CHAPTER 11
Matthew got the impression that they were slogging ahead as though they were traveling through a mud bog. He wanted desperately to reach Alice, and he wanted to reach her now. But the lengthening shadows mocked him with threats of ending the day before they could finish following the trail.
His mind wandered back into the woods that they had just come out of and he mused over the man he had encountered there. He recalled how Tad had been living with the guilt of his ways throughout his life of rough living. Matthew looked down to his hand that was holding on to the saddle horn. Scars on his knuckles reminded him of his own fight with God. Guilt had haunted him during those years, and the greater the guilt, then the harder it was to break free from it. The easy thing to do was to venture further into the mud; after all, once he was dirty, a little more dirt wouldn’t hurt.
A memory of walking through a house that he was burglarizing came to mind. As he was walking through the house he found a mirror hanging above a small table. When he saw his own reflection, he stopped and stared at himself. He vividly remembers the disgust he felt with the person staring back at him. He had picked up a hairbrush that was sitting next to the mirror and smashed the image of himself. But breaking the glass hadn’t healed the way he saw himself.
Chet interrupted Matthew thoughts and motioned him to ride along side of Chet. “You know,” said Chet when Matthew had moved along side of him, “I’ve been thinkin’ about that fella back there and what you did with him.”
Matthew nodded his head during Chet’s pause, but waited for him to continue.
“Well,” continued Chet, “I don’t know that I’d be able to do what you done. I mean forgivin’ him. I tell you, that man twernt worth the spit of chewin’ tobacco. He stole your money and your wife and then he asks you for forgiveness! If I was in your moccasins, I’d a pulled that gun you been trying to shoot me with all day and let him taste one last bullet. I’d of put him in hell right quick!”
“I was awfully tempted to do just that, Chet,” returned Matthew.
“Then why didn’t you?”
Matthew let the question hang between them for a moment while he struggled with how to answer it. “Well, I’m not too perfect myself. I’ve done a great many things that have been… wrong.” He had pause for moment before saying the last word. He earlier thoughts had made that word seem far too inadequate. “But I’ve been forgiven for them. The least I can do is forgive him.”
“But you’re a preacher. You ain’t never been out steeling people’s wives and all.”
Matthew’s mouth turned up at the corners upon this observation of his companion. “You know, I wasn’t born a preacher. The fact is Chet, I was just like that man back there. I stole whatever I wanted, and beat people within inches of death. I was foul mouthed and short tempered. I was, as you put it, not worth spit.”
Chet eyed his young companion with an expression of disbelief. To Chet’s estimation Matthew’s boyish appearance did not have the look of a rough character- perhaps he could have been a thief, but certainly not a successfully violent person. He figured that Matthew was playing the part that many people do who exaggerate their own “fish” stories to look bigger than it really was. Chet had already seen how weak and helpless this “boy” is- he had found him crying, he barely stays on the horse, can’t shoot a gun to save his life, and would be dead inside of a week if left out here on his own.
Instead of challenging Matthew with his doubts, he good manneredly rode quietly beside his young companion and let him talk, but inwardly he was writing off Matthew’s I-used-to-be-bad-myself confession.
“I understand now that the whole time I was being the way I was had more to do with my way of fighting against my own hurts and disappointments of the cards I had dealt in life. I wanted the world to pay for it. So I was lashing out with my fists and mouth.”
A memory tugged at Matthew’s flow of thought as he talked. He allowed his story to follow the direction of the tug. “One day I walked into what I thought was bar. Instead of being a bar, there was a church service going on inside of it. The preacher talked about the love of God and His plan for my life. At first I wanted walk out and find something better to do, but the words of the preacher hit me right between the eyes. He said in a great booming voice, ‘You have a heavenly Father that’s not out to beat you or get you or punish you. No poor sinner, He wants to love you.’”
Matthew looked over to Chet. He had shared this many times with others, and he knew when the listener was hooked, and when the listener was just bidding his time. Chet gave the impression of the latter, but rather than giving up, Matthew finished his story.
“It was at that point that I knew there was a way to find the peace that I truly had been wanting all my life. The preacher invited people forward to be prayed for. I went forward and the preacher prayed for me. I can tell you that it was at that point that I found what I was looking for. The love of God swept into my life and started to heal all the hurts that I was carrying around in my heart and mind.”
“That’s all very interestin’,” offered Chet, “but I’d still have shot him to hell.”
