by Gary D. Svee
“Sounds like someone I know.”
Mac grinned, and Drinkwalter chuckled.
“We’d best be getting back. I want to show you how to clean these weapons. Have to do that every time you shoot, or you’ll ruin the barrel.”
Mac nodded. “Suppose we could stop by the house so Ma knows I’m all right?”
Drinkwalter nodded, and Mac tried very hard to conceal his grin. He wanted his mother to see him on horseback and armed and with Stillwater County Sheriff Frank Drinkwalter.
She would step from the cabin door the moment she heard his voice, wiping her hands with the towel she kept beside the washing tubs. Pride would spread across her face as she looked up at Mac. He would tip his hat to her, and she would smile. Mac would wheel his horse then, and he and the sheriff would ride through the trees of the river bottom to the streets of Eagles Nest.
Mac knew what it was to be the center of attention, to be dressed in rags and skinny as a rail. Most of the time he would hide. Even in the midst of a crowd, he would hide.
But this day he would ride back straight as a lodge-pole pine. His eyes would stare straight ahead, not deigning to look to either side. But their eyes, the eyes of those who looked at a boy and saw only a scarecrow, their eyes would follow him as he rode through town with Sheriff Drinkwalter.
Shrouded in mystery, the riders would be, and tongues would wag in speculation. No scarecrow astride that horse. No scarecrow with a back straight as a lodge pole pine and eyes straight ahead.
The image was so strong Mac forgot how hungry he was. There weren’t many times then when he forgot hunger. He pulled himself back to the scene beside Keyser Creek. Drinkwalter was looking at him and smiling, and Mac wondered if the sheriff could read his mind.
4
Mac lay in bed, waiting for the sun. No sleep and his eyes felt scratchy, but he had been too excited to sleep. He hadn’t really slept since the day they sighted in the rifles.
Mac sighed and sat up, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed, his hand groping for the clothing he had arranged the night before on a bedside chair. On top of the pile were his socks. Putting bare feet on a cold floor was no way to start a new day.
He slipped into his shirt and trousers, shivering as he tugged his suspenders over his shoulders. He stopped to hug himself with his arms, but there was more cold than arms. He bent over to squeeze his feet into shoes a size too small, his fingers guiding laces into eyelets stretched beyond their limits.
Mac shuffled to the stove, feet maintaining contact with the floor so he wouldn’t stumble over something he couldn’t see in the dark. The stove, a huge range hugging one wall of the cabin, was warm still, but only that. Mac reached into a bucket beside the stove to take out a handful of kindling he had split the night before. He opened the lid, built a little pile of sticks around a wad of old paper, and touched a match to it. The paper flared, lighting the boy’s face in its yellow light, leaving a ghostly apparition in the midst of total darkness.
His mother stirred. “Mac?”
“Just lighting the fire, Ma.”
“What are you doing up so early?”
Mac could hear his mother rustling in her bedclothes as she waited for her mind to catch up with the morning. “Oh, yes, you’re going hunting with the sheriff. Wait a minute, and I’ll fix you some breakfast.”
“No, Ma. You stay in bed. Wait until the fire warms up the cabin a bit. It’s Sunday, your day of rest.”
“God gave himself to rest on the seventh day,” his mother replied. “That wasn’t given to us.”
“This morning. This once it is. I took a dime from the dollar I got from Mrs. Thompson yesterday. I got six eggs and some side pork. You just stay cozy and warm in bed this morning, Ma. It’s my turn to fix breakfast.”
“Mac, you’re going to make some woman very happy someday.”
Mac cleared his throat, but he didn’t say the first thought that came to his mind: It is not given to scarecrows to make women happy.
“Want to make you happy, Ma. Just you.”
Mary McPherson snuggled into her covers, listening to the sounds Mac made as he stirred around the stove.
“Better light the lamp, Mac. Don’t want you burning that side pork or those eggs.”
“It won’t bother you?”
“No, it won’t bother me. I was going to get up anyway to see you off.”
“When do you suppose he’ll get here?”
