A Life Restored (4 page)

Chapter 4

As the wagon topped a hill, Caroline nearly choked.
 
The town of Wickenburg was positively primitive.
 
In the river valley below, hundreds of tents lined the banks of the river.
 
A handful of permanent buildings stood set back some from the river.
 
Why the whole place, including tents, was smaller than her hometown in Texas.

After spending the last few months on the trail with her chaperones, Reverend Pritchett and his daughter, Millie, she thought she would be relieved to have their journey come to an end.
 
Instead, she found herself dreading how long she might have to stay here before continuing on to Prescott.

Finally, nearing the edge of the permanent buildings, Reverend Pritchett pulled the wagon to a stop.
 
“Think this will do as good as any place.”

Disembarking from the wagon, both Millie and Caroline looked around at the small cluster of buildings—not large enough to be considered a town with only two saloons, a mercantile, a hotel, and a stage station.

Keeping her voice low so only Millie could hear, Caroline asked, “How much did your father learn about the town before deciding to move?”

“Shhh.”

Most of the population in town appeared to be Mexican.
 
Now that she thought about it, most of the miners down by the river were Mexican, too.
 
Probably not the most receptive group for a Protestant church.
 
Then again, Reverend Pritchett might be used to that coming from Santa Fe.

The sun lowered in the sky as Reverend Pritchett set up their tents.
 
“Ladies, these will have to do for a while.
 
At least we won’t have to pack up each night.”

Caroline nodded, disappointed that their accommodations would not improve anytime soon.
 
Of course, she didn’t plan on being here much longer—especially with a stage station in town.
 
Surely the stage traveled to Prescott.

As she and Millie prepared supper over the fire, she started to notice the whistles and shouts from the miners making their way from the river to the saloons across the street.

One bolder young man came toward her speaking in rapid Spanish.
 
Getting too close for her comfort, she took a step back.
 
The man pressed forward, reaching for the sleeve of her dress.

A rifle cocked next to her, stopping the man from further action.

Millie pressed the gun into the man’s chest when he failed to back away.
 
She spoke quite forcefully in Spanish.
 
The man hesitated only a second before turning and running down the street.

“What did you say to him?” Caroline asked as her heart pounded in her chest.

“I told him, if he wanted to meet Jesus early I could help arrange it.”

Reverend Pritchett’s deep laughter felt contrary to her harried nerves.
 
“That’s Millicent for you.”
 
He uncocked his pistol and returned it to his holster.
 
“She’ll spread the gospel with a rifle if need be.”

Taking a deep breath, Caroline watched as Millie transformed from intimidating rifle-wielding woman to her former mousy self.
 
As her anxiety settled, relief replaced it.
 
She was with two very capable chaperones, both of which would come to her defense when needed.
 
Maybe she should stall her plans to leave for Prescott until they could travel with her.

After a few days in this wretched town, Caroline’s patience fled.
 
Each evening as the miners made their way to the saloons, Millie stood with rifle propped on her hip and Reverend Pritchett kept his pistol handy.
 
The insults spoken in Spanish, though unintelligible to her, grew old.
 
She had to get out of this place.

Finally, on Monday she decided she needed to move forward with her plans.
 
While Reverend Pritchett went to the river bank to save the miners’ lost souls, she carefully slipped from the tents while Millie was preoccupied with laundry.

Caroline headed straight for the stage office.
 
When she stepped into the street, she failed to notice a rider approaching fast.

“Watch out, lady!” a man’s voice shouted, as he pulled up hard on his horse.

Dust stirred and pelted her face.
 
Angry, Caroline shouted back, “Watch out yourself!
 
Who rides at such speed in town?”

The man dismounted and moved within inches of her.
 
She could smell the perspiration soaked into his gray shirt.
 
He narrowed his shaded blue eyes.
 
“Express riders.”

“What?”

“Express riders ride that fast in town.
 
That okay with you?”
 
The sarcasm coating his words let her know that he didn’t really care if it was or not.

Propping her hands on her hips, she tilted her head up slightly to make eye contact.
 
He was only an inch or two taller than her.

“Certainly not.
 
There’s no call for such reckless behavior in a civilized town.”

“Civilized.
 
Ha!”
 
