Pete was jarred awake by the sound of boots coming toward his bed. He opened his eyes and immediately squeezed them shut again. The bright sunlight not only hurt his eyes but it brought him completely awake and threw him into a panic. He pulled himself into a fetal position, covered his head with his arms and waited for the blows he was sure were coming.
He must not have been completely awake when the old lady called him and he had not gotten up. Only once before had he slept until daylight and he thought Laker was going to kill him that time. The boots he heard now, he was sure had Laker’s feet in them and he waited helplessly for the consequence of Laker’s anger.
The boy’s reaction infuriated Dodd. When he woke that morning, Pete’s arm was lying across his chest and the boy’s head was on his shoulder. That’s the way it should be for a child and Dodd felt a warm paternalism to see Pete sleeping peacefully and taking unconscious pleasure from the security of his presence. Dodd realized that, for the first time in his life, he was responsible for someone other than himself and the force of the protective impulses within him both gratified and frightened him. Seeing Pete now, conditioned by experience to react with almost the survival instinct of an animal, enraged Dodd. How could anyone think of a child the way McGurdy had, or treat a child the way Laker had?
Dodd had to stand for a moment to compose himself. When he finally spoke, it was softly and lovingly. “You’re all right, Pete.”
Pete heard Dodd’s reassuring voice, felt Dodd’s arms go around him and felt himself being hugged. The full memory of yesterdays events came to him and it was both relief and affection that channeled all his strength into the hug he returned to Dodd.
“Reckon we better be getting on the road. I’m a day late already. Did you sleep well?”
“Reckon so. I just barely remember you comin’ to bed and I didn’t hear you get up at all. I couldn’t think where I was. ’Bout scared the piss outta me, knowin’ it was daylight and me still in bed. Thought Laker was gonna beat the shit outta me for sleepin’ after I was called.” Pete was a little embarrassed by his show of affection to Dodd and thought he had to explain.
“Reckon it will take some time for you to forget but I hope it doesn’t take too long. Seeing you afraid like you were when I came in gets me wondering if I made the right decision about Laker. Sometimes being an educated gentleman has its drawbacks. If I’d really been a saddle tramp, I reckon, I’d have given Laker the beating he deserves.”
Pete realized that he had admitted fear. He had learned from hard experience that a show of fear was an invitation to bullying, first from the bigger boys in the orphanage and then from Laker and he fell back on his old habits of self-protection. “I wasn’t really scared. That bastard didn’t scare me. I was just seein’ to it I didn’t get hit in the belly or the balls. Them’s the places them goddam Lakers liked to hit me best.”
“Well, I was scared. Just seeing you all balled up like that makes me so angry that it scares me because an angry man is not a sensible man. It also makes me remember the times when I was your size when something really scared me. It’s natural for a boy to feel afraid sometimes, Pete, and I reckon you’ve had plenty of reason to.
“I ain’t scared of nothin’.”
“Well, you’d better learn to be. It’s fear that keeps folks from doing dumb things sometimes. Being afraid, sometimes, is the thing that keeps you alive. But you have to learn to use your fear and not let your fear use you.”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talkin’ about. You ain’t tellin’ me you get scared?”
“Of course I do. Everyone does. If you think about it, Pete, you’ll realize that it just makes good sense to be afraid sometimes. Maybe that’s a better way to put it. Maybe it’s not so much fear as good sense I’m talking about.”
Pete again fell into deep thought. He reckoned it did make good sense to be afraid sometimes when you were safe enough to admit it. He said nothing while he dressed and he ate in silence, again trying to understand new kinds of relationships and a lifestyle in which he was protected rather than having to protect himself. He knew he had been scared all his life and he knew well how it felt and that gave him a twinge of guilt. “I wasn’t meanin’ to scare you.” He looked as if he were almost ready to cry.
Dodd smiled and mussed up Pete’s hair. The boy was beginning to allow himself a show of feelings. That was a good sign. “It wasn’t your fault, Pete. I reckon you’ll stop scaring me when you know you can be who you are and know you can show what you feel.”
