The Shining Badge Read online

  © 2004 by Gilbert Morris

  Published by Bethany House Publishers

  11400 Hampshire Avenue South

  Bloomington, Minnesota 55438

  www.bethanyhouse.com

  Bethany House Publishers is a Division of

  Baker Book House Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan

  www.bakerpublishinggroup.com

  Ebook edition created 2011

  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—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher and copyright owners.

  ISBN 978-1-4412-7055-9

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

  Cover illustration by Bill Graff

  Cover design by Danielle White

  TO NANCI ANDEREGG—

  When I was a child I was taught to sing a little chorus that

  contained the words “Brighten the corner where you are.”

  Since those days I have been aware of a few individuals

  who exemplified the words of that song—

  and you, Nanci, are not the least of these!

  Thanks, and thanks, and ever thanks for

  brightening the days of me and my family.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  PART ONE

  Jenny

  1. Ghosts

  2. Jenny Makes a Call

  3. A Time to Be Born

  4. Three Are Better Than One

  5. Promise to a Mother

  6. Campaign

  PART TWO

  Sheriff Winslow

  7. Sheriff Winslow’s First Day

  8. A Veiled Threat

  9. The Front Page

  10. Hummingbird Cake

  11. “How Long Does Love Last?”

  12. The Raid

  PART THREE

  A Proposal

  13. The Sign of Jonah

  14. A New York Yankee Bites the Dust

  15. Kat Has Her Say

  16. A Matter of Kin

  17. Setting the Trap

  18. “Take Her Out!”

  PART FOUR

  New Beginnings

  19. A Matter of Guilt

  20. “I’ve Missed Too Much!”

  21. A Changed Heart

  22. There’s Always a Harvest

  23. Clay Finds the Way

  24. A Christmas Love

  About the Author

  CHAPTER ONE

  Ghosts

  The ancient Studebaker truck shivered violently, then came to an abrupt halt as Lewis Winslow jammed his foot down on the brake. As soon as the truck stopped, steam boiled out from under the hood like a miniature geyser. Shaking his head angrily, he beat his fists against the steering wheel. “Worn-out piece of junk! I’d like to dump you in an automobile graveyard, wherever that is!”

  Knowing little about cars or engines, Lewis sat there tensely, halfway expecting the engine to blow up. He’d had a difficult trip nursing the truck to town, and now as he sat waiting as the steam slowly subsided, he thought back to the time when he and his family had left New York in this very vehicle. He’d lost every dime he possessed in the stock market crash. After having enjoyed a life of affluence, the Lewis Winslow family had been forced to move south in this pickup truck, carrying little besides the clothes on their backs. Raw memories brushed across Lewis’s mind, but he suddenly leaned back and stroked his chin thoughtfully. “I shouldn’t be angry at you, old girl,” he said patting the seat as if it were a faithful dog. “If it hadn’t been for you and Clint, we’d probably be in the poorhouse back in New York right now.”

  When Lewis opened the door, its creaking squeal raked across his nerves, and he thought back to the expensive cars he had owned when he had been a wealthy stockbroker. He had given his family everything they wanted, but in October of ’29 when the market crashed, he’d become a pauper. He remembered clearly the desperation that had seized him then and how relieved he had been when his daughter Hannah had discovered the title deed to a farm that had belonged to his first wife’s family in northern Georgia. Now, gathering his packages from the seat, Lewis felt a moment of intense gratitude and said aloud, “Thank you, Lord, for pulling my family up and giving us this beautiful place to live.” Slamming the door, he turned toward the house, but as he did, he was struck in the legs by a huge dog that suddenly reared up on him and licked his face.

  “Get down, Stonewall!” Lewis protested. He tried to shove the animal away, but nothing pleased Stonewall more than to sit on someone’s feet. For some reason the animal delighted in it, and now he put all one hundred and sixty of his pounds on Lewis’s feet and looked up adoringly.

