Buch lesen: «The Angel Of Devil's Camp»

Chapter One

Seton Falls, South Carolina

March 1872

Mary Margaret pulled the parsonage door shut with a satisfying thunk and for the very last time twisted the key in the lock. She’d married off five sisters in the past three years, the last one just the day before yesterday. Now it is my turn.

She marched down the walkway and out the front gate, lugging her satchel. For half a heartbeat, she wavered. The yellow rose rambling along the fence needed pruning, but with all the preparations for Charlotte’s wedding, Meggy had had no time for gardening. She forced her gaze away. It no longer mattered.

She smoothed her black traveling dress, slipping her hand into the left pocket. The letter she’d carefully folded crackled under her fingers. Dear God in heaven, let this be the right thing to do.

She heaved the tapestry bag into the buggy and climbed up onto the sagging seat. I will not look back. I will look to the road ahead and be joyful.

At last! She was free. No more meals to eke out from the squash and dried beans donated by the congregation. No more wedding dresses for Charity or Charlotte, cobbled together out of old tablecloths and scraps of lace. She had remade most of her old ball gowns into dresses for her sisters, and sold the rest for food. A barrel of flour cost 150 federal dollars, a basket of eggs $25. The war had made such a struggle of life!

She closed her eyes and pressed her knuckles against her lips. The war took everything, even our hearts and our souls. She and her sisters had survived, but the scars would always remain.

Leaning forward, she patted the satchel at her feet. Inside, on top of her spare petticoat and her nightgown, lay her father’s revolver. She would travel three thousand miles, all the way to Oregon, to marry a second cousin of her father’s, a man she had never seen. It was the only proposal she had ever received, and she most certainly intended to arrive in one piece!

She gathered up the worn leather reins. “Move on, Bess.”

The mare took a single step forward, and Meggy’s heart took flight.

“Colonel, darlin’, wake up!”

Tom rolled over on the narrow canvas cot and opened one eye. “What is it, O’Malley?”

“The deed needs doin’,” his former sergeant said. “And you’re the proper one to do it.”

Tom groaned. Being in charge didn’t let him sleep much. A logging crew wasn’t like an army unit. Loggers were a fractious bunch of misfits with a heightened instinct for survival and an even more heightened taste for liquor and high times. Not one of them would last a day under military discipline. Tom had mustered out two years ago, taken Sergeant O’Malley with him and headed west. The undisciplined men he commanded now obeyed him because he wasn’t a colonel.

“Tom.” The Irishman nudged his shoulder. “You won’t be forgettin’ now, will you?”

With an effort, Tom sat up. His head felt like someone was whacking an ax into his skull, and the aftertaste of whiskey in his mouth made him grit his teeth. He figured his breath alone could get a man drunk.

“Remind me what it is that needs doing, Mick? If it can wait, let it.”

“The peeler, the one that got killed yesterday? The coffin’s ready and Swede and Turner’s dug the grave. You need to speak some words over the man.”

Oh, hell, he had forgotten. Wanted to forget, in fact. Which was why he’d finished half a bottle of rye last night. In the past month he’d lost one, no, two bullcooks and a skinner. The timber was turning dry as a witch’s broom and then one of his peelers, a square peg on a logging crew if he’d ever seen one, let an ax slice into his thigh and bled to death before they could load him into the wagon.

“The men are waitin’, Tom.”

“I won’t forget, Mick. See if you can rustle up some coffee.” He tossed off the grimy sheet, lowered his legs to the packed-earth floor and stood up. “Tell them I’ll be there.”

The interior of the tent spun and Tom sat down abruptly.

“Get me that coffee, will you?”

“Sure thing, Colonel. And you’ll be wantin’ a clean shirt and your Bible.”

His Bible.

He clenched his jaw. His sister had sent it when he’d first joined the army. She had even marked certain passages she liked. He hadn’t opened it since that day in Richmond when he’d read over her grave.

Today would be different, he told himself. For one thing, he didn’t know the peeler very well. He’d known Susanna all her short life, had raised her by himself after their father died. A familiar dull ache settled behind his breastbone.

“One more thing, Tom. We found something on the body. You better have a look.”

“Later.” He stuffed the single folded page the sergeant handed him into his shirt pocket without glancing at it. “Coffee,” Tom reminded him. “And make it double strength.”