Jess Roker wasn’t surprised when Pete rode onto the place with Dodd. “I knew about you takin’ the boy. Laker was here raisin’ hell. Wondered why I didn’t tell him you was Luke Forrest’s son. Said you damn near killed him over that boy and he’d a’been a mite more careful about what he said to you if he knew who you was. Tried to make his stupid mouthin’ my fault.
“I knew there was somethin’ about you, Dodd. I even remember seein’ you when you was a young ’un about the size of that boy. You remember me bein’ at your place?”
“No, sir, I don’t. Sorry, but I reckon I didn’t pay much attention to anything but myself when I was a youngster. That’s why I’m doing what I’m doing. A spoiled child has to learn to be a man some way and this is as good a way as any.
“I really don’t want things to be any different than they were, Mr. Roker. I said that I’d stay until the roundup was complete and I intend to keep my word if you don’t mind me keeping Pete with me.”
“Course I don’t mind, but I was thinkin’ on sendin’ you back on the line. We ain’t lost no cows that I can see but funny things been happenin’ around the line shack. I don’t think it’s varmints but somethin’s broke into the shack and stole that slab of side meat you left hangin’. Could be a cougar and a cow’s just as gone if you lose her to a cougar or a rustler. But you’d think a cougar would mess the place up some and eat what he took right there. Ain’t no sign he done that. Can’t think what it might be. Thought I’d send you back there to see could you find out but I don’t reckon you’d want to take the boy to the line with you not knowin’ what the hell’s up there.”
“No, I’d rather be on the line. I had my problems fitting in with the crew when I was trying to act like a saddle tramp. I reckon I’m not much of an actor.”
Jess Roker laughed. “No you ain’t. I knew you was somethin’ more than you was actin’. The boys knew it too. You wasn’t lettin’ on but they could see that you outdone them in about everything. Wasn’t your fault, but you were some hard for them to live with. A man can’t be outdone in everything he tries and not take some offense. How’d you stay so strong and keep your horse skills? I heard you was in some school in the east for about ten years.”
“It was eight years and I just made a point of staying trim. There were sides to join and most of the games were as hard work as working horses. I joined crew—that’s rowing a boat—and that will keep you fit. When I got back home, I worked horses for Dad a little before I took to the saddle. I spent a lot of time with my backside in the dust but it didn’t take long to get the hang of it again.”
“Ain’t you worried about the boy? What if that’s a cougar?” I reckon Harriet would love havin’ him stay here. She’s always got one of our grand young ’uns here. You want to stay on the place, boy?”
Pete said nothing but the expression on his face clearly said, “No I don’t.” He didn’t want Dodd out of his sight and he had lived on a ranch before. In his head, he knew that Roker wasn’t like Laker but it was too soon for him to trust just anyone. Pete couldn’t breathe until he heard Dodd say, “A cougar will mostly stay away from people and I’ll keep Pete with me until I know what it is. Anyway, he’s getting so good on that horse I’ll probably just lie around the shack and let Pete ride the line. I reckon you just better put him on the payroll.”
Dodd mussed up Pete’s hair and Pete beamed. There was an easy rapport between them now. Pete had opened up on the ride from Lawton. Dodd had not been around many children Pete’s age. He was always the youngest at home and by the time his brothers’ children were Pete’s age, he was in the east. He knew about children from having studied about them during his legal and medical studies but he didn’t really know any children until Pete.
The ride from Lawton was a short one, only about an hour and a half, but by the time they arrived at the Roker place, each felt that he was really beginning to know the other. Pete teased and even tested Dodd a little. Dodd had told the boy to keep the paint at a walk. He was concerned that the paint was too new-broke for Pete to gallop. He was afraid that once the horse was given her head, Pete would not be able to control her. But, no sooner had Dodd told Pete to keep the paint at a walk than the boy kicked the horse into a gallop. Dodd, almost in panic, galloped after him but he soon saw that there was no need to worry. Pete was in full control. He held the horse so well that, in spite of the boy’s disobedience, Dodd could not hide his pride.
