by Ralph Cotton
“No, Father, of course not!” said Falon, backing off, looking embarrassed in front of his men.
Jessup faced the rest of he men, saying, “You are not Believers. No matter what good works you might do, you are still nothing but unclean sinners until you find a way to receive the Lord’s mercy and acceptance.” He raised a finger for emphasis, adding, “Never forget that…and never forget yourselves in my presence.”
Falon and his men stood staring in rejected silence until Ryan and Mullins turned Ellis over to two guards standing outside the meetinghouse doors. Behind the others, Lewis Barr said to Quentin Fuller, “The man on the cross might not have had such a bad idea, wanting to take this place over.”
“Yeah, maybe,” said Fuller, “but I damn sure don’t want to trade places with him.”
“What’s that back there?” Frank Falon asked, giving the two a cold stare. “If anybody has something to say, step up here and say it. Don’t stand back and cluck about it like a couple of old hens!”
“It weren’t nothing, Frank,” Fuller ventured.
“It better not be!” Falon bellowed at them, still stinging from Jessup’s low treatment and wanting to take his anger out on someone. “Now all of you clear away from here! Let’s go get some cold water to drink…since that’s all there is to drink here in wonderful Paradise!” He threw up his hands in frustration.
From a window in the Believers’ meetinghouse, Jessup stood watching Falon and his men drift away. He stood smiling out at the street, his hands folded behind his back while Searcy and Edmunds set Ellis in a wooden chair, threw a dipper of cold water in his face and shook him by his wet hair.
“Can you hear me?” Searcy asked, still shaking roughly until Ellis finally acknowledged him with an upward stare.
“He’s awake, Father,” Brother Searcy said.
“Very well,” said Jessup, turning from the window and facing Ellis from ten feet away, his hands still folded behind his back. For a moment he studied Ellis closely, his expression blank, forbidding. But with a sigh, he stepped closer, stooped slightly and said into Ellis’s ear, “How long did you think you could get by with this charade of yours, CC Ellis?”
“For as long as it took, Jessup,” Ellis said defiantly through his bruised and swollen jaw.
Searcy grabbed his hair again and shook him soundly. “When you address Father by name, you call him Father Jessup.”
“I’m not one of your Believers,” said Ellis. “Why do you want me calling him Father? I’m not his son.”
“I’m afraid he’s got you there, Brother Searcy.” Jessup chuckled, interceding with a hand held out to keep Searcy from punching Ellis in his swollen jaw. As Searcy moved back, Jessup stepped closer again. “Let me set you straight on what I already know, so we won’t be going over ground already tilled. I know you are CC Ellis, one of the so-called long riders that no one seems to be able to handle since the war ended.” He gave a grimace of distaste. “I know that you, Rudolph Banatell and his cut-throats came here to sack Paradise, and do God only knows what all else.”
“Rudy didn’t tell you any of that, Jessup,” said Ellis, trying to remain obstinate.
Hearing him address Jessup by name, Searcy started to draw back his fist. Again, Jessup gestured Searcy back.
“Oh?” Jessup cocked an eyebrow at Ellie. “And how can you be so sure he didn’t?”
“Because he told me he didn’t,” said Ellis.
“And you believe a fellow long rider, an outlaw and social miscreant, before you believe a minister of God?”
“Any day of the week, I do in your case,” said Ellis. “Had he gave me up, he would have told me so. I know what Rudy was…I doubt if anybody knows what you are.”
“I see.” Jessup’s brow furrowed as if troubled by Ellis’s words. “I bet you are one of those who have been terribly mistreated by a man of the cloth in the past. Since then you have been bitter and resentful of every servant of the Lord, blaming all, as it were, for the dark deed of that one bad individual. Isn’t that correct?”
“I’ve seen who and what you are,” said Ellis, ignoring the question. “I know what you want—you want the Mosely woman.”
“Oh, that poor woman who is out there all alone? Who needs someone to look after her? Who owns that land and has no man to either till it or stock it for her?” He tilted his head sideways, and said, “Yes! Indeed yes! I do want that woman! I want to save and protect her, from the likes of you and those of your kind. What sort of monster would I be to ignore her, after all the lies and illusion you have filled her head with.”
