“I don’t either, and with things turning out the way they are, we’re going to need some help. You know of any trustworthy men we could hire? I think whoever wants Nicki off that land thought calling in this loan would do the trick. Now that she’s going to be able to pay if off, I’m afraid we might have trouble again.”
Ron lifted his hat and raked a hand through his hair. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Good. Rocky and Cade should be here within the next couple of days. I’ll feel better when they get here. In between time, see if you can’t get someone out there with you two.”
Ron nodded and turned for the door.
“And Ron? Maybe you could talk to Nicki about William? I tried. Maybe if it comes from you, too, she’ll listen. He really has the wool pulled over her eyes.”
“I’ll talk to her. But she’s pretty convinced that he isn’t involved.” Jason dropped his chin to his chest and shook his head.
“If it makes any difference, she doesn’t think you did it, either.”
Jason looked up, hope surging through him. “Really?”
“Sure. She’s claimin’ she don’t know what to believe, but I can tell she knows you didn’t do it, in here.” He thumbed his chest.
Jason exhaled. He’d been hoping for more evidence than that. “Keep an eye on her, Ron.” A thought occurred to him. “How are the Jeffries holding up?”
Ron shrugged. “Good as can be expected, I guess. They’re staying in the house, and we have an area in the bunkhouse blanketed off for Nicki to sleep in. Sawyer’s still staying with Tilly for now.”
“Give her my blankets. They’re warm, and it gets cold in that bunkhouse at night.”
“She’s using them. She didn’t have anything else to use. She insisted on leaving all the blankets in the house for the family to have.” Ron put on his hat. “Well, I’ll let you get to breakfast. We’ll be back tomorrow. And don’t worry, son, we ain’t gonna let you hang.”
Jason picked up the basket of food Nicki had handed him earlier and moved to sit on the cot, hoping that Ron would be able to keep his promise.
The church members crowded into the pews, the lamps overhead casting a warm glow throughout the room. Nicki eased into the third row back and sank down with a soft sigh. It felt good to be here in God’s house after the stress of the last few weeks.
“Mommy!”
Nicki twisted toward the sound just in time to catch Sawyer as he launched himself into her arms.
Tilly smiled as she scooted onto the bench after him. “‘Morning. How are the Jeffries?”
Nicki reached to squeeze her friend’s hand. “They’re not coming this morning. Brenda couldn’t face church yet without May. She so loved being here.”
Sawyer snuggled under her chin and stuck a chubby thumb in his mouth.
Tilly pressed her lips together as she methodically pulled off her gloves, one finger at a time. She glanced up and Nicki saw tears pooled in her large brown eyes. “I still can’t believe that little May is gone.”
Nicki blinked back her own tears and rested her chin on Sawyer’s head after a quick nod of agreement. So much death and sadness. Was God really somewhere in all of this?
Pastor Saunders stepped up behind the pulpit as Conner and Ron slid onto the bench beside Tilly. “Stand with me as we open in prayer, would you?”
The congregation stood and Nicki took the opportunity to settle Sawyer more securely in her arms.
After prayer and some congregational singing, Pastor stepped forward to stand behind the pulpit once more. He set his Bible on the surface, opening it and flipping some pages without looking up. His voice rang out sure and strong. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; For You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.”
Nicki’s heart lurched at the text he’d chosen.
He looked out over the congregation, his face serious. “Those words are found in the twenty-third psalm, verse four.” Pastor Saunders paced several steps to one side of the pulpit and surveyed the congregation. “Do you believe them?”
Nicki squirmed uneasily in her seat. Where had God’s comfort been for her and the Jeffries these past weeks? She’d thought Jason was God’s answer, sent to help her, but now he was in jail.
Pastor cupped his chin and paced to the other side of the podium. “Make no mistake. We have evil walking our hills these days.” He held out a hand in Conner’s direction. “When a man can’t even ride out after dark without being assaulted, we have evil walking in our hills!”
Conner looked down and fidgeted with his hat where it rested on his knee.
