Chapter Text
The train whistled, high and tinny, when it pulled into the stop at Queensborough. Peter’s tattered bags swung lamely at his sides as he dismounted from the rear. He squinted through the dense smoke of the steam engine on the platform for his guide.
There, beyond the haze of smoke, was a sturdy gentleman with glances that pinched the end of his nose. He wore a concerned, but exuberant expression. It was a masterful combination. “Mr. Leeds?” he said, as he approached the young man.
His guess was founded, as the young man broke out into a disarmingly charming smile. He swept the two well-worn bags out of Peter’s arms and began to speak a mile a minute, “Pastor Parker. Ain’t I glad to see you? I says to the missus you’d arrive just on time. No time for delays, I says. And she said I was crazy for toddling off to the station so early, ‘cause you’d be arriving on the evening train. But here you are. Midday just as you said in your letter.”
Peter ducked his head, bashfully, “I said I would arrive by the midday train. I am a man of my word.”
“Oh, Pastor, right you are,” Mr. Leeds said, as he bustled them along to a wooden cart. He tossed the only two bags of his belongings in the cart and climbed up the two short steps to the seat. Peter joined Ned on the opposite side.
He beckoned for the horses that led the carriage to ride on, back to the village, his new congregation—Queensborough.
“So, Pastor…should I call you Pastor?” Mr. Leeds asked.
Peter smiled, patiently, “Peter is just fine, Mr. Leeds. Ain’t no reason we can’t be familiar.”
Ned split into a sunny smile, “Ain’t no reason we can’t be friends.”
“And shall I call you Mr. Leeds?”
“My Christian name is Edward, but folks around these parts call me Ned.”
It took an hour with the horses drudging through the terrain to make it to the center of the quaint town of Queensborough. It was as picturesque as he had envisioned when his mentor offered him the congregation. The old pastor had fallen ill with the sweating sickness in June. It was a long, godless summer for the good people of Queensborough, but Peter was an avenger of faith. He had been taught and trained in the new manner. His class of clergymen understood more than the book of lessons the Lord had left for them to preach by. They studied math and science and the human spirit.
He had even taken a turn in some more progressive circles in Concord. Nature men or transcendentalists, as they liked to be called, believed that for modern society to progress men and women must all be equal. He took what lessons he could from these enlightened people and learned to live by some of their principals.
Not all. Propriety still ruled his sheltered heart. But truth, logic and the innate goodness of mankind? He could prescribe to those beliefs.
“This is her, Peter,” Ned said as the horses trotted into town. “Queensborough. She ain’t much, but she’s home.”
The horses curled to a jilted stop in front of the bank on the long, dusty Main Street. He shook his head, “Its perfect.” The two men dismounted and Peter could not contain his excitement, “It is absolutely perfect.”
He spent the next two weeks learning the names and faces of his congregation about town, on Sundays, or wherever he could meet the people. It was a hard life, the West. His clergymen had warned him about the lawless world he was willingly entering, but he had not experienced anything but generosity from the people of Queensborough. It was a quiet town and they were a hardworking, kind people.
The only place in town Peter did not dare visit was the dancehall that was at the dusty edge of Main Street. When the stars littered the evening sky, men from all about town and riders from all over the County saddled into the dancehall and did not leave until the early airs of the morning.
Peter might have been a young, idealistic man, with progressive notions, but he still averted his eyes whenever he stepped past the dancehall. It did not seem polite to gawk.
It was on the fifteenth day of his tenure, when he was avoiding the dancehall, that Peter bumped into a restless young woman in brown trousers with a pistol tied at her hip. He could not make out her features beneath the wide-rimmed hat, but he heard her snarl, “Mind your steps, sir.”
He scrambled for some eloquent apology, but before he could say so much as a word, the mysterious figure swung her leg over the horse tied on the nearby post, saddled the beast and was galloping away from the town.
When he found the apology stuck in his throat, all that was left of the woman was the muddy tracks of her horse.
Her name was Miss Jones.
The innkeeper had snorted about the girl beyond the town who ranched on a farm all her own. She had no family, no friends and, the rumor about Queensborough, was that she preferred it that way. She was a loner, and Peter was an idealistic, green Pastor.
