Stealing the Preacher (10 page)

“It says you’re to meet that fellow in Caldwell tonight.”

“Yes. I can see that.” Crockett looked up from the message to glare at the nosy operator. Mr. Hoffmann was taking the afternoon train from Brenham to Caldwell and asked Crockett to meet him at the hotel restaurant for supper at six so they could discuss the elders’ decision.

An unwelcome heaviness settled in the pit of Crockett’s stomach. Why were they sending someone to talk to him? Why not just have him come to Brenham?

“How far is the ride to Caldwell?” Crockett stuffed the telegram inside his coat and slipped a coin into the operator’s waiting hand.

“About eight and a half miles if you take the northeast road. You got plenty of time to make it, as long as that horse of yours ain’t too winded.”

“I’ll rent a fresh one from the livery.” He wouldn’t take Joanna’s horse out of Deanville. She’d been kind to loan Sunflower to him, and he’d not abuse her generosity. Besides, he couldn’t be sure he’d be returning. Despite the knots tightening in his gut, there was a chance he’d be taking the train to Brenham with Mr. Hoffmann after their meeting.

He needed to pack his things and get on the road.

“Thanks for your help, Mr. . . .” Crockett held out his hand as he searched his mind for a name to fit the little man with the big mustache.

“Stallings. Ed Stallings.” The operator shook his hand and stepped back. “You better be on your way, Mr. Archer.”

“Can’t argue with that.” Crockett smiled, feeling slightly more charitable toward the interfering fellow. He waved farewell to Mr. Stallings and made for the boardinghouse with long, purposeful strides.

Miss Bessie must have seen him coming, for her bedroom door was firmly shut with her behind it by the time he arrived in the kitchen.

Shaking his head, Crockett crossed the kitchen and raised his voice so that it might pass through the wooden barrier. “I’m checking out, Miss Bessie. Thank you for the room.”

He turned to go, but the creak of a hinge stopped him.

“Will ya be comin’ back?” His cloistered hostess emerged
through the small opening, an unreadable expression on her face.

“I suspect not, but one never knows for sure.” The way he figured it, from Caldwell he’d be catching a train headed in one of two directions—either on to Brenham or home to Palestine.

“Well.” Miss Bessie fiddled with her apron, not quite meeting his gaze. “Should ya ever wander back this way, you’ll have a room waiting for ya.” A touch of color stained her cheeks, and she immediately surged out of the doorway to start bustling about the kitchen. She collected pots and pans from where they’d been drying on the counter and piled them into her arms like homemade armor. “Unless I’m full-up, o’ course.”

“Of course.” Crockett grinned and wondered what Miss Bessie would do if he plunked a thank-you kiss smack-dab in the middle of her cheek. The poor woman would probably suffer a heart seizure. He opted to tip his hat to her instead. “Thank you for the invite, ma’am. I’ll be sure to stop by if I find myself in Deanville again.”

She nodded, then turned her back, signaling she’d said her piece and didn’t aim to expand upon it.

Oddly reluctant to say good-bye, Crockett held his tongue as he exited the kitchen. It took only a couple minutes to gather his things from his room and buckle the straps on his satchel. He glanced back into the kitchen on his way out but didn’t see any sign of his hostess. Once outside on the road, however, he glanced over his shoulder at the small house and caught the motion of a curtain in the parlor window falling back into place.

“Bye, Miss Bessie,” Crockett whispered, a smile tugging his lips upward.

He certainly wouldn’t have chosen to be pulled from a train by a gang of retired outlaws, but at least he’d touched a life or
two during his little side trip. It just went to show how the Lord could bring good out of any situation. And a reminder that his God was more than capable of working things out with the Brenham elders, as well.

Crockett sent a prayer heavenward as he stepped into the hotel dining room and spotted Brother Hoffmann at a table near the window.

See me through, Lord. See me through.

The Brenham elder caught his eye and stood to greet him as Crockett approached. “Brother Archer. Good to see you again.”

Crockett nodded and accepted the man’s hand. “Mr. Hoffmann. It was good of you to travel all this way to speak with me, though I would have been happy to meet you in Brenham.”

“I know you would’ve, but I was headed this way on business, anyway, so it was no trouble.” The older man waved him toward a chair, and the two seated themselves at the table.

After a waiter took Crockett’s order, Lukas Hoffmann kept up a steady stream of friendly banter. He asked about the abduction and oohed and aahed in all the right places as Crockett recounted the adventure—minus a few key details. Crockett asked after the man’s family and listened to several delightful anecdotes about Hoffmann’s grandson and the scrapes the young lad seemed determined to get into.

Crockett liked Lukas Hoffmann—had since they first met a month ago. He was a jolly sort, always ready with a smile, a laugh, and a thump on the back when a man was feeling low. But as the waiter cleared away their empty plates and poured fresh coffee in their cups, Crockett knew the time for pleasantries had passed.

Hoffmann stirred a heaping spoonful of sugar into his coffee and stared at the swirling liquid, his face losing its cheerful
mien. Crockett waited, his unease growing the longer the silence stretched between them. Finally, Hoffmann let out a heavy sigh and looked up from his coffee.

“We’ve decided to hire Stephen Middleton.”

The suddenness of the statement hit Crockett like a fist to the gut.

“I see.” The two words were all he could manage past the tightness in his throat.

This wasn’t right. He deserved a chance to prove himself. Hiring his competitor simply because the man managed to survive his train travel without incident was grossly unfair! He’d fostered such hopes on this appointment, such dreams. God had been leading him to Brenham; he was sure of it. So how could they just cut him loose without a proper trial?

“You’ve got to understand, son. None of us took this decision lightly.”

Yet you made it in a matter of hours without the benefit of hearing me preach
.

