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Authors: Loren D. Estleman

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“You know what he wants. To pose as a man of the cloth in order to catch a rogue. Sin for sin, and I am to be his accomplice. ‘Speak not in the ears of a fool: for he will despise the wisdom of thy words.'”
“‘The integrity of the upright shall guide them,'” she said.
“‘ … but the perverseness of transgressors shall destroy them.'”
“Should I be taking notes?” I asked.
“
In which faith
were you raised?” Griffin asked.
“Christianity,” I said. “I'm pretty sure.”
“I meant which church.”
“I was born six thousand feet up in the Bitterroots. I never saw a church until I was almost grown.”
His pale eyes clouded. “Your parents were savages?”
“Only my father. My mother was some part Indian.”
“Which tribe?”
“Nez Perce, I think.”
“You don't know?”
“I wasn't encouraged to ask questions.”
“And so with those qualifications you chose to enter law enforcement.”
“No one chooses that. I just sort of drifted into it after the buffalo ran out. In between I punched cows and shot wolves in the winter for the bounty, but I made too thorough a job of it. When wolves got scarce I became a drunk for a while and got to know a few jails. In one of them the sheriff
turned out to be an old bunkmate. He told me the U.S. marshal was hiring here in Helena. It was the only work I could get where my recent history didn't count against me.”
“And how long have you been about it?”
“Ten years last April. Felons don't seem to run dry like buffalo and wolves and whiskey.”
“A fortunate turn for the citizenry. Road agentry is the only calling you haven't answered.”
“I disagree. The frontier keeps changing. There's always a paying position that didn't exist last week. What did you do before you became a priest?”
“I was an altar boy.”
We were seated in a pair of split-bottom chairs in a room he called his study, a dim cell at the top of a flight of stairs you practically had to crawl up on hands and knees to keep from cracking your skull on the square timber across the top. One wall slanted with the roof and the rest were a jumble of books stuck in at every angle between two-inch-thick pine shelves. More books and loose papers climbed corners to the low papered ceiling. A lamp with a blackened chimney smoked on a small writing table near his chair, stinging my eyes while illuminating little but itself. The room smelled of coal oil and moldy bindings.
One queer thing I'd noticed: None of the rooms I'd passed through on the way there contained a visible religious symbol of any kind. The study was no exception. I'd never been in a Catholic household that didn't display a large crucifix or a picture of Jesus somewhere prominent.
He returned to my origins. He would be one of those biblical scholars who cut Methusaleh in half to count the
rings. “The Nez Perce are an intelligent people. Large cranial capacity. I taught them at the Saint Ignatius Mission when I was in seminary. You favor them in the jaw. In the forehead, not so much.”
“My father came from Aberdeen. He used to smash stoneware jugs with his head to win bets.”
“You must have been proud.”
“Grateful for the inheritance. I've stopped more than my share of pistol butts and I can still walk a straight line.”
“You and I are not of the same flesh,” he said. “I cannot think of any other circumstances that would place us both in one room.” He leaned forward as if to rise. “I'm not going to help you. The only reason I didn't turn you away at the door is I'd never be quit of it as long as Esther is around to remind me.”
As if in response to her name, his wife knocked and entered, carrying a brass lamp and a silver tea set on a tray. She was the only one of us who didn't have to lower her head to clear the doorway. She set the tray on a squat square footstool stacked with volumes—there wasn't a bare horizontal space in the room, but this one at least was level—traded lamps, and blew out the one that had been fouling the air. The room brightened immediately. I don't know that it had entirely to do with a clear chimney and a well-trimmed wick.
She poured for us both. I don't like tea, but when she'd mentioned brewing it I'd assented, because I wanted her present for what I did then. I fished a leather poke from my side pocket and placed it on the tray where the pot had stood. It clanked.
“I'm authorized by the United States District Court for the Territory of Montana to offer you a hundred dollars in gold for divinity lessons,” I said. “Judge Blackthorne advised me to pay half in advance and the rest upon completion. I'm putting it all on the table. The risk of flight in your case seems small.”
“It used to be thirty pieces of silver. The treasury must be in good condition.”
“Eldred, the man is our guest.”
I said, “It's more than twice what I earn in a month, but we're asking for a season's instruction in two weeks. The object of betrayal is a gang of highwaymen, not Jesus.”
