A Taste of Heaven (23 page)

Listening to him, her chest had grown tight
again. “Maybe it's a way of telling me that Charlie was a kind,
good-hearted man.”

He turned and gave her a pleased smile, as
though grateful that she understood. “Yes, Miss Libby, I expect it
is.”

After she retrieved Charlie's blanket to give
to Joe, she put together a quick meal of bacon and fried potatoes
while Possum Cooper and Noah Bradley volunteered to dig the
grave.

Even though the men hadn't eaten since the
day before, breakfast was somber and orderly, and the group around
the campfire very quiet. Death and exhaustion had silenced their
good-natured bantering. Now and then, she lifted her gaze to the
distant boulder and saw Tyler still crouched next to Charlie. No
one intruded on his solitude.

When Rory came to get his food, he gazed
blankly at the plate she offered him.

“Miss Libby, no offense, ma'am, I ain't
really hungry. Tyler says I have to eat, but I don't want
anything.”

Pale as snow and despondent, his misery was
so obvious that Libby's heart ached for him. The Lodestar seemed to
be the only family he had, and Charlie had been his hero. She knew
he'd take his death hard. She patted his arm.

“He's right, Rory,” she agreed, putting back
most of the potatoes and half the bacon. “But I think he just wants
you to eat a little.”

He took the plate and glanced across the
flat, untimbered range at the hole Noah and Possum had dug for
Charlie's final resting place. Two shovels were stuck in the pile
of dirt they'd excavated.

“I wish they could've found a tree to put him
under—you know, so he wouldn't have the weather beatin' down on him
year after year. A man ought not to have to spend the rest of
eternity bein' frozen and rained on.”

“He prob—” Libby cleared her tight throat,
“he won't mind, Rory,” she said just over a whisper. He hung his
head for a moment, then nodded and scuffed away with the dragging
steps of an old man.

Tyler didn't follow his own advice about
eating. When he came to Libby, he took only coffee. “We'll be
having the funeral in a few minutes. Do we have enough cups to go
around?” His face still wore its faint gray cast. In some ways he
looked worse than Rory—the hint of emotion that he'd shown earlier
was under firm control again, but she sensed that it required
considerable effort to keep it there.

“Yes, shall I make another pot of coffee?”
she asked.

He shook his head. “Just make sure everyone
has a cup.”

Several minutes later, with the exception of
a couple of men who held the herd, the Lodestar crew assembled to
bid farewell to one of their own. They gathered in a semicircle
around the grave in which Charlie had been laid. Libby stood
between Rory and Kansas Bob Wegner.

Each of them held a tin cup as they waited
for Tyler, their hats removed and their shifting feet stilled under
the morning sun. It was the first time she'd seen them bareheaded
as a group. No one spoke. The only sound to be heard besides the
far-off bleating of the cattle was the wind in the grass. She kept
her eyes averted from the bottom of the grave; it was too similar
to her experience with Ben just a few weeks earlier. Feeling her
eyes well up again, she reached into her apron pocket for her
handkerchief.

Down the line, she saw Noah Bradley staring
at Charlie's blanket-wrapped body, looking grief-stricken and
remorseful.

Finally, Tyler rode up to the graveside. The
smudges under his eyes were noticeable even from where she stood,
and his face mirrored his exhaustion. But still, he was so handsome
she couldn't help but stare at him. He dismounted and reached into
his saddle-bag for a bottle of whiskey. Walking around to face the
semicircle, he put the bottle down at his feet, then let his gaze
rest on each face.

When he spoke, his voice had an unhurried,
intimate tone, as though he were talking to each of them
individually.

“Charlie Ryerson worked at the Lodestar for
seven years. He was always cheerful, brave, and helpful. His life
ended before it should have because his luck ran out first. But he
always did the best he could, and it was an honor to know him. He
was a good cowboy, and a good friend, too. I'm going to miss
him.”

A couple of bandannas came out of back
pockets as his words rolled over the Montana prairie, carried away
on the wind.

He picked up the whiskey bottle. “All of you
know I don't hold with drinking on the trail. Hardly any cattleman
does. But burying a friend is a damned hard thing to do, and I
don't think any of you would object to drinking to Charlie's
memory.” He scanned the circle, stopping at Libby and Rory. “That
includes both of you.”

