Chapter 37

Bliss lay down on her bed and allowed her tears to wet her cheeks.

What had she done?

She felt completely alone and vulnerable knowing that Clint was too far away to help if she was in danger. She didn’t have the assurance of knowing that he was in the next room, sleeping lightly so that he could hear any sign of danger. She had just returned from the room where he had stayed, checking to see if he was really and truly gone.

The room was completely empty. He hadn’t left a trace behind that he had been there. There was nothing to remember him by but the memories.

She reached for her bedside table and pulled the drawer out to retrieve the buckle and rusty pocketknife that Clint had helped her retrieve the day he saved her life.

The day he had let her wear his boots while he walked barefooted.

The day he had taken her father’s accusations without a hint of retaliation.

The thoughts made her tears become a more steady flow.

“What have I done?” she muttered aloud into the silence.

Colt was sitting up in the kitchen on guard, but she still felt vulnerable.

Her family surrounded her, yet she still felt alone.

She was clean on the outside, yet she felt as dirty as sin on the inside.

Why did life have to be so complicated? Two months ago, she was enjoying her life as it was and had no doubts about where she was meant to be. She had walls build up around herself so that she never saw anything about herself that she didn’t want to.

Now those walls had fallen down and left her heart completely defenseless.

At about six o’clock that next morning, she woke up from about a half hour of sleep hat she had gotten that night and got dressed for the day. She didn’t even want to leave her room, but she knew that she had to face life without Clint, and she might as well start today.

Brushing out her hair and putting it in a dull braid, she heaved a sigh and realized that she didn’t want to face the day. She didn’t want to face her family.

Closing her eyes and sucking in a deep breath, she turned toward the door and exited her room.

She had to move on, because that’s what independent people do.

Walking down the hall, she made her appearance in the kitchen and her glimmer of confidence faded.

Every was scowling at her, even Daddy.

“What’s the matter with all of you?” she asked irritably.

“You know what my problem is,” Daddy said. “You had no right to run him off without talking to me first.”

Bliss tried to dismiss her guilt. “You didn’t even like him anyways.”

“But I hired him. It was my job to tell him when to leave, not yours,” Daddy reprimanded her.

“You said yourself that his job was done,” Bliss sat at the table and crossed her arms around her stomach.

“You still haven’t told us why you did it,” Grace mentioned.

“None of you would understand my reasons,” Bliss mumbled.

Even she didn’t understand her reasons. Her mind was one big jumbled up mess and she didn’t have the patience to untangle it at the moment.

“What was that?” Daddy asked.

Bliss bit her bottom lip and the tears that she hadn’t shed last night began to build up again. She looked around the table at her father, then at Grace, and finally at Colt. Then her gaze shifted to the empty chair across from her where Clint had sat and talked to her every day.

“What did you say, Bliss?” Daddy asked again, leaning closer.

As her eyes began to sting more and more, she feared that her tears would fall in front of her father. She popped up from her seat and ran down the hall toward the front door, hoping that no one would follow her.

She needed to be alone to think out herself - to punish herself for what she had done.

Running out onto the front porch, she gripped the railing hard enough to make her knuckles turn white. She tried to hold back the tears, but they refused to be bound behind her shut eyelids and spilled down her face.

Why did she feel so guilty? She knew good and well that she didn’t need Clint around to tell her what she was doing wrong like the Grace and Colt had always done.

Why did she miss the man so much? She had only known him for a few weeks and for the first week she had tried to get rid of him, not get to know him. Yet she had. She had grown to know him, to care for him - to love him.

Yet she had run him off like a criminal.

Just like she had ran off his brothers, and just like she had ran off Damian. She had lumped him in with them as a threat, not even considering how it would make him feel.

The front door opened, and Bliss turned around to see who had decided to invade her privacy.

Colt stood there, closing the door behind him and giving her a look that told her she could confide in him about anything that was troubling her.

Instead of feeling disappointed about his presence, she felt relieved. She suddenly felt the need for someone else’s presence and someone else’s voice besides her own.

Colt walked up to her and wrapped his arms around her shoulders, pulling her close to him like he had when they were young and she had hurt herself. He’d always had a way of making things hurt just a little bit less when she needed it most.

She buried her face in his shoulder and sobbed out all her tears until there were no more to shed. He stood there and let her cry, not making a sound. Even after her tears had stopped flowing, she stood in the circle of his arms, knowing that he didn’t think a thing of it other than he was trying to comfort her.

Whether Colt loved her or not, he always knew when to just be a friend.