“You're overlooking the rest of the congregation, who will come to you in search of guidance. ‘Have ye not spoken a lying divination—'” He broke off with a sidelong glance at his wife. It occurred to me that her knowledge of the Bible ran deeper than his. I seemed to have stumbled into an old argument.
“It won't be a lie if you teach him the proper words.”
“A profane man profanes holy words merely by speaking them.”
“The sword of God is not so brittle,” she said. “And Mr. Matthews has refused to extend us any more credit at the meat market.”
I'd gambled right. It was the men who were winning the West, but it was the women who kept the books.
Griffin sat back a fraction of an inch, fixing me with his pale eyes. “Were you baptized?”
“I've been up to my chin in the Canadian and all the way under in the Yellowstone. I almost drowned that time.”
He looked at Esther. “Are you not yet convinced whom he represents? Must he sprout horns and hooves?”
“The Prince of Lies is not so clumsy or we would not fear him.” She turned to me with the teapot in one hand and a full cup and saucer in the other. “Have you really never been christened in the faith?”
I shook my head.
“There's the end of it,” Griffin said. “Tell Matthews I'll eat potatoes and miss Purgatory.”
“Don't be theatrical. You hate potatoes. The solution is simple. Mr. Murdock will submit to be baptized, and we shall ask him to join us at supper tomorrow night after his lesson. Pork chops, I think.” She handed me the cup and saucer, gave the other to her husband, and set down the pot, scooping the sack of coins from its path and putting it in the pocket of her plain apron, all in the same movement. Then she lifted the tray and left.
For a moment the only sound in the room was me blowing on my tea. I looked across at him. “I don't suppose you'd care to do the honors.”
“It wouldn't be sanctified. I'm no longer a priest.”
“I'll ask Reverend Clay, then.”
The crease between his brows deepened. It had looked like a scar to begin with. “The Presbyterian?”
“I'm posing as an evangelist. How good does it have to be?”
“Mother of God.” He crossed himself. “Is there a sacred thing you don't hold in scorn?”
“I like the idea of the Good Samaritan. As for the rest, no one died for my sins. I wasn't born yet.”
“By which I take you to mean you've invented some of your own.”
“I'd be guilty of vanity if I said I had. I confess I've broken a Commandment or two in order to keep others.”
“Do not use the word
confess
in my presence. The common belief is priests are unworldly and therefore unschooled in the wickedness of man. Those who subscribe to the theory have never sat in the darkness listening to a parishioner gloat over the details of unspeakable evil under the pretense of absolution. Nearing the end I became convinced that no number of Hail Marys would spare them the pit. Meanwhile I retired to the rectory each evening bearing their burden as well as my own.”
“Is that why you left the priesthood?”
He sipped tea, drawing it in with a sucking noise like a horse drinking water, and set his cup in its saucer with a click. It seemed to place a full stop to the conversation. “No doubt you think that having chosen evangelism you've avoided the intolerable yoke of dogmatic principle. What the informed laity lacks in formal training it more than makes up for in passion. Have you ever attended a tent meeting?”
“No.”
“There is always one about, every Sunday in mild weather. You and I will attend the next. What do you intend to wear on this southwestern sojourn?”
I ran a thumb under the left lapel of my coat. He shook his head slowly. I said, “Not black enough?”
“Not humble enough. A made-to-order suit on a minister's back means a hand in the collection plate.”
“I can't find a fit in a ready-made that has room for this.”
I spread the coat to show him the Deane Adams in its suspender scabbard.
The skin of his face drew taut. “A righteous man arms himself with righteousness only.”
“I consulted Samson and David on the matter. They came to a different conclusion.”
“Do not seek to banter with me in Holy Writ. I will bury you, and we haven't time for it. You must not carry a pistol into a house of God.”
“The last time I was in one I didn't see a gun check at the door. I'm going to Texas to break up a gang. If I save a soul, it's in the line of a collateral benefit. I've heard stories of pocket Bibles stopping bullets, but I don't credit them. Bandits carry heavy calibers as a rule.”
He started to drink again, but his hand shook. He set cup and saucer on the writing table. “At least promise me you won't brandish it in church.”
