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paid to my plans to get him to spot me. I was even thinking of resigning
myself to giving in to Owen Baker, when he done showed up again. I found out
later that he liked to make his way back to see the Padre whenever he got a
scratch or three from saving any of the other fellers what worked for the
king. So I decided to give him one last chance.
That night I couldn't get away until the supper dishes was done, but finally
I saw my chance and snuck out, and by then he was on his knees in the church,
praying up a storm. So I slid in the back, and to be respectful I covered my
head with Ma's shawl, and knelt down, figgering to spend as long as I could
until he was done. I was too scared to fake praying, knowing that the Lord
would take that wrong, so I honestly prayed, prayed he'd finally spot me and
want to take along a memento from me to remind him of me when he was taking on
the bad guys. It must have been purty near midnight when my knees finally
cried uncle, so I hauled myself to my feet and dragged myself out of the
church.
And boy, was I surprised when I found out I wasn't leaving the church alone.
The young cowboy hisself was walking beside me. And danged if he didn't look
me right in the eye and speak to me.
"You kept vigil with me," he said. "For that I thank you."
My face got warm, but I kept my manner calm and said, "Thank you." Well, he
turned away, but I stopped him with my hand on his arm, and said, "The Padre
done told me of what you're about. You want I should pray for your success?"
"I thank you again," he said to me, and then to Brother Dave, "How odd to
find someone who truly believes among the hoi polloi."
How odd? How odd? I wasn't just confounded, now; I was getting annoyed. What
made him think that he had a lock on holiness, anyway? Well, I forced my anger
down a bit, and decided to risk it all for what I'd planned, so I took Ma's
shawl off my head.
"Could I ask a favor?" I asked, again trying to talk like they did up at the
Hotel Biltmore. "As a reminder of everything, would you carry this with you?
It were Ma's "
Well, he grabbed it from me, threw it in the dirt, and stomped on it
something fierce. "What?" he hollered. "How dare you tempt me with such
worldly symbols!"
I blew up. A stick of dynamite couldn't compete. "Listen, your High and
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Mightiness," I snarled, "what makes you think that you're so bleeding pure?
What makes you think you're better than the rest of us? Didn't Our Lord
hisself spend time with the poor and the sinners? Least-
ways that's what I learned in Bible class." I snatched Ma's shawl up from the
dirt and shook the tatters in his face. "This here was a courting gift, from
my pa to my ma, and their getting hitched was carried out in church. Brother
Dave even married them, and last I heard, marriage in the church is blessed by
the Lord, and if that ain't holy, what is?"
He just stood there, his purty pale blue eyes bugging out at me. "So why
don't you get your self-righteous self back on that nag of yours, and get
yourself out of here? If you ain't the most selfish bastard I ever seen in all
my born days, I don't know who is!"
I guess he felt the need to get away, because he knocked the Padre down in
his hurry, and the last I saw of him, he was riding out as fast as that big
old cayuse of his could carry him. Me, I helped Brother Dave to his feet, and
let him lean on me on his way back to the parsonage. We were partway there
when Viv joined us. "I saw. I told Ma," she said. "She sent some wine."
We helped Brother Dave to sit down, and Viv lifted his foot up to wrap the
ankle that was all swelled up. I noticed Ma'd sent her old wineglass along
with the bottle, and I figured the Padre would need the painkiller, so I
poured him a healthy amount. And why not? Brother Dave was worth a lot more
courtesy than some stuck-up, priggish eastern dandy and his sorry horse.
So I handed over the glass, and the Padre drank down the whole thing, then
sat there, staring at Lady Cynthia's wineglass. After he was done, he handed
it back to me.
"You sure had him pegged, Padre," I said.
"I sure did, Kate," he replied, straightening as the color came back to his
face. "He's about the coldest fish I ever did see. He's keeping himself
physically pure, but that's about it... He ain't righteous in the heart, like
you." Brother Dave stood up then and stretched, and wiggled the injured ankle.
He grinned. "I feel twenty years old," he said. "How are you gals doing?
Kate?"
I smiled. I was still feeling good about myself, from what the Padre'd said,
about being righteous in the heart. I could sense Viv felt that way, too, from
the way she smiled.
'Think he'll get what he's aiming for?" she asked.
"Well, now, what he's aiming for and what he's asking for are two different
things," the Padre said. "And I think it's what he's asking for that he'll end
up getting."
Viv was already out the door and waiting on the step, so I picked up Ma's
glass and the rest of the wine.
"Oh, Kate," the Padre said, "wait a minute." I stopped and looked back at
him, while Viv went on. I shook my head. Danged if he wasn't looking angelic
as well as healthier. "Don't you let anybody get away with that wineglass of
your mother's. After all, Lady Cynthia must have had her reasons for choosing
your ma to keep it." Then he shut the door and went back inside the parsonage.
I stood there in the street, thinking hard, and after I'd thought a bit, I
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chuckled. And then I figured that if I was going to be the one to take care of
it after Ma was gone, maybe hitching up with Owen Baker wasn't so bad an idea
after all.
A Lesser Working
Jennifer Roberson
"Sir,"
I said, "won't you come into the inn?" It wasn't much, perhaps not properly
an inn as others might name it, being little more than a smoke-darkened square
of rough-hewn wood mortared with clay, but it boasted a sound roof and a
common room men might nonetheless be grateful for in a storm such as this. "No
need to stay out here, sir, when you might come inside."
"Might I?" he murmured tonelessly, as if he didn't care.
"Sir," I began again; what profit in staying beneath the weathered and
leaking limbs of the lean-to currently sheltering four horses as wet as this
man? "There is ale, a little mead ... and Mam has made a stew of two hares and
tubers and sage and wild onions."
"A feast." His tone was far more dry than the black hair clinging to his
head.
It stung, that tone. "Better than naught," I retorted, "unless you wish to
share the horses' fodder."
He looked at me then, noticed me then for what I was, not merely a voice he
preferred not to hear. In the freckled illumination of the small pierced-tin
lantern I carried, his face was every bit as white as his hair was dark. Thin,
pale skin stretched tightly over sharply defined bones. The eyes too were
dark, though perhaps the rims, in daylight, would be blue, or brown, or even
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