Williamson, Penelope

by The Outsider

  Slowly, Ailsa brought the whiskey glass back up to her lips. Her face was as cold, as silent, as falling snow. And the cold silence drifted from her to settle over the room, until it seemed to Quinten that even the candles in their crystal holders shivered and dimmed.

  "How come it is, Pa," he said loudly, his voice breaking like a raw boy's, "that you're back to wanting to rid us of those Plain folk after all this time? I'd've thought we all had pretty much gotten used to having them around."

  The Baron said nothing, only shifted his glare from his wife to his son.

  "Well, it seems to me," Quinten went on, "that any poor fool who tries to raise sheep suffers enough persecutions without you adding to them. Coyotes and bears, death camas and stomach bloat. I once saw a ewe roll over to scratch a tick itch—she wound up getting stuck on her back and suffocated to death before the herder could get to her. Sheep go out looking for ways to die."

  "Aye, and I hope they find every bloody damn one of them."

  Quinten opened his mouth, and then shut it. His father behaved as if there was something privileged, even sanctified, about raising cattle. As if a cow was somehow a higher class of animal than a sheep. But the truth was you could graze five to six sheep on the same ground it took for one cow, and they got along on a fraction of the water.

  If left to graze in one place too long, though, sheep could chew the grass down to the nub. And what went in one end came out the other, creating an odor that was intolerable to cattle, and not easily stood by humans, either. But Quinten suspected that what probably galled the Baron most about his "bedamned, holy-howling mutton punchers" was that wool now sold at a premium, whereas the glutted beef market had crashed last year to the point where you could hardly give even the hides away.

  The glutted beef market also maybe explained why, after a good seven-year lull in his persecution of the Plain folk, the Baron had suddenly taken up the crusade again. The Circle H would need to put even larger cattle herds on just that many more acres of grassland, for there to be a hope of seeing a profit in the coming years.

  Yet Quinten thought he'd probably find himself knocked out of his chair and into next week if he suggested to the old man that they put a sheep band of their own out to graze on their range.

  He settled for saying, "The open range wasn't going to last forever, Pa, much as we might wish for it. Didn't you always tell me that what you can't duck, you'd better figure out a way to welcome?"

  The Baron pointed at his son with the wet end of his cigar, his eyes tightened into slits. But then he grunted and stabbed the cigar back in his mouth. "Ah, bloody hell," he said. "We'd only be doing those mutton punchers a favor to chouse them on out of here. This country is no place for pilgrims and amateurs."

  For the first time all night Wild West Wharton unhooked his small clasp of a mouth for something besides spitting and chewing. "Something tells me that come spring it's not going to be a good time to be a woolly."

  Quinten stared into the man's pale eyes, but he was frowning more over the memory of that skinny Plain boy. "Woodrow and I nearly rode down one of their young'uns while we were out searching the coulees for bogged strays this morning. He at least appears to have a friend who is willing to shoot us all stone dead if we don't mend our wicked ways."

  Wharton scratched his head, plucked out a louse, and crushed it between his fingernails. Ailsa was watching him with a look of polite interest on her face. "He was probably talking about that stranger who got himself shot up while passing through here a while back," Wharton said. "One of them Plain women is supposed to've taken the sumbitch in. The widow of that Plain sumbitch we hung last spring."

  Quinten's head snapped around to his father. "You hanged a Plain man? My God, for what—for being a cow thief? What Plain man even knows how to build a loop, let alone swing a wide one? Or was it for having the audacity to actually make a go of his few measly acres—"

  "He was rustling our beeves, dammit! Leastways we caught him with a bunch of slick-eared calves, so what else were we to think?" The Baron's hand trembled slightly, and the smoke that rose from his cigar shimmered in the candlelight. "It isn't anything for you to get all wild-eyed about. It was an honest mistake. I told his woman, I've told everyone, it was an honest mistake."

  "An honest mistake... Good Christ, Pa. You know as well as I do that a Plain man wouldn't pocket a bruised apple from Tulle's Mercantile, not even when there's a sign that says to help yourself."

