Free Dead Reckoning by Mercedes Lackey, Rosemary Edghill

clearly not their destination.
    “Prayer before food, Mister Gallatin. I trust you agree it is far more important to feed the spirit than the body?” Out of the corner of her eye Jett caught Brother Raymond smirking, and wondered how many “guests”at Jerusalem’s Wall had beat a hasty retreat when they realized they’d been offered a meal and were getting a sermon instead.
    “Ain’t ever had trouble feeding both,” she answered mildly, and was rewarded by seeing Brother Raymond’s mouth settle into a thin line of discontent.
    The chapel doors stood open and the hallway was filled with people moving toward them. The ranch chapel had probably been part of the original building, and not something The Fellowship of the Divine Resurrection had gotten up itself. A lot of spreads were so isolated that if they wanted to do any God-bothering, they needed to make local arrangements. There were circuit preachers who rode among places without a minister in residence, staying a few days to marry and bury (or at least say a funeral), baptize any new young’uns, and offer up a good serving of hellfire. In between, a rancho’s chapel would be used for prayers and Bible readings.
    The place looked more like a lecture hall than a chapel, with benches of the same rough construction as she’d seen in the parlor and the dining room and an unadorned lectern at the back. The only thing that didn’t fit in was the pipe organ in one corner. It was the finest thing she’d seen here at Jerusalem’s Wall, all gleaming brass and polished mahogany.
    All the men Jett saw were dressed much the sameas Brother Raymond, and the women like Sister Agatha. Jett drew more than a few curious looks as she followed Brother Raymond inside. The light in the chapel came entirely from kerosene lamps attached to the walls. There were four on each side of the room and two at the back, and a fan of lampblack on the wall above each one, indicating the room saw a lot of use. Jett wondered if she’d been wrong about this originally being the chapel. Not only was there nothing here resembling an altar, there weren’t any windows.
    No, wait. There used to be.
She looked carefully to be sure.
I can still see where they filled them in.
That was more than strange, but plenty of these so-called “holiness churches” had odd ways about them. It might not mean anything.
    Brother Raymond led her up to one of the benches in front of the lectern. He was still—obviously—trying to make her uncomfortable, but better men than he had tried and failed. She didn’t like having people at her back, but she still had her guns and her knife and she hadn’t seen a single firearm here anywhere, not even so much as a shotgun. She pretended to fidget on the bench, using the movement to let her look around the room. There were maybe three dozen people here, most of them women. Sister Agatha had said there were seventy people living here; she wondered how manybeeves Jerusalem’s Wall had if they needed forty or so hands to wrangle them. That was twice as many as it took to drive a herd to Abilene—and some of those drives numbered a thousand head of cattle. Of course, spring
was
branding season too …
    There was an expectant rustle behind her. Brother Shepherd must have arrived.
    The man who walked up the center aisle was short for a man—about Jett’s height—with thinning gray hair cut short. His skin was pale and smooth, and he had much the look of a law clerk: stoop-shouldered and soft. Jett was willing to bet he didn’t lift anything heavier than a pencil from one end of the year to the next.
    The room settled into expectant silence as Brother Shepherd took his place behind the lectern. Brother Raymond had spent a good deal of time on the subject of Brother Shepherd’s humility and how all the Fellowship were equal, but it was obvious to Jett they all kowtowed to this Blessed Founder of theirs. She settled her hat on her knee and prepared to be bored.
    “My dear