“Rowe didn’t get shot?” Marissa didn’t care that she blurted into their conversation. The fact that Rowe was alive was all that mattered.
“Sheriff McGee carried him off to jail for sluggin’ in the streets,” David answered. Marissa heard Dusty exhale in relief behind her.
Sophie’s eyes flashed. “Gracious, what is Marissa doing near our house? Dusty Sterling, what are you up to, bringing her out here?”
“Sophie, ma’am, the Rev’ren requested that I take her to a safe place. Other than the church, this is about the safest place you can get to in Assurance.”
Every feature scrunched up on her face. “She’s the cause of all that trouble today. How can you even want to protect her? You should have left her on the streets.”
To Marissa’s amusement Dusty remained cool and detached from Sophie’s hard criticism. He adjusted his Stetson so that it sat at an angle above his brow. “With all due respect, Miss Sophie, your bad mouthin’ ain’t ladylike. I’m gonna pretend I didn’t hear none of it.”
“And I’m gonna tell my father you brought a hussy onto his farm. You remember his rules. Workers wanting to associate with women of ill repute must do so in town and keep it off our property.”
“Go tell your father. Ride on ahead of me, in fact, ’cause that’s where I’m goin’ anyhow. I’ll see what Mr. Charlton has to say.”
Marissa knew Mr. Charlton by his accomplishments listed in the town newspaper: generosity in the funding of the church, ample investments in the railroad, and collaboration with farmers and rail tycoons for plans of the future train station in Assurance. He was a dedicated and prosperous man whose demands for temperance in the town drew both admiration and scorn. Seeing her on his property might make him oust her on her bustle.
“Will he receive me well, Dusty?” Marissa whispered. He chewed his jaw in unspoken irritation at Sophie’s constant haggling behind him.
“Should. He trusts me with his crops and cattle, and look where I come from.”
“You’re the best cattle rustler and farmhand from Texas there is.”
“I’m mighty proud of the compliment, but that ain’t all there is to me. Ain’t fittin’ to tell a lady where my boots have been.”
Sophie spurred her horse ahead of them. “I’m telling Daddy so he can put a stop to this tomfoolery. Come with me, David.”
Her brother didn’t move from the rear of the riding party. “Go by yourself. You’re jealous because Miss Pierce can hold Reverend Winford’s attention while you throw yourself at him and still don’t manage so much as a ‘hello, ma’am.’”
She snapped her head to look at him. “See here. I don’t throw myself at any man. I showed myself to be a friend for him when he’s so far away from home. We’re both from the South.”
“That’s about all you have in common.”
“What do you mean?”
Though Marissa had heard it all from Sophie over the years, she maintained interest as David responded to his sister’s tired indignations. “The reverend will be polite and obligin’ to you, but that’s about it. He doesn’t see you as a woman to court, Sophie. I’m sorry if the truth hurts your feelings.”
Marissa put her fingers over her mouth to disguise a giggle. Sophie disguised her wounded pride with an imperious perch of the nose. “Well, he won’t be doing much courting in jail.” She took off on her horse, riding it at a brisk trot to the stable.
Marissa and Dusty arrived at the homestead shortly after.
“Pa’s out back tendin’ to the chicken coop with Bernard.” David cocked his head in the direction Sophie was going. She had already put her horse in the stable and picked up her skirts to walk around the mud puddles left by slop buckets and feeding troughs. “I’ll take your horse for you, Dusty.”
“Much obliged, Junior. I appreciate it.”
Marissa sensed David didn’t want to get involved with the business about to unfold. The boy jumped to his tasks, seemingly relieved to be occupied with a job less demanding than that of contending with his sister.
Marissa followed Dusty around the corner, where the littlest Charlton child, Rosemarie, pulled weeds from her own small vegetable patch, waving as they all went by. They went after Sophie as she stepped through the dim entrance of the coop.
The hens squawked and fussed as their home was being invaded for eggs and a good cleaning by the head of the Charlton household. Sophie’s father swept the floor of the henhouse, swiping at feathers that strayed into his face.
