Legend With a Six-gun (9781101601839) (39 page)

Nicolai Belivev saw Longarm inspecting the church and congregation. He said, “Is not for show, our church, like in Russia big cathedrals, gold vessels for Communion, robes on priests, incense. People say because bright colors and ornaments ve do not have, our lives, too, have no good cheer. Is not true, Marshal.”

“No, I've never seen you folks when you weren't smiling and happy,” Longarm agreed.

“Is not our vay to show off in front of God,” Belivev explained. “Ve go to Him plain, like ve are born.”

“I guess it doesn't take a lot of fancy folderol, at that, to catch God's eye,” Longarm said cautiously.

“
Da
. You are say what
Bratiya
show each day by vay ve live,” Belivev agreed. “But is by Mordka to start vorship.”

Danilov had stepped up on the platform and now stood in front of the lectern. Without raising his voice, he spoke briefly in Russian. When he stopped, one of the men in front of Longarm stood and spoke in the same language. He was followed by several others. None of them raised their voices.

Longarm didn't know whether they were praying or preaching, but he noticed that the congregation gave full attention to each speaker. Not a sound interrupted any of those who spoke; even the children gave them silent attention. Once or twice, in the hush that followed each speaker's words, Longarm again heard cattle blatting outside the church. He frowned. The noises still came from a distance, but it seemed to him the sounds were louder than they had been when he'd heard them outside the church.

A stillness settled over the congregation. Apparently, all those who had felt called upon to speak had delivered themselves of whatever was on their minds. Nicolai Belivev whispered, “Is no one man our preacher, you understand? Mordka our leader is, but anybody is vant to praise God is to do it.”

Mordka Danilov cleared his throat and said a very few words. A stir ran along the benches. Men, women, and children were getting up. Belivev whispered, “Is now ve kneel down to pray each one.” He kneeled. After a look of startled surprise, Longarm did so too. The church was totally still for several minutes. Once again, the cattle could be heard, and this time, Longarm was sure they were much louder and more insistent.

Must be a trail herd pushing on to get to the corrals, he thought. Snowstorm probably slowed 'em down, and they've got to be there tomorrow to dicker with the buyers and load out.

He looked around covertly, but saw nothing except bowed heads and eyes tightly closed. There was no way that he could carry out his half-formed idea of stepping outside to investigate without disturbing the worshippers. He stayed on his knees.

For several minutes, the silence was maintained. Then, one by one, the sounds of scattered voices rose, saying
“Amin.”
The word in Russian was close enough to its English counterpart so that Longarm needed no one to translate. He raised his head and looked around. People were beginning to stand; he rose to his feet with them.

Belivev said, “Is now come near to end of worship. Only is one
obryad
ve do, to vash feet.”

“To do what?” Longarm wasn't sure he'd heard Nicolai correctly. The silence that had lasted so long had ended with the prayers, and now neighbors were talking with neighbors; laughter and the sound of children's voices filled the small church.

“Vash feet,” Belivev repeated. “Of person next to us, ve vash feet. Like did
Christos
vith disciples. You do not know?”

Dimly, Longarm recalled a Bible reading from his childhood, and, from later, an Easter sermon by an army chaplain in which Christ's washing of his disciples' feet had been mentioned. He hadn't been paying much attention at either time, he remembered. However, he said, “I've heard about it, Nicolai. You folks in the Brethren use it as a sort of guide, I guess?”

“An example,
da
. To show all men are from same clay made, is no one above other one, to show ve are vith
Christos
brothers.”

Longarm had been watching the congregation while they talked. From a bucket of water that stood on the base burner, men and women were filling basins. Those still seated were taking off their shoes.

Belivev saw a crease begin to grow between Longarm's brows. He said, “Is not required you vash feet, Marshal. Or have feet to be vashed, if you do not vish. You are our guest, not one of
Bratiya
. But if you vish, I vash for you the feet.”

“Now, I appreciate you offering to do that, but I'll pass, if you don't mind. Seemed to me I kept hearing cattle bawling outside while the prayers were being said. Think I'll—”

He stopped short. A rumbling had begun to become audible above the noise of talk and laughter that filled the room. It was not loud enough, apparently, to register on the members of the church, who were absorbed in their conversations, or in preparing for the foot-washing ceremony. Standing, as they were, at the back of the room, Longarm and Belivev could hear it plainly.

