“It was a hot day,” Jeremiah continued, “and Big Jim had made the mistake of removing his boots and socks and rolling up his pants to cool his feet. So the cook sent some of the boys looking for a tarantula. I asked him why, and he told me to wait and watch. Said he was mixing some medicine.”
“They was gonna put the tarantula in his britches?” Reb asked. He laughed and coughed some more. “That’d be something all right. But wouldn’t Big Jim wake whilst they was fooling with him?”
Jeremiah smiled at the childlike interest of the man under the blanket. “No spider in his britches.” He shook his head for emphasis, and snow fell from the brim of his hat. “Fact is, they let Big Jim sleep sound until the boys got back to camp with a big tarantula. They killed it and laid it down close to Big Jim’s foot.”
“That wouldn’t do no good,” Reb said. “How’s that—”
“Shut your yap,” Kentucky said, interested in spite of himself. “Let the man talk.”
“What they did next,” Jeremiah said, “was they got a pin and fastened it to the end of a stick and gave Big Jim a couple of jabs in the calf of his leg. Which brought Big Jim up in a hurry, just in time for him to see the tarantula before one of the boys stepped on it and mashed it good, and sure enough, Big Jim believed he’d been bit.”
“Say it ain’t so,” Reb said, grinning wide.
“Sure as we’re sitting here right now. Well, Big Jim went hollering to the cook, who informed Big Jim it was a bad case, as more than one man’s died to the tarantula.”
Jeremiah smiled again. “Wish you could have seen it. All of us gathered round and shaking our heads and telling Big Jim it was good to know him and did he have any last words. And Big Jim just about in tears, waiting for the poison to swell him up like we promised.”
“Did he die?” Reb asked.
“He didn’t get bit,” Kentucky snapped. “If you listened, you’d a heard the man say they jabbed him with a pin and played like the tarantula bit him.”
“Yup,” Reb said. “I knew that.”
Jeremiah continued. “Big Jim begged and begged for someone to help save him. Cook said he knew some Indian potions, if Big Jim wanted to give that a try. Big Jim about fell to his knees in gratitude. So the cook gave him a pint of bear’s oil, then a package of soda, a half teacup of vinegar, and a quart of water in which he’d been soaking a ten-cent cut of tobacco. Big Jim ate and drank it all as fast as you and me might eat a good piece of steak after four days with no grub. Wasn’t much of a surprise that he got as sick as a man could be.”
Reb’s grin split his face. “That’s something all right.”
“Don’t end there,” Jeremiah said. “Big Jim complained to the cook, who asked him to imagine how much worse it’d be without those Injun cures and told Big Jim he owed the cook and the boys a two-gallon jug of whiskey for saving his life. Wasn’t till after all the boys drank all the whiskey that they let Big Jim in on the joke. And you can bet your last dollar Big Jim never slept under no wagon again.”
Even Kentucky couldn’t help smiling.
Sort of sad, Kentucky thought, that he’d have to plug the man before the snow stopped falling.
Chapter 17
Grace’s singing woke Josiah. He crawled out from under the blanket and stood beside her. He took her hand and held it as he sang with her.
In her vulnerability, this small act of love nearly brought Grace to tears again, but she didn’t want to upset Josiah, so she poured her emotion into the Christmas carol.
Josiah kept on, his sweet little voice breaking on the higher notes.
Within minutes, Caleb and Seth had left the blanket.
In the heat of the cabin, all four of them stood near the window, singing to the candlelight that reflected off the glass. Outside the snow fell, but inside they were cozy.
When they finished, Grace felt a peace that surprised her. God is good, she realized. He gives us his love reflected through the love they shared this night.
Tomorrow would bring what it might. She prayed that Jeremiah and Noah would be returned to her for Christmas, but in this moment, she felt secure in God’s love.
Caleb tugged on her hand, taking her out of her thoughts. “’Nuther song?” he asked.
Grace hugged him. “No,” she said. “Presents.”
