“Katie,” Florrie said.
“Forgive me,” Katie said. “We loved our mother, God. Our mother loved us. She loved everybody, whether they deserved her love or not. And …”
MacKinnon pursed his lips. This silence seemed to be lasting an eternity.
“Give her peace, God. Give her love. We know she’ll watch after us, and tell her we’ll do the best we can. We thank you for what little time we had with her. We … we … we thank you for … for sending … this … this … good … Samaritan … to help us. We ask you to bless him, too.”
MacKinnon shifted his feet. He felt like a louse.
“Heavenly Father, now let us commend the soul of Margaret Anne Roberts Callahan Truluck to you. Your will be done. I guess … this is a pretty place. Ma came to love the desert. Maybe the desert gave her more years than she’d have had back in Kansas. She loved when the cactus bloomed. There’s plenty of cactus here. Amen.”
* * * * *
When they returned to the wagon, MacKinnon watered both the horse and mule, before looking for a hammer. Once he found it, he gripped his ribs with his right hand and used the left to knock off part of the wagon’s tailgate. He grabbed a knife, and gently lowered himself until he was leaning against the front wagon wheel still on the Studebaker.
Curious, Katie walked to the wagon and stood over him.
Ignoring her, MacKinnon stuck the point of the butcher knife into the wood.
“Margaret,” he said. “That was your mother’s name, right?”
“Yeah.”
MacKinnon nodded. “That’d be M-a- …?”
“M-a-r-g-a-r-e-t,” she answered, adding as she stepped closer: “I can do that.”
“I know you can. But you might think about getting some tea for you brother and sister.” He turned his head toward the saddlebags. “There’s some jerky in the left bag. And a little bit of coffee. Not much, but enough for something stronger than the tea.”
“All right.” She looked uncomfortable. “I don’t know the year she was born.” She drew in a deep breath and exhaled. “I don’t know much about her, really.”
“Don’t think I knew much about my ma, neither,” he said, and traced a letter M in the wood.
“What was her full name?” he asked. “I know it was a mouthful.”
“Margaret Anne Roberts Callahan Truluck.” She let out a slight laugh. “That won’t fit on that board, mister.”
He nodded. “Won’t fit on the whole wagon … especially how I carve.” He made himself look up. She had been crying. He could see that in her eyes. She wanted to cry some more, but she was the oldest, which meant she had to be the strong one.
“You want me to just make it Truluck?” He remembered how the boy had said that the sisters had a different last name because they had had a different father. “Or Callahan?”
“Truluck’s shorter,” Katie said.
Their eyes held.
“She married him. She stuck with him, flaws and all.” Her Adam’s apple bobbed. “I guess she even loved him.”
“So that’s T-r-u-e- …,” he started.
“No e,” she told him, and spelled out the name.
“I can make it Margaret C. Truluck,” he suggested.
“It doesn’t really matter,” she said. “Does it?”
He waited.
“Dry as it is here. Wood on the wagon’s already dried out. The wind and rain. The animals. That marker you’re trying to make will get weathered away, blown over, washed away, the words faded … maybe before we even reach Roswell.”
He recollected the cowboys he had helped bury. The boss hadn’t wasted wood or time to put up a marker over their graves. Just a rock, under which he had placed their spurs and their names written in pencil on a piece of paper.
“It’s not how you’re buried,” he told her. “Or where.”
“Yeah,” Katie said. I’ll make you some coffee.”
* * * * *
He took his time. When Katie had spelled her mother’s name, he had written it in the sand on his right. He made sure not to shift and wipe away the letters accidentally. She had brought him coffee, and even some of his own jerky. The coffee, to his surprise, tasted fine. It refreshed him. Revitalized him.
Pressing the piece of wood on his thighs, he worked the butcher knife, carving the letters as deep and wide as he could, so they’d last for a while. When he heard footsteps, he drew the blade across the wood once more before looking up. Katie was staring at him, but MacKinnon looked beyond her, surprised to see how low the sun was. After placing the knife at his side, he held up the plank from the old wagon.
