Spirit of the Wolf (19 page)

Her brown eyes bored deep into his blue ones, as if in search of the truth. Then she closed her eyes and began again: "Oh Lord my God...."

Chance
stared at her lovely profile,
reveling
in the feel of her soft, warm fingers nestled in his calloused palm. The moments sped by, and disappointment rang loud in his heart when she sang the last line: "How great thou art, how great thou art."

She sighed. "I've always loved that one...."

"Is there anything you
can't
do?"

Bess giggled again. "Can't seem to get any work done when you're around. You're a very distracting presence,
Chance
Walker."

He stiffened.
I'm not
Chance
Walker,
he ranted mentally.
My name is Atwood. Walker Atwood
! He was proud of the name his parents had chosen for him, but regrettably, hadn't been able to use it, not once
in many
years
.

He saw the
startled, almost frightened expression on her pretty face
and
realized he must have been grimacing something fierce. He
smiled, but his heart wasn’t in it
.

"Aren't we friends,
Chance
?"

Such a simple question, yet
Chance
didn't know how to answer. Yes, she'd been a friend
to him, o
ne of the best he'd ever known. Why,
s
he'd
wrangled more from him
than he'd ever
shared with
anyone. S
he knew
he'd lost both parents in a prairie fire
at the age of
twelve, that he'd spent the next seven years with
his aunt and uncle, and someho
w managed to get him to talk about the horrible abuse he'd suffered at Josh's hands
. It had been Bess who’d
convinced him that surely goodness and mercy lived
somewhere
in
the man
's heart
, and
her point-blank question, fired in exactly the same way as she'd fired every other, made him remember the precise moment in time when Josh changed into the
cruel
man
whose testimony
caused
Chance
to
run for his life:

He'd been ten years old on the Sunday his parents
,
Uncle Josh and Aunt Polly had been invited to a neighbor's for dinner. Just as Josh picked up his fork to dig into the delights prepared by their hostess, Abe Martin held up his hands and said, "Before we eat, we must thank God for our bounty."

"Thank
God
?" Josh had countered, smirking. "If you want to thank somebody, thank your pretty little wife, here, who slaughtered the hen and roasted it, who peeled the spuds and snapped the beans, with her own two hands."

Chance
recalled Josh's words with startling clarity. Recalled, too, that Abe had simply shrugged and said, "I suppose you've got a point." At that, he picked up his own fork, as did everyone at the table, and began eating without saying grace.

Two days later, while in the barn helping Abe repair the sickle's broken handle, Marta had reached out to steady the workbench, and when she did, the sharp blade of the sickle slipped from the vise, nearly severing
both
hands. The doctor stopped the bleeding in time to save her life, but not quickly enough to save her fingers. And though Marta manage
d
quite well with her thumbs-only stumps, Josh
had convinced himself that
his careless, Godless words had caused it.

Unable
to listen to reason,
he
found solace only in his
b
ible, the only
place
he could
find guidance to
rectify the awful thing his blasphemy had provoked. Day by day, nose in the pages of the leather-bound
g
ood
b
ook
, his anger and bitterness grew. N
o matter how many verses he memorized, no matter how well-a
cquainted he became with
scripture
, Josh couldn't undo what he believed his
snide
words had done.
It was his
lack of faith
, he believed, that
started the series of events that led to Marta's deformity
, which left her unable to
comb fingers thr
ough her children's flaxen hair
or hold their tiny faces in her hands.

Josh
alleged that repentance could only be reached if he buried
himself in
the Word
. He spent every spare moment at the church,
working his way from
elder
to
deacon
, and
when the pastor passed away,
th
e brethren
chose him
to take
the man’s
place, for they knew no man more devoted and devout than Josh Atwood.

He was hard on his parishioners, demanding pure and abiding faith in all things
, and
hard on his wife, demanding total surrender and submission, which he claimed was the Lord's
intention
for wives.
Hard
o
n his brother's son, too. B
ut,
Chance
remembered, Josh was hardest of all on himself. He allowed himself no human pleasure
,
no lapse in judgment, no time for anything but
prayer and work and more of the same. His
c
hronic
self-abuse turned him
into a
stone-hard
, cold man without an ounce of Christ’s
love
or
mercy
or
forgiveness in his
heart
.

It had taken
Bess
to help
Chance
see Josh as a suffering, tormented man, and in doing so, she’d
lifted
the burden of hate
from his shoulders
. Thanks to her,
for the first time since the murder trial,
Chance
could
think almost fondly of the uncle who
’
d opened his home to a frightened, orphaned youth.

