by Paul Bagdon
Ben drew rein and ground tied Snorty. He didn’t loosen the girths this time—he had no way of judging how fast he’d need to get away from the battle he knew was about to take place. He checked the load in his Colt and dropped it back into the holster. Then he slid his Sharp’s from its saddle scabbard and pocketed a handful of the large, dome-tipped bullets that weighed nearly an ounce apiece.
There was a rise to the left of the bonfire, perhaps seventy-five yards from the gang’s camp. Ben walked to it, his eyes focused on the fire and the figures that were silhouetted around it. A man lurched, stumbled, and fell into the flames, launching a cloud of embers and ash into the sky. He screamed, his voice louder than the raucous laughter and hoots of his outlaw partners. Ben watched as the man scrambled out of the conflagration, shirt ablaze, and dropped to the dirt, rolling, flailing his arms and legs and screaming like a tortured animal.
Ben stretched out on the night-cool dirt on the lip of the rise and jacked a round into the chamber of his buffalo rifle. He placed his Colt carefully beside him, resting the pistol on a patch of dried grass.
His first round tore into the base of the bonfire, pitching into the air burning embers, large chunks of wood, and bits and shards of glass that served Ben as effectively as a load of canister from a cannon. Whatever the wagon owner had been hauling, it was contained in bottles. Ben put another shot into the flames while the shrapnel from his first round was still in the air. Curses melded with the thunderous boom of the Sharp’s and the rolling echo it created.
“Throw your weapons out toward me and put up your hands! You’re under arrest!” Ben bellowed. A volley of pistol and rifle fire answered; geysers of sand and grit erupted from the ground around and in front of him, and bullets buzzed past his prone form like angry hornets. He fired at a muzzle flash and heard the deep thunk of a bullet striking flesh. He focused his next rounds on the point where most of the muzzle flashes were coming from, moving the lever of the Sharp’s quickly but without haste, directing the massive slugs calmly, almost mechanically.
“Stop shooting!” a hoarse voice yelled from the camp. “Stop shooting! You’re gonna kill us like dogs! We give up!”
“Throw your guns out and walk toward me with your hands up!”
A rifle and two pistols flew out a few yards from the fire and dug into the sandy soil. Three men with their hands up stumbled toward Ben. He reloaded the Sharp’s as the killers approached him and then stood, his Colt back in its holster and his rifle tucked into his shoulder, ready to fire.
The shots Ben had anticipated came from the right of the fire, away from the light it gave. He knew those snakes would send at least one man into the dark to ambush him after he’d moved in. The flashes gave him perfect targets. He fired once and then again. Now the only sounds were those of the crackling fire.
“Where’s the man who was driving the wagon?” Ben demanded.
“At the bottom of the fire,” one outlaw snarled. “In hell.”
The muzzle of the Sharp’s swung to the man’s chest, and for a moment Ben’s trigger finger began to exert pressure. He spat to his side as if clearing his mouth of a foul taste as he eased his finger out of the trigger guard.
It was up to the State of Texas to hang these killers. His job was simply to bring them in.
* * *
3
* * *
Lee drove the big buckboard through the buffalo grass of the prairie, pretending not to notice when one or the other of the two fat old geldings that pulled her reached down to the side and snatched a mouthful of the dewy, knee-high grass. She grinned; it looked so fresh and tender she could almost taste it herself.
It’d been a prosperous summer so far for the Busted Thumb. Her men were sure of a second—and possibly even a third—cutting of hay, and her horses were fat and sleek and healthy.
She adjusted her Stetson so that it shaded her eyes a bit more and reread the list she’d taken from the pocket of her chambray work shirt. The monthly trek to Scott’s Mercantile for provisions was generally something she delegated, but the ranch had been running so flawlessly that she welcomed the trip to Burnt Rock.
She glanced down at the cloth bag with a silver clasp that rode on the plank seat next to her. It contained four more letters in her own hand that she’d written the night before at her kitchen table, under the light of a kerosene lamp. Each was addressed to administrators of different schools of theology, and each set forth in detail what the community of Burnt Rock could offer a resident preacher. Seventeen previous letters had gone out in the past couple of months. An equal number of “thank you for your interest, but . . .” return posts were filed in Lee’s small office.
