Chapter
37
Conrad lunged to his feet and started
toward the cabins, but Kingman exclaimed, “Browning! Don’t leave me
here! I need to get down there, too.”
Conrad hesitated, but only for a
second. Grabbing hold of Kingman’s arm he lifted the man to his
feet. Their horses were nearby, looking a little spooked but not
panicking. Kingman’s ride would hurt like hell with that bad leg,
but it was his choice.
Conrad’s brain was racing as he helped
him mount up, then swung into the saddle himself. One: He might
need Kingman’s gun. Two: He had told the guards to gather the men
from the valley at that end of the pass in case any of the avenging
angels made it through the avalanche. Three: They weren’t here.
Four: Something had happened to stop them from coming.
Something . . . or
someone.
“They found another way in!” Kingman
shouted over the pounding hoofbeats of their horses.
Conrad nodded. He had figured it out
already. Fearing a trap, Hissop had split his forces, sending some
of the avenging angels to their deaths in the pass while he and
Leatherwood circled around with the rest of the men and entered the
valley by another route. They had taken Ollie and the other
defenders by surprise, although that smattering of gunshots
testified that some of the men had been able to put up a
fight.
However, the gunfire had stopped,
leaving an ominous silence hanging over the valley, a silence
broken only by the swift rataplan of hoofbeats from the horses
being ridden by Conrad and Kingman.
Dust continued to billow out of the
pass behind and above them as they raced toward the cabins. Conrad
suddenly hauled back on the reins. In the large open area in front
of the burned ruins of Kingman’s cabin, two figures stood. One was
tall and slender, wore a skirt, and had long blond hair that flowed
far down her back. The other figure was shorter and stockier and
even from that distance gave off an air of ugly menace. Elder
Agonistes Hissop had his left arm clenched tightly around Selena’s
waist, while his right hand held a long-barreled revolver that he
prodded into her side.
Kingman had brought his horse to a
stop in shock, too. He whispered, “No . . .”
“Come on!” Hissop called to them.
“Come closer and see what your sins have wrought! Come and face the
judgment and wrath of the Lord!”
“You’re not the Lord!” Kingman shouted
back in a choked voice. “You’re just a man! A twisted, evil little
man!”
Selena cried out as Hissop pressed the
gun barrel harder into her side. “I’ll kill this harlot who dared
to defy God’s will! I swear I will, unless you do as I
say!”
“Play along with him,” Conrad said
quietly as his gaze darted over the settlement. He didn’t see
anyone moving around, but he spotted a couple rifle barrels
sticking around cabin corners. Hissop’s men must have herded all
the prisoners into one place, most likely the barn. Scattered
around, the followers covered the little fanatic as he threatened
Selena.
“If we ride up there he’ll kill us,”
Kingman said.
“If we don’t, he’s liable to kill
Selena. He’s crazy enough to do it.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” Kingman
muttered. He hitched his horse into a slow walk toward Hissop and
Selena. Conrad rode alongside him.
“That’s far enough!” Hissop said when
they were about twenty feet away. Both men reined in. They were
close enough Conrad could see Selena was trembling a little in
Hissop’s grasp. Her eyes were wide with terror, but there was
something else in them as well. After a second, Conrad recognized
it as anger. She was filled with outrage that once again Father
Agony was trying to control her life.
“How did you get in here?” Kingman
demanded. “This is our home!”
Hissop laughed. “You have no home,
boy! You are an outcast. You are the banished! God has turned His
face away from you, and you are forced to flee from the
garden!”
“Juniper Canyon is about as far from
the Garden of Eden as any place I can imagine,” Kingman shot back.
“And you’re about as far from God. More like the
Devil.”
“Don’t blaspheme any worse than you
already have,” Hissop warned. “On the other hand, your soul is
already damned to eternal torment in the fiery pit, so what more
harm can you do? As for how I and the other servants of the Lord
got into this valley of yours . . . you pitiful young fool, do you
think you’re the only one who’s ever been here? I explored every
foot of this territory before the angels of the Lord led me to
Juniper Canyon! I knew this valley was here long before you did,
and I know every way in and out of it. It was child’s play to come
around from the other direction, enter the valley, and take your
men by surprise.”
