All the time I kept thinking what would happen when we fetched up to Heseltine and them. There was nothing behind me that made me fit to buck the likes of them.
I said as much.
‘YOU can be as tough as you’re of a mind to be, son.
I’ve watched you, boy. I’ve watched you work and seen you ride the rough string, and you’ve got all any man has got. I’ve seen you handle that gun, too, and you’re I good, boy, mighty good.
know nothing about Heseltine, but there’s nothing in Sites or Reese that need worry Y.” Pa had never said a word of praise to me that I could recall. Nor had I any idea he’d seen me practicing with a gun. But he had to be wrong.
I’d never fought with any man, with either knuckle or gun.
Heseltine was a hard man. I won’t deny the clothes he wore added to it. There was a swagger about him. My clothes were nothing. I’d never owned a store-bought suit. I had a slouch MY shoulders were beginning to split, and I’d outgrown my jeans two summers ago. My boots were down-at-heel.
The wind was raw and cold on the high plains.
Hunching our shoulders, we pushed against it, riding a land that offered us nothing but prairie and sky.
We had only their tracks to guide us, and the anger that grew more terrible as the hours drew on.
Pa sat up in his saddle and made no sound. His cheeks hollowed down and his eyes sank back into his skull, but the light in them scared me. If I was Bob Heseltine I’d be a worried man.
‘allyou’ve got the makin’s, Edwin,” he said suddenly.
“You’ll make big tracks on the land. There was a Texas (‘Ranger once who said there was no stopping a man who knew he was in, the right and kept a-comin”‘.big tracks on the land. They were words he used of few men, only such as Bowie, Sam Houston, Good night, and Slaughter.
Jim Pa began to speak of them, telling me stories of the Goodnight-Loving TraiLike of mountain men, trail drivers, and Texas Rangers. Of ancestors of ours who fought with the Green Mountain Boys, of Decatur and Andy Jackson, and all sorts of people and things I’d never guessed he knew of. Alongside of some of those men, Bob Heseltine didn’t sound like much; all the stories I’d heard of him began to sound like a man hollering into an empty rain barrel-the sound coming back, but nothing there.
Cold, spitting rain began to fall, the tracks grew faint.
From time to time we’d find a hoof-print, the stub of a cigarette, or some small thing to mark their passing.
Pa’s leg looked awful. It was swollen around the splint, but he wouldn’t let me touch it. He’d taken his knife and slit his pants-leg to ease the pressure, and toward nightfall he asked me to split his boot. His gasp of relief when I done it told me how awful the pain had been before.
When I got back into the saddle it came over me all of a sudden that pa wasn’t going to make it.
I knew then that he knew it, too. He was just hanging on, hoping we’d come up with them whilst he could stand beside me at the showdown.
He would get back the money he’d been trusted with, and he could leave me fixed for the future.
That was it. I knew what he was thinking, and why.
He was thinking of the two things that meant most to him.
His given word, and me.
Was I worth it? Was I really worth all that?
Was I worth any part of the hard work and suffering pa had gone through?
Was I?
A moment there I sat very still … what should I do?
There had always been pa. Somehow I’d never had to worry because he was always there, telling me what to do.
Time to time he got my dander up and I’d growl around for a few days, or I’d ride off to town to talk to Doc or the Kid, but when I got around to riding home, pa was always there.
Come to think of it, he had never held it up to me.
Inside me there was a horrible, sinking feeling.
Without pa, what was there? I’d be alone.
So far as I knew, I had no kinfolk anywheres at all and the friends I had were pa’s friends.
“Your ma,” he said suddenly, “was a fine woman. I wish you could have knowed her. Educated, too. She came of good folks, and she had book learnin.
“Her family was New England Irish .
lace-curtain Irish. Time was I mentioned her family name to an Irishman and he says hers was an old family, born of the old chiefs of Ireland going back to before the Danes came.” Ma died when I was three and I remembered her only as somebody warm and wonderful who held me close and made much of me when I was hurt or feeling bad.
She’d been a pretty woman. Pa said it, and that much I remembered. She died of a fever on Cache Creek when we was traveling to Texas.
It was sundown when we saw the fire, and it was far off. The country was no longer level, but broken into ravines, some of them choked with brush.
We forked out our rifles and closed in, but before we got within hailing distance we saw there were a couple of wagons and off to one side some mules picketed.
It was a camp of buffalo hunters.
One man taken one look at pa and said, “Mister, you better let me help you off that horse.” “My son’will do it,” pa said, and I helped him down, but as my hands took his weight I felt him tremble, and when I got him stretched out alongside the fire I looked into his eyes and saw that he was dying.
There was choking fear in me. I glanced around at their faces.
“Is anybody here a doctor? Pa’s in bad shape.” One man was already rolling his sleeves.
“I ain’t no saw-bones, but ni see what I can do.” When he cut away pa’s pants-leg I couldn’t stand to look. The jagged end of the bone had come through the flesh and the wound looked ugly.
That man who’d said he was no doctor worked fast and he seemed to know exactly what to do.
Another man handed me a cup. comally’re done up, boy.
Have some coffee.” as the man worked on pa and I ate and drank, I told them our story.
‘T’bey were here,” one of them said. “They pulled in last night and left shy of daylight. You aren’t about to catch them.” “I got to. Pa taken them cows up the trail on trust, and the folks who trusted their cattle to him need their money.” There was a lean, well-set-up man with a reddish mustache who sat back from the fire.
He looked over at me. “My friend, you’d have to tie into three men, and they’d be ready for you.” ‘allyes, sir,” I said, “but they’ve got our money. I got to get it back.” Do you know those men?” So I explained about Doc and Reese and Heseltine, and how pa and me had words and I’d gone off and left him, and had I been there I could have caught that horse. Then I told about facing the three of them and backing down.
“You did right.” The big bearded man who seemed to be the head man’spoke emphatically. “I didn’t cotton to that outfit myself. You’d have had no chance with the three of them … and your pa was waiting, his leg broken.” The man who had been treating pa walked over to me, rolling down his sleeves. “You’d better go sit by him, and you’d better stay with him.
I think he’d like it.” Pa was resting quiet when I got to him. I could smell whiskey, and I guessed they had given it to him to ease the pain.
He caught hold of my hand. ‘Son, I never been much of a father.
If your mother had lived I’d have done better.
She had a feeling for things I never rightly had.
Ever since your ma died I been trying to think out what she would have had me do with you. My own father was killed in a river accident when I was four.” “You done all right, pa. I just ain’t much account.” ‘ationo, you’re a good boy. You always were. I don’t hold it against you that you looked up to Doc Sites and Kid Reese. They must have seemed a lot more exciting than me.”…They couldet hold a candle to you. Not even in their best days.” ‘I’d seen their like before.” He looked at me.