by John Larison
I thought at once to warn him of what the Governor had said to me about the cash stolen in the New Moon Heist, the only robbery more famous than Telluride. “The Pinkertons have the serials on the bills you stole from the train. They been tracking your movements. You got to stop spending them bills.”
I saw his teeth glint. “Ah, robbing that train! I hope the Lord gives us another chance like that, sis. I’d like to show you how we do it. A lot to think through. You’d be impressed.”
“But the serials? I heard it straight from the Governor.”
He swatted the notion aside. “We traded that cash for gold six days later. The Pinkertons is likely right now swarming a saloon in Arizona.”
“You know about the serials?”
“The Lord keeps me apprised.”
I looked on my brother smoking his cigarette. He was a big man now, but those eyes was the same that used to ponder our lake and the mountains beyond.
“Why always hit the Governor?” I asked. “You got some special beef with him in particular?”
Noah looked at me like I was dim. “He’s the one who swings the hammer in this country, sis. By now that man got ownership over just about every satchel of gold in the Rockies. He owns the land. He owns the houses. He owns most the cattle. Someday he’ll probably own the horses too and rent those back like he do the houses to the men he pays to run his cattle over his land. See, the Governor is in the man business. He eats up men for a living. True though, the rail lines ain’t his, about the only thing. But we hit those too. Those rail barons? They make the Governor look small time. Back east money, got me? They’s the real kings. Gold enough to fill an ocean. All this out here? Just a trickle running downhill.”
Noah rested his elbows on the table. “Did Pa learn of all the good I done . . . before?”
I knew my brother wanted it honest. “He never spoke of it. Pa quit going to town.”
“Well, he knows now. That’s for sure. He knows more than even us.”
There come footsteps and the door opened and in come Jane. Noah rose to greet her, and I took up my hat and stubbed the remains of my smoke.
“Stay!” Jane said.
But I thanked her and took my leave. My brother had his own house now, and in it I was a guest.
* * *
—
I stepped outside and into Annette’s hard glare. She was splitting wood across the yard near a cabin set off from the rest. She spat. Her eyes left me to balance a round and then she stepped back and swung the ax with force enough to send a quarter of pine end over end. The clap echoed from the rock walls.
She knocked back her hat and looked on me again and this time she didn’t flinch, ax in hand.
Between us the children was playing a game in the last of the sun. The light turned their marbles to beads of water, rolling over the dust but never sliding through. I thought of the lake back home, and that put me in the mood for a long view.
I climbed a thin trail along the rock until my lungs burned, and broke out onto the flat rim hundreds of feet above the earth. They had built rock walls along the edge with firing ports to allow careful shots without exposing the shooter. Crates of ammunition was stacked in the lee of the rocks. There was boxes of canned beans and pickled meat too. A drum to catch rainwater. A couple of the boys was sharing tobacco and watching downvalley, rifles over their laps.
I sat in the sun and removed my hat. The whole world was below me. Swallows shot by beneath. I longed for whiskey.
Wasn’t long before I heard my brother’s voice. “Knew I’d find you here. You and that mare of yours always took to the high spots.” He crossed the top and sat beside me. That he’d chosen me over Jane stirred something deep within.
“Didn’t figure you’d come looking for me.”
“Jane understands what it means to miss your sister.”
“I didn’t reckon I’d find you married.”
He laughed. “You and me both, sis.”
He said he heard Jane before he ever saw her. “We was riding toward a rail town on the Union Pacific line, and it was near dark, and the spring light was purple over the green grass. Ah, sis. The horizon was orange with strips of crimson—storms way out in the far yonder. Coming across that was a woman’s voice. Lord. Her voice. I swear, an angel’s harkening. The cranes was dancing to it. Pure holy. We was married a month on.”
“Her voice ain’t from out west.”
“No. She’s got a long story, that one. My kind of woman.”
A pair of rock doves swooped to a perch on the rain drum. They watched us. They was but ten paces away. They dipped their heads under the water and threw it over their bodies and quivered it through their feathers. They looked on us, then did it again. The wind passed overhead and the sounds of birds on the wing come like bursts of gale through rope.
When Noah spoke next, his voice had taken a turn for the dark. “Tell me honest.”
“Tell you what?”
“Did I break Pa with that blow?”
I shut my eyes to the light.
“Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. Did I break him?”
“Nah.”
“Lord forgive me for I am a sinner.”
“Pa forgave you. He didn’t hold no grudge.”
“Pa was all grudge.”
I drew a breath to defend our old man, but instead I let the silence remain.
Noah was looking over the water. “Thank you, Jess, for tending to him at the end. Should’ve said as much sooner. I am grateful for you. I have always been grateful for you.”
Those words soaked deep. “Pa wasn’t dim. Pa wasn’t no fool.”
Noah took off his hat. “You’re right. Pa was a sad man but not a fool. I trust you said a few words from me when you put him in the ground?”
“I didn’t say nothing. Wasn’t nobody to hear.”
