Heart's Desire Read online

  Heart’s Desire

  Silver Creek Stories: Book One

  Vivian Vaughan

  Copyright

  Diversion Books

  A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008

  New York, NY 10016

  www.DiversionBooks.com

  Copyright © 1987 by Vivian Vaughan

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For more information, email [email protected]

  First Diversion Books edition February 2015

  ISBN: 978-1-62681-667-1

  Also by Vivian Vaughan

  A Wish to Build a Dream On

  Storms Never Last

  Sweetheart of the Rodeo

  The Texas Star Trilogy

  Texas Gamble

  Texas Dawn

  Texas Gold

  Silver Creek Stories

  Texas Twilight

  Runaway Passion

  Sweet Texas Nights

  To my mother

  who taught me to dream,

  And to my husband

  who never gave up on me.

  Chapter One

  Holly Campbell crushed the telegram from her sister in her gloved fist and stabbed a straggling black curl beneath her dusty gray silk bonnet.

  “Come to Texas,” Papa’s letters had urged. So here she was, two months from her home in Tennessee, weary and bedraggled from hours of jostling in stagecoaches, miles of trudging through muddied roadbeds, headed for a remote place on the edge of civilization—clutching the message she had received in New Orleans:

  “Papa dead. Suicide. Return home immediately. Caroline.”

  Suicide! Holly thought of his enthusiastic letters, his plans to buy land, his commitment to the community. He was needed in Silver Creek, Texas, and he knew it; he was happy in Silver Creek. She was sure Papa did not commit suicide.

  And she did not return home. Instead, she wired Caroline to forward any future communications to her in Silver Creek, then boarded the next steamer for Galveston Bay, intent upon her mission: to retrieve his belongings and place a marker on his grave after she discovered the truth about his death.

  Suddenly the rhythmic jouncing of the stagecoach hesitated, then the coach lurched forward, spilling its occupants into and on top of one another.

  Her grief turned to fear as a hand pushed her small frame to the floor, a knee jammed into her back, and, through the rumble and clatter, the voice of the lawyer, Ezra Hinson, echoed, “Rifle shots! Keep your head down, Miss Campbell!”

  Holly coughed, strangling from the acrid mixture of gunpowder and dust, smothered by feet trampling her body as the men maneuvered themselves into better shooting positions.

  The stagecoach paused again, and Holly slid violently to the left; then after an instant of wild swaying, the vehicle poised on two wheels and slammed to earth on its side, and Holly’s head hit the door.

  Her slender arms trembled as she tried to push herself away from the side of the coach. Had Papa gone mad to love such a country?

  The thought startled her. Her father, Dr. Holbart X. Campbell, had resettled in Silver Creek after the Confederate surrender, and for four years he wrote Holly eloquent accounts of his new homeland, encouraging her to move to the frontier where she could escape not only the loneliness of reconstruction Tennessee, but also its dangers. Never a word about stagecoach holdups. Or worse, she thought, clutching the telegram in her now damp, steel-gray leather glove.

  “Are you all right, Miss Campbell?”

  Holly mumbled an assent while tugging at the pearl gray skirt of her alpaca traveling suit, which was caught beneath portly Mr. Rich’s knee. As the passengers silently tried to dislodge awkwardly tangled limbs, she cleared her thoughts. “Was anyone shot?” she asked.

  “Don’t know yet, ma’am,” Mr. Hinson answered.

  At that instant the door flew open, and two black eyes glared down at her from a bandana-covered face. A burly arm reached in and jerked her upward through the door.

  “Easy with the lady,” Mr. Rich called.

  “Shut up in there and throw out your weapons.” The voice was rough, like the arm that hauled Holly onto the top of the coach.

  As she pulled her shaking legs up behind her, they became ensnarled in her heavy, mud-caked skirts, and she stumbled over the edge of the vehicle, landing in a heap upon the rocky ground. Lifting herself up, she gasped at seeing the driver prostrate alongside the coach.

