North of the
Picketwire
When I first came
to this prairie, I swear I was blind. I couldn't see
the glory of the sunrise or the grass that rolled in waves like a sea. I
couldn't hear the wind, that was like a prayer of thanksgiving passing across
the land. The wildflowers that bloomed in the spring were far brighter than the
magnolia I'd known, and the Spanish Peaks were tall and white, near and far all
at the same time.
I couldn't see any
of it. I only knew that we had come to a different place. The songs of the
birds were not the ones I'd known, and all the living creatures that scurried
through the grass were different too. Even the air we breathed was somehow changed. I felt lost, alone upon the earth that
turns beneath the sun.
We came here on
the wings of a nightmare, fleeing what our lives had become, but that darkness
had left us somewhere on the way. When I finally raised my head and saw the
dream that lay upon the land, it filled me up until I could hold no more. I
couldn't breathe, for the sweetness of the wind.
I thought we'd
left our home behind us in the war-torn fields of Georgia, but this land was a
better place by far. There is a stream here they call the Purgatory, but it's
Heaven's gate instead. It's the gateway to the high prairie, where people can
start again. Two men, a woman and a boy crossed over, with a rangy, half-grown
Cat: me.
Sarah Traynor
drove the wagon, had done so all the long and difficult way, and cared for the
child who looked so much like his father. Sarah wasn't his mother, just the
lonely young woman who'd raised him. Russell Moffatt was his father, and Hunter
Wilson was Russel's friend, who'd come back with him from the human war.
And that was all
of us, all who came here to build a new home.
Some call it
"Purgatory Creek," and others say " Rio Animas." When gruff old Charlie
Goodnight told us how to find it, he just called it "the Picketwire." And I
knew, as we picked our way across its stream, that when the wagon stopped
again, our journey was done. When Russell Moffatt stepped down that day, from
the tough old mule that he called Jackson, his first boot-print would mark
our home. And I hoped, oh how I hoped we'd never leave again.
My own kind named
me Silent Hunter, but Sarah and little Ransom never called me anything but
Shadow. I'm always nearby, at your feet or maybe in a corner, but always
here, whether human eyes notice me or not.
I am of the Folk,
and of the Clan of Cat, we whose lives are nine, upon the earth that turns
beneath the sun. My kind have always walked beside the humans. It was the place
that was given to us in the morning of the world, and we have kept to it. I was
with these people when we passed north of the Picketwire, into the land that
Goodnight said was here, and none of us ever spent a moment looking back.
My kind, the Cats,
learn things about the humans and their ways by watching and listening. We
comprehend many things, perhaps more than you humans suspect. It may take us
longer to put all the pieces together, but we are not mere creatures of
instinct and reaction. We own a certain perception of
the world that turns beneath the sun, and we are aware of ourselves and our
places within it.
I began the third
of my nine Life-Walks in a barn near Russell's old home, where my feral mother
nursed her kittens in the straw. When I became separated from her and my
littermates, I began to beg food from a human who lived nearby, a young woman
named Sarah. It was she who gave me the name I now bear: "Shadow."
When I first came scratching at her door, the
little boy beside her made it clear he wanted me, so she let me into the
kitchen, and then into the rest of her home. From there into her heart was
easy. What the child loved, she did too, whether that was some toy, or a living
kitten. It was simply the way the Spirit Above had made her.
It was around that
time that the first of the human soldiers began to come home from their
terrible, unwinnable war. Each one of them was different from all the others,
but at the same time, they were really all the same.
All of them had kept treasured visions of the day they'd finally return, and in those visions they were always able to pick up their lives pretty much where they'd left them. Some of them had wives and families, some had other loved ones; all of them dreamed of going back to something. Just home.
The saddest truth of all was that reality never measured up to their dreams. Their homecomings were never what they fancied they would be.
Russell Moffatt had
known from the few letters that had reached him that his young wife was dead.
He'd known it and grieved until he'd thought he could grieve no more. But
somehow looking down at her grave, with its white headstone and wilted flowers' was different, much more terrible than just the knowing.