“Then what’s keeping you from taking her?” Ellis asked flatly.
Jessup thought for a second, then said, “I want her to come to me. I am not a man who would force himself on anyone, especially a woman so vulnerable now that her husband is deceased.” He paused and watched Ellis’s reaction when he went on to ask, “Sloane Mosely is deceased, isn’t he?”
So that was it, Ellis thought. Jessup was still afraid to make a move on Callie Mosely until he knew Sloane Mosely was dead. Ellis considered the situation, wanting to buy Callie as much time as he could, hoping she could find a way out of this for herself if he couldn’t manage to get away. “No, he’s alive and well,” said Ellis, bluffing his way along. “What made you think otherwise?”
“I ask the questions here, CC Ellis,” said Jessup. “You answer them.”
Ellis looked around at the two bodyguards, noticing for the first time that, in one corner, sat Jim Heady, cowering like a whipped hound. Around his neck he wore a wide leather collar with a six foot leather leash hanging from it. “Fair enough,” said Ellis. “You asked if Mosely is dead. He’s not.”
“Then what were you doing out there, living in sin with his wife?” Jessup asked.
“We weren’t living in sin,” said Ellis. “He asked me to stay with her until he returns from Texas, just so someone like you doesn’t come along and try to take advantage.”
“Do you think I believe for one moment that you weren’t sleeping with that woman?” Jessup asked, his face reddening at the thought of the sin.
“Don’t judge every man’s action by what yours would be,” said Ellis. “Sloane Mosely is my friend. I did his bidding. You can ask him yourself when he gets back here, Jessup.”
Searcy bristled, clenched his teeth, but heeded Jessup’s restraining gesture.
Jessup’s cheeks stung from the sharpness of Ellis’s words. But he managed to keep his anger in check by taking in a long breath and letting it out slowly. Stepping forward again, he bent slightly, grabbed Ellis’s tied hands and looked them over closely. “The hands of a gunman,” he mused. Then dropping Ellis’s hands, he stepped back and said with a smile, “Just to keep our conversation from dragging on as a game of defiance, what say we lop off a finger or two? That tends to always make one sit up and show some respect.”
“You don’t want respect, Jessup. All you want is fear,” said Ellis. “But whichever you want, you’re getting neither from me.”
“Don’t speak so hastily, CC Ellis,” said Jessup, his voice growing almost sympathetic. “It hurts something awful, losing a finger.” He said to Edmunds, “Isn’t that so, Brother Edmunds?”
Edmunds held up his left hand, showing two stubs where his ring and little fingers had been. “Ouch!” he said with a faint twisted smile, agreeing with Jessup.
“Cutting off my finger isn’t going to get you what you want, Jessup. Sloane Mosely is alive. He won’t stand for you taking his wife and child, the way some weaker men have done. He’ll kill you. I think you already know that.”
“I wasn’t talking about one of your fingers, CC Ellis,” said Jessup, offering his cruel grin. “Even Brother Edmunds lost two fingers, and you have to realize, he and I were already friends.”
Ellis looked back and forth between Jessup, Edmunds and Searcy, trying to discern whether or not Jessup was only bluffing.
“Brother Searcy,” Jessup said over his shoulder, “ge
t the rope chopper out of the storage bench. Bring them over and remove CC Ellis’s little finger…to begin with.”
In the corner where Jim Heady lay cowering and listening, Heady watched Brother Searcy lift the seat of a long wooden bench. Ellis watched closely as Searcy rummaged through its contents, even picking up a rifle before taking out a pair of rope choppers.
“God is good! Father is good!” Heady began to chant fearfully. Heady gasped at the sight of Searcy working the long rope chopper handles back and forth with a metallic snipping sound, and his voice grew louder and more urgent. “God is good! Father is better! Father is better! Father is God!”
Ellis threw a quick glance in Header’s direction, the sound of the man’s near hysterical chanting unnerving him. He looked back over at Searcy coming toward him with the rope choppers. Letting out a breath, Ellis relented, saying, “All right, you win. I’ll call you Father.”
