Fallon (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures) Page 16

  At daybreak the stranger walked up the mountain. Years ago lightning had struck the base of the ridge, and before rain put out the fire it burned its way up the mountain in a wide avenue. Strangely, nothing had ever again grown on that slope. Truth to tell, we’d had some mighty dry years after that, and nothing much had grown anywhere.

  The Utes were superstitious about it. They said the lightning had put a curse on the mountain, but we folks in Red Horse put no faith in that. Or not much.

  It was almighty steep to the top of that ridge, and every step the stranger took was in plain sight of the town, but he walked out on that spring morning and strode down the street and up the mountain. Those long legs of his took him up like he was walking a graded road, and when he got to the flat rock atop the butte he turned back toward the town and lifted his arms to the heavens.

  “He’s prayin’,” Ralston said, studying him through Brennen’s glass. “He’s sure enough prayin’!”

  “I maintain he’s a gambler,” Brennen insisted. “Why can’t he do his praying in church like other folks? Ask the reverend and see what he says.”

  Right then the reverend came out of the Emporium with a small sack of groceries under his arm, and noting the size of the sack, I felt like ducking into Brennen’s Saloon. When prosperity and good weather come to Red Horse, we’re inclined to forget our preacher and sort of stave off the doctor bills, too. Only in times of drought or low-grade ore do we attend church regular and support the preacher as we ought.

  “What do you make of him, Preacher?” Brace asked.

  The reverend squinted his eyes at the tiny figure high upon the hill. “There are many roads to grace,” he said. “Perhaps he has found his.”

  “If he’s a preacher, why don’t he pray in church?” Brennen protested.

  “The groves were God’s first temples,” the reverend quoted. “There’s no need to pray in church. A prayer offered up anywhere is heard by the Lord.”

  Ralston went into the hotel, and we followed him in to see what name the man had used. It was written plain as print: Brother Elisha, Damascus.

  We stood back and looked at each other. We’d never had anybody in Red Horse from Damascus. We’d never had anybody from farther away than Denver except maybe a drummer who claimed he’d been to St. Louis…but we never believed him.

  It was nightfall before Brother Elisha came down off the mountain, and he went at once to the hotel. Next day Brace came up to Brennen and me. “You know, I was talking to Sampson. He says he’s never even seen Brother Elisha yet.”

  “What of it?” Brennen says. “I still say he’s a gambler.”

  “If he don’t eat at Sampson’s”—Brace paused for emphasis—“where does he eat?”

  We stared at each other. Most of us had our homes and wives to cook for us, some of the others batched it, but stoppers-by or ones who didn’t favor their own cooking, they ate at Sampson’s. There just wasn’t anywhere else to eat.

  “There he goes now,” Brennen said, “looking sanctimonious as a dog caught in his own hen coop.”

  “Now see here!” Ralston protested. “Don’t be talking that way, Brennen. After all, we don’t know who he might be!”

  Brother Elisha passed us by like a pay-car passes a tramp, and turning at the corner he started up the mountain. It was a good two miles up that mountain and the man climbed two thousand feet or more, with no switchbacks or twist-arounds, but he walked right up it. I wouldn’t say that was a steep climb, but it wasn’t exactly a promenade, either.

  Brace scratched his jaw. “Maybe the man’s broke,” he suggested. “We can’t let a man of God starve right here amongst us. What would the folks in Virginia City say?”

  “Who says he’s a man of God?” Brennen was always irreverent. “Just because he wears a black suit and goes up a mountain to pray?”

  “It won’t do,” Brace insisted, “to have it said a preacher starved right here in Red Horse.”

  “The reverend,” I suggested, “might offer some pointers on that.”

  They ignored me, looking mighty stiff and self-important.

  “We could take up a collection,” Ralston suggested.

  Brother Elisha had sure stirred up a sight of conversation around town, but nobody knew anything because he hadn’t said two words to anybody. The boys at the hotel, who have a way of knowing such things, said he hadn’t nothing in his valise but two shirts, some underwear, and a Bible.

