“O’Reilly,” said the man, “James O’Reilly,” and he felt an unexpected frisson run though his body at the sound of his own name on his lips. It had been many weeks since he’d thought of himself as “O’Reilly” and even longer since he’d thought of himself by his full name. In many ways his journey to Hideaway had been much more than physical.
He’d thought that Jim O’Reilly had died with Sarah and Kay-Tee, back before the influenza, before the APZs and the secret. That O’Reilly had died in a car crash one night in January, four years ago, when a drunk driver lost control of his car and ran the silver Toyota Camry off the road where it plunged over a cliff to explode in flames at the bottom. That O’Reilly hadn’t stood a chance, although he’d been sixty miles away at the time of the accident.
At least he’d thought that Jim O’Reilly died. But then there was that band of ghosts up by Oatman.
He’d believed in the governmental line that ghosts were traitors and they needed to be rounded up or terminated. But that band of ghosts was just a couple of families, trying to make it on their own. One was a little girl of ten or so. The squad destroyed them nonetheless. That night haunted him.
Then, before he had a chance to repair the cracks in his emotional fortress, he met that girl, Christina, at the Laughlin APZ, where he’d been assigned after balking and defying orders on the night of the “exorcism,” the term the Enforcers gave their anti-ghost operations.
This girl was so smart, so brave. Even though she had brown hair and blue eyes, he saw in her his flame haired, green eyed ten-year-old Kay-Tee, questioning everything, wanting to know how everything worked, and carrying an undying faith in the invincibility of her father. In meeting Christina, the Jim O’Reilly he’d thought dead and buried, and whom he really didn’t want to reincarnate, started to reemerge anyway. Now, back in Hideaway, in the land where he grew up, that Jim O’Reilly was ready to take back his life.
“Okay, Mr. O’Reilly,” said the woman, now completely in control of herself. Afraid, yes, but unbelievably in control. A flush stained her cheek and her green eyes glittered in defiance, head held rigidly upright on her slender neck. “It’s obvious that you’re an Enforcer, unless you attacked one and stole his shirt and weapon. Are you here to take us in to the APZ? I warn you, we worked too hard to get here. Unless you have a lot more help out there than it appears, you’ll have trouble getting us to leave with you.
“Really,” the woman continued, “It would make much more sense to leave us here. After all, the APZs are crowded, supplies are short, and we’re not interfering with anyone out here. What does it matter if we’re living here on our own.” Her words began to speed up as if to fill in the vacuum left by his silence.
Suddenly, he made his decision, set his rifle on the table next to the door, walked over and pulled out a chair at the table across from the pair. Seated, he placed both hands on the table and looked both the woman, who’d grown silent when he made his move, and the boy in the eyes, one at a time.
“You have nothing to worry about. I don’t intend to do anything with you.”
“Oh, yeah?” replied the woman, looking quickly at her son then back at O’Reilly, eyes narrowed. “Then may I ask why you were standing in my doorway a moment ago, holding a gun and looking as though you were about to call the wrath of the so-called government down upon our heads?”
“No, I know how it looks, but I’m not an Enforcer any longer. I’ve left that life and I want nothing more than to be left in peace.”
“Well, don’t let us stop you,” she replied acerbically. “Enjoy your trip to wherever it was you were heading. It was a pleasure meeting you... and your gun.” There was a snort of strangled laughter from the boy, which earned him a glare from his mother. The man took his eyes from the woman’s face for a second and glanced at the boy whose features had taken on a redder hue. He’d clapped his hand over his mouth as though trying to hold in either more laughter, or an additional comment.
“Actually,” O’Reilly said, attempting a smile that felt foreign to his face, “this was where I was heading. Hideaway Camp. What I’d like to know is who are you and how did you and your son find this place? It’s not exactly in the guidebooks of five star resorts in Arizona.”
There was a brief silence as the woman pondered the wisdom of revealing their names, which was interrupted by the boy.