Longarm said quickly, “Must be a herd going by on the way to the shipping pens at Junction. I don't guess it's anything to worry about.” Then, belatedly, he finished what he'd started to say a moment earlier. “I'll just step outside and take a look.”

Grabbing his hat from the peg by the door as he passed, Longarm opened the door just wide enough to allow him to slip through sidewise, and went outside. The snow was still coming down heavily. The wind had shifted and was now blowing from the south. It carried the sound away from him and made it difficult to judge the distance between the church and the approaching herd. He squinted into the darkness, but his eyes had not yet adapted for night vision, and the dancing snowflakes still further veiled the darkness.

There was a broken rhythm to the hoofbeats that Longarm didn't like. He'd listened too many times to herds moving by night not to know how one sounded when it was ambling peacefully along a trail with the herders riding flank, keeping the cattle from bunching, warding off the sudden panic to which all herd animals are prone. The rumble he was listening to now wasn't just a large cattle herd moving calmly.

It was a herd stampeding, running in wild panic. Within the next few minutes it would be out of control, packed between the Glidden wire fences that lined the trail and stretched on both sides around the church.

Chapter 18

Longarm opened the door a slit and squeezed inside. Mordka Danilov was standing across the room, talking to one of the Brethren. The others of the congregation had resumed their preparations for the foot-washing, or were still carrying on animated conversations.

He went to Mordka and said quietly, “I hate to bust into what you're doing, but we better have a little private talk, real quick.”

Mordka said a few more words to the man with whom he'd been chatting and stepped aside to join Longarm. “You look troubled, my friend. Is something wrong?”

“It's too soon to tell. There's a cattle stampede heading this way. You've got no fence in front of the church, remember, and those steers will be packing in between the Glidden wire behind the building and across the trail. Some of them are likely going to bump against the walls. Maybe you better tell your people not to get upset.”

“A stampede?” Mordka frowned. “Cattle running wildly?”

“That's about the size of it. And they'll be here in just a few minutes, as near as I can tell.”

By now the rumble of hoofbeats had become a deep, steady thunder. The church members were stopping their joyful conversations and straining their ears to determine the source of the noise.

Danilov jumped up to the platform and began speaking loudly in Russian. As he talked, a few small cries of alarm came from the women, and several of the men started for the door. Longarm moved to stop them. He knew the danger that could be caused by a light being flashed suddenly across the path of the stampeding steers.

“Don't open that door!” he called. “Don't go outside!”

His voice was lost in the din that now seemed to come from just beyond the walls of the church. It was a medley of pounding and blatting and the clashing of horns.

One of the men reached the door and flung it open. Light from the interior speared out into the darkness. It showed the brick-red backs and shoulders of steers glistening as they milled around in the area outside the church. The light that appeared so suddenly spooked the steers that could see it. Their resonant lowing became high-pitched squeals. The cattle directly in front of the church turned to run away from the light that had startled them. They collided with others heading in the opposite direction.

Suddenly the panic that spreads so mysteriously among herd animals struck the steers, the equivalent of human mass hysteria. The cattle nearest the church were pressing against those beyond them. The herd began to mill, to turn in a circle with the unfenced grounds of the church at its center. Steers that had been heading down the trail toward town were drawn into the mill. The barbed Glidden wire fences that bordered the cattle trail scraped the hides of the steers and created still more panic.

A fencepost at the corner of the church lot gave way. Wire strands, stretched taut, snapped through the air with whiplash ferocity and stabbed into the backs of the steers nearest the break. Other strands coiled along the ground and snared hooves. Cattle fell. The other cattle sensed the injuries and death and their panic intensified.

As more and still more steers joined the mill, their flanks struck the walls of the church. The building was completely surrounded by cattle now, and its wooden walls started to creak. A board snapped like a pistol shot, then another. The lights on the walls began to sway. Under the tremendous pressure of the panicked cattle, the building creaked more loudly. Women and children began screaming.

Longarm shouted at them to stay calm, but the tumult drowned his voice.

A kerosene lamp on one of the walls crashed to the floor. It broke, and flames danced along the floor and up the wall. Another lamp fell. The walls of the church were being pushed relentlessly inward now under the weight of the steers packed against them on the outside. A roof girder cracked, and another.

“Get under the benches!” Longarm shouted, but only those nearest him heard.

