Outcast (7 page)

“I'll take 'em home tonight,” Arch said. “I'll keep 'em until they're pullets, and then I'll bring yours back.”

Standish sighed. “Is that what brings you here so early?”

Arch shook his head. “I told you I would bring you a loaf of Ma's bread. Don't you remember that?”

“She's baking bread this early in the morning?”

Arch stiffened. “None of your business what she's doing this morning. Only thing that concerns you is the loaf of bread I brought.”

Standish shut his eyes. It had been a long time since anyone had spoken to him as Arch was.

“I suppose we should break bread.”

The words scrubbed away the anger on Arch's face. “I saw that you had some bacon. I brought some fresh eggs, and I thought.…”

Standish sighed. “That's a great idea.”

“I got some of Ma's huckleberry jelly, too. Ain't nothing better than that.”

“Huckleberry jelly?” The thought teased Standish's tongue. He couldn't remember how many times he had pursued the tiny berries in sun-drenched mountain meadows, trying to bring a little sweetness to his life. “We'd best get started on that bread.”

“Bread will stay warm in the oven while you fry the bacon,” Arch said.

“Guess it will,” Standish said. “Let's prepare the feast.”

Standish took the last bite of warm bread, butter and huckleberry jelly. He shut his eyes as he chewed, savoring the taste. When he opened his eyes, Arch was holding the last piece of bacon between his index finger and thumb. He stared at it as a trout might stare at a yellow-bellied grasshopper.

“Don't see how I can eat this,” he said.

“Don't see how you can't.”

Arch cocked his head and gazed at Standish. “Guess you're right. Don't see how I can't.” The bacon disappeared in two bites.

“Suppose we should get busy,” Standish said.

“Maybe we should take a nap,” Arch replied.

“Sun's burning the day.”

Arch nodded and sighed. “That's about the best bacon I ever ate.”

“No doubt in my mind that your mother makes the best huckleberry jelly ever.”

Arch grinned. “She sure does.”

“Suppose you could clean up in here, while I go tend to the horses?”

Standish half expected the boy to rail about how he didn't do women's work, but he nodded without a thought. His mother had trained him well.

Standish stepped into the barn, talking to his horses, telling them what wondrous creatures they were. Sally nodded. Hortenzia ignored him until she heard the rustle of oats in the bucket. Her head jerked up then in anticipation. He tended to Sally first, giving her oats and sending her off to the meadow for grass and water. She was in a fine mood, dancing as she trotted toward the serenity of the meadow.

Standish approached Hortenzia with the oats, petting her neck as she ate. “Hortenzia, I know you are a fine horse. Some horses don't care for pulling a slip, but I know you've done it before so it shouldn't bother you too much. Probably doesn't seem fair that you have to work while Sally plays, but you've had a good rest, and she's been pulling more than her own weight. She got me out of the high country. She's a helluva horse. Course you know that. So after you finish eating, I'm going to slip the harness over your back, and we're going to dig us a root cellar.”

Arch was standing behind him, head cocked, speculation running across his face. “You play cards with those horses, too?”

“Nope, they're too good for me.”

“You're crazy, ain't you?”

“A little.”

“This the only way the crazy comes out, talking to horses like that?”

“No, sometimes I howl at the moon.”

“That ain't so crazy. Sometimes I do that, too.”

Arch scuffed at the earthen floor, and looked up. “So why do you talk to the horses?”

“Couple of reasons. The sound of a man's voice can calm horses. When they get a little skittish, they like to have someone tell them everything is going to be all right.”

“They can't talk,” Arch said.

“No, they can't talk.”

“So how do they know that you're telling them everything is okay?”

“More from the tone of your voice than the words, although they do understand some words.”

Arch's hands went to his hips, and his eyes rolled.

“Sally knows her name. That's a word isn't it?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“So she knows some words, doesn't she?”

Arch sighed. “I guess so.”

“Other horses know what to do when they hear gee or haw or whoa, don't they?”

“Yeah.”

Standish waited a moment, and then continued. “I told you there were two reasons I talk to horses.”