Meggy dropped to the pine-needle-covered ground beneath the biggest tree she had ever seen. She had climbed halfway up the steep ridge, dragging her satchel, which felt as if it was filled with bricks. Her mouth was parched, her stomach hollow, her eyes scratchy. The supply wagon had left Tennant at daybreak, and she had been walking the past hour. Now it was near noon and she could go no farther.

She gazed up into a sky the color of bluebonnets, listening to the rat-tat-tat of a woodpecker. All at once the sound was obliterated by raucous men’s voices.

Good heavens, Yankee soldiers. She scooted closer to the massive tree trunk.

That can’t be right. The war is over. Besides, this is Oregon. She eased around the tree until she could see to the top of the ridge.

Directly above her, a dozen men in colorful shirts and faded blue trousers stood in a circle. Most had unkempt hair hanging beneath their battered hats. Many had untrimmed beards. Three or four leaned on the handles of shovels.

Their voices ceased as a man taller than the rest marched up. He carried himself ramrod straight. She knew without a doubt he was a soldier.

The circle opened for him, and Meggy spied a rough-hewn coffin. She eased forward for a closer look, watched the tall man take a book from his shirt pocket and begin to read.

Tom cleared his throat, scanned the men gathered at the freshly dug grave site and opened his Bible. He ran his forefinger down the page, stopped at the Twenty-third Psalm. Raising his eyes, he opened his mouth.

“The Lord is my…”

Swede Jensen snatched off his red-and-yellow knit cap and bowed his head.

A flutter of something black through the trees caught Tom’s eye. It vanished behind a thick fir tree, then reappeared. A hawk? He couldn’t be sure. The summer sun was so intense the air shimmered.

Not a hawk. Too low. Something wrapped up like a cocoon—a bear, maybe? The back of his neck prickled.

Whatever it was plodded up the hill toward him at a steady pace. No, not a bear. A bear would pause and sniff the air. Not an Indian, either. Only a white man would walk incautiously forward in a straight line.

He squinted as the figure moved out of the shadows of the fir grove. Not a man. A woman! All in black from boots to veiled hat, with a shawl knotted about her shoulders. Something in the tilt of her head…

For one awful moment he thought it was Susanna. A knife slipped into his heart and he snapped the Bible shut. Handing it to O’Malley, he started down the hill.

She did not look up. Her leather shoes scrabbling on the steep rocky slope, she kept walking, dragging a satchel in one hand and a bulging sack in the other. She didn’t slow down until she almost ran into him.

“My stars, where on earth did you come from?”

Tom’s eyebrows rose. “More to the point, ma’am, where in hell did you come from?”

She let go of the satchel, and it plopped onto the ground with a puff of dust. “The supply wagon from Tennant. The driver brought me out on condition that I deliver this.” She thrust the sack toward him.

Tom accepted the bag and peered inside.

“It contains six bars of soap, a dozen lemons and two bottles of spirits. He said it would hold you until next week.”

“Only two bottles?”

She nodded. “One is for medicinal purposes. And six bars of—”

“Lemons?”

“Mr. Jacobs said they were to combat scurvy.”

Tom stared at her. Her eyes were a curious shade of gray-green, almost the color of tree moss.

“Besides delivering Mose Jacobs’s scurvy remedy, what are you doing out here?”

Her spine went rigid as a tent pole. “I am calling on Mr. Peabody. Walter Peabody.”

“Why?” Tom said carefully.

“It is a personal matter, sir. Between Mr. Peabody and myself. If you would be so kind as to conduct me—”

“Peabody’s dead.”

Her face went the color of chalk. “I beg your pardon?”

“An accident. His ax slipped and he bled to death.”

The stricken look on her face sent a band of cold steel around his chest.

“But…” Her voice wobbled. “He can’t be! We were to be married. I came all the way from South Carolina to marry him.”

“I’m real sorry, ma’am. We’re just burying him this morning.”

“I see.” She swallowed and lifted her chin. “Yes, I do see.”

Tom stood rooted before her, wondering why he couldn’t speak.

“May I…view his remains? You see, we never met. I have no idea what he…” She pressed her lips together.

