The Big Wander

by Will Hobbs

  Clay tried to steer Sarah toward Aunt Violet. He was working on an idea and it was firing him all up inside like a Roman candle. He got a pretty good glimpse of Aunt Violet again, but he couldn’t tell for sure what he needed to know. “Sarah,” he whispered, “I need to talk to you.”

  He tugged her away from the dancers, and then he whispered in her ear, “Would Aunt Violet’s dress have a pocket, like the ones she wears at work?”

  “Mine does.” Sarah’s hand slipped between folds in the pattern of her dress on the right side, and he could see the white of the lining there. “How come you’re wondering?”

  Clay’s eye was still on Aunt Violet, wheeling there among the dancers. She always kept the keys in her dress pocket. Of course she’d have them with her. That’s where she kept them. This dress would have a pocket too. It had to.

  The song was ending. It was crazy, but if he was going to try it he better not think about it too long, he better do it now. “Watch,” he said. “Stay right here. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  Clay squeezed between couples getting their breath. You’ll only have one chance, he told himself. I don’t think she’s left-handed. Her pocket would be on her right side. Try her right side.

  Aunt Violet’s partner was thanking her for the dance. Clay presented himself. “May I have the next dance?” he asked as gallantly as possible and all out of breath.

  She was delighted. She probably thinks I can dance, Clay thought.

  It was a pretty fast dance, a “Texas swing dance” as he heard Aunt Violet remark, and he swung himself into it and swung her too, like a whirling dervish. The Navajos would’ve loved this! Aunt Violet was smiling through it at least. She had a nervous smile you might expect from someone at the top of a carnival ride that’s a lot scarier than they expected.

  When Clay had things wound up as much as he could wind them, he gave Aunt Violet a huge spin and stuck out the tip of his cowboy boot below her flying dress to catch her ankle, and then he lunged to make sure she would land on him, which is what she was doing. He was enveloped by her skirts and reaching for that pocket even before she went down. To Aunt Violet it might have seemed he was thrashing around trying to escape her considerable weight; to him all the motion was meant to camouflage the job of the one limb he was counting on, his right arm and his right hand.

  He had the keys! And yes, his hand was free of her pocket and those keys were tucked in his own jeans before all the confusion came to rest. People close by were standing around, some chuckling. The band was playing on, thank goodness, and he was apologizing all over himself to Aunt Violet who was dusting herself off. “I’m pretty dangerous,” he said, snugging his hat back on his head.

  “That you are,” she agreed.

  “This kind of dancing’s all new to me. But you should see me do the Twist.”

  “Another time, Clay,” she said, laughing now. “Another time.”

  That lady wasn’t going to let one fall spoil her evening. Her partner was back to save her, and she went right on dancing.

  Clay whispered in Sarah’s ear, “I want to show you something.” A little ways into the moonlight, he took her hand and led her toward the formation where they’d watched the moon rise. A little ball of white joined them. “Curly!” Clay said. “Stick close, now.”

  Behind the rock formation he pulled the keys out of his pocket. “Sarah,” he said. “These are Aunt Violet’s keys. The keys to the jail and Uncle Clay’s cell.”

  She gasped.

  “Uncle Clay’s horse is in the corral right by the jail. We can make it to Arizona. I have to try.”

  “The sheriff will come after you, and Barlow will too.”

  “They won’t find out until sometime after the dance. I figure it’ll be hard to track us if we stay on the slickrock.”

  “You’re right about that. I’m sure they’ll come in their trucks, on the road…. With the moonlight, you could ride at night and hide in the canyons by day…. I think you’d have a chance anyway, Clay.”

  “Sarah, I have to go fast, I have to get back to town as fast as I can.”

  He reached out for her. The moon lit up the yellow flecks in her eyes. Clay touched her cheek with one hand, and his other hand found the silkiness of her hair. His lips touched hers, and then their lips met, and it felt like … canyons and mesas and rainbows, and the desert fresh after a rain. It felt like the promise of the life that lay before him all shining and ready for him to make something of. “I love you,” he whispered. “Sarah Darling, Sarah Darling.”

