The Shepherd's Voice (4 page)

Akira allowed the horses to set their own pace, which wasn’t a particularly swift one. The first half-hour passed without conversation. She didn’t mind. She was used to silence and the company of her own thoughts.

She pondered many things as they traveled, most of them about the man seated beside her. She wondered what captivity had done to Gabe Talmadge. She couldn’t imagine the horror of being locked up for years, unable to go where she wanted whenever she wanted, unable to lie in the grass or stroke the silky coat of her dog or swim in the creek in the moonlight.

Why, of all people, had God brought the son of Hudson Talmadge into her home?

She glanced up at the cloudless blue sky. “Will You give me an answer to
that
question?” she asked softly.

“What?”

She looked at Gabe. “Sorry. I was inquiring of the Almighty.”

He frowned as his gaze moved to the road before them.

Without his beard, she could see a slight resemblance to the elder Talmadge. She supposed Gabe was in his early thirties, though he appeared older with his hollow cheeks and the deep lines etched around his eyes.

“How long has it been since you’ve seen your father?” she asked.

The muscles in his jaw flexed, and a pained expression flashed briefly across his face. Then it was gone.

“I’m sorry. I had no right to ask.”

He met her gaze. “Fourteen years.”

“Fourteen?” She couldn’t disguise her surprise. “But didn’t he come to visit you when you —”

“Four teen yea rs.”

How could that be?
she wondered. How could a father abandon his son that way? No matter what Gabe had done, he was still Hudson’s son.

“He doesn’t know I’m coming,” Gabe said, providing an answer to an unformed question.

“He must expect you, now that you’re out —” She stopped abruptly.

“You can say it, Miss Macauley … now that I’m out of prison.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No need to be. It’s a fact.” He stared into the distance. “Actually, I was released four years ago. I didn’t return then, and Hud has no reason to expect me now.”

Hud?
A curious thing to call his own father.
Why doesn’t he expect you?
She pressed her lips together to keep from saying or asking something she shouldn’t.

“Have you lived in the area long, Miss Macauley?”

“Nine years, not counting a brief spell right after my father passed on.”

“Then I trust the gossips have done their job.”

“I don’t listen to gossips.” She shrugged for emphasis, even though he wasn’t looking at her. “Besides, I seldom go to town, and when I do, all anyone wants to talk about these days is the economy and the drought and whether or not I’ve decided to sell my land.”

“Sell?”

She slapped the reins across the team’s backsides. “Giddyap there,” she called. Then she answered Gabe’s one-word question with a bit of history. “My grandfather left me Dundreggan when he passed on to his reward. I won’t sell it.”

“Dun what?”

“Dundreggan Ranch.”

“Dundreggan.” Gabe gave her the closest thing to a smile she’d seen from him. “Your voice changed when you said it. You sounded like Lachlan.”

“Aye, laddie,” she replied with a cocky toss of her head, laying on a thick accent.

He chuckled.

Akira suspected it was a sound he’d not made in a long while, perhaps not for years.

A nicker from one of the horses drew her gaze to the road. Ahead of them, an old Ford truck, its bed piled high with household items, was stopped. Two men leaned over the engine. As the Macauley wagon drew closer, Akira recognized the weary-looking woman in the cab of the truck as Nora Wickham. Akira’s heart sank. She didn’t have to ask what had happened. Charlie and Mark Wickham must have been let go from the mill, and the family was leaving Ransom in search of work. It had happened to many before them and would more than likely happen to others in the future.

She pulled on the reins, stopping the team as they came alongside the truck. “Morning, Mrs. Wickham.”

Nora acknowledged the greeting with a nod; she didn’t look well enough to do more than that. Akira had heard she’d been ill again.

She glanced toward Charlie. “Morning, Mr. Wickham.”

“Miss Macauley.” He looked at Gabe, but when no introduction was given, he returned his gaze to Akira.

“Is there something I can do to help?” she asked with a glance at the open hood.

“No. We’ve about got it fixed.”

“Where will you go?”

“Oregon. We’re hoping there’s millwork to be found there.” He looked at his wife, seated in the cab, her eyes closed. Worry lines carved deep ridges in his forehead.

Ask him.

