October WindA Western Story

by Richard McCuistian

Chapter One

The two strangers were loitering near the open window of the telegraph office at the Union Pacific Depot when Silas Hallstead picked up his telegram.  One of them was a big blue-eyed man with a salt-and-pepper beard and the other was narrow-faced with heavy-lidded eyes and a sharp nose. They both silently noted the significance of the telegram as Silas read it aloud. It seemed that the circuit riding preacher, a fellow named Bob, would be passing by Silver Creek School on his way to Big Spring to preach a funeral and Silas, who was the church treasurer, was to meet him at the school house in the cottonwoods with the prayer requests and the previous three weeks’ love offerings on Saturday morning.  The strangers had been in town long enough to know how far the school house was from town …

 Red and golden autumn leaves were riding the cool October wind, fluttering earthward as seventeen-year-old Carol Summers rode Red Mare down the shady mountain trail above Robinson hollow, but she was lost in thought and hardly noticed the wind or the fiery colors of the hardwoods.  She rounded the familiar bend, saw Silver Creek School in the distance and checked her saddlebag for the hundredth time to make sure the money was still there.

Carol’s father was a small man for a blacksmith, but tough as spring steel, wiry and strong, and Carol had inherited his fierce self-reliance.  Carol could work red-hot iron alongside her father with a two-pound hammer from first light to dusk when school wasn’t in session. Tyrus was proud of the fact that he had always done all his own work. Thirty years earlier, he had come to build a life for himself and his new wife Kate, staking claim to a few acres of land where he built his house and blacksmith shop.  The town had been born and continued to grow as people stopped in to have their wagons repaired and their horses reshod and decided to settle at Silver Creek.  Tyrus raised hogs and chickens and planted a big garden every year for food, and while the winters were hard, food was always plentiful and many a hungry traveler ate at their table.  The town continued to grow as Union Pacific laid the steel tracks of a new railroad and built a depot on the edge of the growing town.

Tyrus’ life had seemed most complete when Kate gave birth to Carol, but the young blacksmith’s dreams of growing old with Kate evaporated when she wasted away and died five years later of a muscle disease Doc Brown had never seen before.  Tyrus was devastated but he swallowed his grief and threw himself into his work and raising Carol.  While Tyrus didn’t blame his wife’s death on the doctor, he did blame God with a dark and persistent bitterness.

The wind was rowdy and the October sun was unseasonably warm.  A dust devil picked up a colorful swirl of leaves and sand, dancing mischievously among the hardwoods, then across the two-rut buggy trail in front of Carol’s horse before dissipating in the brush, leaving only the sound of Red Mare’s hooves on the hard packed earth.  Red Mare swished her tail at a horsefly that tickled her flanks.

Carol had been up late the previous evening.  Her father had been in one of his reflective moods, and as she had cleaned up the kitchen he sat at the table remembering Kate aloud.  Carol never grew tired of hearing him talk about her mother.  She had heard it all a hundred times, but his closing remarks were new and she had never heard them before.  After Tyrus blew out the lamp, he kept talking...

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my life,” he had said quietly, “it’s that you can count on iron and steel, but you just can’t count on people and you can’t trust God.  Every person needs to be prepared to handle his or her own problems, whatever happens” he repeatedly told her, “but when somebody else needs help, we always need to be there for them, because no matter what Preacher Bob says on Sunday, God don’t always come through on Monday.  And as for preachers like Bob, it’s been my experience that you can’t count on them to do anything when real trouble comes except to preach, pray, and pass a plate.”

Carol’s hands were rough and callused, her fine brown hair was long and straight, but she was in the habit of keeping it tied up and out of the way when she was working or at school.  When Carol wasn’t wearing one of her mother’s dresses, she wore rough cotton denim pants with a thick white blouse and suspenders.  Her face was peppered with freckles and her eyes were the dark color of seasoned honey.

Carol could barely remember her mother now and she wondered how much different her life would have been if she had grown up with both parents.  She could remember her mother’s soft, honey-colored eyes and light brown hair…  She particularly remembered hearing a voice on the porch one night when her father was asleep and the autumn leaves were rustling.  She made her way out onto the porch to find her mother kneeling on the rough porch planks with her hands folded beneath her forehead in the swing.

“Who you talkin’ to, Mama?”  Her mother had raised her head and smiled.

