by Duane Boehm
“Yes, you may, but don’t make me have to come out here and remind you again,” Sarah said and vanished back into the cabin.
Ten minutes passed before Benjamin announced that he was finished and proudly held the boat out for Gideon to see.
“Nice job, Benjamin,” Gideon said as he examined the boat. The boy had done a better job than he was expecting for his first project. The hollowed out part was a bit rough, but not bad for an eight–year–old. “You are quite the whittler. You’ll be making all kinds of things before long.”
Benjamin smiled and said, “Thank you for showing me. I cannot believe that I just made this. I got to go show Momma now.”
“I got a better idea. Do your chores first and then show her. That way she will be doubly pleased,” Gideon said.
“You really know my momma,” Benjamin said with a grin.
“No, I just know how all mommas think,” Gideon said and then winked at him.
An hour later, Gideon and Benjamin were sitting out on the porch after Sarah ran them out of the cabin while she fixed supper. Ethan rode up into the yard with a beaver tied to the saddle horn. “Looks like you boys are hard at it,” he said.
Grinning, Benjamin said, “We heard you massacring the beaver. Did any of them chase you?”
Ethan eyes moved slowly from Benjamin to Gideon who was grinning at him like a Cheshire cat. Trying not to smile, Ethan said, “You better worrying about me chasing you. I’m pretty sure I could whip a shot–up cowboy and a boy both at the same time. I’m going to put Pie up while you two jokers sit on your backsides loafing. After supper, you can help me skin this varmint.”
Once Ethan was in the barn, Gideon said, “I didn’t know that you were going to bring up the beaver chasing incident.”
“If you had told me not to, I would not have, but you didn’t. Besides, you know how serious Pa can be. I got to poke some fun at him sometimes for his own good,” Benjamin said.
Gideon looked down into his lap, using his hat to shield his grin and said, “Oh my, boy, you are wise way beyond your years.”
Chapter 8
Hank Sligo ambled up to his boss, rancher Frank DeVille. His girth made his walk out to the corral ungraceful and heavy–footed. A wardrobe of loose trousers drooping in the crotch, a wrinkled red shirt that had faded to pink, and a leather vest so stained that its original color was lost, did nothing to improve the impression. Tobacco juice dripped from the corner of his mouth and his teeth were badly yellowed from the habit began in childhood.
Migrating to Colorado after the war, Hank had been a Confederate soldier that had no desire to return to Alabama after the South’s defeat. His beloved land had been laid bare by the war and he refused to be a part of rebuilding it under the North’s heavy hand. He had served in General Evander Law’s brigade at Gettysburg and had managed to survive the fighting all in one piece while doing his share of killing of Union troops. Considered a marksman with a rifle, he lacked the dexterity needed to have ever mastered the pistol, preferring to hide in tree lines to pickoff his quarry from long range. The carnage he had witnessed during the war had left a deep hatred for the North and its soldiers. Frank DeVille’s daddy had hired the then skinny kid to work on the ranch. Back then, he could not rope and knew little of cattle, but what he lacked in experience, he more than made up for with determination. He had proved to be a quick study and over the years had worked his way up to foreman with his talent for cattle and just enough meanness to keep the men in line.
For all of Hank’s bluster and brawn, women were the one thing that turned him shy and timid. He did not understand them and attempted to give them a wide berth. His only interaction was an occasional trip to the saloon where he would lay down his money for the cheapest whore they had. Even then, he got his business over with as quickly as possible and retreated back down stairs to knock back a couple more beers before heading back to the ranch.
“Have you been hearing all the gossip around town about this Gideon Johann returning home?” Hank asked in his still thick southern accent.
Annoyed that the subject had been broached, Frank said, “Yeah, I heard about it. You would think that Jesus Christ himself had returned the way everybody is going on about it.”
“You know him?” Hank quizzed.