Those who did hear started to crawl under the pews, and others followed their example. Flames burst through broken windows and flared across the backs of the nearest steers. The animals screamed and tried to run, but they were unable to move.

Now the roof was creaking, about to collapse. Longarm looked around. Most of the people were under the benches. Only he, Mordka, and Fedor Petrovsky were still on their feet. Longarm signaled to them to join the others under the dubious shelter of the pews.

With a final keening groan the roof began to fall. From outside came the sounds of gunshots and shouting men. The roof gave way. It fell in, and scattered burning brands across the pews. The gunfire outside increased. The lowing of the cattle diminished in volume, but the ominous crackling of the flames increased to fill the air.

High-pitched cries of children rose and cut through the snapping of burning wood. Women screamed. Boards scraped against one another, broke, and punctuated the pandemonium with loud reports. The tempo of the shots outside the church increased.

“Obotve nobonic obovate!”
a woman cried.
“Moy mladenec! Moy mladenec!”

Longarm was only a short distance from the wailing woman. He wriggled across the floor to her side. She was tugging at the leg of an infant who had been pinned to the floor when a beam had fallen across its chest. Others were crawling to help, though Longarm could tell at a glance that the child was dead. He shook his head at the woman nearest the mother; the woman took the mother in her arms and tried to soothe her. Longarm crouched over the child and wrapped his arms around the beam. The heavy timber lifted to his straining, just enough to allow another woman who crawled up at that moment to slide the small body free. Longarm pointed to the weeping mother and shook his head. The woman cradled the small corpse in her arms.

By now the flames were growing in intensity and spreading rapidly. In a few minutes, Longarm knew, the air trapped under the collapsed roof would superheat to the point where it would shrivel the lungs if inhaled. He looked for a way out.

There was only one hope that he could see—the section of the roof not yet reached by the flames. He belly-crawled over to the center of the unburned span and looked around. When he rose to his knees it was like plunging his head into a hot bath. He dropped back quickly and looked around as best he could while prone.

A few feet away, one of the roof girders had snapped, and the broken end of the heavy eight-by-eight timber lay wedged between the fallen roof and the floor. Longarm scrambled over to it and tried to pull it free. It was beyond even his strength to do so. A hand touched his shoulder. He looked around to find Fedor Petrovsky at his side.

“Ve both pull,” Petrovsky said.

Wrapping their arms around the timber, seesawing it back and forth, lifting it with their combined strength, they worked the timber free. Both men were panting as they inhaled the rapidly heating air at a level of only a foot or so above the floor. Longarm motioned with his fist, driving it toward the roof, which was made of roughcut boards covered with shingles. Petrovsky nodded. Inhaling deeply with their faces close to the floor, they knelt and began swinging the girder horizontally, like a battering-ram.

Again and again they dashed the girder against the roofboards. Shingles flew off, and the boards began to splinter. Their lungs were straining, and they dropped to the floor to inhale again before going back to the attack. At last the board cracked and broke. From the outside, gloved hands appeared, three or four pairs of them, and began tearing at the split boards, pulling them away from the trusses to which they were nailed.

“Yell to them folks to come this way!” Longarm told Petrovsky. “If we move fast, we might get 'em all out safe!”

Petrovsky began shouting in Russian. His calls brought an immediate response. A steady stream of the Brethren began crawling toward the opening, racing the flames that were being drawn by the draft it had created. Longarm and Petrovsky helped those who needed a hand to get through the gap they'd made. Outside, the same hands that had helped break open the roof took the escaping Brethren and aided them in reaching the ground without falling.

Faces became blurred by his smoke-filled eyes as Longarm worked. He recognized those with whom he'd become best acquainted: Mordka, Tatiana, Marya, Antonin Keverchov, Anatoly Yanishev, Nicolai Belivev. There were others whose faces were familiar, but to whom he couldn't put names. One by one they struggled through the gap until at last there were no more. Longarm gestured to Fedor Petrovsky to leave, and followed him out. The flames had crept more than halfway across the floor by the time he went through the opening.

Outside, angry people plodded around aimlessly on the snow-covered ground. There were shouts everywhere, and arms raised in gestures silhouetted by the flames that now engulfed the entire mass of boards that once had been a church. The fire cast a circle of flickering orange light around the cleared area and across the cattle trail. Longarm could see the carcasses of steers littering the ground. Some of the Brethren seemed too stunned to do anything more than stand away from the flames and stare into them. A few were moving around. Mordka Danilov was going from one cluster of people to the next, and at the edge of the circle of light, Longarm recognized Fedor Petrovsky talking with a group of men.

