End Of the Drive (Ss) (1997)

by L'amour, Louis

  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 oid 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 onto 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 Eljsha 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 Col-vin 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 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 ma
ke 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.

  Reverend Sanderson looked stricken, and that morning he talked in a low voice, speaking quietly and sincerely but lacking his usual force. “Perhaps,” he said as we left, “perhaps it is we who are wrong. The Lord gives the power of miracles to but few.”

  “There are many kinds of miracles,” Brennen replied, “and one miracle is to find a sane, solid man in a town that’s running after a red wagon.”

  As the three of us walked up the street together we heard the great rolling voice of Brother Elisha: “And I say unto you that the gift of life to Brother Colvin was but a sign, for on the morning of the coming Sabbath we shall go hence to the last resting place of your loved ones, and there I shall cause them all to be raised, and they shall live again, and take their places among you as of old!”

  You could have dropped a feather. We stood on the street in back of his congregation and we heard what he said, but we didn’t believe it, we couldn’t believe it.

  He was going to bring back the dead.

  Brother Elisha, who had brought Ed Colvin back to life, was now going to empty the cemetery, returning to life all those who had passed on … and some who had been helped.

  “The Great Day has come!” He lifted his long arms and spread them wide, and his sonorous voice rolled against the mountains. “And men shall live again for the Glory of All Highest! Your wives, your mothers, your brothers and fathers, they shall walk beside you again!”

  And then he led them into the singing of a hymn and the three of us walked away.

  That was the quietest Sunday Red Horse ever knew. Not a whisper, all day long. Folks were scared, they were happy, they were inspired. The townsfolk walked as if under a spell.

  Strangely, it was Ed Colvin who said it. Colvin, the man who had gone to the great beyond and returned … although he claimed he had no memory of anything after his fall.

  Brace was talking about the joy of seeing his wife again, and Ed said quietly, “You’ll also be seeing your mother-in-law.”

  Brace’s mouth opened and closed twice before he could say anything at all, and then he didn’t want to talk. He stood there like somebody had exploded a charge of powder under his nose, and then he turned sharply around and walked off.

  “I’ve got more reason than any of you to be thankful,”

  Ed said, his eyes downcast. “But I’m just not sure this is all for the best.”

  We all glanced at each other. “Think about it.” Ed got up, looking kind of embarrassed. “What about you, Ralston? You’ll have to go back to work. Do you think your uncle will stand for you loafing and spending the money he worked so hard to get?”

  “That’s right,” I agreed, “you’ll have to give it all back.”

  Ralston got mad. He started to shout that he wouldn’t do any such thing, and anyway, if his uncle came back now he would be a changed man, he wouldn’t care for money any longer, he “You don’t believe that,” Brennen said. “You know darned well that uncle of yours was the meanest skinflint in this part of the country. Nothing would change him.”

  Ralston went away from there. Seemed to me he wanted to do some thinking.

  When I turned to leave, Brennen said, “Where are you going?”

  “Well,” I said, “seems to me I’d better oil up my six-shooters. There’s three men in that Boot Hill that I put there. Looks like I’ll have it to do over.”

  He laughed. “You aren’t falling for this, are you?”

  “Colvin sounds mighty lively to me,” I said, “and come Sunday morning Brother Elisha has got to put up or shut up.”

  “You don’t believe that their time in the hereafter will have changed those men you killed.”

  “Brennen,” I said, “if I know the Hame brothers, they’ll come out of their graves like they went into them. They’ll come a-shootin’.”

  There had been no stage for several days as the trail had been washed out by a flash flood, and the town was quiet and it was scared. Completely cut off from the out side, all folks could do was wait and get more and more frightened as the Great Day approached. At first everybody had been filled with happiness at the thought of the dead coming back, and then suddenly, like Brace and Ralston, everybody was taking another thought.