“Yeah.”

“The other reason is that sometimes horses are the only creatures who will listen to me.”

“I can see that,” Arch said, nodding sagely. “You being crazy the way you are.”

“S'pose so. Now, are you willing to start digging that root cellar with me?”

“Long as you don't do nothing crazy.”

“S'pose it's alright if I talk to Hortenzia?”

“S'pose so.”

Standish leaned back, running the back of his wrist across his forehead. It had been some time since he had worked so hard. Still, he was working no harder than Arch. The cabin sat on a glacial moraine. Standish should have known that when he saw the quaking aspen grove in the high meadow. A botanist had explained to him once that quaking aspen spread from one root. It was believed that the hardy little tree had ridden into Montana on the brow of a glacier. The cabin squatted on a lateral moraine, marking the sides of the glacier's movement, much like the snow that dribbles off either side of a shovel.

Moraines are marked by rock rounded and polished in their trip from the Precambrian Shield in Canada. Each time Standish slipped the edge of the shovel into the dirt it clanged against rock. Each time he heard that clang, he stopped Hortenzia, pried the rock loose from its bed and dumped it on the slip to be carried with the soil to a pile at the far end. There, Arch was separating rock from sandy dirt, building a pillar of rock beside the pile of dirt.

Standish shook his head. The boy had little give to him. He tried to do a man's job with a boy's body. Several times during the day, Standish had been forced to admonish the boy not to try to lift the larger rocks. Each time the boy had stared at him, rebellion etched on his face. Tough little nut. Tough as hell.

Standish had given the boy a job as a lark. He thought he could let the kid think he was earning the treats—maybe staples—he took home to his mother. But there was little lark in Arch. He took everything seriously. He set out to earn what he had been given, and he sure as hell had.

A shrug of the shoulders didn't ease the ache in Standish's back. Maybe a good night's sleep would help. Probably not. He looked at Arch. The boy had caught up with the slip, all the rock was out of the dirt, but that wasn't enough. He was digging through the pile with a shovel, hoping to find more work with the strike of steel against rock.

“Arch.”

The boy looked up.

“That's enough for today.”

“Not done,” Arch said.

“We'll finish tomorrow.”

“Still got sun.”

“Tomorrow.”

Arch's legs and back and bones disappeared, and he collapsed in a pile on the dirt.

Standish pulled the slip around, lining it up for the next day. “Back, Hortenzia, back.”

Hortenzia stepped back, trusting Standish's commands. He unsnapped the tugs and urged the horse toward the barn. Once there, he slipped the harness off the horse's back. He strung the harness along one wall and slapped Hortenzia toward the meadow. She could get some fresh water and grass there. He would give her an extra measure of oats when he brought the horses in tonight.

“Good job, Hortenzia. Good girl. You earned your oats tonight,” he called after her.

Hortenzia whickered, but Standish figured she was talking to Sally, not to him. She trotted off, and Standish wondered how she could find the energy to trot.

Standish wanted to sit down. More than anything he wanted to sit down, but he couldn't do that with Arch lying on the dirt pile. He would let the boy rest for a while. He stepped out of the barn, willing his legs to carry him up to the cabin.

The chicks were fine, scratching through the grass hay at the bottom on the box for oats Arch had sprinkled there that morning.

Standish sighed, his mind going through a list of possible dinners. He settled on salmon loaf. He stoked the stove, willing the oven to be ready when he was. He opened a can of salmon, beat two eggs and added them. He tore up a couple slices of Arch's mother's bread and mixed it. He stopped, his mind ranging over other possible additions. Onions! He had onions. He cut one of the onions in half, diced it, and added it to the concoction and put the loaf in the oven.

Then he filled the boiler on the stove with water, willing it to heat. He would have a hot bath tonight. He would luxuriate in it, settle into the biggest bathtub the Last Chance Emporium ever had. He would soak out all the dirt and aches he had accumulated.

Meanwhile, he ran some water into a basin and set it on the stove. He was too dirty to eat. That wasn't paying proper homage to his food, and Standish knew better than anyone how important it was to treasure food.