Pete reined in and looked at Dodd, both apprehension and a touch of defiance on his face. “You gonna beat me?”
“No, but if you do that again, you’ll be leading that horse instead of riding her.”
“What the hell for? You seen I can hold her good.”
“Well, two reasons. First, because she’s young and new-broke. She did what you wanted that time but you don’t know her well yet. You don’t know what might spook her and when she might realize she’s got a boy on her back who hasn’t had a whole lot of horse experience. When you get a little more experience and she gets more used to you, you can run her all you want, but until then, I want you to do as I say with her.
“That’s the second reason. You have to learn that when you’re with people who love you, when they tell you to do something, they have a good reason. You have to learn that older folks just know better sometimes and when they ask you to do something, they’re looking out for you, not trying to spite you.”
Dodd did it again. He said that he loved Pete. Pete knew that by now but each time Dodd said it he was overwhelmed with that new feeling.
Pete again took on that expression of almost tearful guilt. That, too, was a new feeling to him and he realized that he liked it. He was truly ashamed for having disobeyed Dodd and feeling shame was an easier thing to feel than anger. He had long known that anger made him feel very uncomfortable—actually, downright miserable. As a very small child he realized that anger must make other people feel the same way. Making people angry was his only way to get even—to make them feel some of his hurt. But Dodd didn’t get angry. When anyone else would have yelled at him or hit him, Dodd had told Pete that he loved him.
They rode quiet for a while. Pete was obviously deep in thought. Several times he started to say something but each time he stopped himself. Finally he asked, “What do you say to folks when you done something you wished you didn’t?”
“Well, most folks say, ‘I’m sorry,’ I reckon.”
Pete’s eyes were brimming with tears. “I’m sorry I done what you said not to.” Dodd reined over and hugged the boy again.
After having proven to himself what he had believed about Dodd, Pete spent the rest of the trip just being a boy. He teased Dodd and Dodd found that Pete enjoyed being teased back. Pete’s wit was a little barbed but it was keen and by the time they reached Roker’s, Dodd was completely captivated by Pete’s intelligence, childishness and clever, boyish sense of humor. And Pete—well, he was just plain out in love with Dodd.
The shack wasn’t as badly damaged as Dodd had expected. Dodd had nailed the door shut before he left and it was very quickly obvious that no animal had been the culprit. The door had been pried open with an old horseshoe and Dodd noticed the print of bare human feet in the wind-blown sand on the floor. He knew Roker had not been to the shack himself. The signs were too obvious. Had Roker seen them, he would not have wondered about a cougar. It was a person but it had to have been a very small person. The footprints were smaller than Pete would have made.
Dodd came to an immediate conclusion. There were many folks who roamed the prairie, hunting hides, living off the land or stealing to keep alive. He had seen more than one ragtag family, in a rickety wagon, pulled by a half-dead horse or mule, traveling along the river that flowed along the base of the mountains, going nowhere in particular. They followed the river, both for the water but also because dying animals always seemed to head for water. Chances of finding a dead buffalo or deer or steer that didn’t quite make it to the water were better if one followed the river. Finding any dead animal meant a hide and a few dollars. Dodd assumed that one of them had noticed the shack and sent a child to see what was there to be had.
The days were lazy, long, hot and boring. The first day they were on the line, Dodd tried to follow the tracks but they were lost in the rocky riverbed, a fact that deepened the mystery. The wagon trail was on their side of the river and whoever had been in the cabin had crossed the river. There was nothing on the other side but mountains and Dodd could think of no reason a child would go alone into the mountains.
To further add to the mystery, whoever had broken into the shack had to have known the area. The river was high from the spring melt and whoever had taken the side of meat had headed directly for the shallowest, safest crossing. Passers-through would not have gone directly to that spot. They would have walked back and forth along the river looking for a safe place to cross. While Dodd did not feel they were in great danger, until the puzzle was cleared-up he did not intend to let Pete out of his sight.