“So what are we to do?” Pastor asked. “Let’s think for a minute about what fear makes people do. Fear usually causes one of two reactions. We either run and hide and pretend that what is happening isn’t really there. Or we get angry and fight back to get rid of the object causing the fear. Both of those reactions are us trying to take matters into our own hands.” He paused behind the pulpit just long enough to fiddle with a paper that marked his place in his Bible and then paced to the very corner of the platform. “I was in town the other day.” He cleared his throat. “It was a couple weeks back, and God had laid this sermon on my heart already. I was thinking about fear and what it causes us to do. I walked into the mercantile and,” he blinked hard and cleared his throat again, “I bumped into the Jeffries.”
A collective murmur rippled through the congregation.
Pastor blinked back tears. “I stopped little May and I asked her, ‘May, you ever been afraid?’ She nodded. And I said, ‘What do you do when you are afraid, May?’”
Nicki swallowed hard and pressed her eyes shut to prevent the tears from falling. But in the silence that followed, she finally opened her eyes. Pastor was trying to regain his composure, but at last he gave up and let the tears fall. He pulled a hanky from his back pocket and wiped his eyes. “You know what she said to me? She said, ‘When I’m afraid, I run to my daddy.’”
In the back of the room someone blew their nose, and off to her left, Nicki heard several people sniffling.
“Now that is the right response, my loved ones. Times are hard, right now. Evil presses in on some of you. Will you run to your Daddy?” He pointed at the ceiling. “He might not take the evil away, but His Word says He will comfort you.” He paced back the other way. “One of the ways God comforts us is by putting other people into our lives.”
Nicki’s mind immediately went to Jason, and her pulse quickened.
“My granddaddy used to say, ‘Sometimes people just need to see Jesus with skin on.’”
The congregation chuckled.
Pastor looked right at Nicki, and she felt herself squirm. Jason had been wonderful to her, and she had been awful to him when he was being hauled off to jail.
Pastor’s next words made her even more uncomfortable. “We have one lady in our congregation who has seen some particularly trying times this past couple weeks.”
All eyes turned to see who the pastor was looking at, and Nicki buried her face in Sawyer’s hair. Why was he pointing her out? Others had had trouble, too.
“Well this past week the board members and I had a meeting, and we’ve decided to be Jesus with skin to that lady.” Nicki lifted her head.
Pastor smiled at her. “Mrs. Trent. We would like to help you put a new roof on your barn. We’ve talked it through as a board, and it looks like the first weekend in April would be a good time for all of us to come help you. Would that work for you?”
Nicki blinked and looked over at Tilly, Conner, and Ron. Tilly smiled nodding her encouragement.
Nicki looked back at Pastor. Her mouth opened and closed. Opened. Closed. Finally she blurted, “I…I…I don’t know what to say. That would be wonderful. But—”
Pastor raised one hand to still her protest. “Jesus with skin, Mrs. Trent, just as you are being to the Jeffries by allowing them to live with you during this difficult time in their lives.”
Nicki pressed her lips together. She didn’t want thanks for that; it was only what any decent person would do.
Pastor Saunders clapped his hands together. “Good. It’s settled then. Let’s close in prayer, shall we?”
As the congregation shuffled to the door, saying their good-byes to one another, Nicki had only one thought. She hoped she still had a ranch come the first weekend of April, or there would be no barn to put a roof on.
15
William leaned his forearms across the top rail of his corral and glanced at Slim. The tall lanky man, leaning in a similar fashion beside him, blew a smoke ring and turned to face his boss.
William’s mouth thinned. “I need you to have a chat with Sheriff Watts.
Give me two days and then tell him something believable to let him know that Jason was otherwise occupied when that fire started. He’s already told the sheriff that he was with someone who looked like you. Confirm it, without making it look like you were following him. I still want him under suspicion, but I need him out of that jail.”
Slim’s gaze was expressionless as he blew another smoke ring, but he appraised William carefully.
