Accept my Word (Rancher's Word #1) - Linda K. Hubalek

Chapter 1

A Spring morning in Western Kansas, 1893

Moses Brenner sat on his canvas bedroll, watching the sky slowly change from pitch black to gray and finally to an array of morning colors. He leaned back against the waist-high limestone rock wall that enclosed the old Fort Wallace cemetery and took another sip of hot coffee from his tin cup. Moses arrived at the graveyard last night as the evening light faded from the sky, on purpose, and made camp for the night. He wanted to watch the sunrise as his parents would have watched it on their last day on earth two decades ago.

Moses’ hobbled horse snickered close by, waiting for a walk down to the nearby river for a long drink of water. The gelding would be tended to as soon as it was light enough to view the area again.

He took another sip of coffee and studied the horizon. Did his father notice a clear morning sky of colors or go just about his work getting the horses hitched to the family’s wagon?

Moses’ adoptive father, Marcus Brenner, was one of the cavalry soldiers appointed to accompany that group of wagons from Fort Wallace to the Kansas and Colorado state line that fateful day. There had been rumors of trouble from the Cheyenne along this stretch, and four soldiers were sent to ride along to ensure their safety.

Marcus remembered the early morning promised to be sunny. He and his fellow soldiers joined the group as they left Fort Wallace, where the wagons camped overnight. Marcus remembered spending time riding beside the wagon train, moving back and forth between the wagons to introduce himself to those he’d been assigned to protect.

As they passed a swell in the land, a band of Cheyenne rode over the hill, their horses running at full gallop. The wagon drivers barely had time to stop their wagons, let alone grab their weapons.

Marcus’s only recollections of those few minutes were being on the ground and shoving a young boy behind him right before he was stabbed in the thigh and then hit on the head. The last thing he saw before passing out was an arrow slicing through a young woman, pinning her to the side of the wagon.

Marcus survived the attack, left the army, and stayed with his uncle Isaac Connely on his central Kansas ranch to recover from his wounds and nightmares. Marcus was asked some months later to travel back to the fort in hopes of identifying two children rescued from a Cheyenne village.

It turns out Marcus remembered two youngsters, Moses, and his sister, Molly, because they had exchanged names, and Marcus remembered their names started with an M, the same as his name. Marcus and his wife, Sarah, adopted Moses and his sister simultaneously as they adopted another family of six orphans.

What did Moses remember of that day so long ago? Very vague bits of sights, sounds, and smells that had been haunting him in nightmares for years.

Maybe facing the place where it all happened would finally ease his child’s visions in his adult mind.

Moses rose from the bedroll, lifted it off the ground, and laid it across the rock wall to dry while walking around the cemetery.

Marcus thought Moses’ parents were buried at the attack site, six miles further west, but Moses wanted to read the stones here anyway, not that anyone remembered his parents’ first names or their last.

According to the town locals Moses visited with yesterday after he arrived by train, the fort was closed, and the buildings were dismantled in 1886. They said eighty-some soldiers' bodies were moved to the national cemetery in Fort Leavenworth, and Moses could see the slightly lower spots among the other graves now. As Moses walked through the cemetery, he noticed that very few graves had actual stone tombstones. Most had wooden headboards, carved with information known about the person. The boards were in various stages of decay depending on the decade of the burial they represented.

Moses walked the rows of graves, not so much looking at the deceased's names, but the information and year they died.

Murdered at Pond Creek Station. 4-3-1868. Name and Age unknown. Relatives unknown.

Died 9-22-1868 from wounds received from Indians at Rose Creek.

Killed at Pond City. 12-21-1868.

Died from consumption. 9-3-1873.

Died of intermittent fever. 9-16-1873.

Five graves of the same family. 1874.

Moses walked all the rows but never found any markers dated April 2, 1873. Satisfied his parents weren’t buried in the post cemetery, he left, hoping to see their final resting