The pistol was being held by a grimy-looking, unshaven man of about thirty, who indicated by placing a finger to his lips that Faulkner should make no noise but get up and accompany him. The soldiers were all sound asleep and the preacher did not feel inclined to put the man to the test by raising the alarm. His own two pistols lay nearby, but he would be unlikely to be able to snatch one up before he was shot.
The two of them walked out of the barn and into the area behind Santa Pueblo’s main street. The man marched Faulkner to the livery stable. Inside, there was a small storeroom, which the man with the pistol ordered him to enter. He then said, ‘Thought you could just come to our town and shoot a man down, did you? I didn’t think you would be foolish enough to return here, but then doesn’t it say in the Bible that the criminal always returns to the scene of his crime?’
Pastor Faulkner shook his head. ‘The closest I can recollect tending towards such a notion is the second book of Peter, chapter two, verse twenty-two, “as a dog returneth to his own vomit”. If you wished to discuss scripture, you hardly needed to abduct me at gunpoint, though. It is my job to do so.’
‘You like a joke. Perhaps I should tell you that I am what passes for law in this town. I am a deputy and it is my business to look into shooting and suchlike. Couple of nights ago, there was a man shot. You left the next day and I have cause to think you were concerned in the shooting.’
‘Where is your warrant or at least your badge?’
‘I do not have to answer to you. The boot is all on the other foot. Some friends of mine have been deputed to take you to Oneida for an official investigation. Till then, I shall keep you locked here.’
With that, the man closed the door and secured it with a padlock. It did not sound to the preacher that this was a true bill. Even if the man was a deputy sheriff, it was likely that he was being paid to surrender him up to a group of the dead man’s friends, who would then escort him peacefully out of town and then, when they were alone, hang him from the nearest tree. Evidently, the man he had killed here had friends who were desirous of avenging themselves for their comrade’s death.
Some little time later, Pastor Faulkner heard footsteps and the sound of angry voices. He supposed that the time had arrived when the friends of the man he had shot in this town were coming to take him away and execute judgment upon him. The door of the storeroom opened and he was astonished to see Sergeant Cartwright standing there with his pistol drawn. He winked at Faulkner and said, ‘Come on out now, you old villain.’
The captain and three of his men stood there, disputing with the man who claimed to be a deputy. The captain said, ‘This is a military matter. This man is my prisoner and I aim to take him north for a court martial.’
The deputy said angrily, ‘What am I to do? I have promised to send him south. I will look a fool.’
‘I do not know what game you are playing,’ said the officer softly, ‘but it is a very dangerous one. This whole area, including this town, has been declared under martial law by the federal army. If you impede me in any way, I can have you up before a court martial as well. You do know that? We are taking this man and that is an end to the matter.’
‘I shall send word to Oneida. I will make trouble for you with your superiors.’
The captain took a couple of paces closer to the man and said, almost in a whisper, ‘If you do that, I promise you that the army will move into this town and use it as their base. We will quarter here for the winter and commandeer whatever we take a fancy to. None of those Comancheros will be able to fart without the cavalry hearing of it. I don’t think your friends will thank you for bringing about that state of affairs. What do you think?’
‘I do not believe you have the authority.’
‘Just try me and I tell you now that the cavalry will be down on this place like a duck on a June bug.’
‘What has the man done that the army want him?’
‘That’s no affair of yours. Just keep your mouth shut, don’t cause ructions and if you are lucky, this pesthole will continue to be overlooked.’
The man who had detained Faulkner shrugged and ambled out of the barn. The captain turned to Faulkner and said, ‘You surely are a whole lot of trouble, Padre. I have never known a man slip so easily in and out of danger. It will be a great relief to me to unload you and those children in Claremont. I have never had a mission that caused me so many problems. I would sooner face a dozen Comanche braves than deal with a man like you again. Come on. I don’t want to hang round here longer than can be helped.’
The final stage of the journey to Claremont promised to be a good deal more pleasant than that from Palo Duro. Provisions were acquired along with a cart for carrying the girls and their teacher. Although the army had little enough cash money with them, they had authority to requisition what they needed and then leave the owners a chit, which could later be redeemed with the army commissariat. The civilians would not lose by the arrangement. They left Santa Pueblo that morning, with the preacher nominally a prisoner of the army. He was riding Jenny and did his best to look dejected as they passed through the town.
A short while after they had left the town behind them, the officer rode up and returned Faulkner’s guns to him. He was disposed to be talkative and the pastor felt that he owed it to the man to be civil and sociable, notwithstanding the fact that he was feeling quiet and thoughtful and not in the mood for casual conversation.
‘Do you think that fellow really was a deputy?’ asked the captain.
‘It’s possible. Even so, I think he was in the pay of friends of a man who fell foul of me a couple of nights ago. I think the aim was to get me out of sight of the town and hang me.’
