Saving Alice Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

He slowly opened his eyes and squinted up at the sun as pain pulsated through his head. When he tried to raise his hand to his head, his arm revolted against the action. It seemed as though his arm weighed a hundred pounds. With a greater effort of will he brought his hand to his head and felt in his hair a sticky and gritty mixture of dirt and blood.

Lying among the high grass, he felt little rocks and clumps of earth jutting into his back. With the effort of sitting up every bone creaked and protested. A groan escaped his dry lips. Leaning heavily upon his left hand, he felt the rest of his body for any serious damage. Miraculously, there were no bones broken, but it seemed that every inch of his body was in pain.

He had landed hard when he had fallen off the charging horse. The bullet had grazed his skull, leaving a new part across the right side of his scalp. He was fortunate to be alive.

As the fog began to clear from his brain, he judged from the low position of the sun that he could not have been laying there for long. Looking around, he couldn’t see anyone. He had to get up. He had to get moving. He didn’t know how, but he had to save his wife.

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The sun had been hiding behind the clouds since dawn on the morning the couple were to board the stagecoach. A soft spring breeze was blowing up out of the south bringing with it the smell of approaching rain.

The young couple paused to look at their transport before climbing in. The stagecoach, which had been painted red at one point, had seen its days of travel. There was a great need for new paint as it was chipped, scratched, and marred in many places from the hard use on the rough trails of the west. Dust had encrusted the entire surface of the coach with an extra layer near the bottom where the spoke wheels threw up a constant rain of the gritty road powder. Rigged to the front, were four tall and worn looking mules.

Inside the open door they could see that there were three benches. The front and back benches faced each other, while the third bench crowded itself into the center with nothing more than a leather strap hanging from the opposite side that was to be stretched from side to side for its back support after the backseat passengers were loaded. On the floor of the coach they spied the mailbags that their feet were going to be resting on during the journey.

The couple could also see that they were not the first to arrive for boarding, for the front and most desirous bench already had two men sitting there, one at each window.

Matthew gave Alice a hand up into the coach. She slid across the back bench to the farthest window, while Matthew crawled up after her and slid in next to her. The bench was hard and the backrest had no give.

Looking across the coach Matthew introduced Alice and himself to his fellow companions.

“Hello. My name is Matthew Moore, and this is my wife Alice.”

 “Tim Hawkins,” replied a lugubrious looking man sitting directly across from Alice.

 “John Whitmore,” came a reply from the other corner. He was a greasy man that bulged over into the middle seat. From the corner of his mouth protruded a large cigar. A wisp of smoke rose to form a growing haze in the top of the coach.

His eyes had settled on Alice. She was a beautiful woman. Her hair was a soft brown, pulled up in a bun, with soft strands hanging down on either side of her face. Her green eyes sparkled with a light all their own. Her blue dress seemed to bring warm summer skies into the coach. Though she never flaunted her beauty, or used it to manipulate, men had always found her to be an irresistible feast for their eyes.

Whitmore’s attention to Alice did not go unnoticed to Matthew. When he was courting Alice, the attention of other men sent him into fits of jealousy. One man in particular had received a reshaping of his nose from Matthew. But as time went on, he realized that men could no sooner stop from admiring Alice as one could stop from being captured by the beauty of a summer flower.

Furthermore, he knew that his jealous outbursts would never be reconciled with his profession- preachers were supposed to be somewhat kindhearted. A punching preacher would never garner any kind of credibility with the people he wanted to reach with the Word of God. So, with much prayer and self-discipline, he had come to terms with the reaction of men to the beauty of his wife. He kept his feelings in check.

But there was always in the corner of his mind a readiness to be on guard with those whose eyes loitered too long on his wife. A lingering glance from another man was understandable, but open goggling with lustful eyes was another thing altogether. When this happened, he could feel his boyhood nature rising up within.

Matthew had been a street kid in the slums of Chicago. Fast with his fists and unmerciful when he fought, he had been a ruthless scrapper. There was one occasion in his late teens when his friends had to pull him off a victim who had fallen under his fury. They truly thought that Matthew was going to beat him to death. By the time he was eighteen he had developed a growing reputation of brutality. Many full-grown men just wouldn’t mess with this dangerous young street tough.

 “What’s bringing you west?” Matthew asked in an attempt to distract Whitmore from Alice.

With a swallow, Whitmore pulled his eyes from Alice. During his distraction with Alice, he hadn’t really looked at her companion. Seeing Matthew now for the first time, he saw what seemed to him to be a boy, at least by his face.

Matthew was a lanky man, and his face bore a youthful appearance. He had no whiskers to speak of. In fact, he could go two full days between shaves before anything showed. Many people initially didn’t take Matthew very seriously with this youthful look. In his younger years this had proved to be a big mistake in the slums of Chicago. Someone would make a comment about him being a just a kid, and, to their surprise, Matthew would summon up a man-sized tornado.

Even now, it wasn’t uncommon for people to mistake him to be Alice’s kid brother instead of her husband. That’s why Matthew always made it a point to introduce her as “my wife, Alice,” just so people wouldn’t make the mistake.

“Uh, my brother,” replied Whitmore to Matthew’s question. “He owns a saloon just outside of Denver.” He had decided that Matthew was nothing to be concerned with.

