The Accidental Lawman by Jill Marie Landis

The Accidental Lawman by Jill Marie Landis

Author:Jill Marie Landis [Jill Marie Landis]
Format: epub
Tags: American Light Romantic Fiction, Christian - Historical, Fiction - Religious, Christian, Christian - Western, Religious - General, Christian - Romance, Romance - Historical, Fiction, Romance, Western, Historical, American Historical Fiction, General
ISBN: 9780373786527
Publisher: Steeple Hill
Published: 2009-06-01T00:34:52.218000+00:00


Chapter Sixteen

In the week that followed, Amelia treated more patients than usual. When Timothy Cutter came down with a bad case of heartburn, she prescribed baking soda dissolved in water followed by a cup of warm milk. She soothed a cowhand’s sunburn with a paste of baking soda and vinegar, a grandmother’s earache with three drops of warm paregoric, and when Harrison Barker’s mother, Barbara, showed up complaining of a terrible pain in her leg, Amelia tied a string soaked in turpentine around the offending limb and sent her home to rest. The next morning Mrs. Barker returned and claimed she’d never felt better.

Though Mrs. Barker paid her with a package of needles and a new thimble, most everyone else had paid in coin. Though it broke her heart to do so, Amelia found a new hiding place for her growing savings—an old sock tucked into her bottom bureau drawer—in case Evan came back.

As the days passed, her brother was never far from her thoughts. She prayed for God to guide and protect him throughout the day, remembered him during her bedtime prayers. When she wasn’t thinking of Evan her thoughts drifted to Hank. She wondered what he was doing, wondered if he was thinking of her.

He made arrangements to stop by and take her for a stroll after Sunday service and that afternoon, when she heard footsteps on the front porch, she forced herself to walk, not run, to answer. She paused before the small mirror on the hall tree and smoothed her hand over her hair. She’d taken the time to comb out her long braid and brush her hair to a high, glossy shine before she coiled it into a thick chignon at the nape of her neck.

She never wore jewelry—she had none to wear—but she’d picked a few sprigs of lavender and tucked them into the left side of her chignon and secured them with small tortoiseshell pins. Her gown was her newest, only three years old. The calico was a joyous pattern of miniature sprigs of pink and yellow daisies scattered over a white background and reflected her mood.

Amelia was smiling as she opened the door, but her smile quickly wilted when she discovered not Hank, but a huge man, well over six feet, standing on her front porch. He wore a leather vest over a chambray shirt, serge pants tucked into knee-high boots, and a weather-beaten ten-gallon hat that might have been bone-white once upon a time but was now the indiscriminate color of Texas trail dust.

“You Evan Hawthorne’s sister?” he asked before she could voice a greeting.

“I am.” She refused to let his size and scowl intimidate her.

She tried to see around him—he was nearly as wide as the door and almost as tall. She noticed there were three men waiting beside their horses beyond her fence.

Could this be the leader of the Perkins Gang? Had Evan sent him to her very door? A vision of the townsfolk of Glory, of Hank, Charity, the McCormicks, all the friends and neighbors who relied and trusted her.



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