The Maverick Preacher. Victoria Bylin

hall while the baby’s cry stayed in the same room, growing louder. The pacing stopped over Josh’s head, paused, then went halfway down the hall. He heard a door open, then another pair of steps, muted now as if two women were trying to be quiet on floors that wouldn’t allow it.

      When the stairs squeaked, Josh shot to his feet. Adie Clarke knew she’d rented him a room, but the women coming down the stairs would see a drifter in black, maybe an outlaw. Common sense told him to leave the kitchen, but he stood frozen with the hope of seeing Emily.

      “Don’t move, or I’ll shoot you dead.” The female voice, shaking with sincerity, had come from the shadow in the hall.

      He froze.

      “Get your hands up!”

      As he raised his arms, his duster pulled open. Josh believed in turning the other cheek, but he wore a Colt Peacemaker on his hip. He’d learned early in his travels that riding unarmed into an outlaw camp caused more of a stir than a cocked rifle. Carrying a weapon was his way of being a Greek to the Greeks. The Colt made him familiar to the rough men with whom he felt called to share the Good News. Unfortunately, the woman in the doorway wouldn’t see the gun as a calling card. Josh felt the weapon pulling on his belt and winced. He’d lost weight. If he didn’t hike up the belt soon, he’d lose his trousers.

      “Who are you?” the woman demanded.

      “I’m a new boarder.”

      “Liar,” she said in a stony voice. “Adie doesn’t rent to men.”

      “She took pity on me.” Josh peered into the hallway. He couldn’t see the woman, but candlelight glinted off the double barrel of a two-shot Derringer. The weapon shook, a sign of her nerves.

      “Where’s Adie?” she demanded.

      “Tending my horse.”

      “Why aren’t you tending it yourself?”

      Pride kept Josh from admitting his weakness. Before he could correct the mistake, the woman hollered down the hallway.

      “Pearl! Get Bessie and Caroline! We have an intruder.” The gun stayed steady. “Find Adie now.”

      With his hands in the air, Josh heard doors open and the tap of feet on the stairs. In Boston, he’d enjoyed the Women’s Auxiliary meetings. The ladies had fawned over him and the compliments had gone to his head. The women of Swan’s Nest wouldn’t be so appreciative.

      Pain stabbed past his sternum and around his ribs. If he’d been alone, he’d have fallen to his knees, clutched his middle and curled into a ball. With a gun trained on his chest, he didn’t dare move. The pain hit again. His shoulders hunched as he cringed, causing his arms to drop as if he were going for his gun.

      The woman fired.

      The bullet slammed into Josh’s shoulder. He took a step back, caught his boot on the chair and fell against a hutch filled with china. Plates crashed to the floor and so did Josh. He didn’t want to die. He had to find Emily. He’d shamed himself as a man and a minister. He had to make up for his mistakes.

      “Don’t shoot,” he said. “I mean no harm.”

      The woman kept the pistol trained on his head. “We’ll see what Adie has to say.”

      Josh lay on the floor, clutching his belly and smelling sulfur and blood. He’d seen men die before. In Boston he’d prayed with elderly gentlemen fading in their own beds. In camps west of the Mississippi, he’d seen men die from gunshot wounds, infections and disease. Curled on the floor, he listened to his own breath for sucking air, a sign he’d been hit in the lung, but he heard only a rasp in his dry throat. His heart kept an even rhythm, another good sign.

      Judging by the pain, he’d been hit high in the shoulder. Silently Josh thanked God the woman had owned a Derringer and not a Colt .45. He’d live as long as she didn’t panic and shoot him in the head.

      He heard footsteps in the kitchen and opened his eyes. Bare toes and the hems of robes filled his vision.

      “You shot him!” said a new female voice.

      “What happened?” demanded another.

      Could one of the women be Emily? The voices hadn’t matched hers—one sounded Southern and the other was too high pitched—but he’d seen four pairs of feet. Josh wanted to look but realized it would be fruitless. He’d become thin and ragged, but Emily would have recognized him. He closed his eyes in despair.

      In a breath of silence, he heard the hopeful cooing of a baby and looked up. The fourth woman had an infant in her arms. The goat’s milk, he realized, was for the child. Expecting to be fed, it had settled into its mother’s arms but was growing impatient with the delay. The cooing turned to a complaint, then a wail that dwarfed everything in the room, including Josh’s pain.

      “The baby’s hungry,” he said.

      “Quiet,” ordered the woman with the gun.

      Josh could barely breathe for the pain. “Please. Feed it.”

      No one moved.

      He raised his voice. “I said feed the baby.”

      He flashed on the night he’d clashed with Emily. Three times he’d told her to leave, betraying her love as surely as Peter had betrayed his Lord. Like the fisherman, Josh felt lower than dirt.

      The wailing grew worse. The woman with the gun called to one of the others. “Get the milk, Pearl. I’ll keep watch.”

      Emily had loved their mother’s pearls, a strand so long it reached to her waist. Was she using an alias to avoid him? Maybe she hadn’t recognized him. He’d changed in the past year. Even more worrisome, maybe she’d seen him take a bullet and wished him dead.

      Bare feet, slender and white, padded across the wood floor. Josh tried to call Emily’s name, but his belly hurt and the words slurred to a groan. He watched the woman’s feet as she retrieved the pitcher of goat’s milk, filled a bottle and warmed it in a pan of water on the stove. The baby, smelling food, shrieked even louder. Wise or not, Josh raised his head. The baby’s mother wore a yellow robe, his sister’s favorite color, but she had white-blond hair. Emily’s hair was dark and wavy like his. He hadn’t found his sister after all, but neither was this woman the baby’s mother. Her belly promised new life and promised it soon. Closing his eyes, Josh prayed for the mother and child, wishing he’d done the same for Emily instead of driving her away with his foolish pride.

      Adie heard a gunshot, dropped the unopened saddlebag and ran for the house. Mary, a former saloon girl, kept a pistol in her nightstand and wouldn’t hesitate to use it.

      Had Joshua Blue betrayed Adie’s trust? She didn’t think so. The man could barely walk. It seemed more likely that Stephen had awoken early and Mr. Blue had lingered over the glass of milk. Whoever went for Stephen, probably Mary, had seen Adie’s empty bed. Maybe she’d heard the thump on the door and jumped to ominous conclusions.

      She ran up the back steps and flung open the door.

      “Adie!” The cry came from Pearl. “We thought—”

      “I know what you thought.” She dropped to her knees at the man’s side. “He’s hurt. We’ll have to call the doctor.”

      Stephen shrieked. He needed to be fed in the worst way, but Adie feared for the wounded man’s life.

      Groaning, he rolled to his back, revealing the bullet hole in his duster. When she opened his coat, she saw a red stain blooming on his white shirt. With each breath he took, the blood spread in a widening circle.

      Looking at her face, he mumbled something unintelligible.

      She hunched forward. “I couldn’t hear you.”

      “I said…feed the baby.”

      Joshua Blue was lying on her floor with a bullet in his shoulder, bleeding inside and