Chapter 52
Down to the Valley
Hawk saddled up his old mule the next morning, put a packsaddle on the other to haul the supplies, and got ready to go down to the valley. He’d gone down before a few times while we were together, but I’d always stayed behind. Maybe part of me was at peace there and didn’t want to be reminded of the rest of the world. In so many ways I’d become a new person during the months out there with Hawk—breathing the high desert air, knowing that even as desolate as the countryside was, it was a land I could call my own.
But things were changing inside me.
After all that Hawk and I had talked about the day before—actually, after everything that had happened that year—somehow I knew it was time I sucked in a deep breath and faced the world again. Or, like Hawk would say, maybe it was time I faced myself.
“I ain’t so sure I like the idea of leaving you alone up here,” Hawk said, strapping the last of his empty bags to the mule. “I don’t think Tranter will bother us, with the chief keeping an eye on him, but Demming still worries me.”
“You think he’s still around?”
“Doubt it, but a tough customer like that’s got plenty of guts to keep himself alive when he’s looking for revenge. Now he’s got two beefs against you—one for you, one for your pa. If he’s still alive, you can bet he’s trying to figure a way to get even. Why don’t you come with me, Grayfox?”
It didn’t take me long to think about it.
“I reckon you’re right,” I said. “I’ll go.”
My reason didn’t have anything to do with Demming, though. I just figured it was way past time that I let the Pony Express people know I was alive.
I grabbed up a few things, including the quiver the chief had given me, which I took with me everywhere, and was ready in a couple of minutes.
We rode down, and the first place we stopped on the way to the trading post was the next Express station west from Flat Bluff. What a surprise it was to walk in and see Hammerhead Jackson there instead of at his own station!
He stared at me for several seconds, squinted hard like he was trying to remember something. Then gradually his scarred-up face spread out, not exactly in a smile, but as close to it as Hammerhead was likely to come.
“Tarnation, if it ain’t the Hollister kid!” he said in something between a sigh of disbelief and an exclamation. “Alive and kicking after all!”
He walked toward me and shook my hand, looking me over up and down from my boots to my hat.
“Not exactly kicking,” I said, “but it’s me all right.”
“It’s them whiskers what threw me. Why, you look ten years older. You look like a man, not that little kid I sent off last summer.”
I laughed kind of sheepishly.
“Blamed if we didn’t all think you was done in long ago.”
“Nope,” I said. “I would have been, but Hawk here kept me alive.”
The stationman acknowledged Hawk for the first time.
“How you doing, Jackson?” asked Hawk as the two men shook hands.
“All right, Trumbull. Why didn’t you tell us you had the boy?”
“Figured that was his business.”
“But what’re you doing here?” I asked. “Here at this station, I mean?”
“Feller in charge here quit a few months back. Things at this station had got kinda sloppy, so they moved me here for a spell.”
“What about Flat Bluff?”
“Smith’s in charge?”
“And Billy?”
“Barnes?”
I nodded.
“Ornery as ever. Still riding both directions outta Flat Bluff. You’ll see him later today.”
“We ain’t gonna be here that long.”
“You ain’t coming back on the line, Hollister!”
“Not planning to just yet.”
“What in tarnation for! You can’t be telling me life out in the desert’s better’n a good-paying job like you had?”
I shrugged.
“Hey, that reminds me, Hollister. I still got your last paycheck around here someplace. The two of you sit down and have something to eat while I find it. You’re just in time for some grub.”
I sat down at the table, which was already laid out. I quickly recognized the food from Hammerhead’s kitchen.
“Might wanna look at them papers too,” Hammerhead called out from across the room. “Blame country’s at war—you probably didn’t know that. Fool southerners!” he added to himself.
A minute or two later he brought over an envelope with my name on it and handed it to me. I opened it and my mouth dropped open. There were two tens and a five-dollar bill—a whole week’s pay from last fall!
I dug into the pot of beans, and a minute later I was scooping them up with a fork in my right hand while reading the newspaper I held in my left. Hawk had walked over to the other side of the room and was talking to Hammerhead about buying a few supplies from him before heading on to the trading post.
The paper was from Sacramento. I scanned over the front page, which was all about the war between the states that had just broken out. As huge as the news was, though, I think I might have been wondering if I’d run across something my sister Corrie had written.
I was scanning through the paper more or less casually, paying more attention to the beans on my plate than what I was reading. I never thought I’d consider Hammerhead’s cooking wonderful, but after months of eating only what you could cook over an open fire, whatever it was that Hammerhead put in his pot made those about the best beans I’d ever tasted in my life! Even better than Hawk’s rice and rabbit stew!
The paper was from sometime back in May, and it was now July. But as long as I’d been out of touch with the rest of the world, it hardly mattered that the news wasn’t current.
I was turning the pages, glancing up and down and reading bits and pieces of the whole paper, when a line caught my eye. I don’t know why I happened to see it, but it said something about a resolution being passed by the California legislature to support the Union cause. To tell you the truth, I don’t know why I started reading that piece, because I hardly knew anything about the argument over which side to support.
