Ben’s wife felt as light as a feather and delicate as the good china at the capitol building as he carried her down the hall toward the stairs, Theresa a half step behind him.
“Watch your big feet goin’ down them steep stairs. She ain’t no sack of corn.”
“You just keep the light where I can see, and I promise I won’t drop her,” he said with a glibness he didn’t feel.
Her husband ought to be told about whatever was going on here. If he knew his old buddy Ben, he most likely wouldn’t stray farther than a day’s ride. Two at the most.
One thing about Ben Delaney. He’d never liked leaving his wife for long, even for the Rangers. Jed hadn’t understood it then. He envied it now. Given the fact he’d spent the better part of a week under the man’s roof, he ought to be seeing him directly.
“You expecting Ben any time soon?” he asked as he turned the corner and sidestepped an especially ugly chair.
“I don’t ’spect you heard ’bout Mr. Ben.” She stepped ahead of him through the open door and readied the bed. Arms folded, she turned to face him with a softer look. “We ain’t expectin’ Mr. Ben at all, Ranger.” She looked away. “Lightnin’ kilt him nigh on two month ago. He layin’ under the pecan tree at the corner of the property.”
The weight in Jed’s arms began to slip, and he realized he still held Ben’s wife. Ben’s widow, he corrected, as he adjusted her in his arms.
“Jest set her nice and easy on those pillows. I don’t reckon you can hurt her much more than she’s already done been hurt, but see if you can be gentle.”
Jed complied and watched helplessly as Theresa handed him a length of toweling and indicated for him to use it to wipe the blood off himself. “Now git,” Theresa said when he’d done the best he could with the toweling. “This ain’t the place for menfolk.”
Numb, he shuffled toward the door and mumbled something in agreement. The least he could do was to make himself useful by removing the vermin in the upstairs hallway. If he had to dig all night, he’d make sure Ben’s place didn’t carry the stench of evil come morning.
It was the least he could do.
“Ranger?” Theresa called softly.
He cast a glance over his shoulder. “Yes?”
“Thank you,” she mumbled. Her voice strengthened, and even in the dimness of the candle’s glow, he could see a tear fall. She wiped it away with the corner of her apron and straightened her shoulders. “You’re the answer to a prayer. More’n one, actually.”
Jed ducked his head and made a quick escape as the walls threatened to close in on him. He attempted a prayer of his own several times during the night’s work—work he did with the help of Theresa’s husband, a fellow by the name of Shaw—but mostly he busied his hands and tried to keep his mind as empty as possible. Once they had the dead man buried, Jed said a few words of prayer but kept his own thinking out of it.
At daybreak, the thoughts finally caught up with him. He walked with them swirling around him to the river, where he watched the Brazos until the first of the day laborers arrived along with Shaw to open the landing. Jed’s shoulder pained him and his good eye scratched with the lack of sleep, but he could find no reason to rest.
Instead, he watched with interest as the first of the barrels were carried to the dock. Soon he joined the workers, handling small repairs and filling barrels—all he could manage with only one good shoulder. He continued laboring long past the time the others had stopped for water. At midday, Theresa found him and saw to his wound, fussing as she changed the bandage, then handed him his lunch.
“How is she?” he managed to ask, all the while pretending to concentrate on the chicken leg he held in his hand.
“Same,” she answered as she pressed a cold cloth to his useless eye.
His nod met her gaze, and no more words were necessary. She walked away and left him with the food still held in his fist. Unable to muster an appetite for anything but work, he tossed the best fried chicken he’d ever smelled over his shoulder and went back into the warehouse.
Over the next few days the pattern continued. While Jed worked his worries into submission, Grace Delaney lay behind a closed door Jed dare not open.
For all he knew, his idiotic plan to get rid of the intruder by luring him upstairs into what he thought were empty rooms had put Ben’s wife in that bed. Womenfolk were delicate and confusing creatures, and what went on in that hall probably caused her troubles.
Just another cause to believe he should do something to make up for his sins. To his mind, working his way out of the trouble at hand was the only thing he could do for her, so he spent all the time he could making himself as useful as a one-eyed man with a bad arm could.
The man called Shaw now ran things at the landing, although few along the river realized this. Most thought Jed had assumed the job, and the traffic began to increase. Men who refused to deal with a woman now returned, perfectly happy to do business with a man, especially one who happened to be a Texas Ranger.
In the back of his mind, as Jed hauled what goods he could and worked the small garden behind the house, he held out the possibility of making things right with the Lord and returning to the work he felt that God had called him to do. Someday he’d take care of himself, but for now he could only do this for Ben.
He spent Sunday morning in the ugly chair by the stairs reading the Bible and contemplating those scriptures that didn’t affect him personally. The others he skipped over, promising the Lord he would return to think on them soon.
Returning to the passages proved to be more difficult than he thought. Before the noon meal could be placed on the table, Theresa left to see to the missus, then returned to Jed and sent the family out of the house with a warning not to return until Ruth came for them.
Giving thanks to the Lord for the unusual warmth of the day, Jed led the children to the garden plot and set them to the task of pulling weeds. As he knelt beside the boy who bore his father’s stubborn expression and his mother’s good looks, Jed felt the urge to pray.