MARGARET
CALLAHAN
TRULUCK
beloved mother
died 1885
RIP
Her lips parted as she stared at him in wonder. He saw the tears begin to well. She whispered: “My … goodness …”
He shifted his legs in discomfort and looked down at his feet. He had guessed at the spelling of beloved.
“Goodness gracious.”
MacKinnon looked up and saw Florrie standing next to her sister. When next Gary came over and studied the rough piece of wood, he asked: “What’s it say?”
Katie told him.
“We gonna put it up over the grave?” Gary asked.
They did. Without a word. The sun began sinking as they walked back to the wagon. There must have been dust blowing across the desert to the west, because the orange, red, and purple of the sunset seemed brighter, more intense than normal.
“Look!” Gary pointed. “That’s pretty.”
“It’s beautiful,” Florrie said, and began to cry. “God’s welcoming Ma to Heaven.” She took her brother’s hand, and they walked away to admire the beauty.
MacKinnon moved to the fire, managed to squat, and poured himself another cup of coffee. He glanced up to find Katie staring down at him.
“You want some?” he asked.
“No,” she said. And waited.
He decided he’d just sit for a bit, until he could find the will to try to stand. She still stared at him, and he looked at her again.
“Thank you,” Katie told him.
Chapter Twenty
He stood over the busted wheel. Although two spokes had split apart, MacKinnon thought he might be able to fix that, or at least come up with a repair that could possibly get them to Roswell. The metal tire, however, had separated from the wheel. That caused MacKinnon to think back to the time when they were driving a small herd to Magdalena, before it was actually called Magdalena. The wooden tire had shrunk because of the heat, and the metal tire had fallen off. MacKinnon had been ordered to help the cookie—as sorry a belly-cheater as MacKinnon had ever known—who had told him: “You’re about as good a wheelwright as you is a cowpuncher, boy.”
MacKinnon sneezed suddenly as he recalled that time. He rocked back on his heels, knees bent, his left hand gripping his bad ribs as tears of pain welled up in his eyes.
Gary stuck his head around the corner of the wagon. “Are you all right, Mister MacKinnon?”
He managed to lift his head, and smile at the boy. His head bobbed, and he raised his right hand toward the five-year-old.
“Want to help me up, Gary?” he muttered.
The boy hesitated.
“You know how good you are at helping me up, Gary.” MacKinnon made himself smile, and Gary returned it as he moved closer.
Once he was standing and back to breathing regularly, MacKinnon told Gary: “I got a chore for you.” Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Florrie and Katie standing by the wagon.
“Got chores for all of you,” he said.
* * * * *
Gary dragged the dead creosote bushes to the fire. Florrie rolled the wagon rim, and Katie dragged the wheel. When MacKinnon offered
to help, she shooed him away.
“Is that it?” the blond asked, brushing her bangs off her forehead.
MacKinnon frowned. “I think we’ll need more wood.”
“There’s not much left,” Katie said. “And if this doesn’t work …”
“It’ll work,” he assured her, but he was far from confident in his ability to fix a busted wheel. “Get the hatchet,” he said, and when the boy ran to the wagon, MacKinnon smiled. “Whoa, Gary. Let one of your sisters do the chopping.” The last thing he needed was for the boy to whack off a toe or a finger. “I got a special job for you.”
The boy frowned, but soon beamed as he came back to MacKinnon. Katie found the hatchet, and MacKinnon said: “Chop up a few bushes. Wood’ll be green. But it’ll burn.” He rubbed the top of the boy’s hair. “Gary …” —he nodded at his saddle—“you see those strips of rawhide dangling behind the cantle?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Cut about two … no, four of them.” That would leave him two to attach to his bedroll. “Cut them as close to the saddle as you can.” He pulled out his pocket knife, and opened the blade. “With this. Careful. It’s sharper than a barber’s razor.” Which it wasn’t. MacKinnon was lousy at keeping the edge on a blade.