“What’s all this?” He looked up when his daughter, Dusty, and Marissa crowded the space at the front of the coop and blocked the filtering sunlight.
Dusty moved for some light to enter. “Sir, I have a need to call upon your courtesy. Miss Pierce needs a safe place to stay for a few hours until she can go back to town.”
Sophie barely let him get the second sentence out of his mouth before she swished down the linear walkway of the coop, upsetting the already agitated chickens with her rustling gait. She didn’t bother to wait for her father to acknowledge her presence. “Daddy, you’ll never believe what happened in town today. Rowe Winford was taken to jail.”
Mr. Charlton sneezed. “The reverend?”
“Yes, Daddy. He and Mr. Garth were fighting in the street outside the saloon. David and I saw it all on our way from the locksmith. It was about this here troubling Marissa Pierce.”
“Rev’ren Winford’s brother tried to force Marissa into the saloon to sign another contract,” Dusty supplied. “The rev’ren went in to get her, and the place got plum crazy. He and Jason were near to killin’ each other over her. Rowe told me to take her to the safest place I know until things cooled down.”
Mr. Charlton’s eyes fell upon Marissa. “Are you alright, Miss Pierce?”
She nodded twice. “Yes, sir. I’m worried more for the reverend than I am for myself.”
“It’s too late for you to fret now,” Sophie fired.
“Hush up, Sophie.” Her father wiped his sweaty brow, leaving a feather stuck to his forehead. “Your comments aren’t helping any. The reverend in jail…great scot, how’d that happen?”
“I just told you, Daddy.” Sophie raised her hands, exasperated. A hen, in its misfortune, walked into it and got a surprising swat on the backside. “Rowe and Mr. Garth started to fighting.” Her voice grew shrill as she yelled over the infuriated hen squawks. “Fists, legs, and everything. I knew the reverend looked mighty and all, but I didn’t know he could do what we witnessed. You would think Rowe’s in love with that woman.” Her face wrinkled at the statement, as though declaring it left the combined taste of pickles and turnips in her mouth.
The feather fell from Mr. Charlton’s forehead. He gave his daughter an iron-sided, stern look. “There’s nothing to be done about it. He is in love with her, and it’s none of your business because he doesn’t want you.”
Sophie gasped. “Daddy…”
“Don’t ‘Daddy’ me. Did you hear nothing of Reverend Winford’s sermons on deceitfulness or idle gossip? I suspect they had everything to do with how you behaved so undignified when you invited him to supper and how you go about town taunting other young ladies. I never thought the daughter I raised would grow to be a cruel gossip and rumor monger.”
Tears pooled in Sophie’s wide blue eyes and collected in tiny droplets on her long lashes.
Mr. Charlton disregarded the performance. “I admonished the reverend last week about his courtship to Miss Pierce, but now I see his determination to have her as his wife.” He nodded to Marissa.
She expressed her gratitude with a small smile. Begrudging as his statement was, it was better than outright rejection.
Mr. Charlton’s forehead creased with hard lines as he frowned upon his daughter again. “Sophie, perhaps I’ve waited too long to say this to you. Your mother and I let you become vain and spoiled because we thought you deserved to feel pampered after we came up from working on other people’s lands in Louisiana. We did you a disservice.
You have become a child that’s grown too big for her bloomers.” He handed her the broom. “From now on you do your fair share of work on this farm. That will keep you from meddling into the affairs of others until you can learn to occupy your time with more worthwhile pursuits.”
He left her to the henhouse and the flying feathers. “Dusty.”
“Yes, sir?” Dusty slipped past Marissa out of the chicken coop.
Marissa remained inside the structure, watching Sophie cry silently, still marveling over what her ears had just heard.
Dusty returned. “Mr. Charlton says to take you into the house and get you some tea to drink. He’ll take you back to town when things have calmed down. I’m gonna go see about Rev’ren Winford.”
“I need to see Rowe too if he’s in jail. He can’t stay there. You know how long it can take for a circuit judge to make his rounds.”