“Presents! Presents!”
Grace left them at the window and came back with the hard-rock candy that she had wrapped in plain brown paper.
The boys tore the paper apart and whooped with joy. “Hard-rock candy!”
Grace didn’t know what she’d have to give them tomorrow, but their glee made her early gifts worthwhile.
When they gathered around her again, Caleb asked once more. “Songs?”
Grace shook her head and smiled.
“Let me tell you about baby Jesus. . . .”
Chapter 18
“What was it that you done to the horse?” Noah asked. He had just returned with more wood for the fire. These were about the first words he’d spoken to Grady, aside from “yes, sir” and “no, sir.”
“The horse?” Grady said, surprised that the boy had broken a long silence. “Tethered him to the tree.”
“I mean when it was bucking,” Noah said, setting the wood down and feeding a few pieces to the fire. “You done something to him.”
Snow still fell. A half hour had passed. The fire burned briskly. Grady stood barefoot on a blanket he had unrolled in front of the fire. His socks and boots were off, so close to the heat of the fire that steam rose from the cotton and leather.
In his coat and long underwear, Grady held his pants in front of him on the end of a short, stout branch. He’d been turning it back and forth in the heat of the fire. In another half hour or so, he figured, the pants would be dry enough he could continue without worrying about freezing to death.
Grady lifted his eyes from the fire and turned his gaze to the boy.
Noah had a serious, quizzical look on his face.
“Pinch your nose as hard as you can,” Grady said. “Then twist. See if it hurts.”
The boy tried it and quit immediately.
Grady had hoped for a smile but did not get it.
“Hurts, huh?” Grady said. “When you do it to a horse, it’s even worse. How much do you weigh?”
“Sixty pounds,” the boy answered calmly, not rattled by the change of subject.
“And a horse might weigh eight hundred. Even so, small as you are compared to a horse, you could control it completely by jamming a thumb in one nostril, a finger in the other, and twisting. When you do that, it won’t even prance.”
“Thank you,” Noah said. “I’ll remember that.”
“And if you’re riding a horse and it’s taken off in a gallop and you lose your reins, there’s another trick.”
The boy waited in serious silence.
“What you do,” Grady said, “is lean forward, wrap your arms around its neck, and bite through one of its ears and hold tight until it stops.”
“You funnin’ me?”
“Not at all. It might save your life someday. You never want to be on a runaway horse. It steps in a hole and throws you, you might snap your neck like kindling.”
“Thank you,” Noah said. “I’ll remember that.”
Grady studied the boy.
Noah had taken off his hat in front of the fire. His hair was cut short and ragged, making his face look round.
“How old are you?” Grady asked.
“Eleven.”
“Why is it that you are so determined to learn all this and remember it?”
For a moment, Noah didn’t answer.
Then, when he spoke, he stared at his feet. “My pa, he needs help, I figure. Seems like other men around here don’t hurt themselves or get lost or build things that fall over the next day. They don’t drive a wagon in a creek and break the axle and wait for someone to come by. My pa . . .”
Grady sensed this was difficult for the boy to say. So G
rady didn’t interrupt; he just waited.
“Ma called my pa a fool. She said he brung us out here to get us all killed. Said he should have stayed in Chicago and kept his job in a schoolhouse instead of spending all we had to follow a crazy dream of his.”
Noah finally looked up at Grady. “So I figure I better learn what I can. It was me that chopped and stacked all our firewood for the winter. Pa, he’d be off by himself, sitting in the sun with a drawing pad and a quill and ink, and I’d make sure the work got done.”
Noah looked back down again at his feet.
Grady understood. The boy was ashamed of his own father.
Chapter 19
Kentucky stood away from the fire. It was time to get his rifle from the horse.
“If you don’t mind,” Jeremiah said, wrapped in his blanket, staring at the flames, “I’d like to tell you another story. The best story a man could hear.”
Reb nodded from the other side of the fire. He was sitting up now, caped by his blanket, snow on his shoulders and hat.
