“Yeah, look,” he said, “he can’t see us here. Come on!”
Tad and I followed, crouching down, sloshing across the little creek, hurrying across the pasture, climbing over the fences of the stables, and in another minute we were standing safely behind the far wall of the old barn, puffing from the run.
Pa crept to the corner of the barn and glanced around.
Now the house was only about seventy-five yards away. But there was no more cover. All the ground between here and there was wide open.
I was scared.
What if the gunman not only saw Pa making a dash for it—what if he shot him in the process?
“Why don’t we wait here, Pa?” I said. “We’re close enough that if something happens you could make a move then. Why don’t we just wait till the sheriff comes?”
“I’ve gotta know if they’re all right inside there,” replied Pa in a tone which I knew meant he’d already made his mind up.
“You two stay here,” he said, then suddenly broke away from where we stood hiding and ran out across the open area toward the house. He didn’t exactly dash across the ground very fast, wearing heavy, water-soaked boots and carrying his rifle.
He hadn’t covered half the distance when suddenly a shot sounded.
I screamed in terror and looked out from behind Tad’s side.
Pa was still running. I saw an explosion from the hill opposite the road, followed half a second later by another sharp rifle report.
Pa stopped. He put his gun to his shoulder and returned the fire with two quick shots. He took off running again. Two more shots came, accompanied by shouts of Pa’s name.
But the next instant, Pa reached the back of the house and was safe. Tad and I breathed gigantic sighs of relief. All was quiet again.
Chapter 53
Climax
Tad and I stood waiting from our point of safety behind the old barn, poking our eyes out from behind the edge of the building to see whatever might be going on.
Everything was quiet for a long time. I wondered where Zack and Uncle Nick were.
What happened next will be vivid in my brain as long as I live. Though it all took place in less than two or three minutes, everything slowed down, as if the incredible drama were taking days before my eyes instead of only a few hundred seconds.
From our vantage point we saw the same man who had appeared at the door of the house three days earlier start down the hill toward the house. He had his rifle in his right hand and wore a second gun at his side.
I don’t know if he realized the rest of us were around. If he did, he showed no fear. He came down to our road just on the other side of the Miracle Springs Creek, crossed the wooden bridge, then came straight on toward the house.
“Hollister!” he called out. “Yeah—that’s right. I found out yer real name. And I know yer in there. I’m callin’ you out!”
He waited a few seconds, but there was no reply.
“You hear me, Hollister?” he cried. “I aim to git what’s comin’ to me. Now, either you give me my share of the loot from back in New York here and now, or else come out and we’ll settle it like men. You hear me, Hollister—I’m callin’ you out once and fer all. Ain’t no more place you kin hide like the yeller coward you are!”
Again he waited, then tossed his rifle to the ground.
“Look, Hollister, I throwed my rifle down. I got nothing in my hands. I’m comin’ just like you see me. Now, you gonna come out and face me like a man, or do I have to come in after you?”
This time there was a long wait. The man swore and yelled a couple more times, but the threat of coming in where Almeda, Becky, and Ruth were was enough.
Finally the door of the house opened.
Tad and I heard the steps of boots on the porch, but we couldn’t see the front of the house. We ran around the old barn to the other side. Just as we got there and poked our heads out, we saw Pa walking slowly away from the house. He had no weapon at all—no rifle or pistol!
He walked off the porch and slowly continued toward the man he had not seen since they rode together as outlaws some twenty-five years earlier.
“There’s no money, Harris,” said Pa quietly.
“Don’t lie to me, Hollister—or Drum, or whatever your real name is!”
“Nick and I ran without a penny.”
“You’re lying! I don’t believe you!”
“That’s why Nick and I came here, to get away from the law and hoping to make a strike.” Pa’s voice was calm and controlled. I could tell, even from this distance, that something had come over him in the time since he had left us and ran for the house.
“I don’t believe you for a second! Where’s the loot?” cried Harris, swearing.
“Judd had it all along.”
“Judd! Why that double-crossing—what makes you think he had it?”
“Confessed on his deathbed. Told his son everything, including where he’d stashed the money. Young Judd didn’t want any part of it. He went straight to the sheriff, told him about it. They recovered the money, and that was that.”
The man seemed to be thinking about what Pa said. Every word I knew was true because I’d told it all to Pa myself, and I had heard it straight from the sheriff’s mouth in our old town of Bridgeville.
“I don’t know whether to believe you or not, Hollister,” the man said after a minute. “But it don’t mind much now, ’cause you and me’s still got us a score to settle. Go back inside and git yer gun—that is, unless you want to do it with fists.”
All of a sudden I remembered the last of what I’d heard from the sheriff in Bridgeville—the two the sheriff figured had done most all the killing, Jesse Harris and Big Hank McFee . . . a couple of nasty coots, those two are.
I remembered being relieved at the time. Now the words from out of my memory sent a chill of fear down my spine. The two who done most all the killing—and there was Pa facing one of them right now . . . without a gun!
“There’s better ways of settling things than with fists or guns, Jesse,” said Pa. Still he stood calmly and spoke in a voice that seemed to contain no fear.
