by Tammy Barley
Jess also prayed His blessing on an enemy soldier whose name she didn’t even know.
***
Two hours west of Chicago, they reined in their horses and prepared to split up.
Jake looked at the cattlemen. “You three ride north. After an hour, turn west. From what the folks said in Chicago, the Federals at Camp Douglas rarely ride the four miles to town to look for escaped prisoners, since they usually find them much closer to the camp. So, the farther away we get, the less likely we’ll have trouble. But watch your backs, just the same. Jess and Ambrose and I will go straight to my father’s farm. We’ll meet you there.”
The ranch hands murmured their agreement, but Ambrose turned to look over his shoulder at Jess, his eyes filled with regret.
“What is it?” she asked.
Ambrose glanced at the others. “I’ll be forever grateful to you for what you’ve done for Jessica and me. You’ve interrupted your lives out of kindness to Jess and traveled across the country to free me, and I look forward to the day I can repay you for that.” He looked at his sister again. “But I can’t go with you.”
The ranchmen were careful not to react, but Jess pulled her hand away from her brother. “What do you mean, you can’t go with us?”
Ambrose dismounted, then lifted her down. Jake took the reins from him.
“Walk with me a little, Jess.” Ambrose led her away from the others. Finally, he stopped and faced her.
“Please tell me you’re not leaving,” she begged. This couldn’t be happening—not again.
“I have to, Jess. I have to find my way back South. The war isn’t over.”
“It can be! The war can be over for us! Please, Ambrose—please come with us. Jake already said that his family will let us stay with them until you’re strong again. Next spring, we’re going back to the ranch. There are horses, Ambrose—more horses than Father ever owned. And there’s land just waiting to be built on—miles of it! We could be a family again!”
Lovingly, Ambrose studied her face. “You look like mother,” he murmured. He said nothing more.
Jess’s shoulders fell. She knew she had her answer. “I thought you would stay with us.”
“I can’t, Jess. Jake was kind to offer his father’s home to a Southerner, but the man’s neighbors might like nothing more than to shoot me on sight. I won’t allow trouble to come to his family on my account.” He gave her braid a brotherly tug. “You be careful, too, as long as you’re here. Stay close to Jake until you go back west. He’s a good man. He’ll keep you
from harm.”
Jess was desperate to keep him there. After discovering he was alive, she’d had only a few precious hours with him. “You can’t travel south! You’ll never get past the Federals! And if you do, the Confederacy will only think you turned traitor in the Yankee prison. They’ll hang you just as surely as the Federals will if they capture you!”
“No, Jessica, they won’t. John Morgan knows me. He knows I’d never betray him or Kentucky.” He smiled softly. “Your heart pulls you west, but me…my roots are elsewhere. The South is where I belong.”
Jess’s moan of frustration dwindled away. She knew he was right. Even when he’d moved west, his heart had remained in Lexington. “You’ve always wanted to rebuild Greenbriar.”
“Yes, I have,” he said. “I once heard Grandmother say that if ever a blessing had been spoken on a place that anyone who stood on its lands would forever remember its warmth, its belonging, and its sureness of home, then that place was Kentucky.”
“And you believe that,” she said softly.
“I believe it.”
A small smile formed on her lips. “I think that same blessing was spoken on Honey Lake Valley.”
So much had changed for them both since the beginning of the war, she mused. In many ways, they had missed a large part of each other’s lives. It pained her that, as they continued on from here in their own directions, nearly a whole continent would remain between them. But she knew they would always be close in heart.
“Send me a letter with the Bennetts’ address as soon as you settle, okay?”
She smiled past the tightness in her throat. “You write back, too, or I’ll come looking for you again.”
“I don’t doubt that,” he said. He glanced over her head, then met her gaze again.
Jess took a long breath. “You have to go, don’t you?”
“I’m afraid so. Only a couple of hours left until sunrise.”
Jess stepped closer to him. His sandy hair and mustache were just as she remembered them, his blue eyes glowing with a brother’s love. She reached up and touched the tiny wrinkles in his brow that were new to her, placed there by the war.
“Will you be able to tell me good-bye, Jess?”
“There really are no good-byes, if you think about it. Since the Lord will eventually bring us to heaven, we’ll see each other again, one way or another. I hope it will be here, and I pray that it’ll be here. I’ll pray He keeps you safe, and that He brings an end to the war, but I’ll be able to let you go.”
Ambrose took her hand, his eyes beaming. “I’ll be so glad when the war is finally over and I can come visit.” He shifted his weight restlessly. “I’d better go, Jess.”
Jess smiled up at him. He was every inch a Kentucky gentleman, so straight and tall. “Don’t let the war take you from me. I’ve seen your name on a gravestone once. I don’t want to see it again—not until you’ve lived a long, long life.”
