Song of the Red Sparrow, Book Three: The Spirit Is Willing

by Rory Shane Riggs

Overview

Prairie Gulch, Texas, is a rough-and-tumble town tucked away on the fringes of the civilized world; the Civil War has had its effect here, though, in spite of the town's isolation. It has been twenty years since the war ended, and yet people still remember the pain it caused. Some citizens even harbor secrets of that dark time-secrets told to no one.

Could the woman living in the large house on the edge of town be the legend whispered about for years? The knowledge of a truth that could rewrite history comes with a heavy price - a price some have already paid and others will.

A series of strange deaths suddenly sets the city on its toes and reawakens past pain. Decades earlier, the assassination of President Lincoln shocked the nation. Now, his ghost seems to haunt their small Texas town.

In this third and final installment of the Song of the Red Sparrow series, all secrets are revealed, all conflicts resolved, and all lives changed.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781491715338
Publisher:	iUniverse, Incorporated
Publication date:	12/06/2013
Pages:	284
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.75(d)

Read an Excerpt

Song of the Red Sparrow, Book Three

The Spirit Is Willing

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By Rory Shane Riggs

iUniverse LLC

Copyright © 2013 Rory Shane Riggs
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4917-1534-5

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CHAPTER 1

Jessica McDowell did not attend the funeral service for her fiancé, the Reverend Joshua Lee.

The young, popular and handsome minister was laid to rest in the front lawn of the Methodist Church, only a few yards from where he had buried his cat just days before.

The congregation took up a donation in order to fashion the pastor a proper engraved headstone.

"Here Lies Reverend Joshua Lee. The Good Shepherd of the Prairie Gulch Church. 1860-1885. Asleep in Jesus."

The church members would have liked to have included another verse, or at least another line to the stone, but the engraver charged by the letter. It took a special committee made up mostly of choir members and bible study attendees to narrow the words down to an agreeable sentiment.

She could have watched the graveside service from her window at the Schroyer Inn, but Jessie did not.

If her weary green eyes had seen the service than his death would have been real.

Joshua was not dead.

Not in her heart.

In her heart, she rode beside him on horseback to that clearing in the woods where he revealed he had purchased property. In her heart, he was sitting beside her by the cool banks of the river, tempting her like the devil himself to her take off her shoes. In her heart, she was naked next to him, feeling his skin hot and taut next to her.

He could not be dead. It simply could not be true and so she did not allow herself to believe it. Someone as warm and full of life as he could not be planted in the cold dirt.

So Jessie made up her mind not to believe what her own eyes had even seen.

She simply put out of her mind that it was indeed her beloved who dangled from the beams of the new schoolhouse building.

Joshua Lee was not dead. She would take to her room and stay in bed until someone could prove otherwise.

Jessie heard the voices that day of the people heading to the church to say their last farewells. She heard the sobbing and the weeping, and the mutterings of her possible presence.

She heard all the statements of tragedy and loss.

She heard the remarks of the loyal as they questioned the Almighty's reasoning and she heard some even question His existence.

Jessie listened from her bed to every word, every voice carried to her window as the mourners walked by the hotel on their way to the field where he was put to rest. She would have slammed the pane shut had it not been for the sticky humidity that day and for the fact that she would have had to remove herself from her bed.

In the days that followed the funeral, Jessie McDowell cursed the sunlight as it rose each morning, bringing with it the promise of a new beginning and a new day.

How dare the sun rise again when such a loss was felt?

Jessie prayed each night before she wept herself to slumber that the evening would suddenly take her. Her wish was that she'd be discovered in the morning, lying peacefully and smiling contently and the townspeople would all gather around her pine box and say "Well, at least she's with Joshua now."

It was ironic, she thought, that those who would mourn her would refer to her soul joining Joshua Lee as "the least" that could happen when it was what she wanted the most.

Ingrid Schroyer -- one of the proprietors of the town's inn where Miss McDowell was a resident -- brought Jessie three meals every day but the young woman barely touched them. She nibbled at toast and took a few bites of cheese but she was not eating enough to maintain her strength. Her hunger for anything was gone. Her zest was gone. Her will was extinguished. Her spirit was broken.

Jessie did not know it because those around her decided not to tell her in her delicate condition, but she was not alone in her anguish.

The Deputy of Prairie Gulch Texas, Preacher Jones, had lost his life as well that same fateful night. During a social reception at his home, a fire engulfed his property, trapping him and his houseguests inside. Preacher would have survived had he not insisted in looking for his 16-year old daughter, Katrina. No one else had perished in the blaze at his home.

Mavis Hand – who owned a successful but albeit debatably ethical business outside the town limits – had been at the party and even in Preacher's company moments before the fire. She was able to make her escape from the rear entrance of his home but not without injury.

Her arm was badly burned.

Try as she could, she was not able to convince the deputy to leave the building.