Dusty shook his head woefully. “Don’t know what to tell you, Miss Marissa. We sure got into a mess with this one, didn’t we?”
The tea Mrs. Charlton served proved refreshing to Marissa’s exhausted body and parched throat, but it was ineffective against her anxiety for Rowe. She felt so useless, unable to do anything for him while he was in jail.
You don’t have to be alone. A gentle voice whispered in her mind. The tone was a far cry from the harsh, mocking one that had taken residence in her thoughts over the past weeks. On the wagon ride to the Arthurs’ home that evening she thought of Rebecca and how the woman asked her if she knew about Jesus Christ. Rebecca told her that God would never leave her. You must believe that, she had said.
Marissa wanted to believe that God cared for her and that He was waiting to help. The Arthurs and Rowe experienced part of her troubles, but they had a peace about them. It was their faith that held them together when she was close to losing her mind.
“Here we are.” Mr. Charlton stopped the wagon in front of the Arthurs’ porch. “Do you need me to speak with Zachary and Rebecca about where you’ve been today?”
Marissa saw Zachary from the house’s open window. Upon seeing her, he hopped from his chair. “No, I can tell them. Thank you, Mr. Charlton. For everything.”
The brawny man nodded with a grunt. “I’m not in favor of this union between you and the reverend, but I still think he has potential to be a good preacher. I’ll try to put in a good word for him in town and at church. People might listen still.”
“I’d appreciate that, and I know he would too.”
As Mr. Charlton drove the wagon back in the direction they came, Marissa went up to the house. Zachary and Rebecca had the door open before she could knock. “Did Jason hurt you again?” Zachary asked.
Marissa worried she was going to give the poor man a new set of wrinkles. “No, other than an ink-spattered dress. Mrs. Arthur, may I speak to you alone?”
Zachary glanced at his wife, perplexed. “You don’t want me to hear?”
“It’s nothing bad.” Marissa stepped inside the house and closed the door on the afternoon heat. “Just something that she and I talked about before.”
Rebecca shooed her husband to his chair. “It’s alright. We’ll be in the kitchen.”
Marissa followed after Rebecca. They gathered around the cold stove. “What is it? Did something happen that you couldn’t say in front of Zachary?”
She ran her hands over the mussed twists in her hair that Rebecca had so meticulously dressed that morning. “No. I just remember what you told me about God, how He never leaves us. I was mad at you when you said that because I thought you were forcing me to believe as you do. I thought you were trying to control me.”
“You were angry about many things at the time. I understood.”
“Yes, but now I see what you’ve been trying to tell me. I’m tired of struggling.”
Rebecca touched her hand. “You realize that accepting Christ into your life doesn’t make your problems go away. Your fiancé is in jail as we speak.”
Marissa grimaced. “I know life won’t ever be free from trouble. I just can’t do this on my own anymore. If God loves me, I want to see it. I want to know Him.”
“Then ask Him to reveal more of Himself to you. Tell Him these terrible hurts you’ve suffered, how you felt He abandoned you. He’ll listen.”
“Will you help me?”
“I can pray with you, but you have to ask Him yourself. You have to invite Jesus into your own heart, and you have to do it willingly.”
The woman’s conviction was sound. Was that why Marissa did not have peace in her own life, because she had not personally invited Jesus to be her Savior? Could He, would He, come and take control if she asked? Let Me help you, Marissa. The voice was so small, so calm and sweetly beckoning.
In front of her friend she bowed her head and prayed for the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to come into her heart. Warmth swept inside her where the bitterness had taken root. Her hands stopped aching.
Problems would still come, but she no longer had to face them alone. She had a Protector.
Rowe heard the town abuzz outside. Men, women, barking dogs. They produced an unintelligible clamor as they gathered outside the small jail, waiting for news of the duration of his confinement.
He crossed the floor of the miniscule cell to peer beyond the iron bars at the sheriff. Julian McGee sat at a dark wooden table, his feet propped on top. McGee amused himself with a game of Solitaire that he had spent all afternoon playing. “Yes, sir, you are some preacher.” He stacked a red queen in front of a king. “If it weren’t for all those witnesses outside, I would think I had been hallucinatin’.”