“Nothing could take me from you, little butterfly. We’ll always have each other.”
Jess smiled through her tears.
***
Ambrose turned and approached the cattlemen to shake their hands and thank them. Finally, he walked up to Jake’s horse and reached out his hand. Jake leaned down and shook it heartily.
Ambrose glanced over at Jess, who was waiting quietly. “Take good care of her,” he said.
“You’d be surprised how many people have made that request on her behalf,” Jake said, shaking his hand once more. “You can depend on it.”
Jess smiled at Ambrose as he walked toward her, leading her horse. He was dressed in civilian clothes rather than a uniform, and he looked more like a businessman than a cavalry scout or courier. Inwardly, she agreed with him that he had every chance of making it safely home. “Send me lilac blossoms from mother’s old hedge when you return to Greenbriar.”
“I will. But it will take time to rebuild the house and grounds as they once were.”
“Maybe not as long as you think.”
“Maybe,” he said. Jess hugged him, then stepped aside.
He climbed up into the saddle.
“Ambrose,” she said, “even if you have to give up the horse, keep the saddlebags.”
He glanced back. “Why? What’s in them?”
“Something that belonged to Father. Something that now belongs to you.”
Moments later, Ambrose Hale was riding south with a thousand dollars of Hale Imports gold.
“It’s for Greenbriar,” she murmured with a smile.
***
“Are you tired?” Dawn was approaching when Jake spoke over his shoulder to Jess, who was riding behind him, arms wrapped around his chest.
The rhythm of the easy gallop lulled her, but the beauty of the sights they passed kept her awake. She pulled her gaze from waving willow branches and smiled up at him.
“I’ll sleep later. There’s too much to see now.”
“I understand that right enough,” Jake said, pressing her hand warmly. “You know, if we’re going to stay here for the winter, we might as well look for Thoroughbreds to buy to take to the ranch with us come spring.”
She smiled. “Thinking of adding on to the ranch, Jake?”
“I might be.”
Her heart taking flight, Jess rested her head against the soft flannel over his shoulder blade. Beneath it was the long crescent scar, left there when he had tried to save her father.
What a good man Jake Bennett was—a man of faith who lived according to an honor code shared only by the rarest of men. How blessed she was to have him in her life.
She thought back to the terrifying precipice her heart had hovered above just months ago. The precipice was gone. Ho Chen was right, she thought. Time and again, Jake Bennett had shown his true character—his honor, his courage, his very great worth. She reflected on the countless times when he had refused to back down in the face of hardship, when he had maintained his character and his trust in the Lord. In her mind, in her heart, and in her soul, there were no more doubts. Not about Jake, and not about the Lord’s presence in her life.
Jess lifted her gaze. Above them, streaks of pink and violet clouds brightened the sky. “Look, Jake. Sunrise.”
Jake reined in his horse, and together, they watched as pink lightened to peach and yellow hues.
“The Lord is telling us good morning,” Jess said.
“That He is,” Jake agreed. “I want all the rest of our sunrises to be like this, Jess.” He turned in the saddle to look at her. “You and me. Watching them together.” His dark eyes searched her face, speaking silently yet plainly of his love. “You’ve never given me an answer, little lady.”
Jess lifted her hand to his cheek. “Jake Bennett, I would be honored to be your wife.”
A breeze stirred, sounding ever so much like a whisper among the grasses.
Epilogue
November 1863
Doyle and Seth threw down their shovels and wiped the sweat from their brows. Hot in their coats despite the wintry cold in Carson City, they stepped back to study the placement of the new tombstone Jess had requested.
Seth had raised his eyebrows when Doyle had read him the instructions printed on the telegram, and they had looked at each other with growing smiles when Doyle had read her name.
Jessica Bennett.
Seth gathered up the shovels, and Doyle pulled out the telegram again, comparing the specifications with the markings on the new tombstone.
Satisfied that the wording was correct, Doyle put the paper back in his pocket and followed Seth to the wagon, marveling at the faith of the tenacious young woman he had come to respect.
“Hale,” the marker read:
Isaac Donelson
Georgeanne McKinney
Emily Frances
and dear friend
Elsie Scheuer
And beneath the names read the epitaph:
I can’t wait to see you again.
About the Author
Tammy Barley’s roots run deep and wide across the United States. With Cherokee heritage and such ancestors as James Butler “Wild Bill” Hickok, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau, she essentially inherited her literary vocation and her preferred setting: the Wild West. An avid equestrian, Tammy has ridden horseback over western mountains and rugged trails in Arizona.
