A Promise to Believe in (10 page)

“Whoa. Whoa,” Lacy called.

The animal would not be calmed, however. She pushed hard against Lacy, then backed against Nick. The action caused Nick to lose his footing, and he slammed up against the stall, the air rushing from his lungs. Without warning, the mare bucked up, trying her best to rear at Lacy, then slammed back down and kicked out behind her at Nick.

“Agh!” Nick cried out, then hit the ground before Lacy could still the mare. He writhed in pain and grabbed his left thigh. His entire leg felt as though it were instantly on fire.

“What’s going on?” Beth asked as she entered the stable. “I could hear you yelling halfway across the road.”

“Beth! Come quickly! Nick’s been hurt,” Lacy called.

Before he knew it, Beth was at his side. “I was just coming to find Lacy when I heard you hollering.” She reached for his leg. “Is it broken?”

Nick pulled back. “No, but it hurts like the dickens.”

“Let me see it.”

Nick looked up and met her blue-green eyes. He felt his breath catch. “No. Don’t touch it.”

Beth laughed. “I’ve treated more injuries than you can shake a stick at. Just relax.”

“I’m all right,” Nick said, struggling to get to his feet. He didn’t feel all right, but he wasn’t about to tell her that. Beth Gallatin had stirred feelings inside him for some time. “I’ll manage by myself.”

It was clear to both Gallatin girls that he wasn’t doing as well as he declared, however. He couldn’t even put weight on the leg without it buckling under him. White-hot pain seared up his side with each attempt.

Beth quickly positioned herself next to Nick and wrapped her arm around his waist. “Lean on me. I’ll help you get to the house, then I can look at the wound.”

“Oh no, you won’t,” Nick said, flushing red. He could just imagine Beth’s warm hands touching his bare leg.

Lacy started to laugh. “Beth, this isn’t our brother or Pa. You can’t be expecting Nick to just drop his pants so you can tend him.”

Now it was Beth’s turn to blush. “Sorry, Nick. I hadn’t really . . . well . . . I wasn’t thinking.”

He trembled slightly, feeling a powerful sense of something he couldn’t even put to words. Her nearness was too much. Nick longed to hold her—to return her embrace—but he feared what might come of it.

“What’s all the yelling about?” Simon asked. He’d been working in the blacksmith shop and sweat poured from his head and neck, despite the coolness of the day.

“Nick took a blow to the leg,” Lacy said. “Beth was trying to march him back to the house to tend his injury. We were just discussing the inappropriateness of such action.”

Simon laughed and went to relieve Beth of her load and Nick of his suffering. “I’ll manage this. Lacy, can you finish seeing to the mare?”

“Sure I can.”

“Just put some salve on the injury and give her some feed. Keep her there in the stall,” Nick commanded.

“I know what to do,” Lacy called after them.

Nick looked up at his brother with gratitude. “Sure glad you came along. Those Gallatin girls don’t give propriety a single thought when they’ve got a notion to do something.”

Simon tightened his grip on Nick and chuckled. “Maybe not, but they sure are pretty. In case you haven’t noticed.”

Nick moaned and he wasn’t sure if it was more from the leg or Simon’s statement. “I’ve noticed,” he said woefully. “I’ve noticed.”

Lacy finished with the mare and left her calmly munching on fresh hay. The tack room was messy, so she figured to help Nick by straightening it. She put away some of the extra harnesses, then lifted a discarded saddle blanket to hang over the railing. She noted the fancy saddle that sat perched atop a wooden saddle rack. Lacy was certain this didn’t belong to one of the Lassiter boys.

Just then she remembered that Hank had brought his own horse and saddle. No doubt a piece of this expense and quality belonged to him.

“It must be his—there’s hardly any wear on it,” she said with a smile. Running her hand over the cantle, Lacy noted something had been carved under the back housing on the skirt. There, tooled into the leather, were the initials
A. R
.

“Who is A. R., Mr. Bishop?” she quietly asked.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Hank thought the cemetery a perfect place for confession. Pines shrouded the graves from the intensity of the sun, leaving shadows to dance on the tombstones whenever the tree boughs waved in the gentle breeze.

“I’ve always liked to come here,” Gwen said. She gazed across the dozen or so graves. “There’s a peace here—a serenity that comforts me.”

“I was thinking much the same. It seems like a place of reflection.”

They said nothing more until Gwen stopped in front of the graves of her father and Hank’s brother. The freshly mounded dirt reminded Hank yet again that this woman was still mourning a very new loss.

“It must be hard for you and your sisters, now that your father is gone.”

“In many ways, it is harder than anything I’ve known, Mr. Bishop.”

“Three women alone can hardly be a safe situation.”

Gwen looked at him oddly. “We’re as safe here as anywhere else.”

“So you plan to stay?”

“For the time, Mr. Bishop, we do. We figure we have all summer to make up our minds as to what we want to do. Winter will mean a great deal more work, so we have to take that into consideration. However, I . . . well . . . never mind.” She looked away and let out a deep breath.

Hank wanted to question her more but thought perhaps it was time for him to offer a little explanation of his own. After all, if she thought he was confiding in her, it might give Gwen the sense of their being friends rather than enemies.

“I’m sorry Harvey never told you about his family. I’m sorry he felt the need to run away and forget about us.”

“He ran away? That just doesn’t sound like Harvey.”

“Listening to your friends speak of my brother the other night, I could scarcely believe they were discussing Harvey, either.”

