Wolf Creek Read Online Free PDF Page A

blouse, stopping just before her breasts would
have spilled out. “Are you with me, ladies?”
    “I am,” Luz Estevez shouted.
    “Me also,” eighteen year old Emma Hartman
added. “Are you with us, Ma?”
    “I sure am, honey,” her mother, Virginia,
answered. She, Emma, and Luz, along with several other of the
women, loosened their blouses.
    “Jezebels! Trollops! Harlots!” Bessie May
screamed. “Showing so much of…of… yourselves in public!”
    “Perhaps they’ll show us even more,” her
husband, Howard, half-whispered to Waymon Pratt.
    “Howard Ferguson!” Bessie May screeched. She
slapped him across the face.
    Marshal Sam Gardner, along with another of
his deputies, Quint Croy, rode up. He looked over the scene, and
gave a slight smile.
    “Mornin’, Seamus,” he said. “Right hot day,
isn’t it?”
    “Fair to middlin’ hot it is, Marshal.”
    “So it seems. Anything goin’ on here you
can’t handle?”
    “Not so far. The builders are about to
return to their work, and the folks gathered her are about to have
a prayer meetin’. Aren’t you? I said, aren’t you, Reverend Hyder,”
Seamus repeated, when he received no response.
    “Yes. Yes, that is what we are about to do,
Marshal,” Hyder said. “Since we cannot dissuade these evildoers
from their wicked ways, we shall pray for their seeing the light,
or, failing that, ask the Lord to smite them down.”
    “As long as you and your bunch don’t take
the smiting into your own hands, Reverend,” Gardner warned. “Father
Flannery, that goes for your people too. Quint, it looks like
Seamus has everything well in hand here. We’d better go down to Asa
Pepper’s place and question him about the stabbing that took place
there last night. Seamus, if you need us, send for us.”
    Seamus nodded. “I think these folks
understood your meaning quite clearly, Marshal. I don’t expect any
trouble at all.”
    “Good.” Gardner and Cory turned their horses
and rode for Dogleg City.
    “Sisters and brothers, let us bow our heads
and ask the Lord to remove this plague from our midst,” Hyder
said.
    “We gonna do anythin’ about ʼem, Father?”
Ben asked.
    “No, Benjamin. As long as they don’t attempt
to keep us from completing our church, let them pray all they want.
In fact, their prayers may inspire us to work even harder. Now, all
of you, back to the job at hand.”
    For the next hour, construction continued on
the new church building, while Dill Hyder led in prayer those who
wished to see it destroyed. Then, the prayers ceased. Carole
Collier, Bessie May Ferguson, Rose Cotton, milliner Lucy Bell, and
several other women knelt and began to sing. They started with Rock of Ages, then continued with Shall We Gather at the
River?
    “It’s rather kind of them, singing hymns for
us,” Father Sean said.
    “It would be if they were singin’ them for us, not for God to smite us,” Abigail Higgins
answered.
    “It’d also be a lot more pleasant if they
were singin’ on key,” Ben said. “I’ve heard cats yowlin’ outside my
stable at night that sound better.”
    “Well, as long as they’re singing, they’re
not doing us any real harm,” Father Sean said. “Words won’t hurt
us, and eventually they’ll tire and go home.”
    Unfortunately, much to Father Sean’s
chagrin, he was wrong. Not only did the singing continue, it grew
louder as the day wore on. Evidently, Carole had decided singing
the same hymn continuously might drive the builders to distraction,
for the women kept repeating Shall We Gather at the River?
ad nauseum.
     
    Shall we gather at the river,
    Where bright angel feet have trod,
    With its crystal tide forever,
    Flowing by the throne of God?
    Yes, we’ll gather by the river,
    The beautiful, beautiful river;
    Gather with the saints at the river
    That flows by the throne of God.
     
    Finally, even Stephanie “Ma” Adams, one of
the cheeriest persons in Wolf Creek, who was loved by just about
everyone, and whom no