Dead Reckoning (9 page)

The road continued to climb, and Clarence noticed that his gelding had a bad habit of tossing his head. He could fix that with a piece of rope tied between saddle girth and headstall, but he didn't have a piece of rope just now. The pilgrims would, he thought.

The rain stopped, clouds broke, and shafts of sunlight began to light circles on the mountainsides. He reached the edge of a mountain forest and stopped for one last look across the plains, sensing that the great ranges were about to engulf him.

After a couple of hours, the tracks of the pilgrims became clearer in the muddy road and Clarence knew they had passed here after the rain. He didn't see many small tracks and figured the children had given out and were either riding burros or their parents' backs.

He was having misgivings again. What business of his was the life of May Tremaine? Here he was carrying a fortune in gold into a wilderness. Perhaps he should have put it in a bank back in Denver, for safekeeping until he decided to head south. Too late now. The plan that had seemed so clear when he left Vermont was starting to break apart like melting ice on a river. If he lost that gold, his father would never let him forget it.

He stopped on a hill and saw several trails of smoke below where miners had carved a town into the valley. This had to be Idaho Springs. The near slopes stood divested of timber, which had been made into buildings for the ungainly town. He could see rude log cabins ringing the settlement, a few painted Victorians in one quarter bespeaking mineral wealth.

He wondered if the Ojo de los Brazos would look the way this place had before the mines—the high rocky peaks cradling forests and green valleys. He hoped so. He could imagine driving May up to the gate in a carriage on a sunny day.

What was he thinking? He barely knew this woman.

Clarence swung down from his horse and squatted at the side of the road. The cheap saddle he had bought was going to make him sore if he didn't walk the rest of the way. He put his rifle butt on the ground and gripped the barrel to steady himself as he balanced on the balls of his feet. What if New Mexico didn't look like this? What if May had no intention of going with him there? What would he do then? Give his earthly possessions to the Church of the Weeping Virgin? Become a religious fanatic?

Maybe he should have bought that train ticket this morning. He could have been in Pueblo by now. Well, no choice but to find the pilgrims and go over the mountains with them at this point. Come on, Clarence, you've got to see something through.

He led his horse into Idaho Springs and found out that the pilgrims were camped just up the creek from town. He was hoping they would give him food and take him in when he got there, but he knew no guarantees.

The burro tracks took him to the edge of the stream, where he found the pilgrims engaged in various forms of industry, though with little spring left to step with.

“Howdy,” a guard said when he saw Clarence approach camp. “Good to see you again.”

“Look!” someone else shouted. “It's Sister May's friend!”

Clarence took his bag down from the saddle horn and stared with wonder at the people stepping forward to greet him. May's friend? It was as if she had been among them for years.

“She told us how you helped her out in Denver,” a woman from Pennsylvania said. “God bless you, Clarence.”

He spotted Deacon Dee Hassard sitting against a tree trunk with a book in his hand. The pathfinder sprang to his feet and came toward him.

“May!” someone was shouting. “Clarence is back!”

“What brings you back?” Hassard said, smiling as he offered his hand.

“Thought I might help you take these folks over the mountains,” Clarence said, pulling his coat from the loop handles of his traveling bag before someone picked it up and felt its heft.

“What for?”

Clarence shrugged. “Never been over the mountains before. Thought I could help these people get there, see some new country.”

“Well, you've got a good rifle,” Hassard said. “How would you like to scout ahead and hunt for meat?”

Clarence fought the smile back. “All right.” He noticed a teenage girl leading May up from the creek.

“Elder Hopewell!” Hassard cried. “Get another copy of Pastor Wyckoff's book for Brother Clarence, if you please.” He turned back to the Vermonter and shook the open book in his face. “You've got to read this,” he said. “It'll open your eyes,” and he turned back toward his tree to continue reading.

The girl led May to Clarence and turned away, giggling. The other pilgrims smiled coyly and went back to their chores, leaving the couple alone at the edge of camp.

“They do make a fuss, don't they?” May said, blushing.

