Yester's Ride

by C. K. Crigger

  Yester shook his head. “Not so good.” He took a deep breath and prepared to jump in case his pa’s fist started swinging. “Ma wants me to go after Ketta. She says those outlaws took her.”

  “You ain’t going anywhere except where I tell you.” Pa scowled. His fist knotted up, but he didn’t strike. “Especially not after that crossbreed—” Seeing Yester’s face, he stopped. “The woman say how many of ’em there was?”

  “Four. Ma said four men.”

  “Well, then,” Big Joe said smugly. “Just shows she’s out of her head and don’t know what she’s saying. If she was in her right mind she wouldn’t let you anywhere near them fellers. And I ain’t going to turn you loose after ’em, either. A sixteen-yearold kid?” He snorted. “What you gonna do? Shoot ’em all with your slingshot?”

  Anger burned the words in Yester’s throat. “But, Pa—”

  “I need you with the horses, you hear me, boy? And the first thing you’re gonna do is ride over to Fontaine’s cabin. Tell ’im I’ll pay him to help round up our horses. He’s the best tracker I know of. ’Sides, he’s our closest neighbor. He’s bound to help.”

  Yester shot his pa a look, knowing full well if Mr. Fontaine’s animals had been stolen Big Joe wouldn’t lift a finger. What’s more, Fontaine would know it, too. He was Métis, which meant half Indian and half French-Canadian, and Big Joe Noonan never made any bones regarding how he felt about anybody with Indian blood. Yester reckoned it’d all depend on if Mr. Fontaine needed to earn some cash money. And on how persuasive Yester could be.

  “All right,” he said. For once, he was actually relieved to have Big Joe intervene with demands of his own. Truth to tell, he wasn’t sure how he felt about going up against four outlaws all by himself. Then there was Ma, so beat up and frail.

  One thing he could do is talk to Mrs. Fontaine. See if she’d come help Ma while the men were gone. Conscience eased, if only a little, he headed for Flint, hoping the old horse had rested up a bit, but Pa surprised him.

  “Take the buckskin,” Big Joe said, waving at the horse ground-hitched nearby. “We ain’t got time to dally, and Flint is too slow. Use your spurs. It’ll be dark before you get back as it is. I’ll see if I can catch us up a couple fresh broncs while you’re gone.” He nodded out toward where trees provided a bulwark against the wind. “Some of ’em didn’t stray far. I see Rory over there, and a couple more those outlaws missed. We’ll be ready to start out as soon as you get back.” Rory was the bay Big Joe rode when he wasn’t riding the buckskin.

  Yester didn’t know what else to do. “Yes, Pa,” he said and stepped into the saddle. To his surprise, the length to the stirrups fit him fine. His legs had grown as long as Big Joe’s, maybe longer.

  Once they were beyond the dooryard, he urged the horse into a trot, and then an easy lope. He didn’t spur, though. It would take an hour to get to Fontaine’s place. He wasn’t going to run the buckskin to death.

  Sorry, Ketta, he was thinking as he rode. Hold on, little sister. You just hold on.

  Big Joe’d had his time a little mixed up, as Yester discovered. The sun was far down on the horizon, bathing the rolling hills of the Palouse with purple and blue before he reached the opening into the little valley where the Fontaines made their home. A hound dog bayed as he started up the trail to the cabin. Lights inside glowed yellow. By the time he got there, Fontaine was waiting outside the porch door, standing in shadows deep enough Yester knew where he was only by a slight stirring of the light.

  It wasn’t until Fontaine recognized Yester that he came to meet him.

  “Hey, boy,” he said, reaching for the horse’s reins, “what you doing here this time of night? What you doing up on that horse? Ain’t that one Big Joe favors?”

  It was a well-known fact around the countryside that Big Joe didn’t like to share, not even with his son.

  Yester dismounted, his legs numb beneath him. It felt like he’d been riding all day, which, come to think of it, he guessed he had. If it hadn’t been for grabbing onto the saddle strings, he thought he might’ve fallen.

  “Big Joe sent me,” he said, his voice breaking like it hadn’t done for more than three years. “We got trouble at home.”

