A New Beginning Read online

  © 1997 by Michael Phillips

  Published by Bethany House Publishers

  11400 Hampshire Avenue South

  Bloomington, Minnesota 55438

  www.bethanyhouse.com

  Bethany House Publishers is a division of

  Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan

  www.bakerpublishinggroup.com

  Ebook edition created 2016

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  ISBN 978-1-4412-2953-3

  Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  To the Reverend Sam Kleinsasser, from whose early life Christopher’s story, much of it factual, is drawn—Pastor who baptized me, Mentor who nurtured me, Friend who loved me—a man whose character and worldwide ministry constantly remind me that all men and women, whatever their background, can be used mightily by our Father.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1. Two Changes

  Chapter 2. The New Sheriff

  Chapter 3. Zack’s Triumph

  Chapter 4. Christopher’s Quandary

  Chapter 5. Funeral at Dutch Flat

  Chapter 6. Trustworthiness

  Chapter 7. Memories

  Chapter 8. Sisters

  Chapter 9. A Sudden Shock

  Chapter 10. Passing On of a Legacy

  Chapter 11. The Call

  Chapter 12. Christopher’s Half of the Decision

  Chapter 13. Christopher’s Story

  Chapter 14. The Answer

  Chapter 15. That Evening

  Chapter 16. Moving Back In

  Chapter 17. Partings

  Chapter 18. A New Beginning

  Chapter 19. A Vision for Ministry

  Chapter 20. Family Tithes

  Chapter 21. Who Is God?

  Chapter 22. Leaving the Rock by the Side of the Road

  Chapter 23. What Comprises Faith?

  Chapter 24. Who’s Watching Your Faith?

  Chapter 25. A Letter

  Chapter 26. What Is God’s Purpose?

  Chapter 27. How Is It Achieved?

  Chapter 28. What Is Christlikeness?

  Chapter 29. Shocking Surprise

  Chapter 30. Hard Questions

  Chapter 31. An Unexpected Caller on a More Unexpected Errand

  Chapter 32. Penetrating Words

  Chapter 33. Mr. Royce’s Story

  Chapter 34. A Most Wonderful Question

  Chapter 35. Living Epistles

  Chapter 36. Franklin Royce Surprises the Whole Town

  Chapter 37. A Hard Day in Town

  Chapter 38. Learning to Be a Pastor’s Wife

  Chapter 39. The Freight Company

  Chapter 40. Looking Toward the Future

  Chapter 41. What Is Going to Last?

  Chapter 42. A Permanent Legacy

  Chapter 43. A Double Tithe

  Chapter 44. Learning to Wait

  Chapter 45. Two Kinds of Obedience

  Chapter 46. Good Tears and Goodbyes

  Chapter 47. New Start in Our Own Home

  About the Author

  Books by Michael Phillips

  Chapter 1

  Two Changes

  If life didn’t contain change, I don’t suppose it would be very interesting. Change is the thing that brings about decisions. Decisions call for choices, and without choices to make a person can’t grow.

  The only trouble is, most of the time it’s the difficult changes and the hard choices you face that make you grow the most. It’s not easy to be happy and thankful sometimes when circumstances bring change. You might look back later and realize you grew and matured through them, but at the time all you can think of is how hard it is.

  The first change to come into our lives didn’t have to do with me. The second one did.

  My brother Zack took the job as the new sheriff of Miracle Springs. That was the first one.

  We women didn’t like the idea too much. But Pa and my other brother Tad and Uncle Nick thought it was great. It was obvious Pa was mighty proud of his son. He and Uncle Nick would joke with each other about coming West to get away from the law—and now they were living under the same roof with the law! Before Zack even had the badge pinned on his vest, Tad was already talking about becoming his deputy. All my stepmother Almeda and my sister Becky and I could think of was the danger a sheriff might have to face . . . and a deputy too.

  “There’s nothing to worry about,” Zack kept saying. “Simon hasn’t had to use his gun since the gold rush days.”

  “Zack’s right,” Pa added with a laugh. “Why, he told me himself that he has to oil his gun to keep it from rusting up! Sheriffin’s an administrative job these days.”

  I don’t think Almeda was convinced.

  Zack took over the job right after Christmas, with the beginning of the new year 1868. Simon Rafferty, the old sheriff who had just retired, still came into town from his ranch almost every day just to make sure Zack got off to a good start. He made it clear that Zack could call on him any time if he needed help with something, and that made it a little easier on all of us.

  The other big change about to come to the Hollister-Braxton home in Miracle Springs had to do with my new husband, Christopher Braxton, and me. The Braxton half of the clan was planning to pull up stakes and leave the Hollister half to itself again. And this time I wouldn’t be on the Hollister side of the fence, but the Braxton side.

  Christopher and I waited until two weeks after Christmas—for the season to pass and for Zack to get situated in his new job—before telling the rest of the family what Christopher felt the Lord was showing him—that we were to leave Miracle Springs and return to the East. We would be making plans to leave California early in the spring.