  Wharton let loose a ringing splatter of tobacco juice into the empty cast-iron hearth behind him. "You remember what that sumbitch was jawing about right before we hung him, boss?" His lips pulled back from his long teeth in a smile. "He said we were all gonna be done in by a rider on a pale horse—"

  "'I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.'"

  That quiet snowdrift voice seemed to freeze them all in mid-breath.

  Quinten looked at his father's wife. Her violet gaze was on the window that framed a fiery sunset. Streaks of copper and orange flamed across a blood red sky. The eerie light was suddenly reflected in the silver and china and crystal on the table, in the mirror of the mahogany sideboard, until it seemed the whole of heaven and earth had caught fire.

  The faintest of smiles touched her pale lips. "His name was Death."

  Benjo Yoder carefully laid the rifle across a pair of deer antler brackets mounted high on the barn wall. He wiped his sweating hands on the seat of his broadfalls and blew out a gusty breath. Maybe now that he was safe home again, and the gun was back where it belonged, maybe now he could quit being so scared.

  He'd had to stand on a hay bale to reach the deer antlers, and he was about to climb down when the man's voice came out of the dark shadows behind him.

  "I was wondering myself if that old Sharp's could still fire."

  Benjo whipped around and his feet shot out from under him. He landed on his rump on the hay bale and went scooting feetfirst to the floor. His heart was pounding so hard it was like a drumbeat in his ears. He looked up into Johnny Cain's face. But the sun, setting out beyond the barn's open doors in a blaze of red glory, dazzled his eyes so that all he saw was a black silhouette.

  "I guess you been out doing some hunting this evening," the outsider said.

  Benjo shook his head "no," then he nodded "yes," then he realized he didn't have any dead game to show for a hunting trip, so he shook his head "no" again.

  "If you're going to tell a lie, Benjo, it's always best to stick with it come hell or high water. Elaborate, but don't explain. Apologize, but don't make excuses.... Your ma was about to rouse the whole valley to go looking for you, she was that worried."

  The outsider's hand gripped his shoulder, not hard enough to hurt, but Benjo still found himself being propelled toward the door.

  "Huh—Hunter's m-men. Th-they were g-gonna huh— huh—huh... hang me!" he said, the last words shooting out of him with such force he choked on them. "F-for being a cuh—cattle ruh—ruh—ruh..." Rustler.

  Then he realized that an almost-hanging wasn't going to account for a whole missing day, so he elaborated. "I ran off and huh—hid." And he had done that for a while, before he'd fetched the Sharp's and a water bucket and gone back to Tobacco Reef and the coyote. "I'm suh— suh—sony." Apologize, but don't make excuses.

  What the outsider made of this story, Benjo couldn't tell. They were out of the barn now and heading toward the house, and although Benjo tried to drag his feet, they weren't slowing down any.

  "I'm thuh—thuh—think... ing," Benjo said, stuttering so hard his head jerked, "m-maybe you m-might want to shuh—shoot them Hunters stone dead."

  They stopped, and the outsider stared down at him from underneath the brim of his hat. The man made a sound that was part way between sighing and laughing. "I might want to. But I as good as promised your mother I wouldn't."

  Benjo sighed, too, because the door to the house had just then banged open, and his mem had co
me flying out of it, and he knew he'd made her scared enough that as soon as she figured out he was all right, she was going to turn madder than a nest full of hornets.

  She grabbed him, hugging him so hard she nearly knocked off his hat. She ran her hands all over him, feeling for broken bones, he supposed, and maybe gunshot wounds. Then she grabbed him again and shook him so hard his hat did fall off.

  "Joseph Benjamin Yoder, you had me worried half out of my wits! Where have you been?"

  Benjo opened his mouth, but the words piled up so thick and fast in his throat they made a dam there, and then nothing was coming out now, not even air. He gasped and choked and his eyes filled with tears, and he hated himself that he couldn't even talk like everyone else.

  "He's only been lying low," the outsider said. "Your Mr. Hunter, the man whose soul you so enjoy praying for, his men threw a bad scare into him by threatening to hang him."

