Forever by Your Side (Willamette Brides #3) - Tracie Peterson Page 0,90

Tom’s first morning devotional with the family. Part of a Psalm—one he’d reread several times since.

Hear, O Lord, when I cry with my voice: have mercy also upon me, and answer me. When thou saidst, Seek ye my face; my heart said unto thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek.

Tom stared up at the sky and realized he very much wanted those words to be true.

Help me, God. I don’t know you very well—but I do believe and . . . I confess with my mouth . . .

“Jesus is Lord.” His voice was just a whisper.

The world was going black, closing in from the sides and leaving only a tunnel of light. Just enough to see the man who’d done this terrible deed rise up from the brush.

Clint Singleton.

Clint was about to check that Tom was dead when he heard a bugle being sounded. He’d never bothered to learn the various calls. The army had already pulled out when he’d taken over as agent, and while he and the soldiers continued to have their encounters, the army was no longer a daily part of reservation life. Still, they were here and had to be dealt with.

The plan was easy enough. Clint had poisoned a large portion of beef and was even now having it made into stew for the army. The poison was fast-acting, as his trial run with the Indians’ flour had proven. He smiled, remembering how no one had been able to prove what was wrong because he had cut the dose down so that it would only cause illness and not death.

Sam Sheridan called to him from the direction of where Clint had left his horse. He decided to see what Sam needed. He felt confident that he’d killed Tom. The last shot had been to the head, and few survived head wounds.

He made his way through the brush to where he’d tied his horse. Mounting, he saw Sam. “What’s wrong?”

“There’s trouble. The Indian Legislature met with Isaac Browning and that man who is making a record of the tribes.”

“Thomas Lowell. I just took care of him, and he won’t be any more trouble.”

“Well, he was trouble enough. The leaders are spreading the word to abandon our plans. Apparently Lowell found our guns and took them.”

Clint shook his head. “That’s impossible. No one knew where they were except people I knew I could trust. Men who wanted this plan to work.” He fumed and wished he could kill Lowell all over again. It wasn’t like the guns would have been much use. Only a few had firing pins—the others were useless. But the Indians would have gone to war with them, believing they were of the best quality. “Did you check on the weapons?”

“No, but I sent others to do the job.”

“Well, let’s find out what the truth is and then modify our plans as needed. There’s no sense canceling our plans until we know it’s true.”

Sam scowled, and his eyes turned dark. “We can still kill the soldiers with the bad meat.”

Clint nodded. “Yes, we can do exactly that. Killing the soldiers might be enough. We can take their weapons and distribute them as the men gather for war.”

The plan wasn’t ideal. After all, he had never meant to give the Indians a fair fighting chance. Fully functioning weapons would mean more killing—more white deaths. Clint shrugged. The times called for tough measures, and if innocent people had to die . . . well, that was life.

Elias Carter sat down opposite a group of men he didn’t know other than Major Wells. His conscience had bothered him terribly since the death of his friend Samuel Lakewood, and he found it impossible to continue with Mr. Smith’s plans. Then, when he’d read in the paper that Adam Browning was being held for the crime of killing Lakewood and Berkshire, Elias knew he couldn’t remain silent.

With a secretary writing down his every word, Carter explained his part in the planned Indian uprising. “I worked with Samuel Lakewood to raise money from among the wealthier men of Portland. We were determined to see the Indians moved far away from here. The reservation land would then return to white settlers, and Oregon would no longer have to have so many reservations.”

He licked his dry lips. “We determined that if the Indians were warring against us, the government would have no choice but to move them. The threat against white settlers and towns would make it necessary. We paid off