On the fourth jump, the door gave way and she plummeted into space, the sickle falling from her hand as she bounced off the shelves in the linen closet and tumbled into the upstairs hall.
As the world went gray, the staccato scurrying continued above her, and beyond that, as soft as lamb's breath, came the whispering stroke of a hairbrush through ethereal tresses.
Odus figured the Circuit Rider would be either at one of his three Lost Ridge grave sites or else up on the Snakeberry Trail where he'd been killed. The Circuit Rider had somehow found his faithful horse, and was mobile again.
Odus figured he'd need a horse himself if he was going to roam the back-mountain trails. A motorcycle would probably work better, but the engine noise would kill any element of surprise. Plus he didn't think he could hot-wire a Harley without rousing half the police in the county. Besides, it seemed only proper to track the Circuit Rider by horseback. Since Odus was going into this showdown without any weapons, he figured he ought to make up the rules as he went along, on the theory that like could slay like.
Odus parked his truck on a gravel lot by the river at the McHenry farm. He was near the bridge that led to Rush Branch Road, a steep strip of crumbled asphalt that gave way to mud as it wound around the mountain. The Smith property lay on the other side, in the valley at the base of the mountain. The Primitive Baptist Church stood near the peak, just where the pavement ended. Some three-story houses were perched on the steep slopes here and there, up where the late wind shook the walls, but they were mostly summer homes for Yankees and were empty this time of year. It would be easy to ignore their fences and NO TRESPASSING signs. The Circuit Rider certainly wouldn't observe human laws, and Odus had to adopt that same mind-set.
He found a horse on a riverside pasture, a stretch of flat bottomland that would have been developed for condos already if not for the spring floods that sometimes washed over it. The horse was a pinto mare of mixed colors, probably two or three years old. It shied away as Odus approached, which was just fine because Odus needed to lure the horse out of sight of the river road. The horse was pastured with cows, a mistake on Old Man McHenry's part, because horses didn't know how to behave after spending time with cud-chomping sacks of sirloin. Odus had helped McHenry put up some hay last fall and knew his way around the barn. The house was up the road a quarter mile, so Odus was concealed while he rummaged. The horse followed him to the barn because it smelled the apple in Odus's pocket and, despite the bad bovine influence, an apple to a horse was like a sweet lie to a woman. They both got you what you wanted.
In the barn, Odus rounded up a halter and reins. He didn't like sliding the steel bit in the horse's mouth. Folks said horses didn't mind, but it looked uncomfortable anyway. He gave the pinto the apple to work on while he cinched the saddle. Odus had done some riding here and there in his work as a hired hand, occasionally putting in some saddle time to exercise horses for lazy people. He was no Gene Autry, but he knew enough to keep from getting bucked.
The church crowd would be filling the roads any minute now, and he'd have to either use the bridge or find a shallow spot to cross Blackburn River. He liked the idea of fording the river. That's probably how the Circuit Rider did it. With any luck, or some kind of higher power pitching in a little help, Odus would be able to track Harmon before nightfall. Because night was a time when things like dead preachers grew more powerful. Odus didn't need a scientist to tell him that. Dark things loved the dark, and the dark loved them right back.
Odus swung into the saddle and gave the pinto a twitch on her flank. "You got a name?" he asked her.
The horse whinnied, spraying a few specks of apple.
"I'll take that as a 'yep,' " Odus said. "You speak human better than I speak horse, so I'll just have to make something up. Harmon has Old Saint, so let's call you 'Sister Mary.' What do you think of that?"
Sister Mary's snort might have signaled disgust, or it could have been a request for another apple. Either way, she headed out of the barn when he gave the reins a shake. He guided Sister Mary past the cows, who stared as if they'd bought tickets, and toward the river. Just before Sister Mary put a tentative hoof in the cold water, Odus glanced up the ridge at the next pasture. McHenry's goats were lined along the fence, as menacing as the Apache warriors in a wagon train western.
"Don't pay them no mind," Odus said. "We got business elsewhere."
He gently bounced bis knees against Sister Mary's ribs and they entered the current
Crisis of faith. That was the only explanation. Mose Eldreth hadn't shown up for services, leaving his congregation high and dry in its time of need. David should have felt disappointment or perhaps pity, for he understood as well as anyone the flesh was weak. But the emotion that struggled for dominance in the mix was triumph, as if God had whittled away one more competitor for precious space in heaven.
Primitive Baptists shouldn't gloat, he knew. Only the Lord knew the whole truth about Mose, and it was always possible that God had sent Mose away on some sort of quest or mission. In which case, David's triumph was actually failure, because it meant Mose was at least one step ahead on those golden stairs. But none of that mattered now.
Clayton Boles, a semiregular at Solom Free Will Baptist, had shown up at David's church fifteen minutes after service started, sliding into one of the back pews. His entrance was obvious: only a dozen faithful had shown up that morning, none of them under the age of fifty. David had even paused in his sermon, a rambling discourse on the enemy within and a human's inability to personally remove the burden of sin. Clayton nodded and blinked and David had offered a public welcome. The Primitives didn't mind an occasional guest; Gordon Smith popped in every three months or so, and relatives sometimes sat in, especially during foot-washing ceremonies. But if Clayton thought he was going to join the fold, he'd have to rid himself of a lot of self-serving ideas of getting saved. Clayton would have to get humble, an idea that far too many Christians of every stripe resisted.
After the sermon, while the members of the congregation were shaking hands, David took Clayton to the side and found out about Mose's dereliction of duty. Word of the Circuit Rider had gotten around, at least among the locals, and Clayton confessed that he figured any port in a storm, because evil wouldn't befall him while he was in a church, no matter what kind of sign was posted out front.
"Damnedest thing, though, Preacher," Clayton had said. "The grass in the graveyard was tore to hell and gone, like somebody stampeded a herd of cattle through. And there was a scorched patch around Harmon Smith's grave."
Around one of his graves, David almost added. Instead, he quoted from Matthew: "Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble."
David waited until the congregation left, then changed clothes in the little room that was more of a broom closet than a vestry. By the time he emerged, the sun was nearly straight up in the sky. As surely as the dawn was a symbol of rising and renewal, dusk was a time of despair and destruction. Whatever Harmon Smith had planned for this go-round of the circuit, it would happen tonight. That gave David less than seven hours to come up with a way to preserve his church and his community. Even though God had already predestined the outcome, David felt a need to act.
He went to his pickup truck and took a shovel from the bed. The oaken handle was strong and sure in his hands, a sacred staff if there ever was one. He navigated the scattered markers that surrounded Rush Branch Primitive Baptist Church and proceeded to the worn and nameless slab of limestone that was cracked down the middle as if lightning had been buried there.