Glorious, page 15
“Will you be serving anything especially good for breakfast?”
“No, the dining room is closed on Sunday mornings.”
• • •
AFTER HIS UNSATISFACTORY MEAL, McLendon went outside. It seemed to him that the night temperature had dropped lower than usual, the most welcome relief of his day so far. He walked toward the Owaysis, hearing the laughter and raised voices inside, and then, on impulse, turned around and walked west instead, past the Elite and the Chinese laundry and Tirrito Dry Goods. It was quieter in that direction. He could hear his boots crunch in the dirt, and the calls of night birds. Just a sliver of moon was visible in the black sky, but there seemed to be an endless blanket of stars. Up the hill and to the right, light seeped through the slats of the shack where Turner, the unsociable prospector, lived, and straight ahead of McLendon was the cluster of tents where the other prospectors camped. He’d never been there and was curious to see how the men lived. A few of the tents were stout canvas, more were made of thinner material, and nearly all of them were patched. Some were supported by thick poles; others sagged and seemed in danger of imminent collapse. A few prospectors were in the camp instead of the saloon, squatting beside small campfires and mending clothes, scribbling what McLendon guessed were letters home, or cleaning tools. He walked among the tents, greeting by name the men he recognized and nodding to those he didn’t. One of these, seated in front of a particularly ragged tent, said cheerfully, “Sit and talk awhile. I’ve got coffee on the fire and beans if you’re hungry.”
McLendon peered at the man; all he could tell, by the light of the small blaze, was that he was older, with a seamed face and snow-white hair.
“The coffee is fresh,” the man said pleasantly. “My name is Martin Sheridan, and I’d be glad if you joined me.”
There was no reason not to. McLendon stuck out his hand, introduced himself, and sat down. Sheridan gave him coffee in a tin cup and said, “I believe you’re the fellow who came here to call on the young lady at the dry goods store. You tried your hand at a bit of prospecting yesterday, didn’t you? Then I expect you’re feeling a little bit achy.”
McLendon sipped some of the coffee, which was strong and very good. “That’s a fact. I don’t see how you fellows do it day after day.”
Sheridan had very white teeth for a frontiersman. They reflected in the firelight when he smiled. “For many, it’s an obsession. They’re so determined to be one of the very few to strike it rich that they’ll endure all sorts of pain in pursuit of the dream. Maybe one in a hundred does it, but that’s enough to make all the others believe that they will too.”
“Is that true of you?”
“Oh, I leave that up to God.” Sheridan rummaged in a pack and produced a tin plate and spoon. “Let me serve you some of these beans.”
McLendon held up his hand. “Thank you, no. I’ve eaten more than enough beans on my trip west.”
Sheridan said, “What I suspect you’re familiar with is stage depot beans, which are wretched fare. They just throw them in a pot of water and boil them into mush. Though pride is a sin, I have some confidence that you’ll find my beans much tastier.” He spooned some onto the plate.
McLendon couldn’t think of a polite way to refuse. He took a tiny bite, chewed tentatively, and his eyes widened. He scooped several more spoonsful into his mouth before pausing to say, “You’re right. These are delicious.”
“Well, I cook them slowly so as to retain some firmness, and I season them with dried Mexican chiles. That gives them a little tang. There’s no secret to it, nor skill. There are so many simple pleasures in this world to enjoy. We get caught up in bigger things and fail to notice them.”
“Mmm-hmm,” McLendon mumbled, eating fast and wondering if it would be bad manners to request a second helping if Sheridan failed to offer one.
A prospector came over to the fire and asked Sheridan, “Have you some thread to lend? I need to mend a shirt.”
Sheridan produced a spool from his pack. “There you are, Archie. Will you join me and Mr. McLendon here for coffee and beans?”
“No, I’ve had my supper. I’ll return your thread when my mending’s complete. Thank you, Preacher.”
As Archie returned to his own tent, McLendon put down his spoon and looked at Sheridan. “Preacher?”