Katie hacked at creosote, and Florrie oversaw her brother’s job as MacKinnon settled himself onto the ground by the wheel.
When Gary brought over the strips of rawhide, MacKinnon nodded his approval. The boy started to return the knife, but MacKinnon shook his head. “That’s your payment, son. Every boy ought to have a knife. Only you got to promise me you’ll be careful with it.”
“Oh, boy!” Gary grinned.
Florrie didn’t. “Katie’s not going to like this one bit. I don’t like it, either.”
“He’ll be fine. He’s careful.”
“Till he cuts his hand off.”
MacKinnon shook his head. “Then he’ll learn just like Wade Stuart learned. He cut his left hand off once, but, by thunder, he learned his lesson. Never cut the right one off. Though he did chop off a toe with an ax. But just one.”
Florrie’s mouth hung open.
MacKinnon realized the story sounded a lot funnier in a bunkhouse or grog shop.
Florrie made a face, and started toward her sister, maybe to help chop up the bush, but more than likely to squeal on MacKinnon’s latest transgression.
“Wait up!” he called.
The redhead sighed and looked back. He pointed at the wheel. “I got a chore for you, too, little lady.”
“All right,” MacKinnon told the girl several minutes later. “Gary and I will pull the spoke as close together as we can. When I say so, you tie that rawhide string as tight as you can. And I mean you have to pull that leather hard and strong … tight. Then come back under and over and give it another hard tie. Think you can do that, Florrie?”
“I’m stronger than I look,” she said.
“Good,” MacKinnon said. “Good. You ready, Gary?”
“Ready.”
MacKinnon drew in a painful breath, set his jaw, tightened his hold on the spoke, and prayed that they didn’t pull the wood all the way off or split it in two. “Pull, Gary, pull.”
MacKinnon ignored the tearing pain in his right side, and when the pieces seemed to line up, he managed to grunt: “Now, Florrie.” The girl’s small hands placed the leather string between MacKinnon’s and Gary’s hands. She crossed the leather, slipped one end under the other, and pulled hard. The knot tightened against the wood, and she tugged till the leather seemed about to cut into the dried spoke. With that, she threaded the leather lace again, and repeated the process.
“Think you got enough left in you to make one more pass?” MacKinnon asked tightly.
“Maybe.”
She did, and when she tied the third knot, MacKinnon gave her a nod and another order. “Tie it again. Till there’s not enough length to make another knot.”
When she was done, MacKinnon and Gary moved away, and let Florrie use another piece of leather a few inches down.
“That’s good,” MacKinnon said. “Now let’s fix that other one.”
That took slightly less time, and when MacKinnon pushed himself away from the wheel, Florrie stood, frowning at the work she had done. “That’s not going to hold, Mister MacKinnon,” she said. “It’ll be just like my shoelaces.”
“Maybe.” MacKinnon said. He pulled his canteen over. “But your laces ain’t leather.” He opened the container, and poured water over the leather strips.
“What are you doing?” Katie yelled, dropping the creosote she was carrying as she ran to the trio. “We don’t have water to waste like that,” she scolded.
He nodded at the soaking spokes as he put the stopper back on the canteen. “Sun’ll dry out the leather, and the leather will shrink. It’ll hold those spokes together better than anything else we had on hand.”
Katie frowned, but she seemed to accept MacKinnon’s theory.
God, you’ll be doing me a mighty big favor if you let this work, MacKinnon thought.
Once the kindling caught fire from the coals, MacKinnon let Florrie and Gary feed the flames with larger pieces of wood, and when the fire seemed big enough, he and Katie began dragging the big pieces of creosote into the fire.
That’s what he was doing when he heard the jingling of a harness and the clattering of hoofs.
“Stagecoach!” he shouted, and moved away from the fire and to the side of the road. Despite the discomfort in his ribs, he was so filled with joy, he felt like screaming and dancing as he raised his hat and began waving it over his head.
