San Domingo: The Medicine Hat Stallion Page 10

  Jethro Lundy’s eyes were cold as glass. “I’ve customers,” he said. He shut the boy out of his consciousness. It was as though a door had slammed in Peter’s face, and the force of its slamming chilled him.

  Outside, a cold, clean wind blew from the north. A glimmer of yellow light shone in the soddy, but Peter turned from it. Step by slow step, he and Dice went around to the back of the shop and hid behind a clump of sage. In the gathering dark he heard wagons pull away, heard his father clump down the two wooden steps and head for home and supper.

  With heart growing heavier, Peter waited until he heard Adam whistling, rattling his frying pan and coffeepot. Then he went around to the big front door. It was closed, the latchstring pulled in. “Adam!” Peter called. And all in a moment he was caught up in the giant arms.

  “He knows,” Peter thought; “he knows and he cares.”

  “Put me down, Adam! I’ve got to know. Is he dead? Is he . . . sold?”

  Buffalo steak frying over the heat of the forge needed turning. Adam used the hoof parer for the job. He motioned Peter to sit down on an upturned keg.

  “I can’t, Adam. Talk to me. Tell me!”

  There was no sound in the shop, except for the meat sputtering in the fat, and Dice snuffling with upraised nose. Adam turned around, his face contorted with suffering. He ran his hands over his bald head as if he were pulling chunks of hair out by the roots. “Gawblimy, blimy,” he mumbled in despair.

  Peter stood rigid and quiet, feeling sorrow for Adam, for his having to tell whatever it was he had to tell.

  At last the words came of themselves: “Come to think on it, Little Brother,” Adam said, “you missed him by the eensiest hair.”

  “Missed who?”

  “The man.”

  “What man, Adam?”

  “The man on the big horse.”

  “Where was he going? Where does he live? Did you hear his name? Who was he, Adam?”

  “He weren’t wicked, Peter. He give me some good eatin’ tobacco.” Adam spat as if to prove his point.

  “But who was he?”

  A light came to Adam’s eyes. “His name were Al-ex-an-der Majors! And his horse were bald, like me. Bald Gallowway ’twas his horse’s name.” He grinned, happy and relieved at remembering. Now there was no stopping him. “Little Brother, him owns six thousand wagon trains and a mee-millionth of oxen to pull ’em. Twelve to ever’ wagon. And he freights clean to . . .”

  “Then why did he need Domingo?”

  “Him wanted a dandy little Indian pony for his three girls.”

  “But why did it have to be Domingo?”

  Adam rubbed his head fiercely. “Mebbe he’s addled from riches. Has to have whate’er he see.”

  “But Pa? How could Pa . . .?”

  “Yer pa says, ‘No, the pony belongs to son, Peter.’ And he says ‘No’ and ‘No’ till the man kept on. First ’twas only two ox.”

  “And then?”

  “Two more, and another two. And a span o’ mules.”

  “And then?”

  “His own big horse, Bald Gallow-way . . . coming five next grass. ’Twas then yer Pa says . . .”

  “Says what, Adam? What’d he say?”

  “ ‘That big horse should please the boy,’ he says. I remember jes’ as plain.”

  The steak charred, and only Dice found it to his liking. The coffee boiled over. Peter stayed that night in the loft, with Adam giving up his own bunk, buffalo robe and all. Once Adam tiptoed down the ladder and disappeared to tell Mrs. Lundy her boy was safe. Back in the loft, he put on his nightcap and rolled up in a blanket on the floor, a giant mummy.

  Peter lay awake, staring numbly into darkness, unable to cry. Toward morning he fell into a thrashing sleep. Adam, calling out in a dream, brought him sharp awake: “Don’t do it, Mr. Lundy! Don’t do it; the boy’ll never fergive ye. Oh, Gawblimy, Gawblimy.”

  It was Adam’s crying that wrenched the silence.