“We grew up around here together. He’s a couple years younger than me. He and Ethan Oakes were always parading around like a couple of choirboys,” Frank answered as he meticulously cleaned his nails with his knife and moved upwind to escape the reeking body odor of Hank.
Frank DeVille was a fastidious man when it came to his appearance. He liked to wear crisp white shirts with black trousers and if the temperature permitted, a matching black jacket. Whenever his Stetson Boss of the Plains hat began to show dirt and sweat stains, he would promptly make a trip into town to replace it and every two weeks he made the trek to Last Stand to get his hair trimmed at the barbershop. He was determined to make sure that people knew he was a man of means.
He had been on a crusade to prove that he was the most important man around ever since the day that his father’s horse stepped in a gopher hole, snapping its leg and throwing the old man to the ground, breaking his neck and killing him instantly. Running the ranch was always his dream, he just never expected it under such circumstance or at so young of age. He made sure everybody knew that he was in charge as he ambitiously began expanding the size of the ranch.
“I take it there is no love lost between you two?” Hank said.
“No, we never got along much,” Frank said as he watched one of his cowboys sail off a horse that they had recently bought from a questionable source. The string of animals was proving to be as wild as Indian ponies.
“I hear tell he was a blue–belly in the war, is it true?” Hank further inquired, ignoring the goings on in the corral.
“His old man and he joined up. The old man got killed and Gideon disappeared,” Frank said.
“I might have to look the damn Yankee up and give him a southern welcome,” Hank said.
“You best leave him alone. He could be a mean little son of a bitch in a fight before the war, and if rumor is true, he has been doing a pretty good job of it ever since,” Frank said.
Hank studied his boss’s face. This was the first time that he had ever seen Frank act cowed down at the mention of someone. Usually, he was ready to stomp anybody and everybody into the ground that got in his way. If he had to guess, he would say that Gideon Johann had beaten the hell out of Frank in his younger days.
All the talk of Gideon brought back bad memories for Frank. From childhood on, he had always tried to get his own way on everything. The meek may inherit the earth someday he supposed, but he planned to take all of it that he could at every opportunity. In school, he relentlessly persecuted the weaker kids until Gideon, or Ethan to a lesser extent, would interfere. Never possessing a desire for fisticuffs, he would back down before it escalated into a fight even though he towered over Gideon. One day, he got brave enough to pinch Abigail Schone on the tit when he thought no one was looking, but Gideon saw him. This time there was no stopping a fight. They were pretty much fighting to a draw until he caught Gideon with a right hook that dropped him. Seeing his chance, he dove to pin Gideon down and beat him to a pulp, but he bounced on the dirt as Gideon rolled out of the way. After that, Gideon seemed to sense that he had taken his best shot, survived, and used his quickness to beat him badly. When his old man found out what happened, he was so embarrassed to know that his son had been beaten up by the scrawny Gideon, that he had made him sleep in the barn to toughen him.
“Well, someone sure shot the hell out of him from what they are saying,” Hank said.
“So they say,” Frank said, wishing to conversation would end.
“You think he came back to go into ranching with Ethan? Those two together could mess with our plans for the ranch,” Hank said.
“I don’t think he would have showed up here all shot up if he was coming back t
o ranch. You tend to the cattle and ranch hands and let me worry about everything else,” Frank said tersely and headed to the house.
Hank watched indignantly as the rancher walked away, befuddled that his concerns had been rebuffed so callously. Turning towards the corral, he roared, “Walter, where in the hell did you learn to ride? If you can’t stay on a horse any better than that, I will find me somebody that can.”
Frank walked into his house and headed straight to the liquor cabinet to pour a glass of bourbon. All the talk of the return of Gideon Johann had riled him. Not that he planned to have any encounters with Gideon, but he just brought back too many bad memories. He didn’t expect the do–gooder to stay around anyway. Anybody that had been roaming that long was not likely to settle down now.