Then all of a sudden my eyes shot open and stopped dead on the page. I couldn’t believe the words I’d just read!
According to Assemblyman Drummond Hollister, who was interviewed briefly after the vote . . .”
What! I shouted to myself inside. It couldn’t be!
But I kept reading.
The new legislator from the mining town of Miracle Springs, where he has served as mayor for the past four years, has been an outspoken pro-Union voice in the Assembly . . . I didn’t need to read another word!
I threw down my fork and jumped up from the table. I ran over to Hawk and shoved the paper in his face. He didn’t have a notion what I was talking about. All I could say was, “Look! Look . . . right here. That’s my pa! He’s an assemblyman!”
I didn’t even wait for him or Hammerhead to say anything. I was so overcome with so many thoughts and feelings that I suddenly had to be alone.
Chapter 53
What Kind of Man Do I Want to Be?
Still clutching the paper in my hand, I stumbled out the door and toward the stables and barn where all the equipment was.
I wandered inside and sat down on a bale of hay.
Even here, so far from home, suddenly everything I saw and felt—every leather strap, every smell from hay to manure to wood to horseflesh—reminded me of home. In those few moments, all the things that Hawk had been saying to me over the last couple of months about courage and manhood and seeing the hidden things came into my mind—especially what he said about looking inside yourself . . . and about fathers.
In those few minutes, sitting there in that barn on the bale of hay, I saw it all so clearly—what I had done, how closed off I had been to all the love Pa had tried to give me ever since that day since my sisters and brother
and I first laid eyes on him in California outside the Gold Nugget Saloon.
Suddenly I was so ashamed of everything I’d said to Pa, ashamed of the way I’d left home.
What a fool I’d been—all wrapped up in nobody but myself, completely blind to how things really were!
I opened up the paper again and looked down there toward the bottom where the article was.
Over and over I read those words . . . Assemblyman Drummond Hollister.
All I could think was what a good man that “new legislator” was, a better man and a better father than any of those people in Sacramento could possibly realize.
Better than I’d realized till right then!
The one thing I knew more than anything else was that I had to see him again. I didn’t want to wait! I had to see him now.
I had to go home!
I was crying by then. I’d have been embarrassed if Hawk or Hammerhead had walked in and seen me. But I’m not ashamed to tell it now ’cause I know how important and cleansing it was to let the whole past year of pain and frustration and anger and confusion out once and for all like that. It was just like Hawk said about the rain. As unpleasant as crying can be in one way, in another way I felt like I was taking a bath in an icy mountain stream or standing in that desert downpour and looking straight up into the sky. There were tears falling all over that newspaper page, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the words.
I was so proud of Pa . . . so proud of the man he was!
I sat there for probably five or ten minutes. In that time, several of the men I had met since leaving home passed through my mind. I saw their faces, heard their voices, remembered conversations with each one. There had been Hammerhead Jackson and Billy Barnes, then Jack Demming and Tranter.
And of course, Hawk.
They were all so different. Yet all except Hawk and maybe the chief, they all had a similar streak too. I thought about the kind of men they were, about the choices and decisions they’d each made that had got them where they were, that had made their lives turn out the way they had. They were all loners, all living only for themselves. Independent in the wrong way, that’s what Hawk would say about them.
Did I want to be like any of them?
What kind of man did I want to be? Suddenly I realized it was time I gave some honest attention to that question. How did I want to turn out? What kind of person did I want to become?
Did I want to be like any of those men?
They had all left their pasts, their families, their friends. They had struck out alone and were now living lonely lives with no one to keep them company but themselves. Men like that never seemed to look back.
What set such men apart from men like Pa and Uncle Nick? They’d run away too. They’d gone off on their own. But now they had turned around and were living again with people, with family. They’d chosen to lay aside that independent life where they were thinking of no one but themselves. Now I could see that Pa was living not just for himself, but for other people—for Almeda, for Tad and my sisters, even for the people of Miracle Springs and California. What he did didn’t have to do with just him.
Was that the difference between Pa and men like Hammerhead and Billy and Demming and the half-breed—just who you’re living for, yourself or other folks? There weren’t really any other options. It was either yourself or other people that you put first. Whichever path you chose made a difference like night and day in what kind of character you’re going to turn out to have.
When I thought about Pa alongside Demming or Hammerhead Jackson, there was no comparison. Pa had been like them once, I suppose you might say. Now he was a California congressman!
It all depended on what kind of choices a man made.
Now suddenly I saw Pa’s character for what it was. It had been in front of me all the time, but I hadn’t had eyes to see it. I’d been too busy looking only at myself. Now I saw that a lot of what had bothered me before had to do with small, insignificant things when placed alongside the kind of man he was.
Pa had been making good choices for years—unselfish choices that showed he had the kind of manhood Hawk was always talking about. One of the reasons he’d gotten into trouble in the first place was that he was trying to help Uncle Nick!