The letters chiseled into the marble hit him like a fist in the gut: Rebecca Moffatt, born 1845, died 1863. That's all there was, as if the words could somehow sum up the warm, caring human being who lay beneath them. There was nothing there at all, about her mischievous laughing eyes, or the fragrance of her hair, or the softness of her voice in the night, there beside him. Just her name and two dates, cut into cold stone, and nothing more.
He'd spent three
years fighting, and then two more rotting in a northern prison camp. It wasn't
reasonable to believe his life would simply wait for him, frozen into a chunk
of amber like some relic of another time. Even without the tragedies the blue
soldiers had wrought upon the land, when they came burning and destroying. Life
just doesn't work that way. Things change.
There was no way
Russell could ever make a life where he'd once lived, not anymore. He had come
home for one reason, to find the young son his wife had borne while he'd been
far away, the child he'd never seen before. He intended to take him, and then
like so many others, he would turn his eyes to the west.
In those days
Sarah Traynor, the young woman in whose home I now lived, was raising the
little boy. She had done so since the night her best friend Rebecca had died
giving him life. Sarah had sworn a solemn oath to her friend, as the life was
fading from her eyes: She promised that she'd take him then and there, to raise
as her own. Now, in the ancient way of human women, she loved him as if he was
her own flesh.
The boy was Ransom
Moffat. He was Rusty's son, and the only fragment that remained of the life
he'd left behind him, when he'd gone to march with the grey soldiers. He was
all that was left of the girl who now lay silent, beneath the white headstone.
And even with the deep hurt of that, the harsh truth was Russell Moffatt was far luckier than many of the returning veterans. Some of his comrades had come home to nothing, nothing at all. Some found only the charred remains of childhood homes, and extra graves in a family cemetery.
Some of those
young men would never find within themselves the ability to rebuild their
shattered lives. I saw their hearts and they were empty, like houses after the
people who once lived there had locked the doors and gone away. Many of them
would wander the country as lost souls, looking for something that no longer
existed, until they finally joined their loved ones in early graves of their
own.
Some of them
became violent men, filled with hate, and looking for a fight in every new
place to which they came. Others became hopeless drunkards, muttering to the
ghosts of those they'd lost.
And so there came
a day when Rusty appeared at the home of Sarah Traynor, in search of the child
that had been born to him. Whatever new life he made for himself, it must
include the son of his own flesh, or else there would be no meaning to any of
it.
When he rapped at
Sarah's door, and came into her kitchen, I was drowsing in her lap while she
sipped her morning cup of tea. The child quietly amused himself at her feet
with his toys, unknowing that his future along with Sarah's would be decided on
this day.
Sarah Traynor knew
Rusty, and she knew his errand. She had known this day would come and dreaded
it. There was terror in her eyes, but also a solid resolve. I had seen the like
before: a she-cat mother, one of my own kind, standing
between her young and a danger she knew she couldn't
defeat. I knew her heart, and was fully aware of what
she was feeling and thinking. I knew the desperation that filled her.
Rusty had every
right to come and take his son, but if he did, Sarah would be destroyed, left
utterly without hope, and soon would die. I prepared myself to defend her and
the boy, to my own death if need be. That is what my kind do when we have
pledged ourselves to a human companion.
To the credit of
the sort of man Russell Moffatt was, he too saw these things, and he hesitated.
I knew his heart as well as hers, and he hadn't foreseen this confrontation. It
was not in his nature to inflict pain on others lightly. He backed away, seeking
some other path.
He made a bad
mistake then: he offered to pay Sarah for all she'd done. Something almost
audibly snapped inside her and she straightened with a jerk that nearly pitched
me out of her lap. Her eyes blazed blue fire and she spat like an angry
lioness. I readied myself to fight beside her.
But though
quick-tempered, my friend was also one of those human women who return to
reason quickly, and when she spoke, her words came out without much heat, just
a world of weariness.
"Rusty," she said
with a shake of her head, "Rebecca was the only real friend I had on this
earth. I went to school with her. We played together as children. How could I
have faced her at God's Judgment if I hadn't taken in and cared for her little
son, when..." She turned away quickly, to hide the grief she still felt, would
always feel.
