A Century of Great Western Stories

by A Century of Great Western Stories (retail) (epub)

  Sergeant Houck felt a small bump on his left side. The boy had toppled against him. Sergeant Houck set the small body across his lap with the head nestled into the crook of his right arm. He leaned his head down and heard the soft little last sigh as drowsiness overcame the boy. He looked sidewise at the woman and dimly made out the outline of her head falling forward and jerking back up and he reached his left arm along the top of the seat until his hand touched her far shoulder. He felt her shoulder stiffen and then relax as she moved closer and leaned toward him. He slipped down lower in the seat so that her head could reach his shoulder and he felt the gentle touch of her brown hair on his neck above his shirt collar. He waited patiently and at last he could tell by her steady deep breathing that all fright had left her and all her thoughts were stilled.

  The coach reached a rutted stretch and began to sway and the young man stirred and began to slide on the smooth leather of his seat. Sergeant Houck put up a foot and braced it against the seat edge and the young man’s body rested against it. Sergeant Houck leaned his head back on the top of the seat. The stars came out in the clear sky and the running beat of the hoofs had the rhythm of a cavalry squad at a steady trot and gradually Sergeant Houck softened slightly into sleep.

  SERGEANT HOUCK AWOKE, as always, all at once and aware. The coach had stopped. From the sounds outside, fresh horses were being buckled into the traces. The first light of dawn was creeping into the coach. He raised his head and he realized that he was stiff.

  The young man was awake. He was inspecting the vast leather sole of Sergeant Houck’s shoe. His eyes flicked up and met Sergeant Houck’s eyes and he grinned.

  “That’s impressive footwear,” he whispered. “You’d need starch in the legs with hooves like that.” He sat up and stretched, long and reaching, like a lazy young animal. “Hell,” he whispered again. “You must be stiff as a branding iron.” He took hold of Sergeant Houck’s leg at the knee and hoisted it slightly so that Sergeant Houck could bend it and ease the foot down to the floor without disturbing the sleeping woman leaning against him. He stretched out both hands and gently lifted the sleeping boy from Sergeant Houck’s lap and sat back with the boy in his arms. The young man studied the boy’s face. “Can’t be yours,” he whispered.

  “No,” whispered Sergeant Houck.

  “Must have some Indian strain.”

  “Yes.”

  The young man whispered down at the sleeping boy. “You can’t help that, can you, bub?”

  “No,” said Sergeant Houck suddenly, out loud. “He can’t.”

  The woman jerked upright and pulled over to the window on her side, rubbing at her eyes. The boy woke up, wide awake on the instant and saw the unfamiliar face above him and began to squirm violently. The young man clamped his arms tighter. “Morning ma’am,” he said. “Looks like I ain’t such a good nursemaid.”

  Sergeant Houck reached out a hand and picked up the boy by a grip on the small overalls and deposited him in a sitting position on the seat beside the young man. The boy sat very still.

  THE SUN CLIMBED into plain view and now the coach was stirring the dust of a well-worn road. It stopped where another road crossed and the young man inside pulled on his boots. He bobbed his head in the direction of a group of low buildings up the side road. “Think I’ll try it there. They’ll be peeling broncs about now and the foreman knows I can sit a saddle.” He opened the door and jumped to the ground and turned to poke his head in. “Hope you make it right,” he said. “Wherever you’re heading.” The door closed and he could be heard scrambling up the back of the coach to get his saddle. There was a thump as he and the saddle hit the ground and then voices began outside, rising in tone.

  Sergeant Houck pushed his head through the window beside him. The young man and the driver were facing each other over the saddle. The young man was pulling the pockets of his Levi’s inside out. “Lookahere, Will,” he said. “You know I’ll kick in soon as I have some cash. Hell, I’ve hooked rides with you before.”

  “Not now no more,” said the driver. “The company’s sore. They hear of this they’d have my job. I’ll have to hold the saddle.”

  “You touch that saddle and they’ll pick you up in pieces from here to breakfast.”