That was the reason for Pete’s boredom. That and the fact that he had been used to working from dawn to dark. He did ride the line with Dodd and used those rides to become a very skilled horseman. And, as Dodd knew he would, he talked. Pete was an endless reservoir of questions. He wanted to know about when Dodd was a boy. He wanted to know about Dodd’s brothers, their wives, their children. He particularly wanted to know who this Jarod was. He wanted to know how windmills could pull water from the ground and how that water got under there anyway. He knew what a cow was but he wanted to know the difference between a bull and a steer and then he wanted to know why they did that—all of which led to a long question and answer period about calves and babies and how they got in there and was it the same with people as it was with cows. To his surprise, in spite of his medical training, Dodd found himself uncomfortable with this discussion. He, at first, tried to put the boy’s questions off but Pete would have none of that. The only solution was honesty and to answer only what the boy asked. It turned out not to be as difficult as Dodd had thought it would be.
At the end of the first week, Dodd thought there couldn’t possibly be a subject they hadn’t covered. But, as the weeks progressed, the questions didn’t stop. Pete was bright and curious. That pleased Dodd and made him proud but Dodd, about once a day would say, “You just hush for a while, boy. You’re putting so much stuff in your brain, you’re going to bust it wide open. Just give everything in there a chance to settle so there’s room for more tomorrow.”
Pete would grin and cooperate. He knew he was being a pest but no one had paid attention to him before and he just couldn’t stop himself, unless reminded, from taking all the attention and information from Dodd he could get.
There was one subject, however, which Dodd did not try to restrain: Pete’s special friends at the orphanage. Austin Houston and Ervin Schnelling were both younger than Pete—nine years old—but they, like Pete, seemed to be the most frequent recipients of McGurdy’s frustration and wrath. Austin remembered his mama and daddy. His daddy was from Texas and give his boy them Texas names because they was some of the greatest men ever to live. Austin’s mama died tryin’ to birth another baby when Austin was five. The baby died too and his daddy took to drinkin’. Got hisself killed in a saloon fight. That’s how Austin come to be in McGurdy’s orphanage. Ervin, like Pete, didn’t know nothin’ about his mama and daddy.
All three boys had been told many times that they were vile sinners and were doomed to hell. For years, Pete would lie awake at night in horror of his inevitable ‘weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth’ and the ‘lake of fire’ which would be his eternal home. But as he grew older, he talked to children who had become orphans after they had had the opportunity to learn other concepts of God: that God was love and that Jesus loved the little children. McGurdy was bossy and thought he knew everything but Pete long ago had learned that McGurdy was wrong about a lot of stuff and he decided that he was wrong about God too. He tried to comfort Austin and Ervin by telling them that McGurdy didn’t know nothin’ about God so not to worry.
As Pete talked, Dodd became aware that Austin was Pete’s good friend but that Pete loved Ervin. Ervin was two years younger than Pete but they had shared a bed and Ervin was a lot like Pete. He said what he thought and like Pete had often sassed McGurdy. Many times Pete had become even more sassy to divert McGurdy’s attention away from Ervin. Pete thought Ervin was too little to take McGurdy’s canings.
After Pete went to Laker’s he worried a lot about Ervin. He felt sure that McGurdy was caning Ervin every day and he was only nine years old. Pete would mention several times a day and he put in his prayer every night his wish that Ervin would be bound out soon and when he was he’d get someone kind like the Rokers—not someone like the Lakers. Pete never actually cried when he talked of Ervin but Dodd heard the pathos in his voice and saw the concern, which was almost heartbreak, in his eyes. Pete missed Ervin.
Pete relished his time with Dodd. He could finally ask questions and just chatter and he was loved but he was a boy, and sitting a horse all day just wasn’t exciting enough. Along with his horse skills, his love for and confidence in Dodd grew. He had come to trust Dodd completely and did not have to have him in sight to feel safe. He knew Dodd would not leave him and he knew that Dodd would not let him do anything that would put him in danger.