"I'm sorry,
Sarah," Rusty said brokenly, still tormented by his own demons. "I'm sorry. I
know all that. It was a stupid thing for me to say. I don't know how to act
with her gone. It's like half of me is missing, and that's the half that had
any sense at all."
"I understand,
she said after a moment. "What will you do now?" .
"I don't know. I'm
not sure I can do anything at all, not here. It's like the whole country is
full of ghosts. I can't even sleep here. There are too many memories everywhere
I look."
I agreed with
Rusty; I could actually see the spirits he could only feel about him, drifting
fragments of those who had passed from life untimely. There was not a family
here who had not lost someone, or even two or three. This was no longer a land
where living people could dwell in any kind of peace. If not for Sarah and
little Ransom, I would have left it behind me long ago.
"I've been
thinking I ought to move west," he mused. "I ran into Hunter Wilson on the way
here. We used to be friends, back in school. He's still got an uncle and a
cousin or two, but the farm is gone, and I don t think he'll stay. If we could
just get to someplace that doesn't have the smell of death about it, get hold
of some cattle, or some land to farm, maybe we could..."
"You have a little
son," Sarah broke in. "He's almost four years old now. Does Ransom have any
place in your plans?"
"Of course he does. He's all I have left. He'll come west
with me. I hadn't really thought much beyond today, but I certainly can't leave
him behind."
She nodded, and
when she spoke again I knew she had reached, and
passed a personal crossroads in her life. One path had been chosen, and the
other left behind, fading into the twilight of what might have been. The
decision was made, and life changed for all of us.
"You'll have to
get a wagon and a team of mules ," she said. "You won't get very far with him in
front of you on the saddle. I'll drive the wagon and look after Ranse for you."
That was all the
discussion she ever allowed on the subject. I required even less time to decide
my own path; no choice was involved. I was Sarah's cat, and my pledge was to
her. I might ride in the wagon, or I might walk, or follow her at a distance;
it made no difference to me. I too, was headed west.
Rusty's eyes
widened, he raised both hands and began to protest, but Sarah rode him down.
"Go get everything you're taking with you, while I pack my things. I won't be
long; I don't have all that much. Does Hunter have a riding horse? Can you get
one for yourself?"
"Now hold on,
Sarah! You seem to be assuming a lot of things that I haven't had the chance to
even begin thinking about!" He waved his arms as if trying to flag down a
moving locomotive.
"I can't stop
thinking about Rebecca long enough to sort myself out. I'm all burned up
inside. I'm a long way from being able to look at another woman. I may never be
ready for that."
"And I'm not looking for a husband," she returned sharply, the dangerous fire showing in her eyes again. "But I've taken care of this little boy since the night he was born, and he's mine now. Mine!" Her voice was rising, becoming an angry shriek. "I made a promise to my best friend just before she left this earth, and no power between heaven and hell is going to stop me from keeping it!
"So, if you had
any ideas about taking him and leaving me behind, you can just forget about
them, right now. That is the one thing that will never happen!" Her face had
reddened, her eyes were wild, and she was shaking.
Again, I seemed to
see the image of a mother of my own kind, a mother who would without
consideration lay down her life for her young. I knew she would do or say
something soon that we all might come to regret. Ransom was starting to cry,
sensing that the grownups were arguing about him, and turning to the only
mother he'd ever known.
I leapt onto the
table between them and gave a long, sibilant hiss, letting Rusty see my teeth
for a couple of seconds. "Not now!" I wanted to say to him. "No more talk for
now. Everything is decided already, and you've no power to change it. Let it
be."
For a wonder, he
seemed to understand, for he took a step back and paused. Then he quietly asked
exactly the right question: "Sarah, who named him? Was it you or Becky?"
"It was both of
us," she whispered. "The last thing Rebecca said to me that night was, 'Take
care of him, please. He's worth a king's ransom.' And then she was..." She took a
deep breath and went on, "So, I wrote "Ransom Moffatt" in her family Bible. I
have it here for you."
