by Regina Scott
A half-moon shed fitful light over the two tents as he drew near, and— What was that? In the circle of light cast by a lamp, a slight figure stood in a loose-fitting garment tied at the waist, facing the fire that had burned down to a few glowing coals.
As he studied the figure closer, he saw that it was Alice. Her eyes were turned to the starry sky above. Tears silvered her cheeks. Her hands were clasped in prayer.
“Alice?” he called, keeping his tone soft, wanting neither to startle her nor have his voice carry to the big tent behind hers.
“Elijah? Can that possibly be you?” Her face glowed with astonished joy in the reflected light, a joy that reignited hope within him.
Did she care about him after all?
Alice took a step toward him, then stopped. He realized that since he wasn’t carrying a lantern, he was swathed in darkness. “Yes, it’s me. Alice. Please, what are you crying about? Can I help in any way?”
“Oh, Elijah…I’m so miserable,” she said, keeping her voice low, also. “I don’t want to marry Maxwell Peterson. I never did.”
“You don’t have to marry anyone you don’t want to,” he told her. “We’ll see to that. Gideon, Clint and I—the whole community. We’ll see that you’re not forced into anything against your will.”
Her face had taken on a tentative hope, but now she looked anxious and frightened again. “But you don’t know what Maxwell Peterson is capable of! I’ve seen what he can do, Elijah! I was afraid for you and your brothers…and my mother, back in New York. He threatened to hurt my mother, Elijah!” She crumpled then, folding at her waist as if she’d taken a blow. Her sobs came in earnest now.
He came forward then and gently raised her to her feet and pulled her into his embrace, patting her back as if she was a disconsolate child.
“Alice, you have to trust God and me and all of us to make sure that doesn’t happen. I promise we won’t let him do this to you. And we’ll have the Lord’s help. Remember that verse in Romans, If God is for us, who can be against us?”
She raised tear-filled eyes to him, eyes lit with the merest spark of hope. But it was enough.
“But what am I to do?” she asked, stepping back from his arms with obvious reluctance. “If I tell him I won’t stay with him, I’m afraid of what he’ll do, Elijah.”
“Let me think a moment…. Give me an hour,” he said. “One hour to prepare, and then I’ll return and we’ll tell Peterson together, all right?” He took both her hands in his. “Trust me, Alice. Trust God, okay?”
“But it’s late, Elijah. Everyone is sleeping, getting ready for tomorrow…”
“It doesn’t matter, Alice. We’ll help you.”
“All right, Elijah.” Her voice shook, but her gaze was steady. Trusting. “One hour. I’ll be waiting.”
*
She took that hour to change her clothing from the wrapper to one of her simplest calico dresses. No matter what happened, she’d never wear those fussy beribboned and flounced dresses Maxwell had brought her ever again.
What would Elijah do? Did he dare stand against all the power that Maxwell Peterson could wield, even if Elijah brought Gideon and Clint with him?
A verse from Proverbs echoed in her head. Trust in the Lord with all thy heart, and lean not to thine own understanding.
She sat down on the camp chair by her bed, and prayed harder than she ever had in her whole life.
*
“Alice?” came a whisper from just beyond the tent flap. It was Elijah. A glance at the watch pinned to the bodice of her dress showed her he’d been as good as his word.
Shaking with mingled fear and hope, she lifted the tent flap and went out into the night. Elijah stood there, the very essence of a preacher in his black frock coat and immaculate white shirt.
“Are you ready?” he asked, nodding his head toward Maxwell’s pavilion.
A lantern’s glow suddenly lit one end of the big tent, sending a frisson of fear snaking down her spine. She shivered in spite of the determination she felt, the resolve Elijah had given her with his steady voice, earnest gaze and trustworthy manner.
“I’m ready.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Horst was there, silently lifting the tent flap before Alice could even call out. Eyes unreadable, he gestured both of them inside, then left the tent. Tucked under one arm she saw the ornate presentation box that held the matched pistols Maxwell had shown her only hours ago.