  We made the announcement one day at supper. After Christopher finished, everyone sat stone-faced and absolutely silent. I was looking down at my plate. None of my family could believe what they’d heard. The silence went on for several minutes. No one took another bite.

  At last I heard someone start to cry softly. I knew it was Becky, and I glanced up.

  “But . . . I don’t want you to leave again, Corrie,” she said in a forlorn tone.

  “We have to do what the Lord wants,” I said, trying to be brave and sound spiritual, but my voice trembled. It was what I thought I should say, though the words felt rather hollow. I didn’t want to leave Miracle Springs either.

  “I missed you so much the last time you were gone,” Becky added. “Who will I have to talk to?”

  I didn’t know what to say. I glanced helplessly at Christopher. After he had become such a friend to Becky, and after the long talk he and I had had with her a few months earlier about being content not being married, it seemed now we were about to abandon her. I know that’s how it appeared to Becky, anyway, and neither Christopher nor I were anxious to say something like, “The Lord will provide you someone,” which could only sound rather superficial in her ears. It’s all well and good to give someone advice, but then you have to back it up, and I know it must have seemed to Becky that we weren’
t going to back up ours.

  “You can talk to me!” suddenly piped up Ruth enthusiastically from her seat beside Becky. It was silent for just an instant. Almeda smiled, and even Becky saw the humor in it and now laughed lightly through her tears.

  “Certainly,” she said, putting her arm around my eleven-year-old half sister. “How could I have forgotten? Thank you, Ruth—of course I shall talk to you.”

  Ruth beamed as though she had solved the whole world’s problem. Everyone was glad for the diversion in the conversation. A little more laughter followed, and the subject of our leaving did not come up again. But I thought it strange at the time that Almeda didn’t say something further. Maybe she could sense how hard the whole situation was for me.

  Neither was it something Christopher and I talked much about in the weeks that followed. We just gradually made preparations. He wrote to San Francisco for ticket information and I began thinking of what we should take. We didn’t have much—just our clothes and quilts and dishes and a few pieces of furniture we had collected to furnish the little bunkhouse on my family’s property where we lived. But we would need at least some of those things to start our new life in the East. So I started saving containers that came into the Hollister Supply Company, our family business, to box and crate up our things.

  Jesse Harris—the former outlaw who’d been wounded outside the house the previous fall and had been with us convalescing ever since—had been taking his meals at the table with us for several weeks now. That was another big change that happened, partly in our lives, but mostly in Mr. Harris’s life. He’d never been part of a group of people who acted like a family. The closest thing he’d ever known was the Catskill Gang. But even though those men rode together, they were still out for themselves.

  Mr. Harris couldn’t get used to the way we all shared together and prayed about decisions. He had changed a lot since asking the Lord to be part of his life, but it was hard for him to understand what all the fuss was about Christopher and me leaving. He’d always done whatever came into his mind to do.

  Chapter 2

  The New Sheriff

  By the end of the year, Mr. Harris had recuperated from his wounds enough to get up and move around pretty good. It had taken longer than Doc Shoemaker had figured it ought to. He said it was probably because Mr. Harris wasn’t very fit in the first place, drinking so much and not eating well. So we did our best to get as much healthy food down him as we could, and of course not a drop of alcohol passed his lips. By Christmas he’d put on probably ten or fifteen pounds and his face showed some color.

  No one talked much about it, but we all knew that eventually something was going to have to happen because there were still warrants out for his arrest. Pa had been spending lots of hours alone with Mr. Harris in the bedroom where he lay. None of the rest of us heard any of those conversations, but they were ones Mr. Harris sure never forgot, because he’d often later refer back to one thing or another that Pa’d told him.

  A few days after Christmas Sheriff Rafferty came to see Zack. They spoke quietly amongst themselves at one end of the sitting room. When Sheriff Rafferty got up to leave, all I heard him say as they approached the door was, “You sure?”

  “Yep, I’ll handle it,” replied Zack.

  As soon as the sheriff was gone, Zack went into the bedroom.

  “How you feeling, Mr. Harris?” he asked.

  “Near like new, young Hollister. These women o’ yers takin’ mighty good care o’ me.”

  “That’s what I want to talk to you about, Mr. Harris,” said Zack. “You know it’s near time you were leaving.”

  “Yep—I reckoned it was coming sooner or later.”

  “You know what that means?”

  “Don’t worry, son,” said Mr. Harris. “Your pa an’ me, we done talked all about it. Bein’ accountable—that’s what your pa calls it. I reckon he’s right too. I know I gotta own up t’ my past and pay fer the wrong I done. If I’m gonna git my life straightened around, ain’t no time to waste doing things like I used to. I know well enough where my new home’ll be soon’s I leave here.”

  Zack nodded, and they talked a little more.

  So it turned out that Zack’s first job as sheriff was to transfer Mr. Harris from our house to the jail in town. That’s what Sheriff Rafferty had come to talk to him about, offering to do it before the first of the year if Zack wanted. I think he halfway expected trouble. But knowing the man he had shot well enough by this time, Zack said it would not be a problem and that he would handle it alone. I think Zack needed to carry out this first assignment for the sake of his own confidence—and to show the people of Miracle Springs that he was prepared to be their sheriff, whatever came his way.

