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 tailings 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,