“I’m Mark Langton.”
“Mark ...,” the woman started.
“And this is my mother Maggie Langton. She writes stories for magazines and stuff and learned...”
“Mark!”
“What, Mom?”
“I’m not sure how much I trust Mr. O’Reilly, or how much we should be telling him about ourselves,” the woman, whose name was apparently Maggie, stated, looking over O’Reilly again, obviously appraising the expression she found on his face and trying to decide whether or not he was telling the truth.
“I can assure you that I’m being honest to you when I say that I’m not here to cause you any trouble. But I’m not just passing through,” he asserted quietly, in that soft gravely voice that drew so much attention.
“Wait just a minute...,” Maggie started to bluster.
“I was brought up around here. I spent a great deal of time in this camp as a child, and I headed here with the intention of making it my home.” He smiled again at her and the boy.
“When I saw that someone was already here, I had to rethink my plan a bit, since I figured I’d be out here on my own, but I’d guess that there’s room for three. It might even make things easier, sharing the work and all.”
He could see Maggie gritting her teeth, as though the taste of what he said was bitter beyond belief. He waited for her next shot, figuring that she wouldn’t give in that easily.
“Mark,” the woman finally said, “Would you please go out and check on Jenny and Lizzie.”
“But...”
“Mark, I need to talk to Mr. O’Reilly alone for awhile and I’d like you to go out and make sure that Jenny and Lizzie are okay. Just hang out in the barn until I call you.”
“Alright, I guess,” Mark hesitated, then started to get up from his seat and head for the door.
“Mark,” O’Reilly said.
Mark turned back, “Yeah?”
“My horses are over behind the barn, tied to the hitching rail. Would you be so good as to take them in, unsaddle them and turn them into that side pen with water while you’re out there?” Then a “Wait” to the woman as she started to interrupt.
Mark hesitated, looked at his mother, and then as she subsided into her seat, face grim, he nodded. “Okay, Mr. O’Reilly. Wha... what should I do with your stuff?”
“Just leave it in the barn, I’ll come out and get it later.”
With another look at his mother, and a whistle to the dogs, Mark opened the door and headed out into the moonlit night.
Once Mark was gone, and the door was shut behind him, O’Reilly turned back to the woman. “What was it that you wanted to say without the boy?”
“I’m going to be straight with you,” Maggie said, eyes unflinching and chin uplifted, giving her whole face a defiant demeanor. “It has been hard here. Mark and I don’t have a lot of experience in this ‘living off the land’ thing, but if you think you’re going to move in here and take advantage of the work we’ve done, and collect some fringe benefits on the side, you’ve got another thing coming.”
“The fact is, lady...” he could see her start to rise again to the bait of his sarcastic use of the word “lady.”
“The fact is, lady, it’s perfectly obvious, even in the short time I’ve been watching, that you and the boy don’t have the foggiest idea how to make a living out here.” He paused, looking on as Maggie struggled with her temper.
“Your animals are fed adequately for now, but you’re putting too many cows in a pasture that won’t hold them for long. The horses’ feet are in desperate need of attention. You can’t just put shoes on a horse and
leave them, so I’m guessing that you took those animals from someone who was dead, and brought them out here, not realizing that the shoes aren’t a permanent addition.
“I’ve watched you ride for several days, now, and how you’ve managed to avoid being killed, I’ll never know. Hell, I figure even if you make it through the summer down here, the winter will put an end to that. You’ve got very little food in your pantry...”
“We’ll have the beef from the cows! And the milk! And the garden!” she interrupted sharply.
“Yeah, there’s the garden, and you actually might be one of those women who knows how to put up food without creating a botulism farm. And, you’ve got the beef, if you actually know how to use that gun, and to dress out the meat. But as far as milk goes, were you aware that cow of yours needs to be bred again and have a calf to keep milking? No? I didn’t think so,” he said seeing the look of surprise on her face.
