Notice: This story contains graphic themes of Christianity, faith, salvation, redemption, and religious experience. If you object to such material, you have been warned.

Usually people think mountains when they think of Colorado, but that’s not always the reality. The eastern third of the state is high prairie, and much of it is pretty flat, though there’s some relief in the topography found here and there. Sometimes it’s the low beds of dry rivers, and other times it’s low hills or ridges that sometimes – although not always – bring the term “rolling” to mind.

Atop one such ridge, the highest point for miles around, though that fact is not readily apparent, sits a small white church. It’s the only thing on the hill except for shortgrass prairie, dotted with flowers at this time of year, the early part of May. Under a dome of clear blue sky the view from the usually unmown churchyard is huge. There isn’t much to see for miles and miles except flat to rolling green prairie; the mountains the state is known for lie a hundred miles and more to the west. Here and there are a few trees that often mark where a farm or ranch house once stood. The nearest is half a mile away, a tumbledown house that had been abandoned long enough that no one in the church had a memory of it being occupied.

Conestoga Methodist Church had seen better days itself; it could have used a coat of paint, and in the winter the furnace was sometimes cranky – hard to light and not quite up to the demands of heating the place. There were no pews but folding chairs could probably seat around sixty people, perhaps a few more if small children were among them, but no one still living could remember it being that full. On this particular day, a warm one for May, the windows were wide open. Someone walking along the road at the bottom of the winding lane that ran up to the church could easily have heard the couple dozen people in the congregation singing Rock of Ages to the accompaniment of a piano that hadn’t been tuned since sometime in the Reagan administration.

After the hymn ended and the small congregation was seated, Arthur Gamble, the lay leader of the church, stepped to the pulpit. “Good morning, friends and neighbors,” he said. “I’m pleased to announce that we have our new pastor with us this morning. She’s been assigned by the conference to here and to the church in Tyler, and we’re glad to see her. There will be a joint potluck dinner held at the Tyler Methodist Fellowship Hall at one o’clock this afternoon to give the people of both churches a chance to get to know her. Please give a warm Conestoga Methodist welcome to Reverend Nanci Chladek.”

Art stepped back from the pulpit and took a seat on one of the three hard straight-backed wooden chairs behind it, as the new pastor took her place. She was a shorter than average woman in her late twenties, with chin-length blonde hair. She was wearing a knee-length dark gray straight skirt, and a clerical collar atop a black blouse that obscured the fact that her lean frame was rather muscular. “Good morning, everyone,” she said warmly. “I realize I’m new to you and new to the area, but I’m looking forward to getting to know everyone as time goes by. I’m sure I have much to learn from and about all of you, and I gladly await hearing all anyone has to share.”

She paused for a moment with a smile on her face and looked out over the congregation. She hadn’t taken an exact count, but there were only about twenty-five people there, and at that she suspected the attendance was larger than normal thanks to people showing up to greet her. She wasn’t exactly nervous; she’d given Sunday services many times before, though this was the first one where she was the pastor of the church, not merely filling in for someone else. Still, she was new here, and these people would be her spiritual responsibility for the foreseeable future, a responsibility she did not take lightly.

“Jesus comes, bearing the good news,” she read from the bulletin, rather more formally and authoritatively than the few sentences she’d uttered in greeting earlier.

“The Kingdom of God has come near,” the congregation responded, also reading from the bulletin. “Repent and believe in the good news.”

After the call to worship, there was another hymn and other preparatory announcements before the sermon, which Reverend Chladek gave working only from a few notes, obviously not from any prepared speech. After all, some of the best and most moving sermons she’d ever given had been totally off the cuff, with no preparation at all, when she’d just let God put His words in her mouth.

The sermon went off well; she was satisfied with her first effort at Conestoga Methodist as they all sang the closing hymn. During the last verse Reverend Chladek stepped down from the pulpit and walked the short distance to the back of the church where she could greet the congregation one by one as they left. Art Gamble was with her, so he could introduce everyone to her. She was okay with names but not great, and she knew she would be a while putting names to all the new faces.