  “Mr. Monk!” Holly rushed to his aid.

  “It ain’t nothing, ma’am.” Monk hobbled to his feet and wrapped a filthy bandana around his arm.

  “Get on back here.” The first outlaw jerked her toward the side of the coach. “Line ’em up,” he ordered his men.

  Then she noticed the other bandits, three of them, with guns trained on the driver and passengers. All wore bandanas over their faces and long yellow slickers. Their eyes, the only identifying features visible between their felt hats and the tops of their bandanas, were all alike—harsh, cold, and leveled on their targets.

  When the passengers were positioned to the leader’s liking, the shorter of the outlaws removed his sweat-stained hat, revealing a nondescript mop of dirty brown hair. He passed the hat along the line, taking coins and a watch from one man and jerking Mr. Rich’s gold pocket watch and fob from his pocket, tearing his beige brocade vest. As he approached Holly, he reached for the amethyst breastpin adorning her lace cravat. She tilted her chin at him, defiantly slapping his hand away.

  “Don’t touch me!” With quivering fingers she removed the pin herself and slammed it into his palm, point first.

  The man yelped in surprise, jumped back a step, then, flushing with embarrassment, he struck Holly across the face. She fell to the ground.

  “You brute!” Ezra Hinson delivered a quick punch to her attacker’s midsection, and the outlaw immediately slammed the barrel of his pistol to the lawyer’s head, knocking him to the ground beside Holly.

  Holly reached toward Mr. Hinson, but before she could speak, the outlaw leader took her by the arm, dragged her to her feet, and pulled her behind the stagecoach.

  “Where are you taking the lady?” Mr. Rich shouted.

  The other thieves kept their guns aimed at the passengers. “Shut your trap, or you’ll get worse’n him,” the short one said, jerking his head toward Mr. Hinson, who had risen and now looked dazedly around the back of the overturned coach.

  “Bother the lady, and I’ll see you hang,” Rich hollered.

  “Keep ’em quiet,” the leader called from behind the stagecoach. He shoved Holly toward the rear boot, ripping it open. “Which one’s yours?”

  “What?”

  “The baggage?” he demanded. “Which one’s yours, Miss Campbell?”

  Holly drew a sharp breath at the mention of her name. He prodded her with his gun. “Point it out. We ain’t got all day.”

  She pointed to a small rose-colored tapestry valise which he rummaged through, then cast aside. “You expect me to believe you come all the way from Tennessee with no more’n that?”

  Her stomach churned violently, and her knees started to buckle. She wanted to scream at him through her terror: Who are you? How do you know me? But she had learned from the Yankee soldiers quartered in her home during the war that any form of weakness always drew more violence. So she steadied her voice as best she could, silently cursing the soft Southern accent which she greatly feared wou
ld make her sound conciliatory. “My trunk is on top.”

  The outlaw dragged her a few steps to the rear, and they found her Moroccan leather trunk where it had tumbled into a thicket when the stage turned over.

  “That all you have?”

  “Yes,” she answered, praying this ordeal was now over, but suddenly he jerked her silk bonnet from her head and began pulling her loosely pinned black curls.

  She screamed in pain. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “During the war,” the outlaw told her, “female spies carried secrets to the Yankees in their false hair.” He gave her black locks a couple more pulls.

  “I am not a spy!” she protested. “And I don’t wear false hair!”

  He loosened his grip on her head, then, evidently satisfied that the mass of black curls was indeed growing on her head. But as she began to relax, she felt his rough hand run down her slender, trembling body.

  “Take your hands off me.” She jumped as far away from him as his hold would permit. “What do you want?”

  He tried to lift her bulky skirts, and she fiercely struck out with her foot, catching his shin with the point of her scuffed gray leather shoe.

  He wrenched her arm behind her. “Straighten Up, lady, or those big brown eyes are gonna be black and ugly.”