Max lumbered out from behind the screen that hid his large camp bed, shoving his arms into a dark red dressing gown with black velvet collar and cuffs. His hair stood out at all angles. His red-rimmed, glaring eyes were still clouded by sleep. “What is the meaning of this?”
It was like facing down a big rabid brown bear. Alice shook in her shoes, more frightened than she had ever been, but she knew Elijah was right behind her, and the Lord was there, too. That knowledge gave her the courage to speak.
“Maxwell, I—I’m sorry,” she said in a voice that shook only slightly. “I need to tell you that I don’t want to go with you tomorrow. I want to stake my claim alone. I can’t marry you.”
His forehead furrowed, he stared at her as if she had spoken in Hindustani. “What? What are you saying, Alice? Of course you’re going to marry me. Everything is all set. The Land Rush is just hours away. You’re wearing my ring, for—” Then he seemed to notice her ring finger was bare. “Where’s the ring I gave you, Alice?”
With trembling hands, she took the heavy gold-and-ruby ring out of the pocket of her skirt and held it out to him.
He took it, staring at it as if he wasn’t quite sure what it was. He raised disbelieving eyes to Alice; then, when her gaze didn’t waver, he seemed to see Elijah behind her for the first time.
His face a mask of fury, he threw the ring into the corner of the tent, where Alice heard it ping off the trunk that sat there.
“This is your doing!” he roared at Elijah. Then, teeth bared in a snarl, fists clenched, he lunged at Elijah with his head lowered like a charging bull.
Elijah neatly sidestepped his charge, which sent Maxwell crashing into the table that had been set with luxurious china, crystal and silverware only hours ago. While the maddened man picked himself up, Elijah pulled Alice gently out of the tent.
As her eyes readjusted to the darkness, she saw what Elijah had done while he had been absent from her for an hour.
The entire population of Boomer Town appeared to be present. Every settler who had ever attended the chapel, everyone whom she had ever helped with her nursing skills stood there in the darkness, many carrying lanterns. Gideon and Clint, Lars and Katrina, Winona and Dakota, Keith and Cassie Gilbert stood in the forefront of the throng.
Elijah put a steadying arm around her shoulder.
“See, no one will let any harm come to you, Alice.”
Now she began to believe it was true.
Maxwell Peterson stumbled out of the tent. Straightening, he stared at the assembled crowd, then back at Alice and Elijah. He shifted his gaze to Clint as Elijah’s brother came forward.
“Maxwell Peterson, I’m Clint Thornton, and as the de facto sheriff of this community, and the future sheriff of Brave Rock, Oklahoma Territory, I have to inform you that we take any threats to the community very seriously. No such threats will be tolerated against Miss Alice Hawthorne or anyone else, do you understand?”
“You gonna arrest me, Mr. Lawman-Without-a-Tin-Star?” Maxwell jeered. “Do you even have a jail?”
“Not yet, Peterson, but it’ll be one of the first things we build,” Clint replied, clearly unfazed by the other man’s scorn. “Don’t you ever come back to Oklahoma, or you’ll be its first resident.”
In a motion too smooth for Maxwell to react, Clint reached for a pair of come-alongs from the back of his waistband. Gideon came forward then to help hold Maxwell, along with Elijah, as Clint efficiently bound the New Yorker’s arms.
“I demand you release me!” Maxwell bellowed, his face pu
rpling. “Horst! Where are you, you worthless German traitor?”
No short Bavarian man appeared, Alice saw with amusement. She could almost feel sorry for Maxwell.
“You’ll be sleeping in your own tent tonight,” Clint informed the furious Maxwell. “Whatever sleep you can get with your arms bound, that is. My brother and I will be standing guard,” he added, nodding toward Gideon, who met Peterson’s gaze unperturbed.
Elijah stepped away from Alice and approached Peterson then. “At first light,” he went on, “my brothers and I, and some of the good people you see out there, will be escorting you to the army, who’ll see that you get on the first train out of here. You’re never going to bother Miss Alice or anyone she knows ever again. I know the army will take a dim view of your threats toward her mother back in New York, too. I’m thinking you’d better forget you ever uttered any such thing, because the army—and the law enforcement officials they will notify—has a longer reach than you do.”