Kentucky shook his head. “Never was much for stories,” he said.
“I’d like to hear it,” Reb said. “Set a spell. We ain’t got anywhere to go.”
Kentucky sat again. He wanted to shake his brother. Of course they had somewhere to go. Reb didn’t know it, but there were those mailbags waiting for them in the wagon. All they needed to do was make sure they didn’t leave a witness behind. And the sooner the better. Who knew when that Pony Express rider might return and complicate this?
“You boys might appreciate this,” Jeremiah said, “for it looks like you’ve spent your share of time on the trail. Anyway, there was this man and woman lived in a land a long time ago and far away. Her belly was big, and she was real close to having her baby, and there they were, with no place to rest. It was a cold night, maybe not snowing like now, but a cold night and nobody would help them out. So they stopped for the night in a stable. And right there, she had her baby. Now this baby was born to save the world.”
“I heard this before,” Kentucky growled. “Let me tell you, I don’t see that the world needs saving.”
“Hush,” Reb said. “I want to hear him out. This man knows how to tell a story.”
Jeremiah turned his face to Kentucky. “I’ll agree it might seem like the world doesn’t need saving, but did you ever get shivers when you heard a coyote howl at night? You ever felt that same kind of sadness looking up at the sky filled with stars? You ever been homesick, not knowing where it was you wanted to be?”
Reb shivered and huddled beneath his blanket. “I been lonely lots.”
“What it is,” Jeremiah said, “is that God’s put a place in your soul that will always feel empty until you let him fill it.”
“This ain’t a place for a sermon,” Kentucky grunted.
“No sermon,” Jeremiah said. “But a man should spend time thinking why he’s been put on this earth. Reb, you’re tired and sick, and that’s a terrible place to be. Ever want some place you can just sit and rest and not worry and just be filled with peace that lets you know you’re where you should be in this world?”
“Plenty,” Reb said. Beneath his beard, he was just a boy, and at this moment he was so weak that he allowed himself to feel his loneliness. “Last time I had that kind of peace, it was when my ma would hold me tight when I was a little boy. Seems since then that . . .”
“Reb . . . ,” Kentucky warned, “she died a long time ago. We don’t talk about her to strangers.”
Reb shut his mouth. Kentucky stared at the fire. Jeremiah let the silence hang for a few minutes.
“I’m truly sorry about your ma,” Jeremiah began again. “Hurts bad, losing someone you love. And to me, that’s why the world needs saving. This baby that was born, he was meant to take away all that hurt and fill it with love straight from God, and not only that, make sure you could get to heaven and see your ma again. Fact is, that’s why the angels showed up that night and started singing to shepherds in the nearby fields.”
“Angel music,” Reb said, his voice soft. “Can’t imagine anything purtier.”
“It would have been some night,” Jeremiah agreed. “All because of God’s gift to you and me, this baby Jesus . . .”
And so Jeremiah continued.
Chapter 20
“This baby Jesus,” Grace said to her three boys, “he lay there in the manger so sweet. Then arrived these wise men, who had followed a star rising in the East, because the star told all the world about this wonderful event.”
Her boys listened, enthralled. She sat with them on their corn-shuck mattress. She was still filled with the peace that had entered the small cabin as they had sung their carols.
“The wise men were accustomed to advising kings and other great rulers,” she said. “They knew this baby would be the greatest ruler of all. And they were right.”
Her boys pressed up against her, and again she uttered a silent prayer of thanks to God for allowing her these precious gifts of life and love.
“Oh, he wasn’t the kind of king who sat on a throne and ordered people here and there,” Grace said softly. She found herself telling the boys the Christmas story the way Jeremiah always told it. “When Jesus grew up, he didn’t care much about money. He traveled through that same land, showing people how much he loved them. He healed them when they were sick and he fed them when they were hungry and he told them again and again how much God loved all of them.”