Standish sat down at the table, laying his head on his hands. Salmon wouldn't be ready for a while. Might as well relax just a little.…

The
scritch
of a plate against the rough wood of the table jerked Standish awake. Arch was setting the table—for two. The boy walked to the oven and opened it.

“That look done?”

Standish nodded.

Arch wrapped a towel around his hand and carried the salmon loaf to the table.

“You say grace?”

Standish shook his head, trying to clear it of the cobwebs that settled there during his nap. “I guess so.”

He bowed his head and closed his eyes. “Thank you, Lord, for the bounty you have given us.”

When he opened his eyes, Arch had the salmon loaf on his plate. He was eating with an intensity best suited for the rapture.

“Might be you'd share some of that?”

Arch's fork paused halfway to his mouth. “You only made the one? Don't seem like much of a dinner, just the half of it.”

“Didn't know I'd just get the half of it.”

Arch explored the possibilities, the ideas marching across his forehead in ripples. “I worked hard all day.”

Standish nodded. “Been meaning to talk to you about that.”

Arch's fork fell on his plate.

“You ain't going to fire me, are you? I don't know what I'd.…”

Standish shook his head. “No, Arch. I won't fire you.”

The fork went back to Arch's mouth.

“I think, after all the work you did today, that I should pay you in cash.”

Arch didn't stop chewing, but his head was shaking back and forth. “Can't do that. Money's bad for us.”

Standish reached up and scratched his neck. “Money is bad for you?”

“No use to us. Got no place to spend it.”

“What about Last Chance.”

“Don't go there much.”

“Why.”

Arch stopped eating. He stared at Standish with an intensity that sent a chill up his back. “None of your business.”

“Guess not.”

Standish fidgeted in his chair. “How's the salmon loaf?”

“Is that what it is?”

Standish nodded.

“It's good. Not as good as the fish in those beaver ponds, but it's good.”

“You fish?”

Arch shook his head.

“Then how did you get those fish?”

“Klaus caught 'em. Ma canned 'em.”

“You like them better than salmon?”

“Lots better.”

“Probably tough on you to eat these salmon after you've had those fish.”

Arch cocked his head. “This'll do fine, for now.”

“Don't much like sitting here watching you eat.”

“You could feed the horses.”

An eyelid crawled shut on Standish's face, and a deep red color spread up from his collar. “Guess I could.”

Standish stood so fast his chair skittered backward. “Guess I'll just do that. Now that I've got you fed, I might was well go feed the horses.”

Arch nodded. Seemed like a good idea to him.

Standish stomped out of the room. Who the hell was this kid to eat Standish's dinner and give him orders? Who the hell did he think he was?

He stopped at the barn and put a couple handfuls of oats in a bucket. He carried the bucket with him toward the meadow. Hell of a thing when he couldn't even have the dinner he had fixed for himself. He wouldn't have minded sharing with the boy. You could tell just by looking at him that Arch wasn't getting much to eat, but it was another matter entirely to have the boy eat the whole salmon loaf by himself. That was just a bit too much. He would have a talk with the boy, set the parameters for his behavior. Seemed more wild than human. Needed to learn some manners.

Standish stepped into the meadow, and the rancor drained from him. The evening had glided into the meadow like Claude Monet, restoring all the colors bleached out by the afternoon sun. A Cranesbill Geranium caught his eye, its bright red an accent point to the tall grasses there. A stand of fireweed defined the trail Bele had carved from the forest. Calling the beautiful flower a weed was an abomination. Sepals formed a cross with gold spraying from the center of the four-petal flower. Arrowleaf Balsamroot winked yellow, here and there in the grass.

Silence surrounded the meadow as though all its living creatures had sucked in their breath, overcome with the beauty and serenity of the place. To the west, the sun teased the eye with violets and blues and pinks and yellows. I will be back, it seemed to be saying, and tomorrow morning I will greet you with the soft pastels of promise. The meadow and the setting sun pulled Standish into God's creation, draining him of rancor and self. Then he stirred, pulling himself back.