No One But You (13 page)

He would have to start a list of additional things to have sent out when the man brought his lumber and his mattress. He couldn't think of a better use for the remaining money he'd gotten from selling the farm he'd come to hate.

“I found some honey,” Ellen said, “but it didn't last long.”

“That's okay,” Salty said. “I don't have much of a sweet tooth.”

“I do,” the little girl replied.

“Me too,” Jared added. “I really liked the doughnuts Mrs. Randolph made.”

“Can you make doughnuts, Mama?” Ellen looked hopeful.

“I think so, but you'll have to wait until we get flour.”

Flour, sugar, probably coffee as well. Why hadn't he bought staples when he was in Austin? Because he thought like a man. He'd bought pigs and chickens, a second wagon, lumber, wire, and seeds. Not once had he thought about food, clothes, shoes, needles and thread, or any of the things a woman needed to take care of her family. He'd make up that list before he went to sleep tonight.

“Are you through eating?” he asked Jared.

“Why?”

“It's time to start on that crutch I promised you.”

Sarah stood. “Ellen and I will clean up.”

Salty walked over to the piece of wood he'd set down just inside the front door. “The biggest problem is going to be finding a way to support your leg.”

“I don't care, as long as I can walk.”

“You'll care after the first few hours,” Salty promised. “Lie down on the floor. It'll be easier to measure that way.”

Jared got out of his chair, hopped to the middle of the room then dropped to the floor like a sack of coffee. “Any special way you want me to lie down?” he asked.

“No. Just get comfortable. I'll have to keep measuring as I whittle.”

It was too dark in the house to see well. Salty guessed Sarah hadn't lit a lantern because she didn't have any oil or kerosene. One more thing to add to the list. “Let's go outside.”

“It's too cold!”

“Not yet. Besides, I don't want to get wood chips all over the house. Ellen, when you get through helping your mother, run to the shed and fetch my bedroll.”

“What do you want it for?”

“Jared can't lie on the ground.”

Sarah didn't look up from her work. She told her daughter, “Go now, but don't dawdle with the horses.”

Salty set a chair outside then helped Jared down the steps and to it. “Lean on the chair and stand up. That'll give me enough to get started.”

Jared stood perfectly still, watching with avid interest. Salty's father had always yelled at him, had never stood still, had complained that Salty could never make anything that would enable him to walk. How different the two were.

Salty took a knife out of his pocket, opened the blade, and sliced a splinter off the long, slender piece of oak he was using to make the crutch. By the time he'd taken the corners off the wood, Ellen was back with his bedroll. He told her to spread it out. Once that was done, he picked Jared up and laid him down upon it, explaining, “I need to fit the wood as closely as I can to your leg.”

It wasn't a crutch he was making, exactly; he had decided on a cross between a crutch and a peg leg. Jared's withered leg was capable of bearing a little weight, but it wasn't as long as his good leg. If he could position a footrest properly, the boy's weight could be shared by his leg and arm.

For the next half hour he worked on the general shape. Jared asked questions about it for the first several minutes, but after that he started asking questions about Salty's past. Salty was relieved when Ellen came outside and started asking other questions about his carving. He didn't want to answer questions about his past. He didn't want to remember most of it.

He noticed Jared shiver. “It's getting too cold to stay out any longer.”

“Can't you finish it tonight?” Jared would have probably endured anything if Salty could have promised being able to walk on his own.

“It's going to take a couple more days. What I did tonight was the easy part. From now on, I'll carve a little then measure to make sure it fits. You'll be tired of me before I'm finished.”

“I've been tired of not being able to walk my whole life,” Jared replied. Sometimes children had a way of putting things into perspective.

Still… “This isn't going to make you walk like everybody else. It will be hard work.”

“I don't care.”

“I want you to care,” Salty said. “You've got to promise to tell me if anything hurts. I'll probably have to make another one—maybe two or three—before I get it right.” After years of being forced to make several kinds of walking aids that his father promptly destroyed, he'd promised himself he'd never carve again. But he couldn't think of a better way to help Jared.

“Can you carve anything else?” Ellen asked.

“I never tried. It takes a lot of work to run a farm or work a ranch. Doesn't leave much time for carving.”

“Could you carve a bowl?” Ellen asked. “Mama's wood bowl cracked open last summer.”

“Salty has more than enough work to do around the ranch,” Sarah told her daughter, appearing from inside. “Don't ask him to spend time making things I don't need.”

“You said you needed a bowl to keep the bread warm.”