Lee chided herself for worrying. She sat a bit straighter and nudged the geldings to pick up their pace. “Come on, you two,” she told the horses. “It’ll be Christmas before we—”
That’s when she saw the boy.
He’d topped a rise, and for a moment, before he started down, he stopped and dragged a sleeve across his forehead. He was fifty yards from the buckboard, and even at that distance Lee could see he was dressed in clothes that hadn’t been purchased for him. The sleeves of the stained work shirt he wore were rolled up several times but still reached to the middle of his hands. His denim pants could have accommodated two people his size and were held up by a knotted piece of baling twine. His hat, its too-narrow brim offering little shade to his face, was a bowler of some sort and rested atop his ears.
Lee instinctively reached toward the rifle at her feet and then hissed at herself. Instead, she raised the hand that had started toward the weapon in a wave. The boy hesitated and then waved back. Lee reined her horses toward him and stopped the wagon a few feet away.
The boy’s hair was black, long, and greasy, but turned almost gray by the dust that permeated it. His skin had a copper cast to it. He was thin but not gaunt, about Lee’s height. His eyes were black and seemed to move constantly, settling on Lee’s open gaze for the shortest of moments. It was impossible for her to predict his age; he could have been twelve or seventeen or anywhere in between.
“Going to Burnt Rock?” she asked.
His voice sounded older than he looked. “That’s the next town, ain’t it, ma’am?”
Lee nodded.
“That’s where I’m goin’, then,” he said. “How far is she?”
“Another three miles or so due west.” For some reason the boy made her nervous. Maybe it’s the man’s voice in the boy’s body, she thought. “Not far,” she added, simply to have something else to say. She knew the protocol of the West as well as the boy did: You didn’t leave a person on foot in midsummer on the prairie if you were going in the same direction he was. “Can you drive?” she asked.
“Sure,” the boy said with a grin. Lee noticed his teeth were bad—angled in his mouth, yellowed, and with a front incisor missing. He dropped the smile quickly, as if he knew Lee was inspecting his teeth.
“I’m Lee Morgan. What’s your name?”
“Henry.”
“Just Henry?”
“I got no folks, Miss Morgan. Henry’s all I go by.”
Lee shifted over on the seat and pulled the rifle in front of her with her foot. “C’mon, Henry,” she said, holding the reins toward him, “let’s go to Burnt Rock.”
The boy hesitated again, as he had before he waved, but then he climbed on to the buckboard. He took the reins, clucked to the geldings, and set out. A silence rose between them, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. When they’d gone a mile, Henry took a wrap on the reins with his left hand and dug out a small sack of tobacco and rolling papers with his right.
“I don’t hold with smoking, Henry,” Lee said.
The boy nodded and continued building a cigarette. His hands were quick and practiced. In a moment he had the cigarette in his mouth, and he scratched a lucifer to light it. Lee shifted to look more directly at him. “I told you I don’t hold with smoking,” she repeated.
Henry met her eyes f
or a moment before his glance flicked away. “Lots of folks don’t. Don’t mean I agree with ’em. You don’t wanna smoke, Miss Morgan, that’s up to you.”
“That cigarette is going to cost you some hot walking in the sun unless you put it out,” Lee said.
Henry reined in and handed the lines to her. He stepped down from the buckboard and blew a perfect smoke ring in the still air. “You watch yourself, Miss Morgan. Thanks for the ride,” he said.
Lee flapped the reins lightly on the backs of the horses. “You’d best watch yourself too, Henry.”
She could feel his eyes on her back as she drove off.
“He was the strangest kid, Ben. So I left him there with his cigarette. Then when I got to town, Mr. Scott told me a couple of his men had gone fishing and that he was short of help. It’ll be at least a couple of hours until my buckboard is loaded.”
Ben laughed. “If those are the worst problems you ever have, you’re in real good shape,” he said. “Anyway, I’m glad you’re here. Isn’t often I get to ride my rounds with a pretty lady next to me. ’Course, it cost me a good piece of money to get you suitably mounted. That ol’ horse OK? Think you can handle him?”