The man turned his back as he snorted.
 
Retrieving his saddle bags, he laughed.
 
“You must be loony.
 
Downright touched.
 
Look around lady.”

He stretched his arm wide, turning back in her direction.
 
“This is some of the most uncivilized country in the whole territory.”

“Humph.”

Touching his hand to the edge of his felt hat, he said, “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some mail to deliver.”

Without waiting for her response, he turned on his heel and walked towards the mercantile.

“I never,” she said, indignant at that man’s behavior.
 
The town might not be the most civilized—well, neither was that express rider.

Brushing the dust from her skirt, she walked past the mercantile, chin jutted high.
 
She stopped at the stage station, pasting a smile on her face.
 
Once through the door, she was greeted by another woman.

“May I help you?”

“Yes.
 
I was wondering when the next stage departs for Prescott.”

“Not until Saturday.”

Caroline’s shoulders slumped.
 
She was hoping to get out of this town sooner.
 
If she had to wait five more days, she would.
 
It wasn’t as if she could just rent a horse and ride out by herself.

“How long is the stage journey from here to Prescott?”

“Two days,” the woman said.
 
Her face brightened as someone entered behind Caroline.
 
“Thomas, welcome.”

“Mrs. Ritter.”

Caroline turned at the familiar voice.
 
It was the express rider.

“Supper will be ready in an hour.”

“Thank you,” Thomas replied.
 
His voice flattened.
 
“Miss.”

Then he brushed past her down the hall.

Trying to control her rising temper, she bit the inside of her cheek.
 
That man was positively infuriating.

“Now, where were we?” Mrs. Ritter muttered.
 
“Ah, yes.
 
The stage to Prescott.
 
It makes one stop for a few hours at a station before climbing the mountain.
 
It doesn’t really stop overnight.
 
Only for meals and a brief respite to change out horses.”

Was this woman serious?
 
A two day stage ride without stopping?
 
Sighing, she reminded herself this was the only way to get to Prescott sooner.

“Do I need to make a reservation?”

“No need, Miss.
 
We take whoever shows up when the stage is ready to leave.
 
Be here by seven.”

Caroline thanked Mrs. Ritter for the information before returning to camp.

Saturday morning dawned.
 
Caroline carefully dressed while Millie sat outside the tent reading her morning devotion.
 
Stuffing the last of her things in her carpet bag, she lifted the edge of the tent and shoved her trunk outside.
 
She cringed as the leather scraped noisily across the gravelly ground.

“Caroline.” Millie called her name.

She darted under the tent flap with carpet bag in hand.
 
Grabbing a handle of the trunk she lifted one side, dragging it along behind her.

When she had taken no more than a few steps, Millie stopped her.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m leaving on the stage to Prescott.”

“Please rethink this.
 
Father and I will take you in September, when the temperature cools.”

The heaviness of the trunk dug into her palm, so she started moving forward again.
 
“I can’t wait any longer.”

After a few more minutes of Millie trying to convince her to stay, they said their goodbyes.
 
Caroline promised to write, as did Millie.
 
One more hug, then Millie returned to her camp.

Dragging the heavy trunk behind her, she finally made it to the stage station with only a few minutes to spare.
 
She purchased her ticket from the money Papa gave her before she left Texas.
 
A large, broad shouldered man lifted her trunk to the top of the stack on the back of the stage.

One of the other waiting passengers offered his hand, helping her into the stagecoach, before taking the seat next to her.
 
With a loud
yaw
the stage lurched into motion.

She was on her way to Prescott, she thought, as a smile stretched across her face.

Chapter 5

Flashing green eyes.
 
Silky blonde hair.

Thomas Anderson snorted as he rolled out of bed, annoyed that he could not get that woman’s face out of his memory.
 
It had been five days since he nearly ran the sassy blonde over as he pulled into Wickenburg.
 
Yet, her face etched into his mind and he didn’t like it one bit.

Shaking out his jeans, he dressed for the day as the smell of frying bacon wafted down the hall.
 
His mouth watered as he opened the door just as Mrs. Denton hollered down the hall that breakfast was served.

Taking a seat at the table, he bowed his head and closed his eyes, knowing Mrs. Denton would slap his hand if he started shoveling food in his mouth before Mr. Denton said grace.
 