Not just the simple words he’d said over the past few days, phrases he’d once knew meant something but now doubted. While his fingers worked the loose, dark soil, his mind turned over the ideas he’d once believed in so strongly.
The Lord. The Bible. His call to ministry. His duty to the Texas Rangers. Each was given much consideration. Finally, he formed the words to speak to God about them.
Lord, I’m coming to You a broken man. I had You written all over my heart, but then I went and killed a man. I took his life into my hands and I shot him dead. Even if he did mean to hurt Ben’s wife and those babies, he was one of Your children and I ought not to have passed judgment on him. That’s Your job, not mine and I was wrong.
“Somethin’ wrong, Mr. Ranger?” the boy beside him asked.
“Wrong, little man?” He cut his glance to the side. “Naw.”
“All right, then.” The kid nodded and moved farther down the row to continue pulling weeds while his sister busied herself stacking twigs and leaves into some sort of creation.
Jedadiah Harte, you are one of My children, too, came the soft answer without warning. It is not up to you to pass judgment on yourself.
“But Lord, I…” The children both looked up in surprise and he shook his head. “Don’t pay any attention to me.”
Mary, the angel in muddy red curls, toddled toward him and settled against his side. “I talk to God, too.” Smiling, she messed up his precise lines with a chubby hand.
“You do?” he asked as he tried to repair the damage.
She nodded. “Sometimes He talks back.” Walking away, she took an oak leaf and buried it under a rock at the edge of the plot.
“Yeah, He does, doesn’t He?” Jed asked under his breath.
“Mama says I’m ’sposed to listen when He tells me somethin’,” the boy commented as he tossed something over his shoulder that looked more like a vegetable plant than a weed.
“Do you?” he asked.
To his surprise, Bennett Delaney, Jr., smiled. “I try,” he said slowly. “But Mama says I’m stubborn like my daddy.”
“Mine used to tell me the same thing,” Jed said, remembering the words of loving chastisement that would trail him until his dying day. “You need to be more like your heavenly Father and less like your earthly one,” his mother had said. Always, he’d pretended he hadn’t heard her. Never would he forget, though.
With those words in mind, he bowed his head and squeezed his good eye shut. Father, let me be more like You. Change my contrary nature and fix my heart so I can be the man You intend.
“You gonna stay with us, Ranger?” the boy asked, interrupting his prayers.
“I don’t rightly know,” was the only answer he had, and it surprised him. Until that moment, staying had been the last thing on his mind. He’d come to Delaney’s Landing on his way to go to work for the Lord. After he’d broken his promise to the Lord and turned his gun on a man, he’d pretty much decided he’d go back to San Antonio as soon as he was able and take back his captain’s job. Suddenly a third option loomed large. He could stay.
Lord, I need to know what You want me to do, so I’m going to need a sign. Tell me who needs me more, You or these kind folks.
Jed ducked his head and rubbed at his good eye. When his vision cleared, he saw Ruth running toward them across the field.
“Come quick, Ranger. Miz Grace be a needin’ you bad.”
Jed raced back to the house, unable to believe the Lord would make his path clear so soon. He burst through the door and down the hall, slowing only when he arrived at the closed bedroom door.
“Lord, make me ready for this,” he said under his breath as he resolutely pushed on the solid wood door.
Theresa stood beside the bed, hunched over a figure he hardly recognized as Grace Delaney. “He’s here, honey,” she murmured as she adjusted the wrinkled blankets and smoothed the woman’s hair away from her face. “I’ll be close by if you need me,” she said softly.
Like a man walking to the gallows, Jed approached the bed. He stood near enough to touch her, near enough to watch her breath catch and her eyes close. Despite the chill in the room, beads of perspiration dotted her forehead and turned her hair slick and shiny.
She opened her mouth, possibly to speak, but instead began to make faint sounds, little whimpers like a child. Eventually her eyes opened. She fixed her gaze on him, making him feel like he’d just trespassed on a private moment.
“Ruth said you were in need of me,” he said, painfully aware of just how inadequate those words were.
This time she managed a complete nod. “Yes,” she whispered. “My children. Send word to my father.”
“Your father?” Jed shook his head. “About what?”
Grace shifted onto one elbow and made a swipe at the table beside the bed, knocking a paper to the floor. Jed bent to retrieve it. In a shaky hand, someone had written a name, The Honorable Thomas Edwin Beaudry, and a New Orleans address.
Jed offered the paper to her, but she waved it away. “You want me to see that this gets to your father?”
She reached for his hand and caught his wrist. He stared at the pale fingers encircling his arm, then slowly shifted his vision to her eyes. Feral, that’s what she looked like. Once on the trail Jed had run across a mama bobcat in the middle of birthing a brand-new litter. She’d worn the same look.
“If I die, you see to these children, Ranger.” Panic seemed to lie just beneath the words. “Don’t let my babies be orphans.”
Pure terror struck deep in his soul. His heart clutched at what he knew he had to do. He was a ranger, first and foremost, and a missionary of God to boot. He still hadn’t worked out how he would hold onto both these jobs, much less add another to it.
“Ma’am, I can’t—”
“You must. And if my father or brother refuse to come, you have to raise them. Theresa and Shaw will help. Ruth, too.” The grip tightened. “Before God, you have to swear it.”