clear. The grace was not. Yet it was there in full measure.
As the weeks went by it was he and not Hart who showed me how to tie a slip knot, how to throw a rope, why and for how long to force a hard-ridden mount to wait before food and water, wiping the sweat off her ribs and backbone and brushing her down until she cooled some. Hart had a distance about him. Mother nearly lived up to his name.
I can't say I ever became expert at what we did. But with Mother's help I didn't tend to make a fool of myself either. Hart and I still delivered our custom to the Little Fanny many evenings — occasionally Mother too — but with a morning's work ahead of us my habits moderated considerably. You didn't want to be riding Suzie with a pounding headache. I had money in my pockets and it more or less tended to stay there. There were nights I simply remained home at the cabin and wrote instead. My dispatches to New York increased proportionally.
So while it was Mother who taught me, it was Hart I had to thank for turning me around in the first place. And because of that, his reserve never bothered me. I figured it was just his way.
That changed when we met Elena.
Then he began to worry me.
FIVE
" You, writer ," she said. " Take this down .
" They will find it on our bodies ."
So I did.
SIX
We did well some days and other days saw nothing for our troubles but empty waterskins and dust between our teeth and on this particular evening with dark fast approaching, all we had as we rode through the scrub were two squat mustangs hobbled behind us. We'd come very far afield and you could hear the river behind us over the click, click, click of Hart's dice.
Mother was riding back aways with the mustangs and gnawing some dried beef he'd fished out of his saddlebag. There'd been the usual silence between Hart and I but this time I'd resolved to break it. I'd been pondering something awhile.
"The night you brought me out here, Hart," I said, "in the bar with Donaldson. Donaldson was ready to shoot you. You just sat there."
"So? What's your point?"
"So, he was ready to shoot you. It was the damnedest thing I ever saw."
"I guess he would have, wouldn't he."
"Hart, you looked so calm about it!"
"Guess I was. Pretty calm anyways. I'm not a real imaginative man, Bell. Most things, I walk in prepared as best I can. Then I trust to luck, that's all."
I had to wonder if part of my problem being here instead of back in Boston or Cambridge or New York was that I was an imaginative man. I could and did imagine rattlesnakes under the bed and scorpions in my boots and I poked beneath the bed with a stick and shook out my boots with due diligence every morning. There were a thousand ways to die out here and I'd seen many of them first hand in Puebla, Churubusco and Mexico City during the war. It didn't take much to imagine my own death courting me.
The west was not NELLIE, THE RAGPICKER'S DAUGHTER or even THE ADVENTURES OF PECOS BILL. No penny dreadful. The west was gangrene and thirst and rivers red with blood and skies so big they could crush you like a bug.
"You got family, Bell?" he said. "Never did ask you."
"Brother. Couple of nephews by now I think. Never do write one another. Why?"
He didn't really answer, only nodded.
"It's a good thing, family," he said.
We were passing some low thick scrub off left and suddenly the horses began to shy. Hart pulled his own mare to a halt and sat listening. I followed suit with Suzie. Mother rode up slow behind us.
"What we got here, John?" he said.
"Something in there. Could be a cat, maybe."
Hart pulled his Winchester out of its scabbard, cocked it and lay it across his saddle and we could hear something in there all right, moving in our direction not twenty feet away. We sat and listened and then Hart swung down abruptly off his saddle saying that's no damn cat and Mother and I heard it too then, a moan and labored breathing and as Hart stepped toward the brush his rifle at the ready they
As the weeks went by it was he and not Hart who showed me how to tie a slip knot, how to throw a rope, why and for how long to force a hard-ridden mount to wait before food and water, wiping the sweat off her ribs and backbone and brushing her down until she cooled some. Hart had a distance about him. Mother nearly lived up to his name.
I can't say I ever became expert at what we did. But with Mother's help I didn't tend to make a fool of myself either. Hart and I still delivered our custom to the Little Fanny many evenings — occasionally Mother too — but with a morning's work ahead of us my habits moderated considerably. You didn't want to be riding Suzie with a pounding headache. I had money in my pockets and it more or less tended to stay there. There were nights I simply remained home at the cabin and wrote instead. My dispatches to New York increased proportionally.
So while it was Mother who taught me, it was Hart I had to thank for turning me around in the first place. And because of that, his reserve never bothered me. I figured it was just his way.
That changed when we met Elena.
Then he began to worry me.
FIVE
" You, writer ," she said. " Take this down .
" They will find it on our bodies ."
So I did.
SIX
We did well some days and other days saw nothing for our troubles but empty waterskins and dust between our teeth and on this particular evening with dark fast approaching, all we had as we rode through the scrub were two squat mustangs hobbled behind us. We'd come very far afield and you could hear the river behind us over the click, click, click of Hart's dice.
Mother was riding back aways with the mustangs and gnawing some dried beef he'd fished out of his saddlebag. There'd been the usual silence between Hart and I but this time I'd resolved to break it. I'd been pondering something awhile.
"The night you brought me out here, Hart," I said, "in the bar with Donaldson. Donaldson was ready to shoot you. You just sat there."
"So? What's your point?"
"So, he was ready to shoot you. It was the damnedest thing I ever saw."
"I guess he would have, wouldn't he."
"Hart, you looked so calm about it!"
"Guess I was. Pretty calm anyways. I'm not a real imaginative man, Bell. Most things, I walk in prepared as best I can. Then I trust to luck, that's all."
I had to wonder if part of my problem being here instead of back in Boston or Cambridge or New York was that I was an imaginative man. I could and did imagine rattlesnakes under the bed and scorpions in my boots and I poked beneath the bed with a stick and shook out my boots with due diligence every morning. There were a thousand ways to die out here and I'd seen many of them first hand in Puebla, Churubusco and Mexico City during the war. It didn't take much to imagine my own death courting me.
The west was not NELLIE, THE RAGPICKER'S DAUGHTER or even THE ADVENTURES OF PECOS BILL. No penny dreadful. The west was gangrene and thirst and rivers red with blood and skies so big they could crush you like a bug.
"You got family, Bell?" he said. "Never did ask you."
"Brother. Couple of nephews by now I think. Never do write one another. Why?"
He didn't really answer, only nodded.
"It's a good thing, family," he said.
We were passing some low thick scrub off left and suddenly the horses began to shy. Hart pulled his own mare to a halt and sat listening. I followed suit with Suzie. Mother rode up slow behind us.
"What we got here, John?" he said.
"Something in there. Could be a cat, maybe."
Hart pulled his Winchester out of its scabbard, cocked it and lay it across his saddle and we could hear something in there all right, moving in our direction not twenty feet away. We sat and listened and then Hart swung down abruptly off his saddle saying that's no damn cat and Mother and I heard it too then, a moan and labored breathing and as Hart stepped toward the brush his rifle at the ready they
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