Even though he didn’t believe in God, he respected their practice.

Well, maybe he did believe in God.
 
Some.
 
Nothing else explained the bizarre past few years.

At Mr. Denton’s “Amen,” Thomas shrugged off the thought and focused on his food instead.
 
Following breakfast, he thanked the Dentons for their hospitality, saddled his horse, and made his way into La Paz.
 
After a brief visit with the postmaster, he started on his return route to Prescott with saddlebags stuffed full of mail.

The initial part of the trip from La Paz to Desert Wells crossed flat desert before winding around the edge of a mountain range.
 
Regardless of the terrain, the three day journey alone always gave him plenty of time to think.
 
Maybe even too much time.

God, or Providence as his old army buddy used to say, seemed to have some interest in him these days.
 
He gave into the idea that God was the only reasonable explanation for how he ended up in the Arizona Territory.

The road to Arizona started over two years ago, almost to the day when he tried to rob a bank with his friends in his home town of Cincinnati, Ohio.
 
The robbery attempt was a culmination of numerous rebellious choices he made with his life.
 
He handled his father’s death poorly at the age of fourteen.
 
When his older brother, Drew, left Ohio a few short months later to pursue medical training, Thomas lived with his Uncle Peter—a disinterested man who seemed mostly annoyed that he was suddenly saddled with a teenage boy.

So, with more freedom than he knew what to do with, Thomas joined up with some other malcontents in his home town.
 
The three started drinking and gambling, staying out late—mostly confining their rebellion to rowdy behavior.
 
For six years they managed to keep from breaking any laws.

Then one of them had the bright idea that they could make more money by stealing it from the bank across the street from his brother’s clinic.
 
Thomas, drunk and senseless, agreed to the plan.
 
None of them had been prepared for the bank manager’s quick thinking.
 
Things went wrong.
 
The bank manager had a gun in the safe and turned it on one of them.
 
Shots were fired.
 
Thomas and his friends ran, leaving the bank manager in a pool of blood.

When he first fled, he thought they had killed the bank manager.
 
Later he found out the man survived thanks to his brother’s medical skills.
 
Within a few days, Thomas and his friends were caught and jailed.

Then the strange events in his life started.
 
Because of what he’d done, Drew and his wife, Hannah, were forced to leave town.
 
No one wanted to go to a doctor whose brother was a criminal.
 
Just prior to their departure, Drew visited him in jail and told him they were headed to La Paz in the Arizona Territory.

Days and weeks in the jail did little to soften Thomas’s heart.
 
He carried a great deal of anger over losing his mother at a young age, then losing his father.
 
He hated the world and everyone in it.

The day came when he received his sentence.
 
The judge, having been a friend of his father’s, decided the Union Army could use another body more than the jail could.
 
The judge sent him to his son’s Ohio regiment.
 
Shortly afterward, he was transferred to an Indiana Regiment.

His regiment participated in the Red River Campaign in Louisiana.
 
It was during that campaign that his life took another inexplicable twist.
 
A dispatch rider fell from his horse after being shot by the Confederates.
 
His dying words to Thomas instructed him to take the copper message tube and ride down the line.
 
Being a strong rider, he mounted the horse without thought of the consequences.

Even though he should have been court-martialed for deserting his post, he wasn’t.
 
Instead, he received a new position as a dispatch courier.
 
His new duties took him all over the western theater of the War Between the States, though the majority of the time he stayed in Tennessee.

The next twist of fate—or Providence, or whatever it was—came following his severe injury in the battle of Franklin.
 
As he learned later, the major general he worked for discovered Thomas’s tainted past.
 
Deciding he could no longer trust him, he sent Thomas west and ultimately to the Arizona Territory.

Once in the Arizona Territory, he served at Fort Whipple near Prescott for only a few months.
 
He made several trips across vast desert wilderness couriering military mail between Fort Whipple and Fort Wingate in New Mexico.
 
When the war ended, due to the strange terms of his enlistment he mustered out and settled in Prescott.

His first hope had been to find Drew and Hannah.
 
When he got the job with the La Paz Express, riding mail between Prescott and La Paz, he felt confident he would find them soon.
 
Only he didn’t find them.
 