Lee laughed delightedly. “How the livery gets twenty-five cents for a couple hours of this poor old fellow’s time is beyond me—and no, I can’t handle him. I’m scared he’ll run off with me.” She reached ahead and affectionately patted the aged chestnut’s neck. “You’ll be old and tired one day, Ben Flood,” she said.
“Already am.”
She stood in her stirrups. “Looks like there’s a lot going on at the church. Let’s see who’s doing what. Isn’t that John?”
“‘Stumbles,’ you mean?”
“Ben! You stop that! He can’t help that he’s a little clumsy. He’s a great teacher, and he loves the kids.”
John Stiles grunted under the weight of the roughhewn beam he carried as he backed carefully across the elevated stage upon which the choir of the new church would one day perform. Billy Strummer, a burly crew chief for the Trans-Texas Rail Road, carried the other end of the twelve-foot beam. On the far side of the church, a group of six men muscled a framed, ten-foot section of wall upright from where it had been constructed on the ground, sliding it on the base plate of the foundation of the skeletal building. The section seemed to be growing heavier rather than lighter as the sweating men bulled it into place. Wood squealed against wood as the section mated with the base plate.
One of the men bellowed, “Wait—stop! There ain’t nothin’ to hold this thing in place—it’ll just—”
“Shaddup an’ push,” another voice growled. “We almost got ’er!” “But look! There ain’t nothin’—”
“Push!”
The section, almost upright, wavered like a newborn foal trying out its legs—and then it was in place. A cheer went up from the men. The section stood square and straight and perfectly in place—for perhaps three seconds. Then, slowly, inexorably, it began to tip into the interior of the church, building speed and momentum as it fell. The crash of wood against the newly laid floor was like that of an artillery piece. John Stiles flinched at the racket at the same moment he stepped over the edge of the choir stage, flinging his arms out to his sides with a startled, feminine shriek. The beam slammed to—and through—the freshly varnished surface of the small stage. John sprawled on his back onto the table holding the water barrel and the sandwiches and pies and cakes the ladies of the congregation had provided. The table, of course, collapsed under his weight.
Directly outside, Davey Pestle’s team of young mules bolted at the noise, their eyes bulging. The load of bricks they hauled in a wagon erupted into the air as the mules raced across the rutted and rocky field adjacent to the church site. Davey, his face scarlet, opened his mouth to shout at his team and then closed it, remembering where he was. He gaped silently as his wagon launched itself into the air, overturned, and splintered on the ground. The harness leathers parted as easily as overcooked noodles, and the mules galloped off in separate directions.
Lee tugged her Stetson off and swatted Ben with it. “There’s nothing funny about that,” she snapped.
Ben shifted Snorty out of striking range, tears of laughter forming in his eyes. “Everything’s funny about that,” he gasped.
Lee edged her horse closer to him and whacked him again with her hat. Then the corners of her mouth quivered slightly as she struggled to contain her own laughter. For a moment she was successful—and then her giggles escaped. When the couple looked again toward the building, John Stiles and Davey Pestle stood side by side, glaring at them. The side of John’s head was thickly coated with chocolate frosting.
“We’d better get outta here,” Ben whispered, turning Snorty toward town. Lee smiled at John for another second, then hustled her old mount into a shuffling semblance of a gallop.
As they rode together down Main Street, Lee marveled at how the town was growing. The church was nearing completion, and although the majority of the work had been done by volunteers, the building would soon be completely closed in and roofed. Lyle Zempner, a carpenter and a recent convert, had donated his skills, time, and materials, and more than half the pews were already in place, covered with heavy tarps and awaiting the completion of the roof.
The two massive stained glass windows Missy had ordered from a church supply house in Rochester, New York, hadn’t arrived yet but were due within a few days. The congregation had wisely drafted Lyle Zempner and his assistants to install the precious windows.
Main Street bustled with Saturday shoppers as Ben and Lee stopped in front of O’Keefe’s Café. “You go ahead an’ order up a coffee for me an’ whatever you want, Lee,” Ben said. “I’ll go down to the post office and collect the mail.”
