“These are deep waters, missy.”
“I think God gave us freedom so we could be more like Him. So we could choose good instead of evil. It’s not freedom if we just do good because we’re already good.”
“Fine, but ‘face to face’?”
Robin paused, gathering her thoughts as though to exude them from her dark eyes as much as her speech. “God is pure will, and powerful. Pure power. And all good.”
“And He created everything, including mankind.”
“Yes.”
“Which tends to evil.”
Robin’s gesture showed she conceded this. “Yes, but He created mankind differently than everything else, that’s my point.” Robin was becoming more animated at being able to put words to these thoughts, and to do so for someone able to comprehend them. “God created mankind with the ability to choose evil. We did. We turn back to God so we can choose good.”
“Because we can’t otherwise,” Jack mumbled. He was beginning to wish for an end to the philosophy session that he, after all, had started. But now Robin was on a roll.
“We go face to face before God because He made us to be with Him.”
“But evil—”
“There is a judgment.”
Jack looked at her blankly, a pained expression on his face. He was following her train of thought somewhat reluctantly. Maybe they ought to be going on into the Willis house.
“To account for the evil, because we’re responsible,” she continued. “But we’re going to have to be face to face with him. We’re not animals. And we will be aware of Him when we’re in His presence in a way we’re not now. It will happen because we’re people.”
“So we’re judged.”
“God is pure, He can’t abide evil.”
“So we’re toast no matter what,” Jack said.
“Or, there’s some way to be reconciled back to God, despite the evil.”
“Ah, Jesus, of course.”
“Are you saying ‘Jesus’ for real, or the wrong way?”
“The right way, the right way. I understand what you’re saying. Weren’t you going to say ‘Jesus’ next?”
Robin smiled. She was pleased with herself for how she’d strung out this bit of theology. “Anyway, I don’t see how we can be mad at God because He doesn’t limit our freedom more than He does.” She hopped off the milk can, and as she did, Jack saw a quick stir of movement behind her, a blur at the top of the low wall she’d been leaning against.
“Who’s there?” he called out. Robin stepped away from the wall quickly, looking toward it and then back to Jack. The low front wall of the stalls was continuous, running nearly the length of the barn. The walls between pens did not connect to the front wall, but rather there was a space, across which a light chain cordon could be hooked. The low front wall stood alone, supported in position by the tall posts which also supported the loft. Jack motioned Robin over to the nearer end of the wall closer to the main entrance to the barn, while he stepped quickly and quietly over to the end of the wall nearer the back of the barn. Just as he stepped into the space between the end of the front wall and the back wall of the barn, a figure hurtled into him, knocking Jack to the ground.
They struggled, in a tight clinch. Jack sensed the man was not trying to do lasting harm, and, in fact, was trying to get away. He had probably barreled into Jack to slow down any pursuit. So Jack clung to him all the more, trying to wrestle him to the ground. The man was strong and quick, though. Jack noted that he wore the now-familiar garb of the Diné Road Patrol. Jack was determined not to let him get away until he could get to the bottom of why he was here in the first place. The engagement quickly turned into an effort by Jack to hold the man in place, rather than mutual combat.
The man spun from Jack’s grasp and was up on one knee. Jack was on his side, on the floor of the barn, but he had a good grip on the man’s jacket. In the midst of this, the thought flitted through Jack’s mind that perhaps the man would spin all the way out of his jacket and make his escape that way. But surely not. Where would he go in this weather without his heavy jacket?
At that moment, the jacket was snatched from Jack’s hand. A whoosh of movement at the Road Patrolman, from behind Jack, sent the Diné intruder sprawling. Scott Willis was on top of him, flailing at him, fists flying. Jack was up in an instant. Both he and Robin came to the man’s rescue, pulling Scott off of him, but careful to keep the intruder detained.
“Ease up, ease up,” Jack exclaimed to Scott.
Scott was breathing hard, the rush of battle still in his eyes.
“Get up,” Jack said to the intruder. The young man stood, unsteadily, careful to stay out of Scott’s reach, and careful not to incite him to resume the beating by a too-sudden movement. Jack kept one hand on the man’s upper arm, pushing him back toward the low wall, so that he’d have the wall behind him, with Jack and Scott to the left and right in front of him.
“Where’s your partner?” Jack asked.
Scott asked, “You saw another one?”
“No, they just go around like that.” Jack gently pushed the man against the milk can so he’d get the message to sit.
To Scott, Jack said, “You came along at the right time. Good work.”
“Sure.”
“I think he was just trying to get away, though.” To the intruder, he said, “Well? Start explaining. Out with it.”
“Out wif what,” he said, insolently.
Scott leapt forward and backhanded him across the mouth. The man slid off the can onto one knee, his hand to his face. Jack considered reproaching Scott but refrained. The intruder did need an attitude adjustment. Robin ran over to the front door of the barn.
The man stood, a little wobbly, and gently took his place again on the milk can. “Lost,” he said. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth into his beard. His eye was swollen.
“Oh brother,” Scott said. “‘Lost.’ Is that the best you can do?”