  Sergeant Houck fumbled for his inside jacket pocket. He whistled. The two men turned. He looked hard at the young man. “There’s something on the seat in here. Must have slipped out of your pocket.”

  The young man leaned in and saw the two silver dollars on the hard seat and looked up at Sergeant Houck. “You’ve been in spots yourself,” he said.

  “Yes,” said Sergeant Houck.

  The young man grinned. He picked up the two coins in one hand and swung the other to slap Sergeant Houck’s leg, sharp and stinging and grateful. “Age ain’t hurting you any, General,” he said.

  The coach started up and the woman looked at Sergeant Houck. The minutes passed and still she looked at him.

  “If I’d had brains enough to get married,” he said, “might be I’d have a son. Might have been one like that.”

  The woman looked away, out her window. She reached up to pat at her hair and the firm line of her lips softened in the tiny imperceptible beginnings of a smile. The minutes passed and Sergeant Houck stirred again. “It’s the upbringing that counts,” he said and settled into silent immobility, watching the miles go by.

  It was near noon when they stopped in Laramie and Sergeant Houck handed the woman out and tucked the boy under one arm and led the way to the waiting room. He settled the woman and the boy in two chairs and left them. He was back soon, driving a light buckboard wagon drawn by a pair of deep-barreled chestnuts. The wagon bed was well padded with layers of empty burlap bags. He went into the waiting room and picked up the boy and beckoned to the woman to follow. He put the boy down on the burlap bags and helped the woman up on the driving seat.

  “Straight out the road, they tell me,” he said. “About fifteen miles. Then right along the creek. Can’t miss it.”

  He stood by the wagon, staring along the road. The woman leaned from the seat and clutched at his shoulder. Her voice was high and frightened. “You’re going with me?” Her fingers clung to his service jacket. “Please! You’ve got to!”

  Sergeant Houck put a hand over hers on his shoulder and released her fingers. “Yes. I’m going.” He put the child in her lap and stepped to the seat and took the reins. The wagon moved forward.

  “You’re afraid,” he said.

  “They haven’t told him,” she said, “about the boy.”

  Sergeant Houck’s hands tightened on the reins and the horses slowed to a walk. He clucked sharply to them and slapped the reins on their backs and they quickened again into a trot. The wagon topped a slight rise and the road sloped downward for a long stretch to where the green of trees and tall bushes showed in the distance. A jackrabbit started from the scrub growth by the roadside and leaped high and leveled out, a gray brown streak. The horses shied and broke rhythm and quieted to a walk under the firm pressure of the reins. Sergeant Houck kept them at a walk, easing the heat out of their muscles, down the long slope to the trees. He let them step into the creek up to their knees and dip their muzzles in the clear running water. The front wheels of the wagon were in the creek and he reached behind him to find a tin dipper tucked among the burlap bags and leaned far out to dip up water for the woman and the boy and himself. He backed the team out of the creek and swung them into the wagon ruts leading along the bank to the right.

  The creek was on their left and the sun was behind them, warm on their backs, and the shadows of the horses pushed ahead. The shadows were longer, stretching farther ahead, when they rounded a bend along the creek and the buildings came in sight, the two-room cabin and the several lean-to sheds and the rickety pole corral. A man was standing by one of the sheds and when Sergeant Houck stopped the team he came toward them and stopped about twenty feet away. He was not young, perhaps in his middle thirties, but with the young lo
ok of a man on whom the years have made no mark except that of the simple passing of time. He was tall, soft, and loose-jointed in build, and indecisive in manner and movement. His eyes wavered as he looked at the woman, and the fingers of his hands hanging limp at his sides twitched as he waited for her to speak.

  She climbed down her side of the wagon and faced him. She stood straight and the sun behind her shone on her hair. “Well, Fred,” she said. “I’m here.”

  “Cora,” he said. “It’s been a long time, Cora. I didn’t know you’d come so soon.”

  “Why didn’t you come get me? Why didn’t you, Fred?”

  “I didn’t rightly know what to do, Cora. It was all so mixed up. Thinking you were dead. Then hearing about you. And what happened. I had to think about things. And I couldn’t get away easy. I was going to try maybe next week.”

