Heart of Texas Vol. 3 (17 page)

Following dinner, Jeremy and Emma, with their usual protests, went upstairs to do homework. Nell was left alone in the kitchen with Travis. He sat at the table with the laptop while she washed up the few dishes they'd used.

“I owe you an apology,” she said, surprising herself.

He lifted his eyes from the screen and she gave him a feeble smile. “I've had a rotten attitude recently.”

“I need to apologize myself,” he said. “I should've mentioned sooner exactly what kind of writer I am.”

“That's your business, Travis, and none of mine. As you said the other night, it doesn't make any difference to who you are as a person.” She turned and reached for another dish, drying it by hand. “I want to thank you for being so good with the kids. It's no wonder they enjoy your books so much.”

“They're delightful kids.”

“I think so,” she said.

He pushed back his chair, scraping it against the floor. “You're delightful, too,” he said, coming to stand beside her. He removed the plate and dish towel from her hand.

“Travis?” She looked up at him, not knowing what to expect. Then again, she did.

He kissed her just the way she knew he would and she allowed herself to be consumed by it. His hands were in her hair, his fingers buried in her braid.

He sighed heavily when he lifted his lips from hers. “Kissing you could become addictive.”

“That's what you said about my cookies earlier.” Her small attempt at humor was a gentle reminder that this kiss—in fact, everything between them—was to be taken lightly. As soon as they had the information they needed, they'd be able to work out the details regarding the events in Bitter End. And once the mystery was solved, Travis would return to New York.

And she'd return to life as she knew it, a little smarter and a little more capable of coping with the future.

He continued to hold her until they heard the sound of footsteps racing down the stairs. They broke apart like guilty teenagers.

Jeremy walked into the kitchen, stopped and looked at the two of them. “Am I interrupting anything?”

Nell denied it with a shake of her head.

“I came for a glass of water,” he said. A minute later he was gone.

Travis sat in front of the computer again. Nell sat next to him, reviewing the notes he'd taken and rereading her own. They'd found a number of references to Bitter End, but nothing concrete that pertained to the mystery.

Not yet, at any rate. Nell had a positive feeling, though; she was really beginning to enjoy this.

“Nell,” Travis said, holding his finger against the computer screen.

“What is it?”

“This newspaper article from the
Brewster Review—
it's from 1879.”

“But that's a year before Promise was founded.”

“My point exactly.” He got out of his chair. “Read it for yourself.”

N
ELL SLID ONTO THE CHAIR
Travis had vacated and stared at the computer screen. Excitement bubbled up inside her. Was it possible Travis had stumbled onto the answer already?

As she scanned the first paragraph of the newspaper article, her spirits sank. Travis was looking too hard for a connection. She hated to be discouraging but could see nothing relevant.

“All this reports is the wrongful death of sixteen-year-old Moses Anderson in Bitter End.”

“Continue reading,” Travis said.

Nell returned her attention to the screen. “It says Moses was defending a saloon girl from an abusive drunk.” Nell glanced up at him, a puzzled expression on her face.

“Read on.”

Nell did so, mumbling a couple of lines aloud. “And the other men in the saloon sided with their friend.” She gasped as she read the next paragraph. “The drunk and his friends dragged the young man outside and—” she looked up at Travis “—hanged him.” Nell sighed at the brutality of such a deed. The boy was only sixteen. Nevertheless she didn't see how this one act of mob rule was connected to the troubles in Bitter End.

The question must have shown in her eyes because Travis asked, “Did you notice the teenager was a preacher's son?”

“Yes, but what makes you think this has anything to do with what happened to Bitter End?”

Travis's smile was wide. “The quilt. We were right, Nell—the mystery is linked to those quilt squares. Who better to curse a town than a man of God? The tree had the word
cursed
carved into it, remember?”

Of course she did. “Wasn't there another square with the hangman's noose? Maybe that's the connection—Moses being hanged.” Nell's enthusiasm mounted. “Let's look at those quilt pieces again!”

“Good idea.”

Travis followed her into the living room. She opened the cedar chest and removed the cardboard box. Nell set aside the folded sheet of muslin and placed the squares on the coffee table.

“What in heaven's name do a frog and a word carved in an oak tree have in common?”

Jeremy came down the stairs. “What are you doing?” he asked.

“Unraveling a mystery,” Nell explained absently as she continued to study the quilt pieces.

“Why not put Moses Anderson's name on the tombstone, instead of Edward Abraham Frasier's?” Travis added as though he was beginning to doubt his own theory.