So y
es, he and Bess were friends
, b
ut in the months he'd been at Foggy Bottom,
Chance
had come to realize she was
so much more
.
He’d never truly loved a woman before, and if not for his miserable past, he’d marry her, raise a house full of young’uns, and grow old b
eside her
.
But he'd never be able to
admit it, especially not to Bess.
He'd grow old, all right, but
he’d do it alone, be
cause she deserved more
than a life of
running and hiding to stay one step ahead of the hangman.

"Aren't we friends?" she
repeated,
squeezing his hand
again
.

"'Course we are," he
said at last.
And that's all we'll ever be.

"Then why don't you tell me what's made you so sad all of a sudden. Maybe I can help."

When she let go of his hand, his own felt so cold and so empty that
Chance
thought his heart might break.
Better get used to th
e feeling
, he thought, for it was only a
tiny exam
ple of how life would be...when he left her....

"Maybe someday," she said quietly, getting to her feet, "you'll trust me enough to tell me whatever
—or whoever—has
hurt you so badly." She headed for the house, but paused halfway there. "You
can
trust me, you know. With anything." She stared hard at him from across the yard. "Do you believe that?"

It had nothing to do with trust!
Chance
trusted
Bess
with his very life,
but he couldn’t burden her with the story of how
he'd been tried and convicted
and
sentenced to hang for
a murder he didn’t commit!

Bess made
her way to the porch. "Whenever you're ready to talk," she said, stepping through the screen door, "I'm ready to listen."

He didn't know how long he sat there, alone on the bench beside her rusty rug beater. It wasn't until a barnyard cat brushed against his boot that he realized the sun was setting.
It would be suppertime soon, and he'd get to watch her bustling about in the kitchen, walking up and down behind the
hired
hands, refilling their plates and
mugs and
the biscuit basket. He'd revel in those moments, for there would be painfully few of them before he'd be forced to leave this place...and that woman.

Chance
rose slowly and headed for the bunkhouse to wait for the dinner bell to ring.

The encroaching darkness that shrouded him couldn't compare to the joyless gloom
that hung
in his heart.

"Aren't we friends?"

Bess hid behind both hands. How could she have asked such a
silly
question, especially after that kiss!

Nearly every time she closed her eyes, she pictured him, big and broad and brooding. But oh, how his handsome face changed when he smiled! Bess sighed softly at the mental image of his wide grin. His sparkling blue eyes. Honey gold hair that curved and curled beneath his wide-brimmed hat.

Her smile grew as she pictured that hat, for before
Chance
had come to town, Bess could have counted on one hand the number of fellows who sported western-style headwear. Now, she'd need ten hands to count them all: All over Baltimore, men strutted in what they called 'ten gallon-ers.' Foggy Bottom field hands claimed to have purchased theirs because it made good sense, since the height of the crown allowed air to circulate and cool their heads, while the width of the rim protected their necks and faces from the blistering effects of the sun. Matt and Mark, however, made no bones about it. "Hey, Pa," they'd exclaimed when Homer Jensen stuck one in the window of his Baltimore haberdashery, "we'll clean the barn twice over in exchange for a hat like
Chance
's
!
" Her father hadn't said yea or nay. Instead, he quietly paid for two white toppers for his twins...and plunked down enough cash to buy one a gray one for himself as well.

And the
mimicker
y
hadn't stopped on their heads.

Men who'd never worn dungarees for anything but field work now emulated
Chance
's style, from silver buckled leather belts to pearl-buttoned plaid shirts
and
snakeskin boots. It didn't matter that the purpose of the boots' pointy toes was to make it easy for a cowboy to slide his foot into his saddle's stirrups, or that the slanted heels held them tight once in place
. The goal was clear: Emulate
Chance
Walker
.

Before
Chance
came to town,
the men of Freeland had sported
bushy beards, muttonchops, and handlebar mustaches.
N
ow? Bess put a knuckle between her teeth to suppress a giggle. Now, she saw far fewer sideburns...and a whole lot of
thick-and-tidy mustaches
. She wondered if the men copied
Chance
's 'look' because they genuinely liked and respected him, or if their womenfolk had talked them into it. If so, Bess wondered, did their ladyfriends get the same reaction from their men's kisses as she'd gotten from
Chance
's?

She knew how hard he'd tried to stay in the background, unnoticed. After that scene on the dock, Bess understood
why.
If he'd known he'd make such an impression, maybe he'd have passed right on by Freeland, rather than
take the
chance
someone like
that ghastly Texan
might recognize him
!

Not even the fracas on the docks could block that kiss from her thoughts. She
tried to focus on fences and trees, farmhouses and barns, silos and fields that whizzed by on the other side of the train's lace-curtained window.
T
ried counting the number of minuscule rosettes that made up the lace trim of the white cotton gloves
poking
from the opening in her drawstring purse.
She adjusted the folds of her skirt, re-tied the bow on her bonnet.