“What kinda ways?” taunted Harris, adding a curse.
“The way real men do, Jesse,” said Pa, “by giving God control of their anger and their desire for revenge.”
“God?” cried Harris. “You done gone and got religion, Hollister? Ha, ha, ha!” Again he swore, ridiculing Pa.
“It’s the only way to know peace in your heart, Jesse. Only God can take away that bitterness that’s eating away inside you.”
“Bah! You’re a fool if you believe that! Only one thing’s gonna take it away and that’s putting a bullet in your head and watching you die in a pool of your own blood. Now, you gonna come and fight me like a man or not?”
Tad and I now saw Uncle Nick behind them, inching forward from about the same place Harris had been watching the house. He’d come up behind and followed Harris toward the house.
Then suddenly I saw Zack to our left, under cover of the barn.
“How’d Zack get over there without being seen?” I whispered.
“On his belly, next to the creek bed,” replied Tad. “We used to do it all the time.”
“No, I’m not gonna fight you, Jesse,” said Pa calmly. “Not like you mean. I’m going to do what a true man would do, Jesse—what a friend would do.”
“Yeah . . . what’s that?”
“I’m going to pray for you, Jesse.”
“Yer a blame fool, Hollister.” The curses that followed this time were horrible to listen to.
“I mean what I say, Jesse. I’m going to pray for you right now, right here. I’m going to pray that you would lay down the bitterness that’s in your heart, and turn to God, and accept the love he has for you, and tell him you want to be his son.”
Uncle Nick had stopped. Zack now stepped out from behind the barn, into the open and began walking toward them.
My heart leapt to my throat! What was
Zack thinking! He was going to get himself killed, too!
“I don’t want no such fool thing!” shrieked Harris. “And if you utter so much as a word that sounds like yer prayin’, I promise you, Hollister, you’re a dead man, ’cause they’ll be the last words you ever speak!”
If Pa hesitated, it was not for more than an instant. Calmly he bowed his head and closed his eyes.
“Father,” he began to pray in a firm and commanding voice. “In the name of your son Jesus Christ, I now pray for your love to show itself to—”
Pa never saw Harris go swiftly for his gun.
A scream sounded from the house where a terrified Almeda watched at the window.
Gunfire exploded.
There was only one shot. As its echo died down, Harris slumped to the ground.
Uncle Nick came running forward, as did Tad and I. Almeda dashed from the house to Pa.
The only one who stood unmoving in the few seconds that followed was Zack. He was still holding the smoking pistol that had saved the life of his father.
For the first time I couldn’t fault him for buying that gun or for practicing his draw! None of us had any idea he was so fast.
Whether it was a coincidence of timing, or whether they had been watching from somewhere, Sheriff Rafferty now galloped up the road with Christopher holding on for dear life behind him.
The sheriff jumped down from his horse as Zack walked up, holstering his gun.
“That’s mighty fine shooting, son,” he said.
Zack shrugged. It was obvious he felt no pleasure in what he had done.
“Ain’t what guns are for,” he said. “But sometimes I reckon it’s gotta be done.”
The sheriff stooped down to where Jesse Harris lay on the ground.
“He’s been wounded pretty bad in the shoulder,” he said. “Losing some blood, but he’s alive. You got someplace we can put him, ma’am?” he said to Almeda as he stood.
Almeda nodded.
“Well, then, let’s get him inside—then somebody oughta go for the doc.”
It was Pa and Zack who now bent down, got hold of the upper half and feet of the man who had come here to kill them both, and carried his unconscious form into the house he had held hostage for the last three days.
Chapter 54
The Prayer of Matthew 5:44
Jesse Harris lay unconscious in our house for a week, in the bed and room that used to be mine and more recently had belonged to the very young man who had shot him.
Doc Shoemaker dug out Zack’s bullet, dressed the wound and bandaged the shoulder, and afterward came and went every day.
“He lost a fair amount of blood, all right,” he declared on the fourth day, “but it’s not so serious a wound that he should be unconscious all this time. Something is strange here.”
“What, Doc?” asked Pa.
“I don’t know, Drum,” sighed Dr. Shoemaker. “I don’t know—he oughta either be dead or waking up by now.”
Zack especially was worried. Having actually shot a man who now struggled between life and death was an experience unlike anything he’d ever been through. Now he was pulling for Harris to live, even though it had been his gun that put him there.
The whole atmosphere around the place gradually changed. At first there had been such fear, then relief when it was over and everyone was all right. But now it grew quieter and quieter as we saw that everyone wasn’t all right.
Realizing a man might be dying right under our own roof had a very sobering effect on all of us. Without anyone saying anything, gradually we began to think of him differently.
He was a human being, a fellow creature of God’s making. The longer he lay there unconscious, the more we all began to think of him less as a hateful outlaw and more as a person. Soon we found ourselves praying desperately that he would live.
It seems such an unlikely thing to say, but what I think was happening was that in some miraculous way we were starting to care about that man. Whether it had something to do with the fact that we had prayed for him or whether it was because he was now so close to death, I don’t know. But it was clear that our feelings toward him had changed within just a few days.