‘What do you mean, the man “fell foul” of you? What befell him?’
‘He was killed,’ said Faulkner shortly.
‘Well, you have at least ensured the safety of those girls. I was hoping to be able to stage a daring rescue mission on my own account, but you rather spiked my guns there. I never was so surprised in the whole course of my life when we came to the top of those cliffs and found you leading those children along the road.’
‘I dare say that you will be able to draft your report to the general so that your role in the affair looks bigger than was the case. I would rather have my name left out of things, anyway. It would not do for a respectable clergyman to be getting a reputation for such goings on.’
They didn’t reach Claremont that day. The cart made for slow travelling and they needed to stop from time to time while various girls were sick from the motion of the thing. There was not a member of that whole entire party who was not longing to sleep in a soft bed as soon as it might prove possible to do so.
They camped out and started a fire to cook food and boil up coffee. When the government was picking up the bill, the soldiers tended to be free with their promissory notes and they had not stinted themselves in their requisitions. Despite their weariness, there was a good deal of jollity, with the cavalrymen teasing the girls and the girls enjoying the attention of the men.
The girls were none too keen to spend yet another night sleeping rough, but there was little that could be done about it. The troopers offered various things like blankets and so on to make them more comfortable, but everybody was a little scratchy and out of spirits at having to camp out again.
When they moved off the next morning, the preacher rode alongside the cart and spoke to Martha Weiss. ‘We should arrive in Claremont by midday and I will direct you to the orphanage. Your girls are still expected and provision has been made for them. I hope that they may not have to stay there long, because there are plenty of farmers who are willing to take children of this age into their homes in return for help around the place.’
‘You would not let anybody mistreat them or overwork them?’ asked the teacher.
Faulkner looked at her indignantly. ‘I would not, ma’am. There is not one child gone out of that orphanage whose welfare I do not visit and check up on. I am up to all the games of using orphans as slave labour, as happens in some places. Not round here, ma’am, not while I have breath in my body.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said quietly. ‘I feel protective of those girls. I did not mean to cause any offence.’
‘None taken, none at all.’
‘Will there be a room for me to stay at the orphans’ asylum, just for a night or two? I have not made any particular arrangements yet for where I am to go after I have seen those girls settled.’
The preacher cleared his throat and then said in a low voice, ‘I have a large house and there is a spare room. It is for visitors, but I have never had one since I have lived there.’
Martha Weiss cut in quickly. ‘You have never had a visitor to stay? How long have you lived there?’
‘I couldn’t rightly say. Eleven years, perhaps.’
‘Eleven years and never a soul to come and stay with you? That must have made for a lonely life.’
‘That’s neither here nor there,’ he said stiffly. ‘What I was about to say was that if you wished to favour me with your company, then you are more than welcome to have that spare room for just as long as you might wish to stay.’ He was suddenly horrified in case she thought that he was suggesting something improper. ‘My housekeeper, Mrs O’Hara, lives with me, so it is not as though I would be asking you to share a house with me, with just the two of us in it, if you see what I mean. . . . There will be a chaperone, so to speak.’
To Pastor Faulkner’s great confusion, the young woman threw back her head and laughed long and loud. ‘You will be the death of me, Reverend Faulkner. Here we are, having been travelling rough, sleeping in barns together and under carts, witnessing murder and I don’t know what all else together and you are worried that our reputations will be damaged because I stay in your guest room? Lord, but you are a strange one.’
‘There is one more thing, ma’am. I am not asking you to tell a lie for me. For my own part, I shall simply intimate that while on my short vacation, I chanced across you and the girls, you having been rescued by the cavalry. I am happy for them to have any honour and glory which might attach to the business. I would be obliged if you could leave my name out of anything you yourself have to say on the subject. It is up to you, though, I would scruple to urge you to tell a direct falsehood.’
‘You need not be uneasy about that. I doubt anybody would believe my own account in any case. You are right, far better to leave the plaudits to those brave boys in blue. I cannot answer for the girls, though.’
‘They will chatter, but I doubt anybody will pay heed to them if they say that one of the trustees at the orphanage was conducting himself like a bandit chief. Do not worry about that.’
The teacher looked at Faulkner and paused for moment, before saying, ‘I should be pleased and delighted to stay at your house, Pastor Faulkner. Thank you.’
Their arrival at Claremont – the girls from Oneida, accompanied by a troop of cavalry and their own minister from the Presbyterian Church – created a minor sensation. The sudden disappearance of the pastor from the church had been remarked upon in the little town and there had been those who hinted darkly that there was more to the case than met the eye. Their suspicions were not of wholesale murder, though; more that that upright and puritanical man might have been caught with his accounts not in order or perhaps detected in an affair with one of his parishioners. He had been a permanent fixture on the streets of the town for so long that suddenly vanishing in that way had been bound to cause gossip.