  “I love you, Clay. I really love you.”

  They held hands. “I just got here,” he said, and a tear popped out of an eye. “I just met you.”

  “I know….”

  “Say good-bye to your folks for me, and Libby and Nora. They won’t mind keeping Pal and Burrito for me, will they?”

  “Pal and Burrito will be eating at the table.”

  “It’ll be good to know exactly where those desert canaries are. And I’m going to come back and see them.”

  “You better,” she sniffled. “And take care of yourself, Clay. Remember, there’s no one else like you.”

  “Do you like letters? Long ones?”

  “The longer the better.”

  He took the silver bracelet with the three beautiful stones from his wrist and he put it on hers. “It’s a little big,” he said.

  Sarah slid it up her arm some. “Fits perfect.”

  He kissed her again, and then their lips parted, and then Clay stood up to leave.

  “But I want to see you once more,” Sarah was saying. “Maybe there’s a chance. I know where you’ll be going, I can try to guess how long it might take you…. Be sure to look around for me before you cross the Colorado. I just might be there.”

  Clay tucked Curly to his chest so no one would notice the ball of white. As he walked his horse away from the music echoing out of Dance Hall Rock, he could hear the band singing, “A-way, I’m bound a’way, a-cross the wide Mis-sour-i.”

  Missouri nothing, Clay thought as he mounted Starbuck and nestled Curly in his left hand against his stomach. Across the Colorado and into the reservation. Across the Colorado and into Arizona!

  23

  By night, they rode. Late in the night that first night, they saw the headlights of vehicles prowling around on the slickrock. But it was a big country and none came close enough to cast its lights on them. Occasionally they’d encounter a cluster of cows taking in the moonlight, and Curly would bark under his breath. Clay explained to Uncle Clay that they must be those “10-30” cows.

  Whenever their horses left a pile of evidence behind, Uncle Clay brought his gloves out of his saddlebags and buried it in a patch of sand. He was being that careful. “I won’t give Barlow much credit, but I’m guessing he knows the difference between cow pies and horse apples. You know, Clay, we’re just like two Apaches. On all this slickrock, they’ll never find us.”

  “I sure hope not,” Clay said with a feeling of dread. His uncle was feeling awful good, but was he being realistic?

  “Lemme tell you about Apaches,” Uncle Clay said, with a wild glint of moonlight in his eye. “They say, out in the middle of the desert with just rocks and sand, and scrub around no taller than your waist, you could turn your back on an Apache and he could disguise himself no farther’n a stone’s throw away, disguise himself so well you just plain couldn’t find him.”

  “Is that true?”

  “I wouldn’t doubt it. There’s so much we don’t know…. Those colors in your saddle blanket, they all come from the plants around here. Those Navajo women know exactly which ones, and whether its the roots or leaves or flowers…. We’re bound for Yazzieland, Clay! I still can’t believe you busted me out of the Escalante jail!”

  “You should’ve seen the look on your face.”

  “Man oh man … God I love this country!”

  By day they hid in one of the many slot-canyons that drained toward the Escalante, and
they ate from the grub they’d pilfered from the jail kitchen and stashed in their saddlebags. They napped in the shade, but Clay never really slept. He kept listening for the sound of approaching horses, or footsteps. He knew they were out there, the sheriff and Barlow too.

  When the moonlight showed on the canyon wall above, they started out of the canyon. Uncle Clay held the horses while Clay sneaked up to the rim and looked all around, keeping low to the ground. Curly knew to keep quiet. All clear. Before long they were up on the slickrock again, riding on the rolling sea of slickrock.

  After several hours they heard vehicles, jeeps or trucks, and saw their profiles far off. They were running without headlights this time. “Stay still,” Uncle Clay said.

  “They’ll see us!” Clay whispered. “If we can see them, they can see us.”

  “Not necessarily,” Uncle Clay said. “If we stay real still, from that distance we’re going to look like a couple of these junipers.”

  The motors droned away in the distance, just as Uncle Clay had predicted.

  A second day they hid, and another night they rode.