He could not bear to look at her face. Except for her unsmiling mouth and her pallor, she could be any pretty young woman out for a Sunday walk. He’d seen Union soldiers with less composure.

Tom hesitated. His left eyelid began to twitch. Lifting the travel satchel from the ground, he pivoted away from her. “Come with me.”

Meggy followed him up the hill, his low, tersely spoken words sending a swarm of butterflies into her stomach. She stepped on the hem of her dress, stumbled over protruding tree roots as she tried to keep up with his long-legged stride. Where the ground leveled out near a stand of fir trees, he stopped short. “Coffin’s over there, next to the grave. Best hurry before we nail it shut.”

Her heart hurtled into her throat. She had seen bodies before. Old men. Young men. Federal soldiers as well as Confederate. Why was she so frightened now?

She took a step forward. In the coffin before her lay a slight man with pale-gold hair and mustache, a narrow chin and thin lips.

She stood absolutely still. It was a mistake to look at him, but she couldn’t help herself. Walter Peabody would have been her husband, had he lived. She had traveled all the way from Seton Falls to be this man’s wife. And now…now…

Now she was not only unmarried, she was also in a fix, stranded out here alone among a bunch of exceedingly rough-looking men. Yankee men. And she had not one single penny in her pocket.

“Seen enough?” A low voice spoke at her back.

“Oh. Oh, yes, I expect so. Thank you. I—”

“Okay, Swede, close it up.”

“Sure thing, Tom.” The big man dropped the lid on the box.

Meggy’s legs turned to jelly, and she looked away.

Then a steadying arm pressed under her elbow. “Name’s Michael O’Malley, ma’am. I’m thinkin’ you’d be Miss Hampton?”

She nodded at the russet-haired man. He wore a wash-worn Union Army shirt, faded stripes still intact, and wide red suspenders. A Yankee. She started to pull away, but she was so unsteady on her feet she could not stand alone. She let him guide her to the edge of the grave, where the bearded Swede was nailing down the coffin lid. Each blow of the man’s hammer sent a tremor through her body.

Whatever would she do now? Walter had paid her train fare, but the stagecoach to Tennant had taken all of her meager savings. Here she was, in a godforsaken wilderness with no money and no prospects.

The tall man, Tom, opened the Bible and cleared his throat. “The Lord is my shepherd….”

Meggy’s throat tightened. Poor Walter! Cut down in the prime of his life, with no kin to mourn for him except her.

“He leadeth me beside…”

She moved her lips silently over the words of the psalm. Would Walter Peabody rest in peace among Yankees?

“Yea, though I walk through the valley…”

She opened her mouth and joined in. Tom shot her a glance over the top of the plain wood coffin. The look on his face stopped her breath.

Eyes as sharp as a steel saber cut into her. The blue was so intense her mind conjured the morning glories she’d planted against the back fence of the parsonage. Dear Lord, he looked so angry!

“…in the house of the Lord forever. Amen.” He slapped the Bible shut. “Funeral’s over.”

Meggy gasped. “Oh, surely not,” she blurted. “Should we not…” She racked her brain. With him looking at her that way, his mouth hard, his jaw muscle working, every thought she had flew right out of her head.

“…sing?” she supplied at last. “Perhaps a hymn?”

He pinned her to the spot with those eyes, like two blue bolts of lightning. “No damned hymns.” His voice spit the words.

Her frame stiffened from her toes to the top of her head. “Why not?”

“Peabody was a good man. A bit soft, but no hypocrite. I won’t sully a decent burial by mangling some hymn none of us can remember.”

She stared at him so long her eyes began to burn. And then, still holding his gaze, she opened her mouth and began to sing. “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound….”

The Swede chimed in, then another voice. Mr. O’Malley and two more joined in, and finally everyone was singing.

Except for the tall man with the Bible.

Defiantly, Meggy began the second stanza. “I once was lost, but now am found….”

He stood rigid as a rifle barrel until the song ended, then stuffed the Bible in his belt and reached for the shovel stuck in the loosened earth. The Swede and another man with straight black hair that hung past his collar hefted the coffin into the waiting grave.

A shovelful of dirt plopped onto the pine box, and Meggy’s heart constricted. North or South, the sound of earth on a coffin lid was the same. By the time the war ended, she’d attended enough burials to last a lifetime.