Cattle were still moving along the trail, but the panic that had gripped the herd had ended as quickly as it had begun. Ranch hands were riding with the steers, and a few saddled horses stood riderless between the stream of plodding animals and the group of people from the church. Longarm recognized the burly figure of Clem Hawkins, and picked his way around the cattle carcasses and clumps of people until he reached the rancher.

“You satisfied now, Hawkins?” Longarm demanded angrily.

“Long? What the hell are you doing out here?”

“Tending to my job. Seems like the Brethren were right when they came and told me they were afraid your bunch was going to pull off one of your dirty stunts tonight.”

Hawkins stared. “You think this thing was something we planned? You're crazy, Long. You've been listening to these nesters too much.”

“Maybe. All I can believe is what I'm looking at.”

“You'll do better to believe me when I say all this was an accident,” Hawkins snapped.

“If it was, it was a mighty convenient one. Fits right in with what you and your crowd have been doing all along.”

“Now wait a minute—” Hawkins began.

“You shut up and listen to me, Hawkins,” Longarm broke in. His anger was controlled now, his steely dark eyes glittered coldly. “There was a little baby killed in that fire your steers caused. I'm going to hold you accountable for that.”

“Are you saying I'm a murderer?”

“You're responsible, ain't you?”

“No, by God, I'm not!” Hawkins looked around, and hailed one of the men who stood a short distance away. “Bill Tatum! Come here a minute! Bring Dell and Hetter, if you can find them!” He turned back to Longarm and said, “Now, if you'll just stand still for a minute and listen, you'll see how this all happened.”

“All right, Hawkins. I'll listen to your side. But I want somebody else to hear it too.” Longarm peered through the snow, trying to locate Mordka Danilov. He saw him at last, talking to a group of the Brethren, and called, “Mordka! Step over here with me, will you?”

Hawkins glared at Longarm while they waited for the others to join them. When the three men he'd called and Mordka Danilov finally got there, the rancher said, “Long, this is Bill Tatum, owns the Double Z. Dell's his drive honcho, Hetter's mine. Long's a deputy U.S. marshal.”

Tatum nodded. “I heard you was nosying around,” he told Longarm. “But I still ain't quite sure what you're looking for.”

“I was sent here to keep an eye on the election,” Longarm replied levelly. “Everything else has just sort of happened. I didn't know I was going to get caught in the middle of a fuss between you men and these homesteaders.” He indicated Mordka Danilov, “I guess you know who Mr. Danilov is. He's kind of headman for the farmers.”

The ranchers and the homesteader exchanged stiff-lipped nods. Mordka was obviously seething, but held himself silent.

Longarm went on, “Now, Hawkins might be right about me having a hard head, Tatum. But I've been lied to and shot at and I've had a bellyful. Now this killing here's come along, and I'm holding you and Hawkins and your men responsible.”

“You see what I told you?” Hawkins exclaimed. “He's on the nesters' side!”

“I ain't on their side or your side, either. I'm on the law's side, and that's the straight of it.”

“I thought Sheriff Grover was the law here,” Tatum said. “That's what he was elected for.”

“Grover's not the law,” Longarm snapped. “Nobody's the law. Law's what's put down in the books, not what you or Grover or Hawkins or me says it is, or would like to see it be.”

“All right, we know that, Long,” Hawkins said brusquely. “Bill, this marshal's not going to listen to anything I tell him. You go ahead, explain how this mess tonight began.”

Tatum scratched his unshaven chin. “Damned if I know where to start, Clem.”

“Go right on back to the first,” Hawkins said. “Back to where you and me got our ropes crossed.”

“All right.” Tatum looked at Longarm and Mordka. “I guess you know that when it comes time to drive our market herds to railhead, all of us raisers get together and draw straws to see who's coming in to the pens, first to last?”

Longarm nodded, “I heard that's how you work it, but I don't see that it's got any bearing on what happened to the church here.”

“Damn it, that's why the whole thing happened!” Tatum retorted. “Clem was supposed to be outa my way by the time my herd got this far.”

“My drive started on time, Bill,” Hawkins put in. “It was this early snow that slowed us down. I couldn't help it, nobody could.”