“For weeks we have been asking for the Lord to make our path clear. To make our choice evident. When you failed to arrive yesterday, many of us saw it as a sign. A clearing of the path, you might say, leaving us one candidate for the position.

“When we learned of the abduction, however, we questioned our conclusion, considered that perhaps a force other than God was at work.” Hoffmann paused to sip his coffee, but the fervor in his eyes didn’t dim. “Then you wired that you were safe, and it brought to mind all the times the Lord worked his will even through the evil deeds of others. Joseph’s brothers selling him into slavery. Pharaoh’s oppression of the Israelites. The trickery that sent Daniel to the den of lions. Who were we to say that the Lord wasn’t at work in a similar way with you?”

Hoffmann took another sip, his gaze challenging Crockett to ask himself the same question. “When Brother Middleton’s
sermon was well received by the congregation this morning, our conviction solidified. The Lord had made our choice.”

If the Lord had made their choice, where did that leave him?

Unable to hold Hoffmann’s scrutiny any longer, Crockett’s attention fell to the coffee before him. He lifted the white china cup to his mouth and drank in the bitter beverage, its heat lightly scalding the back of his throat as it went down. Much like the painful truth he was mentally trying to swallow.

God had chosen another man to pastor the church in Brenham.

“I’m sorry it didn’t work out the way you’d hoped, son.” The genuine compassion in Lukas Hoffmann’s tone soothed away a bit of the sting, though Crockett’s heart still railed against the injustice of being removed from the running by an event so totally beyond his control.

“Me too.” Crockett set his cup down, suddenly eager for some time alone.

“God has plans for you, Crockett Archer. Don’t let this little setback sour your outlook.” Hoffmann pulled a couple bills from his wallet and tucked them under the edge of his saucer, enough to cover the cost of both their meals. Then he pushed his chair back, tossed his napkin on the table, and rose to his feet. “His timing might not be our timing, but it is always perfect.”

With that, he left.

Crockett lingered long enough to finish his coffee, then wandered to the hotel desk and rented a room for the night. There wouldn’t be another train to Palestine until tomorrow.

The decision on his destination had been made.

Yet as he stood in his room discarding his suit coat and removing his boots, a vague disquiet nagged at him like the itch of a mosquito bite. And the more he tried to define it, the itchier it became.

Had his confidence been misplaced? He’d been so certain God was leading him to Brenham. How could he have mistaken the
Lord’s purpose so completely? Or had this detour been God’s plan all along? And if so, what did that mean for his future?

“What am I supposed to do, Lord?” Crockett whispered the question against the glass of the window that overlooked the dim side street below. He unfastened the buttons of his vest, undid the tie at his throat, and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. None of the adjustments to his clothing made him comfortable, though. He reached for his watch, intending to set it on the small desk behind him, but when his fingers closed around the brass casing, Hoffmann’s words echoed again in his mind.

“God’s timing is not our timing.”

Pieces of a verse flashed through his consciousness, a verse he’d read recently, during his study of Peter’s epistles.

Crockett strode to the bed and unlatched his satchel. Taking up his Bible, he sank onto the mattress and flipped to the end of the second epistle. Pages crinkled as he searched for the passage. Then it was there.

“But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.”

“‘Not willing that any should perish . . .’” The whispered words fell from his tongue almost of their own accord. Crockett barely noticed, for at that moment other words bombarded his senses.

“I prayed for a preacher to come. To save my father’s soul.”

“I need help, Mr. Archer. I need a preacher to bring this old church back to life.”

“I will help you find a new preacher. I promise.”

Crockett rose from his seat on the bed, his finger sandwiched between the closed pages of the Bible he still grasped, and returned to his position at the window. Staring over the top of
the building across the street, he found the steeple of a church a couple blocks away. A tiny smile touched his lips as the persistent nagging that had plagued him the last half hour suddenly dissipated.

“I’m not going home to Palestine, am I, Lord?”

12

J
oanna whacked at the weeds daring to encroach her butternut squash plants as the late morning sun warmed her back through the fabric of her brown calico work dress. Once she finished her garden chores and ate a bite for lunch, she’d be able to escape to the barn loft for a few hours to paint. And, oh, how she needed that time away. After all the excitement of the last couple days, she craved the quiet serenity of her studio. Not even her father would bother her there. That sanctuary was hers alone.

The gentle thud of hoofbeats echoed in the distance. An ordinary sound on a ranch, but as Joanna tilted her head to listen better, she realized they were coming not from the pasture or barn but from the road. She straightened, resting her weight against the handle of the hoe. The floppy hat she wore blocked much of the sun, but it still took her a minute to recognize the approaching horse.

“Sunflower?”

Jasper had promised to retrieve her mare when he went to town tomorrow for supplies. Who would be riding . . .

Brother Archer?

Joanna recognized the black hat the preacher had worn the past two days, yet his clothes had changed. Gone was the black Sunday-go-to-meeting suit. Instead, the man riding her horse wore a pair of new denims and a tan work shirt. If it wasn’t for the way he sat in the saddle, and the fact that she’d memorized that particular combination of man and horse yesterday as she watched him ride off, she probably would have mistaken him for a wandering cowhand looking for work.

As he dismounted near the barn, he must have caught sight of her, for he lifted a hand in greeting and strode toward the garden.

Her heart skipped a delighted beat, barely able to believe what she was seeing. Then her delight turned to horror as she realized the state of her attire.

Joanna bit her lip and spun around.
Good heavens!
She was covered in dirt. Probably had smudges on her face. And her nails? Joanna moaned as she examined the dark stains around her cuticles. Could his timing be any worse? Not only had he caught her in her ugliest dress with one of her father’s old hats plopped on her head, but she probably smelled of the cabbage she had harvested before she checked on her squash.
Wonderful.
Just what a man wanted to smell when visiting a lady.