“That’s courteous of you, CC Ellis,” said Jessup. “But I’m afraid you should have done so earlier. Your little finger is coming off. There’s nothing you can do to save it. The only question now is, how badly do you want to keep the other nine?”
“Father is God!” Jim Heady shrieked loudly, covering his ears with both hands. “Father is God!”
“Wait!” Ellis shouted, coming halfway out of his chair before Brother Edmunds shoved him back down and held him firmly in place.
“I’ll take those, Brother Searcy,” said Jessup, reaching out for the rope choppers. “I want CC Ellis to realize that this is about a matter most personal to me. I’ll teach you that you can take my word, CC Ellis. I’ll show you that you must.”
Jessup worked the long handle back and forth the same way Searcy did when he took the tool from the bench. “Now let me explain, CC Ellis, that this is how I like to do things.” As he spoke, he continued working the handles back and forth, the chopper blades opening and closing with a glint of sharp steel. “I like to see if a man has self-restraint. If we have to hold you down, we’ll take off one, two fingers, maybe more!” His eyes glistened wide and wetly. “But if you can sit there calmly, and submit without putting us to a lot of trouble…well, we’ll only remove half of your little finger to start with, just enough to see if it improves your attitude.”
Ellis’s breath pounded in and out of his lungs. But he could see that Jessup was serious. He forced himself to settle down and looked away from Jessup and the other two and out through the open window, where a warm breeze licked at the edge of the short curtains. “Chop away, Father Jessup!” he said, his voice filled with tension, humiliation, loathing. Steadying his hands he held them sidelong out toward the steel blades. “You’ll get no resistance from me.”
Chapter 20
Aross the street from the meetinghouse, Falon and his men stopped on their way to the livery barn and stood with their horses’ reins in their hands. They looked as one back toward the open window of the meetinghouse, hearing Ellis let out one short, restrained yelp of pain. In the silence that followed, Jaw Hughes winced and said, “Well, sounds like he made it past the worst part.”
“How do you know what the worst part is, Hughes?” said Falon, stepping back and forth restlessly. “Damn, what are we going to do now that Lexar is running the bank? Who’ll slip us some whiskey at times like this?”
“Give Jessup time,” said Mullins. “He’ll find himself somebody to sell us whiskey without him knowing about it.” He winked at his joke. “He ain’t going to miss a chance to make a few dollars off us.”
“What about right now though,” said Hughes. “I always do my drinking today, not tomorrow.” He looked all around as if searching for something. “Somewhere in this town is some whiskey, and I know it!”
“You both talk too damn much,” said Falon. “Don’t forget what happened to Jim Heady. You want to end up like him?”
“I don’t want to end up like nobody,” said Hughes. “I just want a drink or two, to celebrate what we did out there this morning.”
“What was that?” said Falon. “Shooting a man who’s laying nailed to a cross? Is that what we ought to be celebrating?”
The men looked at one another. “Naw, Frank, that ain’t what I meant at all.”
“Stay back away from me, all of yas,” said Falon. “I’m getting sick of looking at you!” He jerked his horse away from the others and walked on toward the livery barn.
“It’s getting too damn hard to talk to anybody anymore,” Hughes commented under his breath.
“Look at this!” said Splint Mullins, getting excited, pointing toward the bank, where Lexar stood in the open doorway waving them toward him, giving them a discreet hand signal of taking a drink.
“Oh, yeah!” said Willie Singer to Kirby Falon, poking him in his ribs. “Father Jessup is right! There must be a God after all!” The men hurried across the street, too excited to call out to Falon before he walked out of sight.
“Lord, boys!” said Hughes. “Let’s get over there before Lexar changes his mind!” They all crossed the street, trying not to look anxious to any of the passing townsfolk.
At the door to the bank, Lexar fanned them all inside and closed the door behind them. “You must be a mind reader, Lexar!” said Kirby Falon.
“No, I’m just very attentive.” Lexar grinned. “Mind reading is a sin.”