William chuckled without humor. “I know it doesn’t seem like the smart thing to do right now, but trust me, he’s gonna wish he never set foot outside of that jail when I’m done with him.” He started away, then paused. “And Slim?”
Slim looked at him.
“Fail this time, and your broken nose will feel like a feather pillow compared to what will happen.”
Slim tossed his cigarette down and ground it out with the toe of his boot. William nodded in satisfaction. Soon Nicki will be all mine. The thought brought a smile to his face. Yes, indeed, things were going well.
Brenda wrapped her hands around the mug of hot coffee and stared across the table at her husband. They had not felt up to attending services in town this morning. Rolf stared into his cup, rubbing one finger around the rim listlessly. She had never seen him this way before. His guilt was killing him.
She sighed. He was impossible to talk to since May’s accident. She reached across the table and stilled his hand with her own. “’Twasn’t yer fault, Rolf.”
He didn’t say a word, only lifted pain-filled eyes and tilted his hand so that hers slid off and down onto the table.
She slammed her cup down so hard that the hot liquid shot up into the air and came down all over the table and her hand. Rolf jumped back. She ignored the pain. “Do ya think yer the only one feelin’ pain and guilt, Rolf? Don’t ya think I lay ’wake at night just a-wonderin’ what I should o’ done different thet night? If I hadn’t stayed so late here at Nicki’s…or if I hadn’t come at all. If I had just brought May with me, stead o’ leavin’ her home.” She lost her control then and couldn’t keep the tears at bay any longer. Covering her face, she allowed the sobs to shake her, giving in to the grief.
Rolf came to her slowly and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her up until she stood in the comfort of his embrace. “’Twern’t yer fault, Bren.” They were the first words he had spoken directly to her since the tragedy. She buried her face in his shirt and cried until her knees became so weak she could no longer stand even with his support. She sank down onto the floor, the wracking sobs still shaking her. Rolf squatted next to her, running his hand gently over her hair, his eyes still dry. “Ah, Bren. What’re we gonna do without our angel?”
She gave no reply. The thought was simply too much to bear.
The door to the sheriff’s office opened. Jason stopped pacing in his cramped quarters and turned to see who was coming in. It was the morning of his third day in jail and his patience was wearing thin. If there was one thing that drove him crazy, it was being cooped up and unable to do anything to prove his innocence.
Jason blinked in surprise as the man walked in. It was his escaped captive, the man who had followed him. The man pulled his hat from his head and twisted it around in his hands. “Sheriff, I been talkin’ to my boss, and he said I should get down here and talk to you since what I got to say might save that man’s neck.” He jerked his chin in Jason’s direction.
“What it be, Slim?”
Slim. Jason remembered Ron telling him that a man named Slim worked for William. What a surprise, he thought dryly.
“Well,” he turned his hat another quarter turn, “the night that fire started out at the Jeffries’ place,” Slim gestured to Jason, “he couldn’t have started it.”
Watts glanced at Jason and then back to Slim. “And ya know this how?”
“He was with me,” Slim replied.
Jason raised one eyebrow, knowing the real truth was not going to be forthcoming. He folded his arms and leaned back into the heels of his boots, wondering what kind of story he was about to hear.
“With you?” asked the sheriff.
Slim nodded and gave his hat another twist, dusting the crown. “I’d caught him passin’ through Bar H Slanted land and stopped him to have a chat and find out why he was there.” He shrugged. “He didn’t have a good reason, but he was too far away to have started that fire.”
Watts turned to Jason. “You were on Bar H land?”
“No.”
The sheriff frowned. “This man comes in with a story that might set ya free and ya deny thet what he says be true?”
“Sheriff, I didn’t start that fire. I’ve never balked on that point from the beginning, but I wasn’t on Bar H land. In fact it was quite the opposite. Slim here was following me across Hanging T land, and I detained him for questioning. I just wanted to know why he was sneaking up on me with his Winchester shucked, but he didn’t seem to want to talk to me then.” He raked Slim with an assessing gaze. “I find it curious that he is here trying to free me, unless of course his boss has something to gain by it.” Jason kept the full force of his glare on Slim, who glanced at the ground and fidgeted with his hat some more.