“I didn’t intend for this to happen, Sheriff.”
Sheriff McGee shrugged. “Most people don’t intend to wind up in jail. Folks here think I should just go around and arrest whoever they don’t like, but I can’t do that without hard proof, you understand me?” He put his feet on the floor and stood. “And I’ve been lookin’ for an indisputable reason to catch that feller over yonder for months.”
Rowe looked across the room to the opposite cell. Jason sat in the back corner, most of his slumped form lost in shadow.
“You knocked him out cold when I got to the saloon,” McGee said with a touch of admiration. “He’ll be nursin’ that head for a few days.”
“I shouldn’t have hit him so hard.”
“A woman can make a man do many things, even a man like you. I didn’t think much of you at first, what with your holier-than-thou preachin’ and all. I thought you were just a soft-headed city boy with no real experience. ”
“And now?” Rowe braced himself to hear how far he had fallen from grace.
“Now I think you stand by what you say and defend the people that need you. That’s a real man. You stuck up for that woman when other folk would see her out of town.”
“A man with better self-control wouldn’t have allowed things to progress to this point.”
Rowe still hadn’t made full amends with Marissa to let her know that he wished to go forward with the wedding. With this latest fright from Jason, she could be fed up with his half rescues and good intentions. And for all his efforts to be a minister, he surmised that his work was rendered useless that afternoon. Who wanted to go to church to hear a lawbreaker preach?
McGee produced a set of keys from his belt. “Jason was bound to get on somebody’s bad side. He was lucky it wasn’t someone who would’ve killed him. Well, don’t look so surprised.” He laughed at Rowe’s expression when he approached the cell padlock. “You didn’t think I was keepin’ our preacher in jail, did you?”
He unlocked the cell door and pulled it open. Rowe was bemused. “I don’t want special treatment because I’m a minister.”
“You’re not getting it. The law in Assurance requires you serve four hours for disturbing the peace within an establishment and for fighting in the streets without weapons. You served that time.”
Rowe stepped out, grateful to be able to stretch his legs. His body ached from the fight. H
is rib cage suffered a bruise and still smarted from Jason’s well-placed kick. “What about him?” He gestured to the other cell.
“I’m keepin’ Garth. He has to go before a judge for other charges.” McGee counted them off. “I found unpaid taxes in his office today. I may also be able to get him for keepin’ business after hours and prostitution.”
“You didn’t know Jason had prostitutes?”
“Yeah, but I could never prove it until his ladies admitted it today. One gal named Simone told me she was headed back to her family in Springfield. Guess when he passed out in front of ’em, they got scared.”
Rowe looked at Jason again. With those charges being racked up, the saloon would have to close. The judge in all likelihood would sentence him for maintaining a brothel. “So Jason’s contract with Marissa is null and void now?”
“That’s right. Don’t mean a thing now that he ain’t got a business to run.”
A blessed flood of relief poured over Rowe. Thank You. He exhaled gratefully. “Thank you, Sheriff.”
“Say, you need to get goin’ unless you want to stay in here longer.”
“No, four hours will do just fine.”
Rowe made haste for the door. Outside Dusty jumped up from the steps when he saw him. “’Bout time McGee let you out of that iron can he calls a jail. I’ve been here for hours.”
“Thanks for waiting.” He clapped the man on the shoulder. “Let’s get out of here before this day becomes even more eventful. Where did you take Marissa?”
“To the Charltons. Mr. Charlton said he would drive her back to the Arthurs’ later. Did McGee let Jason out too?”
“No, Jason has some dealings to tend before a judge. I’ll tell you while I look for my horse.”
They departed from the jail building. Part of the crowd had begun to disperse. Those who saw Rowe gave a wave or a loud cheer, to his chagrin.
“Good job, Reverend!” a boy shouted. “That’ll teach Jason to pick a fight with you!”
The Preacher's Wife Page 23