The whisper in Akira’s heart was familiar, the meaning clear. She didn’t hesitate to obey.

“Mr. Wickham, I’m in need of a couple of hands to help with the sheep. Would you consider working for me?”

His expression was one of surprise. “Well, I —”

“You’d have a house of your own. It’s small but sound. The pay won’t be much, but there’ll be plenty of good food.” She looked beyond him to his son. “I could use Mark’s help, too, if he’s willing.”

“I don’t know anything about sheep, Miss Macauley,” Charlie said, despair in his voice. “I’ve been a logger or a mill hand all my life. Lumber’s all I know.”

“Brodie Lachlan can show you the ropes.” She paused, then added, “You’d be doing us a favor if you’d agree. You probably heard Mr. Lachlan had an accident. He’s on the mend, but it’s past time our band of sheep was taken to summer grazing. Mr. Lachlan can’t manage them alone. Not while he’s still using his crutches.”

Another glance at his wife, and Charlie Wickham made up his mind. He nodded. “All right, Miss Macauley. We’d be pleased to work for you. God bless you.”

“Just head on up to the ranch. Mr. Lachlan will show you
where to settle.” She adjusted the reins in her hands. “I’ll talk to you more when I get back.”

In the four years since his release from prison, Gabe had seen countless families like the Wickhams, suddenly homeless, all their worldly possessions piled into automobiles or trucks or wagons. He’d slept under bridges and in abandoned buildings with those once proud men, men who had left their homes so their wives and children could go on the dole instead of starving alongside them.

He was sorry to see it had happened to Charlie Wickham. Gabe had worked in the mill with him for a short while back in 1919. A lifetime ago. He’d liked Charlie, too, because Charlie had treated him fairly. Better than he’d deserved.

Akira clucked to the horses and smacked their rumps with the reins. The wagon jerked forward.

Gabe glanced over his shoulder.

“He didn’t recognize you,” Akira said.

“No.” He straightened. “I was just a kid the last time he saw me. And I’ve changed a lot since then.”

“Well, you have been gone a long time.”

“Yeah.” He wondered if he should have come back at all.

As if reading his mind, she asked, “Why’d you return now?”

He closed his eyes, remembering one particular night in a shantytown near Seattle. A cold and damp night that chilled a man to the bones.

A preacher had walked along the pathway that meandered between the shacks, speaking to any and all who would listen. He’d had one of those voices peculiar to men of the cloth, the sort that carried across a crowd and above the sounds of hurting humanity.

The preacher’s words had reached Gabe’s unwilling ears; try as he might, he hadn’t been able to block them out.

“And he went and joined himself to one of the citizens of that country; and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him. But when he came to himself he said, How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare, and I perish here with hunger! I will arise and go to my father …”

There’d been a time, after Gabe’s release from prison, when pride had kept him away from Ransom. But cold and hunger had a way of stripping a man of his pride—and everything else besides. So when he heard the preacher telling the story of the Prodigal Son, he’d made up his mind to return. The worst that could happen was that the old man would throw him out.

And maybe, just maybe, things would be different between them this time.

“Gabe,” Akira said, drawing him back to the present.

“Hmm?”

“It’s going to be all right. I’ve got a feeling about it.”

“A feeling,” he muttered, thinking how naive she was.

“In good time, you’ll see I’m right, Gabriel Talmadge.”

“Because you’ve got a feeling?”

Her smile was tinged with sadness. He could tell she’d wanted him to believe and was disappointed when he didn’t.

The remainder of the journey to town was made in silence.

Ransom was Hudson Talmadge’s town. He owned almost every square inch of it, from the Logger’s Café on the west side to the Ransom Dry-Goods Store on the east side, from the First Ransom Bank at the north end to the Talmadge Home for Orphans at
the south end. If a person wanted work in this county, it usually depended upon Hudson’s good graces—of which he had few.

Akira cast a surreptitious glance toward Gabe seated beside her in the wagon. Perhaps, she thought, Hudson was the way he was—mean and twisted—because he’d lost all three of his sons, in one way or another. Maybe he would change for the better now that Gabe had returned.

Could this be the way You plan to heal this valley? Could this be the way You redeem Hudson Talmadge? Do you mean to use Gabe for that purpose?