They never settled in La Paz.

Instead, they changed their plans.
 
It was Drew’s intent to settle in Prescott.
 
Unfortunately, Drew died in a tragic accident just a few weeks out.
 
Hannah, being left on her own, did her best to get by.
 
She had worked for Betty Lancaster, the boardinghouse owner where Thomas stayed when he was in Prescott.
 
After she met a local rancher, Will Colter, she married him and moved to his ranch.

When Thomas finally learned of Hannah’s whereabouts, he visited Colter Ranch.
 
His unexpected presence nearly caused Hannah to go into labor.
 
A few weeks passed.
 
Then he received word that she wished to see him.
 
She told him she forgave him for his part in the tragedy of her life—perhaps the most bizarre thing that ever happened to him.

He certainly did not deserve her forgiveness.
 
Truthfully, he still felt awkward these few months later when he was around her.
 
She welcomed him into her new family and asked him to be an uncle to her son, even though they shared no blood ties.

Now Thomas spent his days riding for the La Paz Express in the Arizona Territory.

Shaking his head, he pulled back on the reins, bringing his lathered horse to a stop.
 
After a brief greeting to the station’s hand, he settled the mail bags on a new mount and took off at a fast pace again.

He still couldn’t believe his life.
 
None of it made sense.

The only real reason he even thought to attribute these strange events to God was because of a conversation he had with his friend Paul Lancaster, the son of the boardinghouse owner in Prescott.

“Sounds to me like God brought you here for a reason,” Paul said, after Thomas finished telling him the story a few weeks ago.
 
“Maybe even for several reasons.”

“Like what?”

“I think one reason was so you could start over.
 
Let the mistakes of your past go.”

Thomas remembered growing silent at that point.
 
He had to admit, that other than Hannah and Will and Paul, no one knew about his past.
 
And it didn’t seem to matter to them—at least not any more.

“Who knows?
 
Maybe we can’t even guess what other reasons He might have.”

No, he certainly couldn’t understand it.

The next evening, Thomas arrived in Wickenburg at Ritter’s station.
 
Mrs. Ritter greeted him with her usual warm smile.

“Supper will be ready in a few minutes.
 
Go on and wash up.”

He hesitated, thinking again of the blonde-haired, green-eyed woman he met in this town almost seven days ago.
 
He wondered if she boarded the stage yesterday morning or not.
 
Deciding not to ask, he headed out back.
 
As he splashed cool water over his face and neck, he figured she must have, as intent as she seemed when he overheard her conversation with Mrs. Ritter.

Following supper, he played a game of poker with Mr. Ritter.
 
For once, they had no other guests.
 
As usual, he won, having been an excellent player when he used to gamble in Ohio.
 
With Mr. Ritter’s exclamation of thanks that the game was not for money, Thomas headed to bed.

The first hour he stared at the ceiling, wishing some of the thoughts of the past few days would leave him alone.
 
He still blamed himself for Drew’s death.
 
After all, if he hadn’t robbed that bank, the townsfolk of Cincinnati would not have turned against him and he would have never left.

Turning on his side, he wished he could change things.
 
He wished Drew and Hannah were still happily married, living in the clinic in Ohio.
 
He wished the nephew he bounced on his knee was really Drew’s son.
 
He wished he would have learned the lessons of the past two years without it requiring Drew’s death.

A lone tear slid down his cheek.
 
Hannah forgave him after all.
 
Maybe one day he would forgive himself, too.

A sleepless night gave way to morning as the smells of breakfast pulled Thomas awake.
 
Rubbing his eyes, he sat up, resting his elbows on his knees.
 
Already, the sun seemed too high in the sky.

He dressed for the day in his clothes from the day before.
 
In this heat, he smelled less than pleasant but he had to travel light.
 
Perhaps on the next run he would bring at least one change of shirts despite the sparse room for personal items in his saddle bags.
 
Running a hand over his chin, he decided to skip shaving today.
 
He felt like he was already behind schedule and he hadn’t left yet.

After gobbling down the breakfast, he thanked Mrs. Ritter before walking out the back door to the stables.
 
Typically Mr. Ritter readied his horse before breakfast.
 
Today, it seemed he wasn’t the only running behind.