The lightning did not take the bait.
The rain washed his hair into his face, joined the sweat and tears there, dribbled down his shirt front and the back of his collar where the hair flipped.
'Can I not be forgiven?' he asked softly. 'I loved her. Deep-down and honest solid, same as any man loves any woman. We were not cow and bull copulating in the meadows. It was love, sister or not. Do you hear me, you old bastard, it was love?'
Suddenly he laughed at himself. He was sounding Shakespearean, or like some of that bad poetry he had read by Captain Jack Crawford.
But the humor did not hold.
He lifted his face to the heavens again, let the rain strike his eyes until they hurt. 'For the love of Jesus, oh Lord, forgive me my weakness of the flesh. Test me. Try me. I would do anything for your forgiveness.'
As before, there was no answer.
He went back to the bed and joined the bottle. The rain was blowing in violently now, coating the ends of the sheets. He didn't care.
As he sipped, he thought of his life and how he had lived it. It seemed nothing more than a dark, dirty lie.
There was no God. His sermons were words to fill the air and float about like puffs of ragweed.
He slid down the bed and reached his Bible from his coat pocket. It was a well-thumbed edition. Long ago he had lost his passion for it. Sermons were his bread and butter, nothing more. He realized it had been that way for some time.
Stretching out on the bed again, he lay with his back against the headboard—the bottle in one hand, the Bible in the other. He sipped from his bottle.
'Lies,' he yelled abruptly, and with all his strength, he tossed the Bible toward the window with, 'Take this, you heavenly bastard!'
His aim was off. It did not go through the open part of the window as he had planned. It hit high up, and even before the glass broke, he knew he would be buying a new one for fat Montclaire.
The glass shattered, and the Bible flapped out into the night like a multiwinged bird.
Then, even as he watched, it reached a point of darkness beyond his vision, and as he was bringing the whisky bottle to his lips, it came flapping back through like a homing pigeon. It struck the bottle, and shattered it, dealt him a stunning blow to the face. Glass from the bottle cut his chin and blood dribbled down.
He sat completely upright.
In his lap lay the Bible. Open.
A droplet of blood dripped from his chin and landed in the left-hand margin of Revelations 22:12.
He read it.
AND BEHOLD, I COME QUICKLY; AND MY REWARD IS WITH ME, TO GIVE TO
EVERY MAN ACCORDING AS HIS WORK SHALL BE.
Another drop hit next to verse 14.
BLESSED ARE THEY WHO DO HIS COMMANDMENTS, THAT THEY MAY
HAVE RIGHT TO THE TREE OF LIFE, AND MAY ENTER IN THROUGH THE
GATES OF THE CITY.
Slowly, the Reverend closed the book.
There was a lump like a hairball in his throat. He and the bed reeked of rain and whisky, and there was also the faint aroma of his blood.
He worked the lump from his throat and fell on his knees beside the bed, hands clasped.
'Thy will be done, oh Lord. Thy will be done.'
Still on his knees, he prayed for an hour, and it was the first time he had done so in a long time and deeply meant it.
Later, he cleaned himself at the basin, and shook the sheets free of glass, undressed, bedded proper.
Before he drifted off, he wondered if he would be worthy of whatever test the Lord had prepared for him here in Mud Creek.
It did not matter. Whatever it was, he would try with all his might.
He slept.
And he did not dream.
VIII
With the sun kicked out and a gold doubloon moon rose in its place—a moon that shone down with a bright, almost unnatural hue on Mud Creek and the surrounding countryside—the nightwalkers began to walk.
The livery gave up its tenant—the padlock dripping off into the dirt like melted butter, only to fall to the ground whole again, and finally to return locked and solid to its place.
Just outside of town at the Furgesons, their little month old girl died. Next morning, amidst much wailing, it would be attributed to natural causes.
A few yard pets disappeared, though one small dog was found the next morning with its belly savaged. The way it was torn up wolves were suspicioned.
Certainly there had been a wolf howling last night.
From the sound of it, a large one.
…
And it was almost time.
…
IX
Next morning the Reverend cleaned his suit, and put on a fresh shirt from his saddlebag, spit-polished his boots.
He did not start his morning with a swig of whisky this time. He truly craved bacon and eggs and a cup of coffee.
He went over to Molly McGuire's for breakfast.
The cafe was bustling, noisy.
Waitresses moved back and forth from kitchen to table like ants from harvest to home.
They carried plates of flapjacks, bacon and eggs, pots of steaming coffee.
From his vantage point in the doorway, the Reverend saw one old codger grab a handful of a waitress' ass. She slapped it away in a professional manner, set the fellow's plate down without losing her smile.
At a table against the wall, he spotted the sheriff's badge. It was pinned on a broad-shouldered man of medium height and a sadly handsome appearance. That was the man he needed to see.
The sheriff was sitting at the table with a considerably older man who looked as weathered as an Indian's moccasins.
There was an empty table next to them, and as they were talking briskly back and forth, waving their hands about, he decided to take up that position until a good opportunity presented itself.
When he was seated, he strained an ear for their conversation. He was not even aware of the habit. He had learned it long ago. When traveling from town to town, preparing a sermon, he liked to eavesdrop on what was said. Sometimes it gave him the ability to work into his sermon a message that an individual would recognize. If he heard some man gloating over how he was dipping his wick into another man's wife, he would speak his sermon in such a way that the man might think God had given the preacher inside information.
It came in handy when the offering plate was passed. With their guilt boiled to the surface, the repenters (at least for that moment) would put in heavily, trying to buy off God.
As of last night, the Reverend had decided he would return to the original inspiration of his sermons. Desire to spread the gospel. He was God's boy again, and preaching purely for coinage to afford whisky was no longer his design.
Yet old habits—like eavesdropping—die hard.
'Well,' said the older man to the sheriff, 'I guess that means you ain't come up with nothing?'
'Not a thing. I rode out the stage trail this morning. Didn't see hide or hair of the passengers.... Could have been Indians, I guess. Or robbers.'
''You're grabbing at farts,' the older man said. 'Matt, you know well as I do there ain't been no Indian trouble