The stillness of the house still got on his nerves. He never would have guessed that he would miss the endless chatter of his wife. Back when she lived with him, all the constant talk got on his nerves so badly that sometimes he would tell her to shut the hell up, but now he found that he longed for the noise. The previous summer she had run off with one of the ranch hands. The cowboy had been so stupid that he barely could spell his name, but had somehow managed to charm his wife behind his back. She had everything that a woman could want; he let her spend generously, and she had the best clothes of all the women in Last Stand, as well as the prestige that came with being his wife. He might not have been the best husband in the world, but she could have done a lot worse.
The scandal had been deeply humiliating. He did not care if people liked him, in fact he preferred that they did not, but he did not take kindly to being the butt of a joke. He knew that the story of his wife running off had been the hottest gossip item all last summer.
He had sent Hank to track them down, but with the two thousand dollars that she had drained from their bank account, they had managed to disappear to parts unknown. He swore under his breath that he surely would have gone and killed them if Hank had found them.
He took a long sip of his bourbon as he looked out the window at the futile attempt at horse breaking in the corral. Talk of Gideon and the thoughts of his wife had put him a dour mood.
Chapter 9
The spring shower the night before had left the air smelling sweet and clean when the sun came up Saturday morning and Gideon and Benjamin were basking in it on the porch steps, whittling a set of larger boats in which they planned to attach sails. Gideon had been hobbling around for over a week on his crutch, but was still in no shape to be of any help to Ethan, and luckily for Benjamin, his father had not recruited him for any jobs yet that day.
“Make sure that you leave a high spot in the middle that we can take your pa’s brace and drill a hole in it,” Gideon said as he tilted his boat so that Benjamin could see how he was doing it.
“You really think we can put sails on them?” Benjamin asked.
“Well, if we don’t succeed this time, we surely will in a boat or two. Just be careful and don’t nick yourself. We got enough disabled slackers around here as it is,” Gideon answered.
“How come Pa don’t whittle?” Benjamin said.
“He used to. Running a ranch is hard. I imagine when he is not working, he is thinking about it,” Gideon said.
“I wish Pa would whittle with us,” Benjamin said a little wistfully.
“How come you don’t have a dog? I thought all boys had a dog,” Gideon asked.
“Blue died last year and I can’t talk Pa into getting another one. He says it’s just another mouth to feed. I don’t think it’s fair, but nobody listens to me,” Benjamin answered.
“Your pa always had a dog growing up. He had this yellow thing he called Murphy. Murphy was so ugly that he was cute. That dog went everywhere with us. He was a good one,” Gideon said as he stopped whittling and reminisced.
“That’s what I figured. I’ll probably be married before I get another one,” Benjamin said.
Gideon grinned his crooked smile at him. “I don’t know about that. If I were you, I would get a dog first and then your bride to be will know that you and the dog are a package deal. Otherwise, you might get a woman like your pa that doesn’t want a dog around,” he said.
“Women can be bossy, can’t they?” Benjamin said.
“Whoa, don’t ask me. I’ve never been married to one,” Gideon replied.
“I heard Pa say that Miss Abigail sounded pretty mad when she visited you,” Benjamin said.
Gideon made a short whistle sound. “Boy, my leg is starting to cramp. I got to get up and stretch it,” he said.
He took a couple of steps, and as usual, the shoulder hurt more than the leg. “Benjamin come here and hold my crutch in case I need it. If my leg can bear weight, I don’t think it could hurt any more than the crutch does my shoulder,” Gideon said.
With Benjamin at his side, he took a couple of steps. He had to drag the leg, but it bore his weight. It actually did not hurt much at all; it just did not work very well. A few more steps and it loosened up a little. He made it to the well and back. It would be a good while before he was cutting the rug, but it beat the hell out of using the crutch.
“I’ll be beating you in a race in no time at all,” Gideon said.
“I might punch you where you got shot first,” Benjamin retorted.
“Just cause you save a man’s life don’t mean you get to cheat,” Gideon said.
