A Lady Like Sarah (5 page)

She sat up and reached for her boots. The flapping wings of an owl, followed by a low hoot, made her glance anxiously at the preacher. He didn't move.

Fortunately, the night was moonless, though she didn't particularly look forward to making her way along the trail in total darkness. There was a real danger of her horse stepping into a prairie dog burrow or stumbling into a hole dug out by badgers searching for gopher nests.

Not that she had a choice. The preacher was determined to take her to Texas. She'd just as soon die out here than step foot in that state again.

She rose, grabbed the lawman's saddle,
then
followed the sound of water to the horses.

Marshal Owen's horse neighed softly and pressed its velÂvet soft nose next to her neck. The lawman called the bay Blizzard, though no white could be found anywhere on its reddish-brown hide.

Not far away, Noah nickered. "You stay quiet now, you hear?" she whispered. Moses, the mule, remained silent.

Saddling the bay in the dark was no easy task, but she managed. Taking Blizzard's reins, she eased the horse forward. She had no intention of mounting him until she was out of hearing range.

She was just about ready to jab her foot into the stirrup when a voice floated out of the darkness. "Don't forget, Sarah, you're on your honor."

Stopping dead in her tracks, her mind raced. She would have sworn the preacher was asleep. Still, it was no time to panic. Now that she'd recovered some of her strength, he'd have a hard time holding her back.

Knowing him, he was probably already praying to keep her from leaving. If the beans were any indication of the power of prayer, she had nothing to worry about. He could pray all he wanted for all she cared.

Once she'd made up her mind to do something, nothing or no one could stop her. She glanced up just as a shooting star blazed a fiery path overhead.

"Not even You, God."

She hated to take advantage of the preacher's foibles, but it couldn't be helped. She felt for the stirrups with her foot and mounted the horse with one fluid motion.

"Sorry, Preacher," she called into the darkness. "But when it comes to choosing 'twixt honor and
savin
' my neck, it ain't
no
contest."

Justin stood in the darkness and didn't move. The sound of galloping hooves had faded away, leaving behind an empty silence that had a chilling effect on him.

He knew she'd run, of course, but he didn't think she'd try to escape before daybreak.

What a foolhardy thing for her to do. Who in their right mind would take off in the middle of the night? She could fall prey to Indians, outlaws, or even wild animals. Anything could happen.

But even as he worried about the dangers that could befall her, he heaved a sigh of relief. The last thing he wanted was to help put a woman in jail. He didn't know who she was or even what criminal act she'd committed. For all he knew, she could be an innocent bystander, though somehow he doubted it.

What he did know was that she'd saved the marshal's life. The lawman wouldn't have made it this long without Sarah's help. For all her toughness, he sensed something
soft
and pure in her.
Something that brought out some need within him to protect her.
          

He hated not keeping his word to Owen, but how could he? What did he know about holding a prisoner captive? Nothing in his experience prepared him for this. He had enough problems taking care of the lawman.

He debated what to do. He could ride after her, chase her down, make her wait till morning before taking off, but he discounted each idea in turn. Judging by the way she tore away from camp, she could outride him by far. And he had no way of following her trail in the dark.

He glanced upward. During the long, hard weeks of travel, he'd learned a lot about the sky. Enough to know it was still several hours before dawn.

He walked back to the campsite, surprised at how lonely it seemed now that Sarah had gone. He'd been traveling for weeks. Sometimes days would pass before he saw another living soul. But he welcomed his solitary journey. Had in fact chosen to travel by horseback rather than hassle the unÂpredictable train and stage schedules. He wanted—desperÂately needed—time to think, to talk to God and ask for help in preparing for the challenges ahead.

Tonight, however, the silence offered him no such solace.

He checked on Owen. The lawman's head still felt cool to the touch.

He lay on his bedroll, his heart heavy as a new molded brick. Even though he'd allowed her to escape, he couldn't shake the feeling that he had let her down. He'd been doing that a lot lately.
Letting people down.