  “Trouble?” Fontaine flipped the reins around the porch rail. “What kind of trouble? Come on in, Yester, and tell me about it.” His voice rose, but only a little, like he knew his wife must be standing right inside and hearing every word. “Bird, set another plate. This boy looks hungry.”

  Yester heard the pad of moccasined feet coming from the direction of the barn. Chirping crickets quieted all along the way. There was a rush, then the hound dog that’d bayed stuck his nose into Yester’s open palm in a gesture of friendship. Nat Fontaine’s dog. The dog and Yester were friends because Nat and Yester were friends.

  “What’s happened?” Nat asked, materializing out of the darkness like one of those haunts he told Yester about when they were trading stories. A half head shorter than his friend, he was wiry and strong and looked more French than Indian. “What did Big Joe do now?” He looked a little worried.

  “Wasn’t Pa causing trouble this time.” At Fontaine’s urging, Yester limped over and climbed the rounds of rough-sawn red fir that served as steps into the cabin. Once inside the aroma of venison stew and fried bread hit him, making his stomach growl. He paid the small fuss little attention.

  “Me and Big Joe had gone to town and were coming home.” He looked down, shame-faced. The Fontaines would know that meant Big Joe’d been on a bender, and he’d been along to see he got home in one piece. “Just before the last rise, I saw smoke. Turns out—” He had to stop a minute and swallow down a dry croak.

  Without a word, Bird Fontaine filled a dipper from a bucket and handed it to him. Yester drank it down like he was parched, and he guessed he was, smoke from his home’s burning caught still in his throat.

  “You sit,” Bird said. “Talk when you are ready.”

  It helped, not being pushed to explain the goings on at the ranch. Although he’d had all of the ride over here to think of what to say, nothing came to him now. Everything was jumbled in his mind.

  After a minute, he said, “Some men, they beat Ma awful bad, and . . . and—”

  Bird’s dark eyes opened wide. “Someone attacked the ranch? They beat Magdalene?”

  “Yes. They burned the house, killed some chickens, and shot the cow and Barney.”

  Nat reared back. “Shot Barney?”

  “Wounded him.”

  Fontaine, who’d settled on his stool at the head of the table, scooted it back, legs scraping on the plank floor. “Who did this thing, Yester? When?”

  “Today. Some men. Four men. Outlaws.”

  Bird stopped what she was doing and stood, hands on hips. “Why did they beat Magdalene? Did they—” She stopped, her cheeks flushing.

  “Yes.” Yester answered her unvoiced question baldly. “I don’t know why they did it, but they hurt her something awful.” A sour taste filled his mouth. He hadn’t yet said it all. “They took Ketta.”

  “Took Ketta?” Bird repeated, as if she couldn’t believe it.

  Nat struck at the heart of the matter. “We going after them?”

  “My son,” Bird said warningly, but Yester, relieved, nodded.

  “Yes. That’s what I’m here for. Big Joe sent me. He asked if you folks could help us out. See, they stole some of our horses, the ones Pa’s been training for the army. Turned the ones they didn’t steal loose so they ran off. He asked if you could maybe see your way clear to track’em down for us, Mr. Fontaine.”

  “Track who?” Nat wanted to know. “The thieves or the horses?” He’d seen enough of Big Joe to walk a wide circle around him.

  “Both,” Yester admitted. He looked to Mrs. Fontaine. “And he asked if you could come over and take care of Ma while we’re gone.” Or he should have asked, Yester thought to himself.

  Bird frowned. “She needs care?”

  Yester’s
face puckered before he could catch himself. “Yes, ma’am. She surely does.”

  Bird studied him. “Is she—” she started again, then stopped, probably guessing the answer to that particular question from looking at Yester’s heated face.

  “I will come. Take some things over there to help ease her.” She lifted the pot of stew redolent of onions and venison from the stove and set it on the table, splashing a ladle into the thick conglomeration. “You eat. All of you eat.”

  Bird set about chores of her own, bustling around the room as she gathered things into a bundle. Medicinal herbs that hung from nails behind the stove were sniffed and approved or not approved. Contents of some purpled mason jars were separated out and put in twists of fabric.

  “You got bandages?” she asked Yester.

  “Don’t know.” He shook his head. “They burned the house. Tried, anyway. We put the fire out before it all went up. Looks like what’s left can be rebuilt.”

