To Walk a Crooked Road

There was one of those dear ladies who was attending one of my revival meetings. She was a young lady who was married to a cowboy, a man with a hard and heavy heart, a very jealous man who did not believe in the salvation of Jesus Christ-who, as a matter of fact, did not believe that his young wife needed to be out in public where other men maybe about, especially around a fifteen-year-old preacher such as me!She had attended my services every night from the beginning since it started and, of course, unbeknownst to me, had nothing but praises for me as a young evangelist and my wonderful sermons. Well, after one of those services, her husband decided to stay up and wait for her return. He immediately confronted her as soon as she stepped into the house and said, 'If you ever go back to that evangelist service again, I'm going to do something terrible to that evangelist of yours, something that you will regret for the rest of your life, do you understand?'Later on that week, she decided to go back to our revival meeting, even though she knew that it would cause a terrible confrontation with her husband. It was on a Thursday or Friday night when she showed up at our revival meeting, and unbeknownst to her, her husband had followed her to the meeting place. In the middle of the service, he came up next to her and sat down beside her. Of course, all this was going on without my knowledge! Apparently, he had determined that when I stood up to preach, he would use his six-shooter revolver-which was fully loaded with six bullets and belted in a side-strapped, tie-down holster-to put some holes into me!As I stood up to start my sermon, he stood up next to his wife, pulled his six-shooter out, aimed it at me, and started pulling the trigger.