Texas Angel, 2-in-1 (26 page)

“Mama always boiled the milk first,” he offered upon being ques tioned by his father. “And she put water in it and some sugar.”

“How much sugar?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, you must have an idea.” Benjamin, desperate as he was, could not help that his tone sounded like an interrogation. “A lot? A little? A pinch? A cup? How much, boy? If I make a mistake, the baby could get sick.”

The boy’s recalcitrant behavior should not have surprised Benjamin. Micah had been a burr in his side from the moment Haden had ridden off. When he wasn’t outright rebellious, he was silent and sullen. He helped only when threatened with physical reprisals—and even then Benjamin had to be pretty convincing. Not that Benjamin hadn’t taken Micah over his knee several times in the last four days.

“Don’t blame me!” Micah shot back defensively. “If you hadn’t killed Mama—”

“Enough of that!”

If this altercation proved no different from the others, Benjamin would react in one of two ways. Either he would smack Micah across the face or he would grab him for a more formal spanking. Micah would escape from the cabin if he was fast enough, which was usually the case since Benjamin most often had too many other distractions to go after him.

There were times, however, when those very distractions were actually welcome. More than all the mayhem in the cabin, the absolute worst times for Benjamin were those rare hours, usually late at night, when all four children actually slept at the same time and complete quiet reigned. Facing himself proved more terrifying than the plight of starving children and dirty diapers. He seldom slept, despite sheer exhaustion. His mind simply raced far too much to give way to sleep. Pain, guilt, confusion, and yes, even terror, plagued him. Prayer grew impossible because the words caught in his throat. How could he ask for God’s intercession when it became clearer each day just what a wretched soul he was? Everything Haden had told him and all the words in Rebekah’s letter replayed themselves over and over in his mind, accusing him of his failure. And it didn’t help that Micah chose to remind him almost every day that he was responsible for his wife’s death.

Infant screams penetrated his dismal thoughts, and he glanced gratefully down into the cradle. “I guess you are good for something, little fellow.”

He picked up the baby, but the screams did not cease. The child wanted food, not a father’s awkward touch.

“Micah!” Benjamin yelled, though it was obvious the boy was not in the cabin. He had escaped outside in the pouring rain. Benjamin opened the door. “Micah, get in here this instant!”

Micah poked his head out through the partially opened barn door.

“Are you finally milking the cow?” demanded Benjamin.

“The cow?”

“Don’t act dumb,” Benjamin snapped. “I asked you to do it an hour ago.”

“Why should I?” Micah retorted.

So he wasn’t going to act dumb, just belligerent. “Why? Why!”

Benjamin stammered, incredulous. He would never get used to such behavior. Whatever restraints had kept Micah obedient in the past were gone now.

Benjamin choked back his anger. He remembered his own father— the beatings, the scathing words. He still carried resentment toward his father for that, but now he wondered if he hadn’t driven the man to it.

“Your baby brother will die if he doesn’t get something to eat,” Benjamin’s voice shook. “Is that reason enough?”

This proved to be a good approach. At least it prodded Micah into action. He would do nothing for his father’s sake, but he had no grudge against his siblings.

A few minutes later Micah returned with a pail of milk. Benjamin was helplessly holding the unhappy baby. Isabel had tried to help by tending Leah, but while trying to fetch a toy, she had accidentally knocked Leah in the head. Leah was now wailing over the minor injury and Isabel was wailing out of sympathy or guilt.

As Benjamin rubbed the small red welt on Leah’s forehead, he told Micah to fix milk for the baby.

“I don’t know how.” Micah said, sloshing the pail onto the sideboard.

Benjamin cracked then. Spinning around from tending his crying daughters, he whipped out his free arm, grabbing Micah by the shoulder so quickly even the agile boy could not escape. With the newborn still tucked under one arm, Benjamin used the other to shake Micah soundly.

“What do you want from me, boy!” he shouted. “I admit it. I forced your mother away. I killed her! I am everything you believe me to be. I am a rotten, dirty sinner! The worst reprobate! A hypocrite, a miserable, no-good . . .” He floundered for a moment because he could think of no worse things to say. He gasped in a breath. “I deserve your hatred! But . . . I . . . I need help! I can’t do it. I can’t . . . dear God! I just can’t.”