As I sat there, I remembered how he’d been willing to sacrifice everything, the mine and all he’d worked for, to save Becky from Buck Krebbs and Grissly Hatch. He was ready to give it all to Royce in an instant, just to save Becky.
Other things came into my mind too.
It had taken me all this time to see that all the things that had built up in my mind to the point where I exploded that day a little over a year before—I saw how small they all were alongside the kind of man Pa was and what kind of man he’d been trying to train me to be.
And then I thought about Hawk.
Hawk was completely different than all the other men I’d met out here.
He was a loner too, I reckon you’d say, but in a whole different way. He wasn’t selfish like the others, not independent in the same way. He thought about his past, though he’d lost his chance to go back and make things right with the people he now realized he loved. Even Hawk, in a sense, was living in his own world, by himself.
He’d been like a second father to me during this year. But did I even want to spend the rest of my life like Hawk, as much as I admired and loved him?
What kind of choices did I have to make now to determine what kind of man I was going to become and determine the way the rest of my life went?
I looked down at the paper again. The words were still there: Drummond Hollister.
I just wanted the whole world to know that he was my pa!
And I had to tell him! I had to tell him how much I loved him! It was too late to go back and undo what I’d done and said, but it was not to late to go back and patch it up with Pa!
I remembered Rev. Rutledge saying that asking for forgiveness always clears the air. Hawk had said the same thing, more or less. So it was suddenly clear what I had to do next.
I don’t know how much longer I sat there, not too long, but long enough to get myself looking halfway normal again. Finally I went outside, doused my face with some water from the horse’s trough, then went back inside the station house.
Chapter 54
Goodbye to a Friend
“You got a horse I can buy for this $25?” I asked Hammerhead. “I could give you this money up front and send the rest later.”
“What you want with a horse?”
“Gotta get home,” I answered.
Hawk moved closer.
“You figure it’s time, son?” he asked softly, with deep feeling in his voice.
“Yeah. I think I finally figured out what you been trying to get me to see all this time.”
“About your pa?”
I nodded. “And about some things inside me,” I said.
“Your eyes are seeing what’s inside, huh?”
“Yep. You’re the best teacher a fella could have, Hawk.”
“Anybody can teach. It takes someone special to be a learner. Growing doesn’t come from teaching, son. Growing comes from learning. Only someone that wants to see can learn the best kinds of things. I knew you wanted to see—that’s why I kept pointing, and kept asking you questions. You’re a learner, Zack. That’s why you’re growing.”
I took in a deep breath. As anxious as I was to see my family again, it sure wasn’t going to be easy to leave this man!
“So,” I said, turning again to Hammerhead, “you got a horse a fella could buy?”
“I still got your own horse,” he answered.
“Gray Thunder!” I exclaimed. “You kept him all this time?”
“I had a feeling maybe I hadn’t seen the last of you,” he answered with just a hint of a grin.
“Where is he?”
“Well, that’s the part you ain’t gonna like. He’s still back at Flat Bluff.”
“That’s fifty miles east.”
<
br /> “Yep. It’d set you back a couple of days to go fetch him. But he’s in good shape. Rode him around myself to give him some exercise, but I ain’t let nobody ride him out on the line.”
“I appreciate it. But I don’t have the two days it’d take to go get him.”
“You been out in the desert around eight months, and you’re worrying about two more days!”
I glanced over at Hawk briefly, then turned back to the stationman.
“When the time comes for a boy to see if he’s got the courage to be a man,” I said, “you can’t delay it. You gotta go up and face what’s in front of you squarely. My time’s come. So . . . you got a horse I can buy?”
“I reckon, seeing as how it’s you, and considering what you been through, I don’t figure Russell, Majors, and Waddell ought to mind too much. Yeah, Hollister, I’ll sell you a horse.”
I turned toward Hawk.
“Hawk,” I said, “I’d like you to have my horse. Gray Thunder’s his name. He’s the best horse I ever had. I want to leave you something that’s really part of me.”
Hawk nodded. He understood.
“I’ll take good care of him, Grayfox,” he said softly.
I gave the money Hammerhead had given me back to him. Then he took me outside and we picked out a horse that he figured would get me back to California. It took the best part of an hour to get it saddled and for Hammerhead to get me fixed up with grub and water . . . and for me to say my goodbyes.
That last part was hardest of all.
How could I say goodbye to someone like Hawk, who’d changed my way of looking at everything and my whole way of thinking—how could I say goodbye, knowing I might not see him again?
Especially so sudden-like.
I hadn’t had the chance to prepare for it, and all of a sudden there we were standing face-to-face, me ready to jump up on the horse Hammerhead was holding and ride away west, and him ready to go back up in the hills . . . alone.
Maybe it was best that way. How do you prepare for a moment like that, anyway?
I stuck out my hand.
Hawk took it and grasped it firmly. He didn’t shake it, he just held it firmly and strongly while his eyes looked straight into mine.
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