“That’s what most of them call me, because I share the Good Word. If I might ask, what’s the state of your faith?”
One of those, McLendon thought. And now here it comes. “I really have none to speak of. I’m sorry if that offends you. I’ll pay for the meal if you like.”
“There’s no need. And I’m not offended. I’ll be glad to talk about what the Lord can do in your life, but if you’d rather not, you’re not obligated. The God that I serve is a gentleman and doesn’t want to be forced on anyone.”
McLendon set down his plate by the fire. “That seems an odd attitude for someone called Preacher.”
“It’s my experience that the fire-and-brimstone types drive away many more than they reel in. I go out prospecting during the day, and at night I sit by my tent with my coffee and beans and the Bible close to hand. Everyone in camp knows that I’m here if they want to share a little Christian fellowship. And on Sundays we hold services in the dining room of the hotel. Major Mulkins makes it available for that.”
“And do all the other prospectors come?”
Sheridan shook his head. “Not many. Mostly it’s the women of the town, and a few others like the mayor. But it’s important for everyone else to know that there’s a Sunday place to worship if God puts it in their hearts. Perhaps you’ll come tomorrow?”
“Perhaps,” McLendon said noncommittally. “So you’re a prospector by day and a minister by night? I mean no disrespect, and I understand it’s the custom not to inquire too much into anyone’s past, but was that always your intention?”
“I don’t mind talking about it,” Sheridan said. “Like others, I first came west after hearing of the big California strike in 1848. My family in New York was reasonably well-to-do and I was working in my father’s tailor shop. The idea of chunks of gold and silver laying out on the ground, waiting to be picked up, seemed intriguing. I wanted my life to be more exciting. So out I came, only to discover as everyone does that prospecting guarantees only backbreaking work, not wealth. After six months I was ready to give up, but I couldn’t give my father the satisfaction—he’d predicted I’m come whining home, you see. And so I stayed, working in shops as a clerk to save up some money, then going out as a prospector when I had enough of a stake. I did that in California and then in many of the territories. Nevada, Montana, the Dakotas, now here.”
“And have you ever hit anything significant?”
Sheridan chuckled. “In nearly twenty-five years, hardly a speck. But that’s true of most of us.”
“Then if you know the odds are so much against you, why keep trying?”
“Because God wants me out here. He has ways of letting us know his will. I was in Nevada, down to my last cent, thinking it was finally time to go home to New York. I had a letter from my brother saying my father was sick, I should come back and help with the family business. I was ready. The thought of baths whenever I wanted them, food cooked on a stove and not a campfire, clean clothes and no Indians and a comfortable bed to sleep in every night. No more trudging across deserts and up and down mountains. But at night I’d been reading the Bible by my tent, and it came to me just as clear as your own voice this evening that it was the Lord’s will for me to stay out in the wilderness, making His Word handy to those finally ready to hear it. I’m in a unique position to do this, you see. The usual preachers, they visit the tent camps in their fine clothes and with their holier-than-thou airs, telling men who’ve worked themselves into exhaustion that day that they’re nothing but disgusting sinners who better change their ways entirely or get sent to hell. And then the fancy-pantsers leave with no converts but proud in the belief that they did God’s good work and it was just that no one was smart enough to listen. Me, I’m out there with my friends, sweating in the hot sun and cracking rocks and walking back worn to nothing at day’s end. I’m one of them. So when I ask if anyone wants to join me at my fire for food and maybe a word or two about the Lord, they’re not insulted.”
“And have you brought many of them to God?”
“I haven’t, but that’s all the more reason to keep trying.”
“What brought you to Glorious?”
“I was in Tucson and heard tell that a new silver town was being formed. Such start-ups generally attract some of the prospecting crowd, so here I came. If nothing happens and the other prospectors drift off, I will too. I can’t recruit for the Lord if there’s no one around.”
McLendon swallowed the last of his coffee. “But what about you? What if tomorrow you go out here in the Pinals or along the creek and you find yourself a colossal lot of silver? And you’re all of a sudden a rich man, the one in a hundred—what would you do then?”