  Benjo didn't like the way his mother's face got. She brought the back of her hand up to her cheek as if she was feeling to see if she had a fever, and above her hand her eyes were wide and dark with old pain and a fresh fear.

  She reached for him, gently this time, and she smoothed his hair back off his forehead and touched his cheek the way she'd touched her own. "What were you doing clear over on Hunter land?"

  "Truh—tracking bear."

  "Oh, heavens." She surprised him by laughing, although it was a shaky laugh. "Go on into the house now, Benjo," she said softly. "Wash up for supper."

  Benjo picked his hat up out of the mud and climbed the porch, but he stopped within the shadows just inside the kitchen door. His mem and Johnny Cain had their backs to him, both looking toward the buttes that divided the valley between cattle and sheep. The sun was mostly gone now, but it had left a ruby glow in the sky, and everything had a pink tinge: the barn and the sheep, his mem's prayer cap, the outsider's white shirt that had once belonged to his da.

  It was hard to hear them from the house, but he thought his mother said, "What am I going to do?"

  Johnny Cain must not have had an answer for her, because he said nothing.

  She turned half around, and although the outsider still said nothing, she spoke to him as if he had. "No, never that way. Your way is wrong."

  "My way is certain. He won't be able to hurt you from the grave."

  "But what becomes of my soul then? What becomes of me?"

  They were facing each other now, as far apart as the distance between two fence posts. Benjo thought, from the way the air seemed to crackle around them, that they were angry.

  The outsider's voice had an edge to it. "They won't quit, Rachel. I know these men."

  "Because you are one of them."

  "Because I am one of them. They are capable of destroying anything, killing anything. Believe me, I know."

  She shook her head once, hard. "I don't believe you've ever killed a child. I'll not believe it."

  "Learn to believe it. There's only one way of stopping men like that."

  "No!" Her hand came up as if she would touch him, but they were too far apart. "No, no... God's ways are often hard to understand, but He can be merciful. You are the one who must learn how to believe."

  "Death stops us."

  CHAPTER 10

  Rachel held the lantern high as she slogged through the icy mud in the yard.

  It was after midnight, but she still was dressed properly, in her apron and shawl. She wasn't wearing either a prayer cap or a night cap, though, and her hair fell thick and heavy over her shoulders and down her back. The wind tugged and stirred the curled ends of her hair.

  The moon, round and creamy, had risen above the cotton-woods, the first full moon of spring. It shed a soft light over the hay meadows, and over the sheepherder's wagon where the outsider now spent his nights. The wagon's big wheels cast spiky shadows onto the barn, and the battered tin stovepipe, poking out of the humped wooden roof, shone like polished silver.

  She climbed the steps of the wagon's small stoop and knocked.

  A moment later the top half of the Dutch door swung open, and she found herself staring at his naked chest. She took a startled step backward. "They are coming, Mr. Cain," she said.

  She could almost feel his gaze moving over her hair, like the touch of the wind, before it shifted to the corral next to the lambing sheds, where the ewes milled and bleated in the cold spring night.

  "Let me just finish getting dressed then," he said.

  She waited for him at the bottom of the stoop, facing away from the door.

  When he joined her she saw that getting dressed to him included strapping on his cartridge belt. "What do you intend to do with that gun of yours tonight, Mr. Cain?" she said. "Aim it at some poor ewe's head and demand that she push harder?"

  "No'm. I'm figuring to point it at you, lady, the first time you tell me to go lick something."

  Their feet crunched through the half-frozen mud, the oil sloshed in the lantern she carried. Beyond, in the dark infinity of the prairie, a coyote began singing to the moon. Rachel felt herself smile, and she lowered her head, as the wind tugged and pulled and stirred her hair.

  Benjo, with MacDuff at his side, appeared at the door to the sheds in a wash of lantern light. He had one gloved hand wrapped tight around a pole nearly half again his length and with a hook at the end of it. "You can go fetch some water from the creek," she said to him, "if you please. And by then I should have need of that hook."

  The boy leaned the sheep hook against the sheds and snatched up a couple of empty creamery cans. He ran off, the cans banging against his legs, his dog loping at his heels, and was soon swallowed up by the black shadows of the cottonwoods and willows.

