By Davalynn Spencer @davalynnspencer

The farmer’s market brimmed with vendors’ booths of homemade breads, jellies, candles, and stained glass. Home-grown vegetables covered tables in patches of silk-topped corn, golden peaches, and squash of green and yellow—a fresh-air market spread beneath sunshine and shade, populated by the young and old alike. Some came to sell their wares, others to visit, or to let their children play.

I came to redeem the time.

I had a couple of hours to wait for someone, so I chose the farmers market as a restful place to sit and read with no interruption, no internet, and no news.

After a few minutes into my book, a familiar background noise penetrated my consciousness, and I vaguely wondered why anyone would bring a chicken to a farmer’s market. Was it a gimmick to draw shoppers to fresh eggs?

Finally, I stopped reading and looked around more closely at my setting.

No chicken.

Hearing the drawn-out cluck again, I turned toward the sound. And there it was—not a rogue chicken on the loose, but a girl on the swing.

Every time she swung forward, the metal brackets groaned around the old beam, squawking like a brooding hen.

I had been certain the sound I heard was a chicken, but clearly it was not.

How quickly we can be misled if we’re not paying attention.

Our world is a noisy place full of false sounds and artificial intelligence. Lots of people are telling us what truth is and whom to believe. They insist that their perspective of what we may see or hear is the way things really are.

Beware the swinging chicken.

We must look into the facts ourselves. Check more than one source. And most importantly, check God’s word. Find out what He says. Learn His ways and follow them

There’s a lot of squawking going on out there these days. Check it out before you believe it.

Don’t let anyone capture you
with empty philosophies and high-sounding nonsense
that come from human thinking and
from the spiritual powers of this world,
rather than from Christ.
Colossians 2:8

Gathering Harley, Grace walked to the livery, her plans to find a job completely dashed. The town felt smaller than she remembered, despite some of the new storefronts she’d passed on her way in earlier that morning. Old favorites remained, like Reide’s Bakery and the Ceylon Tea Store. The Cañon City Record held its own, as did the grocery, hardware, and paint stores. But she doubted any of those businesses would hire her.

Of course, the Denton Hotel and Raynold’s Bank maintained their dignified status on Main Street. If Clara was still cooking at the Denton, maybe she’d take Grace on as a helper, though cooking wasn’t exactly Grace’s strong suit.

The Selig Polyscope studio was a new development. She’d heard about Cañon City flickers but had no opportunity to see one. Her traveling and performance schedule had left little down time as well as little skill to be used elsewhere. There weren’t many calls for trick riding and fancy shooting.

As she approached the livery for the second time that morning, it seemed, well, shorter. Not as grand as it had been in her childhood, but as flat as the painted-tarp backdrops of buffalo herds and mountains stretched across arena floors.

In three and a half years, the atmosphere had changed.

She had changed.

~Covering Grace

Inspirational Western Romance – where the hero is heroic.

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