The Reaper's Song Read Online Free PDF

the coming rain in the wind on his face. Rain-laden clouds just smelled different somehow.
    A gust brought the first of the raindrops.
    “You could tell ’em yer our pa.” Manda spoke from off to his left. “I ain’t old enough to be your pa.”
    “Big brother then.”
    On the second spattering gust, he made up his mind. Livery it was.
    But when he returned from talking with the hired hand at the livery stable, he could feel the anger burning under his collar. The weasel said no. They had a perfectly good hotel in town, and he could ask there.
    Deborah coughed as he took her back from Manda. She weighed less than a sack of flour, and if he didn’t get her out of the cold and wet. . .
    “Come on.” He kicked his horse into a lope.
    “We could check with the sheriff.” Manda caught up with him, then pointing, said, “That’s the store where my pa done business.”
    “Yeah, and he probably owes a list as long as your arm.” Zeb regretted the unkind words as soon as they were out of his mouth. “Where we goin’ then?”
    “The church.” He hadn’t known that, but the building appeared out of the mist like an angel dressed in white.
    When he knocked on the door of what must have been the parsonage alongside the church, no one answered. Pulling his hat lower on his head, he waved Manda to stay where she was while he checked out the church. “Thank you, God,” he breathed when the door of the building swung open at the turning of the latch. Surely the good folks of Pierre wouldn’t mind if three strangers took cover there. He knew for certain God wouldn’t mind.
    He tied his horse in the three-sided shed and crossed the yardto the house where Manda’s horse stood by the closed gate. “Come on.” He reached up and took the quilt-wrapped child from Manda’s arms. “We’ll sleep in the church. Maybe there’s even wood for a fire.”
    But without a light of any kind, Zeb gave up that hope. And after seeing that the girls were wrapped warmly in their quilts, he rolled his own around him and fell asleep with a “Please, God” on his heart and mind.
    He woke to the feeling of something nudging his side. That was a boot toe that belonged to a man whose belly refused to obey the confines of his belt. A six-shooter that usually resided in the empty holster at the man’s side now pointed directly at Zeb’s head.
    If this was the preacher, Zeb figured God was scraping the bottom of the barrel for help. But a star that had long lost its glitter announced the man’s occupation.
    “Well, Sheriff, what can I do for you this fine morning?” Zeb strove to sound as northern as a native. But when he tried to sit up, the gun drew closer. He glanced over to see that the girls were still sleeping. Or at least, he hoped so.
    “What are you doing in this here church?”
    Sleeping, you ninny, what does it look like? But Zeb refrained from the obvious reply and kept his voice respectful. “It was raining, and since I didn’t have money for the hotel, and the livery denied us a roof, we came here. We haven’t damaged anything, as you can see.”
    “Oh.” The gun wavered and then clicked into the holster. “You shoulda asked.”
    “Who?” With the gun out of sight, Zeb rolled back his quilt and sat up. “No one answered at the parsonage and the—my little one’s been sick. We needed shelter right bad.” He hoped and prayed Manda was still sleeping, but a twitch of a shoulder let him know she wasn’t. God forgive my white lie here, please . It had slipped out so natural-like. No one would suspect he was Zeb MacCallister, wanted for a killing, while he traveled as a man with two children. So he was a mighty young-looking thirty, and no, he hadn’t fathered Manda when he was thirteen.
    When he rose to his feet, he looked down on the other man’s chest and read “Deputy” on the dull star. The man hadn’t corrected Zeb when he’d called him “Sheriff.” Short, paunchy, and power hungry. Zeb had met men like