 “Is this your first trip, Mr. Whitmore?” asked Alice.

Whitmore’s eyes eagerly turned back to Alice.

 “My second.” Without shame he ran his eyes slowly down Alice. His earlier stares had gone unseen by her, but there was no missing it now. She felt embarrassed and a flush came to her cheeks.

Matthew knew that things needed to be put in order right from the start. A five-day journey in the same coach couldn’t be tolerated with Whitmore’s behavior. His fists used to be his instruments of instruction to help people know that he was to be taken seriously, but, since his conversion to Christianity, Matthew had learned how to be taken seriously by being direct and speaking his mind.

 “Do you like what you see, Whitmore?”

Not expecting that kind of a question from the kid, Whitmore jerked his eyes to Matthew.

 “Well,” Matthew continued, not waiting for an answer, “God made her. And believe me, she is very precious to God. If I were you, I would remember that, for one day we are all going to end up before Him. Then you are going to answer for all that you do. Don’t make my wife’s discomfort one of those things to answer for. It’s just not worth it.

“Now then, we are going to be in this coach together for quite a few hours,” persisted Matthew. “I will welcome your conversation, as long as it is appropriate for women. But staring like you have been doing just isn’t right. As her husband and as a preacher, I’m going to ask you to behave yourself.”

Most people have a certain amount of respect for God and preachers, and Whitmore was no different. Looking down on Matthew’s lap he saw the black Bible for the first time. Though not a churchgoer now, the teachings of his mother and father were not far below the surface. During those quiet times of life he lived with a certain fear of that judgment day to come, and Matthew’s words reminded him of it now. Though Matthew as a man didn’t worry Whitmore, those words had hit a sensitive spot. With a shaken glance between the couple and then down at the Bible, he diverted his eyes and, without a word, he looked out the window and chewed on his cigar.

Alice leaned into Matthew, hugged his arm, and whispered in his ear, “Thank you.”

It wasn’t long until the rest of the passengers had arrived and climbed on board and exchanged names with a bow of the head and a tipped hat to Alice. When the coach rolled out of town there were nine passengers on board, three to a bench.

The advertisements had lied. The stagecoach trip was supposed to be a fast, comfortable, and safe means of travel through the west. It was true that it was fast; in the past three days of travel both night and day with only a couple of stops a day to change out the team of mules to the like or to horses, they made an average of about five to seven miles an hour. And, at one long down hill slope, they covered ten miles in one hour!

The passengers were far from comfortable. Many people said after a couple of days that the trip was nothing less than cruel and unusual punishment. Though it was considered the most comfortable of the three benches, the front bench rolled and jostled in concert with the wheels. The middle-bench passengers were in for a rough ride. After the doors closed, a leather strap had been stretched across the cabin and the three people could lean back against the strap. But as the coach began to roll and jostle down the trail the strap seemed intent on digging into their backs.

The backbench wasn’t much better. With each bump and rut in the road the back of the coach jumped with an accentuated response. Matthew and Alice rode as though they were in a rowboat during a tempest. Many times the coach jumped up and then dropped away from beneath them leaving them completely disconnected from their seat. Then the coach would hit another bump that would suddenly send the back of the coach skyward again while the passengers were in a freefall. The resulting impact between bench and butt would rattle the body from head to toe. It didn’t take long for the back row passengers to feel that their backs and teeth were destined for destruction by the jarring effects of the travel.

Twice during the first three days, all the passengers had to get out and throw rocks at the team of horses or mules. The first day, just an hour before the first team change, the mules had come out of a stream and started up the other bank, when the mules just flat stopped. Out everyone climbed, somewhat grateful for the opportunity to stretch their legs. With the lightened load and few choicely landed rocks, the mules gave a forward lurch, and up the bank they went. Just a little hesitant to clamber aboard once again, everyone trudged slowly up the hill.  Alice was the last one to the top of the bank with her hand in Matthew’s.

    The second incident was with a fresh team of mustangs that had come to a stretch of sand. The coach bogged down in soft road. Out everyone climbed again. With two men pushing the coach from behind, one man at each wheel, and the rest, giving yips and yells and throwing a few rocks at the mustangs. Slowly, it was dragged and pushed through the sand. After ten minutes of work, the coach rolled onto relatively solid ground. Fifteen minutes of well earned rest for horse and man was enjoyed.

In the early hours of the fourth morning, just before the sun peeked above the horizon, the team hit the bottom of a long hill. Most everyone in the coach had been trying to sleep, an almost impossible thing to fully do while being jostled about in the coach. As the coach started to climb rather steeply, a few eyes reluctantly opened.

With an exhausted air, Whitmore complained to the group at large, “I suppose we’re going to have to get out push any minute.” But they didn’t. Slowly but surely, the team of mules slowly pulled the coach up the hill. For ten long minutes they climbed while the coach driver slapped the reins and yelled to his team. At the top of the incline, with the team just keeping the coach rolling, they started to gain a little more speed as the hill softened. The driver had been intending to give the team a fifteen-minute rest, like he usually did after a hard pull. But the stop at the top of the hill was suddenly changed from voluntary to mandatory. In the road were seven masked men sitting on horseback. Each man had a gun, and each were pointing their guns at the driver and the shotgun rider.