She struggled to think clearly as the dirt clods rained down. Walter Peabody had been her last hope. With all the males in Seton Falls under the age of 16, or over 60 or dead, she’d come west out of desperation. She wanted a husband. Children.

But now she was neither grieving sweetheart nor bereaved widow, but still plain Mary Margaret Hampton, oldest of six sisters and a spinster at twenty-five.

Numb with disbelief, she bent her head, clasped her hands under her chin and closed her eyes. Lord, it’s me again. I entreat you to give this man, Walter Wade Peabody, a place in your kingdom where he may rest in peace. It isn’t his fault he left this world in an untimely manner. I assure you, his intentions were entirely honorable. Amen.

When she opened her eyes, the tall man with the Bible was gone.

“Miss Hampton?” A hand touched her elbow. “Colonel’d like to see you. First tent left of the cookhouse, yonder.” The red-haired sergeant pointed to an unpainted wood shack, twice as long as it was wide, on the other side of a clearing. Smoke poured out the chimney at one end.

“The cookhouse, yes, I see it.” Her mind felt fuzzy, as if her head were stuffed with cotton bolls. She started up the hill behind Mr. O’Malley.

When they reached the tent, her guide rapped twice on the support pole and pushed aside the flap. Through the opening she spied the tall man lounging on a tumbled cot, his feet propped on a makeshift plank desk, which rested on two thick log rounds.

“Here she is, Colonel.”

The tall man stood up, his dark hair brushing the canvas ceiling. Mr. O’Malley stepped away from Meggy and lowered his voice. “You read that letter yet, Tom?”

“Not yet. Fetch us some coffee, will you?”

“Colonel, I wish you’d read—”

“Coffee, Mick. Pronto.”

The sergeant gestured to the neatly made-up cot on the opposite side of the tent. “Have a seat, ma’am. Won’t be a minute.” The flap swished shut.

Meggy remained standing. “I’m sure I should not be here, sir. This is a gentleman’s private quarters.” She stared at a coal-black raven in a cage hung from the tent pole.

Tom chuckled. “Not private. And I’m not a…Anyway, sit down. This won’t take long.”

With reluctance Meggy perched on the edge of the cot. The warm air inside the tent was thick with the smell of leather and sweat. Man smells. Not unpleasant, just…different. Strong. Pungent, her sister Charlotte would have said. Charlotte wrote poetry.

Tom settled on the unmade cot opposite her, repropped his boots on the plank desk and looked her over with a penetrating gaze. “What do you plan to do, now that Peabody’s…gone?”

Meggy’s mind went blank. “Do?”

“Ma’am, you can’t marry a dead man.”

The sergeant bustled in with two chipped mugs of something that looked dark and sludgy. He handed one to Meggy and set the other near the colonel’s crossed boots. “There’s no cream. Fong churned it all into butter.”

Meggy removed her gloves and took a sip of the lukewarm brew. It tasted like the coffee she had concocted out of dried grain and sassafras root during the war. She sipped again and choked. Worse. This tasted like chopped-up walnut shells mixed with turpentine.

O’Malley sidled closer to Tom and bent over the desk. “Read that letter yet?”

Tom downed a double gulp of the coffee. “Nope.”

“If I was you, Colonel, sir, I might do that right now.” He gestured at Tom’s shirt pocket.

Meggy rose at once. “Forgive me, sir. I must not keep you from your business.”

“Tom, for the love of God, read the damn letter! Beggin’ your pardon, ma’am.”

Tom glared at his sergeant, then dug in his pocket and withdrew a folded paper. It crackled as he spread it flat. Meggy found herself watching. There was something odd about the way Mr. O’Malley danced near Tom’s shoulder, grinning at her.

Tom scanned the words, then drew his black eyebrows into a frown. “That son of a gun,” he muttered. “I wonder when he found the time?”

“Might explain why Peabody looked so peaked the last few months. Must’ve come off the peeling crew and worked half the night on his own, I’m thinkin’.”

Meggy looked from one to the other. What were they talking about?

Tom spun the paper under his thumb until the writing faced her. “This concerns you, Miss Hampton.”

“Me? Why, how could it possibly?”

“It’s Walt Peabody’s will.”

