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more, the person we know slightly and do not like? Can you be gracious when you don’t feel like it? My friends, if you see someone unsavory in need, can you meet that need without resentment and bitterness? Ask yourself what Christ would do in this situation. Unto the least of these…”
    Griffin tipped back his head and gazed up into the rafters. He dealt with unsavory men all the time. And the good Lord knew he’d been gracious to one of his drivers. He ought to have fired Jules Harding the first time he showed up for work drunk. But Griffin had tossed him in the watering tank behind the livery to sober him up and put him on the box of the stage dripping wet. The second time, he’d turned him away and driven the run to Dewey himself—big mistake. As experienced as he was with horses, Griffin wasn’t much of a hand with a six-horse hitch. But they’d made it through. It wasn’t until time number three that he’d given Jules the boot. That was benevolence, wasn’t it? Giving a man three chances when old Cy Fennel would have cut him loose the first time.
    â€œI submit to you, dear people,” the reverend said, “that sometimes God would have us give our fellow man another chance. Remember the question about forgiveness?”
    For some reason, Griffin’s mind drifted to Vashti Edwards. Should he give her a chance at driving coaches? She was no more a stagecoach driver than he was. Less of one, if the truth be told. He’d be foolish to allow a girl who used to drive her daddy’s farm wagon to climb up on the box. The passengers’ lives would be at stake. No, he’d done the right thing to turn her down. And hadn’t he shown grace by letting her work at the office? Of course, he paid her a pittance—and only when she sold tickets. A dim spark of guilt flickered deep in his heart.
    Phineas Benton wasn’t through yet. “We’ve all had times when we were down—when another person reached out and gave us a hand. When someone gave us a boost we needed but didn’t deserve.”
    That was true enough. Griffin liked to think he’d built his own career. He’d been apprenticed to a blacksmith back in Pennsylvania when he was an awkward kid. His master had been tough on him, but he’d shaped Griffin into a competent farrier and ironworker. When his apprenticeship was over, Griffin had stayed on long enough to earn the money to buy his own tools. Then he’d come west. Opportunity lay in the West, he’d heard. The little town of Fergus, Idaho, had given him the chance to build his smithy and run his own business. Five years later when the livery stable owner moved on, Griffin had saved enough to buy him out, so he became one of the town’s most prominent business owners.
    But how much of that was due to his own hard work? To hear the preacher tell it, none. It was all God’s doing, and in a way, Griff could see that viewpoint. God could have kept him from succeeding. But the Almighty had blessed him and first made it possible for him to get started and later made him able to buy the livery.
    Then there was Isabel Fennel. Her father was once the richest man in town. When Cyrus died, she could have hired anyone she wanted to fulfill the Wells Fargo contract, or she could have simply told Wells Fargo they needed to find a new man to oversee the Fergus branch line. But no. She’d turned to Griffin and offered it to him. He had a lotto be thankful for. But did that mean he should turn around and put a green-as-grass girl who wasn’t strong enough to control a newborn filly on the box to drive six coach horses? Griffin shuddered. “All rise, please, for the benediction.”

    As they filed toward the church door, Vashti craned her neck. Griffin wasn’t hard to keep track of—he stood several inches taller than anyone else in the line ahead of her.
    Her friend Goldie nudged her. “Who you staring