But he was a boy so he continually checked with Dodd as to the limits of danger. He begged Dodd to allow him to ride into the mountains.
“No.”
Pete begged to stay at the shack and go swimming in the river.
“Not until I know what’s been poking around here, and the river’s too high right now. I don’t want you in that water unless I’m with you.”
So Pete pouted. “You’d think I was a goddam baby—can’t do nothin’ and always havin’ to stay by you.”
Even Pete’s pique amused Dodd. The boy was reacting to Dodd’s paternalism as Dodd had reacted to his father’s. Pete was no longer defiant. He was just a boy wanting to stretch his wings and he trusted Dodd enough to fuss with him about it.
“What you smilin’ about?”
“You sound just like I did with my daddy when I was your age. The only difference is, if I’d have said ‘goddam’ I would have gotten my bottom blistered.”
“You gonna blister mine?”
“Not unless you don’t try to remember what I said about cursing. I’d think you’d try to forget anything you ever learned from Laker. I know McGurdy wouldn’t let you talk that way.”
“You was cussin’ at Laker’s.”
“Well, I was wrong. You going to tell my daddy on me when we get home?”
Dodd always had a way of making Pete laugh when Pete was close to being mad.
Things livened up a bit when the branding operation moved to the area of the line shack. Dodd was doing regular cowpoke work and Pete found all kinds of ways to make himself useful. He became a favorite of the men with his willingness and hard work, but mostly for his humor and wisecracks. He loved to tease until some cowboy would grab him, toss him in the air, tickle him or playfully wrestle him to the ground. He reveled in being liked by people and he made the most of it. He did not demand attention and he knew when to play and when to work but he loved any attention he could get.
Dodd watched Pete’s blossoming personality with deepening pride. He was proud that the boy was so well liked. He was proud of the amount and the quality of the work Pete did. He was proud of Pete’s obvious intelligence but he was mostly proud of the fact that, while Pete liked everybody, he loved only Dodd. Actually, Dodd was adored and that both gratified him deeply and frightened him a little.
Dodd was also proud of himself. He had made himself work hard at sometimes unpleasant tasks. Studying hard had never been a task for Dodd. He loved to study so, in a way, his eight years at Harvard were just another way of giving in to himself. Poking had taught him to tolerate the unpleasant things in life and to be diligent. Pete, he was coming to see, was teaching him to be human and also allowed him to experience the outright jubilation of unconditional love. To be so totally worshiped, however, was a horrendous and frightening responsibility.
In reality, Dodd had never really been the spoiled, selfish child he thought himself to be. When he really thought about it, he realized that Luke Forrest would never have allowed a son of his to become what Dodd feared he had become. There were some behavioral similarities between himself and many of the Harvard blue bloods whom he so thoroughly disliked; he was so repulsed by their self-centered arrogance that he concentrated only on his similarities to his fellow students. He wanted to purge himself of any characteristic that remotely suggested the behaviors he had come to deplore. Now that he was away from it and had had time to think, he was embarrassed that he had, for several years, allowed the people he most disliked to distort his own image of himself.
Since Harvard, Dodd thought a lot about love. He had seen the happy homes of his brothers and felt a touch of longing as he contemplated their comfortable domesticity but particularly, their relationships with their wives. There was none of the pretentious display of feigned adoration on the part of the men nor were the women demandingly helpless. He saw in those relationships a mutual dependence, an equality and a quietly private but deep, deep love. And when he contemplated the contentment and happiness of his brothers the image of Elizabeth Hatcher always formed in his mind.
Dodd had not allowed himself to think seriously about her because he didn’t feel that any woman could love him. He had been too conscious of what he considered his imperfections. His father was a man worthy of love. Dodd had idealized his father, and Dodd was not his father. He had always thought that he could not be a proper husband until he had attained the will and the heart and the wisdom and the bearing of Luke Forrest.