“It will take you a while to ride to the Phillips place, close to an hour. And he will probably want to get there before daylight. He could be coming any time, now.”
Mary McPherson realized then that she didn’t want to be in bed when the sheriff came for Mac. She sat up, swinging her feet over the edge, stretching to set her muscles and mind to working.
Mac heard the stirring. “Ma, I told you that you could sleep in this morning. I’ll fix breakfast.”
“That’s nice, Mac, but I can’t sleep anyway. I don’t want anyone to think me a sloth. What kind of a mother would I be to have my favorite son fixing me breakfast, and me not even up to admire his work?”
“Ah, Ma.”
“Ah, Mac.”
They both chuckled, and Mary slipped into her robe. She carried water, tepid now from the boiler on the stove, to the little table. She scrubbed her face and arms with a washcloth, feeling more fit for humanity as she finished. She ran a comb through her long black hair, shaking her head to spread the tresses over her shoulders. She stepped back into her cloth-draped cubicle then, to slip into her Sunday dress. The dress was too big, her flesh having abandoned her just as her husband had. She straightened it as best she could, hoping that people would concentrate on God during church and not how she was dressed.
Being a widow woman in a town like Eagles Nest was not easy. If she tried to make herself attractive, wives would think that she intended to steal their husbands away. It was better to be thought of as a laundry woman than a widow. This dress—the only Sunday dress she had—would fit that image.
Mary stepped into darkness. Dawn lay some distance to the east, stars dying though in the predawn light. Her feet followed the familiar path to the outhouse, nose wrinkling in distaste as she neared the little building. It was time to dump more quick lime into the hole, to ease the reality of it. But quick lime cost money. Everything cost money. She emerged a moment later, frantic to step into fresh air and starlight.
She stood outside the cabin door, willing her nose to remember the scent of the roses she planted beside the step. The scent teased her memory, and then it came to her, soft, subtle and beautiful. The roses were an extravagance for a family that could afford no extras, but every life needed a bit of color and beauty in it.
Mary sipped the memory of the roses’ scent once more and then stepped through the door and into the warm glow of the stove and the soft yellow light from the kerosene lantern. Mac stood in front of the stove, stirring side pork in the large steel frying pan. He looked up as she neared the stove, the question plain on his face.
“You’re doing fine, Mac. It smells delicious.”
The boy smiled and went back to his work, fretting over the side pork as he fretted over everything, seeking perfection in an imperfect world.
“Did you use salt and pepper?”
Mac threw his head back in chagrin. Mary brought the shakers and handed them to the boy. He sprinkled the meat liberally with both. The quarter-inch slices of side pork were dissolving into grease and meat, and the smell of it yanked at the boy’s stomach. Meat was a rare commodity in the McPherson household, something to be savored.
“Ma?”
“Ah, it’s just perfect, Mac, just the way I like it. Here, put the side pork on this plate. We’ll drain most of the grease into this cup, and then do the eggs. Maybe later, we can use the grease for some cookies. We’ll stretch the bounty as long as we can.”
Bounty. Mac smiled. They had a bountiful table. It was the first time he had tied that word to his home.<
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“How many eggs, Ma?”
“All six.”
“All six?”
“Yes, we’ll have enough to share with the sheriff, if he comes in time. If he doesn’t, we’ll eat them ourselves.”
“I hope he’s late.”
“Mac!”
“I didn’t mean it,” the boy said, but the words lacked conviction.
Mac cracked the eggs against the side of the frying pan and eased them sputtering into the grease. He couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten an egg. He couldn’t even remember their taste. No, that wasn’t true. He could remember the taste. The taste was warm and moist on his tongue when he had stopped yesterday at Eli Jenkins’s house to ask how many eggs he could buy for a nickel. The taste followed him into the chicken house as Jenkins checked the birds’ hiding places. Six warm, wonderful eggs for a nickel. That was the price for Mac and his mother, Jenkins said.
The edges of the eggs were bubbling up. Mary took a knife and slipped it between eggs and pan. “Just to be sure that they don’t stick,” she said. She went back to folding the wash then. It was not right to labor on the seventh day, but not right to look at unfolded clothing, either.
