Rosa's Land: Western Justice - book 1 (30 page)

The singing went on for almost twenty minutes. Finally the song leader stepped back and took a seat on the rostrum.

A short, well-built man with brown curly hair and direct blue eyes stood up. “We are glad to welcome you to our church. Those of you who are visitors, feel at home. We welcome you.”

He laid his Bible on the pulpit, flipped it open, and said, “The sermon this morning will be very short. I’m going to pray that if there be one in here who does not know the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior, that he or she will leave this building as a part of this family of God.”

He had a pleasant look on his face. His voice was clear and carried well in the small building. “My sermon this morning,” he said, “if I had a title for it, would be ‘A Woman Who Found Jesus.’ As a matter of fact, if you were to go to most foreign countries where paganism rules, you would find women treated worse than animals. But when Jesus came, he lifted women from a lowly status to a place of honor. This morning I want us to think about one of those women who encountered Jesus.”

He picked up his Bible and began to read:

The minister closed his Bible and began to speak with excitement in his voice. He obviously believed his message and did his best to communicate that feeling. “Isn’t that a wonderful story! This poor woman was unclean, for according to Jewish law any woman with an issue of blood was as unclean as a dead person. No one could touch her without becoming unclean. And for years she had sought to be healed and spent all her money on physicians but was no better.”

Rosa had come prepared to ignore the sermon, but she found herself caught up with the story the minister had read. She had never heard it before, and he went on to describe the woman so well that she was absorbed in the drama of it.

“This poor woman, who had been failed by man on every hand, thought, ‘If I could just touch the hem of the garment of Jesus of Nazareth, I will be healed.’ Ah, now there is faith, my friends. There is faith! And you have heard how she did touch just the hem of the garment of the Lord Jesus and instantly she was healed. Bless the Lord, O my soul! That’s what happens when people come to Jesus. They are healed. That’s what I would like to present for you today. A savior who is Christ Jesus, the Son of God.”

The minister continued discussing the story in great depth, drawing a picture of the poor woman who had struggled for so long and was so sick and how she had found healing in no place except in touching Jesus Christ.

Finally the preacher said, “Let me mention one other woman who found Jesus. It’s found in the eighth chapter of the Gospel of John. ‘And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst, they say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou?’

“The law indeed had such a verse, but Jesus did a very strange thing. He answered them not a word, but He ‘stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not.’ Finally he looked up, and He said words that I have treasured and have kept very carefully. Jesus said, ‘He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.’ Well, dear friends, the Bible says that they were ‘convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.’”

The preacher ran his hand over his hair and said, “The Bible doesn’t say this, but I like to think this dear woman, who was the sinner but yet a beloved sinner, came to Jesus and bowed down and held to His feet. We do know what Jesus said. He said, ‘Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee? She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.’”

This story went straight to the heart of Rosa. It was as though she could see the poor retched woman ready to die for her sin, and she could hear the voice of Jesus saying, “Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.” A longing somehow such as she had never known before began to build within her, and as the sermon went on, she found her hands trembling. She held them to conceal it from Hannah.

Finally the sermon ended, and the preacher said, “We’re going to sing a few verses of an old hymn, and if there be one of you out there who does not yet know the Lord as personal Savior, and perhaps you are in the same condition as this woman, you have a sickness. You have sinned, and you don’t know where to go. I call upon you to look to Jesus of Nazareth, the Savior of the world. He died to save sinners, and that means all of us. So come as we sing.”

Everyone rose and began to sing a hymn that Rosa, of course, didn’t know. She saw two people go down and speak with the preacher, then another who knelt at the altar, and she could not control the emotions that flooded through her. She stood there, her head bowed and her eyes closed, thinking about the two women that Jesus had touched. She felt tears come to her eyes, a very rare thing for her.

Finally the preacher dismissed with a short prayer.

As they left the building, Hannah, whose face was radiant, said, “Wasn’t that a wonderful sermon?”

Rosa could not answer. It had been such a moving experience she did not know how to identify it. One thing she felt sure of was that her thoughts of Jesus Christ had been wrong. She had seen statues in Catholic churches of Jesus, but they were not Jesus. They were merely statues. But the man the minister had read of was living and full of love and compassion, and she knew that she would never forget this morning.

Judge Parker was poring over documents on his desk, but when the door opened and four strangers entered, he rose at once. “Good afternoon,” he said. “I’m Judge Parker.”

“Oh, Judge Parker, I’m so glad to meet you,” the woman said. She was an attractive woman in her mid-forties with auburn hair and light brown eyes. “I’m Eileen Riordan.”

“Why, Mrs. Riordan, it’s good to see you.”

“This is my husband Caleb and two of my sons, Leo and Max.”

