Threads of Change (14 page)

The day turned out to be sun-filled, only a few clouds overhead. The heavy green branches on the trees insisted upon shading them, and the picturesque deep, thick grass rippled in the breeze. The rain of the past few days had painted the area with such rich color that Liz felt a deep sense of happiness as the sun warmed her face, penetrating her brain like a mild drug.

Megan jumped from her wagon seat and twirled in a circle around the prairie of lush grass. “It is beautiful here!” she exclaimed. “What a gorgeous day.”

Abby approached the thicket of trees. “I have never seen a place like this. I wonder if we’re still in the Sabine Forest.”

The meadow at the edge of the forest looked like a fairyland to Liz, and she smiled at her cousin.

“Our Mississippi home was pretty,” Abby told her, “but not like Riverton, and not anything like this place called the Sabine.”

They had traveled along the bottom of the Sabine Forest after the soldiers left them, and they now turned north to the Angelina River and Crockett Forest.

Liz soaked it all in. “Well, do you think our new home will continue this beauty?

“Oh, I hope so,” Abby cooed.

Liz freed her chickens and let them scratch and bob around the camp while she and Emma dug out their quilting supplies. After they settled, each of the women sat in relative silence, engrossed in her own world of fabric, needle, and thread.

Emma pulled out the nine-patch squares that she had recently completed and inspected them carefully, pulling one block to the side.

“This one needs to be ripped out and restitched,” she said, and she went to work on the repair to the lovely block of browns and blues.

Abby had a few dark colors in her basket and decided to work on her appliqué. Liz knew it was Abby’s favorite. She cut out the small flowers and leaves, and then turned under the edges as she stitched it to the background piece. The quilt Megan had made for Granny Claire had been her inspiration. A myriad of red and brown triangle units came from Megan’s quilt box, all of them precut and stacked neatly together inside a pecan box lined with velvet. A gentleman caller had given the wooden box to Megan as a gift, and she’d later lined it with the fabric and turned it into a project box. Megan had never been too keen on any of her gentleman callers. The box, however, was a keeper with its rich, pecan coloring, pewter hinges, and carved trim. Megan had created a small needle cushion inside. “Megan,” Liz said, “would you like some help with all of those triangles you have in that Feathered Star? It will be a masterpiece once you’ve finished it.”

Megan passed the box of triangles to her sister with a warm smile and, as it passed Emma, she reached out to hold it.

“Tell me about this box?” she asked as her fingers passed over the carvings.

Liz jumped in. “It’s from one of Megan’s callers. She received it as a gift from Mr. Matthew Coldwell. He was a buyer who came to the mill often, a master craftsman of furniture back in North Carolina, and quite handsome and wealthy. He was very intrigued with our Megan, and he carved the box himself.”

Megan gave her sister a disapproving glance before she returned to her needle and thread.

“Well, what happened?” Emma asked, wanting to know more.

“He is gone and the box is here. That’s all there is to it,” Liz remarked.

Megan worked to move the topic along. “Sometimes it is best for a relationship to come to an end … even when … they care about each other and all appears to be well.”

Liz took the box and picked out the pieces she would sew together for Megan. She smiled at her sister and asked, “Will each star be the same?”

“Well, yes and no. The center of the stars are all different eight-inch stars, and the larger feathered star will be blue, red, or green, and with black tips. I think I will make it large, with twelve feathered stars.”

Megan became herself again as she spoke of her design. She accepted the box when Liz passed it back to her. As her fingers passed over the engraving on the inside of the lid, Liz sensed Megan’s reminiscence of Matthew.

“I can still hear his deep voice sometimes,” Megan had confided once during a late-night quilting session back at the timber mill. “I’ll tell you, Lizzie, his voice could melt you all the way to your toes. I loved to hear him sing hymns in church when he was last in Lecompte. I could recognize that voice anywhere.”

Megan never said so, but Liz suspected she might have just married Matthew if he’d have asked. But he never did. Not after Matthew’s mother, the real first lady in his life, had accompanied him on one of his business trips. Liz didn’t know the details, and Megan never wanted to talk about them. All she knew for sure was that Megan had gone for a walk with Matthew, and they met with Mrs. Coldwell on their return. The next morning, Matthew and his mother were gone, and Megan had never truly been the same. Little snatches of conversation here and there had revealed Megan’s hidden—but broken—heart, and Liz didn’t press. She could only pray for her sister that God would heal her heart again—and that she’d one day find true love.

The sun began to fade for the day and as the light dissipated, it became too hard to sew. Megan placed her needle in the special box and Liz caught a glimpse of her sister as she ran her finger along the engraving on the inside.

To my special Megan. All my love, always. Matthew

“I’m tired,” Megan said, and she stood up and withdrew to her wagon.

Three cowboys sat around the campfire, just a short distance from the Angelina River. They’d gathered several thick logs and other kindling and arranged them at the base of the fire pit, forming a teepee around some tall, dried branches, creating an intense furnace inside them that no wind or cold could pierce.

The remains of a trail supper surrounded them. The coffeepot bubbled over the fire. Each man wore traditional trail attire. A cowboy hat made of straw for shade and air circulation was deemed most necessary, and the only time it left a man’s head was when it swatted the owner’s leg in anger or frustration. Even with a lady present, the hat was only tipped slightly, just enough to signify polite courtesy. In such occurrences, the cowboy’s hand went toward the brim to tip it in acknowledgment, usually in accord with a “Ma’am.” The removal of a cowboy’s hat signified the utmost sign of respect, and such a privilege was not often bestowed.