He wanted to find his daughter. He had to know for certain she had made it out before he would leave. When Mavis went out the back door – her body already licked by flames -- she looked back inside and noticed Preacher running directly into the part of the house most consumed by the fire.

Mavis had told Katrina Jones this story during Preacher's burial, held the day before the minister's service. Preacher was buried without a service of memorial, as was his wish. He had told his daughter there was no sense people praying for him after the deed was done and if you had to attend a funeral to tell someone how much you loved and missed them then you were already a few days too late.

No memorial was best considering the way his body was later found.

When Katrina was then offered a place to stay by Mavis she took it.

No one in town said a word.

Some men helped the young girl relocate to Mavis' home, being familiar with the way and all.

As the girl coming into womanhood made herself at home in the only spare room of the estate available, Mavis called a household meeting and demanded that her new guest be left to her privacy and that the girl, unless she expressed otherwise, remain undisturbed.

And the employees of the world's oldest profession gracefully complied.

Mavis, after all, had witnessed Katrina grow. She had seen this child's progress from infancy. Katrina was almost like her own kin. The love she was not able to shower on her own offspring after birth Mavis showed to the Jones' baby girl. And so Mavis spoiled her.

Until Preacher would no longer allow it.

He believed there was only so much influence Mavis could properly administer. As a result, the woman had a special affection for the daughter of the deputy and took delight in watching her grow.

Then she would think of her own daughter, the one she had no choice but to leave behind, the one she had been told would need a better rearing than one Mavis could provide. It was a daughter she had only again come to know. But for Mavis, as much as she enjoyed knowing her daughter was at last near her, it still perplexed her why Jessica McDowell had come back into her life and just who had put the two in each other's path?

The two most important women in her life were now in pain. And all Mavis could do was attempt to provide some level of comfort and understanding. But she too was mourning. She was in her own misery, a private pain she had to keep, like most of her emotions, to herself.

Her older brother had been shot down and buried in a pauper's field with only a handful of attendees at his service. Mavis knew Mertyl Cooper questioned her attendance at the field the day Garrett James was planted there.

And Mavis winced at the wrong name printed on the wooden cross stuck in the ground. One day Mertyl Cooper would leave Prairie Gulch, perhaps one day soon, and Mavis planned then to remove the marker with the name "Garrett James" and replace it with a correct one.

Until then, she knew whom the man had been who lay there.

And she would visit him as discreetly as he had visited her. The wanted Jim Gatlin was dead. His body, even exhumed, was worth a bounty. So Mavis thought it best to keep his identity in her heart and thereby keep her brother forever close to her. In fact, new posters were on display in the town with a new likeness of Jim, now wanted for questioning in connection with a fire that killed the life of a lawman. Mavis would never tell anyone the man they sought for reward had died before the first flame.

His passing privately saddened Mavis. She locked his death up in her mind the way she locked up the image of handing over her child in a Maryland orphanage, the way she locked up her notes, photographs and programs in the forbidden attic. And the way she locked up her private thoughts in a safely guarded and recently rediscovered burgundy colored journal.

Mavis had taken to writing in her journal again. She had long dismissed the practice but recently found a need to express her thoughts and feelings. Her mind seemed overburdened with words that came to her more easily through an ink pen then through her lips.

In her heart, she knew Preacher Jones had been right. Perhaps she should have told Jessica McDowell she was her birth mother long before the tragic events. Perhaps she could have prevented them. But perhaps too she would have only accelerated them.

Mertyl Cooper remained stunned by the death of a man who had romantically pursued her. She was sad and angered by the murder of the man but his death did not affect her the way the death of her two innocent friends in the stagecoach had. And his death did not touch her the way the passing of Jessie's beau had affected her.

Mertyl Cooper was more distraught after hearing the town minister, Joshua Lee, had died by his own hand that same night.

She attended the service of her constant gentleman caller out of deep respect. It was Mertyl who stepped in because of the absence of anyone else to make arrangements for Garrett James.

His had been a nice service, she believed. And she did a good job for not having known the man that long and for loving him only briefly. At least she thought she had loved him. She had not enough time to figure it out for certain. Now she never would have that time.

The mood and the emotions Jessica McDowell could not seem to shake troubled Mertyl Cooper.

She never witnessed her lifelong friend so depressed, so withdrawn, so inverted. It was as if her entire personality had been turned inside out.

Mertyl routinely checked in on her friend. She would open the door to Jessie's room on several occasions throughout the day and look in on her. She was always still, quiet, and seemingly emotionless.

Sometimes Mertyl would catch her sitting up or asleep, but she never found Jessica talking, or at the window, or eating, or reading.

In the week since Joshua Lee's death, Mertyl had taken the liberty of washing her friend's hair twice and to sponge bathe her from the bed with a cloth and porcelain bowl. Even as Mertyl rubbed the water over her companion's arms, face, and neck, Jessie did not stir. Her eyes stayed transfixed, cold, and trapped.

