Love's Rescue (3 page)

…I keep your ribbon in my pocket and frequently feel it there. When I think of you, as I often do, the single thought that comes is this: I cannot wait to see you again.…

He felt himself reaching out to her, to Jess. Wanting to see her one more time, to tell her how dear she was to him, had always been. He was fading. The message. He couldn’t feel it. Did the general receive the message?

Ambrose no longer knew what direction the mare took but threaded his fingers through her mane, imagining he was weaving hands with Jess.

…Your ever loving brother,…

No sky fell under his eyes; he saw only a lone field of dappled gray, oddly crossed with streams of red.

“Jess…,” he rasped.

Ambrose.

Carson City, Nevada Territory

February 1863

Jessica moved another impatient step forward in the slow line, her frustration mounting. Near the corner stove, opinionated miners in wrinkled, unwashed clothes passed around the first bottle of the day and growled about the dry winter, Indian attacks, and war news as it came in over the wire. A dapper man at the front of the line relayed his message to the telegraph operator, and the two began to argue over the phrasing of the telegram.

Jess withheld a scathing suggestion and glanced around the room. An attendant shoveled more coal into the stove and raised the wicks of the oil lamps against the predawn darkness. Inwardly, she was growing annoyed with her plan to send a telegram to the States. With the clear pro-Union sympathies among the patrons, she didn’t expect the clerk would much care what happened to her brother.

Her brother.

Jess’s head dropped back restlessly, her temples throbbing with pains of worry. Ambrose had written frequently over the past three years, and though an occasional letter had been lost, she’d received word from him nearly every month since he had left for the war.

The last letter he’d sent was dated almost four
months ago.

Jess stared angrily at the coattails of the man in front of her. She hated herself for waiting this long, for hoping for word. Something had happened to Ambrose. She knew it had. She knew it right down to her boots.

When his letters had stopped, she had written to his commanding officer, but her letter was neither responded to nor returned. For weeks, she had pored over newspapers and casualty lists until long into the night, but she never saw his name. Now few options remained. This telegram had to work. She had to know what had happened to Ambrose. She had to know what to tell their mother.

Three or four of the miners chuckled over another man’s jest, and the line moved slowly forward. Jess pulled her cloak tighter around her. Ambrose, were he nearby, would remind her that the Lord was with her, even in this place. Jess tried to believe that He was, and she took another step closer to the chatter of clicks and beeps coming in over the wire.

***

Jake Bennett lifted the saddle from his horse and laid it over the top rail of the corral fence beside him. The winter morning was still dark, the corral and barn wall dimly discernible in the starlight, and the livery stable had yet to open for business that day. No matter. During the previous day’s ride from the ranch, his men, seldom known to interrupt a good silence with talk, hadn’t passed a mile without one of them commenting on a new hat or saddle he wanted to see in Carson City. All four had been content to break camp before sunrise, and, when they’d arrived, to look through shop windows until proprietors unlocked their doors.

Resting a gloved hand on his stallion’s back, Jake leaned over to swipe the road dust from its flank. Almost four years had come and gone since he had built his ranch up near Honey Lake in ’59, and he and his men now supplied horses and fresh beef to settlers in gold and silver mining towns that hadn’t existed then. Even Carson City, though a fledgling compared to long-established urban areas, looked closer to being cosmopolitan than the open stretch of wilderness it had been only a few years ago. Board buildings and adobes stood in the valley where the easternmost Sierras parted. When Jake had ridden in a short while earlier, they had seemed to rise out of the desert, the silhouette of a growing town beneath star-rimmed mountains.

With a hearty pat on his horse’s neck, Jake straightened. Hurried citizens bustled past, bundled in coats and scarves. A small man scuttled along the storefront toward him, head bowed low against the wind. He stepped off the boardwalk, glanced up in surprise at the huge black horse he had nearly collided with, and lifted his eyes higher to Jake’s. The man blinked, murmured an apology, and eased around the stallion, gasping when it flicked its tail warily. Jake watched the fellow’s hat pass beneath him as he slipped by, then shifted his regard to the telegraph office across the road, where he had seen a young woman enter a few minutes earlier. Even by lantern light, the woman had appeared agitated about some matter, yet she’d held her head high as she strode through the door with unmistakable boldness, like a cat he had once watched tree a bear. He hadn’t seen such beauty and fortitude in a townswoman in quite some time. It was a refreshing sight.