The cowboys sitting around this fire poked at its mesmerizing flame. They wore bandannas around their necks with long-sleeved shirts tucked into denim jeans. They wore ratty cowboy boots made from animal hide, and leather belts with heavy, serious buckles. All three donned leather vests with the metal star of a Texas Ranger planted firmly over their hearts.

The oldest cowboy, Tex, though not as old as Lucas Mailly, was old enough to be the father of the women for whom he searched. He wasn’t a large man in stature, but in attitude and accomplishments, you couldn’t find much bigger. He was a legend with the Texas Rangers and respected across the territory. Tex couldn’t be sure why Lucas Mailly sent his family alone across the land; then again, why would a man leave his family at all if he had the choice. Tex’s duties didn’t allow him to agonize over such things. He intended to locate their wagon train and then bring them safely to the fort, accordingly. He had never met Lucas before, but he liked him. Through their correspondence, Lucas spoke of his granddaughters as a man would his sons. Tex considered it gutsy, no less, to send the women with such sizable amounts of gold. He certainly wouldn’t have done it.

Tex looked over to the two Rangers with whom he had been riding all day. He had ridden with both before and he liked the way they handled themselves—professional, with integrity, like most all Rangers he’d ever known. Jackson, in his midthirties, was tall and broad with a long handlebar mustache. Jackson won most of his battles by sheer intimidation. He rode a large black stallion named Zeus that carried a lofty attitude and listened only to his commands. Even if his enemies knew Zeus as simply a gentle giant, they would certainly not want to chance it, and they rarely did.

Tex often teased Colt about his age, “still wet behind the ears.” Colt was actually twenty-one, but never told anyone. He was eighteen when he started riding with the Rangers and had only ever ridden with Tex and Jackson.

The two eldest cowboys met Colt when they came upon a group of Comanches raiding a traveling group. Wagons burned and bodies lay everywhere, killed by the deadly arrows of the Plains Indians. The Comanche were fierce and superb warriors. They could release six arrows to one shot of the white man’s gun.

Colt had come running out with a Colt revolver and he had an aim many could never master, a natural shot. Tex took him in and started calling him Colt, after the gun that saved them all that day, and Colt’s reputation had grown bigger than life over the years. Tex was the only one who dared tease him about his age. Colt still had a bone to pick with the world, and he would not be intimidated after that wagon raid. His soft brown locks were long down his back and he kept them tied back with a leather strip. Tex couldn’t miss the fact that the boy looked very similar to the Indians he stalked. Tex and Jackson never asked Colt his real name, and Colt never gave it. They also never learned where he got the Colt revolver, or how he discovered that he could shoot so well.

Tex uncorked a bottle of whiskey and brought it to his lips, taking a big swig. The bottle rested on his leg as he considered another.

“What’s eatin’ you?” Jackson asked his mentor.

“Ah, nothin’ I can’t handle.”

“When do you see us finding that wagon train?” Jackson asked, and he took the bottle from his friend’s knee.

“As we go north, we’ll find them.”

Colt stirred the fire and added another log. “Why are we sent to meet this group, anyway?” he asked. “It doesn’t make sense to me. We don’t guard wagons and help them across the frontier. We pull them out of trouble after they find it … and they always do.”

Tex knew that Colt had little sympathy for wagon trains. Few, in his mind, had business going west. He guessed the boy had just seen too much in too few years.

“Women have got no business on the frontier,” Colt continued.

Tex lay back on his saddle and tipped his hat forward. “Jackson, take first watch. Colt you’re next.” He turned his back to the fire and adjusted the bedroll under his shoulder, and he muttered, “Dang, I miss my dog.”

T
he Mailly group had traveled several days and still not come across the Rangers, nor had they found Thomas or Chet. Liz tried to hold on to the occasional burst of optimism that all was well with them and that they would surely meet up at the fort.

The embers of the evening campfire soothed Liz, and she found it an agreeable spot for thinking. Oh, how she missed her rocking chair and access to a sturdy oil lamp for sewing or reading her Bible, but the location had little to do with meditation on Scripture. She thought about one of her favorite verses to which she had often clung since Caleb had died. She recited it softly as she stirred the fire.

“We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken.” She paused and took a deep breath as she looked out into the darkness of night and finished the passage. “Struck down, but not destroyed. Second Corinthians, chapter four, verses eight and nine.”

Liz jerked her head toward a sudden noise just as Megan appeared from the brush.

“Megan, you could get shot sneaking around like that.”

Megan laughed and sat down by her sister. “Is that a threat?” she asked, looking around in dramatic fashion. “I don’t see your gun. Are you hiding it somewhere, Lizzie?”

Liz snickered. “Oh, hush now.”

“I heard you reciting a memory verse before. ‘Struck down, but not destroyed.’ And how many times do we get up?”

“A righteous falls seven times, and rises again. Proverbs 24:16.”

They smiled at one another, and Megan’s hand moved to Liz’s face where she touched the place where the wound had been.

“You are looking better. How do you feel?”

“I try not to think what I must look like, but I do feel better.”