“Why, I’d let God decide. I expect He’d make it clear to me. Come to our service tomorrow morning, Mr. McLendon. It’ll be a short one, what with everyone there needing to prepare for the afternoon dance. And it won’t cost you a penny. We don’t pass a collection plate.”
“I’ll think about it,” McLendon said. “Thank you for the coffee and for the delicious beans.”
Sheridan shook McLendon’s hand. “You’re always welcome here at my tent. By the by, if you come tomorrow, you’ll hear some fine music. The mayor’s wife will sing a solo, and of course Miss Gabrielle will play.”
“Play what? She told me that she had sold her piano.”
“Well, the Lord provides. You should come and see how He did for Miss Gabrielle. Ten o’clock sharp.”
• • •
MCLENDON DIDN’T PLAN to attend, but after his conversation with Preacher Sheridan he returned to the Elite and went to bed sober. As a result he was wide-awake at dawn on Sunday. It was too stuffy in his room to lie around in bed, so he got up, dressed, and went to the dining room before he remembered that no breakfast was being served. He sat in the lobby reading his book until ten, hearing people come and go through the hotel’s rear entrance, presumably setting up the dining room for the service. McLendon thought he heard Gabrielle’s voice and remembered Sheridan’s comment that all the women in town would be at the dance. Since it was a chance to be with her, he decided to go after all.
Just before ten, people began coming into the lobby and walking down the hall to the dining room. Mayor Charlie Rogers and his wife, Rose, came first, then some prospectors, no more than ten, Bossman Wright and Oafie among them. Salvatore Tirrito, in a high-collared dress shirt, was next, accompanied by Sheriff Joe Saint, then Mary Somebody, Ella, and Girl. When McLendon made his own way back to the dining room, most of the seats were taken. The prospectors took up two tables, the Rogerses another, and the Owaysis bunch had the fourth. But Major Mulkins, resplendent in a chalk-stripe suit and seated with Mr. Tirrito and the sheriff, waved McLendon to an empty chair at their table. Saint nodded to McLendon; Tirrito ignored him.
“I hadn’t realized that you were a fellow of such faith,” McLendon said to Mulkins as he sat down. “By lending your dining room out on Sunday mornings, you’re cutting into your precious profits.”
“Well, hardly anyone turned up for Sunday breakfast anyway, what with Saturday night carousing,” Mulkins said.
There was a table covered with a plain white cloth in front, with a Bible on it. Just to the left of the table, Gabrielle sat on a bench before a boxy-looking contraption. It had a keyboard, and underneath it a foot pedal connected to a bellows.
“What’s that thing?” McLendon asked.
“It’s called a melodeon,” Saint explained. “It’s sturdier than your usual piano and works the same way as an accordion. When Preacher started holding these services a few months back, we thought it would be fine to have music with our worship. Gabrielle said she used to have a piano back east, and somehow word got back to Mr. MacPherson out at the Culloden. He sent all the way to Buffalo, New York, for that fine instrument you see there. During the rest of the week it’s at the ranch for safekeeping, and on Sunday morning a couple of his vaqueros tote it in on a wagon for the service. They take it back to the ranch right afterward. Here’s Preacher, so we’d better hush.”
Sheridan appeared out of the kitchen and stood behind the cloth-covered table. He smiled and said, “Let’s stand and sing ‘What a Friend We Have in Jesus.’ Miss Gabrielle?”
Gabrielle’s fingers struck the keyboard, her foot pumped the bellows pedal, and the melodeon emitted rich, organ-like notes. As she played, Preacher Sheridan called out each line of the hymn. After he recited it, the congregation sang the words and then paused while he told them the next line.
“What a friend we have in Jesus,
all our sins and griefs to bear!
What a privilege to carry
everything to God in prayer!
O what peace we often forfeit,
O what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry
everything to God in prayer.”