She laughed. “You and Jared eat it before it has a chance to get cold.”

Probably because bread was the major part of their meal and they were too hungry to wait, Salty guessed. He would make sure they had plenty of vegetables this summer. He also needed to make sure the chickens and pigs were safe. They would be the major source of meat in the family diet.

“It's hard to find a piece of wood in this part of Texas that's big enough to make a bowl,” he told Ellen.

“Could you carve a horse?” she asked.

“It's time to go to bed,” Sarah announced. “We have to get up early tomorrow.”

“We always get up early.”

“That's because we always have a lot of work to do.”

Jared got to his knees, and Salty helped him up. “Can I use the crutch?” the boy asked.

“It's not ready yet. There's nothing to rest your foot on.”

“I can lean on it.”

“I haven't built a cradle for your underarm. It'll hurt.”

“It won't hurt long,” Jared said. “I only have to go to the bedroom.”

Salty wasn't sure he could walk with the crutch, but the boy settled it in his armpit and took a tentative step. Salty reached out to help him regain his balance, but Jared motioned him away. He kept stumbling, but he covered the short distance to the steps. Salty waited to see if he could pull himself up with the help of the rough rail. He was relieved when the boy managed to get inside on his own.

“If I had known he'd insist on using it tonight, I'd have started sooner,” Salty told Sarah.

“It's the first chance he's had to walk on his own,” she replied. “No one but you has been able to figure out a way to support his short leg.”

“I'll work on it some more tonight.”

“You've done enough for us today. There's still a lot that needs to be done tomorrow.”

More than she realized, he'd bet. He reached down for his bedroll and was in the process of folding it when he heard Bones break into a series of barks followed by a savage growl. The noise could only mean one thing, so he dropped the bedroll and started for the shed at a run.

“What's wrong?” Sarah called after him.

“I think Bones has cornered a thief.”

Salty wasn't used to running a hundred feet in boots, much less a hundred yards, but he knew Bones wouldn't be barking without a good reason. He would have preferred to have a gun in his hand, but he'd left his in the shed.

He passed through the grove of trees surrounding the house and turned toward the shed. It was a dark night, the sliver of moon obscured by clouds, but he could make out a man struggling with the dog. The man struck at Bones. Whatever he held, it broke the dog's grip and the man started running away. Salty was torn between looking to see if Bones was all right and catching the intruder, but the decision was soon made for him. The man's horse was only a short distance away, and he leapt into the saddle and was gone before Salty could get close enough to identify him.

He was very sure he'd seen that horse before, however. Unless he was mistaken, it belonged to Arnie.

Salty turned back to Bones, who was inside the pen he had built for the pigs.

“What are you doing in there?” he asked before the reason was made clear. One of the new pigs lay in a pool of blood, its throat cut. The other was huddled in a corner. “Son of a bitch! Why did he want to kill the pigs?” A whine reminded him that Arnie had attacked Bones. Blood ran from a cut in the dog's side.

“What happened?” Breathless from her run, Sarah's words were barely understandable.

Salty knelt down next to Bones. “Arnie killed one of our pigs. He stabbed Bones, too, when the poor old dog stopped him from killing the other one.”

“Why would he do something like that?”

“I'm not sure,” Salty said, “but I have an idea.”

It was too dark to see the extent of the dog's wound. He'd have to move Bones to the house to take care of him. He put his arms under the beast and lifted him gently. Bones whined, but he didn't try to get down. “I'm going to need a lantern.”

Ellen came catapulting out of the shadows. “What happened?”

Sarah corralled her daughter. “Arnie killed one of the pigs and stabbed Bones.”

Ellen looked stricken. “Is Bones hurt bad?”

“We won't know until Salty can get him to the house.”

“I'll have the lantern ready.” She disappeared as quickly as she had appeared.

Sarah sighed, watching her go. “My daughter never does anything slowly.”

Salty laughed. “She's seven. ‘Slowly' is a dirty word.”

His aching feet made the walk to the house seem longer. Ellen met them at the door with a lantern. Jared stood just inside, using his crutch for support.

“Why did Arnie hurt Bones?” the boy asked.

“Bones attacked him. He stabbed Bones so he could get away.”

“I wish Bones had ripped out his throat.” It was easy for children to be vengeful, because they'd never seen what one human was capable of doing to another.

Salty laid Bones down near the stove, which was still warm. “Hand me the lantern,” he said to Ellen.

Bones was lucky. It appeared the knife had found a rib rather than the soft tissue in between. The gash was about three inches long, but it wasn't deep.