  “Tch,” she said and put a roll of clean gauzy strips of cloth into her bundle.

  Fontaine’s fist slammed down on the table, rattling spoons and bowls recently emptied of Bird’s good stew. He still hadn’t said if he’d help or not, and Yester began to fret. What would Big Joe say if he came back without Fontaine?

  Worse, what would he do?

  It was Nat, the one known to complain mightily whenever Yester’s little sister used to try to follow the boys around, who brought up the elephant in the room. “What about Ketta?”

  Yester pushed his bowl away, the food lying heavy in his belly all the sudden. “They took her.”

  “Yeah, you said.”

  “I promised Ma I’d go after her. Promised. Pa says no, but I’m gonna do it anyway. I should’ve lit out right away, but”—Yester’s face hardened—“Ma needed help, too. And the one who stole Ketta. He’s . . . well, he’s . . .”

  “He is what?” Fontaine’s voice was soft.

  “He’s her pa.” Yester forced the words out, though they stuck in his craw.

  Fontaine jerked. “The Chinaman?”

  So he’d known. Yester nodded. “But that don’t mean he has any right to take her. She ain’t anything to him. She’s Ma’s daughter, and she’s my sister. Ketta, she even tried to shoot him, except she got hold of Pa’s old .45 that don’t work. I don’t know why he’d take her after that. She’s just a kid.”

  Bird’s eyes filled with tears. “Punishment, of a sort. And because he could.”

  “Well,” Yester said, stern as any preacher man, “he ain’t going to keep her.”

  KETTA

  Ketta’s stomach still hurt, feeling bruised and twisted and as if a nest of writhing snakes crawled around in it. Regardless, she set herself to fetch firewood, haul water from a little spring the man with black skin had found, and even serve bread and beans taken from her mama’s own kitchen. She didn’t want anyone to be knocking her in the head like they’d threatened, for sure.

  The men muttered among themselves when they thought Kuo wasn’t listening. Ketta figured they were wrong. She was certain he heard every word they said. She also thought the way they tittered like school girls with a secret sounded remarkably silly for full grown men. Her model for a man’s behavior being Big Joe, who seldom cracked a smile, let alone laughed, cued her to a whole different kind of man.

  What really made her uncomfortable, though, was the way Kuo kept watching her. She planned on running away, hurting stomach or no hurting stomach, just as soon as these men settled for the night. Did he somehow guess her plans? If only he’d quit eyeing her. Intimidated by his scrutiny, she hardly dared move.

  After a while, as the men sat around the campfire eating, nature called, and she slipped away to hide behind a bush. Tried to slip away, at least. She hardly got ten feet before he called out to her.

  “Stay where I can see you, little girl,” he said.

  She said, “I’ve got to . . . go.” In fact, the need had become desperate.

  And he said, “Pee?”

  She knew she turned red as a pie cherry but nodded.

  Kuo pointed and said, “There.”

  Ketta nearly died. There was hardly enough cover to hide a rabbit, let alone a girl, even one as small as she.

  Impossible to protest, though, when his narrow, slanted eyes pierced her like pointed sticks. Eyes so similar to what she saw in her own face when she looked in Mama’s mirror. Which she didn’t very often because she looked so different from everybody else in the family. Different from Yester. Brothers and sisters were supposed to resemble each other, weren’t they? But Yester was a handsome combination of Big Joe and Mama, and she was—Well, she didn’t quite know. But something about Kuo, and snippets of things she’d heard over the years, were starting to make her think. And what she thought made her tummy hurt all over again.

  Settling as far away from the men as Kuo allowed, she resolved not to “think” anymore. Just “do.” Starting the minute the men went to sleep. It was as far as her plan went.

  Ketta managed to choke down a half slice of her own good bread spread with a spoonful of mashed beans. Her stomach, still tied in knots, balked at anything more, even if the men had been inclined to leave her any of the good stuff. Which they weren’t.

  Afterward, Kuo showed her how to clean the spoons and tin plates with sand and a bare cup of water. Disgusting to her way of thinking. The cleanliness didn’t meet the standards her mother had taught her, that’s for sure. But it was as she absorbed this lesson that she put in the question burning up her insides.

  Setting her jaw, she glowered into Kuo’s slanty eyes. “What did you do to my mother?”

