Stone Hand
Page 22
They rode out of the reservation toward the hills. As they passed the trading post, he paused for a brief moment to look at the grotesque monument atop a lone pole near the hitching post. As he stared at it, the wind caught in a hollow of the already badly decomposed head, turning it slightly on the pole so that the vacant eye sockets came to rest on Jason. He felt a chill run the length of his spine. It was not fear. Jason didn’t fear anything that was dead. It went deeper than that. Stone Hand had touched Jason’s soul with a cold finger.
He was unaware that he was still staring at the disembodied head until Magpie touched his arm lightly. “All right,” he said, nudging his horse with his heels. “Let’s go. I thought we’d let the little one say good-bye to his daddy.” Magpie replied something but she spoke too softly for him to hear. “What did you say?”
“I said, not Stone Hand’s baby,” she said, this time in her elementary English. “Baby white baby.”
He drew back sharply on the reins, pulling his horse up short. “What?” He moved over beside her and pulled the blanket away from the infant’s face. He stared hard at the child for really the first time ever. “Well, I’ll be damned…” He could not suppress a laugh. “After all this we went through, it ain’t even Stone Hand’s son.” Then he realized the significance of Magpie’s startling report. “So you and me are going off to Colorado territory with John Welch’s son.”
She nodded. The look on her face told him that she was chagrined that it took him so long to figure it out. “Our baby now.”
He smiled at her. “Our baby now,” he repeated. “It’s a start,” he added and urged the Appaloosa forward. After a few minutes, he looked back again and said, “We’ve got to find you a new name. You’re too damned pretty to be called Magpie.”
Her face was aglow. “How about Jason Coles’ wife?”
“That ain’t bad but maybe we can come up with something shorter.”
CHARLES WEST lives in Blacksburg,
Virginia. Stone Hand is his first novel.