Grace smiled at her boys. “And Jesus tells us how much God loves us too. Because God has a home for all of us. He’s waiting for you and me, and all we have to do is listen to Jesus and pray to God. That’s the best Christmas present ever.”
“Better than hard-rock candy?” Seth asked.
“Much better,” Grace said. She smiled at each of her boys in turn. “If someone asked me if I wanted hard-rock candy or the three of you to love, I’d tell them that love is much, much better than hard-rock candy or money or a big house. Wouldn’t you agree?”
As an answer they each hugged her.
Looking over their heads, Grace saw the candle at the window again.
She didn’t let go of her boys until she had managed to blink away her fresh tears.
Chapter 21
Draped with fresh snow, branches of the trees along the wagon trail were sculpted angels, watching in silence as Grady and the boy rode the final mile toward the cabin.
The snow had finally stopped falling. The full moon shone now that the clouds had cleared, reflecting off the whiteness of the landscape. Night was almost brighter than the gray of the afternoon earlier. Grady easily saw ahead, and he knew his return journey to the wagon and then to the ranch would not be difficult.
He felt no peace about it, however. The quietness of the boy behind him was like a burden. It didn’t take much effort for Grady to imagine how it would be for any boy to feel shame about his father. He felt bad for the boy.
On the surface, it seemed the boy had good reason. On first arriving at the wagon, Grady, too, had been quick in his mind to accuse the settler of incompetence.
Then one single thought about Jeremiah popped into Grady’s mind. The man, at least, has plenty of courage to be out here without knowing where life might take him.
Grady chewed on that thought for some ten minutes before he was ready to speak. He knew he had to say it right. Every boy deserved to be able to respect his father, and it seemed like Grady was at the right place and right time to be able to help.
“I remember the first time I rode a horse,” Grady began, speaking into the quiet of the night. “My daddy didn’t think I was old enough, so I snuck into the barn and saddled it myself. I jumped on that horse and rode proud. Until just down the road me and that saddle slid right off the horse. Turned out I hadn’t buckled the saddle right.”
No response from Noah.
“’Course,” Grady said, “it was my first time. Should I be blamed for not getting it right?”
“No, s
ir.” The boy spoke so quietly, Grady barely heard him. “A person has to learn.”
“Exactly,” Grady said. “You can bet I never made that mistake again. Because I did just that. I learned. Shoot, unless there was someone right there to show him, every man in this Territory has learned what he learned the hard way. Including me.”
“Yes, sir.”
Grady let the horse walk farther. Each breath of the horse rose as white vapor in the still night air.
“There’s a girl waiting for me tonight at a ranch,” Grady said. “She’s been stuck on me a long time. I believe she’s hoping I might someday ask her to marry me.”
This time, when Grady paused, Noah did not reply.
Of course, Grady realized, the poor boy might be perplexed as to why Grady was telling him this.
“Thing is,” Grady continued, “I’m afraid. I can rope a steer, break a horse, build a fence, shoot as good as the next man, and I’m afraid to go somewhere in my life that’s new to me. I’ve been a lone man for quite some time, and I’m accustomed to it. Changing to a married man, that’s quite a jump, and I’m not sure I can make it.”
Grady was glad he could not see the face of the boy behind him. This way, it was like Grady was just thinking out loud, finally admitting to himself something he’d tried to keep hidden from his heart.
“Over the last few years,” he confessed, “I’ve taken just about any job that would give me an excuse not to settle down. Including this one for the Pony Express. In so doing, I’ve treated that woman poorly. I stay just close enough she can’t say good-bye, and just far enough I can’t say ‘I do.’ It’s been right handy, having a sweetheart without having the responsibility.”
Grady whistled. “And having children? That’s enough to make me faint with fear. What if she died giving birth? What if one of my children took sick and died? What if I died and left them alone with no one to support them? There’s so many things that could go wrong, it’s just plain and simple much easier not to try. A man could grow old and never take a chance like that and live just fine. I know plenty who’ve done it that way.”
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