  He gave her a questioning look. “Don’t you know?”

  “I . . . no. You knocked me out.” She set hands on narrow hips, a brave gesture of defiance. “You better not have hurt her.”

  “Or what?” He shrugged and almost smiled. “I didn’t touch her.”

  That’s right. Because he was holding on to me. Squeezing me until I couldn’t breathe. Until there was pure darkness and nothing else. Ketta’s narrow gaze fixed on the other men. “Them? They did. I saw . . .” She stopped again, unable to remember exactly what she’d seen.

  He shrugged again. “She shouldn’t have fought. Men get a little rough when a woman fights.”

  Ketta put what he said together in no time. “So, they did hurt her. You’re all a bunch of dirty, weasel-eyed, low-down, sheep-biting . . .” She couldn’t think of anything bad enough without using language more proper to Big Joe than to a young lady.

  Kuo’s fist bunched up. “Don’t you go getting snippety on me, child. In fact, you keep your mouth shut unless I say you can talk. I ain’t in the mood to listen to you. And take it from me, you don’t want them to hear.”

  The “them” meant the black man, the scarred man, and the one with snaggly teeth.

  Ketta eyed them in sudden fear as she watched for his fist to strike out, but, to her surprise, it remained at his side. Emboldened, she said, “You better let me go. My father and my brother will come for me, and you’ll be sorry you ever saw me. They’ll kill you.”

  The slap came so fast she didn’t have time to dodge any part of it. Pain stung her cheek. Her teeth sinking into her tongue almost made her convulse with the agony. But she didn’t cry out.

  “What’s your name, girl?” Kuo demanded, his hand drawing back for another go at her cheek.

  Silent, she glared back at him.

  His hand raised. “Name.”

  “Ketta.” She barely got the word out.

  “Ketta?”

  She nodded, inching backward. He didn’t slap again but reached out and grabbed her skinny little arm, fingers clenched all the way around it.

  “Well, Ketta. You talk mighty big, but we both know there ain’t nobody coming for you. I seen your ‘father’ in town, and he don’t care one cent for you. Besides the fact, he’s got enough hootch in him to slow him down to a crawl. He’d probably even shake my hand for taking
you. I heard him talking. As for your brother . . . huh. What’s he gonna do? He’s just a kid, too. Grown up tall, all right, but still a kid. He’ll do what his pa tells him to do. Just like you’re gonna do what your pa tells you.”

  Something stuttered to a stop in Ketta’s brain but not because of the physical blow he’d dealt her.

  “My pa?” she finally whispered.

  The Chinese man’s voice was almost as quiet as her own.

  “Your pa. Me.”

  Curled up on a bed of pine boughs and covered with the sweaty saddle blanket from Beau’s back, Ketta tried to ignore her throbbing cheek. She couldn’t sleep. Not even with a chorus of nighttime insects trying to sing her to sleep. Kuo’s last three words still echoed in her mind. They were like waves on the shore of the little lake they sometimes went to when the summer sun liked to scorch them all to a crisp. Used to, anyway. Until Big Joe decided they didn’t have time for such frivolous doings. She knew what his real reason was, though. Big Joe just didn’t want to be seen in public with her and didn’t want Yester tarred with her brush, either.

  But, her father? This outlaw, Kuo? How could that be? Yet Ketta figured he didn’t lie. All the half truths and hints and harsh words Big Joe, and even Mama, sometimes, had let drop proved the truth. This Celestial man was her father. Crossbreed. She really was a cross-breed, like Big Joe so often called her.

  Yester knew all about it, too. He’d always treated her kindly, but what would he think now?

  No. He wouldn’t be coming after her, either. Her mother was the only one who ever loved her, and who knew if she was still alive?

  Well, she had to find out. And, for that, she had to get back home.

  A hiccuping sob escaped, and she quickly stifled a second one. She didn’t think anybody heard, though. They’d decided a watch wasn’t necessary, discounting Big Joe with a laugh. Now they all slept, the black-skinned man and Kuo quietly, their breathing soft and regular. Scar and Snaggletooth snored with a racket as loud as Mama’s chickens in full cry.

  Inch by inch, she pushed out from under the saddle blanket and got to her feet.