End Of the Drive (Ss) (1997)

by L'amour, Louis

  “You did right, Ed,” Pa told me, speaking around his pipe stem. “You did the smart thing. They will think you were scared off.”

  “That Heseltine … they say he’s killed a dozen men. He’s robbed banks and he’s got a mean reputation.”

  “I like to see a mean man,” Pa said. “Most of them don’t cut much figger.”

  Pa had finished working out his crutch. It wasn’t much, just a forked stick trimmed down a mite so he could use the fork to hold under his armpit. I helped him to the horse, and once he got a foot in the stirrup and a hand on the horn he was in that saddle. Meanwhile I smothered our fire. Nobody wants to turn fire loose in grass or timber unless he’s a fool.

  “A bank robber don’t shape up to me,” Pa said. “When he goes into a bank with a gun, he don’t figure to get shot at. If he expected it he’d never take the first step. He threatens men with folks depending on them and steals money he’s too lazy to work for.

  “The James boys swaggered it mighty big until a bunch of home folks up at Northfield shot their ears off, and the Dalton gang got the same thing in Coffeyville. The McCarty boys tried it in Colorado, and all those bold outlaws were shot down by a few quiet men who left their glass-polishing or law books to do it.”

  Well, all those outlaws had seemed mighty exciting until Pa put it that away but what he said was true. Pa was a little man himself, only weighed a hundred and thirty pounds, though he had the strongest hands I ever did see. Strong hands from plowing, shoeing horses, and wrassling steers.

  Close to midnight we fetched up to their fire.

  “Help me down, Ed,” Pa said, whispering. “I want to be on the ground.”

  We walked up to the fire, our boots making small sounds in the grass. Pa was carrying my Colt in his right hand, and I carried a shell under the hammer of my Henry rifle. Those boys weren’t much account at keeping watch; they were setting around a blanket playing cards for our money.

  “You boys are wasting time,” Pa told them. “You’re playing with money that don’t belong to you.”

  Pa had that crutch under his left shoulder, but he held that Colt in one big hand and it pointed like a finger at Heseltine.

  “Hear you’re a killing man,” Pa said to him, “but you size up to me like a no-account, yellow-bellied loafer.”

  “You got the drop,” Heseltine said. “You got a loud mouth when you got the drop.”

  “The drop? You figure we’re in some kind of dime novel? Ed, you keep an eye on those others. If either of them make a move, shoot both of them and after they’re laying on the ground, shoot them again!”

  Deliberately Pa lowered the muzzle until it pointed into the grass beside his foot. “Now, Ed tells me you’re a fast hand with a gun,” Pa said, and he limped forward three steps, his eyes locked on Heseltine’s, “but I think you’re a back-shooting tinhorn.”

  Heseltine looked at Pa standing there on one leg and a crutch, and he looked at that old pistol. He looked at Pa again and he drew a long breath and held it. Then he let his breath go and stood there with his hands hanging.

  “Nobody’s got the drop now, Heseltine.” Pa spoke quietly but his pale eyes blazed in the firelight. “I’m not going back without that money. And if you try to stop me either you’re gonna die or both of us are gonna die!”

  Sweat was all over Bob Heseltine’s face, and it was a cool evening. He wanted to go for his gun the worst way, but he had another want that beat that one all hollow. He wanted to live.

  Kid Reese and Doc Sites stood there looking at the big man and they couldn’t believe it, and I’m sure I couldn’t. A body didn’t need to read minds to guess what they were thinking, because here was a poor old gray-haired caprock rancher on one leg with his gun muzzle down calling the bluff of a gunman said to be among the fastest although, come to think of it, I never heard it said by anyone but Doc or Reese.

  Out of the corner of my eye I could see Pa standing there; for a little man he looked mighty big, and I suddenly found myself thinking about how it was that my pa had come back with Uncle Bud’s scalp. No Comanche warrior ever left a trophy like that beside the trail. Surely no Comanche warrior would ever let a trophy like that go without a fight to the death. It seemed all Bob Heseltine had to do to die was lay hand on his guns.

  Pa’s pistol swung up. “You had your chance. Now unbuckle your gun belt and step back.”

  Heseltine did what he was told and I went forward and gathered his guns. Then I picked up all that money and stuffed it in the saddlebags, and I went through their pockets checking for more.

  “Time you learned a lesson, Edwin,” Pa said to me. “Time you learned that it’s what’s inside a man that matters, not how fast he can draw a gun.”

  Pa backed off a few careful steps and without looking’ at me, he said, “Ed, you and him are going to fight. He needs a whoppin’ and you’re going to give it to him, do you hear?”

  Pa gestured with the Colt. “You others stay out of this … it’s a fair fight, between the two of them.”

  Well, I looked over at Heseltine; he was six or seven years older than me an’ he outweighed me by more than a few pounds. I thought of that story where he killed the sheriff, and then I remembered that he’d just backed down to a crippled-up old man who’d been armed with little more than a fiery force of will and my old Colt.

  I put down my gun.

  Heseltine took off his calfskin jacket and spat on his hands, looking over at me. “Why, you weak-kneed little whelp, I’ll !”

  Another thing Pa taught me: If you’re going to fight … fight. Talk about it after.

  Lifting my left fist I fetched him a clout in the mouth with my right, and right then I saw that a mean man could bleed.

  He came at me swinging with both hands. He was strong, and he figured to put the sign on me. He moved well, better than me, but he hadn’t put in all those years of hard work that I had.

  He walloped me alongside the jaw and it shook me some, but not like I figured it would. He hit me again and I saw a kind of surprised look come into his eyes, and I knew he’d hit me as hard as he could so I fetched him right where he’d been putting all that whiskey. He grunted, and I spread out my legs and began whopping him with both fists … and in that regard I take after Pa. I’ve got big hands.

  He went down to his knees and I picked him up by the collar and looked him over to find a place that wasn’t bloody where I could fetch him again, but 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.

  “Whatever 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.

  “You 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.”

  “Together, we could,” Pa said.

  We rode south, taking our time, under a Comanche moon.

  *

  ELISHA COMES TO RED HORSE

  There 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 tai
lings 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 grounds-keeper 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 arty 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.

  He 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.

  “A sky pilot, Marshal.” Ralston spat into the dust. “We got ourselves another durned sky pilot!”

  “It’s a cinch he’s no cattleman,” I said, “and he doesn’t size up like a drummer.”

  “We’ve got a sky pilot,” Brace grumbled, “and one preacher ought to balance off six saloons, so we sure don’t need another.”

  “I 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!”

  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 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 ey
es 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.