Rusty nodded.
"I'll go do what I can to find a wagon," he said. "I guess there's enough of Ma's things left
to trade for what we'll need."
That's how the
great journey of our lives began. It was Sarah Traynor who'd decided for all of
us. After all the time he'd spent longing to get back home, Russell Moffatt
stayed there less than twenty-four hours.
In a short time,
he was able to acquire a light spring wagon and three mules, a pair of jennies
to pull the wagon, and a big jack as his riding animal. Into the wagon they
piled what few belongings either of them had left after the war, and a couple
of sacks of beans from Sarah s kitchen. She handed Rusty a Colt's revolver and
its powder flask, that she'd kept hidden from the northern soldiers.
Rusty's friend
Hunter Wilson had even less; his entire worldly estate was in his saddlebags.
Across the saddle in front of him he carried a heavy cavalryman's carbine that
had somehow escaped confiscation by the country s occupiers.
We were four human
beings and a rangy spotted cat, with a meager chance at life before us and
nothing but memories and pain behind. I leapt up on
the wagon's seat and little Ranse took me in his small arms. Then we rattled
away, as straight toward the setting sun as the roads would take us.
The trek across
the defeated and broken South was endless, one town, one county, one state not
much different from the ones already behind us. The people were all the same
too, defeated beings who walked with their eyes downcast. There was no hope in
any of them, and after a while I just stopped seeing them. We were on a
journey, and the journey was everything. They had no part in it.
We had no
destination, no goal, because that was too far ahead to imagine. The beginning
we had put behind us; it was what we were fleeing from. There was only the
journey, and it was enough.
When we reached
its banks, the Mississippi was the widest river any of us had ever seen. My
kind do not normally approve of water in greater quantities than can be
contained in a drinking dish, and I certainly hadn't anticipated the need to
cross more than a mile of it in one place.
It was done by
loading the wagon, mules, people, and everything else onto a flatboat ferry,
which was then poled and rowed across by a crew of twenty brawny ferrymen. It
cost us the last of Sarah's inherited jewelry in trade, but she assured us she
had no need of it anymore. It was just something to be left behind, like
everything else concerned with life as it had been, the life that was over now.
It also cost me my
composure and my feline dignity. I resolved that I did not approve of boats in
any form. I spent the trip under a bench, with all my claws dug as deeply into
the wood of the thing's bottom as I could make them go.
On the far bank
was Louisiana. It had seen less of the war, but the land wasn't much different.
Just the same sights, sounds and sensations as we'd known in Mississippi. The
speech of the humans there had a slightly different sound to it, but that was
all.
One more stretch
of ground travelled, taken from in front of us and pushed back behind, one more
mile that we'd never set eyes on again. And then another, and then one more.
When our food ran out, the men worked at odd jobs on the farms that hadn't been
nearly as devastated as the ones back in Georgia. We ate, and slept, and
travelled onward, that was all.
The Sabine river
was far smaller than its monster sister to the east, and I was better prepared
for the sensations of crossing it, than I had been
before the Mississippi. Still, I didn't like water-borne travel. It just wasn't
catlike to place myself at the mercy of the moving water s vagaries, and in the
power of the humans who operated the boat. I don't think the humans liked it
much either, but the river lay squarely athwart our progress, and so we crossed
it.
A cat is a
creature of the dry ground. We were never intended to float, neither in our own
persons, nor on boats made by the humans, and I personally thanked the Spirit
Above each time we crossed water and my paws found firm footing on the far
side.
In Texas the land
began slowly to change, and the mood of its humans did too. These people hadn't
seen the war sweep their whole lives away, the way those to the east had. They
were more inclined to look forward to the future, rather than back at the lost
causes and broken dreams of the past.
In the town of
Nacogdoches, we were advised by several humans to take the southern routes as
we moved onward, lest we risk crossing something called "The Comancheria,"
where a fearsome hostile tribe of humans made their home.