She was a little surprised – though not terribly so – to discover that about half the congregation had the last name of Westbrook; they were all descended from one of the founders of the church, which had been built almost a century before. Art explained that they were all ranch families living in the area. Also not to her surprise was the fact that she was nearly the youngest person in the building. There were a couple of small children and one teenage boy wearing a western shirt and tooled cowboy boots, which she suspected were his best Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes. For that matter, most of the men and some of the women wore similar boots; none were expensively dressed. Some of them, both men and women, seemed to be rather careworn, and with nothing being said Reverend Chladek got the impression that nobody in the congregation was very prosperous.

As Art introduced people, he provided a sentence or two about them – indeed, virtually everyone in the building was a rancher, and some people came from fifteen miles or more away to attend the service.

One of the Westbrooks, a man about fifty at her guess, was a little more memorable than most. “Reverend Chladek, this is Trent Westbrook,” Art explained. “He’s the radical here. He doesn’t run whitefaces like most of the rest of us. He runs buffalo.”

“Buffalo?” Reverend Chladek smiled. “I’ll bet that has to be challenging.”

“It has its moments,” Trent smiled. “Some bad, some good.”

“I’ve seen buffalo here and there,” she said. “I’ll be interested in learning more about them.”

“I’ve found out there’s lots to learn,” Trent replied, “and I’ll be interested in showing you around.”

“I’ll take you up on that when I get my feet under me.” He went on to introduce his wife Cathy and his son Keith, the teenager with the cowboy boots. On first impression, Reverend Chladek thought the tall, lean woman seemed brighter and more vital than some of the other church wives, who seemed quiet and unprepossessing in general. Keith gave the impression that he would really rather be somewhere else, but that wasn’t surprising for a boy his age. At least he was here, which was much more than Reverend Chladek would have been when she’d been his age.

It took a few minutes for the church to clear; a few people stood around talking in the warm morning sunlight, while others got into their vehicles, mostly pickups, and departed, heading down the rough lane to the county road. Soon, only Art and Larry Reed, the lay leader of the Tyler United Methodist Church, along with a couple others and their wives were left. Reed had come along to show Nanci the way out here and to introduce her to Art.

“So, Art,” Reverend Chladek said to the Conestoga lay leader, “how do you think it went?”

“I think it went just fine. Of course, just about anyone would be better than that Anders character. It’s going to take you a while to get to know everyone, and they’re all likely waiting to see how you take hold.”

“All I can do is to do my best,” she smiled. “I’ve spoken in small churches before, and sometimes they’re a bit clannish.”

“That’s probably more true here than elsewhere,” Art agreed. “I know you have to get on your way, so I’ll see you this afternoon, Reverend Chladek.”

“I’ll be looking forward to it, Art,” she smiled. “And please, when we’re outside church I’d be just as happy if you were to call me Nanci.”

“I’ll try to remember,” Art shook his head. “We’ve never had a woman pastor before, and after that stuck-up joker you’re replacing it’s going to be even harder.”

“I’ll try to make it as easy as I can,” Nanci grinned. “I’m just as human as everyone else, Art. I’ll see you later.”

Keith Westbrook was really distracted as he and his parents got into the cab of the pickup for the trip back home. He was in the back seat of the extended-cab pickup; the seat really wasn’t big enough for him, and he resented having to ride back there, but there was nothing else that could be done, and he knew better than to ask.

“So, Keith,” his father asked, “how did you like the new pastor?”

“Oh, she’ll be all right, I guess,” he shrugged. “She doesn’t seem as stuck-up as the old one.”

“Yeah, I hope not,” his father said as he started the truck. It was a diesel and loud enough that it made it hard to hear what was being said. “Anyone would be an improvement.”

It would be a real improvement if they didn’t bother going to church at all, Keith thought but did not say. It was boring and they wasted a lot of time with it, time that could be spent doing something else, even if that something was nothing. If they didn’t have church this morning, and then that dinner in a couple of hours, he could be out on his horse enjoying himself – or maybe, if his folks went along with it, he could go to town and see that Amber was all right.

Keith wasn’t old enough to have a driver’s license yet, though it would come not far in the future. That didn’t stop him from driving the family’s old pickup into Tyler once in a while, always with his parent’s permission, of course, and usually for some errand that needed doing in town. Although driving the pickup into town wasn’t quite legal, if he kept it to the back roads, off the busier state highway and didn’t go crazy, the sheriff would look the other way when he drove by. Of course, if an underage driver screwed up, they were stuck with a big ticket, trouble from the folks, and a much closer watch by the sheriff and his only deputy. That all added up to a pretty good reason to keep things cool.