Lee grinned. “Just coffee?”
“A good, thick slice of apple pie would go real good with that coffee. But you’re the one who says I’m developin’ a belly. Make up your mind, ma’am.”
When Ben strode into the café a few minutes later, Lee was at a table, forking a bite of rhubarb pie into her mouth.
“Couldn’t wait for me, huh?” he commented. He set a half dozen envelopes on the table in front of her and sat down, his back to the rear wall. Waiting for him were a mug of steaming black coffee and a very generous triangle of apple pie.
“Bessie’s outdone herself with this pie,” Lee said with a smile. “No way in the world could I sit here and look at it and smell it without trying it.” She sorted through the envelopes for a moment, selected one, and used her thumbnail to open it. After reading the first couple of lines, she sighed, quoting for Ben, “ ‘I regret that I feel my ministry would more effectively serve the Lord in a venue more expansive than that of your fine town.’ ”
“Translated: ‘I ain’t comin’ to a dust hole in the middle of Texas for $1,300 a year.’”
Lee opened another letter and again quoted, “‘I fear I need to be where the climate would be more salubrious, since I suffer allergies and am prone to chills.”
“We’re hotter’n Gehenna in the summer an’ freezin’ cold all winter, is what he’s sayin’,” Ben grumbled.
Lee nodded. She slit the top of the next envelope and scanned the letter. She sat up straight in her chair. “Hey . . .” she said quietly.
Ben held his curiosity until she’d finished reading the letter. When she looked up at him, she was smiling.
“This fellow’s name is Duncan Warner,” she said. She lowered her eyes to the letter once again. “He graduated from the Medina School of Theology with high honors, and he’s assisted at a couple of churches—one in Kansas and one in Oklahoma. He’s forty-four years old, single, favors a strict interpretation of Scripture, and he’s looking for a church of his own. He’s willing to accept the salary—says money’s not important to him, but serving God is. Let’s see . . . he didn’t go directly into ministry after his graduation because he had to care for his mother, who died after a prolonged illness. He’s preached a
t some revivals . . .” She refolded the letter carefully. “He sounds good to me, Ben.”
“Where’s Medina?”
“Doesn’t say—probably a small divinity school in the East somewhere. He certainly sounds enthusiastic enough, and I like the fact that he tended to his mother until her death.” Her eyes glinted. “He might work out perfectly. What do you think?”
Ben sipped his coffee before answering. “Well, it ain’t like we’re swamped with offers to come here. Duncan Warner sounds fine on paper. Let’s present him to the board tonight and see if we can squeeze some travel money out of the church fund. Can’t hurt to bring him here an’ see what he has to say for himself.”
“You sound dubious, Ben.”
“I’m not—maybe just careful. It seems like you’ve got him hired an’ preachin’ his first sermon already. Could be Burnt Rock’ll scare him right back to Medina. That’s all I’m sayin’. I don’t want you to get your hopes all up and then have the man turn out to be wrong for us.”
“He’s not in Medina now—that’s where he went to school. He’s in Chicago. I know what you mean, of course. But this is the first positive response we’ve gotten to that ton of letters I sent out. I suppose I might sound like I’m ready to hire anyone tall enough to be seen behind the pulpit, but I’m really not. The waiting’s frustrating, though.”
“We don’t even have a pulpit yet.” He smiled to soften the words.
“I know that.” She returned his smile, if a bit ruefully. “It just seems like everything’s going so slowly. I expected that we’d have at least a few candidate ministers to choose from, and we’re way behind on the building schedule we figured out—”
“But you gotta realize that most of the men involved in the building don’t know all that much about carpentry. Most of us can whack together a chicken coop or a lean-to for a horse, but that’s about it. That schedule we worked out would probably give a real builder a laugh—I know Lyle had one when he looked at it. And like it or not, Burnt Rock is a little burg in the middle of nowhere that doesn’t have a whole lot to offer a man of God—‘specially a young fella who’s bound an’ determined to light the world on fire and bring every man, woman, and child to the Lord. It’s only natural that those young fellas want to be where there’s lots of people to do their ministering to.”
