Pearl knew Long Bill was tired of her trying to get him to quit the rangers, but she couldn't stop herself. Sometimes at the thought of him going away again she felt such distress that she felt her head might burst, or her heart. She and Long Bill had been so happy before the raid; they hardly ever fussed, except over the crease in his pants, which she could never seem to iron well enough to suit him. They had been happy people, but a single hour of horror and torment had changed that.
Pearl didn't know how to get their happiness back but she knew it would never be possible unless Bill moved her to a place where she felt there were no Indians to threaten her. If he wouldn't move to a safer town, then the least he could do was stay home and protect her. The thought of Bill leaving made her so scared that, twice recently, just walking down the street, she had grown so nervous that she wet herself, to her great shame. She had no confidence now, and knew she had none. The Comanches had come once and done as they pleased with her. There was no reason to think they wouldn't come again.
Long Bill paid for his whiskey and walked home under a thin March moon. There had been a spurt of snow the day before, and a little of it lingered in the shaded places near the buildings. It crunched under his feet as he approached the house where he and Pearl lived.
It was late, past midnight. Long Bill had hoped to find his wife asleep, but when he tiptoed in he saw that the lamp by the bed was still lit. There lay Pearl, propped up on a pillow with the lamp lit and a Bible in her lap.
'Pearl, if you've been praying, that's enough of it, let's blow out the lamp and get to sleep,' he said.
Pearl didn't want to. For hours, while Bill drank in the saloon to avoid coming home to her--Pearl knew that was what he was doing and knew that the rapes were what had driven him out--she had been praying to the Lord to show her a way to get their happiness back; finally, only a few minutes before Bill stepped in the door, a vision had come to her of what that way was --a vision so bright that it could only have come from the Lord.
'Billy, it's come to me!' she said, jumping out of bed in her excitement.
'Well, what has, Pearl?' Long Bill asked, a little taken aback by his wife's sudden fervor. He had been hoping to slip into bed and sleep off the liquor he had just drunk, but that clearly was not going to be easy.
'I know what you can do once you quit the rangers,' Pearl said. 'It came to me while I was praying. It's a vision from the Lordffwas 'Pearl, I've learnt rangering and I don't know how to do anything else,' Long Bill said. 'What's your notion? Tell me and let's get to bed.' Pearl was a little hurt by her husband's tone, which was brusque. Also, he was swaying on his feet, indicating a level of drunkenness that she could not approve. But she hadn't lost hope for her God-sent vision--not quite.
'Billy, you could preach to the multitudes!' she said. 'Our preacher got killed in the raid and his wife too. There's a church open right here in town. I know you'd make a fine preacher, once you got the hang of it.' Long Bill was so stunned by Pearl's statement that he dropped, a little too hard, into their one chair, causing a loose rung to pop out, as it often did. In his annoyance he threw the rung out the open window.
'We need a better chair than this,' he said.
'I'm tired of that damn rung popping out ever time I sit down.' 'I know Bill, but the Forsythes are dead and the store ain't open,' Pearl said, horribly disappointed in Bill's response to her suggestion. She had convinced herself that he would be delighted to become a preacher, but he clearly wasn't delighted at all. He just looked annoyed, which is how he had looked most of the time since his return.
'Didn't you hear me?' she asked.
'Handsome as you are, I know you'd make a fine preacher. The town needs one, too. One of the deacons has been holding church, but he can't talk plain and he's boresome to have to listen to.' Long Bill felt a good deal of exasperation.
In the first place, Pearl had no business being up so late; now she had caused him to break their chair, and all because of a notion so foolish that if he had been in a better mood he would have laughed.
'Pearl, I can't read,' he pointed out.
'I've heard some of the Bible read out, but that was a long time ago. The only verse I can recall is that one about the green pastures, and even that one's a little cloudy in my mind.' Long Bill paused, noticing that his wife was on the verge of tears; Pearl did not cry thimblefuls, either. Once she got started crying it was wise to have a bucket handy, or at least a good-sized rag.
'I do not know how you got such a notion, honey,' he said, in the gentlest tone he could manage. 'If I was to put myself up to be a preacher, I expect the boys would laugh me out of town.' Pearl Coleman wasn't ready to give up her God-sent vision, though. Faith was supposed to move mountains--it was just a question of convincing Bill that faith and his handsome looks was all he would need to start out on a preaching career.
'I can read, Billy,' she said. 'I can read just fine. I could read you the text in the morning before church and then you could preach on it.' Long Bill just shook his head. He felt a weariness so deep he thought he might go to sleep right in the chair.
'Would you help me off with my boots, Pearl?' he asked, stretching out a leg. 'I'm tired to the bone.' Pearl helped her husband off with his boots.
Later, in bed, as silently as possible, she had her cry. Then she got up, went out into the street, and managed to locate the chair rung Long Bill had flung out the window. There was no telling how long it would be before the store opened again, and, meanwhile, they had to have their chair.
Old Ben Mickelson had been so badly frightened during the great Comanche raid that, as soon as it was clear that he had survived it, he attempted to give notice and leave.
'Leave and go where?' Inez Scull asked him, a moment or two before she took the long black bullwhip to him.
In the Scull mansion, of course, there was little room to employ a bullwhip properly, and old Ben, when it became a question of his hide, proved surprisingly nimble, darting through the halls and managing to keep the heavy furniture between himself and his enraged mistress. The best Inez managed was to strike the old butler a few times across the shoulders with the coiled whip before driving him outside, where she cornered him on the high porch.
'Leave and go where, you scabby old fool?' Inez said, waving the whip back and forth.
'Why, back to Brooklyn, madame,' Ben Mickelson said; he was calculating the risk of jumping off the porch--it wasn't that high but neither was it that low, and he had no desire to break an ankle or any other limb.