“This is the way I talk to God. I meet Him here every night after your father has gone to sleep.”

“What you askin’ God for, Mama?”

“For you to know Jesus and marry a nice man someday.  For Jesus to protect you from bad people…”

After Kate died, some of the women in the community had offered to keep Carol while Tyrus was working, but he declined their offers. She had grown up spending her days in the blacksmith shop when school wasn’t in session.  She was particularly interested in the forge, with its bellows and its blistering heat that could bring a piece of iron to a bright cherry red in a matter of minutes.

Carol had awful recurring nightmares.  The dreams always started out with Carol watching her mother walk slowly through a beautiful sunlit garden with a tall, strong-looking man she knew must be Jesus, and they always had their backs toward Carol.  Carol was at the edge of the garden in a place where the sun didn’t shine and she had an irresistible urge to run to her mother, but for some reason she couldn’t move her feet and she couldn’t call out. As she struggled, her mother and the tall man would walk farther and farther away.  Then from behind her a swarm of demons would appear to drag her screaming into a huge, white-hot blacksmith’s forge.  She always woke up trembling and in a cold sweat with the distinct sensation of smoking black claws digging into her flesh.

Carol didn’t mix well with the girls in the community, but she had earned the respect of many of her peers by whipping a bully named Roy Knox in a fair fight.  Carol really enjoyed the younger children and spent a lot of her recesses playing games with them while the other boys and girls her age were stealing kisses under the cottonwoods. Little Pete Perkins had developed the same muscular disease and distinctive limp from which Carol’s mother had died, and with childish cruelty, some of the kids at school pushed Little Pete around and made fun of his odd limp.  What infuriated Carol was the way they laughed at the way Pete struggled to regain his feet after he fell down and she was constantly running to help him.  None of the kids knew Little Pete was dying, but Carol knew all too well when she recognized his strange little limp that he wouldn’t be around much longer.  Her blood boiled one day when she saw Roy Knox grab Little Pete and send him sprawling.

“HEY!!  Hey, Roy KNOX!!,” she shouted, “you leave Little Pete be!”   He just laughed and paid her no mind.  Carol saw red and charged the big boy like a mad bull.  It was most unladylike.  Five minutes later Roy was lying in the dust with the wind and the fight knocked out of him and Carol was helping Little Pete back onto his feet.  Little Pete died that summer.

Elijah Perkins and his wife had spent all the money they had on medicine that did no good and they had a large outstanding balance at the general store as a result.  They had eaten Carol’s cooking more than a few times when they were down and out with nothing to eat and their credit was exhausted.  In her anger and sadness at Little Pete’s passing, Carol was inclined to agree with her father in doubting the goodness of God.

The one-room schoolhouse at Silver Creek also served as a Sunday school on every third Sunday, but having inherited her father’s cynicism, Carol had little use for Bible teaching.  Preacher Bob was a tall, handsome man in his early forties with twinkling brown eyes and smooth golden brown skin, but Carol had very little respect for a fellow who did nothing but preach for a living.  He had, however, been very good to Little Pete’s folks, she reflected.  Her opinion of the preacher had shifted a little when she heard that he had paid off Elijah Perkins’ account at the general store.  Bob didn’t collect a lot of money from the congregation and it must have taken him a long time to save the money it took to pay their debt.  And while her father wasn’t all that impressed with Bob’s altruism, Carol began to wonder if there was more to the circuit rider than her father thought.

This morning Carol had been given the job of delivering the past three weeks’ offerings and the prayer list to the preacher.  Silas had started out for Silver Creek early Saturday morning to meet the preacher, but a wheel had run off the left side of Silas’ buggy, throwing him headlong for a nasty spill.  He had been taken to Doc Brown’s upstairs office and his buggy was at Tyrus’ shop for repairs.

What nobody knew was that the narrow-faced stranger had sabotaged Silas’ buggy wheel, but he didn’t count on Tyrus, who happened to be nearby when the “accident” happened.  Tyrus knew Silas was taking the money to the preacher, and unaware that there were two worthless strangers in town with designs on the preacher’s payroll, he volunteered his daughter Carol to carry the money and the prayer requests out to Silver Creek. Carol had saddled Red Mare and headed for the school, wondering why the preacher hadn’t just dropped by the treasurer’s house in town to pick up his money instead of having it brought to him. 

