Frontier Lady (Lone Star Legacy Book #1)

Judith Pella

Description

Deborah Graham learns too late--on her wedding night--that her escape from the ravages of the Civil War to the plains of Texas is really no escape at all. A captivating first book in the historical fiction Lone Star Legacy series.

Informations

• Publié par: Baker Publishing Group
• Date de parution: 01 mars 1993
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781441262974
• Langue: English

Extrait

Lone Star Legacy Book One
Frontier Lady
Judith Pella
Copyright © 1994 by Judith Pella
Published by Bethany House Publishers 11400 Hampshire Avenue South Bloomington, Minnesota 55438 www.bethanyhouse.com
Bethany House Publishers is a division of Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan. www.bakerpublishinggroup.com
Ebook edition created 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means for example, electronic, photocopy, recording without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
ISBN 978-1-4412-6297-4
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
Cover illustration by Joe Nordstrom
The internet addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers in this book are accurate at the time of publication. They are provided as a resource. Baker Publishing Group does not endorse them or vouch for their content or permanence.
To Michael Phillips,
Friend, brother in Christ, and mentor.
“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” John 15:13
Thank you, Mike, for being so generous with your talents, your wisdom, and your encouragement.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Part 1: Stoner’s Crossing
Part 2: The Company of Outlaws
Part 3: Broken Wing
Part 4: Wind Rider
Part 5: Squaw Lady
Part 6: Surrender
Part 7: New Beginnings
About the Author
Books by Judith Pella
Back Cover
Part 1
Stoner’s Crossing
1
They were building a gallows in Stoner’s Crossing. The two men commissioned for the job perspired and grumbled as they set nail to wood under the searing Texas sun. The temperature was no less than a hundred degrees on that midsummer day. A brilliant yellow sun reflected against the stark blue of the sky.
Wiping a grimy red handkerchief across his damp brow, the older of the two builders, a man with more gray in his tangled hair and beard than brown, stood back and surveyed the results of his labors.
“Should be done on time,” he observed.
“They better have that free whiskey for us when we’re done, that’s all I can say,” replied the younger fellow.
They would earn two dollars each and a bottle of whiskey for their work no less than a king’s ransom to the ne’er-do-well drifters. But they could have commanded any price for the nefarious task, since they were the only ones in the dusty, ramshackle excuse for a town who had the stomach for it.
Having arrived in Stoner’s Crossing only a few days earlier, they had never known Leonard Stoner. To them he was but a victim, murdered in the prime of life. To them, his killer should pay for the crime by hanging. That was the law. They didn’t know the victim; they didn’t know his murderer, and they didn’t much care about either. Still, they were not completely heartless.
The older man mopped his drenched brow again. “You know, Tom, I don’t feel altogether settled about taking that there money.”
“Me neither, Wash.”
“Wash,” otherwise known as Eli Washburn, slowly shook his head as he aimed his hammer at another nail. “I reckon someone was bound to take it, though, if it weren’t us.”
“I suppose you’re right there.”
“You ever hanged anyone, Tom?” Without waiting for an answer, the older man continued. “It ain’t a pretty sight. I seen tough frontiersmen carry on sorely aforehand. It ain’t easy sticking your neck through that noose.”
Momentarily sobered by Washburn’s unpleasant statement, both men fell silent.
The steady clank-thud of their hammering dominated the stifling air, without even a flutter of a breeze to dull the haunting sound. Oddly, the town was quiet just then, the two or three hundred residents, apparently occupied indoors, showing no interest in the solitary activity around the ominous wooden structure. Occasionally the sound of a snorting horse or a raised voice at one of the saloons penetrated the silence, but for the most part only the tattoo of the hammer and the grunts of the workmen broke the grim quiet.
The sun arched higher in the sky, its movement almost visible, if anyone had the kind of mystical vision that could peer directly into that blazing light. But even a blind man could feel the sun’s inevitable climb toward its apex.
High noon.
That hour would not pass this day without note. The cloistered citizens of the town would surely not neglect to attend the upcoming event. Even if their hands must stay free of actual blood, their curiosity was another thing. It had to be appeased.