“The Lord is always with us, Jess. Though I suspect He hears just the same in the language of the tongue or the heart. Just so long as Pa could spend eternity beside our mother.”
I watched the birds clean themselves. I watched as they lifted their heads and let their beaks touch.
“You did bury him beside Ma.”
“And how exactly was I to put him on a horse in that state?”
“You could’ve found somebody to help. The neighbor. What was his name? Saggat. Somebody. Jess, you didn’t bury him beside Ma?”
“He died a full day’s ride onto Indian land. He was worked over by critters by the time I got to him. I didn’t even ever find his right arm!” My voice had rose. “You ain’t seeing the proper picture in your mind. I was alone with him. What was left. You left me to tend to him alone.”
He put his hat back on and the brim cast his face in gray shadow. “All I ever done is walk the path the Lord laid. One brick at a time, I see it and I step.”
“Go back with me, brother. Let’s put it right. Let’s build up our home again, together. That’s what they would want, our folks.”
“Go back?”
“Don’t we owe it to them to make that place right?”
“Jess. There ain’t no going back for us. You’s as deep in this as me now. I guarantee you got a bounty on your head. You got to know there ain’t no going back for us.”
I looked to the ground. “What is we if not that spread?”
“Humble yourself, sister. Be His implement, not your own.” He touched his hand to my knee. “Think about it. He has delivered you here for a reason, hasn’t He?”
“You believe the Lord has delivered me?”
“Admit to yourself you felt the hand of God shepherding you to this moment. You can admit it.” He smiled on me with honest warmth.
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess. I feel it.”
“Oh, sis. I am so happy to see you! This is what they woul
d want. Us together, wherever that might be.”
I looked out at the land before us, at the blue sky and wisps of cloud. Above and below like two worlds divided at the horizon. My whole life had been spent watching that place where the two unite.
The birds took flight, and the water rippled and then went still, and there the sky shone back from what lies below.
And my brother slapped me on the back. “Come on now. Let’s shoot some, like old times. The Lord does love shooting or He wouldn’t have given us a surplus of lead and powder.”
I followed my brother to the edge, the whole vast desert before us. Way out in the distance like a gray mushroom was the haze of Pearlsville. I looked down and was breathless to see the sage as one plant. A leap from this height and you might take flight.
Noah withdrew a small red cube from his jacket pocket. “If Jane asks about this, let me do the talking.”
“Asks about what?”
“You shoot first. Get that pistol ready.” He checked over his shoulder to see that we was alone.
“Ain’t you gonna get ready, sister?”
“I am ready. What is that target in your hand?”
“Still a show-off, huh? You remember when you hit that yote at like a thousand yards with Pa’s rusty old Sharps?”
“Sure, it was my first bull’s-eye. But it wasn’t a thousand yards.”
“You let me take the credit, you remember?”
“I also let you take the blame,” I said.
Noah brought his finger to his ear. It was still scarred all these years later from that blow our pa had delivered with his pistol butt. “I’ve missed you, Jess. I mean that. There ain’t a day that’s gone by without a long thought of you.”
“You gonna throw that or what?”
He smiled. “But all right, you better not waste this. These ain’t easy to come by.” He threw that cube over the edge and it glittered red in the evening light. I drew and fired with routine calm. The cube become a flash of light the width of a wagon, and the noise knocked me back in surprise. Noah had thrown a piece of dynamite!
“Yip ha!” he shouted. His hat had been blown off and he drove a pinkie into his ear and wiggled it against the sudden deafness. “Nice shooting! Real smooth. You wasn’t lying about knowing a thing or two!”
I climbed up from the ground. I put my own hat back in place. “Next time at least warn me when we’s shooting dynamite.”
“But did you see that burst! Holy spirit! I swear I looked right into it! I’m blinded by the revelation!” My brother slapped my back and I stumbled toward the edge. “We’s gonna have some fun, you and me. I know it. We’s gonna do good together, in His name.”
The speed had me laughing. That boom was better than whiskey. “You know it, brother.”
“Here, here, you throw the next one. Don’t drop it. Serious, Jess.” Noah drew his pistol and worked the hammer, and the smile on his face was the same damn smile he’d had that afternoon years before when we stole Pa’s Sharps.
“The papers all say you is some miracle with a sidearm,” I said in jest. “Yet a real man remains holstered until the throw.”
“Them papers don’t lie. But what do you know about being a man?”
I tossed him a hard glare and spat. “Not much to know.”
This left him laughing. He slipped his pistol back in its holster. “All right, make it a good throw then.”
“Don’t miss. I’ll tell everybody I’m the faster Harney if you miss.”
“I don’t miss.”
“Ha!”
“Just throw it, Jess.”
I held the cube to the light. “Pa would’ve loved shooting these things.”
“Yes, I reckon you right on that score. For Pa then.”
“For Pa.” I threw that cube up off the edge and Noah drew, and it was as it had been before.
