She turned and waved her hand in the air. A sudden fear intruded her thoughts that someone had seen her leave town, and this was someone her father had sent to fetch her and bring her back home, and she hoped she was far enough down the road that the person in the wagon wasn’t anyone from Lakewood. She thought about how furious her father would be if he saw her walking miles from home, attempting to hitchhike. Even though she was known for her independent and stubborn streak, this was still by far the most rebellious thing she had ever done.
But she need not have worried, as the traveler was a stranger: a distinguished-looking gentleman wearing a suit and a bowler hat, much like the traveling salesmen that often came through Lakewood. He took off his hat as he slowed down to greet Cora.
“You’re not lost, are you, ma’am?” he asked.
“No sir, I’m not lost. I’m trying to get to Wheats Ridge. Can you help me?”
The man looked at Cora curiously, his brow crinkled with worry. “Wheats Ridge? Are you sure you want to go there? From what I understand, that’s not a safe place for a young woman traveling alone.”
“Yes, I understand, sir,” Cora said, trying to mask her frustration. She disliked it when she was treated as if she were a helpless child, but she needed to be polite if she wanted this man’s help. “But, you see, it’s quite important that I get there. I have an urgent message that I need to deliver to someone who lives there. It’s a message that must be delivered in person, not by a letter in the post.” She spoke quickly, her heart pounding, as she knew that time was of the essence. Every second that she spent trying to convince this traveler to help her was another opportunity for her to be spotted by someone from Lakewood—if she hadn’t already. She darted her eyes down the road, silently willing away any other wagons that might be driven by someone sent by her father.
The man nodded, seeming satisfied by that explanation. “All right. Climb on up, and I’ll be happy to give you a ride.”
Cora thanked him profusely and climbed into the wagon, settling in for the ride with her hands clasped tightly in her lap.
“Does your father or husband know you are traveling?” the man asked after some moments of silence.
“I do not have a husband,” Cora said truthfully. She did not address the question about her father, not wanting to lie, and fortunately the man did not press the issue. She was not surprised that he asked about a husband first. She looked every bit her twenty years, and many young women had already been married for two or three years by now and started their families. Two of her childhood friends, Mary Robinson and Ruth Perkins, had each gotten married within the past two years.
Cora often felt lonely in the absence of female friendships, but she also didn’t want to rush into a marriage. She was determined to marry for love, not for convenience or for a business arrangement like so many women did. Her own parents had married for love, and she wanted that, too.
"Well, whoever it is you answer to, I’m sure they will be glad to know that you have a safe ride to Wheats Ridge,” the man said, and Cora suspected he knew she was traveling without permission but was letting it slide.
Although she was grateful for the ride, she was struggling with the guilt of disobeying her father and how disappointed he would be in her once he inevitably found out that she had left town against his wishes. She forced those thoughts aside and chose to stay focused on the mission at hand.
She would soon be in Wheats Ridge and one step closer to honoring her promise to Pastor Burns. Her only trepidation now was confronting Roy Burns and how he would react to the news about his father.
Chapter Two
Wheats Ridge, Colorado, 1870
Roy Burns had been up since before daybreak, picking up the slack from his fellow ranch hands. They had not returned to the ranch until after midnight, having had a little too much fun the night before at the saloon. As a natural consequence, they were now suffering from self-imposed ‘headaches.’
After Roy finished mucking out the last of the stalls, he sat down on a nearby pail and wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. Truthfully, he didn’t mind the solitude; the ranch was at its best in the early morning hours, the sun peaking over the mountains in the distance, bathing the sky with intertwining orange and pink streaks. Roy did not consider himself a man of faith anymore—he had left that part of his life back in his hometown years ago and had not even been to church in five years—but the morning view at Morton Ranch was almost enough to make a believer out of him.
Almost, but not quite. While it was easy to justify divine presence in the magnificent Colorado sunrise, it was also impossible to disentangle God from the crushing weight of expectation that bore down on him throughout his youth. Growing up the son of a small-town pastor meant that the practice of his faith was on full display, wide open to the scrutinizing judgment of others.
He could remember sitting in the first row of the church while his father led the congregation in prayer, and no matter how hard he tried to throw his heart into genuine prayer, he always just felt like he was going through the motions. Perhaps he just wasn’t doing it right, because since moving to Wheats Ridge, he sometimes found that he felt closer to a Higher Power outside, alone in the solitude of nature, more than he did sitting in the shadow of his father on Sunday mornings.
It was hard to have an intimate conversation with God with the people next to him in the pew watching his every move. If he got distracted by so much as a mosquito flying in his face, causing him to break out of perfect church boy formation—something that actually happened on one particularly hot summer Sunday—the church members would whisper about that “rambunctious boy” and hand his father newspaper clippings advertising boarding school. They didn’t try to hide their disdain when they passed him by, pursing their lips and raising their eyebrows as if they were holding back a good scolding but didn’t want to overstep the authority of the pastor.
Eventually, he just got tired of trying to be what they or his father expected him to be, and he resolved to be his authentic self. They had already made their minds up about him regardless, so he figured he might as well do whatever he wanted anyway. If anything, he figured he was providing them a service by giving them something to talk about.
Lakewood was a quiet town, and people loved to gossip—never mind that gossip was one of the seven deadly sins. As the son of a pastor, that was one thing Roy was sure of—what qualified as a sin. Gossip didn’t seem to count to small town folk, though. Especially when they masked their whispered conversations about him as ‘prayer requests.’We need to pray for Pastor Burns’ boy, because I heard last night that he…
Of course, this “rebellious streak,” as his father called it, just put a further strain on their relationship, until it ultimately seemed irreparable. The last few months of Sundays that he was in Lakewood, when he lay on his back in bed staring at the ceiling and outright refusing to go to church, his father was unable to look him in the eye.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to please his father or be the son that he always wanted, but no matter what, all of his efforts seemed to go to waste. Roy even went through a period, about a year before he quit going to church, where he would spend hours poring over the Bible and various writings from renowned pastors. His hope was that when his father would inevitably try to engage him in theological debates, he could hold his own in the conversation, offering insight from what he studied.
But despite his attempts, his explanations always fell short or were at odds with his father’s perspectives, who would shake his head in disappointment. Each time he let his father down, it was as if his heart had been pierced. That feeling could only happen so many times, though, before eventually he grew numb to it.
One day he told his father he wasn’t going to discuss theology with him anymore, that he wasn’t even sure if he was still a believer. He hadn’t really meant that last part, but he knew it would hurt his father, and he wanted him to feel what he felt every time his father brushed off his contributions to their discussion.
The truth was that he and his father were just not the same in their way of being close to God. While his father was a studious man who felt closest to God through Scripture reading and studying of the Word, Roy considered himself a man of the land, and he felt closest to God when he was working with his hands, the hot sun beating down on his neck. He didn’t realize that was the difference between them until he started working out in Wheats Ridge. Before then, he just thought there was something wrong with him for not being like his father.
Suffice to say, he had succeeded in hurting his father that day, who, at the end of their heated argument, told him that if he wanted to live under his roof, then he needed to pray for forgiveness and accept God back in his heart.
Not long after this argument, which was shortly after he had turned eighteen, Roy saw a ‘Help Wanted’ ad in the paper advertising the urgent need for ranch hands over in Wheats Ridge, a place most ‘decent’ people didn’t want to be, so he took off in the night without saying goodbye or even leaving a note.