Pa and Zack, I think, spent more time in the sickroom, sitting at his side, than any of the rest of us. Anyone except Becky, that is. She was as devoted to him as if she were his personal servant, checking on him, keeping the room clean and warm, trying to get what liquid she could between his lips even though he was unconscious. I found myself thinking what a good nurse she would make.
Zack was real quiet all week. Sometimes he’d come out with his eyes red, and I knew he’d been crying. It was a hard thing to face what he’d done, and I knew he was trying his best to come to terms with it.
Christopher didn’t say much. I knew he was wondering what God might be doing in all this. I told him every word Pa had said to Harris, and he was moved by what Pa had done.
As he listened, Christopher just kept shaking his head and saying softly, “God is really going to use your father’s faith. I don’t know how, but he is really going to use it in some powerful way. It’s one thing to talk about loving your enemies, but I’ve never seen it done so powerfully.”
He looked at me with an expression almost of disbelief.
“He actually did that?” he asked again. “Bowed his head and started to pray immediately after that threat?”
I nodded.
“He’s a man of God, Corrie. He got angry, but then he turned that anger straight around back on itself and transformed it into the greatest kind of love in the world—love that is willing to give its life for a brother. It is an honor to call him my father-in-law.”
That same evening, the sixth day after the shooting, we had the chance to see what Christopher meant even more.
A half an hour or so after supper was over, I suddenly realized that Pa wasn’t at the table with the rest of us. Everyone had been coming and going, and I hadn’t noticed when he’d slipped away.
I looked around and saw the edge of his back through the door into my old room where Mr. Harris lay.
I got up, went to the door, and looked in. Pa was just sitting there at the bedside, one of his hands stretched out and laid on top of the other’s lifeless arm.
I stood watching the silent exchange a moment, knowing full well what was going on. I was moved. I felt tears coming to my eyes.
“What are you doing, Pa?” I asked finally, walking into the room.
Pa glanced toward me unembarrassed, with a gentle, humble, almost tired sort of smile, but good-tired.
“Praying for him, Corrie,” he sighed. “Praying like we did before, that God would do his best for him.”
He paused briefly.
“And,” he added, “praying that if God decides to take him, that somewhere deep down inside the man, the Lord’ll be talking to him, maybe like he did to the thief on the cross that repented right at the last.”
“Mind if I join you?” I said.
“I’d be pleased if you did, Corrie Belle. Pull up a chair.”
I did. I’d only been seated a minute when slowly the others began to wander into the room too. Christopher had seen me come in and had followed, then came Almeda, and within two or three minutes everyone of the household was standing or sitting in a circle around the bed, hands stretched out and laid on Jesse Harris’s arms and head and legs, all of us murmuring our own prayers.
It was Pa who first prayed aloud.
“Lord,” he said, “I pray you’ll forgive my attitudes against this man that weren’t what they should have been. I’m still learning what it means to do like you say—trying to learn, I should say, and sometimes it ain’t easy. But I thank you for what Corrie’s man, Christopher, told me about praying for people. Hasn’t been easy to do with this here fellow that’s laying here in our home. But I have been praying for him, and I pray for him again right now. I ask you, Lord, that you’d be inside him and you’d put the strength inside him to pull out
of this. I’m asking for his life, Lord. I’m asking you to save his life and bring him back. I don’t know what we’ll do then, but I know you do. All I’m asking is that you’d heal him and fix him up.”
“Amen,” came Almeda’s soft voice.
“Help the man to wake up,” prayed Ruth simply.
I prayed, then Becky prayed, and Tad. Christopher remained silent. He knew this was time for others to take the lead.
Zack was the last to pray. His eyes were full of tears as he did.
“Oh, God,” he said, and his voice was so soft I could hardly hear it, “I’m asking the same thing as Pa prayed—that you’d bring Jesse Harris back, and make his body strong again. I can’t help feeling horrible for what I did. I don’t know if it was right or wrong, I just didn’t know what else to do when I found myself standing there and realized he was about to kill Pa. But I never meant to kill him, Lord. And now, seeing him there, seeing his face sleeping so peaceful, I . . . I can almost feel myself loving him, maybe a little.”
His voice caught. He looked away a moment.
“No matter what he’s done, I can’t think that he’s so bad that you couldn’t do something with him if he had another chance. As much as I thought I hated him when he was trying to kill me in the Nevada territory, looking at him now, I know how you must love him no matter what he’s done. So save him, Jesus. Save him, and heal him, and give us a chance to see if we can love him instead of hate him. Amen.”
Long before Zack was through, every one of the rest of us were crying too.
Chapter 55
Straightforward Challenge
Jesse Harris woke up the next morning.
It was Becky who first heard him groan. She went running in and saw him opening his eyes.
“Mr. Harris,” she exclaimed, “you’re awake. Could you drink some water?”
He nodded faintly.
By the time she had returned, he was dimly trying to take in his surroundings. She handed him the glass and helped him to get a few sips down.
“Who’re you?” he asked.
“Becky . . . Becky Hollister.”
The Braxtons of Miracle Springs Page 22
