Hallowed Ground Read Free Page B

nearly in sight, but his eyes were dust-blind, and despite the early hour, they stung with sweat.
    As he rode closer things took on substance and form: canvas, like distant rolling hills.   The land beyond Dead Man’s Gulch had been transformed into a city of tents and wagons.   In the center, one huge patched structure rose toward the sun, and affixed to the top-most point on the center pole stood a rough-hewn cross of dark wood.
    Creed stopped his horse and pulled out his canteen.   He rinsed his mouth and spat into the brush, then took a longer drink.
    "I'll be damned," he muttered.
    He stowed the canteen and spurred his horse into a trot, not slowing until he'd reached the edge of the camp.   He continued at a walk, stirring a cloud of dust into the unfamiliar hive of activity.   The first thing that hit him was the smell; the reek of sweat and bodies too long estranged from water and soap.   It clung to the canvas as much as to the laborers working around the tents.   There was no breeze; scent didn't carry in the gulch under normal circumstances, but once you were caught in it it clung to the skin and stuck in the nostrils.
    Disinterested heads turned his way as he rode past.   He'd expected to cause something of a stir, but it was as though each forgot him before he'd even left their field of vision.   He'd never seen a place so deserving of the word grim.
    He drew up beside a squat, thickly muscled man driving stakes into the hard ground.   No blood bubbled back out of the wounds in the earth. Creed smiled wryly to himself at the thought.   The man glanced up and met his gaze but not his smile.
    "What's going on here?" Creed asked.
    "The Deacon’s arrived," the man replied, as if that explained everything.
    Maybe it did.
    The country was full of charlatans and snake oil peddlers offering universal cure-alls and spiritual guidance for a pocketful of silver.   Whatever your ailment, someone was out there looking to profit from it.   Provender Creed eyed the man intently, expecting him to say more.   Instead, the hammer rose and fell again, driving the peg all the way home.   The man didn't glance up again.   Creed watched him a moment longer.   The stranger favored his left side.   A closer look showed that the arm on that side was withered, the hand shrunken like a bird’s claw.
    Creed rode on without a word.
    After a few moments he began to wonder if he'd actually come up on a circus freak show.   He saw a pretty young girl sitting outside a ratty tent, wringing murky water from her wet laundry.   Close beside her an equally pretty twin scrubbed away with lye.   The girls looked up and smiled at him.   It took Creed the silence between heartbeats to realize   what was wrong with this image of domestic bliss: they weren't sitting close beside one another at all.   They were co-joined at hip and ribs, and only had three arms between them. It did not make their smiles any less beautiful.   Creed tipped his hat slowly, and turned away.
    A young boy with a twisted gait shuffled across his path, dragging a clubbed foot.
    "Boy," he called down, "which tent belongs to the Deacon?"
    The boy glanced up at him with a half-toothed grin and pointed toward the rocky outcropping at the rear of the camp.   Creed saw a wagon with a canvas extension that looked cleaner than the rest of the camp.   It was set out in back of the great cross-topped tent in the center.
    He nodded his thanks.   He was about to say something, then fell silent.   It wasn't a boy's face staring up at him, as he'd thought.   It was a midget.   The small twisted figure turned and shuffled off into the camp.
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    Creed dismounted outside the revival tent.   He figured it was better to check out The Deacon's place of business than to just bust in on the man in his 'home'.
    A single black feather lay in the dirt at his feet.   Creed