And so, he set off in pursuit of her small ranch, to finish their conversation from the day she left him in the dusty street.
It took him more than two hours on stilted horseback to reach her ranch. The people in town had warned him her home was nearly impossible to find. She had staked out some land that was close enough to supplies in less-than-a-day’s journey, but far enough away where should could read her books in solitude.
He tied off his horse on the post of her cattle panel. “Miss Jones?” Peter called as he explored the length of the young woman’s ranch. It was a meager farm with enough acres to house a decent size herd of cows for milking and slaughtering. No of the structures had fallen into disrepair, which surprised the young pastor. The idea of a young woman alone in the wilderness with nothing but the grit of her convictions to see her through the seasons was unorthodox. Yet, the people in town had said Miss Jones was an unusual girl. “Half wild and more stubborn than any man,” Betty had tutted when Peter suggested riding out to her ranch to introduce himself. All of the good people of Queensborough were his congregation.
Even the wild girl beyond city lines.
“Miss Jones? My name is Pastor Peter Parker. I’ve come to bid you hello and introduce myself.”
He heard the stomach quenching cock of a rifle. “Turn ‘round real slow.” The voice of his would-be attacker was fierce and eerily calm and unmistakably feminine.
“Miss Jones, apologies, I didn’t mean to spook you,” he gambled and turned around.
“I manage just fine, Pastor Parker,” she said, and much to his dismay, her gun was still aimed in his direction. His welcome and apologies had done nothing to dampen her ire. What he did not know about her could have filled a book, but he had a sneaking suspicion that she was an excellent shot. He did not want to give her leave to test his theory.
“Forgive me, Miss,” he said, raising his hands weakly, as if to plead for his safety, “I just meant to come and invite you to service on Sundays. Everyone is welcome in my Church.” Miss Jones took the safety off of her Winchester. The rifle creaked an unsettling click. He swallowed, “Miss, I ain’t come here to start trouble, honest.”
She did not lower her gun, “Don’t I know it, Pastor. Otherwise I’d have shot this gun already.”
He laughed more out of fear than the awkwardness that was bubbling in the pit of his stomach, “I think we got off on the wrong foot, Miss Jones.”
She lifted the rifle, pointing it at the sky, and fired one, very loud warning shot. Peter jumped. “Not that wrong,” she drawled, looking him up and down like she was not sure whether to shoot him for trespassing on her land or dismiss him for being the kind of gentleman that was spooked by the crack of a rifle. “I don’t remember inviting you here, Pastor Parker. And I don’t fancy having men I don’t know on my land. This place ain’t safe for a woman all alone, you see.”
He blanched and stuttered, “I would never….I’m a man of God.”
She nudged the cold barrel of her gun against his chest, “Lots of men do lots of things in the name of their God.” Underneath the brim of her dusty hat, he caught the first, fleeting glance of her eyes. They were as hard as the rocky terrain all around them and they were just as sandy in color. She looked like she had been birthed from the West. The wilderness was her only Lord and Master. And she was absolutely magnificent in her temerity.
“Miss Jones,” he scraped, helplessly. “Miss Jones, I don’t like guns.”
“Funny, I don’t like strange men on my land,” she replied, dryly.
“Are you gonna shoot me?”
She paused, “I haven’t decided yet.”
“Miss Jones,” he struggled to look at the gun directly. It made him quake with fear. “Miss Jones, I will mount my horse and get as far away from here as I can ride, if you let me go.”
Michelle pushed her gun against his chest, a gesture of warning, and then, finally, mercifully, lowered her rifle. Peter exhaled. She began to swagger back to the little shanty near the outskirts of the grazing land. He watched her walk away, completely terrified and entranced. Only when she swung open the door, did she finally turn back to look at him. She donned the same nearly murderous, almost bored expression from when he first laid eyes on her with her gun shoved in his face. She said, “Well, Pastor, would you like to come inside? You’ve come all this way…”
He should have done as he promised, mounted his horse and flown away from the ranch and the girl he was almost certain had perfect aim, but, instead, he nodded stiffly—
—and followed her inside.