He handed the bottle to Joe, who poured a
measure into his tin cup and passed it along. When it reached
Kansas Bob, he poured a sip for Libby and a full drink for
Rory.

At last the whiskey made its way back to
Tyler and he gave himself a healthy share Then he extended his cup,
and the rest raised theirs.

In the distance, a lone bird twittered.

“Some people die in their beds, but Charlie,
you died doing a man's job, and doing it well. Now we're going to
put you into the arms of the land you loved. I hope you find tall
grass and good water.” His voice grew rough with emotion and he
paused. “You were one of the best.”

Tyler bolted the whiskey in one swallow.
Around the circle, the men followed suit. The silence was
punctuated with a few coughs and gasps. Libby wrinkled her nose at
the strong smell, but the occasion seemed to warrant drinking the
thin layer of liquid fire at the bottom of her cup. She let it
trickle into her mouth and tried to swallow before she tasted much
of it.

Imitating Tyler, Rory gulped his, then
coughed until she thought he would choke. She clapped him on the
back until he got his breath.

Then, one by one, each of them filed past the
grave and threw in a handful of dirt. When Rory's turn came, he
froze, the mud clenched in his fist.

“Mr. Hollins is right, Rory,” Kansas Bob said
in low voice. His usually rosy face had gone quite pale. “Burying a
friend is one of the hardest things a man can do. It takes a lot of
grit. And that's what you are today—a man.”

Libby watched to see if Kansas Bob's words
would make the youngster feel better, but his chin still trembled.
His effort to hold back his tears was obvious. “I sure don't feel
like a man. I wish I could wake up and find out this is all just a
bad dream.”

Tyler, who'd been watching this, stepped
forward and took Rory out of line. His tired face was shadowed with
concern.

“I need you to do a favor for me,” he said in
a confidential tone. Rory stared at the gaping hole with wide eyes
and said nothing. Tyler put a hand on the back of his neck and
gently turned him away. “Rory, listen to me, now. I need you to
escort Miss Libby to camp. I can't go with her because I have to
finish up here and Joe needs to see to the herd. We don't want to
make her walk back all by herself—it wouldn't be right. So could
you take her?” He looked for Libby over the boy's head.

She stepped forward. “I'd really appreciate
your company, Rory. This is a bad day for me.”

He wouldn't meet her eyes, but he turned and
offered her his arm, the dirt from Charlie's grave still clamped in
his hand. His voice suddenly sounded much older than his years.
“It's a bad day for all of us. Come on, Miss Libby, I'll walk you
back.”

As he led her away, Libby saw Tyler leaning
on one of the shovel handles, considering her. She thought he
looked for all the world like a man who'd just seen his own life go
by.

*~*~*

After the night they'd all had, and this
morning's sorrow, Tyler decided to make it a short day. He rode
ahead to choose the night campground, while Joe stayed back with
the herd and took over Charlie's place at the point.

Tyler rode alone. He wanted some time to
think, to be by himself. Feeling as though he hadn't slept in a
year, he kept a slack grip on the reins and let his horse find its
own way. In the void, his thoughts turned to things that had
happened in the last day or so. The image of Charlie's lonely grave
out there on the grassland behind them kept returning to his mind.
He'd helped Noah fill it in and ended up doing most of the work
himself. Noah had become so unraveled he could only push feebly at
the dirt with his shovel while he swiped at his streaming eyes with
the back of his hand.

When a man lost someone, he was inclined to
think of all the things he wished he'd said and done for that
person, and felt guilty for any petty human grievance or grudge
he'd ever held. That's what was bothering Noah. And Tyler's
conscience pecked at him for the day he'd embarrassed Charlie in
front of Libby Ross.

He shouldn't have told her the story about
the afternoon Charlie and Noah had spent upstairs at the Big
Dipper. He knew he'd done it on purpose. He'd been highly annoyed
when his top hand appeared to be setting his sights on Libby, and
he'd had no reason to be. At least no reason he'd been willing to
admit to. Now he wasn't so sure.

