Across the street at the Day Employment Agency a man spoke raucously through a loudspeaker.
"Wantin' a neat-appearin' Christian man with good habits to milk forty cows. Don't chew tobacco or smoke. Must be married and woman willing to do chores. See the boss here."
"How comes?" Sister Faye considered distractedly. "How comes a big tall man got to rob a old woman like me?"
Who would steal from old Sister Faye? She had never before found it necessary to lock the door of her mission. Even the dehorns and pickpockets would not violate the sanctuary of a disciple of God.
"Oh dear," she whimpered. "There just don't seem no reason to it. No reason at all."
"Except maybe he was a stranger in town," the Spirit spoke up suddenly. "Strangers without no jobs hereabouts gets powerful hungry. Hunger make you so sick and hollow inside you do just about anything."
"Yes!" whispered Sister Faye with the queer feeling that always preceded an important discovery. "He must have been a stranger, powerful hungry."
If she could just find out who he was. Guess he didn't know Sister Faye always managed to find a scrap to eat for a body that asked proper. Guess he didn't know there warn't no need to steal.
She had the picture of his face clearly in her mind. She frowned, trying to remember something that might identify him. There must have been something special about him that would help her.
"Something special," murmured the Spirit. "Something mighty special, Sister Faye, but not special like the world thinks about special. Just a big dumb sort of guy like you might see most anywheres kind of special, that's the kind of special he had. Like a innocent kid kind of special."
Sister Faye started to tremble.
"Had farming clothes on," she breathed.
The crowd in front of Day's milled back and forth and Sister Faye looked out over it with a new kind of vision. Suddenly her hunched shoulders straightened and her mouth opened. There, standing in the crown, praise God! was the yellow-haired man. She scurried across the street and approached him breathlessly.
"You, Jim!" she said, her heart rejoicing. "You got to give me back my money."
The yellow-haired man looked at her coldly.
"What money you talking about? Ain't got no money. You beat it!" He started to back up slowly, his eyes becoming shifty as he stared at her. The crowd fell back in astonishment.
"Got to have my money," Sister Faye said with authority. "Got to have my diadem-buying money. Got to have my money for saving Mary Magdalen."
The yellow-haired man was still backing up. Sister Faye followed him and opened her handbag with trembling hands. She took out the diadem and displayed it to him and the watching crowd.
"Got to gift this brouche, chock full of head-of-a-match diamonds, to Mary. Got to gift it to her and make her soul clean again so's she can hear the word of God."
The yellow-haired man stopped, a look of shock and recognition creeping into his hungry eyes. His lip twitched and his big hands seemed to fight an impulse to reach out and take the jewelry from Sister Faye.
"Got to have my money," Sister Faye repeated.
Some of the men in the crowd were turning their heads with interest. Towards them along the dusty street came a woman whose auburn hair flamed redly at the ends of looping finger-curls. The yellow-haired man quit looking at the diadem and his eyes filled with a strange, wild light.
"Ann!" he shouted hoarsely as he took a step towards her. "Ann!"
The hardness in the woman's eyes began to turn to bewilderment.
"Jim!" she cried as the yellow-haired man swept her into his arms.
Sister Faye opened her handbag and pulled out the diamond diadem. She crept up softly behind the woman and placed the crown gently on her head.
"My my," she said. "That looks mighty pretty in your hair."
"I guess it had ought to," said Jim. "Poor like I was I almost had to mortgage the ranch to buy it four years ago. You said you'd never part with it, you remember, Ann?"
"I got scared, Jim," she said sadly. "Nothing to eat. So I had to pawn it."
CONTINUED