Tammy excelled in her writing studies at a local college, where she explored prose, novel writing, and nonverbal communication. She even enrolled in acting classes to master character development. In 2006, she published two series of devotionals in Beautiful Feet: Meditations for Missionary Women for the Lutheran Women’s Missionary Society. She won second place in the Golden Rose Contest in the category of inspiration romance, and she serves as a judge for various fiction contests.
In addition to writing, Tammy makes a career of editing manuscripts, ghostwriting, and mentoring other writers. She also homeschools three children. Tammy has lived in twenty-eight towns in eight different states, but her family currently makes its home in Crystal Lake, Illinois.
Coming Soon:
Hope’s Promise
Book Two in The Sierra Chronicles
By Tammy Barley
Chapter One
Western Nevada Territory
May 1864
Would you care to rest a while, Jess?”
Withholding a smile, Jess leaned forward in the saddle as her horse clambered up beside Jake’s to the top of the rocky bank. When the ground leveled out, she glanced at the progress of the small herd of Thoroughbred stallions close behind, then tossed a lightly accusing gaze to her husband.
“Rest a while? Are you coddling me, Bennett?”
In the shadow of his hat brim, Jake’s whiskey-brown eyes sparkled at her as he grinned. “No, ma’am, I wouldn’t dare.” He nodded sagely to Taggart and Diaz, who were wrangling on the opposite side of the herd. “But the boys haven’t stood on their own feet twice since sunup, and they’re looking piqued.”
“Piqued?” Jess looked to the burly, orange-haired Irishman and the sinewy, born-in-the-saddle Spaniard, and she burst out laughing. “Those two wouldn’t walk to their dinner plates if they could ride!”
The sleek, long-limbed Thoroughbreds continued towards the mountains, heads bobbing. From her position riding flank, Jess took in the beauty of white noses and white socks flashing amid the bays, chestnuts, and blacks, framed by the red earth and green pines of the Sierra Nevadas.
They were going home.
Jess quieted, but her smile remained. “I couldn’t stop now, Jake. We have only ten miles before we reach the ranch.”
Ten out of seventeen hundred, she mused, and eight months since I’ve seen this part of the country. When they had left the ranch, they hadn’t been married, and she hadn’t been certain she’d ever come back. Even so, she hadn’t forgotten the beauty of the mountains, her love of the ranch in Honey Lake Valley, and her dream to raise horses with the good man beside her.
Amid the scattered rocks and fragrant clusters of gray-green sage around them, desert flowers added brilliant splashes of purple, red, and orange. When they had left, the land had been brown, dry from a year of heat and draught. Clearly, the winter snows and spring rains had come, for now, life bloomed everywhere.
Well, almost everywhere. With a twinge of sadness, Jess pressed a gloved hand to the flatness of her stomach.
She and Jake had married in the fall, on one of the most beautiful autumn days God had ever created. As a wedding gift, Jake had given her the herd of Thoroughbreds, which were grazing in the Bennetts’ paddock even as the pastor stood with them beneath an arch of trees and joined them as husband and wife.
All she had wanted was to give Jake a child in return. And now, it seemed, she was barren.
“What do you suppose they’re thinking, your horses?”
Jess dropped her hand and smiled. “Our horses,” she corrected him. “They’re probably wishing they had taken a train instead.”
Jake chuckled, his broad shoulders stretching the seams of his white cotton shirt. “Is that what you wish, Jess? That the transcontinental was nearly finished instead of only beginning?”
“No, I wouldn’t want to be packed into a noisy passenger car anymore than you would. I’d rather see the land—be a part of it.”
“Well, this land looks as though it’s seen some rain this year.”
“I was just thinking the same.”
The Bennett Mountain Ranch—our ranch. Tickled by the thought, Jess laughed out loud. “We’re going home,” she said, a pleasant tightness in her chest. “I feel….” She lifted a hand, uncertain how to describe her feeling. “I feel like a young falcon, about to soar into the wind for the first time.”
He smiled in understanding, then suddenly turned tense, alert. He drew his Remington. An instant later, Taggart and Diaz did the same.
“What—?”
A rock burst on the ground beside Jess. The sharp report of rifle fire echoed across the desert. All at once, shots exploded, pelting the road around them with shattered stones and dust plumes. Drawing her own revolver, Jess whipped her mare around and looked past Jake to an outcropping of rocks, where rifles barked and gun smoke curled away.
The mare abruptly jerked, then reared high, spilling Jess’s hat and causing her long braid of hair to tumble free. The horse teetered on its hind legs, then fell over backward.
Pain exploded through Jess
’s back and lungs.
Then, darkness.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Endorsements
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Quote
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Epilogue
About the Author
Preview of Hope's Promise