  “Get off of my feet, you monster!” Since Stonewall weighed almost as much as Lewis himself, it was all he could do to shove the animal away with his knees. Stonewall stared at him reproachfully, then at once reared up on him again.

  “Stop that!” Lewis commanded and then shoved him away with his hip. He started toward the house, and Stonewall persisted in getting right in front of him, making progress almost impossible. “Why in the world did you take up with us?” Lewis moaned. The dog had simply showed up one day, battle scarred and fearful to look at. Kat had discovered him and claimed him for her own. Despite all protests from Lewis and his wife, Missouri Ann, Kat had begged and pleaded until finally the dog had been allowed to stay. He was as strong as a bull and would try to fetch anything, including a six-foot fence post. He also loved to swim, but most of all he loved to sit on people’s feet. He was tremendously loyal toward all of the Winslow clan, but strangers were often taken aback at the sight of the huge dog facing them with fangs bared when they approached one of the family.

  Lewis turned to follow the beaten path that led to the back door into the kitchen. As he passed by the chicken pen, he heard a sound and stopped quickly. Foxes had been known to get into the chicken house, but that did not seem likely in broad daylight, not with Stonewall roaming loose. He waited for a moment, heard a cry again, and this time he recognized it as the voice of his wife. Dropping the groceries, heedless as they spilled out on the yard, he ran toward the fenced yard and opened the gate. The door to the hen house was open, and as he stepped from the brilliant sunlight into the dim light of the hen house, he paused for his eyes to adjust. His eyesight cleared, and with a start he saw his wife on the floor.

  “Help me, Lewis, I’m stuck here!”

  Missouri Ann Ramey Winslow had been Lewis’s wife for just over a year, and she was eight months pregnant. She was a large woman, strong and active, but now one leg was doubled under her and the other disappeared in a hole in the floor.

  “What happened?” Lewis demanded as he moved toward her and knelt at her side.

  “Oh, I come out to gather the eggs, and this foolish board broke. I can’t get out.” Missouri Ann spoke calmly and showed no sign of strain. She was a woman of great faith and said, “Don’t worry, now. Just go get Clint, and you two can hoist me up.”

  Lewis felt a flicker of fear. Missouri Ann was thirty-nine years old, older than most women care to have a baby. He had grown to love her dearly, and despite his shock at becoming a father at the age of fifty-seven he had found himself more and more grateful for Missouri Ann and for the child that was to come. Ignoring her protests, he reached down and snapped off the rotten board, enlarging the hole. Then, moving around behind her, he put his hand under her arms and said, “Come on. Up you go.” He heaved, and Missouri Ann pushed with her free foot, and her leg suddenly appeared.


  She laughed and turned around to face him. “Well, you didn’t carry me over the threshold, but I guess this is about the same thing. I’m big as a house anyway. Thank you, dear.”

  Lewis took her kiss, but he was still concerned. “You’ve got some scratches on that leg. We’ve got to go get it taken care of. I’ll get the wheelbarrow and wheel you inside.”

  Missouri Ann laughed. She was not a beautiful woman, but she was striking. Her hair was jet black except for an inch-wide silver streak that began at her brow and went to the tips of her long tresses. The silver track was so startling that everyone’s eyes always went to it first. She had large, expressive blue-gray eyes and well-formed lips. She was a large woman at five-eleven, one inch taller than Lewis, and had been shapely before the child had ballooned her out. Now she reached out and touched Lewis’s face affectionately. “Well, don’t be silly. I’m not riding in any old wheelbarrow. I can walk.”

  Lewis ushered her out of the hen house, and when they passed out of the fenced chicken yard, he looked up to see Stonewall eating the bologna Lewis had brought back from the store. “Let that alone, you no-count mangy hound!”

  Stonewall came at once and tried again to sit on his feet, but Lewis shoved him away. He quickly gathered up the groceries scattered about the yard and carried them into the house. As they entered through the back door, his daughter Hannah turned from the kitchen and cried at once, “What happened, Ma?”