  That night there was rain. It was a soft, pleasant spring rain, the kind we call a growing rain, and it broke a two-year dry spell. Whenever we get a rain like that we know that spring has surely come, for they are warm rains and they melt the snow from the mountains and start the seeds germinating again. The snow gone from the ridges is the first thing we notice after such a rain, but next morning it wasn’t only the snow, for something else had happened. Up that long-dead hillside where Brother Elisha walked, there was a faint mist of green, like the first sign of growing grass.

  Brace came out, then Ralston and some others, and we stood looking up the mountain. No question about it, the grass was growing where no grass had grown in years. We stared up at it with a kind of awe and wondering.

  “It’s him!” Brace spoke in a low, shocked voice. “Brother Elisha has done this.”

  “Have you gone off your head?” Brennen demanded irritably. “This is just the first good growing weather we’ve had since the fire. The last few years there’s been little rain, and that late, and the ground has been cold right into the summer.”

  “You believe what you want,” Ralston said. “We know what we can see. The Utes knew that hillside was accursed, but now he’s walked on it, the curse is lifted. He said he would bring life, and he has.”

  It was all over town. Several times folks tried to get into talk with Brother Elisha, but he merely lifted a hand as if blessing them and went his way. But each time he came down from the mountain, his cheeks were flushed with joy and his eyes were glazed like he’d been looking into the eternity of heaven.

  All this time nothing was heard from Reverend Sanderson, so what he thought about Brother Elisha, nobody knew. Here and there we began to hear talk that he was the new Messiah, but nobody seemed to pay much mind to that talk. Only it made a man right uneasy…how was one expected to act toward a Messiah?

  In Red Horse we weren’t used to distinguished visitors. It was out of the way, back in the hills, off the main roads east and west. Nobody ever came to Red Horse, unless they were coming to Red Horse.

  Brennen had stopped talking. One time after he’d said something sarcastic it looked like he might be mobbed, so he kept his mouth shut, and I was just as satisfied, although it didn’t seem to me that he’d changed his opinion of Brother Elisha. He always was a stubborn cuss.

  Now personally, I didn’t cater to this Messiah talk. There was a time or two when I had the sneaking idea that maybe Brennen knew what he was talking about, but I sure enough didn’t say it out loud. Most people in Red Horse were kind of proud of Brother Elisha even when he made them uncomfortable. Mostly I’m a man likes a hand of poker now and again, and I’m not shy about a bottle, although not likely to get all liquored up. On the other hand, I rarely miss a Sunday at meeting unless the fishing is awful good, and I contribute. Maybe not as much as I could, but I contribute.

  The reverend was an understanding sort of man, but about this here Brother Elisha, I wasn’t sure. So I shied away from him on the street, but come Sunday I was in church. Only a half dozen were there. That was the day Brother Elisha held his first meeting.

  There must’ve been three hundred people out there on that green mountainside when Brother Elisha called his flock together. Nobody knew how the word got around, but suddenly everybody was talking about it and most of them went out of curiosity.

 
By all accounts Brother Elisha turned out to be a Hell-and-damnation preacher with fire and thunder in his voice, and even there in the meeting house while the reverend talked we could hear those mighty tones rolling up against the rock walls of the mountains and sounding in the canyons as Brother Elisha called on the Lord to forgive the sinners on the Great Day coming.

  Following Sunday I was in church again, but there was nobody there but old Ansel Greene’s widow who mumbled to herself and never knew which side was up…except about money. The old woman had it, but hadn’t spent enough to fill a coffee can since old Ansel passed on.

  Just the two of us were there, and the reverend looked mighty down in the mouth, but nonetheless he got up in the pulpit and looked down at those rows of empty seats and announced a hymn.