  The Withered Hand

  EVEN AS Peter examined Bald Galloway next morning his mind was made up. He would put on his other shirt under the one he was wearing, and his other socks on top of those he had on, and no one would have any notion he was going away. As he headed toward home he saw his old wheel-barrow leaning against the soddy, and he thought of a time long ago when he was five, and he had tried to push it with a load of buffalo chips but he couldn’t budge the stubborn thing. And his father had laughed, calling him a puny tomtit. He remembered how he had burst into tears, and then he remembered his mother running with him into the house and holding him on her lap, close by the fire, and he could feel her strength moving into him.

  But that was long ago, and now he was fourteen and he put up a barrier against pity.

  Emily Lundy understood. From her window she watched him scuffing the dirt as he walked, not glancing back at his big new horse, nor paying attention to Dice’s invitation to play. When he stopped dead still and leaned against the saplings that closed in the corral, she threw on her shawl and went out to him. A cool mist hung over the morning, making the world seem masked and unreal.

  Without looking, Peter knew that his mother had come out to comfort him. He wished she hadn’t. If she could tolerate his father, then . . . He never finished the thought. Perhaps the man was not even his father, him so dark-eyed and dark-haired.

  A silence closed around them, and the silence had a life of its own that even the clacking of wild geese could not penetrate. Time itself stood still and waiting.

  After a while Peter said, “You’ll get cold, Ma, with only that little shawl. You better go back.”

  “I can stay only a moment, Peter, but what I have to tell you may make you strong enough to stand up under the weight of your sorrow.”

  “Not anything could,” Peter thought. Nothing she said could matter or put his world back together again.

  “Let me tell the story quickly, son, without stopping, for fear I might not go on.” The clacking of the geese came louder, then slowly died away.

  “Your father,” the troubled voice began.

  Peter winced. Did it have to begin with him?

  Mrs. Lundy tried again. “What happened to make your father bitter is no fault of his.”

  “Whose is it?” Peter demanded.

  “I explain for him,” her quiet voice went on, “because he will not defend himself. While you were still a child, he lived through an agony that would have killed a lesser man.”

  Suddenly Peter was again sick with the quinsy, and he was opening a letter not meant for him, and the words quickened in his mind:

  . . . Jethro, as you know, has never been the same since that terrifying experience.

  “Your father,” Mrs. Lundy continued, her voice impassive, “used to guide men over the mountains. Some were gold seekers, some missionaries, and some were nesters who feared Indians and road agents. Often he would ride on ahead, hunting bear, elk, deer, or wild turkey—whatever he could find—and by the time the party caught up he’d have a fire going and meat simmering in the pot.

  “One day,” her voice fell to a whisper, “when your father was alone on the trail, his horse pulled up lame and he dismounted to set a loose shoe. Out of nowhere a grizzly she-bear pounced on him, clawing and biting, until the flesh of his legs was in shreds. One arm, too, was mangled; that’s how he lost his finger. When the party caught up, your father was close to death.” Mrs. Lundy stopped for breath. Peter said nothing. His eyes were fixed on the mist rising.

  “With your father’s directions,” she went on, “the men decided to go on anyway, taking his horse as a spare. But in all fairness they did leave one of the gold seekers behind to stay with him the few hours he had left, and to give him a decent burial in his own blanket.

  “But Jethro Lundy willed himself to live, while the man watching grew greedy for gold, and impatient at this delay. When on the third day snow fell, he pulled off your father’s blanket with a withered hand.

  “ ‘You’ll soon be bu
ried decent all right,’ he said. ‘You’ll have a nice white shroud better’n this old blanket.’ Then he stole your father’s rifle, too, and his knife and flint, and left him to freeze to death.”

  Peter felt the hairs on the back of his spine prickle. In a cold flash he saw Lefty Slade riding into the shop on Lucia, with Domingo tagging along. “The withered right hand,” he said aloud, unbelieving.

  “Perhaps, Peter, I should have told you this long ago, but I felt you were too young to know there are such vile men. And I couldn’t bear to see you become bitter like your father.”

  Peter heard harsh breathing. He listened, knew it was he himself breathing so heavily. He asked, “How did Pa get help?”

  “With his horse gone and his legs useless, he clawed and crawled with his hands, dragging the rest of his body along like a paralyzed thing. He lived on dried buffalo berries and chokecherries, and one night he watched a wolf kill an antelope, and when the wolf had feasted, he ate some of the raw meat and tore off all he could to carry with him. He crept almost five miles before he reached a prospector’s cabin.”

