The Best of Edward Abbey Read Free Page B

lifted the saddlebags to his shoulder, ducked under the top of the doorway and walked out; she watched his thin legs and narrow back retreat in the direction of the corral, fading into the purple night. Feeling cold and desolate, she closed the door, hearing a whinny from the mare at the same time, and went back to the stove and moved the coffeepot to what appeared to be the hottest area on the stove. She stared at the black charred handle of the vessel, at the round lid under it, at the yellow glint of fire visible through the crack between stove lid and center section. She roused herself again, set the skillet on the stove and peeled half a dozen strips of bacon into it. She put another skillet on the stove, poured a little bacon grease into it, and cracked five eggs and let them fry. She tossed the cracked eggshells toward the woodbox and missed; she did not bother to pick them up.
    Something has happened, she decided; something terrible has happened.
    From outside came the sound of hoofs beating on the hard earth, the soft coaxing voice of Burns, the mare Whisky’s answering nicker. Again she heard, as in a dream, the jingle of spurs and the cowboy’s steps across the porch.
    “Hey, somethin smells mighty good,” he said, coming in; he spotted the bacon and eggs on the stove. “Jerry, you’re my angel.”
    “I’m a damned worried angel,” she said, setting a plate, knife, fork, two cups, on the table.
    “What’s wrong?”
    “What’s wrong? What’s right?” The coffee began to perk and bubble; she flipped the eggs over, forked the strips of bacon out of the skillet and onto a doubled-up paper towel. “Sit down,” she said. “Soon as you eat I’m going to put something on that massacred face of yours. What on earth happened to you?”
    “Is that all that’s frettin you?” Burns sat down at the table and gave the plate a spin; he remembered his hat, took it off and set it on the floor beside his chair. “Huh?”
    “You men make me sick,” she said. “You act like children. Even my son or that mare out there would have better sense. Here you are with your face cut up and running away from the police and there Paul is in the county jail waiting to go to a Federal prison for a year or two. What’s the matter with you people?” She dished out the eggs and bacon onto his plate and turned back to the stove to rescue the coffee, already beginning to boil over. “I think you’re both crazy, that’s all.”
    “You might be right there,” Burns agreed. “Question is—what can you do about it?”
    “Don’t make me angry,” Jerry said; she filled his cup with coffee, then her own. “There’s plenty I could do,” she added.
    Burns gazed sombrely into his black coffee. “Maybe so,” he said, “maybe so.” The vapor rising from the coffee clouded his face, giving him a temporary intangibility.
    Jerry sat down. “What kind of extra trouble is Paul in now?” she asked.
    “None that I know of.” Burns began to eat. “He helped me get out but there’s no call for anybody to learn that.”
    “What are you going to do now?”
    Burns spoke between mouthfuls of bacon and egg. “… Up to the mountains. Hide—” He gulped down some of the steaming coffee. “—Hide out maybe a few days. Get some meat, make jerky.”
    “I can give you some things.”
    “Can’t take canned goods—too heavy, too bulky.”
    “I baked yesterday. I’ll give you some bread.”
    “That’d be fine, Jerry.”
    “You say you’re going to hide for a few days—what does that mean? What then? Where will you go?”
    Burns ate heartily; a touch of egg adorned his beard. “I can go north, west or south. Winter’s comin so I guess I’ll go south: Chihuahua or maybe Sonora, dependin on how things look.”
    “What will you do down there?”
    “I dunno. Just live, I guess.” He swabbed his plate with a piece of bread. “I like Mexico—I have friends there.”
    “But Jack—” Jerry hesitated. “You’ll be