Free Sudden Country by Loren D. Estleman Page B

Wedlock, who separated himself from the group from Amarillo and came over. "Ben Wedlock, Major Rudeen," said the Judge. "I am placing you in charge until we return. See that no one wanders off."
    "Count on me." Wedlock had his good eye cocked toward Rudeen. The major met his gaze with spine straight and chin lifted, and I could feel the barrier between the man in the Confederate hat and the officer wearing the uniform of the Republic.
    We took our leave. I paid attention to the people milling around the platform, but did not see the man who had joined us in Denver. He had ridden in a different car, and although I had not seen him alight at any of the stops between, neither had I laid eyes upon him since he came aboard. Assuming that I had made a mistake, I congratulated myself for my decision not to inform Mr. Knox and the Judge of my suspicions. At the time I had been loath to arouse the contempt of Judge Blod–not because I valued his good opinion any longer, but because I valued Mr. Knox's and worried that the other's skepticism might influence it.
    Cheyenne had been a cowtown and still smelled like one, but most of the ramshackle saloons and storefronts had given way to brick buildings and, perched on hilltops overlooking the city, ornate houses with turrets and gables and gingerbread porticoes built by railroad men and the wives of cattlemen who spent more time with ledgers than with cows. When our way led toward a saloon of an ear-her vintage I supposed that was our destination–Wedlock's Golden Gate and Jed Knickerbocker's accounts having educated me upon the haunts of frontiersmen–but Major Rudeen took us past it and into a frame house down the street. A sign on the porch read HOUSE OF THE BLESSED LAMB.
    "Gentlemen," said the major, removing his hat, "allow me to present Deacon Philo Hecate."
    It was a long room with a plank floor and two rows of fresh-sawn benches standing on either side of a generous aisle, at the end of which stood a pulpit just as new. Two pointed window openings in each side wall awaited glass. Even as we entered, a man wearing a canvas carpenter's apron planed an eighteen-inch curl off the edge of the pulpit, felt the edge with the heel of a brown hand, and set aside the plane to untie his apron. Beneath it he wore a black cassock and white clerical collar.
    He was excessively lean, and would have appeared emaciated but for the strength in his face–clean-shaven, burned dark as ironwood, and made up of flat sections that themselves looked as if they had been planed. His hair was pure white and thick and he had eyes of a disturbing blue clarity, like one of those mountain streams that smoke in the heat of summer and burn one's hands with their iciness. His shoulders were high and thin, his jaw long and square, his mouth a horizontal fissure. When it opened, the words that came out crackled like sticks in a hearth.
    "Even Lucifer uncovers in God's house," he said.
    Mr. Knox, Judge Blod, and I snatched off our hats. I think we had all forgotten we were wearing them.
    " 'And I will raise me up a faithful priest,' " said Deacon Philo Hecate, " 'that shall do according to that which is in mine heart and in my mind: and I will build him a sure house; and he shall walk before mine anointed forever' "
    "Amen," said the major. "Deacon Hecate hunted and trapped the Black Hills with Carson and Bridger when there were no railroads west of Chicago. He rode with Fremont, established the first mission school in the Dakotas, and until recently ran the mission school at Standing Rock." Rudeen introduced Judge Blod and Mr. Knox. The latter asked Hecate why he left the reservation.
    "I could not abide the heathen corruption of the Word."
    "May I ask why you wish to return?"
    "I did not say that I did."
    "The Deacon requires stained glass for his windows," Rudeen explained. "They are costly."
    "We are paying a dollar a day for expert services," said Mr. Knox.
    "My fee is two dollars a day. I will not