Pete’s love was not the love of a woman but Dodd was learning from it. Dodd saw some image of perfection but Pete just saw a man. Dodd intellectualized. Pete felt. Dodd analyzed. Pete loved. Dodd had agonized over his petty faults to the point that he saw only those parts, never the whole. Pete knew and chose to ignore those fragments of Dodd’s person that were less than perfect and it was Pete’s unconditional love that made Dodd start to see himself differently. He came to realize that he had been not unlike Pete. He had loved his father just as Pete loved him. Dodd also, for the first time in his life, allowed himself to recognize that Luke Forrest was not perfect. He was simply a man, a man who had his imperfections but a man who tried very hard and who had loved Dodd completely. It was the love, not the imagined perfection that made his father Dodd’s idol. Why had he never understood that before? He knew why. He was a boy—like Pete was a boy. He felt protected and secure and he knew he was loved for who he was in spite of childish, spoiled behavior. Dodd realized that he loved his father because his father loved him—that love is something you just get, not something that you earn. Pete taught him that. Dodd felt he finally was beginning to understand the whole equation. His understanding had not come from study or philosophizing but it was because of this little boy. The more he felt he understood the human equation, the more he thought about Elizabeth Hatcher.
It was the heat and the cajoling of Roker and the other hands that finally made Dodd give in to Pete when he begged to leave the crew and go swimming. The river wasn’t nearly as high and Dodd had come to recognize Pete’s maturity and good sense. He was a boy with all the playful qualities of a boy but eleven years of hard living had given him a sense of self-preservation and good judgment beyond his years.
Anyway, Pete already knew the best place to swim. He’d been there several times. It was just a little upstream from the spot where he and Dodd and the rest of the crew bathed. There were a lot of times that Dodd was off roundin’ up or doin’ some other cowboy thing and since there were other folks to keep an eye on Pete, Dodd felt it safe to leave him. Roker or Cleaver, the foreman, usually respected Dodd’s wishes but when he left Pete with them, they figured they could make the decisions about what Pete did. They both had been parents for a long time and they figured, Dodd, being new at it, was too skittish about the boy anyway. Often, when Pete had worked hard and what they felt was long enough for a boy his age they would say, “Boy like you ought to be swimmin’ this kind of weather,” and off Pete would go.
Pete knew it was deep enough to jump or dive off that big rock and he knew there was nothing under the water that he could hurt himself on when he did. He knew the spot where there was a warm current and he knew just where to float on his belly and let the current carry him downstream and he knew how far it was safe to go. Dodd had kept him on a short leash and he loved Dodd a lot but that didn’t mean that Dodd had to know everything he did.
Pete pulled off his britches, waded slowly, accustoming himself to the cold, and stood shivering in the neck-deep water at the base of the rock. He waited until he stopped shivering and the ache was gone from his groin, knowing that that would make the first dive an invigorating thrill rather than an agonizing ordeal. He had learned that technique the hard way. The first time he just dived in and the shock of the cold made them hurt as bad as when Laker had hit him there.
He climbed the rock and stood a moment wondering why he now felt colder in the warm air than he had in the cold water. His dive wouldn’t have won any prize but it got him into the water and, as always, the cool solitude and the ease of movement gave him a sense of peace and freedom and security that he felt in only one other place—in Dodd’s presence.
He had been frolicking: diving off the rock, floating downstream, diving to the bottom to pick up rocks, and just generally doing boy things in the water for almost an hour before he spotted the eyes peering at him from the willow clump on the mountain side of the creek. For just a moment he was frightened but then he realized whoever was there couldn’t be very big or that willow clump couldn’t hide them. “You spyin’ on me in them willows?”
The eyes proved to have hair, a face and a body and all of it looked Indian when it stepped out of the willow clump. Except the eyes. They were blue. Pete had heard the cowboys talkin’ about Deak Lantz, wonderin’ what happened to him, wonderin’ what happened to his squaw and half-breed daughter. From the talk, Pete had gathered that the girl was about his age and it occurred to him that was probably who it was, at about the same time it occurred to him that he was naked.
