Cloud of Sparrows Read Free Page B

death. He was still alone. For a moment, he thought he had been having the bad dream again.
    “Therefore wait ye upon me, saith the Lord, until the day that I rise up to the prey . . .”
    He recognized Cromwell’s voice coming from the deck above. He exhaled and lowered his weapons. The preacher was at it again, spewing hellfire at the top of his lungs.
    Stark got up from the bunk. His trunk was open, ready for final packing. In a few hours, he would be ashore in a new land. He felt the comforting heft of the big gun in his hand. The .44 caliber Colt Army Model Revolver with the six-inch barrel. He could draw the two pounds of steel and fire, all inside of one second, hitting a man’s torso at twenty feet with the first shot three times out of five, and with the second shot the other two times. At ten feet, he could send the first bullet between a man’s eyes, or into his right one or his left, take your pick, two times out of three. The third time, if the man ran, Stark could put the bullet through his spine, right at the base of the neck, and blow his head clean off his shoulders.
    He would have preferred to keep the Colt on him, in an open holster slung low on his right hip. But now was not the time to wear a gun outside his clothes. Or a knife the size of a small sword. The bowie went back in its sheath and into the trunk between two sweaters Mary Anne had knit for him. He wrapped the Colt in an old towel and put it next to the bowie. He covered them both with folded shirts, and on top of the clothes he placed a layer of a dozen Bibles. In the hold of the ship was a crate with five hundred more. How the Japanese were going to read the King James Version, only God and Cromwell knew. It didn’t matter to Stark. His interest in Scripture began and ended with the second line of Genesis. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. He doubted he would be called upon to do any preaching anyway. Cromwell too dearly loved the sound of his own voice.
    Stark had a second gun, a compact Smith & Wesson .32 caliber pocket pistol. It was small enough to hide under his jacket and light enough to keep in a reinforced pocket on the lower left-hand side of his vest, just above the belt line. To get it out, he had to cross-draw, reaching under his jacket and into the vest. He tried it a few times, practicing until his body remembered the movements, and he was as smooth and as quick as he was going to be. He didn’t know how good the .32 was at stopping a man. He hoped it was better than the smaller bore .22 he’d had before. With the .22, five bullets could go into a man, and if the man was big enough and angry enough and afraid enough, he would keep on coming, blood spilling from his face and chest, the ten-inch blade of his bowie knife still hungry for your guts, and it could take a lucky swing of the empty gun fracturing the man’s skull to finally bring him down.
    Stark put on his jacket, picked up his hat and gloves, and went up the stairs. Cromwell and his fiancée, Emily Gibson, said their final amens and rose from their knees as he arrived on deck.
    “Good morning, Brother Matthew,” Emily said. She wore a simple gingham bonnet, a cheap cloth coat lumpy with cotton padding, and an old wool scarf around her neck to keep the cold away. A stray ringlet of golden hair fell out of the bonnet by her right ear. She reached up and tucked it back in as if it were something to be ashamed of. How did that line go? Neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you. Funny. She made him think of biblical verses. Maybe she was meant to be a preacher’s wife after all. Worry briefly creased her brow before her turquoise eyes sparkled again, and she smiled at him. “Did our prayers wake you?”
    Stark said, “What better way to wake than to the Word of God?”
    “Amen, Brother Matthew,” Cromwell said. “Is it not said, I will not