Boomer Town.
They headed for her tent not long after that. Perhaps now Elijah would sit outside with her and share what he’d been so obviously wanting to say the night before.
“Say, Reverend,” a voice ca
lled out, and Alice saw Mr. Johnston, one of the older men in the congregation, with his son, a young farmer, sitting on bales of hay outside their tent. “Me an’ my son were just discussin’ a bit of Scripture, and we were disagreein’ on the meanin’ of it. S’pose you could sit a spell and explain it to us? It’s in Second Thessalonians, and it’s about the Second Comin’…”
Elijah gave Alice a rueful glance. “This is probably going to take a while,” he said in a low voice. “I’ll walk you back to your tent and then come back, all right?”
“Nonsense. It’s not far,” she told him, and wished she was bold enough to ask that he stop by afterward. But dusk was already deepening, and here and there lantern lights were blooming. She knew Elijah was too careful of both their reputations to be observed coming to her tent after dark. “Good night, Elijah.”
Their conversation would have to wait for yet another day, Alice thought as she walked briskly on.
Her tent was illuminated by lantern light, too. Had she left it burning when she went to accompany Elijah on rounds? She didn’t think so; she hadn’t needed its light then. Perhaps Gideon or Clint had come and lit it, so that she wouldn’t have to enter a dark tent? How thoughtful, if that was the case. They’d all been more vigilant lately….
To reassure herself, she reached into her medical bag to touch the knife she’d placed there the other night after Mrs. Murphy had been robbed. Was it one of the criminals with the black bandannas lurking inside, waiting to pounce on her?
No, she was being ridiculous. No sound came from within the tent. There was no one inside. She’d lift the tent flap and see that everything was just as she had left it. “The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear?” she murmured aloud, and lifted the tent flap.
“Hello, Alice,” said a voice she’d hoped never to hear again, coming from the last person she had ever wanted to see. She froze in her tracks, dropping the medical bag with the knife still inside it. Suddenly, despite the warmth of the Oklahoma April night, she was as cold as if she had swallowed snowballs. Her pulse took off like a jackrabbit scurrying across the prairie.
“You always did like to talk to yourself,” Maxwell Peterson said. “I heard you murmuring to yourself outside.” He sat in the camp chair across from her cot, like a figment in her nightmares, dressed in the same sort of fancy pin-striped suit he always wore, his soulless pale blue eyes gleaming in the lamplight. His derby hat was perched on top of her Bible on the upended packing crate by her cot.
He stood. “Come on, how about a hug for the man who’s followed you hundreds of miles from civilized New York to the wilds of Oklahoma Territory?” Maxwell said, and before she could refuse or step back, he’d enveloped her in his arms.
He was a tall man and powerfully built, so it was like being embraced by a grizzly bear. Alice tried not to flinch or pull away as those massive arms went around her and threatened to squeeze the breath from her body. She always thought he’d liked it all the more when she struggled, so she reminded herself to be still.
He released her at last. “I was wondering if you were ever coming back to your tent. I’d begun to think these yokels had led me astray about which was your tent,” he said, making an airy gesture in the direction of her nearest neighbors. “So where were you, Alice, my dear? Out painting the town?” He threw his head back and gave a hearty laugh. “As if there was anything in this hole of a place worth painting!”
“I—I was visiting some of the townspeople,” she said, trying to stifle the tremor that threatened to creep into her voice. It wouldn’t do to show fear, just as it didn’t when facing a cougar.
“Visiting? What could you possibly have in common with the hicks I’ve seen here?” he demanded, as if asking to be let in on some joke.
“I—I’ve been…nursing the sick, Maxwell. And a lot of the people here have become friends,” she said and was sorry she’d let defensiveness into her voice—yet another weakness one dared not reveal to this ruthless man.
He ignored the last half of her statement as if she hadn’t said it. “‘Nursing the sick,’” he echoed. “I thought you’d hung up that ugly uniform and those thick, hideous shoes you wore at Bellevue forever, Alice. I told you that you’d never have to work a day in your life ever again, my dear, once you were mine. Still, I suppose you had to do something to pass the time, didn’t you?”
“What are you doing here, Maxwell? How did you find me?” she asked, wondering if she was fast enough to back out of the tent and run screaming to the Thorntons.
It was too late. Of course it was. It had been too late the moment Maxwell Peterson arrived in Boomer Town. She just hadn’t known it until she had trustingly lifted that tent flap.