“Here,” Robin said. She had wrapped snow in a bandanna, and she walked up close to the Road Patrolman, pressing it gently against his mouth.
“Fangs,” he mumbled. The gesture and his response served to discharge the tension in the atmosphere.
“Okay, sport, why are you in my barn?” Scott asked.
“And why are you on foot and why are you alone?” Jack added.
“Smoke,” the man said. “Curious.”
“Motorcycle?” Jack asked.
“At another ‘anch, a foo ‘iles sout’.”
“Partner?”
“Him, too. Foraging.”
“You can’t ride in the snow, I take it.”
“No. Waiting it out. Out of fuud.” The ‘f’ sound was just an expulsion of air between upper teeth and lower lip.
“So your partner went a different way.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re in my barn because why?” Scott asked.
“I uz just getting orm. Orm. I came through the trees, I was going to get orm and get on the rud. Oad. Outta here.”
“And get un-lost,” Robin added.
The man nodded his head.
“Why were you hiding?” Jack asked. “Why did you jump out at me like that?”
“Apache,” the man said, wincing a little at making the “p” sound.
Jack was exasperated at the unnecessary violence. He was rubbing his hip under his .45. He had a bruise there where he’d landed on the firearm. “You didn’t have to knock me down. You could have stood up and walked out.”
An angry roar overtook them from the front of the barn. “What’s going on in here?” Rupert demanded. He was striding forward from the opening, with all the command presence he could muster. Peter and Millie were right behind him, incongruously hand-in-hand.
“He attacked Jack,” Scott said.
The group parted, and Rupert stood before the hapless young man perched on the milk can. They all expected an explosion of indignation, but Rupert was silent. At length, the man
looked up at Rupert, ready for the tirade to begin so he could be on his way, or to be beaten further, or to be killed, but to be free of questioning. At length, Rupert just said, “I am a free man.”
“I want to go,” the Diné intruder responded.
“Then go,” Rupert said.
The man tottered to his feet, making for the front door.
“Wait,” Jack said. “I’ll get you to where you need to go.” Jack glanced at Rupert, but it was only a glance. Rupert was either dispassionate about the exchange or else had not had time to muster a glare of disapproval.
“Let me go. I can take care of him if he needs it,” Robin said.
“Peter, could I borrow your horse?” Jack asked. “We should be back by dark.”
“Peter can stay here if you’re not,” Millie said, coloring when more than one head turned toward her.
Jack looked at Peter with an inquisitive look on his face, gesturing with a tilt of the head toward Robin.
Peter gave a quick nod.
“I think it would be okay,” Jack said to Robin. To the intruder, he said, “Hope you can ride a horse.”
The young man did not respond. But neither did he refuse the offer of a ride and an escort.
“All right then,” Jack said, and he and Robin turned to the task of saddling the three horses.
Chapter 21
The unlikely trio was back on the road pretty quickly. At first, the horses balked at leaving the relatively warm barn so soon. Robin more than once had to grab Peter’s horse’s bridle to keep him on track. The motorcycle rider didn’t have the dominant presence to tamp down the horse’s rebellious streak. The further they got from the barn, though, the better the horses behaved.
“What’s your name?” Jack asked the reluctant horseman.
“Woy,” he said, wincing at the pain from his swollen lips. “Roy.”
“It just occurred to me, Peter probably knows his way around here better than either of us do,” Jack said to Robin.
“I know most of the roads. And Roy needs to stick to roads so he doesn’t get lost again.”
“That sounds right. But what do you think of how we get back to the main highway? Follow our own trail back out to the main road?” Jack was pointing to the snow trammeled by these same horses just a little while ago.
Robin asked Roy, “You were south of Alpine, right?” They were still paused by the tracks back to the highway.
“Roy, you need to talk to us,” Jack said. “I know you were lost, but all we can do is follow the roads around Alpine. I don’t know how to get you back to your partner, or your motorcycle.”
“I got lost cause I got off the ‘oad. If I get ‘ack on the Coronado, I can fine it.”
Jack looked at Robin.
“The Coronado Highway. Highway 191. It’s the north-south road through Alpine. The road we’re on probably goes straight to it, but we don’t know for sure. We do know for sure these tracks do, because we were on it ourselves when we went south through town.”
Jack gently heeled his horse’s left side like he’d been taught, and they turned into the tracks they’d left earlier. Roy was pretty much just hanging onto his horse. By comparison, Jack looked like a real cowboy.
To Roy, Jack said, “We’ll be at the highway pretty soon, but we come to it a little south of Alpine. How far south of Alpine do you think you were?”
“Not sure. Went to Tucson.”
Robin said, “So they were approaching Alpine from the south, headed north.”
“Well, was there anything you remember from the place where you left the road?
“I was at a house. Nothing there.”
“Food, you mean. Did you see the house from the highway?”
“No, I took the rud to it off the highway. Coronado.”
“So would you recognize the road again from the highway?”
“There were two ‘oads. Opp’site sides. Close, ‘aybe thirty ya’ds.”
“Well, that helps. Robin, do you remember any like that back toward Alpine?”
“No, but I’m not completely sure.”
“I’m not, either. Hard to remember something like that if you weren’t looking for it at the time.”