“Is he going to die?” Ellen asked.

Salty shook his head. “It's not a deep cut. If we can keep it clean, he ought to be right as rain in a few days.”

“I'll find something to make a pad to cover his wound,” Sarah said.

“Jared, can you hold the light? I need Ellen to bring me a basin of water.”

Sarah turned to her daughter. “I'll get the water. You bring the blue jar I keep in the back of the cupboard. I have a tea made of sage that will help stop infection,” she told Salty. As soon as she returned from the well, she took the jar Ellen handed her and poured a generous amount into the basin.

When Salty tried to clean the wound, Bones whined and struggled to get up. “It's got to be cleaned to keep it from getting infected,” he told Ellen when she asked why he was hurting the dog.

“Let me try.” Sarah produced a length of fabric she had folded into a pad large enough to cover the wound.

Salty nodded and took the lantern from Jared. “Let me know where you want it.”

“Hold it higher and a little forward.”

Sarah took the cloth Salty had been using, dipped it into the basin and carefully pressed it against the dog's raw flesh. Bones whined softly but didn't move. With slow and careful movements, she continued to dip the cloth into the basin and press it against the wound until all the blood was gone. Once that was done, she squeezed some of the liquid directly onto the exposed flesh to flush out the remaining debris.

“Hand me that fabric pad,” she said to Ellen. When her daughter complied, she soaked the pad in the solution, wrung out most of the liquid then placed it over the wound. “Now we need to find a way to keep this in place for a couple of days.”

Salty was startled out of his reverie. Watching Sarah bent over the dog, deftly cleaning the wound with a minimum of pain, was like watching an angel bring about a miracle of healing. Sarah was a strong, independent woman who was capable of the gentleness and tenderness that men looked for in women. The sensitivity that soothed and healed without the need for words. He had just seen what he'd wanted without knowing exactly what it was, the answer to a question he'd been unable to put into words.

“I could fashion a bandage if I had enough cloth to circle his chest,” he said to Sarah.

“I'll get some.” Ellen was off like a shot.

“Do you think Arnie will come back?” Jared asked.

“I don't know,” Salty replied. “I didn't expect him the first time.”

“I never liked him,” the boy repeated.

Salty turned to Sarah. “Maybe he thinks that, if I fail, you'll be forced to turn to him.”

“Why would he think that after what he tried to do tonight?”

“You never know what a man who thinks he's in love will do.”

Ellen returned with strips of bandage trailing after her. “Can I do it?” she begged.

“I think we ought to let Salty,” Sarah replied. “If you watch closely, maybe he'll let you try the next time.”

When the bandage was attached, Bones wasn't happy about having it around his chest. He tried to pull it off with his teeth. When Salty gave him an admonishing tap on the muzzle, he tried to kick the cloth off with his hind foot. “We'll have to watch him,” Salty said.

“I'll do it,” Jared offered.

“I'd better take him to the shed with me,” Salty decided. “I can make sure he doesn't get out of it.”

“Are you going to stay up all night?” Ellen asked.

“No.” He couldn't do that and work all the next day, too.

“Then how will you know if Arnie comes back?”

“Bones will know.” He hoped Bones would wake him. Arnie wouldn't come back unless he was planning to do some serious damage.

“What about the pig?” Sarah asked. “It can't be left lying in the pen overnight. We have to process the meat now.”

Salty practically sagged against the doorway. He'd helped with hog-killings growing up. It was a long process that began at dawn and frequently lasted until midnight, and he was already exhausted. “We'll be up all night.”

“The children and I will take care of it.”

What kind of husband would he be if he went to sleep and left his new family to work through the night? Surely Sarah didn't think he would do that, even if he was her husband in name only. “While I take Bones to the shed, find me a big pot to boil water.”

He trudged to the shed with heavy feet, thinking of the work ahead. How many times had he built a fire in a pit under a tub used to scald a full-grown hog? How many hogs had he scraped free of hair, struggled to hang so the corpse could be eviscerated and the processing of the meat begun? More than he cared to remember, especially because his father always sat close by, shouting that he was a fool, an idiot, that he was doing everything wrong. Knowing his father's anger sprang from helplessness had done little to ease the pain or calm Salty's anger—or expunge his guilt for feeling relief when his father died.

Ellen followed him. “Mama said I was to show you the pit we use to build the fire.”

“How about the tub?”

“We don't have one. We just keep pouring water on the hog until it loosens the hair.”

“I guess the wash pot will have to do.”