Benjamin picked up his boat and started whittling again as if he was oblivious to Gideon. He was soon lost in concentration on his project. Gideon started watching a mockingbird singing up a storm when the view of the mountains caught his eye.
It had been so many years since he had lived here or even thought much about the place that he had forgotten how beautiful the area was. The mountains with their imposing snow peaks made him think of God, something that never happened. As a young man, he had always loved hunting in the woods at the base of the mountains and he had brought a lot of game back home. Fishing in the streams of blue mountain water had been one of his and Ethan’s favorite pastimes. Ethan was the better angler, possessing the patients that he lacked. To top it off, the grass was some of the thickest and greenest he had seen anywhere. The land was so different from his last stop in New Mexico, where everything tended to be brown and scraggily.
He had missed out on so many things with his self–imposed exile. It had probably been ten years since he had gone fishing and now when he hunted, it was because he was running low on food, not to enjoy the peace of the woods. He tried to imagine having a family and ranch like Ethan. Both were things that he could not get his mind to envision. The idea seemed as foreign as speaking French did, though he had to admit he enjoyed the company of a kid more than he thought he could. He decided it was silly getting all nostalgic over what might have been and that he was right to have avoided this place all these years. He had chosen his course long ago and there was no going back now. Looking at Benjamin working away, he knew that it would take three slugs of whiskey to get to sleep.
That night, Gideon excused himself for his usual evening leg stretch before bed. Throughout the day he had managed to progress from dragging the leg to a pronounced limp. His limb was stiff now and getting sore from the exertion. It took all of his concentration to make the leg work as he walked around the yard. It was aching like all get out. Once it loosened up a little, he made his way to the barn, and fumbling around in the dark, he found his bottle. It felt cool and smooth in his hand.as he took his first drink. He had no reason to be in a hurry so he savored each sip until he had drunk the three swigs he had promised himself. The bottle felt about empty. He walked to barn door and held it up to the moonlight to see how much was left. There was one good drink left so he killed off the bottle. Before retreating into the barn to go put the bottle back into his saddlebag, he saw a light from the direction of the cabin coming towards him. He did not have to guess who was coming.
“Hey, Gideon,” Ethan said as he walked up.
“What bring
s you out here?” Gideon asked.
“You know we can smell the whiskey every night when you come in,” Ethan said.
Gideon’s first impulse was to tell Ethan to go screw himself and mind his own business, but he just did not have it in him. The day had taken too much out of him and the whiskey was starting to make him feel mellow. “I know,” was all he said.
“You want to talk about it?” Ethan asked.
In a voice that sounded monotone even to his own ears, he said, “Ethan, it’s not like I’m the town drunk. I just need a couple of pops to get to sleep at night.”
“Did you ever think that if you told somebody about what happened that maybe you could start to get past it? I wish that you had come to church with us. My sermon was about forgiving yourself. I guess you know that you inspired it,” Ethan said.
Gideon looked down at the ground and tried to think of a good answer, but he was getting tired and his mind would not focus. Finally, he said, “I just can’t talk about it. I’m too ashamed. Ethan, I know that you mean well, but let’s just go to bed and forget about this. You saved my life and that is enough. You can’t save my soul or teach me happiness.”
They walked back to the cabin in silence. Gideon was thinking about the past again, despondent that being back had unlocked so many memories that he had buried years ago. Ethan was more convinced than ever that Gideon’s return was not a random accident but part of God’s plan and that he was the one to see the plan come to fruition.
When they reached the door, Ethan put his hand on Gideon’s shoulder and said, “I’m glad you’re back.”
Chapter 10
Gideon awoke to find his clothes missing from the room and some of Ethan’s apparel sitting neatly on the bed. Apparently, Sarah had decided that the time had come for his clothes to get a washing. The pants and shirtsleeves had to be rolled up just to find his hands and feet and when he fastened his belt, the waist of the trousers gathered up in clumps. Looking himself over, he laughed aloud at his appearance. He guessed the only thing worse would have been if Ethan had been a lot smaller than he was.