When he was first ordained as a minister, eight years ago, things had seemed so simple. He had a sense of God's purpose for his life. But now, at the age of thirty-two, confusion had chipped away at his resolve until he was no longer certain if his heavenly Father even had a plan for him.

How could he know what God wanted when he couldn't even trust his own judgment? He'd been wrong about a lot of things.
About his life.
About his church.

His faith had burned like a steady light inside him all these years, but even that had been shaken in recent months.

Who knows? Maybe he was even wrong about Sarah. Maybe he only imagined the goodness he saw in her, the vulnerability.

From the distance came the howling of wolves. It was a lonely sound that seemed to echo the very loneliness inside him.

"Dear heavenly Father, Almighty God, Creator of heaven and earth . . . Keep her safe, God. Keep her safe."

The hours dragged on
until,
at last, a silver thread of light on the distant horizon announced the near arrival of dawn. Stumbling around in the darkness, Justin packed up his belongings and loaded them on to Moses, careful to balÂance the load so as not to add undue stress to the animal's back.

He'd not slept a wink since Sarah left. He rubbed his neck and stretched the muscles in his back. He wondered if a body ever got used to sleeping on the cold, hard ground.

However, his low spirits had little if anything to do with his physical complaints. He couldn't stop thinking about Sarah, praying for her safety, wondering whether he'd made a mistake in not keeping better watch over her. The truth was
,
he detested the idea of handcuffing her. Holding her against her will went against his very nature.

Even if his chances of catching up to her were slim or altogether impossible, he should have gone after her.
If for no other reason but to make her wait till daylight to escape.

Why hadn't he?

And why, for that matter, hadn't he stayed in Boston and faced his accusers? Why did he always take the path of least resistance? It was a question very much on his mind that morning as he wandered about in the dawn's early light.

Marshal Owen woke at his touch. His skin sallow and parched, his cheeks hollow, he gazed at Justin from sunken eyes.

"How are you feeling?" Justin asked.

"Like I was run over by an iron horse," Owen replied, his voice weak.

Justin debated what to do. "Do you think you're well enough to travel? There's a town about thirty miles away." Normally, he would have easily made it there in less than a day, but with two men on a single horse, he wasn't sure how long it would take. "We might find a doctor there."

The response was slow in coming. "I can try."

"We only have one horse," Justin said.

"The prisoner—"

"
Shh
. Don't
try
to talk. You need to conserve your strength."

"Just don't make me drink any more of that ghastly tea," Owen pleaded.

The silvery sky gradually turned blue with not a cloud in sight. North and west of him, the Missouri prairie seemed to go on forever. To the far south, the Ozarks rose like ghostly ships sailing across the
sealike
plains.

The lawman slumped on the saddle in front of
him,
Justin made his way along a rutted trail. Travel was slow, but it couldn't be helped.

Spotting fresh horse tracks, he stopped for a closer look. He felt certain the tracks belonged to Sarah, and the way the hoofs sank into the ground indicated she'd been traveling fast. She was probably miles away by now.

It was still only May, but already the temperatures began to soar. He studied the landscape ahead for even the slightÂest motion, but nothing, not even a blade of grass, moved beneath the shimmering, hot sun.

He rode for the better part of the morning, stopping only long enough to water his horse and pack mule in one of the many natural springs that dotted the area, and to check Owen's bandage and make him drink.

The red, swollen skin around the jagged wound worried him. If only Sarah
were
here, she'd know what to do, he was certain of it.

He rode past herds of wild horses and graceful antelope. A lone buffalo bull bellowed,
then
walked away on legs that seemed too short and thin for such a large, cumbersome body. The sound woke Owen. "Mating season," he muttered before closing his eyes again.

Never having seen such an odd animal, Justin stopped to watch it. He'd heard that the plains were once filled with the woolly beasts, but he had always assumed the reports were exaggerated. That was before he'd witnessed for himself the unbelievable number of bleached bones strewn across the land. Feeling a sense of sadness, Justin watched the magÂnificent creature until it moved away.