* * *
—
That night ended like all nights at Lord’s Rock, with music and dance. We ate supper and then wandered with lanterns toward the blazing fireplace and the sounds of strings tuning. Jane was skipping in her dress and the children come from their houses at the sight of her to ask after cookies. She pulled one after another from her pockets and soon a whole flock of the little beings was fluttering toward the fire in her lee.
Men and women alike was there with instruments. Eyes was shut to the light of this world and folks saw only with their sense of song. I heard a mandolin for the first time. I heard the emotions that could come from smart lips on a harmonica. But it was Annette’s banjo that seized my mind.
She sat in the firelight with her legs crossed and that banjo upon her thigh and her fingers running wild over them strings. How those fingers could move! All at once that hoarse voice of hers cut in and I could no longer keep still. She sang of white horses coming fast, and I was upon those horses.
I longed for Pa’s fiddle, but I was no match for these players. Jane took my hand and I joined the dancing.
A lantern was lit within Constance’s cottage. I saw the moment it went out. Jane saw it too. She said to me, “Poor girl. We should make an effort.”
“Doubt any effort could help,” I said.
“Only the Lord can help but we can be His hands.”
The music rose up through the peculiar shape of that rock and returned to us as a humming echo. Each of us heard it, I know. It sounded like a voice coming straight down upon us, the coos of a Maker to its chosen child.
In that place set to song it was easy to be sure.
* * *
—
I awoke the next morning early in my bedding on Noah and Jane’s floor and could not return to sleep. My body had grown used to the comforts of whiskey and without adequate supplies my sleep was thin and easily punctured. I dressed and stepped into the dimmest gray and looked upon the stars. The rock was a sewing frame to them and I imaged a needle passing its thread back and forth. A silver tear appeared on the velvet of Heaven and was healed again, quick as water.
When I come back inside Noah was getting ready for the day. Like Pa, he couldn’t sleep past dawn’s earliest glimmer.
“What you doing?” he whispered. He had the stove open and was setting splinters of pine to last night’s embers.
“Rolling up my bedding.”
He shut the stove and opened the flue and the wood set about popping. “No, I mean why you up?”
“I’m going with you. Wherever you’s going.”
“Not this time, Jess.”
Jane stirred awake and said while stretching, “Too early.”
“Go back to sleep, darling,” Noah said. “You too, sister.”
“I been hunting you for months. I ain’t letting you out of my sight now.”
Jane lit the lantern and yawned. “Let me whip up some eggs. You’ll need something to carry you through.”
“No need,” Noah said. “Stay in bed. Both of you.” He took his hat from its hook and placed it on his head. “Some hard business today.”
Jane and I shared a look. “Take your sister with you. She’s come all this way to join you.”
“Jane, I’ll ask when I need your counsel.”
I set my bedroll in the corner. “I ain’t no stranger to hard business, brother. And maybe today’s the day the Lord calls me in service of His plan.”
Noah’s jaw tightened. “Come on then. But you stay behind me, you hear?”
* * *
—
We met by lantern light near the pole barn. It was Annette and Youn and us. They was already saddled and had Noah’s Blackie tacked up too. Brother had told me Blackie was his lucky horse, had been with him since his first getaway. Now brother put his open hand to the animal’s nostrils and the darkness was filled with the sound of breath.
“What’s this?” Annette asked, pointing her chin at m
e.
“You best leave old Ingrid and take another,” Noah said. “Somebody fast.”
But I whistled anyhow and feet come thundering out of the aspens and into the common bay. I tacked Ingrid with a spare saddle, seeing as she come this whole way bareback. It was an old cavalry number, too much leather for my liking, but it would do.
Noah swung up on his mount. “Let’s get.” He gave Blackie the heels and in three bounds they was at full speed.
I followed at the rear and watched my brother’s strong back as the day broke and the sun threw mile-long shadows. He’d become a damn fine rider, well balanced and casual, a cattleman through and through. He was no stranger to covering rough terrain at speed, he led his animal with his hips. When down in the pines he ducked limbs rather than brushing them aside to keep them from swinging into me.
I don’t think I’ve ever been so gleeful in all my life as I was in that crystalline dawn, following my big brother down his mountain.
* * *
—
The air was still cool with morning when we come to a pair of buildings in the pines, a saloon and a whorehouse. It was just another outpost of sin in the wilderness. Them pines was tall and squirrels dropped cones from the treetops that bounced down the roof and to the earth.
Youn checked the stable. “Three, Boss, including his.”
Noah checked the loads in his pistol. “Good.”
We hitched our horses in the trees and Noah demanded I stay with them. He said, “Keep at that there back door. Don’t go shooting nobody but don’t let nobody go running off neither.”
I walked toward the building with them.
“What you doing?” he said.
“I’m a better inside man than out.”
Annette was smiling. “His Jane do what she pleases too.”
“Yes,” Noah confirmed. “I am surrounded by women who think they know better than me. Huh, Youn? What happened to the days when a woman listened to a man?”