Like the no-account vagrants they had hired to do their dirty work, the residents of Stoner’s Crossing wondered. Some had seen a hanging before. Some had even participated. Often, in that untamed wilderness, the affair involved nothing more than pitching a sturdy rope over a stout tree branch and then kicking the victim’s horse out from under him. The scions of law were often too far removed to await that nebulous thing easterners labeled “due process.” The rope and the gun were often the only law an honest man had available to him this far west of the Mississippi. One could not be fainthearted. Too many who had let a desperado walk away from a crime later ended up receiving a bullet in the back as thanks.
Hangings were not uncommon, but trials were. In fact, the recent trial in Stoner’s Crossing was somewhat of an anomaly in this lawless land. But that’s how Caleb Stoner had wanted it all nice and legal. And Caleb usually got his way. It was his town, after all.
Shading his eyes with a calloused hand, Tom gazed up at the sky.
“I figure that there sun’s as high as she’s going to get.”
Washburn pounded the final nail into the structure.
“Yeah. Told you we’d finish.”
The two dirty drifters scrutinized their work once more. Fifteen feet high, the gallows had taken them nearly two days to build, and was a handsome piece of work. The steps were even, except for one near the top, where an ill-placed nail had split the wood, leaving it rough across the center. It shouldn’t pose a problem, though. Most folks climbing a gallows were moving slow enough. The framing was strong, too. Washburn gave it a couple of heavy-handed blows to be sure. It wouldn’t do to have the thing crashing down prematurely. He’d seen something like that happen once, only it had been a tree branch, and the criminal managed to escape in the confusion that followed.
Tom hauled a sandbag up the steps. It weighed only about fifty pounds and wouldn’t be a true test of the structure’s soundness, though Washburn didn’t think it would have to take much more stress than that. They only needed to test the trapdoor. For this procedure the two men tied the bag to the rope Washburn had already fastened around the crossbar of the framing. Tugging at the rope, Washburn pulled the bag to the top.
Washburn wondered why they were going through all this trouble. A tree and a horse would have served as well, even if it would have meant he’d be out two dollars and the bottle of spirits. He decided the sheriff must have figured these unusual circumstances warranted a more formal approach.
“Let ‘er go!” Tom yelled.
Washburn released the rope. In a flash, a mere twinkling, it was over. The bag fell smoothly, with a dusty thud, through the trap. Everything worked fine. You couldn’t have found a better gallows, even in New York City.
Tom set down his hammer and strode over to the sheriff’s office to tell them everything was ready.
But the older drifter didn’t look entirely satisfied with his work. He let his eyes roam over the structure as if looking for some flaw, almost hoping he’d find one, forcing a postponement of the imminent event. He tried to tell himself he wasn’t squeamish. He’d fought Indians and Mexicans and grizzly bears; spilled enough blood, both his own and that of others, to know it wasn’t that. But there was one thing he hadn’t done before and, old and seasoned as he was, he still couldn’t say if he had the stomach for it.
Washburn squeezed the moisture from his handkerchief, and retying it around his sunburned neck, turned to his assistant who had just returned.
“You know, Tom, I ain’t never ”
But his words were cut off as all at once the stifling midday air began to stir with voices and movement.
They were coming now, the sheriff and his deputy with their prisoner sandwiched between them.
The prisoner was a woman.
She was barely twenty years old so young, yet years of strife clung to her as closely as the sultry air. She walked with a sure step, her shoulders hitched back, her chin, despite its delicate line, firm and proud.
It was time for the hanging to begin.
2
Her frame was slight compared to the two men walking on either side of her, but somehow she gave the appearance of towering over them, as if she, not her captors, were in control. The two men gripped her arms, but obviously not because she needed their support. If her knees trembled at all on this her last journey in life, she gave no outward evidence of it. She appeared ready to meet her fate indeed, almost eager to do so, in spite of the pallor of her skin that seemed but a continuation of her colorless gray muslin dress.
The sheriff, now striding grimly at her side, had been amazed at her calm demeanor. She had spoken not a word all day, mostly sitting very straight and prim on the edge of the cot in her cell, with her slim hands folded in her lap. She ate her last meal with meticulous care, finishing every crumb. Sheriff Pollard had known men, hardened outlaws, who couldn’t even choke down a cup of coffee on their execution day. But the woman ate as if it meant something more than just appeasing her hunger. She ate as if she defied even her appetite to accuse her of weakness. Pollard would never have expected it of her, being the genteel eastern-bred woman that she was, although he supposed he’d had a few previous hints of