Heaven Sent
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PROLOGUE
T
he first gray light of dawn illuminated the white clapboard house that sat like an island in a sea of corn near the border of the
Indian Territory
. The Reverend Farnam Bunch, pastor of
He was a simple man who loved the country. He drank in the smell of the early morning air, anticipating the prospect of a fresh day. He had come to the
Today the future seemed to be just dazzling out on the horizon as he whistled the catchy melody to "There shall be showers of blessings."
As he opened the door to the wellhouse, his whistling stopped. He stood frozen, contemplating the shocking sight.
On the floor of the wellhouse, a young couple lay wrapped in each other's arms. He knew them both, and yet surely he was mistaken. He threw open the door wide, hoping that the meager morning sunlight would show his error. It could not be true. Even as his mind denied it, rage boiled up in him like a volcano and came spewing out in a torrent of angry words.
"You trifling, no-account scoundrel! By God, I'm going to send you to hell!" he thundered. The preacher had never been a man to curse. He struggled, his hands shaking at his side, with the vile language that rushed to his lips. The situation didn't call for civilized discussion.
In red-eyed fury he yelled back to the house, "Violet! Bring me my gun!"
Inside the wellhouse, Hannah Bunch woke from her warm, pleasant dream, startled to hear the sound of her father's angry voice. Disoriented at first, she quickly realized that everything was going as expected. This was a crucial part of her plan, a difficult part, but one that was essential. Her father would be understandably angry, she had known that from the beginning. But it was her father who had taught her that nothing worth having was achieved without sacrifice. A few embarrassing moments could hardly be counted against a lifetime of contentment.
People came running from every direction. The whole community had camped at the Bunch farm the previous night for the church raising and all of them had heard their preacher's angry cry.
Hannah had never seen her father in such a rage. His face was a vivid red and his teeth were bared like an animal's as he spat thunderous blasphemies into the doorway of the wellhouse.
She knew that more than one couple from the community had anticipated their wedding night, and rather than condemning them her father had always been understanding and forgiving. She had counted on that spirit of forgiveness, but there was no mercy in him right now. He was furious and he seemed to Hannah to be talking crazily, directing his anger to the man who stood silently behind her.
"People told me not to trust you, that you're a heathen with no morals, a son of a drunken squawman. But I said a man must be judged on his own merits! The more fool me! I invite you into my home, feed you at my table, and this is how you repay me, by ruining my daughter!"
The preacher's deep booming voice was raised to a pitch that surely made it audible halfway to Guthrie. "Violet! Where is my gun?"
Hannah was frightened. Her brothers drew close at the door behind her father, their angry words more hateful and vile than her father's. They would not hesitate to come to blows on Hannah's behalf. She had to calm the situation, and quickly.
She'd expected it to be difficult, but she hadn't thought her father and brothers would be beyond reason. And she was shocked at the things they had to say about Will. They had always seemed to like him. She couldn't bear such hard feelings among the family. She could feel his presence behind her and she wished he would say something. Clearly, she must make an explanation and she must make everyone watching believe it.
"Papa, please don't be angry," she pleaded, leaving the door of the wellhouse and walking toward her father with her arms outstretched, entreating him. "I love him, Papa, and I think that he loves me," she lied.
Her father's look, if possible, became even more murderous. Her brother Leroy snorted an obscenity in protest.
She grabbed her father's clenched fists and brought them up to her face in supplication. "He's a good man, Papa. You know that as well as I."
The crowd of people stood watching in shock as Violet, who had heard the commotion and her husband's call for a weapon, came running with his old squirrel gun, as though she'd thought some rabid animal had got shut up in the wellhouse. Seeing her stepdaughter, clad only in her thin cotton nightgown, she stood stunned in disbelief, but retained the good sense not to give her husband the weapon.
"Papa, we want to be married," Hannah pleaded, praying silently that Will would not dispute her statement. "Please, we want your blessing."
Her brothers exchanged looks of furious disbelief and righteous indignation.
"You're a dead man!" Rafe, the youngest, threatened.
Hannah was tempted to go over and box his ears.
"Give me that gun!" Ned ordered Violet, but she gripped it tighter.
Hannah's patience with the whole group was wearing thin. It wasn't as if she were a green girl,
she was a
grown woman twenty-six and was thoroughly entitled to make her own mistakes.
"I love him, don't you understand?" she lied. "I want to be with him."
"That low-down snake doesn't deserve the likes of you, Miss Hannah!" a voice just to the right of her father shouted in anger. "What's got into you messing with a decent farmer's daughter?" he yelled at the man behind her.
The voice captured Hannah's immediate attention. She turned toward it, shocked. Will Sample, the man she planned to marry, was standing in a group of men staring angrily at the wellhouse.
With a feeling of unreality, Hannah turned toward the object of their anger. In the doorway of the small building, with his hands upraised like a captured bank robber was Henry Lee Watson, a man Hannah barely knew.
CHAPTER 1