It’d been a long night. Joel leaned against the thick oak and watched as the sky turned a rosy pink. It’d be nearly nine o’clock before the sun made it over that mountain. Used to the open plains of northern Texas, Joel felt like he was in the bottom of a rust-colored sack, surrounded by these mountains. At any moment someone might pull the drawstring and the sky would be swallowed up from view. He ran his finger beneath the bandanna that hugged his neck. Such thoughts were fitting when one slept beneath the hanging tree. The limbs rustled above his head. How long since they’d had need for the tree? Hopefully he wouldn’t be called on to utilize it.
A rooster crowed up the hill, but no one stirred. Back home in Garber, the restaurateurs and delivery men were up before dawn. Then again, they weren’t out terrorizing the county in masquerade costumes at midnight, either. Those men had to sleep off their activities, which might be a start in identifying them. The early birds wouldn’t be as suspect, while everyone dragging around after sunrise . . .
What had she been up to, that Betsy lady who’d run out of the woods like a bear was chasing her? At the time he’d thought she’d hit him blindly, but now he wasn’t so sure. He couldn’t trust anyone, if the reports were true. Even before the war, the feuding ran so deep that the law couldn’t be trusted to be impartial. That was why he was there—so that both sides had someone without a history, without any partiality, who could judge fairly. So he had to be accurate with his first impressions. In a town as divided as this, everyone would be trying to paint the other side in the worst light possible. He couldn’t pay much mind to their reports. Better to start with a clean slate and judge each by his actions as they went.
Joel opened the flap on his saddlebag and dragged out his Bible. Before he could contemplate judging this town, he had to make sure his own heart was right. He didn’t take his responsibility lightly. In Texas, he’d operated under the auspices of Sheriff Green, but here he had no direct supervisor. In essence he was the acting sheriff in a town where he knew no one and no one knew him, but that was for the best.
He flipped to the book of Psalms and took up where he’d been reading on the train, at number forty-three.
Judge me, O God, and plead my cause against an ungodly nation: O deliver me from the deceitful and unjust man. For thou art the God of my strength: why dost thou cast me off? why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? O send out thy light and thy truth: let them lead me; let them bring me unto thy holy hill, and to thy tabernacles.
After last night, Joel was of the opinion that nothing in these hills was holy. Had God’s light and truth led him here, or was he just running from the deceit of the unjust? Either way, Joel hadn’t had a choice, but that didn’t excuse him from doing his job. No matter what people back home said about him, he’d do the best he could to bring law and order to this far-off nation.
As good as those intentions sounded, they didn’t solve the immediate questions of where he was supposed to eat, sleep, or wash up in this town. He brushed the dead grass off his coat. Speaking of first impressions, he couldn’t help but notice which house Betsy Huckabee had gone to last night. It was the cabin just up the street. Smoke puffed out the chimney, but no one had opened the door yet. As much as he wanted to take a look around, something told him that poking between buildings wasn’t a safe occupation for a stranger.
Instead he’d best get a spit and polish before meeting the sheriff. Standing, he dusted off his trousers and buckled on his gun belt. On the way down the hill last night, he’d crossed a creek. Retracing his steps, he found it easily. As the sky lightened, more activity was apparent—doors creaked and banged shut, children shouted, the unoiled wheel of a well’s pulley squeaked. Soon he’d be discovered.
He knelt at the creek and found it spring-fed and cold as ice. No matter how sorry he’d slept the night before, Joel was braced up now.