“Can you saddle his horse?”
“I unsaddled it.”
“You need help saddling her?”
“I can do it myself. I’m not an invalid.”
“Then saddle her.”
“Why don’t he?”
“Because his ribs are broken, Florrie. Just saddle the horse as best you can.”
“I don’t guess he wants some tea.”
“I could care less what he wants. What I want is for him to ride out of here. The sooner the better.”
MacKinnon looked at the wagon, frowned, and studied the wheel. The iron rim had come loose and lay in the weeds. The wheel was leaning against the boulder that held the axle up. Two spokes were busted.
“I’m no wheelwright,” MacKinnon declared as he touched the end of the axle with his hand. He began walking.
Honey was restless. The mule was blind indeed.
“What’s he doing?” the redhead asked.
“I don’t care.”
“Maybe he’s stealing our stuff.”
“What would we have that’s worth stealing?”
MacKinnon held out his hand, palm down, and let the mule take in his scent. He guessed the mule had to be pushing thirty years old.
“Good Sam MacKinnon,” he said to himself, spit in the dust, and moved around the mule, keeping his hand on the animal’s back until he had cleared the big animal.
He saw the kettle and the campfire. He moved to stand by the covered body.
That’s when the blond shouted: “Stay away from her!”
MacKinnon removed his hat, let it hang at his side, and bowed his head. He didn’t pray. He wasn’t sure he could remember how.
The blond moved over beside him in an instant, and Gary and the redhead shifted closer hesitantly.
“We’ll saddle your horse, mister,” the older girl said. “And you can ride out of here. Do you understand?”
He did not answer.
“I mean for you to get.” The girl was sure insistent.
He thought about kneeling down by the body, but quickly abandoned that thought. A pickax and shovel lay in the dirt. He toed the ground with his battered boot. His head shook in defeat. A moment later, hearing the girl’s heavy breathing, MacKinnon turned back toward the mule.
“Do you hear what I’m telling you, mister?” the blond said.
MacKinnon looked from the mule and took in the desert all around.
“I want you to ride out of here,” the girl said.
“Later,” MacKinnon told her.
Chapter Eighteen
He heard one of the girls, or perhaps both, gasp when he finally knelt by the covered body. MacKinnon stiffened at the pain when he reached down and touched the tarp, but his ribs didn’t hurt as badly as before. Maybe it was the way the blond had wrapped his side. Probably he had grown accustomed to the discomfort.
“Listen to me,” the blond began.
“No.” MacKinnon kept his voice even. “You listen to me. You got few options.” He looked up at her. “You’ll never bury her here. Not unless you have mining equipment and dynamite. Ground’s like iron, especially this time of year. So we can put her in the back of the wagon, and burn it, but that’ll mean you’re stuck here till you can get another wagon.” He paused. “Where did you say you were bound for?”
“I didn’t.”
He breathed in, breathed out, pulled his lower lip in over his teeth, and gave her what Slim Bradford used to call “Sam’s look of contempt.” He stared, and she stared back. He didn’t say a word, just waited. She, he understood, wasn’t about to give in.
“Pa wanted to try Shafter,” Florrie sang out.
“Florrie!” The blond whirled.
“He wants to help, Katie!” Florrie countered.
“He wants to rob us,” Katie said.
“I’m no robber,” MacKinnon said, and chuckled. I’m still a born liar, but maybe that ain’t no lie. Ask the folks at Bonito City. Ask Jace Martin. I’ve tried that line of work and decided that it don’t fit me. “I’m a thirty-a-month cowhand.”
“Shafter’s down …,” the redhead started to say, but Katie’s glare caused her to bite her tongue.
“I know about Shafter, miss. It’s about as tough a place as this here piece of …” —he sighed—“paradise.” He began to push himself up, but the needlelike pain in his side, sent him back to his haunches. He waited till the pain subsided before he opened his eyes. When he saw the boy moving toward him, MacKinnon grinned, and held out his hand.
“Reckon you can get me up again, Gary?”