Jake returned his attention to his horse. He reached into his pocket for a comb, which he used to pull tiny burrs off its flank.

***

Jess stepped up to the counter. The thin man in shirtsleeves standing behind it grabbed a blank form, barely giving her a glance. “What’s your message?”

She steadied herself with a long, deep breath. “To Dr. J. S. Newberry, Secretary for the Western Department of the Sanitary Commission, Louisville, Kentucky.”

At the sound of her voice, the man’s pencil stopped. Conversations in the room tapered off. The telegrapher’s eyes flicked over her in disgust. “Kentucky?”

Jess bristled at his subtle insult. “Yes,” she said evenly. “Kentucky.”

Gradually, the other men in the room resumed their discussions. The telegrapher rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Sanitary Commission, huh? All right, go ahead.”

Jess waited until he had completed the address. “Dear Sir: I must ask your assistance in locating my brother, as I have no one else to turn to. His last known location was Versailles on October eighth of last year.”

The pencil scratched across the page. “Go on.”

“He is Lieutenant Ambrose Hale, Second Kentucky Cavalry, Company A”—Jess hesitated only briefly—“Army of the Mississippi.”

The discussion behind her ceased abruptly.

Jess felt several pairs of eyes turn toward her.

***

Jake looked up as the door of the telegraph office burst open. A mob of angry men was dragging someone, thrashing and bucking, down the steps and into the street.

That someone was wearing a skirt.

Jake jerked the lead free of the fence rail. Grasping a handful of mane, he swung himself onto his horse and whistled sharply to the already moving animal.

***

Jess stared into a sea of snarling faces and rage-reddened eyes. She shrieked as a burly, pockmarked man grabbed a fistful of her hair.

“Confederate trash gets hung in Federal territory,” he roared into her face. He was nearly ripping the hair from her head. Jess swatted desperately at his hands. “I lost two cousins at Shiloh,” he spat. “Two cousins!”

“You can hardly accuse me—” Jess gasped as she was shoved into the arms of one of his companions, arms that held tight against her ribs, though she fought to wriggle loose. All around, faces leered at her, moving closer: a skeletal, balding man with sunken cheeks. Another with long, white-blond hair. Tobacco-stained teeth. A twisted, broken nose. Others, pressing against her skirt. Rough fingers clamped onto her throat.

Jess was finally flung free as a huge black stallion reared up beside her, massive hooves thrashing. Her attackers stumbled back to a more respectful distance. The horse came down, and the big man astride it speared her attackers with a glare.

“Start walking,” he said.

Swiftly recovering their wits, her aggressors glanced around at one another, silently assessing this intruder’s ability to hold his own against a large group. Then their eyes shifted to four other men who had stepped into the street and were lining up behind Jess and the horseman.

Jess’s heart hammered in her chest. The threat from both sides hung in the air. The four who had joined them— friends of her rescuer, judging by their dress—looked more than ready to take on two times their number, along with anything else that might get in their way. In the lightening gray of the sky, their faces were little more than shadows and gleaming eyes beneath their hat brims. Yet, menacing as they were, none of their scowls could match that of their leader.

A cold blast of wintry air pelted her. The men drew back their heavy coats, hands hovering near the guns at their hips. Jess’s breath came in intermittent puffs of vapor. A small crowd had gathered on the boardwalk, and their suspense was mounting tangibly.

Finally, Jess saw the burly man’s eyes narrow and his stance relax; it seemed he had decided to let the matter be. With a jerk of his hand, he signaled his companions, who started to back away.

Jess watched them retreat until they disappeared from sight, the last man piercing her with a hate-filled glare. She counted. There had been nine of them. Her stomach felt as if a mule had kicked it. Twice. In the window of the telegraph office, the thin man in shirtsleeves pointedly flipped the Open sign to Closed.

“That went well,” she muttered sarcastically.

“You seemed to be holding your own,” a deep voice behind her said.