Breathing hard, shaking all over, Benjamin stopped just short of joining all the other raving, crying beings in the cabin. Through it all, Micah stared silently. Benjamin could not tell if the boy had heard a word he’d said. The only hint that maybe something had penetrated was that Micah slowly began to prepare the milk. Slowly, methodically, with a cool deliberateness almost frightening to watch, he poured milk into a small pan, added water from the bucket, then sprinkled in a couple of teaspoons of sugar. Stirring this, he carried it to the hearth and set it over the flame. Contrary to his words, he knew quite well what to do.

Benjamin watched, as if observing a stranger, and he wondered if he had created some kind of cool, unfeeling monster.

A knock on the cabin door intruded into the scene as reality intrudes a nightmare. When the discordant sound finally registered with Benjamin, he was regaled with a new barrage of emotions. In a panic his gaze swept the cabin, which resembled a battlefield. His first thought wasn’t that help had possibly arrived, but rather he lamented that an outsider was about to see his life in such shambles.

As the thought flickered into his mind, he nearly laughed. You fool! He silently berated himself. You have single-handedly destroyed your life and that of those you love, and still you worry about appearances! Benjamin Sinclair, you are the worst kind of reprobate.

The knock came again.

With an almost wicked, masochistic determination, Benjamin stalked to the door and flung it open.

What met his gaze was a creature that looked as wretched, dirty, and pathetic on the outside as he felt himself to be on the inside. And though the rain had stopped, his visitor was as soaked as the proverbial wet hen. In spite of strings of wet hair hanging in her face, which was sprinkled with splatters of mud, he recognized the countenance staring back at him. Only now the defiance and pride were gone, replaced by bone-deep weariness.

“R-Reverend S-Sinclair . . .” Her teeth were chattering with cold and her lips shook so badly she could barely speak.

“Miss . . . uh . . .” He could not think of her name. Had he ever heard it? Then it came to him—Liz—but before he could say it, she spoke.

“P-please . . . c-can I c-come in . . . ?”

“Yes, of course.” He stepped aside. “You’re soaking wet.” He meant the statement to be sympathetic, but it came out rougher than he had intended because he was still shaking from the encounter with Micah.

“I’m s-sorry."

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Is M-Mrs. S-Sinclair here?” She brushed a strand of wet hair away from her eyes and glanced over Benjamin’s shoulder. “I s-so want to s-see her.”

“That’s not possible.”

“P-please! I kn-know . . .” She paused a moment, biting her lip, seemingly in an attempt to get control over the chattering. “I know I’m not good enough for her, but . . . I don’t know, I just thought she was my only hope.”

Touched and indicted further by this woman’s words, Benjamin replied, “You don’t understand. It has nothing to do with you. Mrs. Sinclair . . . is gone . . . passed away.”

She stared at him, then started to sway on her feet. Benjamin wasn’t certain what was happening until she reeled toward him. Only then did he realize the woman was about to faint. With only one arm free, the most he could do was break her fall a bit as she crumpled to the floor.

CHAPTER

32

T
HE HOUNDS WERE CHASING HER
so close the high-pitched bays echoed in her ears. But Liz kept running even though her heart felt as if it would explode. Feeling the hot animal breath on her heels, she kicked furiously.

“No! Please . . . no!” She tried to cry out the words, but nothing save for mute gasps seemed to come from her lips.

“Liz.”

The voice did not come from the pursuing hounds. Something touched her, but it was not rough teeth trying to tear her apart. The touch was gentle and warm.

“Liz, you are having a dream.”

She opened her eyes and found herself staring up at the towering figure of Rev. Sinclair. Then she looked down at the hand still resting on her shoulder. It surprised her that his touch could be so gentle. He’d always seemed to her to be intimidating, imposing, harsh . . . but never anything close to gentle.

“I g-guess I w-was." She was shivering, partly from the nightmare, partly from the wet clothes she still wore. But despite the fact that she was now fully awake and realized she had been dreaming, she thought she had not wakened into a situation much better. She could see why she had dreamed of baying hounds, because the sound so resembled the voices of crying children that filled the cabin. “W-what h-happened to me?”

“You fainted.”

Suddenly she gasped in terror as a far more pressing memory came to her. “Hannah!”

“Your child is in the bed next to you.”