“I could, but it'd be a lie. They build churches and saloons from the same green wood and there are men who'd as soon bust a cap in a convent as in a brothel. I won't make a point of the business without good cause, I can swear to that much. That's why I need a coat that won't show a bulge.”
“Pick one off the shelf a size too large. No, two sizes; the more shapeless the better. Bundle it in your bedroll, and when you reach your destination don't be too conscientious about brushing and pressing. You can't preach convincingly about a camel passing through the eye of a needle if you look as if you'd get stuck yourself.”
“Should I let out my whiskers and chew a plug?”
“Assuredly not. You must be clean in your habits and appearance.
Does it not sting your professional pride when you encounter a slovenly peace officer?”
“I've trusted my life to a few. But I understand. A bad lawman paints us all. I'll pack a razor and look to my nails.”
“Clean them, don't pare them. And under no circumstances allow a barber to shave you. Fifteen cents for a haircut is as much as most ministers can afford, and they will forego a meal to avoid becoming shaggy. Fortunately, sustenance will not be a problem. Most parishioners consider having even a mediocre minister to their homes for dinner the same as purchasing an indulgence.” He touched his flat belly. “Mind you, don't be taken in by the conventional belief that all country wives are superb cooks. You'd be wise to carry a sack of peppermints in your pocket to settle your stomach.”
“I didn't realize the work was so dangerous.”
Nothing like a smile crossed his features. “Many men—out here in particular—make the mistake of confusing a cassock with a skirt. They have no concept of the level of courage required to walk the path of the lamb in a den of lions. Any fool can muster the strength to face a mortal enemy. Only one man in a thousand can find it within him to turn his back on one. Are you that man?”
I hesitated for the first time in the discourse. “I don't know.”
“An honest answer at last. Have you a Bible?”
“I own one. I didn't bring it. It seemed like carrying firewood to the forest.”
“Bring it with you next time. It will save passing the text back and forth.” He turned in his chair and lifted a volume
the size of a traveling desk off the pile of books on his writing table—one-handed; his hands were slim and white, but as strong as a harvester's—opened it in his lap, and hooked on a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles from a waistcoat pocket.
And so began the catechism.
I returned to
my furnished room past midnight, limp as a bar rag. A hundred voices were shouting Bible passages in my head. Sunday school with Eldred Griffin was like digging postholes all day in the desert, and I'd done that too.
By gray dawn I was back in his study. He looked as fresh as I felt stale, wearing a clean collarless shirt with his waistcoat and trousers brushed and creased in the right places (he had no one to impress with his poverty) and a shine on his elastic-sided boots, round-heeled though they were.
That day began as did the next four, with the same question :
“Are you baptized yet?”
My answers varied:
“Not in the last six hours.”
“I haven't had the chance.”
“Reverend Clay went shooting.”
“I'm catching a cold.”
“I forgot.”
On each occasion he made no comment, snapping open his leviathan Bible and directing me to turn to the passage before him in mine. He'd marked his place with a piece of razor strop scraped thin as flannel. My copy was bound in supple leather for traveling, with all the gold leaf worn off the outside lettering and its dog-eared pages rubbed nearly transparent at the edges, like a marked deck of cards. It had been left to me by Dad Miller, a deputy marshal who'd taught me two-thirds of what I knew about the hunting of men, including a posthumous lesson: Place the same faith in your friends as you do in your enemies. He'd had his throat cut while on watch by a member of his own posse.
Each day we interrupted our labors for breakfast, noon dinner, and supper. Esther Griffin was a good simple cook who skimped a bit on salt and pepper, but kept vinegar in a cruet on the table for my use; neither she nor her husband touched it. We ate meat on two evenings and crackles every morning, so I concluded that she had made peace with the butcher. We spread lard on slabs of coarse bread and washed everything down with chicory coffee and water, which she drew from a well uphill of the cemetery. She baked bread twice that first week and on Saturday a peach pie made from preserves sent to her by a sister in Michigan whom she hadn't seen in seven years. I gathered that although she belonged to a large family, this sister was the only member who stayed in touch. I assumed the break had something to do with Griffin's having quit the priesthood, but later I learned I was wrong. Anyway the pie was good, if the crust was a little doughy; she blamed the woodstove, which listed toward the
corner where a stack of bricks had been inserted in place of a broken leg.
