Ride the Man Down, page 22
Chapter Forty
Anna Wild Bird was on the porch when they arrived. She saw Thomas sitting next to Cole on the wagon seat. Cole thought that she knew, even at a distance, that it was their son. For a long time she just stood there, and the boy said: “Is that her?”
“Your mother,” Cole said.
“I don’t know what to say to her,” he said.
“You don’t have to say anything.”
In the days since Cole had found the boy, he had taken him to a doctor, then on the return journey to Talaquah. Thomas had been a brooding, confused kid who asked few questions. Cole thought he already knew most of the answers, but he had told him who he was, and he had told him that he had only learned about him recently, and that he was sorry for everything that had happened to him.
“You’re still a lawman,” the boy had said at one point.
“Was a lawman,” Cole had corrected.
“You’re still a white man ....”
“That I can’t change. Neither can you. We have to deal with the hand that’s been dealt to us ... you, me, your mother ....”
“You going to be the one to take me to Fort Smith for my hanging?”
“You do something you deserve to be hanged for?”
“I rode with those men while they murdered people, raped women ....”
“Did you have a direct hand in it?”
He hadn’t looked at Cole.
“Whether you did or not,” Cole had said, “I won’t take you to Fort Smith. Maybe somebody else will want to, but it won’t be me.”
Then the boy had looked at Cole, looked into his eyes, and Cole had seen a boy who was afraid and confused and ashamed.
“I never killed any of them. It made me sick, what they did.”
They pulled up in the yard. Anna’s hand went to her mouth when she got a closer look at him. “Thomas ...?”
He looked at the toes of his boots.
Cole climbed down and went to her. “Give him some time.”
Tears welled in her eyes.
“He’s got a gunshot wound. He’ll need time to recover,” Cole said.
Her gaze went from Thomas to Cole.
“He knows everything,” Cole said.
She crossed the yard and stood next to the wagon. “Do you want to get down, rest on the porch? Are you hungry?”
Thomas shook his head.
She touched his leg as gently as if she expected him to shy away like a wild thing. “There’s so much we need to talk about ...,” she said.
“Why don’t you go on in the house and rest some,” Cole said to Thomas.
He slid from the wagon seat, still favoring the wound, and went slowly into the house.
“Did he ...?” she began.
“No, he didn’t have anything to do with the killings,” Cole assured. He took her in his arms, noting the stiffness of her body. “I brought him back to you, Anna. It’s the only thing I could do.”
She looked toward the house. “It will take us time to get to know each other,” she said.
Cole nodded. “It’s a lot to chew for all of us.” He kissed her forehead and stepped up onto the wagon.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“I’ve got something to do. And, besides, I think you and Thomas need to be alone together for a time.”
“Are you coming back?”
“Is that what you want?”
The uncertainty floated into her gaze. “I’m still a widow,” she said. “I’ll need time to grieve for Jimmy, and Thomas will need me ....”
“Let’s both give it some time,” Cole said. “Then I’ll get back up this way and see how things are between us.”
“Thank you,” she said, her voice as soft as a morning sky.
Cole looked into her eyes one more time, took up the reins, and turned the horses’ heads toward town.
In Talaquah, Bone Blue was in his office when Cole arrived. Cole told him the story.
“Might be some want to hold him accountable,” Bone said.
“He didn’t have a rôle in it. Let it go. Nobody has to know but us.”
“Hell, I’m quitting the law anyway,” Bone said. “Rudina wants me to become a farmer, raise beans and squash. What about you?”
Cole asked him if he would look after Anna and Thomas, maybe be an uncle to the boy while Cole was gone.
“You ever going to lose them wings off your feet?” Bone said.
“Someday soon, I hope,” Cole said.
“Where you going to now?”
“See a man about some angels,” Cole said.
* * * * *
The headstone Cole placed over the grave read:
PABLO JUÁREZ
A MAN WHO LOST EVERYTHING
BUT HIS HONOR
He stood back and admired the pair of winged angels he’d had the stone mason carve just above the name. They looked like their wings were strong enough to carry a man to the happy hunting grounds, maybe to that place where they’d carried his wife.
Then Cole hoisted a bottle of tequila and drank one for the old bandit before setting it down against the headstone.
“You take care, hombre, and have one or two on me on your journey.”
the end
About the Author
Bill Brooks is the author of twenty-five novels of historical and frontier fiction. After a lifetime of working a variety of jobs, from shoe salesman to shipyard worker, Brooks entered the health care profession where he was in management for sixteen years before turning to his first love—writing. Once he decided to turn his attention to becoming a published writer, Brooks worked several more odd jobs to sustain himself, including wildlife tour guide in Sedona, Arizona where he lived and became even more enamored with the West of his childhood heroes, Roy Rogers and Gene Autry. Brooks wrote a string of frontier fiction novels, beginning with The Badmen (1992) and Buscadero (1993), before he attempted something more lyrical and literary in the critically acclaimed: The Stone Garden: The Epic Life of Billy the Kid (2002). This was followed in succession by Pretty Boy: The Epic Life of Pretty Boy Floyd (2003) and Bonnie & Clyde: A Love Story (2005). The Stone Garden was named by Booklist as one of the top ten Westerns of the decade. After that trio of novels, Brooks was asked to return to frontier fiction by an editor who had moved to a new publisher and he wrote in succession three series for them, beginning with Law For Hire (2003), then Dakota Lawman (2005), and finishing up with The Journey of Jim Glass (2007). The Messenger (Five Star, 2009) was Brooks’s twenty-second novel. Blood Storm (Five Star, 2011) was the first novel in a series of John Henry Cole adventures. It was praised by Publishers Weekly as a well-crafted story with an added depth due to its characters. Brooks now lives in northeast Indiana.
Bill Brooks, Ride the Man Down