Losing a friend also made a man prone to
review the regrets of his own life. Tyler was no stranger to
disappointment and grief, although he'd learned to shut them out.
But in many ways, that left him with not much more than the icy
shell that encased his heart. Libby, with her scent of flowers and
vanilla, her modest blushes and her courage, had warmed the shell
in a way that Callie, all fire and proud brassiness, could not.

When he'd held Libby in his arms last night
and kissed her, it took every bit of self-control he had to keep
from pulling the blanket away from her and burying his face in her
breasts. He'd wanted to make love to her, hot and sweet, to join
his body with hers, to fall asleep in her arms. He didn't make love
with Callie. He satisfied a physical need. Oh, he wouldn't for a
minute say that he didn't enjoy it. But a hunger in his soul was
left wanting by their encounters.

Tugging on his hat brim, he kicked his horse
into a trot through the buffalo grass, driven by the urge to be
near Libby. Not to touch her or kiss her—though he couldn't forget
how good that had felt; her soft body in his arms, her lips under
his, moist, warm. No, right now he just wanted to be around her, to
look up from his shaving mirror and see her rolling out pie crust
or stirring beans. He was beginning to realize how good that felt,
too. He was setting himself up for trouble, and he knew it. But,
God, it had been such a lousy day . . . 

He spotted the chuck wagon sitting on a
gentle rise up ahead. Yellow flowers bloomed in the grass around
it, and he wondered why that wagon made him feel as though he'd
come home. Maybe because
she
made it seem that way—

He pulled on the reins and slowed his horse.
Goddamn it, but he was getting all sappy and soft, he thought
crossly, and tried to derail the contemplations. It was just
because he was tired. A decent night's sleep would help get this
weight of gloom off his shoulders.

Riding toward the chuck wagon, he continued
to scold himself. He should count himself lucky that a lightning
bolt hadn't sent him to an early grave. So his soul was
unsatisfied—so he was scared sometimes, and lonely most of the
time, and weary of the burdens he carried by himself—well, so what?
Life was hard but it went on.

Yeah, life went on, but now and then it left
unlucky ones behind, buried on green bluffs in a mahogany coffin,
or quilt-wrapped in a windswept prairie grave. It could happen to
anyone.

It could happen to him.

*~*~*

When Libby and Rory arrived at the night
camp, he went about his usual routine to stake the rope corral and
dig the fire pit. But she was concerned about him. She watched him
from her spot at the drop-leg worktable as she cut lard into flour
for pie crusts. He was still chalk-pale, and his movements were as
listless as those of a sleepwalker. And though she didn't expect
him to be his customary outgoing self, it worried her that he'd
stopped speaking altogether. As soon as the coffee was boiling, she
called him to the back of the chuck box.

“Rory, have some coffee and a biscuit. You've
hardly eaten today.”

Obediently, he came and took the cup she held
out to him. When she looked at him, her heart contracted. His
freckles stood out in stark contrast to his pallor, and he gazed
back at her with an uncomprehending hurt. The wind ruffled his
sandy hair, and at that moment he seemed very young.

She wiped her hands on her apron. “I think
I'll take a break myself. Do you want to sit down with me over
here?”

He only nodded and followed her to the side
of the wagon where Libby had put Tyler's keg. She sat, and he sank
down on the ground next to her, staring into his cup.

Suddenly he looked up at her, and his pale
mask cracked. “Miss Libby, I keep askin' myself why that lightning
bolt hit Charlie, instead of a stupid cow, or the saddle band, or
the ground. But I can't figure it out.”

“I don't think there are answers to those
questions,” she said. “Maybe that's why accidents like Charlie's
are so hard for us to accept.”

*~*~*

When Tyler got to cow camp the fire was
going, and he smelled biscuits in the Dutch oven, but he found
neither Libby nor Rory. Dismounting, he walked around to the chuck
box and paused.

Tyler saw Libby sitting on an overturned keg
down by the front wheel. In the afternoon sun, her hair gleamed in
shades of ripe wheat and whiskey, lifted by the breeze to fly
around her shoulders. Sitting on the ground next to her was Rory.
Tyler heard the tremor in the boy's voice.

“One minute he was alive, just doin' his job,
tryin' to save the herd. Then come dawn I found him out in the
grass—f-face down with that burned h-hole in the back of his
shirt.”