hand, and as far as I’m concerned, God made me do it. He gave me the opportunity to save you from being shot and me from…who knows what. There is nothing wrong with a person defending himself to protect those he…loves.”
He took one last drag and threw the cigarette into the fire. “Yeah, well, there’s another problem…the fact that I care about you. We have a lot of traveling to do together yet. I just want you to know that you don’t need to worry…about sometimes having to share the tent. I mean…it’s hard for a man to care about a woman and not want to…show it…if you know what I mean.”
Elizabeth felt her cheeks growing hot. “I’m not sure what you want me to say,” she answered nervously.
“I’m just saying that until we reach Dawson, and until I come to terms with the turmoil inside my soul, I don’t intend to spoil something as…pure and perfect as you are. I respect you too much.”
“Clint, I’m not perfect. No one is perfect.”
“You are in my eyes. I just think we need to think about all this, to be careful, to wait till you reach your brother and we both are back to a halfway normal life before we make final decisions. And I come with a lot of leftover hatred and vengeance that I still need to deal with. I just wanted you to know that I’m not sure right now that loving each other is enough to cure the ugly side of me. And until I am able to overcome my past, I see no future. I live day to day, and, believe it or not, I did used to pray. I just…I found no answers. And I still blame God for what I’ve lost. For now I’m just glad to know that there is actually a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel. I guess watching the sky made me start thinking about all of this.”
Elizabeth looked up at the glorious lights again. “There is always light at the end of the tunnel, Clint. The light is the love of Jesus Christ. He understands everything about why we do the things that we do and He wants us to know that He is always waiting with open arms to relieve us of our burdens and our grief. All we have to do is want it and believe in Him.”
He rubbed his forehead. “Well, if I never reach that point, it sure won’t be for lack of you trying, will it?”
Elizabeth smiled. “It’s God who’s trying. He’s just using me to do it.”
Clint cleared his throat and rose. “You’d better try to get whatever sleep you can.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll, uh…I’ll sleep right outside the tent.” He finally turned and faced her. “The horses will be all right, now that others know what was going on. Most of the men up here are decent, you know. They aren’t all like Ezra Faine.”
Elizabeth rose. “How did you know, Clint?”
He smiled almost sadly. “A man leads the kind of life I have the last few years, he learns how to read men’s eyes. I had Faine figured all along.”
“And what do you see in my eyes?”
His previous look of hard anger over Faine quickly softened. “I see light. I see love, not just the love of a woman for a man. It’s more than that. I see someone who is full of trust and joy. Those are two things I haven’t known for years. My biggest joy in life…”
Visible, sudden tears in his eyes tore at Elizabeth’s heart.
“…was my son.” He cleared his throat. “Now he’s gone. God would have done better to have had someone carve out my heart while I was still alive than to take my son from me.” He quickly wiped at his eyes.
“God didn’t cause his death, Clint. You haven’t told me how it happened, but there is no way God had anything to do with it. All God can do when the evil of the world destroys the lives of innocent people is to take those innocents into His arms and bring them more peace and happiness than they ever could have known on earth. And those who caused the kind of pain you’re feeling will suffer horribly, forever, in a burning hell.”
He stood up and turned away. “I, uh…I think I’ll go check on the horses once more.”
His voice was gruff and broken. Elizabeth felt such pain in her heart she thought