As Alice watched, Maxwell seemed to shrink inside himself, seeming to lose inches of height and breadth as his bluster evaporated, leaving him like a deflated balloon. Without any further direction from Clint or Gideon, he turned and shambled back inside his big tent, ignoring the spontaneous cheer that went up from the eyewitnesses to his defeat.
“Thank you, Elijah,” Alice said, beaming through tears of joy as the tent flap closed behind Maxwell. “And Gideon and Clint. And all of you,” she said, calling to the throng, who couldn’t seem to stop cheering.
“Alice, do you want to sleep here?” Elijah said, nodding toward her tent, as the crowd began to scatter to their campsites. “You’ll be safe enough, with Clint and Gideon standing guard in the other tent. Or, if you’d rather not sleep here with Peterson so close by, you could come down and sleep in the Thornton tent, and I’ll sleep outside under the stars.”
Alice doubted she’d sleep tonight. She was too full of joy and relief. “I’ll stay here,” she said, indicating her tent, which loomed in the darkness like an old friend.
Elijah smiled, a smile that sent warmth rocketing through her like wildfire.
“That’s the spirit,” he said approvingly. “I’ll see you in the morning, then. Gideon and Clint and some of those here will escort that scoundrel to the army and make sure he’ll be on that train out of here. There’ll be plenty of time to get ready for the opening shot, and I’ll make sure you can stake your claim.”
*
Having bid Alice good-night, Elijah sighed as he walked down to the Thornton campsite and lay down on his cot in the otherwise empty tent.
He had wanted to remain with Alice awhile. Once they were alone, he would have asked her if, now that Maxwell Peterson could no longer come between them, she could ever care for him the way he cared for her.
But a little voice inside Elijah told him to wait. Alice was too vulnerable now. Minutes ago, she’d been saved from a life no woman should have to contemplate. As the one who had first come to her aid, Elijah had too much of an advantage.
The Land Rush would start in twelve hours. As he had promised, he would see that she staked her claim, so that when—if—she agreed to his courtship, it would be from a position of strength and independence, not need.
The man lying trussed in his big tent had thought to dominate her, impose his bullying will on her in every facet of her life. But Elijah wanted Alice to choose him, and if she agreed to be his wife, he would offer her a life of faithful partnership in serving the Lord—he as a preacher, she as a nurse. He would seek her benefit before his own, always. And if she chose him, he would love her all the days of her life.
They would send for her mother to join them, just as soon as the elderly lady chose to journey here from New York. He didn’t know if Mrs. Hawthorne would want to live with them or near them, but she was welcome either way. He hoped he and his future mother-in-law would enjoy a close relationship. He and his brothers had lost their mother when Clint had been born, so it had been a lifetime since he had had a mother.
Elijah grew drowsy picturing the sons and daughters he and Alice would have, daughters with her lively dark red hair and sky-blue eyes, sons with his dark hair and hazel eyes. Or maybe vice versa. Would one of them choose to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a preacher?
He was getting way ahead of himself, wasn’t he? Children and a mother-in-law—when he didn’t even know if Alice wanted him in her life. But somehow, on this night before the great Land Rush, life seemed rife with possibilities.
*
The sun hadn’t even fully risen and Alice was getting dressed when she heard the commotion outside. She opened the tent flap just enough to see out, and was in time to spot Gideon and Clint strong-arming a disheveled-looking Maxwell, his arms bound behind him, out of the big tent and onto a wagon piled high with the trunks that Horst had placed there yesterday. As Elijah had promised, at least a score of those who had stood outside to support her last night stood waiting to help the brothers and escort her former fiancé to the army and the train they would put him on.
“But what about the tent? And where are my matched pair of saddlebreds?” Maxwell roared at Clint. “That’s expensive horseflesh, not that you’d know it! What about the ruby-and-gold ring? It’s somewhere in that tent, I tell you!” His tone turned wheedling as he looked to Gideon. “It’s worth a lot of money. Find it and it’s yours, if you’ll just untie me.”