Katie quickly joined him, moving her arms about like a pinwheel.
White dust sailed behind the mud wagon as the jehu worked the whip, urging the six mules galloping down the road.
“Halloooo!” MacKinnon shouted joyously.
The messenger leaned forward. The whip snapped again.
Florrie and Gary were jumping up and down a few feet from Katie and MacKinnon.
But the stagecoach kept thundering toward the east, toward Roswell.
MacKinnon stopped waving his hat as he shouted: “Hey there. Stop! We need some help. Stop! Stop! Help us!”
He watched as the messenger picked up his shotgun while the driver practically stood in the box, lines in his hands, cursing the mules and urging them onward.
MacKinnon unleashed every piece of blasphemy, every bit of profanity he could recall as the stagecoach raced past. He stepped onto the road, staring at the trailing dust—for now that was all he could see of the mud wagon—and he raised his fist and directed more profanities at the stupid messenger and the coward of a driver.
He could have done that as long as he could stand, but when he looked at the others, he drew in a deep breath. Florrie was on her knees, sobbing, and Gary had this strange look on his face. Katie simply seemed resigned. He saw the fire, though, and he moved to it.
Florrie looked up, sobbing: “Why didn’t they stop?”
“Schedule to keep,” MacKinnon said. “Figured we were road agents. Who knows? It don’t matter.”
“We’re never getting out of here,” she moaned.
“Chins up,” he said. “We don’t need that stagecoach. We don’t need nobody. We’ll do this ourselves. Come here. All of you.”
None budged.
He let loose more curses, then: “Don’t you dare feel sorry for yourselves. We’re getting out of this furnace. But that means we’ve got work to do. Help me.” He started to bend, but the pain forced him back up. “Get this tire on that fire. Now. Quick. While the flames are still hot.”
“Move!” he thundered, and watched all three of them jump.
* * * * *
While the fire crackled and the iron tire got hotter and hotter, MacKinnon and the others busied themselves. They cut up t
he remainder of Tommy Truluck’s clothes. Using the least amount of water they dared, Gary and Florrie got the strips wet and then laid them onto the bottom of the wooden wheel, while Katie tacked the pieces on. It was up to MacKinnon to rotate the wheel until the cloth covered the entire wheel.
The fire had started to die down, and MacKinnon stood over it, staring at the red-hot tire.
“This is the hard part,” he said. “Watch your fingers. Watch your clothes and your toes.”
Grunting and grimacing while trying his best to ignore the searing heat on his fingers, knuckles, and the backs of his hand, MacKinnon used both hands to lift the wheel rim with the hammer’s handle At the same time, Katie lifted with a steel carpenter’s square, the L shape giving her more leverage than a hammer. MacKinnon could see the tears in her eyes and the pain in her face as she lifted against the heat. The boy used a hayfork, and the younger girl a shovel, which at least protected them more from the heat. MacKinnon and Katie backed up. The tire slipped off the hammer, landed on the ground. He swore again, but picked it up before the others dropped their ends, then they all shifted the tire over the wooden wheel.
Quickly, he banged the tire with the hammer. The soaking cloth steamed from the red-hot metal, as MacKinnon continued swinging the hammer, ramming the tire over the wood. The others tried to help as best they could. The clinging rang out so loudly that the mule and horse snorted. Finally the tire fell into place, the cloth sizzling.
All four were soaked from sweat as they looked down at the tire.
“That stinks,” Gary said.
MacKinnon grinned. “Smells better than hot biscuits to me,” he said, nodding. “Y’all done good.”
“You think it’ll hold?” Katie asked.
He shrugged. “If the seal holds. It worked on the trail ten years back.” Wiping his brow, he nodded at the wagon. “We’ll let the tire cool, then put it on the axle.” He pointed. “I’ll need one of you to fetch that grease bucket. We’ll need to grease that pretty good.”
“I want to do that,” Gary said.
“Of course you do.” Katie rolled her eyes.
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