The Outsider by Penelope Williamson

loneliness, able to summon only a pale shadow of the faith that had always steadied and comforted her. For how could a loving God allow a boy’s father, a woman’s husband, to be so unjustly hanged at the end of a rope?
    Yet the music found a way to be heard, just as God always found a way. It came back to her at first in sweet bits and snatches, like the whispered perfume of apple blossoms on a windy spring day. Then one night she had shut her eyes and opened her heart to the wind howling andmoaning through the cottonwoods. And the wind became a chariot of wondrous, booming chords, carrying her higher and higher, home to God. The music brought Rachel Yoder back to her faith again.
    And so when the music came to her on this night, Rachel opened her heart. It wasn’t sweet or gentle, not on this night. It was all violence and fury, fiery bursts of notes that exploded in a black sky, sudden and shattering as the sound of a bullet slamming into a wall.
    As always the music ended abruptly, falling into a hollow, echoing silence. Slowly, she opened her eyes.
    The room wavered before her, hazy from the lamp smoke. The outsider still lay in utter quiet on her bed. A gleam of sweat ran down his cheek and jaw and settled into the hollow of his collarbone. Lampshine reflected off the sheen of his eyes.
    He was awake.
    Her breath caught, first in surprise and then in fear. The way he was just lying there, staring at her with that taut silence . . . No, she was being foolish. He was only bewildered, and perhaps frightened himself, to come awake in a strange place.
    She rose and went to him. She thought she’d gotten used to him, somewhat. Hours, after all, had passed since he’d come staggering across her hay meadow. She had held him and fed him with a pap bottle, she had bathed his naked body. But she had never understood until that moment, until she looked down into his face, why the eyes were called windows into the soul. In the gloomy light his eyes glittered up at her, fierce and wild, and haunted with old and terrible fears.
    She didn’t realize she’d taken a step back until his hand grabbed her arm. His fingers dug painfully into her flesh,surprisingly strong. His ragged breathing sawed across her own gasp.
    “Where’s my gun?”
    She opened her mouth, but the words wouldn’t come until she had sucked in a deep hitching breath. “We put it up. In the wardrobe.”
    “Get it.” His fingers, so long and slender, whitened with the force of his grip. His strength seemed unnatural, unholy.
    “You’ll shoot me.”
    “I’ll shoot you if you don’t get it.” His eyes, glowing wild, locked with hers. “Get me the goddamned gun.”
    She believed him, and it didn’t matter that he was lying there gunshot and with a broken arm. Looking into those eyes, she believed him capable of anything. “I will, then. As soon as you let go of me.”
    She pulled against him but he didn’t let go. And then he did, so that she lost her balance and stumbled.
    The door to the wardrobe groaned as she opened it. She knelt and retrieved the leather cartridge belt from the back corner where Doctor Henry had put it. Even though she’d watched the doctor empty the gun of its bullets, she was still afraid of it. It slipped easily and quickly out of the oiled holster, surprising her anew with its weight. Its wooden grip had the smooth worn feel of an old ax handle.
    She thought the stranger had fallen back into sleep, for he lay utterly still again, eyes closed. Yet as she held the revolver out to him, his fingers wrapped around it with that unnatural strength. She felt the breath leave him then, on a sigh of relief.
    She stared mesmerized at the hand that held the gun. She hadn’t cleaned that part of him very well. Dried blood stained the creases of his fingers, and lay crusted beneath his nails.
    She prayed he was too far out of his head to notice the missing cartridges.
    His fingers tightened on the gun’s grip. Her gaze jerked up to