Mertyl Cooper left Jessie's room with the bowl and cloth floating in the soapy water. A book she had offered but got no reply was tucked under her own arm still.

She had to return the bowl to Ingrid Schroyer in the kitchen and the book to Jorgen Schroyer so she made her way slowly- step by step-down the stairs, careful not to spill any water in front or behind her.

As she reached the lobby area, Mertyl noticed that the blood was completely gone from the floorboards. The image of the crimson stain had stayed with her since Garrett James lie there motionless in her arms.

Mrs. Schroyer had scrubbed the floors for days until every spot was removed.

As a result of Garrett James' grisly mysterious death at the inn, the hotel had only its four remaining residents. Two were the owners.

No one new had inquired about a vacancy.

As Mertyl took her direction into the kitchen to return the basin, the back door to the establishment opened.

It was her former employer, Donna Lilliforth.

Donna had made it from the blaze as well, luckily for her, she thought, untouched.

She had been near the front entrance looking out the window for any sign of Jessie's return with the minister.

The only other person at the party she knew had disappeared with one of the hosts. Because of Donna's location in the house, she was able to escape relatively quickly when the blaze broke out.

"Donna," Mertyl greeted, resting the bowl on the large table, giving her forearms a much-needed break from the strain. "How are things in town?"

"Bleak," Donna answered as she removed her hat and gloves. She continued to maintain her sense of social decorum. "The town has suffered a tremendous loss. Three losses in fact in one night. What a tragedy. How is our own patient today?"

That was the same question asked to Mertyl everyday by every individual with whom she had contact.

It was sometimes varied in semantics but the answer was always the same. The "she" in "how is she?" or "is she better?" was also assumed on Mertyl's behalf.

She wrang the cloth out in the sink and breathed heavily.

Donna had not asked the question as many townspeople did but rather out of genuine concern. She cared for Jessica McDowell. Perhaps not as much as Mertyl Cooper did but in her own way and very much just the same.

"No change. She's the same today as yesterday and the day before," Mertyl answered. "I haven't seen her this bad since she was twelve. In fact, this could be worse."

Donna Lilliforth, the namesake of the original dance troupe, sat at the head of the table and gingerly placed her removed attire in front of her. "How do you mean?"

Mertyl decided to join her former mentor in a seating position. She pulled a chair of her own and sat down. The resting felt good.

Mertyl had been on her feet for hours and hours at a time.

She was still planning a new show for that week.

She had to. It was in her contract as the showgirl of the town.

The sheriff had allowed her to cancel the week before due to the events in town. But now rehearsals were back on. So it was practice all day and care taking for her friend at night.

"Jessie was adopted by her parents when she was just a little over two years old," Mertyl began to explain, knowing she would be even more exhausted when she was finally finished with the telling. "When she was ten, her father accepted a missionary assignment in South America. Jessie's mother was afraid her daughter would contract some rare tropical disease so she and Reverend McDowell decided it would be best to leave her behind. The couple had no family close by. All of their relatives were still in the D.C. and Virginia areas. So there was only one place they could put her."

"Back in the care of an orphanage," Donna replied.

"We never called it that, but yes," Mertyl answered. "We called it the group home for girls. That's when I met her. She and I became friends from day one. We were immediately inseparable. We stuck up for each other and looked out for each other. I taught her how to smoke and she taught me how to dance. Of course, she quit smoking the first day she started. It took me a little while longer. Her parents told the home they would be back in six months so Jessie and I made the most of it. I was the one who named her Jessie. Before me, she was Jessica all the time. It didn't suit her. But then, the six months turned into a year, and then two years."

"Why?" Donna asked, wrapped up like a brown paper package in the conversation.

"Mrs. McDowell, Jessie's mother, was so troubled and so worried about her child getting sick that she forgot about her own immunizations before they left for their trip abroad. Jessie's mother contracted a virus and died there."

"Oh no. How awful." Donna felt a chill run up the back of her spine. She had no idea what the young woman had been through up until she met her friend at her dance organization. Donna knew the Reverend McDowell was a widower but she did not know to what end his wife had succumbed.

"The real sad thing is, Jessie's mother's body could not even be sent back home. There was some sort of outbreak of whatever killed her and the entire village had to stay put. Her father wasn't allowed out until the scare was over and they were sure he had not been infected. He couldn't even get word to his daughter that her mother had died until nearly a year after it happened," Mertyl told. "When the Reverend McDowell came and got her, she was a long time coming out of that and accepting it. I even went to live with her and her father for a time because he thought I would be a help in her recovery."

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Song of the Red Sparrow, Book Three by Rory Shane Riggs. Copyright © 2013 Rory Shane Riggs. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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