“You a girl?”
“I was the last time I checked.”
“What you doin’ lookin’ at me all bare-ass naked?”
“What you doin’ swimmin’ in front of me all bare-ass naked?”
“How come you don’t talk like a Indian?”
“How come you don’t talk like a Indian?”
“I ain’t no Indian and you got to be around Indians to learn their talk.”
“That’s why I don’t talk like a Indian. I’ve never been around Indians much. I only went to my mama’s village twice and my pa was very careful to see that I learned to talk properly. You never knew when he was telling the truth so I don’t know for sure, but he says that he was a big-shot lawyer back east.”
“Is your pa Deak Lantz?”
“He was, at least I think was is the right word. He was almost dead when I left to come down the mountain this time. He came home with a bullet in him about a month ago and he’s been dying ever since. He won’t let me go to town to get a doctor and I’m not going to try after what he did to my mama.”
“You don’t act like you care much if he’s dead.”
“My pa wasn’t that much to care about. He was mean and he was a thief and he killed my mama. He shot her because she said she was going back to her village to get an Indian doctor. I buried her the best I could and piled rocks on her but if he’s dead when I go back up there, I’m just going to leave the buzzards have him.”
“Folks say you live in them mountains. What you doin’ down here?”
“You aren’t a fish, what are you doing in that water?
“It’s hot and I’m coolin’ off.”
“Well, I’m hungry and I’m looking for food.”
“You stole Dodd’s side meat, didn’t you?”
“I took it. I guess you’d have to say I stole it. It was either that or eat grass.”
“What you been eatin’ since? You ain’t been back around here.”
“Well, you aren’t the only folks in Nevada to steal from.”
Pete liked her. She was kind of like him. She said what she thought and it was kind of funny the way she said things. It sounded sassy but you knew she meant it to be funny.
“If ya’ll turn around, I’ll get outta this river and get Dodd. He’s a doctor. Maybe he can do somethin’ for your pa.”
“Why should I turn around? I’ve been watching you for a spell. Anyway, when I went to the village with my mama all the boys your size ran naked, so looking at you isn’t much of a lesson.”
“Well, being looked at by a girl when you know she’s doin’ it ain’t much of a pleasure so turn around, dammit. Just standin’ here like this talkin’, I’m about to freeze.”
She did and Pete scrambled out of the water and pulled on his britches. “Let’s go get Dodd.”
The girl willingly climbed on the paint behind Pete. She was a strange mixture of contempt and concern regarding her father. While they rode back to the roundup camp, she asked, “Do you think this doctor can really save my pa?”
Pete couldn’t tell if the question was asked from concern that he might die or from fear that he might live.
Pete completely understood the ambiguity. He knew how it felt to wish Laker dead and at the same time wonder what would happen to him if Laker did die. He had long ago learned that what you have you can learn to live with. It’s what might happen in the future you had to worry about.
“I told you he’s mean. He might try to shoot this doctor. He keeps a gun in his hand all the time. At first I tried to feed him when he got so he couldn’t walk anymore. But now he’s mostly out of his head and he thinks I’m the law. He tried to shoot me once. I don’t go in the cabin anymore. I just know he’s alive because I hear him talking out of his head sometimes.”
“Don’t worry none about Dodd. I seen him pull and throw a knife so fast, you couldn’t see his hand. If your pa’s as sick as you say, Dodd ain’t in no danger.”
Pete had often wondered what was in that fancy leather black bag that Dodd kept hanging from the rafters of the shack. He’d just been told that it was Dodd’s doctoring bag and to please not touch it. The way Dodd said that he got the idea he’d best do as he was told. He’d never seen Dodd do anything with it until now and he’d never seen what a doctor did. He’d just heard of them and he knew a boy at the orphanage who got spider bit but who didn’t die because a doctor done somethin’ to him. That was the only time Pete ever saw McGurdy act like he cared anything about any of them orphans, but then, the boy was almost boundin’ age and he was worth fifty dollars.