“I just come to tell you what I know, Sheriff. And that is he couldn’t have started the fire. He was too far away.”
“Well Slim, I’ve known ya fer a long time, and I never knowd ya to lie. And if William sent ya, then I guess he must believe ya, too. So…” The sheriff walked across the room, removing a ring of keys from a peg. “Jordan, I guess you be free to go, but I’ll be askin’ ya to hang around and not be goin’ far in case I have some more questions I need to be havin’ answers fer.”
“Don’t worry Sheriff, I won’t be going anywhere. Not until I have some answers of my own.” He cast one more hard glance at Slim before the man turned, placed his hat on his head, and exited the building.
It only took Jason a moment to gather his guns and knife from Watts.
Settling his black Stetson on his head, he nodded at the sheriff and stepped into the bright March sunlight. The winter wouldn’t be lasting much longer, even this year with the snow and cold loath to give up their quarter.
What would William have to gain by freeing him from jail? He couldn’t figure it, but he would break that bronc in its own time. At least, now that he was free, he’d be there to protect Nicki.
Nicki paced back and forth in the bunkhouse. Ron was out working on the barn as the snow had begun to fade in the last couple of days. Even though the nights were still very cold, the days were getting warmer and warmer and the snows were fighting a losing battle.
The first weekend in April was just a couple weeks away. Many families from the community had stopped Nicki after church to say they would come and help fix the structure. Nicki was so thankful for the blessing of good friends. Ron was preparing for the event—removing the scattered debris from inside the structure and making sure the walls would be braced properly so that on the day of the roofing things would go smoothly.
She rolled her head from side to side, trying to ward off the oncoming headache.
Jason. The name hung in her mind like a torment. She almost wished she’d never laid eyes on the man. She didn’t want to think about what he was accusing William of
, yet Ron concurred with him.
Could William really be as deceitful and conniving as they were making him out to be? She just couldn’t picture it of him. Yes, he was abrupt with people sometimes; didn’t always look at things from another’s position before he spoke or acted. But toward her he had never been anything but a gentleman. To believe that he was trying to steal her ranch, lying to her, she would have to believe that all he had ever done for her had been done in pretense. In deceit. She rolled her shoulders to ease the tension. No, there had to be another explanation.
She turned her thoughts to the Jeffries. Who would have set fire to their house? Perhaps it had been an accident that merely looked like it had been set on purpose?
She was halfway across the floor for the umpteenth time before she realized that she was worrying about something she had no control over.
Father forgive me. Help me not to take on things that I cannot figure out. I need Your help, God. I don’t know what to do. William has been so helpful to me since John’s death, and now Jason is accusing him of conniving to get my land. I don’t know about these accusations, but You do, and in Your word You have promised to be a husband to those who need one and a Father to the fatherless. My family needs You now more than ever, Father. I pray that You will work this out. Help the truth to come to light. If William is innocent, then help me to know.
Her thoughts turned to the other man that seemed to occupy her thoughts constantly lately. And, Lord, I pray that You would help Jason. I know he didn’t start that fire. Help us find who did. She sighed. Lord, am I even supposed to be here? I don’t know. I need some assurance. I need to know what to do with my life now. I never had a choice before. There was just John…and Sawyer. But now there is just me and Sawyer and this new little one. She laid a hand on her stomach. And I don’t know what to do. I could go back home if I wanted, but I want what You want. Send someone to show me what to do. Lord, I want to be used of You. But if I’m going to stay here, You’re going to have to work out this money situation. The money from the horses will get us out of debt and maybe leave a little extra, but with all the repairs that need to be done…well, I don’t see how it will last. I can’t keep asking Ron, Conner, and Jason to stay on for no pay. And now there are these three new hands that Ron hired.
High Desert Haven (The Shepherd's Heart) Page 19