Kingman frowned. “But I don’t
understand. If you knew this valley was here, why did you settle in
Juniper Canyon? The water and the soil and the grass are all better
over here. This is paradise!”
“Of course it is!” Hissop cried. “Do
you think I wanted a ready-made paradise for my people? How would
they ever learn to appreciate what God has given them if they
didn’t have to struggle for it? I looked at this place and saw
nothing but Satan’s temptation! I looked at Juniper Canyon and saw
how hard work could transform it into a place where my people could
live and make their homes without ever taking anything for granted.
I saw a place that would be ours because we fought the Indians and
the elements and the earth itself for everything that it gave
us!”
Oddly enough, Conrad could see
Hissop’s point. He didn’t agree with it, necessarily, but he could
understand why the elder had felt that way all those decades ago
when he had established his community in Juniper Canyon, rather
than in the lush valley on the other side of the salt flats. That
wasteland must have represented a stark division to
him.
“You’re a madman,” Kingman said. “What
are you going to do now?”
“Why, I’m going to carry out the
Lord’s will, of course,” Hissop declared. “You and all the rest of
your sinful followers must be made examples of. You’ll be taken
back to Juniper Canyon and executed. The two Gentiles we’ll kill
here. They won’t set foot in our home again. As for the women,
Sisters Dora, Rachel, and Caroline will be returned to their
families and given in marriage to their intended husbands. This
one”—Hissop dug the gun in Selena’s side again, making her
gasp—“has been too defiled to ever be a proper wife for a prophet.
I tried to overlook her sins, I really did, but I cannot. She will
live among us as one shunned, a servant who will never be spoken to
or acknowledged, for the rest of her days. It is a fitting
punishment,” Hissop added piously.
Kingman looked like he was about to
rave some more, but Conrad cut him off by asking, “Where’s
Leatherwood?” He hadn’t seen the leader of the avenging angels, and
it was hard for him to believe Leatherwood wouldn’t be front and
center with Hissop, gloating over the elder’s triumph.
A look of sadness came over Hissop’s
toad-like face. “That valiant warrior in the Lord’s service has
gone to his reward. Jackson insisted on accompanying his men
through the pass, even though we suspected there might be an
ambush. We didn’t expect anything as craven as the mass murder you
committed here today, though.”
Conrad hadn’t spotted Leatherwood
during those few minutes of bloody chaos in the pass. He hadn’t
been leading the charge, but his horse could have fallen behind
some of the others. If he had been in the middle of the pack,
Conrad wouldn’t have seen him.
“Jackson Leatherwood’s death is one
more sin for which the Lord will exact vengeance,” Hissop went on.
“And the time for that vengeance has come. You men throw your guns
aside. We have a long ride back to Juniper Canyon.”
Before Conrad and Kingman could even
start to follow that order—which they probably wouldn’t have,
anyway—Selena said in a loud, clear voice, “Don’t do it, Dan. Don’t
give up.”
“But Selena . . .” Kingman’s voice was
twisted from the strain he was under. “He’ll kill you. He’s loco
enough to do it.”
Hissop’s chin jutted out defiantly. “I
am the living embodiment of God’s will, that is all!”
“Let him kill me,” Selena said.
“Better yet, you do it. Or you, Conrad. Draw your guns, kill me,
and then kill him. He has to be stopped, even if it costs my life,
all of our lives. Kill me, so he dies, too.”
Kingman shook his head. “I . . . I
can’t do it.”
A smug smile stretched across Hissop’s
face. “Of course you cannot. I am under divine protection. The
angels watch over me and protect me—”
Suddenly, Selena let out a scream and
twisted violently in Hissop’s grip. He couldn’t hold her. Both her
hands wrapped around the gun barrel and wrenched it away from her
side. She wrestled the weapon out of his hand and grabbed the butt,
slipping her finger through the trigger guard.
Instead of turning the gun on Hissop,
she lifted it toward her own head, crying, “Daniel, I love you!
Kill him!”
“Selena, no!” Kingman sent his horse
plunging forward.
He was too late. The gun roared and
flew out of Selena’s hands as the impact of the bullet drove her
backward off her feet.