Collection 1997 - End Of The Drive (v5.0) Read Free Page B

the fight was all out of him and Pa said, “Let him go, Ed. Just drop him.”
    Seemed like he would go down easier if I fetched him a clout and I did, and then I walked back to get my gun, blowing on my sore fists.
    Pa looked over at Doc Sites and Kid Reese who were staring at Heseltine like it was a bad dream. “You two can keep your guns,” he said. “This is Indian country, and I just hope you come after us.
    â€œWhatever you do,” he added, “don’t ever come back home. There will be too many who’d like a shot at you.”
    Neither of us felt like camping that night with home so far away, so we rode on with the north star behind us. Pa’s leg must have been giving him what for, but he was in a good mood, and my fists were sore and my knuckles split, but I felt like riding on through the night.
    â€œYou know, Pa, Carlson’s been wanting to sell out. He’s got water and about three hundred head, and with what we’ve got we could buy him out and have margin to work on. I figure we could swing it.”
    â€œTogether, we could,” Pa said.
    We rode south, taking our time, under a Comanche moon.
    ELISHA COMES TO RED HORSE
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    T HERE IS A new church in the town of Red Horse. A clean white church of board and bat with a stained-glass window, a tall pointed steeple, and a bell that we’ve been told came all the way from Youngstown, Ohio. Nearby is a comfortable parsonage, a two-story house with a garreted roof, and fancy gingerbread under the eaves.
    Just down the hill from the church and across from the tailings of what was once the King James Mine is a carefully kept cemetery of white headstones and neatly fitted crosses. It is surrounded by a spiked iron fence six feet high, and the gate is always fastened with a heavy lock. We open it up only for funerals and when the groundskeeper makes his rounds. Outsiders standing at the barred gate may find that a bit odd…but the people of Red Horse wouldn’t have it any other way.
    Visitors come from as far away as Virginia City to see our church, and on Sundays when we pass the collection, why, quite a few of those strangers ante up with the rest of us. Now Red Horse has seen its times of boom and bust and our history is as rough as any other town in the West, but our new church has certainly become the pride of the county.
    And it is all thanks to the man that we called Brother Elisha.

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    H E WAS SIX feet five inches tall and he came into town a few years ago riding the afternoon stage. He wore a black broadcloth frock coat and carried a small valise. He stepped down from the stage, swept off his tall black hat, spread his arms, and lifted his eyes to the snowcapped ridges beyond the town. When he had won every eye on the street he said, “I come to bring deliverance, and eternal life!”
    And then he crossed the street to the hotel, leaving the sound of his magnificent voice echoing against the false-fronted, unpainted buildings of our street.
    In our town we’ve had our share of the odd ones, and many of the finest and best, but this was something new in Red Horse.
    â€œA sky pilot, Marshal.” Ralston spat into the dust. “We got ourselves another durned sky pilot!”
    â€œIt’s a cinch he’s no cattleman,” I said, “and he doesn’t size up like a drummer.”
    â€œWe’ve got a sky pilot,” Brace grumbled, “and one preacher ought to balance off six saloons, so we sure don’t need another.”
    â€œI say he’s a gambler,” Brennen argued. “That was just a grandstand play. Red Horse attracts gamblers like manure attracts flies. First time he gets in a game he’ll cold deck you in the most sanctified way you ever did see!”

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    A T 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.