The boy gave his sisters a quick look, but he didn’t wait for their approval. He stepped closer, took MacKinnon’s hand in both of his, and began moving backward like a plow horse. MacKinnon’s legs pushed him forward, and he stood, chest heaving, waiting for the torment in his side to settle into something he could manage.
“There ought to be people traveling on this road, heading one way or the other,” MacKinnon said, then paused for a few minutes of thought. “One of you bring Honey.” He nodded at the sorrel.
“You’re leaving …,” Katie said.
MacKinnon wasn’t sure if she were asking or telling, not that it mattered. He nodded to the south. “We’ll use my horse to bring your mother over to that little rise, put her against it. Collapse the sand down on top of her. I can pry off a chunk of tailgate from your wagon, and I’ll carve a marker for her.” His head shook as memories arose. “Seen that done for a couple of cowhands I rode with.”
He looked around and shook his head. “It’s not a bad spot, really. Don’t look like much, maybe, but those cactus will bloom after a monsoon. And it’s peaceful. Rains won’t wash her away, like they might if we took her to the arroyo. I reckon I can get enough dirt down to keep the critters away from her.”
MacKinnon made eye contact with Katie. “It’s not a cemetery. Not a churchyard. But you need to get her under the ground. And then we need to figure out how to get you to …”
“We?” she said with bitterness.
He shrugged. “Roswell’s on the way to Shafter. I can get you that far.”
“Maybe we don’t want to go to Shafter.”
“That’s your business,” he told her. “But Roswell’s something of a town. You can get to El Paso or Fort Davis down south. Or Mesilla or Lincoln or Socorro to the west. Or Puerto de Luna or Las Vegas or Santa Fe up north. You can catch the railroad in El Paso or points east. Go anywhere you want to.”
“We don’t need your help.”
“Yes,” he said, “you do. Besides, I owe you.” He gently rubbed his ribs. “And you’re stuck with me. I’m your …” —he had to let out a sigh as he shook his head—“good Samaritan. That’s me, you see. Good Sam MacKinnon.”
* * * * *
MacKinnon found adequate harness and rope in the wagon. He threaded some underneath the tarp. The body wrapped with the blankets felt incredibly light, but it was a woman who had been consumed by consumption, so that did not surprise him. The blond, Katie, helped, and MacKinnon tied the rope securely around the dead woman’s midsection. They did this again around her upper body, her feet, and just above the head.
It was far from a pine box, but MacKinnon had seen men buried with nothing but a bedroll for a coffin, and sometimes less than that.
The siblings did not question what MacKinnon was doing. Maybe they thought it was the closest thing to a coffin he could come up with. But MacKinnon’s main concern was pulling the body a hundred and fifty yards or so across the desert floor. Getting a corpse onto the back of Honey or the blind mule would be practically impossible, especially with MacKinnon’s bum ribs, and the increasing smell of the decaying woman. MacKinnon figured he’d have a hard enough time just having Honey pull the body that distance.
Satisfied as he would ever be, MacKinnon
let the children fetch Honey while he rigged a rope harness through some holes he had punched in the bottom tarp. When the children brought Honey over, MacKinnon held his breath. The wind blew, and maybe that relaxed the mare. He helped back the horse up about as close to the body as he dared, and grabbed the rope and gave it a few quick dallies around the saddle horn.
“All right,” he said, and he took the reins and walked toward the small knoll less than two hundred yards south.
He did not look behind him, but focused on the knoll, weaving around cactus and feeling the sun’s heat. His ribs ached, his throat turned dry, but Honey never gave him any trouble. They made it to the knoll, and MacKinnon stopped to look back.
After a nod of approval, he brought the reins over the sorrel’s head, rubbed her neck, and draped the reins below her mane. Quickly, he removed the rope and found the boy.
“Gary,” he called, “come over here and keep my horse company!”
“Go ahead,” Katie told her brother. “And be careful.”