“Who's Moses Anderson?” Jeremy asked, leaning forward to get a better look at the embroidered squares.

“Travis found a news article about him in an old newspaper,” Nell murmured, concentrating on the squares.

“Off the Internet? Mom, I'm telling you, we gotta get a computer.”

“Someday.”

“Aw, Mom…”

“The river scene without a river,” Nell muttered listening with only half an ear to her son's pleas.

“Did you notice that the stitching on the riverbank's sort of a rusty-red?” Travis asked.

“Soil in the area is iron-rich,” Nell explained, dismissing any significance in the choice of color.

“Moses turned the water into blood, remember,” Jeremy commented. “We read about it in Sunday School last week.”

“Moses did indeed,” was Nell's vacant reply.

“Moses and his brother Aaron.”

“That's it,” Travis shouted and threw his arms in the air. “Jeremy, you're a genius, a living breathing genius. That's it, that's the key.” He gripped the boy's shoulders to hug him wildly. Then he reached for Nell, laughter spilling from him like water.

Jeremy and Nell stared at him as if he'd suddenly gone weak in the head.

“What are you talking about?” Nell demanded.

“The curse!” he shouted.

“What's Travis so excited about?” Emma asked from halfway down the stairs.

“I don't know how we could have been so blind.” Now that Travis had stopped laughing, he clasped Nell around the waist and danced her about the room. Jeremy and Emma clapped and laughed.

“Travis, for the love of heaven, stop! Tell me.”

Breathing hard, he draped his arms over her shoulders and rested his forehead against hers. “I can't believe we didn't see it sooner.”

“See
what?
” she cried, growing more and more frustrated.

Travis turned her around so that she faced the coffee table. “Look at the quilt pieces again.”

“I'm looking.”

“What was the preacher's son's name?”

“Moses,” she said.

“After his son was murdered, the preacher cursed the town.”

“Yes.” Her gaze went to the square with
cursed
carved in the tree.

“Now look at the frog.”

“I'm looking, I'm looking.”

“Jeremy, bring me your Bible,” Travis instructed.

The boy raced out of the room.

As soon as Travis mentioned the Bible, Nell understood. “Moses and the plagues.”

Jeremy returned with his Bible and handed it to Travis, who started flipping pages in the Old Testament.

“Somewhere in the first part of Exodus,” Nell said, fairly certain that was where the story of Passover was told.

“Here,” Travis said, running his finger down the seventh chapter. “First there's all this business about turning staffs into snakes, then Moses and Aaron did as the Lord commanded and hit the surface of the Nile with a rod, and the river turned to blood.”

“Gully Creek became bloody?” That sounded a bit farfetched to Nell.

“Maybe the water went bad and they couldn't drink it,” Jeremy suggested.

“Or dried up,” Travis said.

“What else happened in the Bible that ties to Bitter End?” she asked, eager now, reading over his shoulder. Travis skimmed through several chapters, listing the plagues that had befallen Egypt. The death of cattle, flies, hail and lightning, locusts, boils, crop failures were the ones described first.

“What was the one that came after the river turning into blood?” Jeremy asked.

“Frogs,” Travis said triumphantly. “The land was covered with frogs.”

“Not if the creek dried up.” Someone had to show a little reason, Nell thought.

“I don't think we'll ever completely understand the dynamics of what happened.”

“The grave marker,” Nell said excitedly. “The five-year-old boy, remember?”

“Abraham Edward Frasier.”

“Remember, it was the death of the firstborn sons that convinced Pharaoh to let the Israelites leave Egypt,” Nell said.

“The children.” Travis's voice was low. “Of the ten graves we were able to identify, eight were children.” He paused. “The last plague was the death of the firstborn sons,” he said slowly.

As a widow, Nell knew she could survive any financial trial, bad weather or crop failure, if she still had her home and her land. The one thing she wouldn't be able to stand was losing her children. If
they
were at risk, nothing else mattered.

“That's why everyone left the town,” she said confidently. “Their children were dying. The community had withstood everything else—the river drying up, the pestilence, the other trials. But no land, no town, no community was worth the loss of their children.”

The phone rang just then and Emma ran to answer it. “Mom,” she shouted as though Nell was in the barn, instead of the next room. “It's Ellie Frasier.”