So they turned right at Highway 191, heading south. Jack looked over to Roy, hunched over his saddle horn. Roy looked like he was worn out. His face was red from the weather but almost purple under his right eye, above the most swollen part of his lip. Scott evidently had a pretty strong left. “You should have taken some food, Roy,” Robin said. “You don’t look so good.”
“’s okay,” Roy murmured.
“I still have some in my saddle bag,” Robin said.
“Robin to the rescue, Roy. I don’t get why you wouldn’t take a rest and some food from the Willises, though. What’s your beef with them?” Jack well knew that it was the Apache/Diné thing, but why not root around for a little intel?
“Abache,” Roy said, this time with a little less bitterness compared to back in the Willis’ barn. He took a baggie of venison and another of cooked potato slices from Robin.
“I heard you say that before,” Jack said, “but you know what I really want to know. Why this animosity for the Apache?”
Roy took some time to chew, working out how to avoid pain in doing so. “Just don’t chust. Truss,” he eventually muttered.
“No trust. That’s it? Roy, I’m really curious, why the mistrust? You know we’re not the Apache, right? Do you trust Robin and me?”
This question seemed to vex Roy a little. He didn’t seem to have the standard answer stored somewhere to recall upon being prompted. About being Apache, though, he did. “Saw you at the canyon.” He took another small bite of venison.
“Oh, you were there that day! Sorry I didn’t remember you. You know Hashkeh? How about Roland? Old friends of mine.”
Jack thought he detected a sardonic grin, despite Roy’s chewing and his swollen features.
“And heard you at the b-arn,” Roy said, gently pushing out the ‘b’ sound.
“Ah. We did talk about that. And about Diné, too. Hope you weren’t offended.”
Roy just shook his head, slightly.
“And all that God talk. How do you take to that?”
Again the same mild shake of the head, but in this context it was ambiguous.
“Well, not sure what to make of it myself. Do you think that might be the road?” Jack pointed to a road intersecting with theirs ahead on their right, and just beyond it, another that went off to the left. Ahead of them, the mountains loomed. The highway they were on would soon be a slot in the top of the mountain—what they used to call a “gap” back east.
“I think so.”
“Well, you’d remember if it was up in those mountains, right?”
“This is it. Where I started ’alking through woods was ut there,” Roy said, pointing up the road to the right. The ranch house he found must have been up around the bend, out of sight. “Cycle ut there,” he said, pointing up the road to the left. “I can ’alk.”
“Or we can ride,” Robin said.
“Now tell me, Roy. We’re taking care of you here, and I just want to know one thing,” Jack said. “You know we don’t mean you any harm, right?”
A nod of the head.
“So one thing. Is your partner armed?”
Roy shook his head. “We’re not armed.”
“Just want to be sure. And he’s not hostile?”
Roy shook his head.
“No more hostile than you?”
A strained smile from Roy.
Jack knew there was every possibility that Roy’s partner would be gone on his own foraging venture, but in fact he was at home. There was the smell of wood smoke in the air. They rode up into the yard of a modest house on a little half-acre mostly flat place just before the road tilted up again and crested some fifty or so yards further along. On one side of the little house, the roof extended to an overhang, and under that the two motorcycles were parked, of litt
le use in all the snow. Roy’s Road Patrol partner must have seen them from inside because he met them in the little yard to the house. He was tall and lanky. Too much of his teeth showed.
“Roy, what happened?” he quite reasonably asked.
“Long story,” Roy answered. He was inhibited about going into detail in front of Jack and Robin.
“I’ll give you the short version,” Jack said, “’cause it pains Roy to talk.” Actually, Jack was thinking he had the opportunity to spin this story so it would be received as well as it might be once it got back to the Diné.
“Roy here startled his unwitting hosts. He was taking refuge in a barn and jumped out at me. We wrestled a little. I guess he was afraid he would be in some sort of trouble and wanted to be sure he got away. But one of the guys living there, I mean at the house where the barn was, he came in while Roy and I were tussling and laid into Roy. So, understandable how it came about. But that’s the only reason it was so rough for Roy.”
“Apache?” the partner asked. They had been helping Roy down and walking with him to the house. The partner wanted to get some understanding on this before going in, however, so they stood in the yard, though Roy was more than ready to lie down.
“Not me, or her.”
“’ancher, though,” Roy squeaked out.
“The guy who beat up on him?” the partner asked.
“Well, I suppose,” Jack conceded, “but none of this happened because Roy here was Diné. In fact, I only knew he was Diné because he’s wearing those Road Patrol clothes.”
This seemed to satisfy Roy’s partner sufficiently for him to open the door to the little house. The front door entered directly into a dark living room. It was quite warm but a little smoky.
Robin went into the kitchen.
Roy’s partner said, “What are you if you’re not Apache? I thought everyone around here decided they were Apache if they aren’t Diné.”
“‘Around here?’ What about people who aren’t from around here?” Jack asked hopefully.
The Diné partner just looked puzzled. “Fella, there’s no one left in the whole world but the Diné and the yahoos who call themselves Apache.”
Another Like Me Page 21