  “I hoped you’d come. Right away when you heard.”

  His body twisted uneasily while his feet remained flat and motionless on the ground. “Your hair’s still pretty,” he said. “The way it used to be.”

  Something like a sob caught in her throat and she started toward him. Sergeant Houck stepped down on the other side of the wagon and walked off to the creek and knelt to bend and wash the dust from his face. He stood drying his face with a handkerchief and watching the little eddies of the current around several stones in the creek. He heard the voices behind him.

  “Wait, Fred. There’s something you have to know.”

  “That kid? What’s it doing here with you?”

  “It’s mine, Fred.”

  “Yours? Where’d you get it?”

  “It’s my child. Mine.”

  There was silence and then the man’s voice, bewildered, hurt. “So it’s really true what they said. About that Indian.”

  “Yes. He bought me. By their rules I belonged to him. I wouldn’t be alive and here now, any other way. I didn’t have any say about it.”

  There was silence again and then the man spoke, self-pity creeping into his tone. “I didn’t count on anything like this.”

  Sergeant Houck walked back to the wagon. The woman seemed relieved at the interruption. “This is Sergeant Houck,” she said. “He brought me all the way.”

  The man nodded his head and raised a hand to shove back the sandy hair that kept falling forward on his forehead. “I suppose I ought to thank you, soldier. All that trouble.”

  “No trouble,” said Sergeant Houck.

  The man pushed at the ground in front of him with one shoe, poking the toe into the dirt and studying it. “I suppose we ought to go inside. It’s near suppertime. I guess you’ll be taking a meal here, soldier, before you start back to town.”

  “Right,” said Sergeant Houck. “And I’m tired. I’ll stay the night, too. Start in the morning. Sleep in one of those sheds.”

  The man pushed at the ground more vigorously. The little pile of dirt in front of his shoe seemed to interest him a great deal. “All right, soldier. Sorry there’s no quarters inside.” He turned quickly and started for the cabin.

  THE WOMAN TOOK the boy from the wagon and followed him. Sergeant Houck unharnessed the horses and led them to the creek for a drink and to the corral and let them through the gate. He walked quietly to the cabin doorway and stopped just outside.

  “For God’s sake, Cora,” the man was saying, “I don’t see why you had to bring that kid with you. You could have told me about it. I didn’t have to see him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why, now we’ve got the problem of how to get rid of him. Have to find a mission or some place that’ll take him. Why didn’t you leave him where he came from?”

  “No! He’s mine!”

  “Good God, Cora! Are you crazy? Think you can foist off a thing like that on me?”

  Sergeant Houck stepped through the doorway. “Thought I heard something about supper,” he said. He looked around the small room, then let his eyes rest on the man. “I see the makings on those shelves. Come along, Mr. Sutliff. A woman doesn’t want men cluttering about when she’s getting a meal. Show me your place before it gets dark.”

  He stood, waiting, and the man scraped at the floor with one foot and slowly stood up and went with him.

  THEY WERE WELL beyond earshot of the cabin when Sergeant Houck spoke again. “How long were you married? Before it happened?”

  “Six years,” said the man. “No, seven. It was seven when we lost the last place and headed this way with the train.”

  “Seven years,” said Sergeant Houck. “And no child.”

  “It just didn’t happen. I don’t know why.” The man stopped and looked sharply at Sergeant Houck. “Oh. So that’s the way you’re looking at it.”

  “Yes,” said Sergeant Houck. “Now you’ve got one. A son.”

  “Not mine,” said the man. “You can talk. It’s not your wife. It’s bad enough thinking of taking an Indian’s leavings.” He wiped his lips on his sleeve and spat in disgust. “I’ll be damned if I’ll take his kid.”

  “Not his anymore. He’s dead.”

  “Look, man. Look how it’d be. A damn little half-breed. Around all the time to make me remember what she did. A reminder of things I’d want to forget.”

  “Could be a reminder that she had some mighty hard going. And maybe come through the better for it.”