  On the second of January, Zack loaded Mr. Harris into a two-seater buggy, then the two of them set off for town. Zack was now wearing the badge on his vest and his gun on his hip, which I still couldn’t get used to. But he didn’t take any extra precautions with Mr. Harris, like handcuffs or tying his hands or anything. Even writing that sounds funny, because in the months he had been in our house Mr. Harris had become our friend. Yet still, as he and Zack rode off, with Pa and the rest of us watching them go just a little bit uneasily, there was still no way around the fact that the one man was a sheriff and the other was an outlaw who had come to town in the first place vowing to kill both Zack and Pa.

  But Mr. Harris really had changed. Nothing happened, and they made it to town just fine.

  But something else did happen, and it wasn’t that much later either.

  No one expected anything so dramatic so soon. Sheriff Rafferty hadn’t encountered a dangerous incident in years, and within Zack’s first month, he almost . . .

  Well—I should tell you about it as it happened.

  I was at the supply company—which most of us still called the freight company from its days as the Parrish Mine and Freight—for the day, both working and gathering up some crates and boxes in the wagon to take home for packing. I had just loaded one of them up into the back of the wagon when I saw a stranger ride up and dismount in front of the Gold Nugget saloon down the street. The first thing I noticed was that his horse and saddle weren’t cared for. A lot of men don’t own much of anything, but at least they keep their horses brushed and their saddles oiled.

  I shuddered when I saw him. I could tell he was a bad man. I don’t like to say that about anyone God has made. I don’t suppose anyone is really bad through and through because God says we’re made in his image. But from the look on this man’s face I didn’t see too much left of whatever goodness of God’s image might have once been in him.

  He walked into the saloon and I went back into the freight company.

  I’d just about forgotten about the incident. Ten minutes or so passed. Suddenly I heard yelling outside.

  “Hey, you in there!” called a loud voice from the street. “Yeah, inside the jail. . . .”

  The instant I heard the word jail, my heart leapt into my throat. I dropped what I was doing and ran to the window. There was the man I had seen, now standing in the middle of the street facing the sheriff’s office!

  “I’m talking to you, Sheriff! I’m calling you out,” yelled the man in an angry tone. “You got my partner in there in your jail, and I want him.”

  A second or two of silence followed. My eyes were as big as saucers. I was terrified but didn’t know what I could do. I didn’t even think to pray. I just stood there at the window hoping Zack wouldn’t come out.

  But slowly the door of his office opened. Zack walked slowly out onto the board sidewalk, then stopped, just looking at the man. There was still that holster and gun at his side, and I liked it less now than ever!

  “Jesse Harris is your partner?” asked Zack calmly.

  “Ain’t the name I knowed him by—but you got him in there all right. I heard. An’ you either bring him out t’ me, or else I’ll have t’ go in there an’ git him myself.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t
do that, mister,” said Zack.

  The man laughed.

  “Where’s the sheriff, deputy? My business is with him.”

  “I’m the sheriff.”

  The man laughed again, this time with cruel derision in his tone.

  “Come on now, son, before you git yerself hurt—just let my partner go and you can run along home.”

  “I told you before, I can’t do that.”

  “Yer just a blamed kid!” the man said, still laughing. This was going to be easier than he’d thought! “Who’s gonna stop me?”

  “If I have to, I will.”

  Suddenly the man’s laughter stopped and his face took on a deadly expression.

  “Now look, kid, I ain’t got all day.” As he spoke his fingers began to inch imperceptibly toward his gun. I saw his fingers twitching ever so slightly.

  Before I knew what I was doing, I opened the door and ran out.

  “Zack!” I screamed.

  “Get back, Corrie!” shouted Zack. His voice was different than I’d ever heard it. Even as Zack spoke to me, I saw that he never took his eyes off the stranger. His face was calm but his eyes had a squint to them, and I knew he was watching the man’s hand.

  I stopped in my tracks, terrified for what might happen. Out of the corner of my eyes I saw a few people creeping out of the stores and saloons up and down the street. We’d heard about things like this, but there’d never been so dramatic a showdown right in the middle of Miracle Springs.

  “Come on now, kid,” said the stranger, “I don’t wanna have t’ kill you. But I don’t aim t’ leave this two-bit town till I got my partner, one way or another. Now bring him out, I tell you, before I have t’ get rough with you.”

  Zack didn’t say a word. Not a muscle on his body moved.

  Suddenly the man went for his gun.

  I screamed and ran toward them.

  It was all over in a second or two. Only one shot rang out, dust flew, several yells and shouts sounded, and within seconds the street filled with thirty or forty people running forward into the street.

  Nobody had even seen Zack’s hand move—that’s how fast he’d drawn his gun. The gunfire I’d heard was his. The stranger lay writhing in pain in the middle of the street, shouting out obscenities. A crowd gathered around him as Zack now approached. The people stood back to let him through, looking at him with a sudden new awe and respect, as if they’d never seen him before.