She had just finished when they heard the jangle of a bridle outside.
“Sheriff’s here, Mac.”
Mac’s face twisted into a knot. He had looked forward to breakfast, one meal when he could eat everything he wanted. He had thought about breakfast almost as much as he had thought about hunting.
Mac’s mother glanced at the disappointment written on Mac’s face. “We have a boiled potato left over from last night. I’ll make some hash browns. There’ll be plenty for all of us.”
Mac tried to smile, but the effort died miserably. He reached the door just as the sheriff knocked. Drinkwalter was standing on the step, hat in hand.
“You ready, Mac?”
“Sheriff, we would be pleased to have you for breakfast.”
“That’s fine, Mac, but I don’t want to put you to any trouble.”
Mary called from inside the cabin. “No trouble, Sheriff. Mac has fixed a feast for us. Please share it with us.”
When the sheriff stepped into the little cabin, a wave of warm air from the stove hit him. The little table was set with three mismatched plates and forks, knives, and spoons. There were no extras in that room, nothing that wasn’t needed to get along. The two chairs were simple, straight-backed, and bare wood. People didn’t really need cushions, not if they weren’t accustomed to them. Plates were plates and no matter that the roses clashed with the lilacs, and the silverware was no closer to silver than the copper penny in the sheriff’s pocket. Still the room generated warmth, put there with loving care.
The sheriffs eyes drifted to Mary. She stood expectantly behind her chair at the table, long, black hair cascading down her back. She was a pretty woman, attractive on the outside but prettier still on the inside. Some people were like that. They shone through their skin, mocking the fallacy that beauty is only skin deep.
Drinkwalter stepped behind Mary’s chair. “Ma’am,” he said, dipping his head in respect. She blushed then, a faint tinge of pink spreading upward from her neck, and Drinkwalter felt the strangest need to touch that blush, to feel the warmth of her skin. He guided her chair to the table.
Once Mary McPherson was in place, Drinkwalter nodded to Mac and they both sat—he on the other chair and Mac on an apple crate Mary used as a hamper. Mary and Mac joined hands, reaching with their free hands toward the sheriff, making a circle around the table. Drinkwalter’s strong hands held Mary’s rough laundered skin and Mac’s tentative grip.
Mary led them in prayer:
“Dear Lord, we are thankful for the bounty You have heaped upon us, for the time You have given us together. Please set us on the paths You have chosen for us. Let our feet celebrate the joy of going Your way. And please, dear Lord, bless Mac’s and Sheriff Drinkwalter’s hunt so that they may come back safely.”
“That was very nice, Mrs. McPherson.”
“Thank you, Sheriff.”
Mary served the side pork from an old chipped plate. She had no serving dishes, hadn’t really thought about that until this morning. She started to give the sheriff a third piece of the meat, her piece, but he shook his head. She felt slightly guilty about not giving him more than she would have.
She glanced across the table at Mac. He was a good boy. He had never done anything but make her proud—and sad. Mac’s teacher, Miss Pinkham, said Mac was bright and should go to college. But Mary could barely afford to keep him in high school. He was such a ragamuffin and so thin that sometimes she thought a high wind might come along and blow him away. Then she would lose him, too, just as she had lost his father.
The thought of her husband carried Mary away from the table. Always in the evenings she pictured him staring into the sunset. He had talked of the high country to the west as though the sun stored the day’s beauty there, waiting to unveil it the next morning as a bride lifts the veil from her face.
“It must be a wondrous place out there,” he would say. “Wondrous.”
One day in South Dakota she had awakened and he was gone. She and Mac had followed, taking the little money they had to travel west, asking in each town if anyone had seen a tall man with brown hair that turned reddish in the sun. He always seemed to be smiling, she had told them, and if they looked close, they could see sunsets burned into his face. Always those people had turned away, unwilling to share her search, unwilling to share her pain.