McLendon did not even remotely believe in God. Back in St. Louis he had always refused Gabrielle’s requests to accompany her and her father to church. But now, as he heard the people around him raise their voices in song, he was moved, thinking about how true it was that they all had sins and griefs to bear, himself especially. He’d come to the service to be with Gabrielle, but now he found himself thinking of Ellen, and the guilt about her death that he knew he’d carry with him for the rest of his life. Almost in spite of himself, he began to sing too. As always, he was terribly off-key, by far the worst in a room of mostly unskilled singers. Gabrielle twisted on her bench in front of the melodeon and, just for a moment, seemed stunned to see him there. Then she turned back to the keyboard, never missing a note.
When the song was over, Preacher read a little from the Bible, a psalm about the Valley of the Shadow of Death. The people gathered in the dining room that morning knew something about valleys of death, he said, since they lived in one themselves. They had so much to be afraid of: the Apaches above all, but also wild animals and falling off cliffs and many other threats to life. But the man in the psalm wasn’t afraid because he had faith that God was with him, and everybody here in the room had that same protection if they shared the psalmist’s faith.
“It’s tough, I know,” Preacher said. “We work hard without many rewards, if there are any at all to speak of, and we see friends die in tragic ways and wonder why God lets such things happen. That’s when we feel the temptation not to believe anymore. I know you all want to get ready for the dance—have that chance to enjoy yourselves and put aside your troubles for a little while. When you’re done dancing, those troubles will still be with you. But the good news is God will be too. After one final song I’m going to bless you and send you on your way, but take this thought with you. When those times come where you find it hard to believe that God exists, never doubt this. Even when you don’t believe in him, God always believes in you. And now let’s all take pleasure in a magnificent hymn sung by our very own Sister Rose.”
The mayor’s stout wife got up from her chair with some difficulty. Her husband had to stand and pull on her arm to finally get her on her feet. Then, with great dignity, Rose Rogers walked to where Gabrielle sat at the keyboard. Facing the small congregation, Rose said, “This is a favorite of mine, and, I’m sure, of yours.” She nodded at Gabrielle, who coaxed great, soaring notes from the melodeon, and as the music swirled, Rose began to sing in scintillating soprano:
“Amazing Grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see. . . .”
Afterward, Major Mulkins served everyone coffee and biscuits. McLendon told Preacher Sheridan that he’d enjoyed the service, and Sheridan said he hoped to see McLendon again the following Sunday.
“I’ll be long gone by then,” McLendon said.
“Well, when you leave, I hope you’ll take some of the Lord’s spirit with you,” Sheridan said.
“And if he does, maybe the Lord will finally grant him the ability to sing on key,” Gabrielle added. McLendon hadn’t realized that she was standing just behind him. “Right now, he remains the worst singer my ears have ever endured.” To McLendon’s immense pleasure, her tone was more affectionate than mocking. “It was a surprise to see you here,” she continued. “You were never a churchgoer in St. Louis, no matter how much I asked you to accompany me.”
“Given the opportunity, I’d continue demonstrating how much I’ve changed by surprising you in welcome ways.”
Gabrielle studied his face. “So you say.” After a long moment she said, “Well, I must get home to prepare for the dance. It will be great fun. Will I see you there too?”
“Of course,” McLendon said. “You know, in recollecting old times in St. Louis, if I never went to church, I can’t recall that you ever mentioned an affinity for dancing.”
“Perhaps you’re not the only one who’s changed,” Gabrielle said, arching her eyebrows. “Self-improvement should be everyone’s goal.” She seemed about to say more, but Salvatore Tirrito, exiting the dining room with Sheriff Saint, grasped her arm and tugged Gabrielle away.
TEN
The Sunday dance didn’t begin until three that afternoon. Major Mulkins explained to McLendon that most of the prospectors who hadn’t attended Preacher Sheridan’s service wanted to get a half day’s work in before returning to town. “Then they’ll bathe in the creek, put on their nicest clothes, and head to the Owaysis. These dances are real dress-up occasions.”