Salty had filled it with water and started the fire before Sarah left the house with a handful of knives. Ellen trotted behind her with various pots and bowls. Jared was seated at the kitchen table they'd set up nearby. He'd been given the job of organizing the spices and the cans that would hold the lard which would cover and preserve the meat. Later he could help with grinding meat and stuffing sausages.

“Let's hope the clouds clear,” Sarah said. “I don't have enough fuel to keep this lantern burning all night.”

It wasn't easy when only half of the pig would fit into the wash pot at a time, but Salty finally got the thing scalded, scraped clean, and hung up. He was relieved when the clouds passed and the yard was illuminated by pale moonlight. But once he removed the pig's insides and got everything washed and cleaned, the real work of the night began.

He'd never liked hog killings because they required lots of people to work together. He'd always preferred to work alone. Yet, if he wanted to succeed with this ranch, he'd have to integrate himself into this family in a way that he'd never been part of in his own. Tonight was a good place to begin.

“What can I do?” he asked Sarah. By the time she got through telling him, he wished he hadn't asked. In Salty's father's world, once a man had cut up the carcass and taken the meat to the smokehouse or covered it with salt and seasonings, his work was done. The cleaning, cooking, rendering, grinding, and stuffing was women's work. The men sat around talking and eating cracklings.

He had to take the carcass apart. Some pieces would be cured in the smokehouse, some ground up, and some preserved in salt or lard. He helped Jared wash intestines to be used as casings for sausages. He boiled chunks of fat to render the lard. Through the long hours of the night, the four worked together, sometimes stopping to help each other before going back to their own individual tasks. They talked and joked. The children had never participated so fully in a hog killing, so they had lots of questions, most of which Sarah had to answer.

Sometime before dawn, Sarah got up from the table where she'd been working and said, “I'm going to fix breakfast. Do you think you can handle things for a while?”

Salty shrugged. “There's nothing left to do but fill the sausage casings.”

Sarah put her hand to her back to stretch muscles that must have been tight and aching from bending over the table for hours. “My father never made sausages. He wouldn't have. I didn't know if you would.”

“My father wouldn't have, either,” Salty admitted. “But I disagreed with him about a lot of things.”

Sarah's tired smile was more than enough to warm his heart. Her attitude toward him had unquestionably softened, but it was a long way from anything resembling love. Not that he wanted love. His mother had loved his father, who had made her life a misery. Liking each other well enough to be friends was the best way for a husband and wife to feel about each other, and that was what Sarah wanted in the first place. It would avoid the bitter pain of jealousy, the fear of believing the person you loved didn't love you, the torment of discovering you were interchangeable with other persons of your gender. George and Rose Randolph had found mutual love, but they were one in a million.

There was no denying the attraction between him and Sarah. He expected it to grow stronger. It was impossible to be around a woman like Sarah and not be attracted. But as long as he didn't confuse attraction with love—

“Are you going to help us?”

Ellen's question pulled him out of his abstraction. “Sure.”

“Then why are you just sitting there staring at the house?”

He was staring at the doorway through which Sarah had disappeared. Was he hoping she would reappear, or was he merely remembering the way she looked as she walked toward the house? Either way, he had to stop thinking about Sarah and concentrate on work. “How are we going to organize this?” he asked.

“If you'll hold the casings, Jared and I can stuff them.”

Salty looked at the two children, both calmly waiting for him to take the job they'd assigned him. He wondered if he'd ever been that assured as a child. His father had been prosperous, an important man in the community, yet Salty had felt worthless. These children were as close to being penniless as possible without starving. They should still be playing with dolls and pretend rifles instead of worrying about their next meal. And yet, because poverty had denied them the advantages he'd enjoyed, they had the experience of knowing what they did was important, that their contributions would always be valued, that their abilities were respected.

“Mama says I stuff sausages better than Ellen.” Jared held up his hands. “My hands are smaller.”

Salty's father would have ridiculed him if he'd been physically smaller in any way to a female. Here, Jared was able to take pride in it. Apparently there were advantages in growing up without a father and away from towns full of people who could only see the disadvantages of being different.

“Then I'll hold, Ellen will hand, and you can stuff.”

Something about what he said, or the way he said it, caused the children to start giggling. In no time at all, all three of them were laughing.

“Are you going to get back to work, or do I have to find myself a switch?” Salty looked up to see Sarah standing in the doorway, hands on hips. But she was smiling.

Jared pointed to Salty. “It's his fault.”

“Then I guess I'll have to switch Salty. Do you think I can find one big enough?”