Parker came around from behind his desk, shook hands, greeted them all, then turned his head to one side, and smiled. “I expect you’ve come all the way out here to the frontier to visit your son.”

“Yes, we have. We just got off the steamboat, but we don’t have any idea where to start looking, so I thought we’d come and ask you.”

“Well, you’re fortunate, Mrs. Riordan. Your son is in town today.”

“Where has he been?” Caleb asked curiously. “We’d like very much to see him.”

“I’ve had him stationed out on a ranch. The owners have been threatened with outlaws, and I haven’t had the men to send a crew in to quiet them, so I sent Riordan.” He stopped and said, “I don’t even know his first name.”

“It’s Lafayette,” Eileen said, “but everyone calls him Faye.”

“Well, it’s a small town. Let me call one of my marshals.”

Parker went to the door and said, “Marshal Thomas.”

Heck Thomas stepped inside, put his hazel eyes on the visitors, and listened as Parker explained who they were. He smiled briefly and said, “You know your son saved my life.”

“You don’t mean it!” Caleb said. “How did that happen?”

“I was going out to arrest a minor criminal, and I thought I’d take Riordan with me just to get him used to the Territory. When we got there, the man I wanted as prisoner had two of his kinfolk with him, both of them gunmen. One of them drew on me, and I just had time to get off a shot. I really expected to take a bullet in the head, but another shot rang out echoing mine, and I saw the other outlaw fall. I turned around and saw that Riordan was holding his gun. None of us had any idea he had that quickness or was that certain a shot.”

“He—he killed a man?” Eileen asked tentatively.

“Yes, that’s the way it goes out here in the Territory. Thomas, they’d like to find their son. Do you have any idea where he might be?”

“He was with Miss Ramirez fifteen minutes ago. They were in the general store. Probably still there. They seemed to be loading a wagon with supplies. I’d be glad to take you over there,” he said to the visitors.

“Good. We’re so anxious to see him.”

“Are you planning to stay over?” Parker asked.

“Yes, we planned to make a lengthy visit of it.”

“You may have trouble finding a place to stay. The hotel’s full.”

“Yep, we had a multiple hanging today. Two of them were killed for murdering one of Miss Rosa’s hands.”

“Please take us to him,” Eileen said.

“Come this way. It’s just down the street,” Heck Thomas said as he started out the door.

“Why don’t you get some more apples? I like those apple pies,” Riordan said. He had been helping Rosa stock the wagon, and he picked up a large red apple. “I love apples.”

“All right. Get a dozen of them. We’ll have apple pie tonight. Maybe tomorrow.”

Riordan obtained a sack, filled it with the fruit, and then he followed her around as she wandered through the store. “Did it bother you seeing that hanging, Rosa?”

“Yes, it did.”

“I know something that bothered you worse.”

“What?”

“The sermon that preacher laid on us.”

Rosa shot a quick glance at Riordan. “Well, I had never heard anything like it before. You probably grew up hearing sermons like that.”

“Yes, I did, but you know there was something in that man that’s not in most preachers. To tell the truth, he shook me up quite a bit.”

“But I thought you said you were converted when you were twelve years old.”

“Well, I thought I was, but I got away from my raising. Never got into any trouble … until I got out here.”

They were alone at one end of the store, and Rosa said quietly, “I don’t know what to think. I never thought much about God and heaven and hell, but I know they’re real.”

“Maybe we ought to go back and talk to that preacher, just you and me.”

“No, I’d be embarrassed. I don’t think God—”

“Faye!”

Riordan looked up and was shocked to see his mother, father, and two brothers had entered. His mother ran toward him, and he held his arms out. He caught her. She smelled of lemon and lavender, like always, and there were tears in her eyes. “Mother, what in the world are you doing out here?”

Caleb stepped forward. “We came out to visit with you, son.” He looked his son over, up and down. “I have to say I am impressed with you, son. You are so tan, and there’s a steady look in your eye now.”

“Father’s right, and besides, we wanted to see the cowboy in all his glory.” Max grinned.

Riordan pulled Rosa toward his family and said, “This is Miss Rosa Ramirez. I’ve been staying at her ranch for quite a while now.”

“I’m so happy to know you, Miss Ramirez,” Caleb said. He could have a gentlemanly manner when he chose, and he smiled saying, “Has this young man been behaving himself?”

“Oh yes, he has.” Rosa was overwhelmed with the family. One look at them told her that they were aristocrats. They dressed entirely in the fashions of the East and were all fine-looking people. She did not see much resemblance between Riordan and his father and his two brothers, but some of his mother was in his features.

Caleb said, “I hear it’s going to be hard to find a place in town. I don’t know where we’ll stay unless we buy a tent.”