“Thanks, but I can’t picture me wearing some lady’s ring,” she heard Gideon tell him. Alice saw a wry smile curve his lips. “And anyway, Peterson, you know we looked high and low for that bauble last night and didn’t find it.”
“But it’s got to be there!” Peterson whined. “And my pistols—”
“We didn’t see any pistols, either,” Clint told him. “Now be quiet. It’s too early in the morning to be caterwauling like that.”
“I have the right to free speech!” shouted Maxwell. He was still ranting when Clint took a clean strip of white cloth—likely part of the monogrammed tablecloth she and Maxwell had dined on last night—and gagged him with it.
Of course they hadn’t found the pistols, Alice thought, remembering how she had seen Horst walking away with the box that contained them. She had a notion he’d made off with the ring, too, taking advantage of his employer’s confrontation with the Thornton brothers last night to sneak back into the tent and find it.
She wished Horst luck. If he hadn’t abandoned his post last night… Had he done it on purpose, tired of Maxwell’s tyrannical ways and disapproving of the way his employer treated her? She liked to think so. If he was smart, he’d get away from here on one of the saddlebreds, maybe using the other as a packhorse.
Poor Maxwell, she thought, as they loaded him, willy-nilly, onto his own wagon and drove slowly away. He had been gifted with financial ability and business acumen, but he had wasted his gifts, and spent his time abusing and dominating those he saw as beneath him. She wondered what he’d do the rest of his life. She felt sorry for him but not sorry that Maxwell’s life would go on without her. She let the tent flap close and finished braiding her hair into a coil at the back of her head.
When Alice stepped outside, the wagon and its escort were gone. Elijah waited at the campfire, holding a steaming cup of coffee out to her. She spotted a covered skillet sitting on the big, flat stones at the edge of the fire and thought she smelled the delicious odor of bacon.
This would be the very last time she sat and ate food cooked at this campfire, she realized with a start. All around her she heard the sounds of Boomer Town being disassembled—people calling out to each other, horses whinnying as they were readied to carry riders or pull wagons, axles and leather creaking. So many people had already struck their tents that she could see clear down the dirt road now.
“Ready for the big day?” Elijah asked, smiling. “Looks like you’ve dressed well for it.”
She’d donned her divided skirt and the riding boots and the lightest long-sleeved shir
t she owned. Her sunbonnet dangled from its strings down her back. She’d need that soon enough—it was going to be a hot one today. Elijah was ready to ride, too. Gone were his ministerial frock coat, black trousers and immaculate white shirt. In their place he wore rough denims, a striped shirt and a bandanna at his neck. His own wide-brimmed hat sat waiting on a hay bale.
“I hope I’m ready,” she said, taking a seat on a hay bale at his side. “I can’t help wishing it was all over already.”
“We’ll be fine,” he said, as if he sensed her nerves. “I’ll be riding beside you, remember? The Lord hasn’t brought us this far to abandon us now.”
Alice smiled, warmed by his encouragement. She couldn’t imagine facing this race by herself now, a woman alone, as she had been just three short weeks ago. How naive she had been, to think she needed no one.
She needed this man, she realized, but knew this wasn’t the time or the place to say so. Afterward, perhaps, if she saw any hint that the feelings that had been building before Maxwell’s arrival could be rebuilt.
He’d cared about her; she knew that as sure as she was sitting here. But perhaps Elijah had thought better of it and would remain the unmarried preacher of the Brave Rock Church. She told herself she would be content with that, as long as she lived near him and could help him serve the people of the town they would all build together.
She straightened her skirts, overly aware of him beside her. By unspoken consent, she noticed they did not speak of Maxwell Peterson. Instead, they focused their thoughts on the Rush.
“As soon as we’re done eating, we’ll collect the horses and load up your belongings on your wagon and mine, then take them to Katrine,” Elijah said. “Got your stake to mark your claim?”
“Already packed in my saddlebag and inscribed with my name,” Alice told him. “Will Katrine be all right, guarding everything for your brothers and us, Elijah?” She didn’t like the thought of the sweet Danish girl being responsible for so much. There would be others left behind to guard wagons and belongings, she knew. What if someone thought to take advantage of them?