CHAPTER 1

I reckon I’d seen a lot for a kid not quite fourteen.  Never before that day though had I seen coffee come out of a United States marshal’s nose.  For a spell I was afraid I’d killed him.  After two or three minutes of his coughing and choking while I pounded him on the back, he straightened up.  Wrapping his left arm around one of the posts on our front porch, Marshal Bodie stood there, gasping for breath.  The red in his face showed through his dark tan, and his eyes were watering.  Somehow he had managed to hold onto his coffee cup.  I was thankful that he hadn’t dropped it, for it was one of Ma’s china cups.

            “What did you say?” he asked.  Pulling a large, blue bandanna from his pocket, he wiped sweat and a little coffee from his face.  After returning the bandanna to his pocket, he sat down in the rocking chair where he had been a few minutes earlier.

            I grinned, but he didn’t.  I had never seen the marshal look this way before.  “I asked you if you’re planning to marry Ma,” I said.

            He came out of that rocker like a man who had sat on a hot cook stove.  “Now, what would make you ask a question like that?” he asked.  He took off his hat and ran his fingers through his thick, dark brown hair.

            “Well,” I said, beginning to enjoy myself,  “I’m not blind or stupid.  I saw that there was something between you that day the two of you rode out to Coyote Canyon to give my gun back to me—“

            “That long ago?” asked the marshal.  “Why haven’t you said something?  That was months ago!”

            “I did say something,” I replied, grinning.

            “When?”  He was pacing back and forth the length of the porch, slapping his hat against his leg and running his fingers through his hair after every three or four steps.

            “Just now, sir,” I replied.  “Weren’t you paying attention?”  I leaned down and picked up his half-empty cup from the floor where he had left it  “Why don’t you have a seat?  I’ll get us some more coffee, and we’ll talk.”

            As I lifted the heavy pot from the stove and poured the coffee, my hands shook.  During those long days that I had spent recovering from getting walloped by that flash flood, I had had a lot of time to think and pray.  I had also spent a lot of time reading, and much of that reading had been from the Bible.  I reckon God must have decided that the two of us needed time to talk, and we had talked.  At first I had boiled over like a forgotten pot of stew on a stove.  I told God how He had let Ma and me down by taking Pa from us.  I told Him how much I missed Pa and how my heart ached when I thought about how much Pa would have loved the Circle A.

            Then I had opened my Bible.  While I read, God talked; and I listened.  One day I had read from Job, and I found a man who had lost as much as I had and more.  When Job said that he’d serve God even if God killed him, I saw the light.  I understood what God wanted from me, and I promised to do all I could to give it to Him.

            As I crossed the kitchen and carried the coffee toward the front door, I remembered that, lying in my bed that day, I had finally let go of Pa.  As I stepped through the door and onto the porch, I realized that, in a different way, I was going to have to let go of Ma too.

            Marshal Bodie was still pacing the length of the porch.  I smiled as I handed him his coffee.  I sat down again and waited, smiling into my cup.

            He stopped pacing when he noticed my expression.  “What’s so amusing?” he asked.

            “You are, for one thing,” I replied.  I was trying not to laugh, but I couldn’t stop myself.  “Please sit down and drink your coffee.  I promise I’ll try not to say anything else that will make you snort it through your nose.”  I was still laughing.

            Marshal Bodie sat with his back straight, holding his cup, and staring straight ahead.  He reminded me so much of Widow Smith at a church social that I laughed even harder.  His face got really red, but he didn’t move or speak.  When he finally turned to look at me, his face showed a strange mixture of anger, embarrassment, and pain.  He stared at me for a minute or two while I tried to get control of myself.  Then he bit his bottom lip.  His broad shoulders began to relax.  Slowly shaking his head, he chuckled.  When we stopped laughing a few minutes later, both of us were wiping tears from our eyes and trying to catch our breath.  We sat there a spell without saying anything, and then the marshal spoke.

            “What’s the other thing?” he asked.

            I stared at him, confused.  “The other thing?” I asked.

            “When I asked you why you were so amused, you said that you thought I was amusing, ‘for one thing.’  What’s the other thing that made you grin?”

            “I reckon you might not believe me,” I replied, “but I was amused at God’s timing.”

            Marshal Bodie was dead serious again.  “What do you mean?” he asked.

            I swallowed the last of my coffee and set my cup on the floor beside my chair.  “A month ago I would have said that Ma should never marry again.  No other man should ever try to fill Pa’s place in our home.  Ma and I would always have each other, and that was enough.”

            Marshal Bodie had leaned forward and sat with his elbows resting on his knees, staring into his cup.  When he spoke, his voice was so low that I could barely hear him.  “And now?”  He turned his head and looked me in the eye.

            “Now,” I said, “I reckon my experience in that arroyo has left me a wiser man.”

            “You nearly died in that arroyo,” he said.

            “I died in my bed,” I replied.  “Flat on my back for a few days and then stuck in bed for a few weeks more, I had plenty of time for talking to—and listening to God.  He used verses I’d memorized and others I’d never noticed before to show me some things.”

            “What kind of things?” asked the marshal.

            “Mainly how selfish I had been,” I said.  “I reckon I died to myself in that bed.  All I had been thinking about was how Pa’s death hurt me.  I didn’t have a father.  I had an ache in my heart.  I had to keep an eye on Ma.  I had to be alone when I wanted to be with Pa.  Finally I understood that what had happened wasn’t all about me.  I started thinking about the other people in my life.  That’s when I thought of you and Ma.”

            “What about us made you smile?” he asked, staring into his cup again.

            “I’m getting to that,” I said.  “One night last week I had gone to bed, but I couldn’t sleep.  I reckon Grandpa had gone to bed too, but Ma and Grandma were sitting in the kitchen, talking.  I wasn’t trying to listen, but I heard Ma say that she thought she was ready to get the widow’s weeds out of her heart and start living again.”

            Marshal Bodie almost tipped his chair over as he turned it toward mine and leaned forward.  “She said that?” he asked.

            “She did,” I replied.

            “So you were grinning because—”

            “Because God brought Ma and me to the same place at the same time without either of us knowing that He was working in the other’s life.”

            He was still leaning forward, but his smile faded.  “Do you reckon your ma would let a fellow come courting?” he asked.

            “She might,” I said.  “You know anyone who’d be interested?”

            “Several possibilities,” he said.  He stood, pushed the chair back to its former position, and handed me his empty cup.  He stepped off the porch, picked up his horse’s reins, and swung into the saddle.  “I can’t say for certain how many suitors your ma will attract.”  He smiled and touched the brim of his Stetson.  “I can dead sure guarantee who’ll be the first man in line.”  As I watched him ride toward town at a gallop, I was pretty sure I could too.