“The thing is this. Three can make it here probably as easily as two, especially since only one of those three, me, knows exactly what’s involved with living on a camp in the middle of nowhere. And, as far as ‘fringe benefits’ are concerned, I don’t take nothing from a woman that she don’t want to give.” He held up his hand as he saw Maggie start to interrupt again. “I’ll take the third room, and I’ll teach you and your boy what’s involved in making a living out here. If it doesn’t work out, then we’ll figure out how else things can be arranged.” His voice grew deeper and more serious. “But, I warn you, I don’t intend to leave, and considering how things are going out in the ‘civilized’ world, I think making things work here with me is your best option.”
He stopped talking, and watched Maggie evaluate her options. He could tell from the expressions that flitted across her face that she didn’t like the corner she found herself in, but that she also didn’t see an easy way out. Finally she took a deep breath, and looked at him again.
“Fine,” she said in a cold sarcastic voice. “We accept your most gracious offer...”
He choked on a surprise burst of laughter, a sound he hadn’t heard from his throat in, what, years? God, she had guts this one.
“As I said,” she continued, bestowing on him a glare fit to char the meat off an elephant, “We accept your offer, on the condition that we’re equal partners in this undertaking, and all decisions are made between the two of us. Mark and I are not your slaves to boss about.”
He frowned, “There are a lot of things you don’t know about life out here, things may need to be done and you wouldn’t realize the importance of them...”
“Equal partners,” she maintained firmly. “You seem like an intelligent, well spoken man, even if you are impressed with yourself a bit much.” Again he felt the uprush of that unexpected laughter.
“I figure you can explain to me the importance of any actions that need to be taken. And I, being a moderately well educated woman, even if, as you say, completely lacking in survival skills, a point I’ll debate with you later, will listen to you and make my judgement.
Dazed by this last convoluted argument, O’Reilly agreed to the partnership, wondering at the same time how he’d lost control of the situation. He wasn’t used to losing his position of power when dealing with others. Sarah had been the only one who could run circles around him that thoroughly, and this woman certainly wasn’t his sweet, quiet Sarah.
After agreeing to the formation of the new partnership, O’Reilly excused himself from the table, stating his intention of gathering his belongings and letting Mark know that he could come back to the house. On his way out to the barn he smiled to himself suddenly. Judging from tonight’s encounter, the first battle of wits might, in some lights, be considered a draw, though he wasn’t quite positive about that. It seemed the next few months would get more interesting than he’d originally figured.
7
The next morning the loud banging of pots and pans startled Maggie fr
om a deep, troubled sleep, where navy uniformed Enforcers were marching her into a cell and interrogating her while holding a chicken over her head. Dragging herself from bed she opened the door of her room to find O’Reilly pouring milk though a clean piece of cheesecloth into several large containers. Mark was at the kitchen table stirring what appeared to be batter of some type, and Jack and Gypsy, the two dogs, appeared to be in a quandary over which human could be the most expected to produce spills needing to be cleaned up.
Upon hearing her door open, O’Reilly glanced in her direction, looking her up and down as she stood framed in the doorway, wearing the old Minnie Mouse pajamas that Mike had bought her as a joke the last time they went to Disney Land. “I’ve just got this thing about mice, I guess” he’d laughed when he’d presented them to her. “Squeak, squeak,” she’d answered him.
When she and Mark had packed to run away, she just couldn’t stand to leave the silly things behind. She had to leave so many other mementoes. Though, when she thought about it, Mark was the best memento of her husband that she could possibly have.
Pulling herself back to the here and now, she returned O’Reilly’s look, seeing him for the first time dressed in boots, jeans, and a blue work shirt covering a white t-shirt. He’d found a bunch of worn clothes in storage in the empty bunk room last night and helped himself. He told Maggie that frequently cowboys would leave things like this at the camp so that if someone got stuck here in a storm they would have dry clothes to wear. The pantry was also left provisioned with a week’s or month’s worth of dry goods for the same reason.
