the Strong Shall Live (Ss) (1980) (21 page)

"Ruby's dead, Ryan," Delaney said. "She was sending the boy to you, but we'll care for him, all of us."

He seemed to hear, tried to speak, and died there on the floor at Bluff Creek Station.

Doc Moody got to his feet. "By rights," he said, "that man should have been dead hours ago."

"Guts," Hank Wells said, "Dud never had much but he always had guts."

Doc Moody nodded. "I don't know how you boys feel about it, but I'm adopting a boy."

"He'll have four uncles then," Jackson said. "The boy will have to have a family."

"Count us in on that," the newlywed said. "Wewant to be something to him. Maybe a brother and sister, or something."

They've built a motel where the stage station stood, and not long ago a grandson and a great-grandson of Dud Ryan walked up the hill where some cedar grew, and stood beside Dud Ryan's grave. They stopped only a few minutes, en route to a family reunion.

There were fifty-nine descendants of Dud Ryan, although the name was different. One died in the Argonne Forest and two on a beach in Normandy and another died in a hospital in Vietnam after surviving an ambush. There were eleven physicians and surgeons at the reunion, one ex-governor, two state senators, a locomotive engineer, and a crossing guard. There were two bus drivers and a schoolteacher, several housewives, and a country storekeeper. They had one thing in common: They all carried the blood of Ryan, who died at Bluff Creek Station on a late October evening.