Tyrus had built a circle of small hot fires in the shop yard one day and was preparing to mount a steel wagon tire he had fashioned.  After he laid the wagon tire on the circle of fires, Tyrus was watching the slowly expanding tire carefully and preparing the wooden wheel upon which he would mount it.  Carol was hammering a cold steel horseshoe into shape on her anvil. It was brutally hard and the horseshoes she made were far from perfect, but her arms were getting stronger by the day. Tyrus paused long enough to watch his daughter work the iron.  When she was satisfied with the horseshoe, Carol tossed it onto the pile practice horseshoes she had made that week and laid her hammer down so she could turn to watch her father mount the wagon tire. As her eyes met his, Tyrus smiled at her for a moment before he spoke.

“Sweetie, I always heard it said a man would go to hell for working cold iron, but then, you’re not a man… Still… I think it’s time you started working your iron hot.  What do you say?”   Carol smiled and nodded, but a chill went up her spine.  Remembering her dream, she could always expect a cold shiver when the words he had said that day would replay in her thoughts.  “…a man would go to hell….” Carol didn’t really believe what he had said, but she never worked cold iron again.

 

 Carol was entering the school playground now, but she didn’t see the preacher’s horse tied to the rail and she was wondering how long she’d have to wait for him to show when she felt a hand grab her ankle.  She whipped her head around to see a gray-streaked black beard, a dirty brown hat, and the coldest, meanest frosty blue eyes she had ever seen.  The man grabbed her by the waistband of her jeans and yanked her off Red Mare.  A narrow-faced man carrying a pistol appeared behind the mean blue-eyed man and raised the flap on the saddlebag, cut a sidelong glance at the blue-eyed man who held her and spat a curse.

 “The money’s here, Butch, but it don’t look like much.  What about her?”

 

“She’s seen us both.  We ain’t got no choice.”  Carol’s heart was pounding, and she fought furiously, bringing her heel down hard on the big man’s toe, but all he did was roar in pain and tighten his vise-like grip on her arm.  He pulled her close to him and she spat in his face.

“You’re a feisty little thing, aren’t you, little girl?”  She could smell tobacco on his breath and the sickening odor of a body that hadn’t been bathed in weeks.  The October wind picked up suddenly in a dust devil between the Red Mare and the school building, whipping sand into the eyes of  the man rummaging through the saddlebag.  He grunted and shook his head, pausing to rub his eyes, dropping his gun in the process.

 “Quit fiddlin’ around, Lidge!” The blue-eyed man was impatient. He was looking Carol up and down. “Let’s go! We’ll take this little girl and have us some fun with her.”  An icy bolt of fear shot through Carol.  The dust devil whirlwind danced across the school yard toward the cottonwoods in a swirl of leaves.

 

“That’s about enough, boys.”  Carol recognized the calm mellow tones of Preacher Bob’s voice.  Carol had never been so happy to see the preacher as she was now, and in the blink of an eye she realized just how wrong her father’s perception of the man was.  He was sitting calmly on his big black horse and both men found themselves looking down the long octagon barrel of a Marlin rifle he was holding balanced across his saddle horn.  His long black coat was dusty and his flat-brimmed Stetson sat square and level on his head.   As always, His Texas mustache was neatly waxed, and the thin crescent of a smile curved his lips. In the preacher’s eyes there was only iron resolve.  The narrow faced man holding the saddlebag whirled around to face the preacher, then lunged for the spot where he had dropped his pistol.

Back at the blacksmith shop, Tyrus was firing a metal pin for the buggy wheel in his forge when the crack of a gunshot broke the morning stillness from the direction of Silver Creek…    

                                                          
Chapter Two

 

Back at Silver Creek, the ruined pistol went spinning across the playground, and Red Mare shied away from the sound of the rifle shot, knocking the narrow faced man flat on his back.  He tried to hold the horse’s reins, but she pulled free and made for town in a mad gallop. The preacher calmly jacked the lever on his rifle and a brass shell casing flipped out the side of the rifle and landed smoking in the dirt next to his horse.

The blue-eyed man holding Carol tightened his grip even more on her arm and pulled a big knife with his free hand, dragging her around in front of him to face the preacher and quickly bringing the knife to her throat.  She could feel razor sharp metal tickling the tender flesh of her neck.  She was dimly aware that Lidge was scrambling to his feet spewing a steady torrent of curses.

