Devil's Dare. Laurie Grant

deceptive calm.

      Too late, Charity appeared to see the abyss yawning in front of her. Mercy saw her sister swallow hard and try but fail to meet their father’s eyes.

      “Oh…nothing…just an excess of good spirits, I guess…” she said, her eyes fixed on a spot on the wall just above their father’s thinning, carrot-colored hair. “I mean, well…they’ve just come in from weeks on the trail, and…”

      “Charity Elizabeth Fairweather, you’ve never been a good prevaricator, and I’d strongly advise you not to start now,” her father said in a voice that he had not raised but that somehow seemed to reverberate from all corners of the room. It was the same voice that successfully convicted sinners and usually brought at least one woman to tears every Sunday morning during the services, which they were still holding in their house due to the lack of a proper church building.

      “Pre-pre-varicator?” Charity asked. Mercy knew she was playing for time, hoping to find her way out of the maze that was leading straight to their father’s wrath, but she didn’t hold out too much hope her sister would find it. Charity never could think very quickly—she was too intimidated by the basilisk stare her father was so good at training on her when she erred. Mercy watched, fascinated, as beads of perspiration broke out on her sister’s pale brow during the silence.

      “You know very well what it means, young lady. It means liar. You are lying to me about what those imps of hell, those Texas demons were cheering so heartily about. I would advise you to tell me at once.”

      Charity swallowed convulsively again, and stared into her lap. A tear, illuminated by the lamplight, shone crystalline as it trickled down her white cheek. “They were—” she began, then stopped as a sob erupted from her instead of more words.

      “I’m waiting, young lady. They were what?”

      Mercy couldn’t stand it any longer. “They were cheering at fallen women, Papa. Saloon girls that were parading past them.”

      Once Mercy had blazed the way for her, Charity seemed impelled to confess the rest. “They wore low-cut dresses, Papa, and boots, with a gun in one and their money in the other. Though I don’t really understand how they get the money,” she added miserably.

      “And just how did you learn that these…these women had money in their boots?” the reverend asked in sepulchral tones. “Did you, perchance, go out on the street and interview one of these Jezebels?”

      “Oh, no, Papa, Mrs. Barnes told me,” Charity hastened to reassure their father, brightening.

      Charity had thought she was beginning to climb out of the abyss, but Mercy knew better. If there was anything their father couldn’t stand, it was the thought of his small congregation knowing that he or his children were less than perfect. And evidencing curiosity in prostitutes certainly indicated a want of perfection in the Reverend Jeremiah Fairweather’s eyes.

      The reverend placed the spread fingers of one hand over his bowed head for a moment, as if praying for strength, then lowered them. He gazed at Charity, who stared back, much as a cornered rabbit will stare at the hawk who is about to descend on it. “Daughter, the cowboy, especially that species that ascends to us from Texas, has no regard for law, morals or virtue, defying the first, deriding the second and outraging the third. He has no respect for man, no fear of God, no dread of hell.” Mercy recognized the words from a recent sermon, and knew her father was going to wind up to a real diatribe if she didn’t do something.

      “Papa, there wasn’t any harm done,” she said hastily. “I got her out of there by the back entrance as soon as I saw the women parading past.”

      But the Reverend Mr. Fairweather was warming to his subject, and paid her no heed. “My child, in the words of Scripture, ‘a whore is a deep ditch, and a strange woman is a narrow pit. She also lieth in wait as for a prey, and increaseth the transgressors among men,’ while a virtuous woman, on the other hand, is ‘worth more than rubies.’ Charity, do you understand what a whore is?”

      “No, Papa,” came the soft answer, the voice still choked with tears.

      Mercy quickly lowered her eyes to her lap, afraid their father would somehow discern that she did know what the harsh word meant, and would feel the need to go on with his tirade. She’d known ever since she’d overheard the word during their wagon-train trip to Kansas, when some of the bachelors were talking about what they’d do when they next came to a town. She’d gone to her mother, instinctively knowing this wasn’t a word she could ask Papa about. Mama had answered her question matter-of-factly, but had gently confirmed her feeling that this wasn’t something ladies were supposed to know about. Their mother was dead now, though, the victim of pneumonia during their first winter, when they had lived in a soddy, and she couldn’t refer Charity to her to have her questions answered.

      “Very well, then we will not say more about them, except to say that they are evil women and evil men, and you are to have nothing to do with them,” the reverend said. “If you are so unfortunate as to encounter them on unavoidable trips to town, you are to look the other way. If one of either group should be so bold as to speak to you, you are to ignore them. Is that clear, Charity Elizabeth Fairweather?” Mercy realized with sudden clarity that their father didn’t understand her younger sister at all. There was no surer way to fix Charity’s interest in a subject than to forbid her to have any interest in that subject. Nothing had really been explained to Charity about why the women were bad, and what they did with the cowboys that made them bad, so she would be all the more determined to find out. She sighed. She’d given her sister an elementary explanation about the birds and the bees a couple of years ago, but now she’d have to go into more detail. She would have to explain the whole matter at night, when they’d gone to bed in the room they shared. Mama, give me the right words.

      “Dessert, Papa? I made peach pie,” she said, relaxing somewhat now that the storm had passed over and neither she nor her sister were too wet.

      “In a moment, Mercy. I have not finished,” their father said in that precise way of his that told her not to look for any rainbows just yet. “Of course, there must be consequences to every action. Yours, Charity, is that you are to go to your room now and memorize Proverbs chapter thirty-one, verses ten through thirty-one, so that you can recite it at the prayer meeting tonight and so that you will know the qualities of the virtuous woman.”

      Charity’s eyes, a deeper blue than their father’s, widened. “But Papa, that’s…let’s see, twenty-one verses! And the meeting starts in an hour!”

      “Then you had better get busy, had you not?” her father responded serenely.

      “Yessir,” Charity said, her lower lip jutting out, a sure sign, Mercy knew, of incipient rebellion in her sister. But Charity left the table quietly enough and headed down the hall to their bedroom.

      Mercy sighed. Charity’s punishment was punishment for her, too, for it meant she had the sole responsibility for cleaning up after dinner, washing and drying the dishes. Drat it! She had intended to see that Charity did most of it, since she’d been so little help during the preparation. Mercy had rather wanted to take time to change her dress and comb her hair in case Ned Webster chanced to come.

      Ned, the son of the local blacksmith, became all red-faced and tongue-tied whenever he was around her, but she thought he liked her just a little. And though she despaired of Ned’s ever framing a whole sentence to her, let alone asking if he could come calling, he was the only boy in town who came to Sunday services on a regular basis-which made him the only boy in Abilene Mercy would be allowed to keep company with. And unless another youth could be persuaded to start attending, God only knew who would be allowed to court Charity.

      

      At about the same time that Charity Fairweather was reciting “the heart of her husband doth safely trust in her” to a properly hushed dozen members of the Abilene First Baptist Church, meeting in the Fairweather parlor, Samuel Houston Devlin was leaving his room in the Drover’s Cottage, the hotel set up for the cowboys