Mel's Arc

Chapter 28 of 36

The preacher was safe in the square, but the light was fading. Mel stood beside the chair where Cross sat with his Bible, and she saw the problem the day had hidden. The neighbors were packing up their carts. A woman gathered her jars. A man hitched his mule. When the square emptied for the night, Cross would sit alone. One rider could take him in the dark, and no one would see it done. "He can't sleep out here," Mel said. Ted came up beside her, watching the same carts roll off. "Soon as they're gone, he's got no guard." "Then we don't leave him," Ted said. "But where? Every roof in this valley has a Caldwell string on it." Mel thought of the barn. It carried her name, and the Caldwells knew every board of it. The first place they'd ride. Then she thought of the one house they'd stopped watching. Ted's own place, past the dance ground, with its wide porch and lit windows. The Caldwells believed she and Ted lived there together now. They had no reason to search a home they thought held only the couple they'd already lost. "Your house," Mel said. "They've quit riding it. They think there's nothing there worth taking." Ted nodded slow. "Spare room's empty. He rode there once before, that hand. Found nothing. He won't come back to nothing." Cross had been listening. He closed the red Bible. "A bed and a door," he said. "I've slept in worse and preached the next morning." They waited until the last cart left. Then Mel walked Cross to Ted's horse and helped him up behind the saddle. They rode the back way, off the main road, keeping to the low ground where no rider watched. The house sat quiet, its porch rails throwing long shadows. Ted lit the front windows so it looked like any ordinary night. A courting couple, home. Nothing more. Inside, Ted showed Cross the spare room, the same one Mel had slept in months back. Cross set his Bible on the sill and sat on the bed. "I'll be here Saturday," he said. "You have my word, and now you have my roof." Mel stood in the doorway. For two days she had feared the Caldwells would steal the one man who could marry her. Now he slept behind a door they had stopped watching, in the one house in the valley their eyes had passed over. She had beaten them again, not with a crowd this time, but with a lie they told themselves. Ted banked the fire and blew out the lamp. "He's ours till Saturday," he said. "Nothing left for them to reach." Mel looked out at the dark road. Empty. She let herself breathe. The ceremony was whole now. Every piece stood in place. Only the day itself remained.