  With daylight approaching once again, Clay steered for the safety of a nearby canyon. “This way,” his uncle said, staying on the beeline across the exposed slickrock toward the east and the lavenders of dawn.

  “But Uncle Clay … ,” he warned, “they can see us up here.”

  “We’re going to be all right,” his uncle said, only a little bit tense. “They’re going to be tired of looking for us by now. They’ve gone home for breakfast.”

  “I sure hope so.”

  Why were they taking such a chance? Clay thought. It wasn’t worth it! They were so close, so close now.

  They rode for another half hour. Clay’s dread was growing as the daylight was coming on. “It’s getting really light, Uncle Clay!”

  “Just a little bit farther,” his uncle replied. His uncle looked worried now too, but his jaw was set.

  Clay was looking all around, all around, and listening. Was he hearing a motor or was he just imagining it?

  Still they continued on. The sun was rising. Off to the southeast, he could see a big corral. “Please, Uncle Clay, let’s get out of here.”

  “Just up ahead,” was all his uncle said.

  As soon as Clay saw this canyon, he didn’t have a good feeling about it. It didn’t look deep enough or narrow enough to do them much good. It was more like a broad wash. You could see into the bottom of it from a long ways.

  “It gets deep soon enough,” his uncle said reassuringly.

  They started down into the wash. Still, Clay didn’t like it. There was no way down on slickrock like there had been into the canyon the day before. They were leaving all kinds of tracks. Why take a risk like this?

  They followed the wash downstream until the walls rose a hundred feet. Still, the wash was wide, and someone up above would see everything. “Let’s hurry,” he said.

  “We’ll be okay.” His uncle reined his horse in. “Right here. This is a stop I have to make, Clay.”

  Without saying another word, his uncle tied his horse to a bush right there in the bottom of the wash and started climbing up the hillside.

  Clay didn’t know what he should do. They had to get down this canyon and fast, and get onto some slickrock where they couldn’t be followed. Curly was looking back and forth between him and his uncle moving up the slope, and he was confused too.

  Clay scrambled up the slope after him. His uncle was crouching up there at the base of the rimrock where a big slab of rock had fallen down and was leaning back against the rimrock.

  He was breathing hard when he reached his uncle. He paused for a second to catch his breath. The soil was dusty and loose, like you find around the cliff ruins. His uncle was crouching at the entrance of the tentlike space under the leaning slab, and he’d taken his hat off. There was a pile of rocks in there, and something else….

  Clay leaned closer, and then he saw it. The All-Around Cowboy buckle tucked back in the rocks.

  “I had to stop, Clay. I sure hope it isn’t going to get us caught, but if I’m never going to come back into this state I knew I had to pay her a visit, one last time.”

  “I’ll run up and keep a lookout,” Clay said hurriedly. As much as anything, he thought he should give his uncle privacy for his grief.

  It was a a few hundred yards back up the canyon before he found a way up and out. It was broad daylight now and he was terrified. As he was nearing the rim he kept to his belly and crawled up like a lizard. All he meant to do was poke his head over the top.

  Up ahead, Curly was growling.

  “Quiet, Curly!”

  A little ways farther, and he’d be able to peek over the top.

  What he found was a big man standing just back from the rim. A man with a deer rifle, a man with a face hard like an anvil and unshaven. A jeep was parked three or four hundred yards away, back by the corral.

  “Thought you were pretty smart, didn’t you?” The man’s voice was hoarse and pitiless.

  Clay didn’t say anything. All his hopes were dust. Clay stood up and came over the rim, looked around. There was no one but Barlow.

  “The sheriff wouldn’t stick with it,” Barlow sneered. “I knew you were out here somewhere. Your uncle’s a rodeo cowboy, that’s all he is. I was born out here.”

  Down the canyon, Uncle Clay had his back turned and wasn’t seeing this. He was in the same crouched position. Should he shout to his uncle? Would Barlow shoot? Would Uncle Clay run even if he could?

  Uncle Clay wouldn’t run with me up here, Clay realized. There’s nothing I can do. It’s all over.

  “Look, Mr. Barlow, why don’t you just let him go? He never hurt you, I mean, not you personally.”