Liz turned, and there was Hannah, no longer in her wet bundle but dressed in a shirt and gown and wrapped in a different blanket. She was breathing, though her breaths were labored and her skin was flushed.

“She’s quite sick,” Rev. Sinclair said. “I tried to do the best I could with her. She would eat nothing, but that may be due more to my ineptitude than her inability.”

“Th-thank you.”

“You best get into some dry things now before you fall ill also.” Sinclair’ s voice was soft, almost kind. He seemed a different man from the arrogant, self-righteous judge who had confronted her in the store only a few weeks ago. Perhaps this had something to do with his wife’s death.

Liz still could hardly believe that the kind, good-hearted woman was really dead. She tried not to think what this would mean to her own quest for help and succor. Surely the reverend would not harbor a woman of ill repute in his home. No doubt she would have been booted out immediately had she not fainted.

Yet even as the bitter thought came to her, she sensed no such attitude from Sinclair now. However, with screaming children and a house that looked as if it had been struck by one of those Texas tornadoes Liz had heard about, he probably had more on his mind than rebuking a fallen woman.

“I have n-no clothes,” she said, bringing her mind back to matters at hand.

Benjamin nodded toward a steamer trunk at the foot of the bed.

“You may borrow something of Rebekah’s.”

“I c-couldn't.—

“You really have no choice,” he said simply. “Micah and I will step out while you change.” To the girl who looked about five or six, he added, “Isabel, mind the babies while I’m gone.” Then he turned to the boy who was sitting on a small bed with an open book in his hand. He appeared to be twelve or thirteen. “Micah, come outside with me.”

The boy made no response and did not even look up from his book.

“Micah!” Rev. Sinclair said more firmly. “I said come with me.”

The boy did look up then, and his cold, hard eyes were a sight to behold. Liz did not think a child could be capable of such venom. She shivered. What was the story between father and son? The phrase “no love lost between them” sprang to her mind.

Very deliberately Micah closed his book and swung his legs off the bed. Sinclair watched the obviously defiant response with clenched teeth, a muscle in his jaw pulsing dangerously. Liz thought only her presence was preventing an angry scene.

When the males were gone, Liz went to the trunk.

“That’s my mama’s,” the small voice of Isabel Sinclair piped up. A hint of challenge could be detected in the tiny quivering voice.

“Do you think she would mind if I borrowed one of her dresses?” Liz made no further move toward the trunk, instinctively knowing she tread upon delicate ground. Though she had been too young to remember losing her own mother, she had some understanding of what a motherless little girl might be feeling.

Isabel merely shrugged with uncertainty.

“I’m awfully cold because of my wet clothes.” Liz gave her damp skirt a pat. “I know your mama was a kind, giving person and would not want to see anyone suffer.”

“You knew my mama?”

“Yes, I did. She helped me once when my little Hannah was sick. She was such a wonderful lady.”

Isabel appeared to think about this, her fine lips pursed, her brow wrinkled. In the end the kind words about her mother won out. She started toward the trunk, but as she moved, Leah, who had been sitting in the rocking chair chewing on a crust of corn bread, became restless, making very insistent noises and trying to wiggle from the chair.

Liz quickly rescued her. “Do you want to help, too, little one?” With a brief glance at the bed where Hannah was lying, Liz assured herself that her daughter was secure. She needed tending badly, but Liz saw the wisdom of caring for herself first so as not to become sick, too, and completely worthless to her daughter.

Standing Leah on the floor beside the trunk, she noted how strong the chubby baby was. Poor Hannah wobbled terribly when she tried to stand. And she was probably half the size of the Sinclair child, though, according to what Rebekah had told Liz on the ship, the child was a few months younger than Hannah.

“Why don’t you choose something, Isabel?” Liz lifted the lid. “Just something plain and old. I will return it when I’m done, but I don’t need anything fancy.”

As Isabel rummaged carefully through the trunk, Liz noted children’s clothing there as well. They were likely hand-me-downs Rebekah was saving until Leah or the new baby could fit into them. After a couple of minutes, Isabel took a dress from the trunk. It was perfect for Liz’s needs. From the look of the gown, it was probably ten years old, reflecting the style of that time, with a slightly raised waist and a skirt much less full than the current modes. A brown calico printed with tiny cream and blue flowers, it had a small ecru lace collar and black buttons running down the front to the belt of black velvet.