“If it hadn’t of been for God’s love for him, I’m sure that’s what I would have done. But God has better plans than that. God loved him just as much as he loves me… and you, Chet.”
Chet let the conversation’s flow come to an end as the two men now rode in silence while Chet kept his eyes moving from the ground and then to his surroundings. Matthew was doing the same, but he knew that he wasn’t seeing the same things that his new friend was. The day’s episode had taught him so vividly just how lost and helpless he was out here in the west. He shook his head to himself as he remembered telling Alice at one point that things couldn’t be all that difficult out here. After all, he had survived a brutal childhood and life on the streets.
“But things are different out there,” she had said.
“I know that,” he said agreeably, “but we’ll be in a little town somewhere, and I’ve seen it myself that people in small towns are just plain nicer people than in here in Chicago.”
“But it’s also the wilderness. Neither one of us have ever spent anytime in the wilderness.”
“Honey, we aren’t going to be in the wilderness,” he reassured her. “I am going to be a preacher, not a trapper, or gold-digger, or some other such thing. Preachers do their preaching in towns.”
This is some town, he thought to himself as his eyes swept over the landscape that the two of them were riding through. There wasn’t a building to be seen in any direction. Instead he saw the high grass sprinkled with trees and the hills that they were heading towards. In fact he was surprised at how close those hills had become in since they had come out of the tree line.
“This here day has been a costly one for Jack Higgs,” said Chet, breaking the silence. “He done lost four of his men. That’s an awful high price to pay for one job.”
“Its cost me a lot more,” returned Matthew.
Chet glanced at Matthew as they rode along. “Yes, that’d be the truth of it, Son. But I’m strongly thinkin’ that it’ll be a higher fee for that Jack by the end of it all. Don’t you be worrin’ none. We’ll be gettin’ your Alice back before long.” He paused for a moment before continuing with his encouragement. “You know, the odds are in our favor.”
Matthew looked over to his companion. “What do you mean that we have the favor?”
“Well, it’s like this. He ain’t got but two men left. That means that their number of eyes and ears to be on the guard is pretty low, not to mention the number of available gun fingers. He’s also got a woman that’s mad as a hornet. She’s got to be guarded all the time- why she may try to escape, or get a gun and shoot ‘em, or who knows what.
“Next thing is that he don’t know that we is right behind him. He didn’t figure on you being alive and all. I’d bet he’s a thinkin’ that the soonest that anyone to be pursuin’ him would have to be some odd time on the morrow, if at all. Your old stagecoach ain’t even to town yet, and most people here ‘bouts know that scar he’s wearin’- most likely as not, their ain’t too many men that’s gonna be very thrilled about chasing out after Flash Jack, especially if you ain’t there to make the case. He’ll be guessin’ that most likely it’ll all just be left alone.
“And last of all, he’ll be thinkin’ there ain’t no way that anyone can be knowin’ ‘bout his little cabin in the hollow. Our friend back in the woods didn’t exactly draw us a map or nothin’. But at least he let us know ‘nough in the way of clues that we won’t be wanderin’ around in the dark, so to speak. And I’d bet you my left eyeball that we’d of rode right past where ever this place is without even knowin’ it.”
Matthew considered the words of Chet as they plodded along. He hadn’t seen the circumstances quit in that light, and the explanation of Chet hit its mark in the way of encouragement for Matthew.
“Do you suppose that they are held up in those hills were coming upon?” inquired Matthew.
“Well, these hills stretch a pretty big piece both to the north and south. I’ve spent some time wanderin’ these hills, and I’d be thinkin’ that there is lots of places to get yourself lost in ‘em if that’s your intention. I’m thinkin’ we’ll be findin’ ‘em there.”
Chet suddenly reined his horse to stop as he continued studying the ground.
“Looks like they come this way before” he observed. “They come out of the hills and then turned here and headed that way.” Chet nodded with is head to the north. “They must of circled on up around that way when they had gone after your coach this morning. Didn’t want to leave a trail comin’ and goin’. That Jack is a cunning coyote.”
“Will this make it harder to track him?” queried Matthew.
“These tracks are all mixed up now, that be the truth of it. But I think we ought to be able to make the sense of it all as we go on. More than likely, we are goin’ to be findin’ this sort of thing as we get closer to where they be hidin’. They been comin’ and goin’ for quit a time, so lots will be goin’ in all sorts of directions. Now what we got to do is stay to the main trail. They may turn off, but I’m not thinkin’ that that’ll happen.”
With that explanation, Chet spurred his horse on.
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