So, if it weren’t for church and the dinner, he could maybe go to town and see Amber today. She wasn’t his girlfriend, not really, but he tried to watch out for her and help her where he could.

While Keith was as curious about sex as any other fifteen-year-old boy and often had interesting thoughts about Amber, that really wasn’t the core of his interest in her. She simply was a kid who needed help, and she wasn’t getting much at all. While he knew little about Amber’s mother, he had heard that she spent more than enough time hanging around the Stationhouse, the only bar in Tyler and just about the only one in the county. That meant Amber was way down her mother’s priority list, and he sometimes wondered how the girl managed to get along.

Keith knew that she wasn’t getting along very well. Back in the winter he had been eating his school lunch across the table from Amber one Monday, and the food in front of her had quickly disappeared. “You must be hungry,” he commented.

“Hell, yes,” the scrawny little brunette frowned tearfully. “I didn’t have anything to eat all weekend.”

Keith looked at her for a moment, then looked at his tray – the meal wasn’t very appetizing, and he had barely started to eat it. “Here,” he said as he slid the try across to her. “You need it more than I do.”

“Thanks, Keith,” she said, and dug into the usual unappetizing mess the school had served. He soon realized that the only halfway decent meals the girl got were the school lunches, and he had no idea what she ate when school wasn’t in session.

From that day on Keith had gone hungry at lunch so Amber could have more than one inadequate school lunch. He wasn’t thinking about sex or about a girlfriend – he just realized that Amber was a hungry girl who needed something to eat. He had big breakfasts and knew he could hold out until he got home where he could raid the refrigerator and only draw the odd comment from his mother about how much teenage boys ate.

That put the two of them into somewhat of a friendship, and as the months went by Keith understood better and better just how hard things were for her. Summer was coming on now; school would soon be out, and that made him worry about what Amber would do for food then. There had to be something more he could do to help, but he hadn’t figured anything out yet.

It bothered him that he would be going to the potluck dinner at the Tyler church, where there would be more food than anyone could want. He wished there were some way he could ask Amber to accompany him, but he didn’t think his parents would like it. But if he was going to be in town, maybe there was something he could do …

With his wife Shirley next to him, Art stood and watched as Reed and Reverend Chladek drove away toward Tyler. It would be nice to get to know the new pastor a little better, he thought, but she had given him a favorable impression earlier in the week at the combined pastor-parish committee meeting, and now another at the service she performed this morning. She seemed like a bright and warm person, but he had his doubts about how well she was going to work out here.

He barely noticed his neighbor Ralph Westbrook come up next to him. The two traded work back and forth a lot; there were things now and then that Art and Shirley couldn’t do by themselves. The two of them had known each other for a long time, clear back in grade school in the fifties, and they’d been friends ever since.

Ralph got right to the point, which was not unusual for him. “So what did you think of this new kid we’ve got for a minister?”

“Seems all right,” Art shrugged. “She ain’t no Craig Howell, that’s for sure, but she ain’t no Darius Anders, either. And you really can’t call her a kid, she’s almost thirty, but she seems like a real friendly sort, and I think she means what she says. I’ll tell you that after Anders I think we’re lucky to get her.”

“Seems strange to have a woman for a preacher,” Shirley put in. “She seems like a nice girl, though. She seems to mean what she’s saying, not just saying the words, if you know what I mean.”

“Does to me too,” Art agreed. “I can’t say it’s wrong or anything, but it’s going to take some getting used to. I’m pretty sure that she ain’t gonna be afraid to get her hands dirty. It may take her a while to get settled in, but she’s young and eager, so I think she ain’t going to be sitting in Tyler counting the days until she can get back to civilization like Anders did.”

“Well, I hope you’re right,” Ralph said with a nod. “I’m really surprised that they got someone here after Anders so quick.”

“I am too. I figured it was going to be months if we got anyone at all. I think the bishop thought we needed someone soon and who could clean up the mess Anders made.”

“I’m worried that this kid came out here with orders to try to talk us into closing the church and joining with Tyler,” Shirley added.

“Wouldn’t surprise me,” her husband agreed. “I know Anders had been told to try to do it, and I know that even Howell was told the same thing. Darn it, I don’t want to see it happen and I’ve told the bishop just that. The church here and the one in Lexington are about the last places we have where we can be neighbors with each other. That’s why we’ve drug our feet on it for so long.”