  The man snorted in disgust, and then squinted down the canyon. “What’s he doing over there? He’s been in that same spot for fifteen minutes.”

  “Visiting her grave,” Clay said quietly.

  “Whose grave?” Barlow’s voice was harsher than ever.

  “Don’t you remember? When he came to you to get horses, and his wife was sick? You said she’d just eaten too much frybread, or something like that? Don’t you remember?”

  Clay saw confusion in Barlow’s face at first, and then the memory coming back.

  “They think her appendix burst. She died out here.”

  “I never knew that,” Barlow said roughly. “I never heard that from anybody.”

  “He never talks about it,” Clay said. “I learned it from the Navajos.”

  Barlow stared a long time down the canyon at the man under the rimrock. Then his hard features slackened as the hatred seemed to leave his eyes for a moment. “I’ll tell you what, kid … ,” Barlow said finally, still looking down the canyon. “Just get him out of here … just get him out of here for good.”

  The man turned suddenly on his heel and walked away.

  For a moment Clay almost said thanks. No, it was better to say nothing. Even to Uncle Clay, he’d say nothing of what had happened here.

  Hurry him down to the river, today. The sheriff might still come looking.

  “Now that we’ve left tracks in this canyon, let’s just skedaddle,” Uncle Clay said. His eyes were bright and shining but the dust on his cheeks showed the passage of tears. “This is the start of Coyote Canyon. If we keep moving all day, I believe we can cross the river yet this afternoon.”

  “Fine with me,” Clay said. “Let’s make tracks, Uncle Clay. Let’s make tracks, Curly. I told Russell Yazzie I was going to come back and see him one day—wait till he finds out how soon!”

  “A couple days of hard riding and we’ll be there. I can smell that wooly mutton roasting from here.”

  “And I’m going to have a decent present to give my friend.”

  “What’s that?”

  “His horse back!”

  They dropped into a deeper and deeper canyon. They rode under a natural bridge and they rode under Lobo Arch.

/>   They rode under hanging gardens of ferns and red wildflowers, and dripping springs so convenient they stuck out their mouths and drank from horseback. When they reached the canyon of the Escalante they turned downstream along its sandy shallows.

  Past the mouth of Davis Canyon they rode, and Clay remembered a cloudburst and a burro being born. All the while he was scanning the rims a thousand feet above, looking for a girl waving where he guessed she’d be. Soon they’d leave her country and his heart would be left behind as well.

  Between the sheer red walls they rode, between the waving willows at the Escalante’s edge. No cloudburst coming today. The sky was as blue as the walls were red and the willows were green. “Bik’é Hozhoni,” he said aloud.

  “Yes, sir,” his uncle agreed. “On the beautiful trail we go.”

  “Just a couple of miles to the river,” Clay said, looking up to the rims. “We aren’t safe yet.”

  At last, the coffee-and-cream Colorado. They reined their horses in, and his uncle reached over and shook his hand. “I’ll never forget it, Clay. And what do you keep looking up for, anyway?”

  “Oh, I’m just checking out the canyon. It sure is deep.” In fact, it was so deep he couldn’t see up to the Escalante’s rims. Even if she was up there he wouldn’t see her.

  Uncle Clay said it was important to rest the horses before the big swim across the river. They rested too, lying on the riverbank without speaking, thinking about all that had happened. Curly nestled his head against Clay’s shoulder and sighed, then closed his eyes.

  Just as Clay was thinking the horses must be rested enough and they shouldn’t wait any longer, Curly lifted his head and looked around ominously. The tiny dog’s brown ears were standing straight up. Clay listened too and thought he heard something, listened again.

  At first it sounded far off, like the ocean in a conch shell. Strangely, it was building fast. Clay reached for his hat and got to his feet. Uncle Clay was hearing it too, and he was alarmed.

  The sound was swelling, like the Pacific during a storm. In the time it took for Clay to scoop Curly up and turn toward the mustang, the roar was rushing his way, sounding more like a colossal torrent of hailstones, and it seemed to be coming at them off the Escalante’s walls.