Meggy lifted the paper with shaking hands.

“…all my earthly possessions to Miss Mary Margaret Hampton, soon to be my wife.”

“Possessions? Oh, you mean his law books?”

“No, not his law books. Seems he built a cabin. For when his fiancée joined him.”

Meggy stared at him. “You mean…you mean Mr. Peabody provided for me?” The knot in her stomach melted away like so much warm molasses. Oh, the dear, blessed man. He had left her some property! She sank onto the cot.

“Oh, thank the Lord, I have a home.”

Tom shot to his feet. “Not so fast, Miss Hampton. You can’t stay here. I run a logging camp, not a boardinghouse.”

“But the cabin—my cabin—is here.”

“A logging camp is no place for a woman.”

The red-haired sergeant stepped forward. “Oh, now, Tom—”

“Shut up, O’Malley.”

Meggy stood up. “No place for a woman? Mr. Peabody seemed to think otherwise.”

“Mr. Peabody isn’t—wasn’t—the boss here. I am.”

Meggy felt her spine grow rigid. It was a sensation she’d come to recognize over the last seven years, one that signaled the onset of the stubborn streak she’d inherited from her father. “That does not signify, for it is—was—Mr. Peabody who wrote the will, not you.” She gentled her voice. “And you, sir, even if you are the boss here, are surely not above the law?”

At that instant she noticed that Mr. O’Malley stood off to one side, shaking his head at her. The Irishman was trying to warn her about something, but what? What was it she was not supposed to say?

Silence fell, during which she desperately tried to think.

A woodpecker drilled into a tree outside the tent, and Meggy started. The noise rose above the rasp of cicadas, pounding into her head until she thought she would scream.

“The law,” Tom said in a low, hard voice, “protects no one. When push comes to shove, it’s not the right that wins, but the strong. Coming from a Confederate state, I’d think you’d have a hard time forgetting that.”

She clamped her teeth together. Was that what the man had against her? That she was from the South?

“The mighty prevail, is that it?”

“That’s it. It’s a lesson I learned the hard way. I suggest you are about to do the same.”

O’Malley pivoted toward his boss. “Oh, now, Tom, couldn’t we—”

“Nope.”

Meggy drew in a long breath and used the time it took to expel it to gather her courage. She might as well risk it. She had nothing to lose and everything—a home, a sanctuary out here in this remote bit of nowhere—to gain. She needed time to absorb what had happened. Time to make new plans. Besides, she had no money, and until she could decide what to do next, she was stuck here.

“On the contrary, Colonel…I beg your pardon, what is your family name, sir? I do not wish to be improper in addressing you.”

“Randall,” he growled. “I come from Ohio.”

“Colonel Randall,” she continued. “I believe it is you who may learn the lesson here. For it is a known fact that when a suit is brought, and the issue judged by an honest jury of one’s peers…”

She left the rest unspoken. It was always best to allow the enemy a graceful exit. “Why, your own president, Mr. Grant, made that very point not long ago in a speech before the Congress of the United States.”

Tom took a good long look at the young woman standing before him. She wasn’t going to give up, he could see that. Her softly modulated voice never rose, but beneath the controlled tone he detected cold steel. And the look in her eye…Yeah, she sure did remind him of Susanna.

In that instant he knew he was beaten. Women like this one, like his sister, didn’t give up. If he pushed, she would fight back, and she would continue until she either triumphed or died trying. He closed his hands into fists. He didn’t want to be responsible for another one. She had determination written all over her.

And, he noted, she had unusual eyes, set in a perfectly oval face and framed with thick lashes. Her dark hair was parted in the center and gathered in a soft, black-netted roll at her neck. The only other part of her body he could see was her hands, which were graceful and small-boned, with long fingers and short nails. For all her fragile female appearance, those hands looked capable enough.

For some reason his gut clenched just looking at them.

The good Lord can sure play a joke when He sees fit. The last thing he needed was a woman at Devil’s Camp. A pretty woman with eyes like a cool, deep river. The last thing he wanted anywhere near him for the remainder of his life was a woman who stirred his emotions.

He grasped her elbow, turned her toward the tent entrance.

“Meeting’s over, Miss Hampton. I’m sending you back to Tennant.”