  Peter put his hand in hers, and she lifted it to her cheek.

  “Can you imagine, Peter, the aching for revenge that must have wracked him all those long miles?” She freed his hand when Dice objected, stroking the dog’s head.

  “Afterward,” she said, “as soon as your father was able to stand, all he wanted to do was practice target shooting. He used an old skull, and I knew what went through his mind with each shot. I’ve watched him shoot six times in succession and hit his mark, even at a hundred yards.”

  “I know. I saw him snuff out a candle with one try.”

  “Of late, haven’t you noticed how he has stopped all this target practice? So you see he is improving. I think it was the night he traded Kate, the old white mare, for Domingo’s mother that made him feel avenged—without actual killing. His broody silences, however, have not changed. Nor his philosophy, which remains: the strong will survive; the weak shall perish.”

  “But Ma! I didn’t want to crack my ribs. Why did Pa call me chicken-livered and shame me in Mr. Brislawn’s eyes?”

  “You must try to understand, Peter, why he has been severe with you. He wants you to become strong enough and wise enough to face life as it is.”

  “But how could he trade my own Domingo?”

  “He honestly believes that in time you will love the big-going Thoroughbred, Galloway, more than Domingo. He even quoted from the Bible. ‘When a boy is fourteen,’ he said, ‘he should put away childish things.’

  “Of course, you and I know that no animal can ever take Domingo’s place in your heart. But perhaps there is room for loving another in a totally different way?”

  The question went unanswered.

  “Men fear your father. They respect his courage, his marksmanship, his tradesmanship. They are awed by his violence; some even respect the strength of his violences. But they do not love him, because he himself has forgotten how to love. They avoid contact with him as if he had some dread disease. By the men who know him, he is feared a great deal more than the Almighty. And I, too, fear him but can understand.”

  Mrs. Lundy wrapped her shawl closer. “Can you forgive him, Peter, knowing why he is trying to make you strong?”

  Peter had no idea how long he stood mute, nor when his mother left to go back to the house. He was shocked by this glimpse into his father’s past. He wondered what he would have been like in his father’s place. He wondered if his father ever tried to imagine himself as a boy again.

  When finally Peter did go home, Grandma’s black peppercorn eyes went suddenly bright when she saw him. She reached into the folds of her skirt, found the pocket with the peppermints, and held out two pink ones on her trembling hand.

  Accepting the simple offering, Peter silently shed his tears. He knew he had forgiven his father.

  Part III. The CRUCIBLE

  The Handbill

  HIS NAME is Peter Lundy and he is one day short of fifteen. He still wears his hair in twin braids, like the Sioux. The fact that his are yellow makes no difference to him, or to the Indians. They still call him Yellow Hair or Little Brother, as does Adam.

  The year is 1860. The month March. The day Wednesday, the twelfth. Tomorrow, on the thirteenth, he will be fifteen.

  “A man can age years in a day,” he thought, as he stood behind the counter of Jethro Lundy’s Trading Post. “That is, if he sets himself to it.” The dream didn’t stay long, being nipped off by a grizzled trapper who threw a pack of beaver skins on the counter.

  The trapper ran a broken fingernail through the thick softness of the undercoat. “Ever see such beauts?” he asked. “Worth seven, eight dollars the pound, eh?” He grinned, eyes squinting, testing the boy.

  “Sorry, sir. Pa’s price is six dollars, and I can’t change it.” Peter heard his voice crack and suddenly plunge hoarse and deep. He had to smile at himself, aging so quickly. Even Dice lifted his head, facing around to see who it was. Satisfied, he went back to his dozing, head between his paws.

  The trapper shrugged. “It don’t matter, kid. Six dollars, or seven. You can bet your neck it’ll all be spent come morning.”

  A newcomer, standing a little way off, watched the weighing of the pelts, impatient for the transaction to be over. He had a face like a compass, marked with purpose and sureness. While he waited, he laid a sheaf of papers on the counter, squaring them into a neat stack. Then he observed everyone in the store and in the blacksmith area, the way a horse buyer might look over a string of horses for sale. Peter felt himself included in the scrutiny.