Jaw Hughes and Splint Mullins already had their money out and in their hand. Lexar walked to the window and looked out toward the meetinghouse door, where Brother Paul was hurrying inside. “Let me see what’s going on,” he said, looking back and eyeing the money in their hands. “Then we’ll get things going.”
“Are you still going to be the one selling the whiskey here, Lexar?” Quentin Fuller asked.
“For now, I am,” said Lexar, staring back at the meetinghouse, seeing Brother Paul come back out and walk to the hitch rail where he mounted a big sorrel mule and headed out of town on it. Lexar breathed a little easier. “All right now, where were we?”
“You know where we were!” Mullins laughed. “Get us some whiskey.”
The rest of the men hooted and cheered. Lexar smiled and disappeared behind the bank counter toward the safe, saying back to them, “Hold your horses! I won’t be but a moment.”
Across the street, in the back room of the meetinghouse, Searcy and Edmunds shoved Ellis onto a hard bare cot and pitched some gauze wound dressing down beside him. Behind them, Jim Heady slinked into the room and went to a far corner, the leash still dangling from his collar. “Put plenty of salve on that stub,” Edmunds said to Ellis with a detached tone. “That’s what I did. It’ll keep it from infecting.” The two turned and looked at Heady before leaving. “Are you staying or going, Brother?” Edmunds asked.
“Sta-staying,” Heady said in a shaky voice.
“All right men,” said Edmunds, “but don’t snag your leash on something and break your neck.”
“Remember what Brother Paul taught you. Don’t listen to any thing these non-Believers tell you.”
“I—I won’t,” said Heady.
“And what are all these non-Believers?” Searcy asked, quizzing him.
“They’re all lying, sinning dogs,” said Heady, giving Ellis a cold distrusting stare.
“Yes, Brother is going to be all right.” Searcy laughed, walking through the doorway behind Edmunds.
Long after the door closed, Ellis sat wrapping the gauze around the half finger, after smearing it with salve from a tin Jessup’s men had left for him. Pain throbbed in his entire hand. Losing half of his finger, especially the way he had lost it, left a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.
He didn’t feel like speaking. But he forced himself to. As he wrapped the gauze he looked over at Jim Heady, kept his voice from shaking and said in a matter-of-fact manner, “You can stop the playacting now. I’m not going to tell Jessup anything you say.”
“I’m not playacting,” said Jim Heady, giving a worried glance at the closed door. “God is good. Father is good. God is goo
d. Father is—”
“I know, Father is good. I heard you before, remember,” said Ellis, cutting him off. He gently tucked the end of the gauze under itself, securing it. “But they are gone now. I don’t believe you’re as cowed down as they think you are.”
“I am a Believer now,” Heady said softly, his eyes appearing on the verge of tears. “I trust nobody but fellow Believers. I worship but one God, and that God is good. Father is good.”
“You’re Jim Heady. Jessup bullwhipped you in front of the whole town,” said Ellis. “I didn’t see it but I rode in right after it happened.”
“Then how do you know it was me?” Heady asked, a curious look coming to his face.
“The other man who was there to be whipped that day—he told me.”
Heady perked up. “You mean Randall? Randall Turner told you?”
“That’s right. Randall told me,” said Ellis. “But he never told me how you ran out of guts and knuckled under to Jessup and his followers.”
“Is—is he alive?” Heady asked. “I heard he’s dead.” A noticeable difference had come over Heady.
“He? You mean Randall Turner?” Ellis thought for a moment, realizing if Heady knew that Randall was alive and he passed that information on to Jessup, there would be riders going to the Mosely house at a full run to kill the young man. Ellis wanted to keep Heady talking to see if his mind cleared any. Without answering his question, Ellis said, “Before Falon and his wolf hunters caught up to him, Randall had them all beaten. He and his wife ran out of horses. That’s what got them caught.”
“And killed?” Heady pried. “Did he get killed?”
“You know how you won’t trust anybody who’s not a Believer?” Ellis asked. “Well, you see, Heady, I don’t trust any of you who are.” He cocked his head and gave Heady a curious look. “Why are you so concerned about Randall Turner? You won’t even say his name!”
“We’re forbidden to say his name in Paradise,” said Heady.