It seemed that yet
another human war was building to the west, this one between those who had
lately come, and those who had always lived in this land. With Humankind there
always seemed to be a reason to hate. Whenever differences were encountered,
violence was always the first reflex. My kind do love
our human companions, but taken as a whole, the Clan of Man is a flawed
creation, apt to self-destruction.
We followed the
recommendations and the scrawled maps we were given, keeping to the more
settled country of the old Texas Republic, rather than climbing up onto the
high Llano Estacado. The Brazos and the San Saba were two more muddy brown
nightmares from the feline perspective, but the process of crossing them was at
least a familiar one now, and I managed with what dignity I could preserve.
Finally, we came
upon the Rio Pecos, but it was nothing like the eastern rivers I had come to
dread. Sarah just drove the wagon straight across where the men found water
that was shallow enough to ford. Little Ranse thought this was great fun and
whooped for joy. I was less impressed, just thankful for the wagon which kept
me from the further outrage of getting my paws wet.
In Fort Stockton
we met a man who was already legendary in the Southwest: none other than
Charles Goodnight. He was a granite cliff of a man, taciturn, and at first
impression humorless, but after the manner of my kind, I reached out to see his
heart, and received a welcome surprise.
The human person
hidden within the granite cliff was more of a mischievous little boy, endlessly
adventurous, and possessed of a carefully concealed wry sense of humor. His
twinkling eyes met mine as we accepted each other as kindred spirits.
I liked him
instantly. This trail hardened cowman might hang horse thieves on sight, but he
would also help anyone he judged worthy of the effort. His friendship was a
permanent gift. Once you had it, it was yours for life.
There was
something very catlike in this human. I sensed that he could be as ferocious to
his enemies as he was loyal to his friends. If you couldn't manage to be his
friend, it might be better to go somewhere else entirely.
"Charlie," as he
liked to be known, treated us all to a well-cooked meal and listened with
interest to our story. Then he gave us more advice: "Turn north," he said. "Go
north to Fort Sumner. My partner Ollie Loving is there, selling a herd of our
cattle to the Army.
"He'll tell you
how to reach an abandoned homestead a couple of hundred miles further on from
there, north of the Picketwire. It ought to be just what you people need to
make a new start. There's forty or fifty head of mostly unbranded longhorns
running free in the area. A dozen or so of them might be carrying my brand.
Tell Oliver I said if you can round them up you can have all of 'em."
Then he nodded,
tipped his broad hat to Sarah, and went on about his business. Charlie
Goodnight never was one to waste words, when actions would serve just as well.
He wasn't someone to be taken lightly either, so we turned to the north and
soon re-crossed the angling Pecos on our way to Fort Sumner and whatever lay
beyond.
We had long since
run out of food, as well as any means of buying more, but Rusty and Hunter kept
us fairly well supplied with game, foraging along the trail. There seemed to be
no shortage of deer and antelope, as well as multitudes of different game birds.
They soon reached an agreement with Sarah: she'd cook anything they brought in,
but it was up to them to skin it first.
I was just as
satisfied with the smaller creatures I could catch in the brush. My humans
always offered me portions of their own food, but I made it a point of pride to
show them I was well able to provide for myself. It's not easy to starve a cat
if he's healthy and has the run of the countryside. I had seen almost two
summers by then, and without boasting, I was a fine specimen of a tomcat, quick
and strong, with the fire of life in my eyes.
The act of moving
into a new country is a thing that naturally regenerates the soul, empowers it
anew. I felt it, and I knew my humans did too. The hardships of the war years
were over, far behind us. There would certainly be more adversities ahead of us
as we began to rebuild, but we'd face those as we came to them. We knew that
given a fighting chance, we could surmount anything
now.
It was about this
time that Rusty began to spend more time talking to Sarah, riding his big mule
beside the wagon as we rolled on, even laughing with her over human
trivialities as they sat beside the fire in the evenings. It was a sight I had
been expecting for a long while. The journey had changed them too; they just
hadn't noticed yet.
He began to
arrange his bedroll closer to the wagon where Sarah and Ransom slept, and she
seemed to welcome the nearness. Hunter just smiled and moved his own sleeping
place a bit farther away, content to give them some room. He too, had been
worried about his friend.