  “She had hard going! What about me? Thinking she was dead. Getting used to that. Maybe thinking of another woman. Then she comes back—and an Indian kid with her. What does that make me?”

  “Could make you a man,” said Sergeant Houck. “Think it over.” He turned away and went to the corral and leaned on the rail, watching the horses roll in the sweat-itches out of the dry sod. The man went slowly down by the creek and stood on the bank, pushing at the dirt with one shoe and kicking small pebbles into the water. The sun, holding to the horizon rim, dropped suddenly out of sight and dusk came swiftly to blur the outlines of the buildings. The woman appeared in the doorway and called and they went in. There was simple food on the table and the woman stood beside it. “I’ve already fed him,” she said and moved her head toward the door to the inner room.

  Sergeant Houck ate steadily and reached to refill his plate. The man picked briefly at the food before him and stopped, and the woman ate nothing at all. The man put his hands on the table edge and pushed back and stood up. He went to a side shelf and took a bottle and two thick cups and set them by his plate. He filled the cups a third full from the bottle and shoved one along the table boards toward Sergeant Houck. He lifted the other. His voice was bitter. “Happy homecoming,” he said. He waited and Sergeant Houck took the other cup and they drank. The man lifted the bottle and poured himself another drink.

  The woman looked quickly at him and away. “Please, Fred.”

  The man paid no attention. He reached with the bottle toward the other cup.

  “No,” said Sergeant Houck.

  The man shrugged. “You can think better on whiskey. Sharpens the mind.” He set the bottle down and took his cup and drained it. Sergeant Houck fumbled in his right side pocket and found a short straight straw there and pulled it out and put one end in his mouth and chewed slowly on it. The man and the woman sat still, opposite each other at the table, and seemed to forget his quiet presence. They stared everywhere except at each other. Yet their attention was plainly concentrated on one another. The man spoke first. His voice was restrained, carrying conscious patience.

  “Look, Cora. You wouldn’t want to do that to me. You can’t mean what you said before.”

  Her voice was determined. “He’s mine.”

  “Now, Cora. You don’t want to push it too far. A man can take just so much. I didn’t know what to do after I heard about you. But I was all ready to forgive you. And now you—”

  “Forgive me!” She knocked against her chair rising to her feet. Hurt and bewilderment made her voice ragged as she repeated the words. “Forgive me?” She turned and ran into the inner room. The handleles
s door banged shut behind her.

  The man stared after her and shook his head and reached again for the bottle.

  “Enough’s enough,” said Sergeant Houck.

  The man shrugged in quick irritation, “For you maybe,” he said and poured himself another drink. “Is there any reason you should be nosying in on this?”

  “My orders,” said Sergeant Houck, “were to deliver them safely. Both of them.”

  “You’ve done that,” said the man. He lifted the cup and drained it and set it down carefully. “They’re here,”

  “Yes,” said Sergeant Houck. “They’re here.” He stood up and stepped to the outside door and looked into the night. He waited a moment until his eyes were accustomed to the darkness and could distinguish objects faintly in the starlight. He stepped out and went to the pile of straw behind one of the sheds and took an armload and carried it back by the cabin and dropped it at the foot of a tree by one corner. He sat on it, his legs stretched out, his shoulders against the tree, and broke off a straw stem and chewed slowly on it. After awhile his jaws stopped their slow slight movement and his head sank forward and his eyes closed.

  SERGEANT HOUCK WOKE up abruptly. He was on his feet in a moment, and listening. He heard the faint sound of voices in the cabin, indistinct but rising as the tension rose in them. He went toward the doorway and stopped just short of the rectangle of light from the lamp.

  “You’re not going to have anything to do with me!” The woman’s voice was harsh with stubborn anger. “Not until this has been settled right!”

  “Aw, come on, Cora.” The man’s voice was fuzzy, slow-paced. “We’ll talk about that in the morning.”

  “No!”

  “All right!” Sudden fury made the man’s voice shake. “You want it settled now! Well, it’s settled! We’re getting rid of that damn kid first thing tomorrow!”

  “No!”