When Gary was next to him, MacKinnon instructed: “Just rub her neck, and take hold of the reins to make sure she don’t bolt. She’s been good so far, but Honey’s notional. We don’t want her to leave us afoot.”
MacKinnon moved to the body and knelt to unthread the rope as Katie and Florrie walked over. He tossed the rope to the redhead, saying: “Coil that up if you would, Miss Florrie. Rope might come in handy.”
Still on his knees, he gripped the canvas tarp and dragged the body closer to the side of the little hill. That little bit of effort gave him more fits than he expected. He found himself sweating, and his ribs either wanted to push through his skin or pierce his innards. He wasn’t exactly sure which. He waited until his breathing stopped sounding so ragged, pushed his hat off his head, and blinked until he could see the girls.
Katie held the shovel and the pickax. She had carried the tools all the way from the campsite. MacKinnon hadn’t even thought about that. Florrie had finished coiling the rope and was staring at him.
He tried to stand, couldn’t. Watching him, Katie sighed, lowered the tools to the ground, and came to him. She extended both hands, and he sighed as he accepted her help, yelling out in pain as she brought him to his feet.
“Are you all right?” Florrie asked.
“Getting … there,” he said between gasps.
Katie had already moved to her mother’s feet, and was dragging that part of the body closer to the slight overhang. She looked up. “Is this good enough?”
MacKinnon nodded.
“Well?” Katie asked. “What do we do next?”
He hesitated. “You might want to walk back to camp. I can do the rest.” Funerals were one thing. But watching MacKinnon bury their mother—if you could call what he planned on doing a burial—didn’t seem proper.
“How do you plan on doing that?” Katie asked. She walked right past him, took the reins from Gary’s hands, and led the horse back to the wrapped body. “You can’t even climb into the saddle.”
“I can,” said Florrie, who tentatively approached the horse.
“No,” MacKinnon said.
He felt their stares. “You use those tools.” He nodded at the pickax and shovel. “Just start jamming them into the side here.” Another nod. “Loosen up the ground. I’ll get into the saddle.”
“I can ride,” Florrie told him.
He tried to smile. “I bet you can. I know you can. But this is ticklish. There’s a chance Honey falls. You don’t want to have this mare roll over you.”
“Maybe,” Florrie said, “we don’t want her to roll over you, either.”
His smile felt genuine. “Well, I do appreciate that, Miss Florrie. And I’ll do my dam— … I’ll do my best to keep that from happening.”
He took the reins, and pulled the horse to the other side of the hill. There, he found a spot where he could climb a few feet up the knoll. He managed to stick his left foot into the stirrup, and somehow swung into the saddle without passing out from the pain.
Of course, that was the easy part.
Chapter Nineteen
While the girls worked the earth with pickax and shovel, MacKinnon took a quick swallow from his canteen. Then he held the canteen out to Gary. The boy shook his head. MacKinnon lowered his and held the canteen out farther.
When the five-year-old hesitated, MacKinnon said: “It’s hot. And the sun’ll dry you up if you don’t drink water.” He shook the canteen slightly, but even that caused him to grimace. “Drink,” he said. “Then take some to your sisters.”
The boy obeyed, and, after he had a mouthful, he stepped away from the horse and moved toward his sisters, the gravediggers.
“That should be good enough,” MacKinnon said to the girls, as he gathered the reins. “Have some water. Stay back … I don’t know, thirty feet or so.”
MacKinnon pressed his legs against the mare. Clucking his tongue, he moved Honey toward the mound. Once they reached it, near the body’s feet, MacKinnon leaned toward the sorrel’s neck, and kicked hard.
“Up,” he said, and gave another kick as he gripped the reins tightly. “Up. Up. Up.”
The horse leaped up. MacKinnon cringed. He kept kicking. The mare snorted, lunged, as gravel, sand, and stones began cascading underneath Honey’s forefeet. The horse was going higher, and now her rear feet smashed into the hillside. MacKinnon bit back the pain, and let Honey climb, climb, climb. The hillock maybe rose five feet off the desert plain, but it felt like he was climbing up those mountains south of Bonito City. They reached the top, and MacKinnon heard the dirt tumbling behind him. He let Honey step a few more feet before he pulled the reins, drawing in a shallow breath.