Conversation at table centered around food, and if it weren't for the preserves. I'd never have found out about the sister and Esther's estrangement from the rest of her people. Griffin never failed to thank her for cooking, and he always pronounced the grace. “Never defer this duty to anyone else when you're a guest,” he told me the first time I joined them. “Your hosts will be too polite to refuse, but they'll resent you for it. The reason for having you over is to gain a place at God's table, and if you don't put in a good word, their chances are no better than even.”
“Is there anything else I should know?”
“Eat with your fingers if they eat with theirs, but if they're too self-conscious to pick up a chicken leg in your presence, use a knife and fork. Don't let anyone see you pluck stray hairs from your food. And come prepared with plenty of fresh gossip.”
“Isn't that violating some kind of oath?”
“The seal of the confessional doesn't extend to what you overhear in ordinary discourse, and doesn't exist at all outside the Roman Catholic Church. You must sing for your supper, especially if you want to hear what else is taking place among the congregation. The more garrulous the minister, the less laconic the host. That is the reason for this charade, is it not?”
“Still, it steers pretty close to bearing false witness.”
He frowned at the bit of potato on his fork. It was the only vegetable I ever saw him eat, and he seldom did so
without showing distaste. If it weren't for that I think he'd have come down with scurvy long before. “That raises another point. Never sermonize beneath another man's roof. He works six days a week only to be told on Sunday morning he is going to hell. He won't tolerate it in the afternoon.”
“More cabbage?” Esther offered me the bowl.
I gained weight during that period, something I rarely did. Gluttony has never been one of my sins. I was used to bolting a steak in a saloon or a bowl of rabbit stew at a stage stop in order to keep from fainting and falling out of the saddle ; sweets and savory seldom slowed me down when there was light out and miles to make. However, the ordeal upstairs made me ravenous. I think Esther Griffin enjoyed serving something other than bread and meat to someone other than herself, and took special care in the preparation. When she brought out the pie, she surprised Griffin by pouring a glass of cold milk for me from an earthenware pitcher.
“I traded Mrs. Nordström three eggs for a quart from her Maybelle,” she said. She kept chickens in a little pen out back.
Griffin asked how she'd kept it cold.
“In the well, where else? You won't have an icebox in the house.”
“Certainly not, with the market only three hundred yards away. The amount those pirates in the icehouse demand for water and cold, God's own bounty, will revisit them at end of days.” He was as pinchpenny as any country preacher.
“It's very good.” I have a weakness for cold milk.
Griffin said, “I suppose this means no eggs with our fatback tomorrow morning.”
“It means hotcakes. I saved two.”
His mood lightened then, and he spent several minutes in praise of Esther's hotcakes.
“Don't bore the man, Eldred. He'll find out tomorrow whether they taste like sunshine or black midnight.”
He stopped talking and resumed eating. He touched on human whenever his wife was in the room. The rest of the time he was a slot machine that paid out in Scripture.
 
 
The sixth day
of my training was Sunday. I came expecting a short lesson, as surely Griffin still attended morning services, and when he opened the door wearing a coat and hat I began to hope for a holiday. The coat was rusty and appropriately rumpled, and stove blacking had been applied to the kettle-shaped crown of his hat where the nap had worn off. He had on a stiff gutta-percha collar and a green cravat. When he asked about baptism, that's when I told him I'd forgotten.
“Come with me.” He bustled me out the door and drew it shut behind him.
“Where are we going?”
“Where every nonheathen goes on Sunday.”
“What about Mrs. Griffin?”
“She never attends church.”
That surprised me more than when he'd told me there was no mention of apples in Genesis. I didn't even think to ask if it meant he'd married a heathen.
He'd hired a buggy and a shaggy gray. He left the whip in its socket and steered with the lines and short whistles. I'd suspected he avoided Sacred Hearts for reasons of his past, but when we left behind two Protestant churches, I got curious. Genuine wonder set in when we crossed the city limits and took the road that led to the Rockies.
In the foothills, where frost tipped the blades of grass like candle wax, we topped a low swelling rise—Griffin using the whip now to keep us from bogging down in mud from the spring runoff—and came within sight of a large gray tent pitched at the top of the next, looking like the offspring of the massive peak rising beyond it from a tarn of ground fog into streamers of cloud. A hundred yards away from the tent, the nearest stretch of level earth held a dense assemblage of carriages, buggies, and buckboards, and saddle horses browsing in the winterkill for tough new green shoots; it hardly seemed as if any form of transportation had been left in Helena, nor a dry hem or pair of boots among the men, women, and children who had picked their way up the hill. I heard a virile voice raised in song:
There's a place above all others,
where my spirit loves to be.