Jess started. The big man stood an arm’s length away, his stallion nuzzling the broad shoulder of his sheepskin coat. He was so tall that she had to lift her head to meet his gaze, and she calculated his intimidating height as six feet—and that was not counting the cowboy boots and hat. Beneath the brim, his brown eyes were calm yet keenly alert, his nose slightly hooked—Indian blood, perhaps?—and his rectangular face was undeniably handsome, dusted with a trace of whiskers. He seemed familiar, and she struggled to place him.

“I think those fellows were fortunate we came along when we did,” he said. “You looked mad enough to shred their hides.”

Jess stared up at him, recognition dawning. “Mr. Bennett?” She recalled him as a rancher who had come into her father’s store a number of times. He had once joined them for dinner when her father was considering investing in cattle of his own.

“That’s right.” His dark eyes studied her face. “You’re Isaac Hale’s daughter.”

“Jessica,” she said. “I was mad. Frightened, too, but mostly mad.” With her fingers, she combed back the hair that had come free in the struggle and winced at the tenderness of her scalp. “I’m grateful you came along when you did.”

“We’d best move aside,” Jake said, seeing that the onlookers were going about their business and usual traffic had resumed. As they crossed the road toward the livery stable, Jess began to shiver. The wind was about as genial as a blanket of ice. Her eyes darted back to the place on the road where the men had dragged her, but her cloak wasn’t there. No doubt, she had lost it in the telegraph office. So be it. She wasn’t about to go back for it.

Bennett tied his horse to the corral fence. The four cattlemen stood lookout near their horses at the hitching rail, and Jess paused by them, intending to thank them for their help. “Do you have another wrap?” Jake asked her.

Jess looked at him in surprise.

His brown hat tipped toward the telegraph office. “You went in with one,” he said.

And the Yankee-loving telegrapher likely had it in hand, and was just waiting for her to slink back in and beg him for it. “I’ll be fine until I get home.”

Without preamble, the rancher shrugged out of his thick sheepskin coat. “There’s more to consider than your pride, Miss Hale,” he murmured as he swung it over her shoulders. “Influenza can be a hard lesson.”

The coat was heavy and tremendously warm. Jess extended her arms in the sleeves and buttoned it rapidly, nodding in thanks.

The thinnest of the ranch hands, a young, wiry man, pulled his ragged, woolen scarf from around his neck and passed it to her. Jess wrapped it over her freezing head and ears and knotted it under her chin. She flashed him a look of gratitude, but he had already lowered his blushing cheeks into his upturned collar and resumed his survey of the street.

Another of the four handed her a pair of man’s gloves. He was stout, with fiery orange hair and a bushy mustache and beard to match. An Irishman, no doubt—her grandfather had had the same flame-red hair and fair skin. This man had a look of joviality about him, though he evidently restrained it in favor of remaining vigilant about any who might return to do them harm.

At her questioning look, Jake introduced her to the Irishman. “Miss Hale, this is Taggart.” One bright-blue eye winked. “The boy is Reese.” Jake then turned to a big, black man who was nearly as tall as he. “This is Doyle, and the Spaniard there is Diaz.”

Doyle barely glanced at her, but Diaz gave her a jaunty salute with the knife he had drawn to carve a piece of wood. He was a contrast of brown skin, black mustache, and grinning white teeth. “Señorita,” he said with a slight bow.

“I’m grateful to you all for your help with those men,” Jess said. “I knew there might be trouble, but I didn’t anticipate violence.”

Though she was tall for a woman, she still found herself at eye level with either coat buttons or bandanas. She had to lift her gaze to see even the youngest, Reese. Jess glanced at Jake, knowing she could trust him with the truth. “I was trying to wire a high-ranking doctor in the States. My brother—” Her voice caught. She tried again. “My brother, Ambrose, is missing in the war. I wanted the doctor to help me find him. Those men became offended when they heard that Ambrose is fighting for the South.” She attempted a smile. “I don’t expect they cared much for my accent, either.”

Having said the words, Jess felt the weight of her failed efforts and of the tension that awaited her at home. Writing to Ambrose’s commander had availed nothing, and her attempt to obtain assistance via the telegraph had failed. She could try to wire from another town, but she strongly suspected the response there would be the same. Given her accent and the fact that half a continent separated her from her brother, she felt as trapped as a wild bird in a cage. And the urge to break free nearly choked her.