  Then, swinging her body around forcibly, he held her with one arm across her heaving bosom and the pistol barrel pointing up her quivering chin, as he fumbled among her lace-trimmed white petticoats with his other hand.

  “Take off your bustle.” Exasperation tinged his demand.

  “What?”

  “Them lady spies,” he said, “they carried papers in their bustles, too. Take it off.”

  She glared daggers at him from the depths of her smoldering brown eyes, her loathing now almost as great as her fear. “I will not,” she answered firmly.

  “You’re a mighty troublesome woman, Miss Campbell.” He stared straight back at her while he jerked up the back of her dress, found the bustle, and ripped it off, breaking the ties.

  “You’re a beast!” she cried, watching him tear apart her ruffled crinoline bustle. “The Yankees never treated me this indecently!”

  As the outlaw shoved her ahead of him toward the front of the stagecoach, her mind whirled. What could he possibly think she was hiding?

  Apparently satisfied, he called to his men. “All right, boys, let’s get movin’.” He motioned toward the trees where Holly, for the first time, noticed horses calmly cropping grass in a mesquite thicket a few yards from the road, waiting for their riders.

  The leader addressed the passengers. “Everybody down, face on the ground. And stay put till Monk here counts to a hundred.” As he disappeared behind the stagecoach, he called back, “Sing it out loud, Whip.”

  In a voice crackling with hatred, Monk recited the numbers, and Holly rushed to his side, forgetting for the moment her own ordeal as she urged Monk to let her look at his wound.

  She gently unwound the dirty bandana and threw it aside. The bullet had shattered his thin arm above the wrist. Holly looked around at the desolate countryside, then called to the men to find her two smooth boards.

  “Now, Mr. Monk,” she said as though she were tending a patient in the best equipped hospital, “your arm has been broken by the bullet. I will use a portion of my petticoat, which is somewhat cleaner than your handkerchief, to staunch the blood; then we’ll splint and wrap it, and you’ll make it to our next stop just fine.”

  Ezra Hinson brought her two rough pieces of wood which were caked with mud. “These are the best I can find, ma’am. They’re used for staking horses, but I reckon they’ll do for splints.”

  Holly took the two sticks and began brushing the mud away. “They’ll do nicely, thank you. Now, would you see if, by chance, Mr. Monk has a bottle of spirits stashed in the boot?”

  The driver’s blue eyes came alive. “Yes, sirree, break out that jug! It’s almost worth gettin’ gunshot to have a pretty young thing tie up my wound and feed me likker.”

  Mr. Rich fetched a brown jug and handed it to the driver, who took a couple of long pulls before Holly doused his wound with its amber liquid contents.

  “Where’d you learn this doctorin’ stuff?” Monk asked.

  “From Papa mostly.”

  “That’s right,” he recalled. “I plumb forgot. Holbart Campbell was your pa. Doc Holly we called him out here.” Monk grinned at her. “Just like you.”

  Holly smiled, “He was known as Doc Holly back home, too. I always loved sharing that name with him.” Her smile dimmed. “I also spent a number of years working in a field hospital near my home in Tennessee, where our brave boys suffered more gunshot wounds and broken bones than I ever hope to see again.”

  Monk looked at her through wizened eyes. “You do mighty fine work, ma’am. An’ I’ve been shot up enough to know when a job’s done proper.”

  As Holly gave the wrapping a last tug, she heard a loud crash and turned to see the coach land upright on all fours. The men groaned, slumping against the cab.

  Monk held out his bottle. “Here you are, boys. Come an’ get it. You deserve to wet your whistles as surely as this ol’ reprobate.”

  Mr. Hinson passed the bottle around, and Holly noted how carefully each man measured his swig. They were leaving something to ease Monk’s pain on the ride into Silver Creek, she supposed, smiling at their thoughtfulness.

  Holly helped Monk to his feet, and he reached for the brake stick to steady himself before climbing onto the driver’s box.

  “Mr. Monk! You cannot drive this stagecoach!”