  Now I am one of these here folks who don’t sing. Usually when hymns are sung I hang on to a hymnal with both hands and shape the words and rock my head to the tune, but I don’t let any sound come out. But this time there was no chance of that. It was up to me to sing or get off the spot, and I sang. The surprise came when right behind me a rich baritone rolled out, and when I turned to look, it was Brennen.

  Unless you knew Brennen this wouldn’t mean much. Once an Orangeman, Brennen was an avowed and argumentative atheist. Nothing he liked better than an argument about the Bible, and he knew more about it than most preachers, but he scoffed at it. Since the reverend had been in town his one great desire had been to get Brennen into church, but Brennen just laughed at him, although like all of us he both liked and respected the reverend.

  So here was Brennen, giving voice there back of me, and I doubt if the reverend would have been as pleased had the church been packed. Brennen sang, no nonsense about it, and when the responses were read, he spoke out strong and sure.

  At the door the reverend shook hands with him. “It is a pleasure to have you with us, Brother Brennen.”

  “It’s a pleasure to be here, Reverend,” Brennen said. “I may not always agree with you, Parson, but you’re a good man, a very good man. You can expect me next Sunday, sir.”

  Walking up the street, Brennen said, “My ideas haven’t changed, but Sanderson is a decent man, entitled to a decent attendance at his church, and his congregation should be ashamed. Ashamed, I say!”

  Brennen was alone in his saloon next day. Brother Elisha had given an impassioned sermon on the sinfulness of man and the coming of the Great Day, and he scared them all hollow.

  You never saw such a changed town. Ralston, who spoke only two languages, American and profane, was suddenly talking like a Baptist minister at a Bible conference and looking so sanctimonious it would fair turn a man’s stomach.

  Since Brother Elisha started preaching, the two emptiest places in town were the church and the saloon. Nor would I have you thinking wrong of the saloon. In my day in the West, a saloon was a club, a meeting place, a forum, and a source of news all put together. It was the only place men could gather to exchange ideas, do business, or hear the latest news from the outside.

  And every day Brother Elisha went up the mountain.

  One day when I stopped by the saloon, Brennen was outside watching Brother Elisha through his field glasses.

  “Is he prayin’?” I asked.

  “You might say. He lifts his arms to the sky, rants around some, then he disappears over the hill. Then he comes back and rants around some more and comes down the hill.”

  “I suppose he has to rest,” I said. “Prayin’ like that can use up a sight of energy.”

  “I suppose so,” he said doubtfully. After a moment or two, he asked, “By the way, Marshal, were you ever in Mobeetie?”

  By that time most of that great blank space on the mountainside had grown up to grass, and it grew greenest and thickest right where Brother Elisha walked, and that caused more talk.

  Not in all this time had Brother Elisha been seen to take on any nourishment, not a bite of anything, nor to drink, except water from the well.

  When Sunday came around again the only two in church were Brennen and me, but Brennen was there, all slicked up mighty like a winning gambler, and when the reverend’s wife passed the plate, Brennen dropped in a twenty-dollar gold piece. Also, I’d heard he’d had a big package of groceries delivered around to the one-room log parsonage.

  The town was talking of nothing but Brother Elisha, and it was getting so a man couldn’t breathe the air around there, it was so filled with sanctified hypocrisy. You never saw such a bunch of overnight gospel-shouters.

  Now I can’t claim to be what you’d call a religious man, yet I’ve a respect for religion, and when a man lives out his life under the sun and the stars, half the time riding alone over mountains and desert, then he usually has a religion although it may not be the usual variety. Moreover, I had a respect for the reverend.

  Brennen had his say about Brother Elisha, but I never did, although there was something about him that didn’t quite tally.

  Then the miracle happened.

  It was a Saturday morning and Ed Colvin was shingling the new livery barn, and in a town the size of Red Horse nobody could get away from the sound of that hammer, not that we cared, or minded the sound. Only it was always with us.

  And then suddenly we didn’t hear it anymore.