  Earlier, in preparation for this moment, Rachel had hung several lanterns on the poles of the corral. She went around lighting them now, and yellow puddles spilled onto the muddy straw and the shifting gray woolly backs.

  "Mr. Cain, if you would start separating out the ones who are about to drop..."

  He stood in the middle of the bleating, milling sheep and turned in a slow circle. "I'd do that, Mrs. Yoder, truly I would. But one sheep pretty much looks like another to me even in the best of times."

  She ducked her head to hide another smile. "The ones with stiff teats, and those whose udder bags and female parts are pink and swollen—they're the ones whose time is near. That flighty one is going to be first off the mark." She pointed to a young ewe that had moved away from the flock and was digging almost frantically in the straw with her forefeet to make a nest. "It's her first spring as a mother, and she could have trouble."

  Rachel could always spot the ones that were going to lamb in the next hour or so. She could tell right off which ones would need help and which wouldn't. Ben had said it was because she was a female herself that she was so good at reading the ewes.

  Rachel thought it was the music. Come lambing time, she imagined she could hear a sweet trilling, like birdsong, emanating from the ewes who were about to give birth. Or rather, she didn't so much hear the songs as feel them as a stirring in her own blood. And if a ewe was headed for trouble, the birdsong became the jarring and discordant caw of the crow.

  The outsider was now walking among the ewes, bending over from time to time to peer at them "It appears," he said, "like there's gonna be a lot of 'em coming all at once."

  "Indeed, Mr. Cain. It's going to be a busy night. Now, if you could just come over here, please, and give this new little mother your man's strong and sturdy leg to push against She finds what's happening inside her belly very strange, I think, and so she's scared by it"

  A thin white sac was showing now in the opening under the ewe's tail. She flung her head back, her neck stretching, her whole body straining, her eyes bulging. The opening widened, and more of the white membrane appeared. Rachel could see the emerging lamb's front hooves and between them a tiny black nose. This mother would be a frightened amateur, but at least her baby knew the proper way to make an entrance into the world.
>
  The ewe collapsed suddenly into the nest she'd tried to dig for herself. She was laboring hard, her upper Up peeling back with each push. She was silent, though, except for a grunting deep in her throat and the instinctive slurping of her tongue.

  The outsider had given the ewe his leg to brace against, and now he squatted down in the straw next to her rolling head. He threaded his fingers through the puff of wool between her ears, stroking her, over and over. "Why don't she holler?"

  Rachel's gaze was held fast by those long fingers, the way they moved tenderly, almost lovingly over the ewe's head. But then, he touched his gun like that, she thought. And, once, her mouth.

  "Sheep can bear a lot of pain," she finally said. "But I think more than anything they keep quiet because they don't want the coyotes and wolves to know when they're giving birth."

  From the look on the outsider's face, he appeared to be suffering right alongside the ewe. It was funny, but watching a lamb come had sometimes twisted up Ben's insides like that, too. Maybe, Rachel thought, a woman understood better that birthing was just naturally going to be hard. That with life came suffering.

  Benjo trotted up, bringing with him the hook and a piece of gunny sacking, just as the ewe lurched back onto her feet. She gave a mighty strain, her rear end jerking sharply. The lamb seemed to dive out of the womb, feet and nose first, landing in the muddy straw, a glistening, steaming nubby yellow sack of bones.

  Rachel tore the membrane, peeling it away from the lamb's nose and mouth, laughing as she heard the squeaky maa that came with the little one's first breath. Her own boy was right there to hand her the sacking, so that she could quickly dry off the lamb's ears and keep them from freezing.

  The ewe just stood there, baaing frantically and shaking her hind end, as if she wasn't quite sure what all had been happening to her. Rachel began to fear she'd turn out to be one of those mothers who refused to accept her baby. But then, as if some wheel finally clicked over in her brain, she turned, stretching her nose out toward her lamb. She sniffed, and then began to lick the sticky yellow slime off its rump, making loud noises that almost drowned out the night wind, the rustling straw, and all the bleats and baas of the other expectant mothers.