W
ADE
M
C
M
ILLEN SAT AT THE DESK
in his study and tried to ignore the bright sunshine flooding the room. The most difficult part of his week was writing the Sunday sermon. While he enjoyed preaching, even enjoyed the research demanded in his work, he wasn't particularly fond of the effort that went into composing his sermons. Especially on a day as glorious as this one.

Putting aside his notes, he rose and walked over to his study window, gazing at the tree-lined streets of Promise. It was a changed town from the one he'd come to serve five years ago. And this past year had seen the most dramatic of those changes.

There'd been a number of weddings, sure to be followed by a rush of births. Just last week he'd been out to visit the Smiths' baby girl for the first time. Wade had watched Laredo, as the new father, rock Laura to sleep, crooning cowboy songs, instead of lullabies. The memory of that scene brought a smile to his lips even now.

Recently Grady Weston had proudly told him Caroline was pregnant. Wade was pleased; this was exactly the kind of happy news he'd been waiting to hear. Maggie would make a wonderful big sister. It would be nice, too, for the Smiths' daughter to have a cousin around the same age. Wade recalled how close he was to Les McMillen, a cousin only three months younger than he was. They'd been inseparable. In many ways he was closer to Les than his own brother, who was four years his junior.

It wouldn't surprise Wade any if Ellie and Jane, the wives of the Patterson brothers, showed up pregnant—and soon. He knew from the hints he'd heard Mary and Phil give their sons that the boys' parents were more than ready to become grandparents. Wade didn't think they'd need to wait much longer.

With his thoughts full of weddings and babies, Wade didn't realize he had visitors until he heard the voices outside his door. His secretary buzzed him on the intercom.

“Nell Bishop and Travis Grant are here to see you,” Martha announced.

“Show them in.” Wade knew Nell had a paying guest staying at Twin Canyons. Nell had briefly introduced him after service a couple of Sundays ago. Jeremy and Emma had been full of chatter about their guest the past few weeks, as well, but Wade hadn't met him yet.

His first sight of Travis Grant revealed a large man with a kind face.

“Wade McMillen,” Wade said, and the two men exchanged handshakes. Wade gestured for Nell and Travis to sit down, which they did. Maybe he was getting to be an old hand at such things, but Wade felt he knew the reason for this unexpected visit.

One glance told him they were in love; he knew the signs. It was early, probably too early, for them to think about marriage. If that was what they were here to discuss, he'd feel obliged to suggest a long engagement. Nevertheless, Wade was pleased for Nell, very pleased indeed.

“What can I do for you?” Wade asked, leaning back in his leather chair.

“We've come to talk to you about Bitter End,” Nell said.

Wade frowned. That was the last subject he'd expected her to mention. The ghost town that had been the cause of so much trouble lately, what with Richard Weston having holed up there. Sheriff Hennessey and the town council had combined their efforts to keep things quiet, but information always seemed to leak out, anyway.

“You do know about the ghost town, don't you?” Travis asked.

“Yes. Have you been there?” The question was directed at Travis, but Nell answered.

“We both have. Twice,” she added.

“Actually three times.”

Nell nodded. “Three times.”

Good grief, they already sounded like an old married couple.

Nell looked at Travis and her eyes sparkled with excitement and happiness. “We think we've solved the mystery of why everyone left Bitter End.”

“The town was cursed,” Travis explained.

“Cursed?”

“By a preacher whose sixteen-year-old son was hanged when a mob of rowdy drunks got out of hand.”

Wade hated to discourage them. In the Wild West it wasn't uncommon for a preacher to be credited with the ability to rain fire and brimstone down upon the backs of sinners. There were usually logical reasons for these supposedly supernatural events, but they were cheerfully overlooked.

“His name was Moses,” Nell supplied.

“The preacher's?”

“No, the teenager who was hanged.”

The violence of the Old West never ceased to distress Wade, but then all he had to do was take a walk through an inner-city slum to appreciate that, in certain ways, humanity hadn't advanced much.

“When the mob of drunks hanged the boy, the preacher came to the town and cursed it with the plagues of Egypt,” Nell said.

“That's our theory, anyway,” Travis added.

Wade was willing to listen, but he didn't hold out much hope that this was really the reason the town had been abandoned all those years ago. “How do you know about the plagues?”

“From the story quilt.”

Nell and Travis glanced at each other as if to decide who should explain the role played by this quilt. Apparently it was decided that Nell would, because she continued. “Ruth had a cedar chest in the attic that was given to her after her mother-in-law died almost fifty years ago. Inside it, we found the makings of a quilt. The backing was intact, but there was only a handful of completed squares.”