She pulled away from him and wiped her eyes, taking a deep, soothing breath.

“Do you need to talk about it?” he asked her.

Bliss sat down in one of the white wicker chairs on the porch. “I suppose that I’d better. It might make some sense to me if I talk about it aloud.”

Colt sat in the chair beside her and waited for her to begin.

“I can’t even remember how the conversation got started, but somehow we got on the subject of how he had changed over the past week or so.” Bliss went on to tell Colt all about the conversation she and Clint had had yesterday in the kitchen, then about how she had told him to leave. “I can’t make heads or tails of myself. I’ve never been that rude to anyone before. I guess I was just infuriated that he was turning out just like you and Grace, always telling me what to do and how to do it. That or what I was always doing wrong.”

“I’ve never told you what to do, and you know it,” Colt defended, not looking at her.

“If you haven’t, then you sure implied it,” Bliss told him.

“Are you sure that you’re not convincing yourself that our belief in God hinders your lack of faith in him?” Colt asked.

Bliss shook her head. “I’m absolutely sure that’s not the case.”

“Are you? Because it seems to me that you accuse us of telling you how to live our life to convince yourself that you really don’t need the Lord,” Colt said in a confiding way.

Bliss rolled her eyes. “There you are, doing it again.”

“Bliss, don’t act like I’m doing this to hurt you. You know I care about you, and you know that I wouldn’t say these things because I like the sound of my own voice. Maybe you ran Clint off because the changes you saw in him were convicting and you didn’t want to catch yourself believing that God cares about us ordinary people,” Colt looked at her when he spoke this time.

Bliss gripped the armrests of the chair she sat in and didn’t reply.

She didn’t know how or why, but Colt’s words hit her somewhere deep down inside. They made her think with a part of her brain that she hadn’t used in years.

No matter what she tried, she couldn’t stop his words from ringing in her ears and convicting her heart.

*****

Clint rolled over onto his back and heaved. Grace’s cooking hadn’t done his body well. Climbing so far up the side of Almighty wasn’t as easy on his muscles as it had been the first time. His fear of heights had faded this time, too, though he was still uneasy with looking down.

He had camped on the ground last night, deciding to tackle the task of climbing back to the top of Almighty again the next day. He had grown mighty cold, and had missed his room back in the Cooper house, but a nice fire had kept him warm enough to get a little sleep.

Sitting up, he looked out over the land below the mesa until his eyes landed of the ranch. He could see the buildings, though the people walking around were like tiny ants from where he watched. He could still see if a rider rode up to or around the ranch, though, and that was what mattered.

Taking the long rope from where it was coiled around his shoulder, he moved to walk to the other side of the mesa where his horse was near the old pulley. If he could put some new rope of the pulley and get it back into working condition, he could get his supplies and gear up a lot easier.

He still had some jerky in his saddlebags that would last him for a spell while he was up on top of Almighty, but he knew that it couldn’t last him long. However, keeping Bliss safe was the top priority at the moment.

He reached the pulley and immediately set to work on replacing the ropes on it. The chilly wind cut through his coat and chilled him to the bone, alerting him that he needed to start a fire soon. With numb fingers, he finished replacing the rope and walked to the other side of the mesa to get down to the bottom to fix the other end. It was about a mile to walk, so he set off in a brisk job to try to warm himself up. He finally reached the place on the other side where the rope he and Bliss had used to get down the mesa was still tied to a sturdy rock. He made quick work of lowering himself down to the ground, his leather gloves preventing his hands from getting a rope burn.

Once back on the ground, he jogged around the mesa to where his horse stood. Humming an old cowboy song, he went about fixing the rope where it was weighted on one end with a rock so it wouldn’t blow loose. Heaving a sigh with a small smile tugging at his face, Clint looked at his contraption and prepared to try it out.

He tied one of the ropes around himself and pulled on the other. Slowly, he began lifting himself off the ground higher and higher until he was sure that it would work.

*****

Clint sat beside a small fire that night, darkness descending over the land around him as the sun set behind him.

Bliss had once told him how she liked to watch the sun set behind Almighty, and he couldn’t help but wonder if she was watching the sun set at that moment - almost as if she was looking right at him.

Even while they were apart, he couldn’t keep his mind off her. Every thought, every prayer, every action led him to think of her. He prayed for her almost constantly in his mind, knowing that the Lord wouldn’t mind hearing the same plea for her salvation one more time.

In time, he knew that the Lord would help him let her go, but he couldn’t’ bring himself to do that just yet. Not when he was still protecting her.