Deak was still alive but he was now completely unconscious so there was no danger from Deak’s gun. As they approached the cabin, Dodd recognized the putrid stench of gangrene. The bullet had passed through Deak’s right lung and it amazed Dodd that he had lived this long.
Dodd had never known who he had shot. He just knew that he had hit him by the blood stains which he had followed but had lost in the river. He could not find where they came out on the other side and he thought that whoever it was probably died in the river and was swept downstream in the high water of the spring melt.
It had taken Dodd a while to figure out where the stolen cattle were being crossed. Trying to track was foolish. There were too many hoof marks and the bank of the river was rock. Dodd had finally decided that whoever the thief was was crossing the cattle at the most unlikely spot. He had heard that drowned cattle were sometimes washed ashore at the big bend about fifteen miles downstream. There had to be a reason for that. Cattle are not the smartest animals in the world but they know enough not to try to swim high, fast water.
Actually, Deak was an intelligent thief. Ranches had miles of line, impossible to guard completely and there were many ranchers from whom to steal. Deak was careful not to hit the same ranch too often and not to establish a pattern. Folks had come to his mountain shack several times but they could never prove that the stock they found there were stolen. Unbranded stock wandering freely in the mountains were fair game for anyone.
Dodd had hidden himself at the deepest, swiftest area of the river. He was right. The thief had picked the least likely crossing spot and if he lost a few cattle while swimming them across, he had really lost nothing. They weren’t his to begin with anyway.
Dodd had seen only a man’s dark silhouette in the moonlight. He had shouted a warning only to have a shot thrown in his direction. Dodd had shot, seen the man fall or jump off his horse. The rustler did not re-mount but he had grabbed hold of the saddle horn and kept his horse between Dodd and himself. Dodd could hear him urging the horse into the river. Dodd watched until he lost them in the darkness of the night and the water but could not bring himself to shoot a man in that helpless situation. He was sure he could follow the tracks in the morning.
Dodd couldn’t find the tracks in the morning but he had found his thief now.
Roker, Cleaver and Billy Whitt had followed the girl up the mountain with Dodd. Dodd had wanted Pete to stay behind but Pete wouldn’t have any of it and Dodd didn’t want to take the time to fuss with him now. He had wanted to protect the boy from the misery and probable death but he also saw a need in both Pete and the girl to be with each other right now.
All his life until Laker, Pete had lived with other children. Until he met this girl he didn’t realize how much he missed them. The adults in an orphan’s life were at the most cruel and at the least uncaring. The children, therefore, learned to take concern and affection from each other. The girl had told Pete enough that he knew some of what she was feeling. He also knew, that in spite of her carefree facade, she was afraid. In the orphanage, they took care of each other. It was natural for Pete to want to be there for the girl now. It was what other children had done for him and what he had done for them.
Dodd felt sure that Deak’s coma was deep enough that he was no longer in pain but he felt he should do something. He took a large brown bottle from his bag, and tried to pour some in Deak’s mouth. “If I can get a little laudanum down him, it might make it a little easier for him.”
Deak died just before dark. Roker, Cleaver and Billy could not stay in the cabin because the stench of Deak’s rotting flesh drove them out. The girl, however, would not leave and, therefore, neither would Pete. She sat, transfixed, somewhat away from her dying father, repulsed by much of what he was in life but confused by her ambivalence at his death.
Billy, who had become a special friend to Pete, tried to get him to come out—away from the drama of despair. He, too, wanted to protect Pete from the frightening realities of life. But Pete stayed with the girl. Pete knew better than the four men that the real issue here was not that the man was going to die but that the girl was going to live and that, right now, he was the only person there who could feel and fear with her. Pete knew what perhaps the girl didn’t even know: she needed him.
Copyright © 2003 Gordon L. Klopfenstein