The knoll stretched maybe four more feet.
MacKinnon glanced to his left and right, and decided he had enough room to turn Honey around. Once he accomplished that, he wiped the sweat off his brow before nudging the mare back toward where she had just climbed. Again, he reined her up, stood in the stirrups, and looked below.
The body was covered up to her knees. How deep, MacKinnon couldn’t guess, but at least that much had worked.
After settling back into the saddle, MacKinnon’s eyes sought Gary, Florrie, and Katie. He couldn’t see their faces clearly, and probably he didn’t want to. How would he have felt had he watched the burial of his own mother at their age? Especially had she been buried this way. The kids, he had to admit, were strong.
“All right,” he told the mare. “Let’s try it this way.”
He brought the horse down just below the top of the gentle rise, and kicked her as she moved six feet, then let her leap to the ground.
That gave him a sound jar, but he had been expecting it, and although he almost gagged up the water he had swallowed earlier, he didn’t throw up, and he kept his seat. Not letting the horse relax, MacKinnon turned her around and rode up the knoll closer to the dead mother’s head. Honey churned, snorted, and kicked, and again more sand and gravel rolled below. They stopped just long enough on the top to turn around and return to the desert floor. Again. Once more. Again. Twice more. MacKinnon knew he had played this hand as long as he cared to. He felt exhausted. Honey labored for breath, and the way she responded to the reins and his heels, he figured she was finished with this bit of business. Besides, that little rise held just so much dirt, and the last two treks up that mound had felt dicey. Honey had barely kept her footing. MacKinnon had just managed to keep from being dusted.
He leaned forward and rubbed the horse’s neck. “Good girl,” he whispered. “Good girl.” He reached for the canteen, only to remember that the kids had it. MacKinnon straightened in the saddle, pulled his hat off his back, and waved it at the two girls and boy. His mouth opened, but his throat was too dry and his tongue too swollen to speak.
They understood, though, and began moving back toward the knoll.
Now
MacKinnon twisted in the saddle and saw what he had done.
Few would call it a proper grave. But it was a start.
* * * * *
He considered staying in the saddle, but decided it wouldn’t be right. Not at a funeral. So he gradually made himself step to the ground. He led the horse to the side of the knoll, and directed the two girls to flatten the dirt with shovel and pickax. When they were finished, he walked Honey over the mound.
“Back in those olden times,” he told the children, “on the overland trails and such, they’d do this. It’ll make it harder—” He stopped. The children didn’t need to know everything. He figured Katie, the oldest understood, but maybe all three did.
Anyway, the wolves and coyotes would not likely disturb the woman. The mother could rest in peace. Maybe the kids could find some peace, too.
* * * * *
Florrie sang. The girl had the voice of an angel. MacKinnon couldn’t recall the name of the hymn. The boy sobbed a bit, and Katie kept brushing at her eyes. MacKinnon kept his head bowed, hat in his left hand, reins in his right.
“We should pray,” Florrie said when she had finished the song.
“Yeah,” Katie said. She sniffed, sighed, and began: “Dear Lord …” A long silence followed.
MacKinnon wondered if the girl would continue. If she didn’t, he worried he would have to come up with some words, and a long time had passed since he had been to a camp meeting or church social.
“We thank you for our mother, Heavenly Father,” Katie picked up, and MacKinnon felt the pressure lift off his shoulders. “We thank you for her life, for her love.”
Another long minute or two with nothing to hear but the wind, Gary’s sobs, and the swishing of Honey’s tail.
“She never had an easy life, God. We hope you find your way to give her what she deserved now. Because …”
MacKinnon waited.
“Because she never lost her faith. Maybe we didn’t go to church as often as you’d have liked. Probably she wanted to go more than she did. And you know what happened to her Bible. But whoever paid Truluck for it might have gotten some good use …”
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