'Tis within the sacred shadow
of the cross of Calvary.
It was as clear as newly minted silver but rang like iron on iron. From that day to this I've never heard one to approach it for depth or distance. I felt it in the soles of my feet, and
they were eighteen inches above the ground. Then the chorus came in:
In the shadow of the cross,
in the shadow of the cross;
there my spirit loves to be.
In the shadow of the cross.
These voices were an inexact mix of male and female, full-throated and tentative, on key and off by a country mile; not all of them finished at the same time, and there was one bray in particular that shrank my gums from my teeth at the top of the scale. There's always one, and he never misses a service. But the best of them was a torn hinge compared to the soloist:
On the cross my Savior suffered,
that He might atone for me.
And I love the blessed shadow
of the cross of Calvary.
I asked Griffin who it was.
“Lawrence Lazarus Little; I have doubts about the second name. That's his outfit.” He inclined his head toward a sheeted Studebaker wagon standing near the entrance to the tent, with DR. L. L. LITTLE'S TRAVELING TABERNACLE painted in Barnum letters on the canvas. A pair of Percherons stood hitched to it, eighteen hands high unshod, switching braided tails at flies buzzing around their great round
haunches. “He styles himself a doctor of divinity. I can't contest it, but whatever his credentials, when he lifts his voice to God, our heavenly father must either listen or strike up the celestial choir to drown it out.”
“Where do you know him from?”
“Denver. Cheyenne. Omaha. Wherever the church sent me, there he was. For years I thought he was an imp sent to bedevil me, but I knew nothing then of the tent-show circuit. I doubt he's overlooked a major population center or a tin-pan mining camp since he answered the Call. If he were Catholic he'd be a cardinal by now.”
“What church is he with?”
“Southern Baptist.”
That was the last answer I wanted, because I'd already suspected the worst, and the presence in a dale fifty feet beyond the tent of an acre of standing water did nothing to cheer me. It was an old buffalo wallow, from its size as ancient as the veins of gold that remained in the mountains, and worn into a perfect bowl by a thousand dead shaggies. Jagged panes of ice ringed the edge like painted glass.
I waited until we'd found a place among the other horses and vehicles and stepped down. “If you think I'm going in that frozen puddle,” I said, “you've had too much traffic with miracles. I'll take my chances with the lake of fire.”
He let the lines drop to the ground. It was a livery animal and wouldn't wander away from others of its kind. “It's just water. Don't tell me you've never crossed a river in colder weather than this.”
“Then I had something worth getting to on the other side.”
“Not like what's waiting for you this time.”
“Just because you taught me to recite a few columns of verse doesn't mean you made me a believer.”
He turned toward me. The shadow of his hat brim drew a mask around his washed-out blue eyes without concealing them; they seemed to glow like phosphor, but that's an old mesmerist's trick, and most spiritual counselors are students of the art. “Man is conceived in sin, and piles transgression upon transgression all the days of his life. The earth is nine parts water. Nine times nine would not begin to pale the stain of the first; not that brackish pond, and certainly not the paltry few drops the priests of my church sprinkle in a man's face, as if it came sixty dollars the barrel, and declare him cleansed. The Blood of the Lamb is a rare vintage and cannot be bought with Latin. The ceremony is a charming fraud, like confession, and like confession it fools none but fools. But it is the beginning of hope.”
“Hope of what, salvation?”
“That's faith. Faith requires a higher power. Hope is the belief that you can reverse the course of your own descent. It's the only mortal thing the devil fears, or he would not banish it at his gate. It involves free will, which will always be the enemy of him who would throw bad after bad. I will turn a faithless man out into the world to carry the Word, I am that corrupt, but I will spend eternity in limbo before I turn out a creature without hope to poison the hearts of my brothers.”
“So religion is free will. I thought it was the opposite.”
“You thought nothing until God placed you in my charge.”
“Judge Blackthorne said I was hopeless. I said he was wrong.”
“Prove it.”

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