Standing in the
main street of Fort Sumner as if he owned it, Oliver Loving was the perfect
partner for Charlie Goodnight; he was his opposite in almost every way.
Where Goodnight
seemed closed off, Loving was an open book to everyone who entered his sphere.
Where Charlie's sense of humor was under careful control, Oliver's was in plain
sight. He turned everything that happened near him into an occasion for laughter,
so that the other humans loved to be around him.
"That sounds like
Charles!" he said to Rusty and Hunter when they repeated what Goodnight had
told us. "He can be mighty quick to give away what ain't his to start with."
His easy grin and quick laugh turned what could have been a harsh statement
into amused approval of what his partner had said to us.
"But he's right.
That's the trouble with the old scoundrel: he's right most of the time. That's
the old Spencer place he's talking about. It ought to be just about a fit for
you folks."
He squinted at
Sarah and little Ranse, and then back at Rusty. "Y'all ain't married are you?"
Without waiting for an answer, he went on, as unstoppable as a landslide.
"Well, you ought to be. You've got yourself two different families here, and
they need to be spliced. That young sprat ain't her
blood, he's yours. Any dang fool with half a brain can see that.
"But those are her
skirts he's hiding behind, so she's been raisin' him while you was off fightin'
with Bobby Lee."
I almost rolled
off the wagon seat where I was perched, convulsed with the hidden laughter of
my kind. Most humans are so stupid they can't get into a barn without falling
over their own feet, but once in a while you run into one of them who's nearly
as smart as a cat. Oliver Loving had pinned down the whole situation in less
than thirty seconds.
Sarah turned red
from her collar bone to the part in her wheat-straw hair, and Rusty looked as
though he'd seen his own ghost. Hunter Wilson mumbled something about a cold
beer, pulled the brim of his hat down over his eyes, and ambled away toward a
saloon, grinning into his beard.
"You ought to get yourselves to a preacher and put the young'un out of his misery," Ollie went on. "He needs a mama and a daddy who both admit the fact."
With that and a
crooked smile, he tipped his Stetson to Sarah and got back to the subject at
hand. "Once you get over Raton Pass, talk to the Dutchman, Hoehne. He's got a
farming enterprise going, a bit south of where you want to be. You tell him
just what Charles and I said. Y'all have a fine day now!"
As we had done
with his partner, we followed Oliver Loving's instructions without much
discussion. He knew the country as well as anyone around, and his stark honesty
was right there in the open, along with the rest of him. That he would
knowingly give anyone bad advice was unthinkable.
He also gave Rusty
and Hunter better guns, Henry repeaters he said he'd taken off a couple of
cattle thieves. They didn't ask what had become of the thieves; some things are
best left alone.
We left again
without even staying the night in Fort Sumner, all of us sensing that our
journey was finally nearing its end. It was time for us to get on home,
wherever and whatever that might turn out to be.
The mountain pass
the humans had inexplicably named "Raton," after the Spanish word for rats,
contained few rodents of any kind, as far as I could see. The trail was high,
far up toward the stars, and the air was cold and clean, as pure as it had been
when the Spirit Above had first breathed it out, in the morning of the world.
On its far side was a new world, as different from that we'd left behind as
light from dark.
When we splashed
across Purgatory Creek, what Charlie Goodnight had called the Picketwire, it
was our last river, and all of us knew it. We might spend a few days wandering
around before we found the place we'd been told about, but the journey was
over. Everything that had ever gone before was behind us, had nothing to do
with anything, now.
Wilhelm Hoehne
wasn't Dutch; he was thoroughly German. That didn't surprise me at all. After
all, the same unpredictable humans who'd miscalled him that
had also named the spectacular mountain pass Raton, after a nasty rat.
He had nearly a
thousand acres of orchards, apple and cherry trees with strawberries planted
among them. We found him with his workers, a stout, round little man with a hoe
in his hand, a grey cloth cap on his head.
"Gruss Gott!" he said to us with a grin, when we approached him.