“You…you didn’t go terrorize my mother, did you?” she asked suddenly, sick to think of him wringing her whereabouts out of her frail, aged mother with the mixture of intimidation and threats of which Maxwell Peterson was a past master. “If you harmed her—”
“You’d what? No, silly one, I didn’t bother your old mater. Alice, when you have the assets I do, it’s no problem to hire a detective—or a herd of them, for that matter,” he said with a grin, sitting down again. “Sit down, Alice,” he said, pointing to her cot, the only other place in the tent for her to sit—as if she’d come to his dwelling, not her own. “You’ve got to be dead on your feet, tending to the poor unwashed and all that. I don’t know how you stand it.”
She complied, keeping her eyes on him all the time.
“But it wasn’t all my well-paid detectives, but my new best friend from The New York Times that did the trick, in the end.”
She could only stare at him.
“Yes, Robert Millard Henderson. I believe you met him almost two weeks ago, when he interviewed you about your nursing? ‘Florence Nightingale of the Oklahoma Territory,’ he called you. It was most impressive. And you were so modest, not wanting to give your name. Commendable—but the people you’d been ministering to were only too happy to share that bit of information.”
Alice remembered it now—the impertinent, pushy newspaperman and Abe and Nancy McNally. She’d looked back as she and Elijah had walked away, and had seen Henderson lingering with the McNallys and hadn’t thought about it past the next day. She felt the blood draining from her face as she realized how neatly she had stepped into the trap.
“You just happened to see a newspaper article?” she asked.
“No, he was among the many I’ve paid to look for you, Alice, my dear. He was merely the lucky fellow who hit pay dirt. He’s been handsomely rewarded, of course.” Maxwell was smug as a cat that had just drunk a whole pitcherful of cream.
She’d known she shouldn’t give her name! But the McNallys had given it for her, sure that she was only being self-effacing. It was all she could do to smother a groan.
She was going to die tonight—or at best, suffer a beating. Maxwell didn’t accept rejection well and hadn’t ever since he’d first tried to court her when they’d grown up together. Lord, help me! If You ever cared what happened to me, save me now!
“So how does it feel to be the face that launched a thousand queries, my clever, beautiful Alice?” he said. Chuckling, he suddenly leaned forward and kissed her forehead.
His mercurial change of mood left her dizzy. “Cl-clever?” she stammered. She’d feared his fists would clench at any moment and make her pay for escaping him, and now he was calling her clever?
“Yes, clever. I had no idea you had such spunk, or such enterprise, either—to come all the way to Oklahoma to surprise me with a wonderful new future for us.”
“For us?” she parroted, feeling as if she was lost in a maze. What on earth does he mean?
“Yes, for us. You weren’t content to be a rich New York City aristocrat—too confining a role for you. I should have seen that,” Peterson mused aloud. “You always did like a challenge—though you would have wanted for nothing as my wife, you know. But, no, you came here instead to make this wonderful surprise for
me.”
“Surprise…” Could she do nothing but parrot his words and stare at him? she thought, angry with herself.
“Yes, my spirited darling. You wanted to surprise me by getting us a homestead—not that a hundred and sixty acres would ever be enough, but it would be a start—a base of operations, while we bought up land around us and eventually owned a prairie empire, right? It was going to be your wedding present to me, wasn’t it? Please don’t mind that I’ve guessed what you were up to, Alice. It only makes me prouder of you.”
Clearly, she marveled as she stared at him, it had never entered his mind that she had come all this way to avoid him.
He’d grown a beard and mustache since she’d last seen him, and he fingered it now, vainglorious as ever. It only made him look more ruthless, she thought.
“So if any of these friends you’ve been making are gentlemen admirers, Alice, you’ll just have to tell them your sweetheart is here now, so they’ll have to go nurse their broken hearts, won’t you?” he said, grinning as if he was letting her in on the joke now. “Because I don’t share.”
The last four words hung on the air as if the threat they represented was a palpable thing.
Elijah. His image rose up before Alice suddenly—his earnest, handsome face, his kind eyes, his gentle smile—a smile that would never be aimed at her again. She could never tell Maxwell she had begun to care for this man, not if she wanted Elijah and his brothers to live.
Men who had crossed Maxwell before had been made sorry they’d done so. Alice had guessed he’d been responsible, though he’d probably only hired others to mete out the punishment. Naturally there’d never been anything to tie the retaliation to him. One man who’d resisted selling a choice property Maxwell coveted had been found riddled with bullets—and his grieving widow had been only too glad to sell it to Maxwell for a greatly reduced price. Others had disappeared, their bodies never found.