"Good morning to you too." The Padre smiled softly. "No bother. I suspect you've only saved me some level of repeating myself at any rate." The older man smiled, and interlaced his fingers. Please, dear lady. Sit. Sit."

"Mornin'." Clint's own greeting was brief. And she might take notice that he didn't look up at her. The Padre leaned back against his own seat, and sighed a little sigh.

"So, I believe the two of you are working together. On what, I don't know. And to be honest, I don't think I want you to tell me. Anything that needs people to carry around that many guns, it isn't my business. Never the less, your friend has peaked my interest with his questioning. Clearly, neither of you is really from around here. So, for him to have noticed the subtleties of our little town so easily, I found odd. But he isn't wrong. There's something ominous here. Church attendance has dropped. Almost none of the town's wealthy ever came to a service, except to put on a show of their wealth with some flashy donation." He sighed. "Maybe that's how it is everywhere. The wealthy don't need my God. They have their own God. He's green, and square, and very small..." The sadness in his voice lingered only a moment before he looked back up into Beth's eyes. "But God has always been for the working man. The migrant workers and farm hands. Those who come upward from Mexico, and from across the seas too. But lately even they... I don't know. It isn't a lack of faith. People still seem to believe, when I speak to them. And when I ask them why they don't come to service, they all say they just don't know. That they don't feel like it, but don't know why. I've tried to bless the building. I've had travelling priests bless the building. But still no one comes. And it seems no matter how I clean, how I care for the building... this poor church gets dirty faster, the walls rot and wear away faster, disrepair comes faster on this poor sanctuary, than to anywhere else in town. I don't know what is happening here." He reached into his lap, and held up a notebook. Waved it about a couple of times, and then held it out toward Beth.

"Parishoner's log book. Despite how often people come and go from this town, I seem to be performing more funeral rites than anything. And I know, this is a rough place to live. People pass. It is sad. But not like this. It wasn't like this down in Mexico. Except during the war. For every baptism, for every wedding, for every christening, in this town, three funerals. And the people that attend them... Yes the family, sure. But there is a group of people at every funeral. They never seem to mourn. To care. I wonder if they even knew the deceased, or if they're just here for theater of it. For something to do. Never people I've seen around town. Not anywhere else. Though, I suppose they could be at the saloon a lot. I don't go in there. Or at the whore house. But never just around town. They're only ever at the funerals. And they always leave before I have a chance to talk to them. And when I ask anyone else in attendance if they know them, no one else ever seems to have noticed that they were even here." The old man sighed. "There was a story told, back in Mexico, by the old orthodox priests. From the very old days. About a man who rode into a town one day and stopped it in its tracks. No babies were born, no one came, no one went, no crops grew, even the sun refused to rise, until he rode on. No one will come out and say they believe that man was..." Even the Padre wouldn't say it - Devil. "Not that I believe that man is here. No. But there does seem to be a certain sense... Like life, which normally goes on about its way, is grinding to a stop here. In this small place."