the grass was growing where no grass had grown in years. We stared up at it with a kind of awe and wondering.
'It's him!' Brace spoke in a low, shocked voice. 'Brother Elisha has done this.'
'Have you gone off your head?' Brennen demanded irritably. 'This is just the first good growing weather we've had since the fire. The last few years there's been little rain and that late, and the ground has been cold right into the summer.'
'You believe what you want,' Ralston said. 'We know what we can see. The Utes knew that hillside was accursed, but now he's walked on it, the curse is lifted. He said he would bring life, and he has.'
It was all over town. Several times folks tried to get into talk with Brother Elisha, but he merely lifted a hand as if blessing them and went his way. But each time He came down from the mountain, his cheeks were flushed with joy and his eyes were glazed like he'd been looking into the eternity of heaven.
All this time nothing was heard from Reverend Sanderson, so what he thought about Brother Elisha, nobody knew. Here and there we began to hear talk that he was the new Messiah, but nobody seemed to pay much mind to that talk. Only it made a man right uneasy ... how was one expected to act toward a Messiah?
In Red Horse we weren't used to distinguished visitors. It was out of the way, back in the hills, off the main roads east and west. Nobody ever came to Red Horse, unless they were coming to Red Horse.
Brennen had stopped talking. One time after he'd said something sarcastic it looked like he might be mobbed, so he kept his mouth shut, and I was just as satisfied, although it didn't seem to me that he'd changed his opinion of Brother Elisha. He always was a stubborn cuss.
Now personally, I didn't cater to this Messiah talk. There was a time or two when I had the sneaking idea that maybe Brennen knew what he was talking about, but I sure enough didn't say it out loud. Most people in Red Horse were kind of proud of Brother Elisha even when he made them uncomfortable. Mostly I'm a man likes a hand of poker now and again, and I'm not shy about a bottle, although not likely to get all liquored up. On the other hand, I rarely miss a Sunday at meeting unless the fishing is awful good, and I contribute. Maybe not as much as I could, but I contribute.
The reverend was an understanding sort of man, but about this here Brother Elisha, I wasn't sure. So I shied away from him on the street, but come Sunday I was in church. Only a half dozen were there. That was the day Brother Elisha held his first meeting.
There must've been three hundred people out there on that green mountainside when Brother Elisha called his flock together. Nobody knew how the word got around, but suddenly everybody was talking about it and most of them went out of curiosity.
By all accounts Brother Elisha turned out to be a Hell-and-damnation preacher with fire and thunder in his voice, and even there in the meeting house while the reverend talked we could hear those mighty tones rolling up against the rock walls of the mountains and sounding in the canyons as Brother Elisha called on the Lord to forgive the sinners on the Great Day coming.
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.
