“Did you hear about Chavin?” the cowboy asked, coming through the bunkhouse door.
Gil tore his gaze away from the TV news program. Lately, he’d been hearing one report after another about violence in Mexico, and he couldn’t help worrying about Cissy. He’d decided he would visit the orphanage frequently. She was bound to need his help, and he would be happy to give it, but that just didn’t seem like enough. He’d begun to wonder what would be enough where Cissy Locke was concerned.
“Who’s Chavin?” he asked distractedly.
“Rancher south of here.”
“What’s that wild man Chavin up and done now?” someone asked, leaving the impression that Chavin could be counted on to provide entertainment.
“Would you believe he got himself married yesterday? Up and eloped to Oklahoma.”
“Chavin?” one appalled man gasped. “That can’t be. No one woman could put a noose on that raging bull.”
“Got it from his brother,” the reporter stated flatly, to the general shock of his listeners.
“Why Oklahoma?” Gil heard himself ask.
“No waiting period,” he was informed. “You can get a license and hitched in the same day.”
“There’s a waiting period in Texas?”
“Three days.”
“I didn’t even know Chavin was seeing anyone,” someone else remarked glumly.
“Knew her about a week,” the tale-bearer detailed. “Now, don’t that beat all?”
The general consensus was that the rancher had been uncharacteristically rash.
“On the other hand,” Gil said, sitting up straight in the warped easy chair, “when it’s right between two people, it’s right. Don’t you think?”
Glancing around, he saw a number of gaping faces turn his way, but he didn’t back down. Every single, unattached man considered getting married lunacy—until he met a woman who made him consider it. Gil realized that he’d met such a woman. And she was headed to Mexico in three days. Alone.
He thought of the ranch he’d been so set on establishing, but suddenly the future seemed bleak and dull without a certain shapely little redhead in it. He turned back to the TV, no longer interested in the program but taking a bit of cover while he thought the previously unthinkable.
So he had been called to Grasslands…but that didn’t mean he was supposed to stay here, did it? He wondered what his grandfather would have said about that, but then, if anyone could understand a man’s true calling, Oscar Valenzuela would have, especially given his current Heavenly viewpoint.
It suddenly all seemed so clear. Cissy needed him down in Mexico, and he needed her. Now. Always.
He didn’t realize he’d come to his feet until someone asked where he was going.
“Oh. Uh, prayer meeting.” Yes, prayer was exactly the thing.
As he left the common room, he heard a cowboy ask, “Aren’t prayer meetings on Wednesdays?”
That was the best thing about a man and his Maker, Gil mused, they could have a prayer meeting all on their own any night of the week.