Max and Mary ran out of money and hope in Eagles Nest. She remembered still the hollowness she felt, as though something inside her had been wrenched out. She had written home to tell her parents that she and Mac were in a cabin along the Yellowstone River. If her husband came looking for them, would they please tell him to come to Eagles Nest? But he hadn’t come looking.
She thought that first summer that she had found the place where the sun stored its beauty. The colors of sunsets could be found in the river’s greens, in the pastel pinks of the wild roses and the bright yellows of the sunflower. The Beartooths thrust so far into heaven that she wondered each day how the sun managed to pass over them. Perhaps those tall mountains scraped the colors from the sky, painting their flanks a sapphire blue.
Her husband would have spent some time in this place, nourishing his soul with its beauty, but he would have moved on, wondering if something even more beautiful waited around the next corner. She thought he would move west until he reached the Pacific Ocean. He would strip his clothing then and leave it strewn there on the beach. Tanned he would be on the arms and neck and face, the rest of him pale as the belly of a fish. He would swim then into the Pacific, diving finally through the black waters to find the resting place of the sun.
Mary shook the image from her eyes, focusing on the side pork growing cold on her plate. She cut off a piece with her knife and tasted it. “It’s very good,” she said to Mac. “Perhaps you will be a great chef someday, serving the crowned heads of Europe.”
“Side pork,” Mac said, grinning. “Do you suppose they will like my specialty?”
“They will if they have any sense, Mac,” the sheriff said. “They will if they have any sense.”
5
Mac stumbled as he eased off the cabin step to the ground. He paused, willing his eyes to forget the soft yellow light of the cabin’s kerosene lamp so they could pierce the darkness.
“Dark,” the sheriff said.
“Never saw it so dark,” Mac replied.
“Always darkest just before the dawn.”
“Must be just about dawn?”
“Must be.”
“I led your horse over, so he’s probably just behind mine.”
“Where’s yours?”
“Just ahead of yours.”
Mac snickered.
Mac could feel the horses’ warmth before he saw them. In the soft, motionless morning air, their distinctive odor and the more modest arom
a of grass hay hung close to the animals. But as Mac and the sheriff stepped closer, their eyes began to clear, discerning the horses as shadows against shadows.
“I see ’em,” Mac said.
“Which one do you see, yours or mine?”
“Depends on whether we’re coming up on them head on or from behind.”
Sheriff Drinkwalter chuckled. “I hope we can figure it out. I would hate to have it said that the Stillwater County Sheriff didn’t know the front end of a horse from the back.”
“I’ve been told that one end bites and the other kicks.”
“That’s a helluva a thing to say, boy, when we’re walking up on two horses in the dark. Maybe it would help if you sang to them.”
“Be better if you did. They know your voice.”
“You ever hear me sing, boy, you’d rather be horse bit or kicked.”
Mac laughed, the sound muted in the darkness. For the first time, he was joking with someone not his mother.
Mac stepped under his horse’s jaw and ran his hand down her neck and shoulders. She shivered a bit under his touch. The sheriff had tied the reins to the saddle horn. Mac held the reins and untied the lead rope from the horse’s neck. He found the stirrup and pulled himself into the saddle. He could feel the bulge of the rifle scabbard under his right knee, the stock slick as satin against his pant leg. Settled, he heard the sheriff’s saddle creak as Drinkwalter climbed aboard. Mac saw movement, but only that.
“How are we going to find our way in this?”
“We’ll follow the railroad track west. By the time we get to the west hill, it should lighten up a bit. We’ll cross the river up there.”
“I don’t know how to swim.”
“Well, you’d best not fall off your horse, then.”
Drinkwalter kicked his horse north toward the Northern Pacific railroad track, guiding himself by the smell of creosote. As they neared the track, he could see the shine of steel polished daily by passing trains. Stars winked secrets at the track, and the track winked back.
The roadbed was wider than the gravel and ties that bore the track, so there was a ready-made trail on either side, easy walking for a horse. Drinkwalter turned the gelding west, settling into the horse’s easy gait. When he was sure that Mac’s horse was following, he set his thoughts on the secret. Today, he would decide if he could trust Mac.