After installing the six girls at the orphanage, it took Pastor Faulkner that the correct thing would be to let the elders know that he was back in town and would be resuming his duties with immediate effect. He had been gone less than a week, but could already sense that the community was beginning to slip. There was nothing like a sober minister patrolling the streets to remind folk of their duties and obligations both to the Deity and also to the weaker members of their community.
Mrs O’Hara was pleased to see him, but also surprised. Her surprise at seeing him back so soon was as nothing, though, compared with the shock of hearing that for the first time ever, he was having a guest to stay. And a lady, too! Faulkner left the house hastily to avoid the flurry of activity by which his housekeeper signalled her readiness to entertain a visitor for a few nights.
He found Martha Weiss at the orphans’ asylum, making the girls comfortable and introducing them to the other children there. She came up to him when he entered the ward, saying, ‘Pastor Faulkner, have you yet repented of your rash invitation for me to spend a night or two as your guest?’
He smiled, in a more natural way than he was wont to do before his little excursion. ‘Not a bit of it, Miss Weiss. Everything is in hand and if you will just be a little more patient, I shall call back in an hour, after I have taken care of a small matter of business.’
She leaned forward and said, almost in a whisper, ‘I am glad to observe that you have shed those pistols. Does this mean that your business on this occasion will not entail shooting or blowing anybody up?’
‘Do not joke about death,’ he said reprovingly. ‘This is by way of being a pastoral visit.’
‘Hurry back. I am eager to see you in your own home. I cannot really get used to you in your capacity as a respectable clergyman, but I dare say I will get used to it by and by.’
The ride out to the Carson place took only twenty minutes. Billy Wilson was working in the vegetable garden but ran up to the preacher as soon as he caught sight of him. ‘Have you come to talk to my step-pa about Sunday School, Pastor Faulkner? They said that you had gone away and I was afeared that you would not be coming back again.’
Faulkner smiled down at the boy and said, ‘When I say I’ll do a thing, Billy, you may rest assured that I shall do it. Set mind to that principle as you grow up and you will not go far wrong. Let your word be your bond. Where’s your step-pa, over yonder in the fields?’
‘Yes, sir. Do you want me to lead you there?’
‘No, I can find my own way. You just carry on and I will see you at church on Sunday.’
Pastor Faulkner found Joe Carson, a hard-faced and ill-favoured man in his late thirties, hoeing a field. He looked up when Faulkner approached and stopped working. ‘I hope you ain’t looking for any contributions towards the church steeple fund or whatever else you are begging after at this moment? I have not a cent to spare for such foolishness.’
‘This has no reference to money, Mr Carson. I am calling to remind you that your stepson has been a faithful member of the church for some time and I am hoping that he will continue on that road. By which I mean, be sure to give him the Sabbath off and allow him to come to Sunday School and meet his friends.’
Carson dropped the hoe and walked right up close to the preacher, perhaps meaning to crowd him. ‘What the hell’s it got to do with you?’
‘ “A soft answer turneth away wrath, but harsh words provoketh a rebuke.” Proverbs, fifteen, verse one.’
‘Don’t come on my farm, preaching to me. The boy needs to work. His ma was too soft on him until we married. He must toughen up.’
The sight of this swaggering bully, who thought that he could lord it over a 10-year-old boy, was too much for the minister. He grabbed hold of Carson’s shirt-front and walked forward, causing the man to scrabble with his feet to avoid falling over backwards. ‘Listen, Carson,’ he said in a quiet and reasonable way, ‘I have had what you might term a trying few days and my patience is all wore away. This would not be a good day to get crosswise to me. Do you apprehend my meaning?’
Joe Carson stood stock-still, suddenly in fear of the old man about whom he had made so many contemptuous jokes in the past. ‘All right, Parson, there’s no need to get agitated. I did not realize that this was such an important matter to you.’
‘Just let that boy have a break on Sundays, you son of a bitch, or you and me are going be falling out with each other. I do not think that either of us want that.’
The preacher released the front of Carson’s shirt and stepped back a pace or two to ease up the tension. It was clear that Joe Carson was taken aback by the entire episode and he stood there looking uncertainly at Faulkner. After a pause, he said, ‘Ah, what the hell. Let the boy come to your damned church if he’s that keen. Tell you the truth, he ain’t much use in the fields, anyways.’
Pastor Faulkner said courteously, ‘That is right good of you, Mr Carson. I am obliged to you and I know that Billy will thank you for your change of heart. You have a good day, now.’ He turned and walked back to the house, where Billy was waiting with his horse.
‘Well, Pastor?’
‘I reasoned with your step-pa, Billy and he saw things in my light. You will be coming to Sunday School. Mind you thank him properly, now, you hear me?’
‘Thanks, Pastor Faulkner.’
Simon, thank you for another ‘good read’ most enjoyable!