  “Oh, I’m so big I broke through the floor in the hen house.”

  “Her leg’s all scratched up, Hannah. Put something on it, will you?”

  Hannah Winslow Longstreet, little more than a bride herself, came at once. She had brown eyes and auburn hair pulled back in a simple knot. “You sit down here, Ma, and I’ll take care of you.”

  “You go on about your business, Lewis,” Missouri Ann said. “Hannah can take care of this. I’m all right.”

  Lewis put the groceries down, commenting sourly, “Stonewall ate the bologna.”

  “That’s all right. You go along, Dad.” Hannah smiled. She watched as Lewis left and then turned to her stepmother. “That’s the last time you get out of the house until this baby comes,” she said firmly.

  “Reckon you’re right about that, Hannah. I didn’t tell Lewis, but it scared me a little. Not for myself but for the baby.”

  While her stepmother recounted the incident, Hannah cleaned the scratches and applied iodine, which caused Missouri Ann to open her eyes and exclaim, “Ouch, that burns!”

  “You gave Dad a fright. He’s scared enough about becoming a father at his age. He’s afraid people are laughing at him.”

  “Why would they laugh? He’s a good, strong man, and fifty-seven—why, that’s not old at all. My grandpa, he lived to be ninety-three and was hale right up to the very end.” Her eyes grew soft, and she reached out and touched Hannah’s hair. “God’s been right good to give me a family. I thought I was done with havin’ young’uns, and then one day the Lord just told me that He would bring me a husband and we’d have children.”

  Hannah smiled, remembering how Missouri Ann had, on her first meeting with Hannah’s father, announced, “God sent you to be my husband.” Later she had announced that they would have children together as well.

  “Dad is happier than I’ve seen him in years. He never really was himself after Mother died, but you’ve come to fill a place in his heart.” She hugged the older woman and whispered, “I’m so happy for both of you!”

  ****

  “ . . . and now let’s see what’s going on down in Pine Ridge.”

  Lewis sat in his chair staring at the wall across from him, listening as Lum and Abner carried on their usual hijinks. He had grown fond of the radio program, for the two rural characters had captivated America almost as much as Amos and Andy had.

  Lewis was only half listening, however. He was still shaken over the accident suffered by Missouri Ann. He got up nervously now and walked around the room, conscious of a touch of pride, for it was a beautiful room indeed. He remembered how abysmal it had been the first time he had walked into it on arriving from New York. A group of squatters had settled in and had even allowed pigs and chickens inside, but the Winslows had worked tirelessly to clean the house. Now he admired, as always, the beautiful job of wallpapering that he and Hannah had done.

  He stopped for a moment, his eyes fixed on the framed medal that occupied a space over the fireplace. It was the Congressional Medal of Honor he had won in the Spanish-American War. He thought for a moment of the violent action of that day and how he and his brother Aaron had fought as fiercely as men can fight. It all seemed long ago now, but the medal was there to remind him, and it gave him a feeling of pride. He never spoke of his war exploits to anyone, but they were vividly embossed in his memory.

  He moved over and studied the picture of Deborah, his first wife. The picture was taken when she was only a girl, but he had always liked it. She had grown up in this old house before moving to New York City, where he had met her, and he felt, as always, a tug of sadness. But the awful, searing agony of loss had faded now, and he thought of her often as being happy and joyous in heaven. He moved to the other pictures on the wall, one of a wedding picture of Hannah and her husband, Clint, and once again he felt a surge of gratitude. Hannah had been a recluse for many years, never leaving the house. She had been molested as a young woman and had been unable to recover. But Clint Longstreet had appeared from nowhere, it seemed, and had won Hannah’s love, and now the two were happily married.

  The next picture was of his daughter Jennifer, the prettiest of all the girls, he had to admit. She smiled out at him through the photograph, and he shook his head, wondering at how far she had come. Jenny had been a spoiled socialite in New York, and he could never have dreamed that she would have survived a move to the hills of rural Georgia, but she had.

