She walked deeper into the woods. She spotted poison ivy and steered clear. Marigold was allergic to poison ivy—her mother said it was one of the curses of being a redhead. But she had never let it scare her. It was part of growing up in the forests of Trinity.

She gasped for air. Her heart was beating slow but hard. The air was so hot she could taste it. The sun had turned the humidity surrounding the bay into steam and made her dress damp. Her hunger had become confusion. She was so thirsty, her body burned all over. Her breasts were swollen and throbbing. They’d begun leaking, and the top of her dress was soaked.

When she reached the gnarled oak with a ribbon on its branch, she was near camp. She spotted her canvas tent in the distance. And she almost started crying when she saw it.

“Maggie! Hold on, Maggie! I’m coming!”

She trotted toward the tent, moving as fast as she was able. She fell once. Her knee hit an exposed root. Her white knee started to bleed. It was thick, slow-moving, dark blood. When she got closer, she saw the firepit of ash. She entered the white canvas tent and saw the empty pine-straw bed.

Her body felt empty. She became cold all over. She was not brave like the old man in her vision had said. She was a coward. She was scared. She was terrified. She screamed Maggie’s name and frightened the birds away for miles.

This place was anything but heaven.

Ten
Wild Blake Hickok

The E. P. Willard Gospel Troop tumbled into Hickok on gasoline fumes and parked in a field behind a gas station. They’d spent the afternoon setting up the large circus tent in an open field. The red crucifix hanging atop the tallest post was so high it looked no bigger than a crimson dot against the dusk clouds.

At sunset, E. P. had taken the choir into a local diner to eat supper. It was the same old song and dance E. P. did in every new town they visited. E. P. would buy things on credit, sweet-talk shop owners, and tell outrageous stories. He’d start tabs at restaurants, drugstores, grocers, and department stores. Then he would leave town without paying his bills. He’d done this all over the South, back East, and now in the Midwest. He left a trail of debts behind him a hundred thousand miles long. And often he left the broken hearts of naive young women in his wake.

Once he got caught skipping town outside Pretty Prairie. He had to spend two nights in jail. But E. P. was a charmer. Before his sentence was up, E. P. had led two deputies to salvation and baptized the sheriff’s sister.