  There was the Widow McCann who had buried three husbands out there, all of them fighters and all of them mean. There were a dozen others with reason to give the matter some thought, and I knew at least two who were packed and waiting for the first stage out of town.

  Brace dropped in at the saloon for his first drink since Brother Elisha started to preach. He hadn’t shaved and he looked mighty mean. “Why’d he pick on this town?” he burst out. “When folks are dead they should be left alone. Nobody has a right to interfere with nature that away Brennen mopped his bar, saying nothing at all.

  Ed Colvin dropped around. “Wish that stage would start running. I want to leave town. Folks treat me like I was some kind of freak.”

  “Stick around,” Brennen said. “Come Sunday the town will be filled with folks like you. A good carpenter will be able to stay busy, so busy he won’t care what folks say about him. Take Streeter there. He’ll need a new house now that his brother will be wanting his house back.”

  Streeter slammed his glass on the bar. “All right, damn it!” he shouted angrily, “I’ll build my own house!”

  Ralston motioned to me and we walked outside. Brace v was there, and Streeter joined us. “Look,” Ralston whispered, “Brace and me, we’ve talked it over. Maybe if we were to talk to Brother Elisha … maybe he’d call the whole thing off.”

  “Are you crazy?” I asked.

  His eyes grew mean. “You want to try those Hame boys again? Seems to me you came out mighty lucky the last time. How do you know you’ll be so lucky again? Those boys were pure-dee poison.”

  That was gospel truth, but I stood there chewing my cigar a minute and then said, “No chance. He wouldn’t listen to us.”

  Ed Colvin had come up. “A man doing good works,” he said, “might be able to use a bit of money. Although I suppose it would take quite a lot.”

  Brace stood a little straighter but when he turned to Colvin, the carpenter was hurrying off down the street. When I turned around there was Brennen leaning on the doorjamb, and he was smiling.

  Friday night when I was making my rounds I saw somebody slipping up the back stairs of the hotel, and for a moment his face was in the light from a window. It was Brace.

  Later, I saw Ralston hurrying home from the direction of the hotel, and you’d be surprised at some of the folks I spo
tted slipping up those back stairs to commune with Brother Elisha. Even Streeter, and even Damon.

  Watching Damon come down those back stairs I heard a sound behind me and turned to see Brennen standing there in the dark. “Seems a lot of folks are starting to think this resurrection of the dead isn’t an unmixed blessing.”

  “You know something?” I said thoughtfully. “Nobody has been atop that hill since Brother Elisha started his walks. I think I’ll just meander up there and have a look around.”

  “You’ve surprised me,” Brennen said. “I wouldn’t have expected you to be a churchgoing man. You’re accustomed to sinful ways.”

  “Why, now,” I said, “when I come into a town to live, I go to church. If the preacher is a man who shouts against things, I never go back. I like a man who’s for something.

  “Like you know, I’ve been marshal here and there, but never had much trouble with folks. I leave their politics and religion be. Folks can think the way they want, act the way they please, even to acting the fool. All I ask is they don’t make too much noise and don’t interfere with other people.

  “They call me a peace officer, and I try to keep the peace. If a growed-up man gets himself into a game with a crooked gambler, I don’t bother them … if he hasn’t learned up to then, he may learn, and if he doesn’t learn, nothing I tell him will do him any good.”

  “You think Colvin was really dead?”

  “Doc said so.”

  “Suppose he was hypnotized? Suppose he wasn’t really dead at all?”

  After Brennen went to bed I saddled up and rode out of town. Circling around the mountain I rode up to where Brother Elisha used to go to pray. Brennen had left me with a thought, and Doc had been drinking a better brand of whiskey lately.

  Brace had drawn money from the bank, and so had Ralston, and old Mrs. Greene had been digging out in her hen coop, and knowing about those tin cans she buried there after her husband died kind of sudden, I had an idea what she was digging up.

  I made tracks. I had some communicatin’ to do and not many hours to do it in.