  The picture next to hers was of Katherine, who was called Kat. It was a relatively new picture, and although it was in black and white, his mind filled in the missing colors, the same gray-green eyes and tawny hair as Josh, his older son. Kat was a tomboy who loved hunting and fishing and anything out-of-doors, but there was a hint of real beauty in her expression. She looked a great deal like his first wife, Deborah, as well as Josh. Then, for a long moment, Lewis studied the portrait of Joshua, his son, whose poor choices in life had almost destroyed him. He had been a hard drinker and had served a month in the penitentiary, but now he had found success working as an archeologist in Egypt. He was so far away, and yet at times Lewis felt that he was here with them.

  He came then to the picture of himself and Missouri Ann as they stood in the church, Missouri wearing a lovely white wedding dress and he himself wearing a beautifully tailored gray suit. He could not get over the marvel of finding a woman to stand beside him and give him comfort at his ancient age (as he thought of himself). He had long ago given up on such thoughts, but Missouri Ann had brought a new joy in his life that equaled, at least, that which he had known when he had married his first wife. She certainly was nothing like Deborah had been, for Missouri was rural Georgian to the bone, and her language revealed her country upbringing. Having become a member of the Winslow family, Missouri Ann was now embarrassed by her speech and was taking lessons from the whole family on how to speak properly—to become “genteel,” as she called it.

  Lewis reached out and touched the photograph and then whispered, “Thank you, Lord, for my family. You’ve been good to all of us.”

  “What in the world are you doing, Dad?”

  Jenny had entered the room and saw her father standing there staring at his wedding picture. “Are you admiring yourself?” she teased.

  “Oh no,” Lewis said hurriedly, “I’m just a little upset. You see, Missouri Ann—”

  “Oh, I know. She’s fine, Dad.” Jenny came over and reached up and brushed a lock of Lewis’s hair back. “She’s fine. Just a few scratches.”

  “I’ll tell you it scared me, Jenny. Made
my knees weak.”

  “It didn’t make you very weak. Ma told me that you reached down and picked her up like she weighed nothing.” Jenny’s eyes danced as she spoke, for she loved to tease her father. She did not know what an attractive picture she made for him at that moment. Her laughing eyes were a brilliant green, and her hair was not auburn but a bright red. “Come on and sit down,” she said, “I’ll get you some tea.”

  “No, I don’t want any.” Lewis walked across the room and sat down, and as soon as Jenny sat down beside him, he said, “It scared me witless. Mostly about the baby.”

  Jenny reached over and took her father’s hand and held it and patted it. “The baby’s all right.” She laughed. “You didn’t waste any time. Married just over a year and you’re almost a father again.”

  “I don’t know how I got into this,” Lewis said ruefully. “Sometimes I think it’s all a dream.”

  “God did it. That’s what your dear wife says.”

  “She never had any doubt, did she?” Lewis grimaced. “I never will forget when I woke up in her house delirious with a broken leg, and almost the first thing she said was, ‘God sent you to be my husband.’ ”

  “Well, she was right about that, and she’s right about the baby too. She always said that you and she would have children.”

  “I’ve forgotten everything I ever knew about babies. What will I do, Jenny?”

  “You’ll do just what you did when Josh was born. You’ll learn how to change diapers.”

  “Great Caesar! At my age!”

  Missouri entered at that moment and was not even limping. “I’m all bandaged up and as good as new.”

  “Well, sit down here and try to tell Dad that, Ma.” Jenny smiled. “He’s always been a worrywart.”

  Jenny rose and Missouri took her seat. “You look like you’ve been into something sour, husband,” she said. “Come on, now. Let’s have a smile.”

  Lewis tried to frown, but his face broke. “Woman, you are unusual! That’s the kindest thing I can say.”

  Jenny found pleasure in watching the couple but now said, “I’ll leave you two lovebirds alone. Kat and I are going to town.”