It is times such as this that show a man how much the simple things like food and warmth can mean. Slowly my fire blazed up, and the first warmth in a long time began to work its way into my stiff, cold muscles.
Everything was damp. I’d nothing to cover my nakedness, but the fire brought a little warmth to me, and just having it made me feel better. My feet were in bad shape again, although not so bad as at first, and the bruises from the beating I’d taken showed up in great blotches over my hide. I huddled there by the fire, shivering, wishing for food, for warmth, for a blanket.
It was unlikely any wild game would stir during the rain, so I must wait it out or try to find what roots there might be, but looking from where I sat I saw nothing I could eat. Yet I had lived long enough to know that nothing lasts forever, and men torture themselves who believe that it will. The one law that does not change is that everything changes, and the hardship I was bearing today was only a breath away from the pleasures I would have tomorrow, and those pleasures would be all the richer because of the memories of this I was enduring.
It was not in me to complain of what had happened. A man shares his days with hunger, thirst and cold, with the good times and the bad, and the first part of being a man is to understand that. Leastways, I had two hands, two feet and two eyes, and there were some that lacked these things. The trouble was that I wasn’t feeling quite right … I’d a sense of things being unreal, and of sickness coming on, and that scared me something awful. To be sick, alone, and in the woods, with the weather damp and cold … it was not a thing to favor the mind.
Of a sudden I was sweating, out there in the cold and rain, I was sweating where a short time before I’d been chilled and shaking. I burrowed down into the pine needles and leaves, and fortunate it was that here where I’d stopped the carpet was thick.
I’d stick out a hand from time to time to put something on the fire, scared of the time when it would be used up around me and I’d have to get out and go to hunting. There were willows near, and I peeled back the bark to get at the inner bark, which was good for fevers, and chewed some.
Along in there somewhere I sort of passed out. There was a time when I put a stick or two on the fire, added some leaves for lack of anything else.
Once I thought I heard a horse coming, and it was in my mind that somebody called out to me, but I don’t know if I answered. My head felt light and my mouth was dry, and I was cold … cold.
I’ve heard folks say that if you’re down in a dark hole and you look up you can see the stars, even by day. Well, I looked up and saw a face looking into mine with wide eyes and lips parted, and it was like looking up out of that hole and seeing a star. Anyway, it was the last I saw for some time.
We never had much in the mountains. The fixings around the house were such as Ma contrived, or Pa when he was not too tired from work. Nothing fancy, just a few little things like curtains at the window, and flowers on the table, and Ma when she swept the floor and could keep us boys off it for awhile, she traced patterns in the dirt floor like you’d find on the finest carpets. Ma was good at that, and she liked things nice.
About the best we could manage was to keep them clean. You don’t make much on a sidehill farm in Tennessee. The country is right beautiful, and that is where you have to find what beauty there is, there, and in the singing. Most mountain folks sing. They sing songs learned from their grandfathers or other elders, and sometimes they change the tunes to fit the day, and change the words even more.
You get a hankering for nice things if there’s much to you. It seems to me that first a man tries to get shelter and food to eat, but as soon as he has that he tries to find beauty, something to warm the heart and the mind, something to ease the thoughts and make pleasurable the sitting in the evening. About all we had was the open fire. It was the thing we set store by. Ma, she was too busy knitting and sewing just to keep us covered to have much time for fixing.
Opening my eyes like I done, in that bedroom with lacy curtains to the windows and a handsome patchwork quilt over me, I thought I’d sure come to in the house of some rich folks, or in heaven mostly, although I never did rightly know whether they’d have patchwork quilts. She set store by them, and she was always a saving of odds and ends she might use toward one. She never did get to make it. Pneumonia came too soon, and pneumonia to mountain folk far from doctors is nothing to feel good about.
There I lay, a long tall mountain boy in such a bed as I’d never seen, looking up at a painted plank ceiling … well, maybe it was whitewashed.
I turned my head and saw a dresser set against the wall with a mirror over it, and there was a small table with a pitcher and a washbasin. In a dish alongside the basin was a bar of soap. These here were surely well-to-do folks.
When I tried to set up I felt giddy, but the first thing I saw was that I was wearing a flannel nightshirt. I’d had a nightshirt one time, quite a while back, but they were scarce. I was seventeen years old before I owned a pair of socks. We boys just shoved our feet down into boots.
We never had much, Galloway and me. First big money we made was on the buffalo range. We were shooters, me and him, and mostly we hit what we shot at. Back in the high-up hills a body didn’t have enough ammunition to go a-wasting of it. When you shot at something you’d better hit it. Which led to our being good at stalking and tracking because we had to get close up before we chanced a shot. And if the animal was wounded and ran off, we had to track it down, for the needing of the meat and not wishing to leave any crittur to suffer in the woods.
That money we made on the buffalo range, that went to squaring Pa’s debts, of which he’d left a few with men who trusted him. We never taken a trust lightly. It was a matter of deep honor, and a debt owed was a debt to be paid.
I lay there in that big bed, just a-staring up at the white ceiling and wondering how come I was here in this place.
There was a door opening to a sort of closet and in it I could see women’s fixings and some man’s shirts and pants. I could also see a holster with a gun in it. Gave me a comfort to have it near.
Footsteps were coming down the hall and then the door opened and a man came in. He was a square-shouldered man with a mustache and wearing a white shut. He looked down at me.
“Awake are you? You’ve had a bad time of it, man.”
“I reckon. How long have I been here?”
“Six … seven days. My daughter found you. How she got you on her horse I will never know.”
I was tired. I closed my eyes a minute, thinking how lucky I was.
“You had pneumonia,” he said. “We didn’t think we could pull you through. At least, I didn’t. Maighdlin, she never did give up.”
“Where is this place?”
“It’s on Cherry Creek, about six or seven miles from where you were picked up.” He sat down in the chair he pulled up. “I am John Rossiter. What happened to you?”
It took me a couple of minutes to think that over, and then I explained about us hunting land, the Jicarillas, and my escape. I also told the part about the rider who wouldn’t lend me a hand. “They called him Curly.”
Just as I said that a mighty pretty girl stepped into the room, her face flushed and angry. “I don’t believe that!” she said sharply. “You must have been out of your head.”