“I can see that to the church it makes a lot of sense,” Ralph said, “But darn it, I don’t want to have to drive all the way to Tyler to go to church. There are some good people there, sure, but it ain’t the friends and neighbors we’ve known all our lives.”

“Yeah, and I don’t like that joker they’ve got down at Lexington, either. I mean, I’d drive to Tyler before I’d go there.”

“Well, yeah, me too. Might come to that in the end, at least for anyone with any sense. The county just seems to be getting emptier and emptier. It sure ain’t like when we were kids.”

“No, it isn’t,” Art agreed. “There have been times I’ve wished I hadn’t come back here after I got out of the army, but mostly I’m glad I did. When you know that the alternative is to live in some city, we’ll just have to put up with it.”

““Yeah, and that’s if we have it very much longer.” Ralph replied. “You know, I was thinking just now over how we used to go down to the store in Lexington just to have coffee and talk with people.”

“That’s darn sure a long time ago,” Art shook his head. “Must be twenty years.”

“All of that,” Ralph agreed. It had never been a real busy place, just a handful of goods on the shelves and a gas pump outside, but after old Archie died, it had never reopened. About ten years before, the old place had been hit by lightning, and it was pretty much down to embers by the time the fire truck from Tyler had made it out there. “Closer to thirty years, I think.”

“Something like that,” Art agreed. “It’s not hardly worth the effort to go into Tyler to have a cup and jaw a bit. The church here is about the only place we’ve got left if we want to talk with the neighbors.”

Just about that time Elmer Pepper drove his old pickup truck into the West Walke Cemetery, a couple of miles toward Lexington from the Conestoga Church.

The pain in his gut was incredible, and Elmer had no idea how he’d put up with it as long as he had. The drugs the doctor had given him down in Carondelet weren’t helping any more, and they hadn’t helped in a long time. There really hadn’t been much choice but to try and ignore it, but those days were long gone, too.

He was an old man, very old, and the cancer had made him seem even older. He was barely able to do much of anything anymore. It had been so intense last night that he hadn’t been able to sleep. He knew, of course, that he could call someone like Art Gamble, who would take him to the hospital in Carondelet. They’d probably send him somewhere else, but it would mean even more pain and only delay the inevitable, which couldn’t be very far off in any case.

It wasn’t even easy to put his hand up and turn the key, but he did and the truck fell silent. He let his arm fall to his side, and just sat there looking out at Gladys’ grave and the empty prairie rolling away beyond. He wanted to get out of the truck and go over to where she had lain the last several years, but he didn’t think he had the strength to do it. It had taken him a long time just to get into the truck, and he’d almost passed out several times in the ordeal. This would have to do.

God, I’ve missed you, Gladys, he thought. We had a good life, but we both got too damn old. Helplessly his mind rolled back to the barn dance two thirds of a century before, when they’d wound up kissing and hugging and a little more out in the back of old man Koltz’s hay wagon before he’d had to go out to the Pacific. But damned if she hadn’t been waiting for him when he got back, and they’d been together for half a century before the Lord had come and taken her away. He’d tried to carry on without her, had carried on for years until the cancer came, but there was no reason to hold on anymore.

The time had come. In fact, it had more than come. There was one sure way of ending the cancer, ending all the pain. He didn’t like the idea of doing it, and had put it off for weeks, but he just couldn’t take it anymore.

He’d known this day was coming, had known it for a long time. Weeks before, in one of his better spells, he’d taken a short length of board and driven a couple of nails into it toward one end. He couldn’t reach the triggers of his old twelve-gauge sitting beside him in the truck without it. He pulled the muzzle of the double barrel over toward him, and resolutely took the stick in his hand.

“Gladys,” he said softly. “It’ll be good to see you again.”

The wind was still out there this morning. A couple of miles away Trent Westbrook was standing out by his truck, rolling an after-church cigarette while he waited for Cathy to get ready to go to the potluck in Tyler when he heard the distant shot. He couldn’t make out where it had come from but hoped that someone had managed to kill one of the coyotes that had been hanging around the area. A coyote was no danger to a full-grown buffalo, but it could be a danger to a calf, so a dead coyote was better than a live one.

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