  Now it wasn’t noontime, and Ed was a working sort of man, as we’d discovered in the two months he’d been in town. It was not likely he’d be quitting so early.

  “Gone after lumber,” I suggested.

  “He told me this morning,” Brace said, “that he had enough laid by to last him two days. He was way behind and didn’t figure on quitting until lunchtime.”

  “Wait,” I said, “we’ll hear it again.”

  Only when some time passed and we heard nothing we started for the barn. Ed had been working mighty close to the peak of what was an unusually steep roof.

  We found him lying on the ground and there was blood on his head and we sent for the doc.

  Now Doc McDonald ain’t the greatest doctor, but he was all we had aside from the midwife and a squaw up in the hills who knew herbs. The doc was drunk most of the time these days and showing up with plenty of money, so’s it had been weeks since he’d been sober.

  Doc came over, just weaving a mite, and almost as steady as he usually is when sober. He knelt by Ed Colvin and looked him over. He listened for a heartbeat and he held a mirror over his mouth, and he got up and brushed off his knees. “What’s all the rush for? This man is dead!”

  We carried him to Doc’s place, Doc being the undertaker, too, and we laid him out on the table in his back room. Ed’s face was dead white except for the blood, and he stared unblinking until the doc closed his eyes.

  We walked back to the saloon feeling low. We’d not known Ed too well, but he was a quiet man and a good worker, and we needed such men around our town. Seemed a shame for him to go when there were others, mentioning no names, who meant less to the town.

  That was the way it was until Brother Elisha came down off the mountain. He came with long strides, staring straight before him, his face flushed with the happiness that seemed always with him these days. He was abreast of the saloon when he suddenly stopped.

  It was the first time he had ever stopped to speak to anyone, aside from his preaching.

  “What has happened?” he asked. “I miss the sound of the hammer. The sounds of labor are blessed in the ears of the Lord.”

  “Colvin fell,” Brace said. “He fell from the roof and was killed.”

  Brother Elisha looked at him out of his great dark eyes and he said, “There is no death. None pass on but for the Glory of the Lord, and I feel this one passed before his time.”

  “You may think there’s no death,” Brace said, “but Ed Colvin looks mighty dead to me.”

 
He turned his eyes on Brace. “O, ye of little faith: Take me to him.”

  When we came into Doc McDonald’s the air was foul with liquor, and Brace glared at Doc like he’d committed a blasphemy. Brother Elisha paused briefly, his nose twitching, and then he walked through to the back room where Ed Colvin lay.

  We paused at the door, clustered there, not knowing what to expect, but Brother Elisha walked up and bowed his head, placing the palm of his right hand on Colvin’s brow, and then he prayed. Never did I know a man who could make a prayer fill a room with sound like Brother Elisha, but there at the last he took Ed by the shoulders and he pulled him into a sitting position and he said, “Edward Colvin, your work upon this earth remains unfinished. For the Glory of the Lord…rise!”

  And I’ll be forever damned if Ed Colvin didn’t take a long gasping breath and sit right up on that table. He looked mighty confused and Brother Elisha whispered in his ear for a moment and then with a murmur of thanks Ed Colvin got up and walked right out of the place.

  We stood there like we’d been petrified, and I don’t know what we’d been expecting, but it wasn’t this. Brother Elisha said, “The Lord moves in mysterious ways His wonders to perform.” And then he left us.

  Brace looked at me and I looked at Ralston and when I started to speak my mouth was dry. And just then we heard the sound of a hammer.

  When I went outside people were filing into the street and they were looking up at that barn, staring at Ed Colvin, working away as if nothing had happened. When I passed Damon, standing in the bank door, his eyes were wide open and his face white. I spoke to him but he never even heard me or saw me. He was just standing there staring at Colvin.

  By nightfall everybody in town was whispering about it, and when Sunday morning came they flocked to hear him preach, their faces shining, their eyes bright as though with fever.

  When the reverend stepped into the pulpit, Brennen was the only one there besides me.