Clarence nodded. “It's welcome after that long walk. How did your feet hold out today?”

May smiled and stuck a toe out from under her hem. “That Comanche woman—her name is Mary Whitepath—she gave me these moccasins. They don't hurt at all.”

Elder Hopewell approached the couple on his gangling legs and towered above them. “Here's your book, Brother Clarence.”

“I'm not sayin' I want to join your church,” Clarence explained. “Just thought I might see some new country with you and help you find a place to settle.”

“Will you read the book?”

“I don't see any harm in that.”

“That's all we ask. I hope you will learn to walk in the way that leads to light.” Elder Hopewell gave him the book and turned back toward camp.

“I've been readin' that book,” May said. “Some of it's all right, but other parts…”

“What?”

“It's just hard to believe.”

Clarence raised his eyebrows and looked across the campground at the busy pilgrims. “Did you ever expect you'd fall in with a bunch like this?”

“I didn't know there was such a bunch as this.”

They stood looking at each other—the Vermonter and the runaway wife—neither feeling quite awkward enough to break the stare.

Eleven

The eyes were wide open under Dee Hassard's hat. His head lay on a packsaddle, the edge of a blanket curled under his chin. Pastor Wyckoff's book,
The Wisdom of Ages,
lay open on his chest, and one hand rested across its spine. His lungs drew deep, as if he had fallen into the rhythm of sound sleep, but his mind was conscious, plotting, rehearsing.

The late Pastor Wyckoff was a genius, he was thinking. Hassard only wished he had thought of the scam himself. To an eye honed for deception, it was all laid out like a thinly disguised recipe for fraud in
The Wisdom of Ages.

He held a reverent smile under his brim as he walked mentally through the formula again. Wyckoff's first step: he makes himself a pastor—the easy way. Creates his own religion. No Bible lessons, no seminary.

Only in America.

Hassard couldn't imagine why he hadn't seen it before, but religious freedom had opportunity written all over it. You conjure a revelation, proclaim yourself a prophet—bang, you're in business.

According to
The Wisdom of Ages,
Wyckoff's revelation arrives in the image of the Virgin Mary. She appears weeping over his bed one night, lamenting the sorry state of the wicked world. She tells Wyckoff to gather the poor downtrodden faithful from all the races and start over. Presto, there's your congregation.

It helps to be a good writer, Hassard thought. That Wyckoff could really mold the lingo, yet
The Wisdom of Ages
read like a dime novel, in simple language, with its philosophies easily understood. There was a reason for that. The book was designed to appeal to the poorly educated.

This part is hard to figure, Hassard thought. Wyckoff goes after poor people with little schooling. Where's the logic in that? Poor folks have no money to steal. It makes no sense at first. But that's why it's good—it's hard to figure.

Wyckoff isn't after just any poor folks. He wants honest, hardworking, trusting Christian souls—“the generous poor” as he calls them in his book. They don't have money to take, but they'll work. What a thrust! Didn't the Virgin Mary tell Wyckoff in his vision that all members of the New Order must work every waking moment to keep the devil from infesting their souls? No hand was ever to lie idle for even an instant.

Hassard could hardly stay still thinking of it. Take the church's built-in tenet for constant work, and add to it the Virgin Mary's order that every member give every penny earned to the church, and you have an organization that can only get richer. Wyckoff sits back and counts money while his new recruits keep chipping in their meager earnings.

Next step, publicity. Distribute the book, give a few sermons, convert a few souls. Let it build. Wyckoff is bound to run into opposition, of course. He's telling everyone to renounce money, government, and all other symbols of man's authority—especially other religions. He goes so far as to claim that the Bible is incomplete without
The Wisdom of Ages.
His is the only true Christianity.

But the preachers and priests and parsons won't stand for some upstart prophet shaving off pieces of their pie. They condemn Wyckoff, stir the resentment against him, foment the festering hatreds. They all but condone acts of violence and vandalism perpetrated against the Church of the Weeping Virgin and its members.