“Do you think you can cut her throat before I put a bullet between your eyes?  It’s a bit early in the mornin’ for a one-way trip to hell, don’t you think?”  Carol kept quiet and consciously tried to calm the beating of her heart during the long moment while the blue-eyed man considered his options.  If he cut the girl’s throat, the preacher could kill him, but he didn’t really think the preacher would pull the trigger.  Still, he found the barrel of that rifle singularly unattractive, especially since it was pointed directly at his nose and he had already seen that the preacher was a good shot, even from the hip. The wind had died, but Lidge was still trying to rub the dirt out of his eyes.

“You boys know you’d hang if you was to hurt that little girl.”

“She’s seen us.  You have too,” Lidge spoke sharply, rubbing his watering eyes.

“Well, if you start movin’ and hop the next train, you might get far enough away from here that nobody who would recognize you would see you again.  And in the meantime you could probably have some fun with the little bit of money that’s in those saddlebags.”

“Why should we listen to you?”

“Because if you don’t let Carol go before I count to three, I’ll shoot the both of you, and you’ll be the first one to go,” Carol was inwardly surprised that he knew her name.  She had never even spoken with him.  Bob still had his eyes locked on the man holding Carol and raised his rifle slightly.  “One…”

“Hey!  What about ‘Thou shant not kill’?” The big man stammered.

“…. That’s ‘shalt not’, replied the preacher,  …two…” The blue-eyed man slowly lowered his knife and relaxed his grip on Carol’s arm.  She jerked free, jabbed his bulging belly with a sharp elbow, and ran to Bob’s horse, taking a position behind his right leg.  Bob never took his eyes off the two men but he turned his head slightly toward Carol.

“You okay?” he asked quietly.

“Yeah,” Carol was embarrassed that her voice sounded so squeaky.   The two strangers stood stock still, waiting for Bob to lower his rifle.  He didn’t.

“Take off your coats and drop your britches.  And throw that knife on the ground.”

“You lyin’ cheat! Just like a preacher!  You said you’d let us go!”

“Nope.  I simply said IF you started movin’ you could hop the train. I didn’t say I’d let you go, and you ain’t movin’.  Now, drop them britches, boys.”  The two men took off their boots and dropped their pants while Carol averted her eyes.  A few minutes later, each man was stripped to his long johns and securely tied to his own cottonwood tree with strong braided cords the preacher had produced from his saddlebags.

                The preacher’s big black horse suddenly raised his head and pricked his ears forward, craning his neck to peer down the trail toward town.  The distant sound of rapidly approaching hoof beats became audible and Carol turned her head to see her father and Sheriff Kline riding full speed around the curve in the trail leading from town.  They drew rein with their guns drawn in the school yard on their lathered horses in a cloud of dust.

 

 Tyrus and Sheriff Kline stood smiling while Bob stood facing the hapless thieves with a Bible open in his smooth brown hands.

“Fellas, have you ever considered the fact that the way you’re livin’ is wrong?  ‘All of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,’ but for you two, that’s an understatement.  ‘These six things doth the LORD hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him: A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren….’ ”

“Do we have to listen to this?” The bigger man whined.  The preacher kept preaching.

“ ‘… the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.’ “ The October wind rustled the pages on the preacher’s Bible as he continued:

“When God came to earth in the flesh as Jesus Christ, the first thing He said when He started preaching was “repent.” That means a change of lifestyle, a change of focus away from doing the devil’s work and toward God.   If you two don’t repent from this wicked way you’ve chosen and receive Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord you will die in your sins.  Jesus Christ spilled His blood on a Roman Cross to pay the price for all your sins and mine, including what you’ve done here today.  His blood even paid your sin debt for the people you murdered and the cabin you burned up near the Arkansas line.”

The two men exchanged wide-eyed, pale-faced glances at Bob’s remark about the cabin.  Bob continued:

“They put Him in a borrowed tomb, but death couldn’t hold the Savior.  He had promised He would rise from the dead on the third day and He kept that promise.”

“Lidge, this is your dang fault… “ complained the big blue-eyed man.

“Quiet, boys,” Sheriff Kline barked.

The preacher kept preaching.

