The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 1

by Louis L'Amour

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 Colvin 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 make 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 yo
u 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 outside, 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 thataway.”

  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 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 spotted 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.

  I spent most of those hours in the saddle. Returning to Red Horse the way I did brought me to a place where the trail forked, and one way led over behind that mountain with the burnt-off slope. When I had my horse out of sight I drew up and waited.

  It was just growing gray when a rider came down the mountain trail and stopped at the forks. It was Ed Colvin.

  We hadn’t anything to talk about right at the moment so I just kept out of sight in the brush and then followed. He seemed like he was going to meet somebody and I had a suspicion it was Brother Elisha. And it was.

  “You got it?” Ed Colvin asked.

  “Of course. I told you we could fool these yokels. Now let’s—”

  When I stepped out of the brush I was holding a shotgun. I said, “The way of the transgressor is hard. Give me those saddlebags, Delbert.”

  Brother Elisha stared at me. “I fear there is some mistake,” he said with dignity. “I am Brother Elisha.”

  “I found those cans and sacks up top of the hill. The ones where you kept your grub and the grass seed you scattered.” I stepped in closer.

  “You are Delbert Johnson,” I added, “and the wires over at Russian Junction say you used to deal a crooked game of faro in Mobeetie. Now give me the saddlebags.”

  The reverend has a new church now, and a five-room frame parsonage to replace his tiny cabin. The dead of Red Horse sleep peacefully and there is a new iron fence around the cemetery to keep them securely inside. Brennen still keeps his saloon, but he also passes the collection plate of a Sunday, and the results are far better than they used to be.

  There was a lot of curiosity as to where the reverend came by the money to do the building, and the good works that followed. Privately, the reverend told Brennen and me about a pair of saddlebags he found inside the parsonage door that Sunday morning. But when anyone else asked him he had an answer ready.

  “The ravens have provided,” he would say, smiling gently, “as they did for Elijah.”

  Nobody asked any more questions.

  The Courting of Griselda

  When it came to Griselda Popley, I was down to bedrock and showing no color.

  What I mean is, I wasn’t getting anyplace. The only thing I’d learned since leaving the Cumberland in Tennessee was how to work a gold placer claim, but I was doing no better with that than I was with Griselda.

  Her pa, Frank Popley, had a claim just a whoop and a holler down canyon from me. He had put down a shaft on a flat bench at the bend of the creek and he was down a ways and
making a fair clean-up.

  He was scraping rock down there and panning out sixty to seventy dollars a day, and one time he found a crack where the gold had seeped through and filled in a space under a layer of rock, and he cleaned out six hundred dollars in four or five minutes.

  It sure does beat all how prosperity makes a man critical of all who are less prosperous. Seems like some folks no sooner get two dollars they can rattle together than they start looking down their noses at folks who only have two bits.

  We were right friendly while Popley was sinking his shaft, but as soon as he began bringing up gold he started giving me advice and talking me down to Griselda. From the way he cut up, you’d have thought it was some ability or knowledge of his that put that gold there. I never saw a man get superior so fast.

  He was running me down and talking up that Arvie Wilt who had a claim nearby the Popley place, and Arvie was a man I didn’t cotton to.

  He was two inches taller than my six feet and three, and where I pack one hundred and eighty pounds on that lean a frame, most of it in my chest, shoulders, and arms, Arvie weighed a good fifty pounds more and he swaggered it around as if almighty impressed with himself.

  He was a big, easy-smiling man that folks took to right off, and it took them a while to learn he was a man with a streak of meanness in him that was nigh on to downright viciousness. Trouble was, a body never saw that mean streak unless he was in a bind, but when trouble came to him, the meanness came out.

  But Arvie was panning out gold, and you’d be surprised how that increased his social standing there on Horse Collar Creek.

  Night after night he was over to the Popleys’, putting his big feet under their table and being waited on by Griselda. Time to time I was there, too, but they talked gold and how much they weighed out each day while all I was weighing out was gravel.

  He was panning a fine show of color and all I had was a .44 pistol gun, a Henry rifle, and my mining tools. And as we all know it’s the high card in a man’s hand to be holding money when he goes a-courting.

  None of us Sacketts ever had much cash money. We were hardworking mountain folk who harvested a lean corn crop off a side-hill farm, and we boys earned what clothes weren’t made at home by trapping muskrats or coon. Sometimes we’d get us a bear, and otherwise we’d live on razorback hog meat or venison.