“Maybe it wasn’t Harvey.”

Hank looked at her hard. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the man who told me his name was Harvey Bishop was, in fact, someone else. Maybe he took your brother’s name to hide his true identity. Men seem to do things like that all the time in the West. Or maybe his name was also Harvey Bishop, yet he wasn’t related to you at all.”

Hank felt sickened by the thought. Surely he hadn’t come all this way following the wrong man. There had to be some way to figure it all out.

“Let’s suppose the man I knew really was your brother,” Gwen said, looking back at the grave. “Perhaps you could describe him, and I could tell you if he looked as you remembered.”

“I suppose it’s a decent place to start.” Hank thought for a moment. “Harvey was eighteen when he left home. That would have been the winter of 1873.”

Gwen nodded. “The age would fit. He was nineteen when my father found him in November of 1874.”

Hank nodded. “His birthday was in November. The tenth.”

“Yes!” She looked encouraged by this news.

“Harvey didn’t look much like me,” Hank admitted. “He had darker hair and his eyes were more of a green than blue.”

Gwen’s voice was barely audible. “Yes. That sounds like him.”

“Our family was four in number. Our mother, myself, Harvey, and our stepfather.”

Gwen shook her head. “Harvey told me he was an orphan. He said his father had died when he was only six.”

“Well, that’s true enough. Our father was wrongly accused and hanged by a lynch mob.” Gwen gasped and put her hand to her mouth. Hank continued. “He was an alcoholic and womanizer, but he wasn’t a horse thief. When the mob learned the truth, they were very sorry, but of course it was too late to save my father.”

“How awful.”

“It was. Especially for our mother. She was left with two boys who could hardly help her earn a living. I was twelve and did what I could. I went to work for a man who owned a newspaper. My mother took on sewing and laundry for a time. Eventually we moved in with a widowed churchwoman who had a large boardinghouse. My mother worked for her until she met my stepfather.”

“And what of Harvey?”

Hank shrugged. “He was sickly. Mother wanted him to get an education, but he could hardly be at school a week without coming down with something. Mother wanted us both to excel at our learning, so I did what I could to work around my school hours. I was blessed to have a good schoolmaster who cared that I should receive an education. Later, my stepfather was just as supportive. He hired a tutor for Harvey and made certain that I went on to college.”

“That was quite fortunate for you. What happened to Harvey? Did he go to college also?”

“No. He played us for fools.” He saw the shocked expression on Gwen’s face and immediately regretted his words. Nevertheless, he didn’t offer an apology but went on with an explanation.

“Harvey always managed to garner sympathy from the household staff, as well as our mother. She smothered him with an overprotectiveness that nearly crippled him. I must say, Harvey did have his share of sickness as a young boy, but as he grew older I could often see that he was simply playing a role.”

“He did mention having been sick a lot as a boy,” Gwen said, moving to lean against the trunk of a tree. “That’s why we figured he’d already had the measles.”

“I couldn’t say. I know I had them before Harvey was born.” Hank shook off the memory. “Anyway, Harvey didn’t like our stepfather much. He required a great deal of us, and my brother fought against his authority. Harvey grew bitter about the demands, as well as the fact that much of the attention was taken away from him. Especially our mother’s attention. She had pampered and spoiled him a great deal, and now our new father had the audacity to expect Harvey to act like a responsible young man.”

“See, that is where our thoughts on Harvey differ greatly,” Gwen replied. “The Harvey I knew was always quite helpful. He would lend a hand before even being asked.”

“Maybe in the time before you met he learned his lesson about selfishness and seeking his own way.”

“But why wouldn’t he have returned home then, Mr. Bishop?”

Hank’s eyes narrowed. “Because he stole valuable property from our stepfather.”

“And you think he brought it here?”

Her tone suggested his idea ridiculous, but Hank wouldn’t give up that easily. If she was hiding the things Harvey took, she would do whatever necessary to send Hank in a different direction.

“He must have.”

Gwen pushed off the tree and paced a bit. Hank watched her as she considered his words. “When my father found Harvey, he was half dead from pneumonia. He had very little, save a beat-up old suitcase that held his only change of clothes. He hadn’t had a decent meal in months—at least, it didn’t appear that way to us. He was skin and bones and we thought him a goner, to be sure.”

“And where is this suitcase now?” Hank was hopeful that she would tell him it was nearby. He was even more hopeful that inside he would find the missing stock certificates Harvey had taken.

“In my room. Why?”

“Might I see it?” Hank asked.

Gwen shook her head. “Not until I’m convinced of your purpose. What is it exactly that you’re looking for?”

“My brother stole several expensive pieces of jewelry, as well as a stack of stock certificates that, at the time, were valued a fair amount but now happen to be worth a vast fortune.”

“I can assure you, Mr. Bishop, Harvey had nothing of the sort on him when he came to us. Certainly I would have known if he were carrying around jewelry. I’m back to believing that perhaps the man I knew wasn’t your brother at all, but a different Harvey Bishop.”

“With the same birth date and history of childhood sickness?”

“I don’t know. Often in life there are strange things that happen to cause there to be an appearance of certainty, when in fact there is no solid evidence.”

Hank could see that Gwen had become quite upset. She walked away from him, and for a moment, Hank thought perhaps she would head back to the house and leave him there. All at once, however, she paused in one of the sunnier spots. The glints of light on her hair drew out the golden essence, and for a moment, Hank was mesmerized by her appearance.