The man in front of her stank of sweat and fear and hatred. He grabbed her chin. Forced her to raise her head.
Never let them see your eyes.
She tried to keep her eyes closed, but what did it matter now? What did anything matter? Her family, her betrothed, were dead. Everyone she loved was gone.
Filled with anger and defiance, she raised the hidden knife, intent on plunging it into his heart. But he was bigger, stronger. He grabbed her wrist and twisted. She cried out at the shock of pain. Her fingers uncurled and the hunting knife fell to the ground at her feet.
She raised her head at last and stared into his cold, hate-filled eyes and willed the bearded white man to take her life. There was fury in his gaze, along with an anger that left no doubt that he wanted to kill her.
Do it now, she thought. Kill me, Blue Coat, so that I can join the others.
Suddenly, the hatred in his eyes turned to shock and he began shouting to the others. This new excitement in him frightened her more than his hairy, sun-burned face, his foreign scent, his rough hands.
Three men on horseback watched as he struggled to drag her up the shallow ravine. His fingers bruised her upper arms and his grip twisted her shoulder, but she refused to cry out.
The smell of death tainted the air. The Blue Coats had killed her family—her mother, her father, her husband-to-be, her little brother. Her many friends, the wise elders, Bends Straight Bow, her grandfather.
The Nermernuh, her people, were scattered, dead, dying.
The Blue Coats had captured her.
It was a good day to die.
Chapter Two
S pring was Hattie Ellenberg’s favorite time of year. A time of beginnings when the snow and ice turned to warm rain, trees swelled with the buds of new life and God’s promise of a bountiful fall harvest was evident everywhere. The coming of spring tempered the bleak, desolate bite of winter with its dark memories and images of bloodstained snow.
Hattie took joy in the small gifts of spring, the way the birds sang with riotous pleasure at the break of day, the early morning sunlight that flooded her bedroom. Somehow the puddles of sun, warm as pools of melted butter, made her feel more alive and less isolated.
Each year, as the first spring wildflowers bloomed, she asked her son, Joe, to move the old kitchen table out of the barn and onto the shade of their wide covered porch. There, they would take their meals beneath the roof of the low, wide overhang, even through the dog days of summer.
When she woke this fine morning, she had no idea Jesse Dye would be paying them a visit. Now here she was, sitting on the porch at that very table with the former Confederate soldier and seasoned war veteran.
She smoothed her work-worn hands across the faded gingham tablecloth, absently wished she’d mixed up a sage-scented salve to smear into the reddened cracks around her knuckles. She’d never been a showy woman and her looks certainly didn’t matter anymore. Certainly not to Jesse, a man in his late thirties who had been raised on a ranch a few miles south of their own Rocking e Ranch. They’d known Jesse forever. Now he was a U.S. Army captain fighting the fierce Comanche, a plague on the Texas frontier for nearly a century.
The sight of her chapped hands embarrassed her almost as much as the wide scar above her forehead. The minute she’d seen Jesse riding into the yard, she’d grabbed her poke bonnet off a hook by the back door and wore it to hide the puckered swath of baldness.
“Will you do it, Hattie?” Jesse leaned back in his chair, casually resting one booted foot over his knee and propping his wide-brimmed hat atop it. A wisp of warm breeze barely ruffled the hem of the tablecloth as he added, “Will you take her in?”
“You know what you’re asking, don’t you?” She couldn’t believe one of the few friends they had left was laying this challenge at her feet.
“If I didn’t think you were exactly what she needs—if I didn’t think you could do this, I wouldn’t be here.”
Her pulse accelerated and a wave of dizziness assailed her. Hattie closed her eyes for a heartbeat and waited. As always, her panic eventually abated.
“It’s been eight years, Hattie.”
“Joe will never agree.”
“Why not ask him?”
Her own emotional concerns aside, she knew how deep Joe’s bitterness ran. He not only blamed himself for not being there when she’d needed him most, but he’d lost his faith in himself and, worse yet, in God.
Hattie clung to her faith now more than ever. Faith filled the hollow places, banished the darkness that might have otherwise taken her down. Faith gave her the strength to forgive, the will to get up and face each new day knowing the Lord was always with her.
But now, Jesse was asking her to do more. He was asking her to take action, to prove forgiveness was not just a word or a thought, but a deed.
She struggled for a way out.
“I’m sure there must be someone else, some other family willing to care for her, Jesse.”
She surveyed the land that had once held so much promise, remembered how thrilled her husband, Orson, had been the day they’d staked their claim. So long ago. So many memories were buried here. Memories and pieces of her tattered heart.
She studied Jesse, amazed he’d ridden all the way out from Glory on a fool’s errand.
“She’ll only be here until we locate her family, Hattie.”
Hattie reached up, smoothed back a strand of hair that had escaped the back of her bonnet and trailed down her neck. She let her imagination run loose, tried to picture a young woman sleeping in the empty room upstairs, the room that hadn’t been used since Melody died.
She had no doubt this was God’s hand working through Jesse. In the beginning she’d struggled to forgive the harm done to her, the injuries inflicted upon her, the taking of her loved ones. Eventually, she’d succeeded, or so she thought. Setting aside the past was the Christian thing to do.
Nine years ago she would not have hesitated to say yes if asked to help, nor would Orson. They would have opened their door and arms to anyone in need. But Orson was gone and so was little Melody, and now Hattie didn’t know if she had the courage to say yes. She was scarred inside and out. She wasn’t the woman she’d been then.
Besides, even if she agreed, Joe would never stand for it.
Oh, how she wished Orson was here. But then, if Orson was still alive, things would be different. Joe might be different.
But he’d been a rebellious youth before Orson and Mellie were killed and now he was a bitter young man.
“Is she…dangerous?” Hattie met Jesse’s gaze, hoping to measure the truth of his answer.
“She hasn’t shown any violence. Hasn’t tried to escape. She may not even be right in the head anymore, but she looks to be sane. Only God knows what those savages did to her.”
“How old is she?”
“Hard to tell. Maybe eighteen. Maybe younger. Maybe a year or two older. No way to know how long she’s been a captive, either. She doesn’t speak English anymore. That’s how long.”
“I just don’t know what to tell you, Jesse.”
Her Melody would have been sixteen in August; Mellie with her cherub’s curls and bright green eyes. Mellie was the light of all their lives before the Lord saw fit to take her. Both Melody and Orson at once.
Only by her faith in the goodness and workings of the Lord had Hattie made it through her darkest days, her bleakest hours. She slowly convinced herself that her work here was not finished or He’d surely have taken her, too,