  As soon as the beaver skins and the money had changed hands, the man stepped up, moving his papers along the counter. “I’m puzzled,” he said, smiling and showing big white teeth that looked strong enough to crack nuts. “You couldn’t be Jethro Lundy, the proprietor?” he asked. “Or could you?”

  Peter liked the man at once. “I’m minding store for two days while Pa’s away,” he said.

  “My name’s Bolivar. But everyone calls me Bol.” He offered a hard, lean hand across the counter. “You can, too,” he said. “That is, if you like.”

  “Glad to meet you, Mr. Bol.”

  “You often mistaken for your father?”

  “Oh, no, sir.”

  “Being you’re tall as a lodgepole pine, I’d guess it might happen regular,” he said, as if he meant it.

  Having no answer, Peter glanced inquisitively toward the stack of papers. The printing and the picture were upside down to him. Instantly Bolivar turned the stack around and handed a copy to Peter.

  The boy’s eyes moved swiftly over the page. All at once his heart began to bump against his chest. The blood rushed hot to his face.

  “I’d be obliged,” Bolivar was saying, “if you’d put up several of these so travelers heading west or east would be sure to see them.” He peeled off a small batch, placing them in a separate pile. “They’d be noticed best if you tacked ’em eye-high beside your door, going in and out; and two, three in your blacksmith shop. Oh, and some on your corral fence where young fellows stop to gawp.”

  Peter, still clutching his copy, kept scanning it out of the tail of his eye, not looking straight at it for fear it might be a mirage and vanish right into the wood of the counter. Yet his mind had photographed it whole so that he could, if he had to, recite it from memory.

  WANTED, the heading read, Young, Skinny, Wiry Fellows Not Over 18. A picture of just such a fellow appeared alongside, like a giant exclamation point. He wore knee-high boots and a wide-brimmed hat almost as big as Brislawn’s.

  With a quick intake of breath Peter mouthed the next words: Must be expert riders, willing to risk death daily. He repeated this sentence, wondering why the printing was smaller, yet the thought bigger.

  Then the big bold letters again, and big bold figures, WAGES $25.00 Per Week. Already, in his mind, he had collected his first pay and was thumbing through a catalog, ordering a pile
of things—a gold comb and brush for his mother, a hobbyhorse for Aileen, and pounds and pounds of peppermints for Grandma. But even in his excitement he was nagged by two words at the bottom of the handbill: Orphans preferred. He frowned, and then suddenly he laughed. It didn’t say Orphans only. It just said preferred. And what if he was only fifteen, just? Hadn’t Mr. Bolivar taken him for man-grown? And the notice didn’t say not under 16, it said not over 18.

  On every count he qualified! At last Brislawn’s prophecy had come true. He could hear his voice: “There’s a time for some things and a time for all things; a time for great things, and a time for small things.”

  The time for great things had come! No need for asking, the knowing was sure.

  “Hey, daydreamer! How about it?” Bolivar interrupted. “Will you tack up my handbills?”

  Peter nodded, still wrapped in his dream. A knot of men had gathered around, reading the handbill aloud. The trapper nosed up to Bolivar.

  “Who be you?” he demanded, jangling the dollars in his pocket. “What’s all this about?”

  Bolivar made sure his voice and eyes took in everyone. “I’m superintendent for the Western Division of the new Pony Express,” he explained. “My job is to recruit eighty young men for the company I represent.”

  “Whoozat?”

  “Russell, Majors, and Waddell.” The last-mentioned name he pronounced “Wad’dle.”

  “Huh, huh! Ho, ho!” a white-bearded man roared. “The name’s Wad-dell’, like farmer in the dell.”

  “Sorry to disagree, sir, but W.B. himself pronounces it Wad'dle, as in duck.”

  Everyone laughed as the old man waddled out of the shop, joining in the laughter at himself.

  The foolishness ended. The talk quickened. Questions and answers seesawed.

  “What do we need a pony express for? Bad news travels fast enough; good news can wait. Besides, we already got the Butterfield Express. They go every week and travel the hull way from Missouri to California in twenty-five days.”