“And now all those who trust Jesus as Lord have and eternal hope for the future.  He has gone to prepare a place for you.  If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart God raised Him from the dead, you’ll be saved.  Your sins will be forgiven and you’ll have an eternal home. If you reject the eternal life and the home that Jesus has prepared for you, well, that’s a bad idea and a one-way ticket to hell.”  The two men had recovered their composure by the time Bob finished.

“Look, preacher, do you think we’re gonna pay attention to anything you have to say?  You’ve got the girl and yore money back, you got our clothes, you’ve got us tied to these here trees, and now we have to listen to a sermon?  I think I’m gonna be sick!  Sheriff, cut us loose and take us to jail and get us away from this mouthy preacher.”

“Stop yore whinin’ and listen,” the sheriff barked.

“Gents,” Bob said, “it’s my responsibility to share the gospel with you whether you listen or not. I’m a follower of Jesus Christ and a preacher of the good news.”

“Well, we ain’t listnin’.  So just take yore Bible and yore hypocritical saddle gun and hit the trail.”

“Okay.  But if you die in your sins, your blood is on your own heads. And in the meantime, I’ll be prayin’ for you.   Sheriff, they’re all yours.”

              

                “When are you coming back, Bob?” Tyrus asked as Bob turned his horse toward Big Spring.

                “Monday afternoon,” Bob replied.

                “You can stop by the house if you’re a mind to. Carol, would you mind fixing Bob some supper Monday evening?”

                “There’s nothing I’d like better, Pa.”

 

                Bob’s plate was empty and Carol’s heart was full as she bustled around the kitchen listening to the words passing across the table between the two men.

                Bob had been a soldier in the Texas cavalry and had been wounded at the battle of Pea Ridge, Arkansas at the age of eighteen.  He had fought his way all the way through the war and had seen a lot of bloodshed on the battlefield, but he came home to something worse, at least in his eyes.  On the night he got back he had supper with his parents and they stayed up most of the night talking about his experiences in the war. They prayed a long prayer and thanked God for bringing him home safe.

The next morning Bob had made a trip to town to buy sugar so his mother could bake him a cake and he had met two men on the road to his parents’ homestead.  One was a big blue-eyed man and the other was a narrow-faced fellow.  When he returned home that day, both his parents had been murdered and their cabin was on fire.  He had made a vow to himself on that day that he would find those two men and bring them to justice.

For weeks Bob struggled with the concept of an all-powerful God who could allow all the evil he had seen in his short life, but rather than turning his back on God, he had decided to get to know the Almighty and try to gain a better understanding of what he had lived through. What he learned from his studies in the Scriptures had brought him to a deep and saving faith in Christ.

                “Those two at Silver Creek were the same two who murdered my parents,” Bob finished, taking a sip from his coffee cup.

                That night, with the preacher sleeping in their guest room, Carol went out on the porch and knelt in the same spot where she had found her mother praying so many years earlier.  The moon was bright and the October wind was gently moving the live oaks by the blacksmith shop.

                “God, I’ve never trusted You since my mother died. But Preacher Bob has changed that.  I’ll be yours from now on if You’ll have me.  And one more thing.  If You’re really listening to me, and if Bob would have me, I’d like to be his wife.   In Jesus’ name. Amen.”   She slept without the nightmare that time.

                Tyrus had a whole week to reflect on Bob’s willingness to forgive the two men he could have gunned down the previous Saturday.  Bob’s desire to draw nearer to God instead of stewing in his bitterness revealed Tyrus’ own unforgiving spirit and unreasonable anger against God for the wickedness it was, and he found himself wishing he was half the man Bob had turned out to be.

The next time Preacher Bob came to Silver Creek, the school house couldn’t hold the congregation. And in spite of the cool temperatures, the windows were open so those standing outside could hear. The October wind was blowing softly across the millpond where Bob baptized thirteen new Christians, including Tyrus the blacksmith, and last of all, Carol.

                When Bob led Carol up out of the water, in the presence of the whole congregation, Preacher Bob had a question for Tyrus.

                “Mr. Summers, if Carol would have me, I wonder if you’d give me your permission to ask for her hand in marriage.”  Tyrus looked at Carol, who appeared as if she were about to faint.  He raised one eyebrow and she nodded quickly.

Silver Creek would never be the same…