Yawning and rubbing her hands over her sleep tousled hair to cover her discomfort at O’Reilly’s scrutiny, Maggie asked, “What time is it?”
O’Reilly looked back down at the bucket in his hands. “5:30 or thereabouts, as if it makes a difference,” he replied. “The cow’s milked, calf’s fed. Mark here is getting breakfast ready so you’ve got around fifteen minutes to get dressed before food’s on the table.”
Maggie bristled at his offhand approach, but she caught his meaning. He didn’t intend to give orders as though she worked for him, but he made it clear that a cowboy’s life started early in the day. It probably irked him that he had to restrain his comments since he was obviously a man accustomed to giving orders.
She nodded her understanding and stepped back into her room, closing the door behind her. Searching for jeans and a shirt, Maggie thought ruefully that she and Mark had been under the belief that they’d been working hard, but apparently they’d been slacking off by rancher’s standards, rising late, dawdling through the chores without a set schedule. Apparently they were about to be indoctrinated into the agricultural lifestyle good and proper, and she wasn’t quite sure how she felt about it.
Less than ten minutes later Maggie reemerged from her room, clothed and brushed, to find Mark at the stove while O’Reilly instructed him with moderate success how to flip the pancakes without throwing them on the floor or into the fire.
Mark looked back at his mother as she passed through the room on the way to the outer door, heading for the outhouse. The ten-year-old grinned and waved his spatula at her.
“Breakfast in five minutes. If you’re late I’ll feed it to the dogs,” he called. The two dogs sitting at a respectful distance with tongues lolling and eyes avid indicated that the threat might be more than idle.
“No worries, kiddo, unless I fall in, in which case I don’t care about the pancakes, just bring a rope,” Maggie joked back as she opened the front door and stepped out into the fresh morning air.
Later, after enjoying a breakfast of pancakes with fresh butter and drizzled in honey that O’Reilly fished out of one of his packs, Maggie and O’Reilly headed outside to begin the day’s labor, while Mark settled in to work on his school assignments. When O’Reilly heard about the morning’s plans for Mark, he looked curiously at Maggie, but chose not to make any comments regarding the issue. Maggie caught the look, but refused to justify herself at that time.
On the way to the barn O�
��Reilly insisted that one of the first things that needed to be taken care of was to trim the feet of Maggie’s four horses.“I’m stuck in a bit of a dilemma here,” O’Reilly confided. “These horses have never had to make it out in the rocks, so their feet are soft. They depend on their shoes. The problem is that we don’t have a supply of shoes any longer, so these horses are going to have to get used to going barefoot.”
“What’s wrong with that?” questioned Maggie.
“Well, there’s nothing wrong with that,” O’Reilly said, matter of factly, “It’s just that they’re going to be awfully sore footed for awhile. Think about when you were a kid and it finally warmed up in the spring so that you could go without shoes. How did it feel?”
Maggie winced at the memory. “Does that mean they can’t be ridden?” she questioned.
“They can be ridden, but at the beginning they won’t be able to be ridden much.” At Maggie’s worried look O’Reilly went on to assure her, “It’s okay, their feet will toughen up just like yours did, but it will take awhile; months or more, before they’re really rock footed.” O’Reilly nodded to emphasize what he was saying. “Also, we’ll be able to save the shoes we do have, so that if there’s an emergency and we have to take them out for longer, I can slap a set of shoes on for the trip, then pull them off again when we’re done. We’ll get more use out of them that way.”
“Okay,” agreed Maggie, still not sure. “But what about your horses?”
“I caught these horses up off a ranch near Laughlin after I left the APZ. They’d been running out on the range and weren’t shod already. Their feet will be fine as long as I keep knocking off any long bits. They’re used to making it in the rocks out here. Not like your horses. They’re city horses and have never had to make a living in a spot where the feed isn’t brought to them.” He looked out of the corner of his eye at Maggie, “Sort of like some people I know.”
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