Around noon, the ground grew muddy. Shallow pools of water made travel increasingly difficult.

Something caught his eye—a horse.
Sarah's horse.
He anxÂiously scanned the marshy bogs. Her
untethered
bay stood a short distance away, grazing, but there was no sign of Sarah.

Fearing the worst, he urged Noah on. The horse gingerly picked his way around the soggy ground with Moses plodding behind.

Birds took flight as he drew near. Ducks, geese, and loons rose to the sky and scattered like feathers in the wind. Striped frogs jumped out of the way, splash-landing into sodden swales. Dragonflies hovered close to the water's surface, their blue bodies gleaming in the sun. The air was abuzz with dark clouds of bugs that flittered back and forth in a graceless dance.

He found
a
relatively
dry spot
next to Blizzard and tethÂered both horses together. Fearing the marshal would fall out of the saddle if left
unsupervised,
he helped Owen to the ground and settled him on a blanket in the skimpy shade of a low-growing willow.

As quickly as he dared, he circled the marshy bog on foot, his sense of dread increasing with each hurried step. He cupped his hands around his mouth and called her name. "Sarah!"

"It's 'bout time you got here!"

His heart leaped at the sound of her voice. Unable to disÂcern where her voice came from, he squinted against the sun. "Where are you?"

"Over here!"

He spotted her, at last, in the middle of a murky pool. Alarm shot through him. "What in the world . . .!"

"Don't come any closer," she warned. "If you get stuck, neither of us has got a prayer of
gettin
' out. This stuff holds on tighter than a corset."

"A corset, eh?" He couldn't help but laugh. He was so relieved to see her he almost jumped with joy. "You don't strike me as the type to have firsthand knowledge of such a garment."

"You don't have to wear them to know how they fit," she snapped. "Now get off the stick and get me
outta
here!"

Without another word he backed away, watching his every step until he reached hard ground again. "Don't move," he called. He then raced back to the horses. A coil of rope hung from the skirts of the marshal's saddlebags. He hoped it was long enough to do the job.

Rope in hand, he started back. Moving as close to Sarah as he dared, he uncoiled the rope. "Grab hold of this," he called. "I'll haul you in."

He tossed one end of the rope to her, and it fell a distance away.

"You throw like you build a fire," she complained.

Pulling the rope back in, he grinned. "I'm glad to see you've retained your usual sweet disposition."

"Don't go
gettin
' your hopes up high, Preacher," she said. Although her fate was in his hands, she made no attempt to agree with him or even placate him. "I might have one foot in the grave, but I ain't about to mend my ways."

"That's two feet you have in the grave," he teased. "And if you mended your ways, I wouldn't have to keep rescuing you." He tossed the end of the rope again, this time hitting his mark.

She grabbed hold of it, and he slowly reeled her in. When she was close enough to reach, he held out his hand and yanked her out of the mire.

She followed him back to the horses with her arms straight out like a scarecrow's, complaining all the way. "Did you ever see such a mess in all your born days?" she cried.

"We'll find a safe place for you to clean off," he said. "While you're doing that, I'll fix us something to eat."

"I'll eat with you. But I ain't
goin
' to Texas with you," she said. "So you can just forget that notion, you hear?"

By the time they had moved to dry land and found clean water, she was in an even worse mood than before. Her pants, shirt, boots—everything—were caked with sand and she walked like a stiff board.

Apparently, it wasn't in Sarah's nature to suffer in silence. She voiced her complaints nonstop till his ears began to ring.

He pulled a blanket off the horse and handed her a pair of clean pants and a shirt. He then pulled out a bar of Blue India soap he had tucked away in his saddlebags and tossed it to her. She stared down at the soap in her hand, and her face softened.

Without a word, she turned and disappeared behind a clump of trees.

She was in a considerably better mood when she returned. Her damp hair fell to her shoulders in tangled curls. His clothes were too large for her, and she had rolled up the legs of his pants and the sleeves of his shirt. She flung her newly washed clothes over Moses' saddle to dry.