So what does Wyckoff do? He takes it like a true martyr for a while, raking in sympathy and new members. Religious fanatics feed off of persecution. It pulls them closer together. Then, when things get really bad, Wyckoff heads west, to new country, where no clergy rule. There his church will work for him, make him wealthy, carve his domain.

But he makes a fatal mistake. On the way west, Wyckoff probes the Old South for converts. Hassard rocked his head on the pack saddle at the folly of it. Wyckoff has grown too cocky at this point. He's been lucky so far, and now he's pushing it. Some white folks in Arkansas take issue with Wyckoff's marrying colored to whites, and they lynch him. You don't mess around with those Southern boys.

The mixing of the races is not a bad idea by itself. It excludes no one, appeals to immigrants. And people who will stand for it don't hate anybody. They're harmless. But Wyckoff should have been smart enough to know it would never go over in the South. Audacity has to be reined in somewhere.

Now he's a poor, dead, fake martyr. He could have had his own kingdom out here. And if Carrol Moncrief wasn't coming back after my hide, Hassard thought, I could pick it up where Wyckoff dropped it. As it lies, I can only take the Church of the Weeping Virgin for what it's worth now, and it doesn't have over a thousand dollars in its coffers.

The swindler shifted on a rock that was poking up into his back. The important thing, he had decided, was knowing the strategy of the scam, and there was still one aspect of the church he hadn't been made privy to: the initiation.

This was something they only whispered about, but he had gathered a little. When a new recruit had read
The Wisdom of Ages
and had decided to join the church, several of the congregation members would put the recruit through a three-day initiation process of some kind. Browbeating and lecturing, Hassard suspected. Whatever it was, it worked. Weeping Virginites were loyal to excess and kept the initiation rites a secret.

Anyway, once he figured out how to conduct the initiation, he could swindle the pilgrims, stay one step ahead of Moncrief, and go somewhere else to put his own twists on Wyckoff's grand swindle—maybe Canada or Australia.

Earlier today he had thought about just grabbing the money and making a run for it in the night. Then that greenhorn from back east showed up—Clarence what's-his-name. He looked just brave and dumb enough to give chase. Hassard had heard May Tremaine tell how Clarence had fought off the cowboy in Denver for her. All he needed was a college boy putting practical thoughts into the heads of his pilgrims. That was why he had made the Vermonter a hunter. To keep him away from the congregation.

Keep him away from Sister May, too. Dee Hassard knew that look. She was no weeping virgin. That gal had used what God gave her to get by before. Now that Clarence had come back, it looked as if he was going to have to string this thing out a little longer than he had at first planned. That was all right. Maybe he would find time to discover the secrets of the initiation rites and have a religious experience with Sister May.

He snorted, forcing her out of his thoughts. The cold mountain air streamed under the hat, into his nostrils. He heard Clear Creek boiling among its time-rounded boulders, the wind rattling twigs against the starry sky. The time was right. Dee Hassard was about to show the ghost of Pastor Wyckoff a thing or two about audacity.

He bolstered his gall, chose his opening line. Coiling his resolve like a twisted spring, he held a breath and waited for the release.

“Great God!” he shouted, springing up from the ground. He threw the blanket aside, staggered, and fell across the gangling legs of Elder Hopewell. “Wake up, everybody!”

The elder flinched as he woke and scrambled out from under Hassard. “What is it?” he said, groping for his sensibilities.

“It's a wonder!” Hassard shouted. He pulled his knees under him, clasped his hands, and made out like he was searching the heavens.

One of the pilgrims rose a short distance away. “Everything all right?”

“Yes,” Hassard moaned. “It's wonderful.”

“What's got into you?” Elder Hopewell said.

Hassard jumped to his feet. “Everybody, wake up!” he shouted, waving his arms. “I know what to do now!”

Voices began to mutter and pilgrims sat up in their blankets. A few of the more curious came trotting to Elder Hopewell's fire, and Clarence Philbrick arrived in stocking feet with his Remington rifle in one hand and his coat under his arm.

“Settle down,” Hopewell said, putting his hand on Hassard's shoulder. “Tell us what you're talking about.”