  Monk looked down at Holly with a twinkle in his blue eyes. “That’s news to me, ma’am, sure enough it is.” He settled himself on the driver’s seat, calling below, “All aboard!”

  The passengers climbed back into the coach, while the young shotgun guard crawled onto the driver’s box beside Monk.

  Holly held back protesting, but Ezra Hinson guided her into the coach. “Rink will do the driving, ma’am,” he assured her quietly, “but nobody can take away Monk’s right to ride on the box and call the shots. He’s in command here.”

  “He’s in terrible pain,” Holly objected.

  “Beggin’ your pardon, Miss Campbell,” Mr. Hinson said, “most folks out here tend to their own affairs. Oftentimes it don’t pay to do otherwise.”

  “But I am doctoring him,” Holly replied, trying to hold her ground.

  “As he said, ma’am, he’s had a caution of gunshot wounds in his lifetime, and likely none of them has laid him up. Don’t worry none about him, he’s a crusty old dog.”

  Holly sighed. “Papa wrote that people in Texas live by different rules.”

  The lawyer nodded. “Born of necessity, ma’am.”

  At that the air was pierced by the call of Monk to his team, and the coach pitched forward, forcing the occupants to scramble for secure positions.

  Mr. Rich felt inside his vest pocket, and his face took on a wistful look. “I reckon it to be around four o’clock,” he said, indicating that even though he had been relieved of his gold watch, he had in no way relinquished his self-appointed task of advising the passengers on the time of day. “Couple more hours and we should be pullin’ into Silver Creek.”

  Holly pushed her tousled black hair from her eyes. Two more hours and this wretched journey would be over.

  Her shoes cut into the flesh of her swollen feet, every joint in her body throbbed, and the stays in her confining corset were wreaking havoc with her ribs and the tender flesh of her bosom. She was so exhausted from lack of proper sleep that she fought delirium.

  And being a female on a trip like this made matters worse. Inside the cramped quarters of the coach every move bumped one or more passengers, sometimes in the most awkward places. Each shift in position pushed the next person, causing him to move as well, so that the cab was in a constant state of reshuffling.

  Two hours. Holly squeezed her eyes closed, shutting out the co
untryside Papa had loved so well, holding in the tears which threatened to flow.

  Her confidence and anticipation of two months ago had been erased. Today, nearing the place he called home, she was filled with misgivings and fear. As the desolate, alien land rocked by her window, her thoughts were on Papa, his life and death, the holdup, the telegram. What did it all mean?

  She recalled her bitter tears of four years ago when he rode away from Hedgerow Plantation, a torn and broken man. He had returned from the War Between the States to find Mama dead of yellow fever, their farm destroyed, and his line of thoroughbred bays dispersed as mounts for Yankee soldiers. In desperation he turned Hedgerow over to his elder daughter Caroline and her husband, William Bedman, and headed West.

  Through the ensuing years, he wrote to his family often, and Holly kept every precious letter. Sometimes late at night, when the big old house seemed unusually lonely, she would reread the whole stack.

  Through his candid dialogue and witty descriptions she came to know his new friends, and after he pleaded in six consecutive letters for her to join him and start a new life, she made her bold decision to come to Texas.

  When she announced her plans to Caroline and William, her sister was stunned. “You always were a willful sort, Holly Louise! Ladies simply do not travel about the country alone—especially not to an uncivilized place like the frontier. And even if no physical harm comes to you, you will be dreadfully lonely for everything you have ever known—books, music, friends.”

  “Perhaps,” Holly had agreed. “But I’m lonely here, too.” She looked around the once-elegant room that a few years before had been alive with the laughter and dancing of her friends. “You have William,” she cried, desperately trying to communicate her lonely predicament to her married sister. “No matter how miserable things get, you won’t be alone. But there is no one here for me, Caroline. No one. The single men who were lucky enough to come home from the war have been forced to leave again by the dastardly carpetbaggers.”