I never met anyone
so at peace with his surroundings and the life he found himself living. I found
myself wanting him to raise his foot, so that I could see if he had roots going
down into the soil he so clearly loved.
"Ja, Charlie Goodnight, Ich kenne ihn sehr gut! I know him well," He said to Rusty. "Whatever he and Herr Loving say is good enough for me. That is a good piece of land, good earth. It needs a family growing on it."
He pointed north
with the worn hickory handle of his hoe and said "You go until you cross the
Hoehne Ditch, what I dig to water my trees. A few miles further and you will
see the house. The roof, it is bad, but the man who lived there before left
behind a pile of lumber for the repairs when he went back to Santa Fe.
"You watch out for the baby, the woman," he said with a slight frown. "The little cat too. Coyotes there are, and they grow bold on moonless nights. These are not country dogs. They are Fleischfresser; meat eaters."
With that he went
back to his work, and we rolled onward once more, on the final stretch now.
Wilhelm Hoehne might be afraid of the coyotes, but he needn't worry about me.
This spotted, ring-tailed feline had crossed half a continent to get here, and
I wasn't about to start slinking away from any real or imagined threats. With
the Picketwire behind us, I would cross no more rivers. I was here to stay.
The house was a
two-room cabin, with a wide covered breezeway between its sections. Its roof
was more than bad; it was done for. In several places it had completely fallen
in. Piles of rubble blocked the interior of both rooms. It would be a while
before anyone slept in there.
I could hear and
smell small creatures, probably mice and lizards, scurrying about inside. Maybe
even scorpions. Their presence would surely mean rattlesnakes as well, and to
my mind, those posed a greater danger than Hoehne's coyotes.
It didn't matter
much. We had been driven from our homes by a nightmare, but it was a good dream
that had beckoned us here, the same dream that lay all around us on this land.
My humans were
even now beginning the work, Hunter and Rusty planning the repairs and listing
what needed to be bought in town as soon as that became possible. Sarah was
already starting to clear away debris and broken furniture from the house, even
as the sun faded behind the high western peaks, and its light bled from the
sky. I stayed with her, vigilant for the scent or sound of small threats. A
scorpion sting was no joke, and a big one might well kill little Ranse.
That night as the
fire burned low, the flames subsiding into twinkling, glowing embers, Rusty
turned to Sarah, who sat drowsing with Ransom in her lap. Hunter smiled and
nodded to them, then as if by tacit agreement, moved off to check on the mules.
I pricked my ears, as I lay beside her. Something was about to happen that
would change everything yet again. Something good this time.
"Sarah," he began,
slowly picking his way through words he'd never expected to say. "I've been
doing some thinking."
"Well, be
careful," she said with a chuckle. "Too much thinking will give you a headache
and spoil your sleep."
"I've been
thinking about what Mister Loving said," he went on after a pause. "Back in
Fort Sumner. About two different families needing to be spliced. About Ranse
needing a mama and a daddy both." He was floundering, and took a deep breath,
unsure of how to go on.
"Yes, Rusty," she
said softly, in the flickering, dimming firelight.
"What?" he said
after a moment, the wind visibly spilling from his sails.
"I'll marry you,
Russell Moffatt," she said, turning to look into his eyes. "I'll be this little
boy's mother, and your wife too. Don't beat it to death, just accept it, and
let's get on with our lives."
I stretched and
purred with satisfaction as my humans finally realized what I'd known for at
least the last two hundred miles. We were a family now, and for us, the war was
finally over. Its hurts and tragedies would never fully leave us, but time
would lessen the pain. We could all get on with life now.
I resolved that as soon as my humans were all asleep, I'd go out and begin to mark out my new territory on this high, clean prairie. My markings would make a plain statement, for every living creature north of the Picketwire to see: "I am Silent Hunter, of the Clan of Cat, and called Shadow by my human companions. I have come here to stay. This place and these humans are mine."
This was going to
be our home for a long time, long enough for many generations of cats and
humans to be born, and to grow, and to become what the Spirit Above had wanted
them to be.
END