Chapter Eighteen #2
“The dog was barking past midnight. I came out with a lantern. Sign of a horse in the willows along the dry wash. Gate on the lower paddock worked open and shut again.” Dawson paused, his eyes steady on Wade’s.
“Nothing taken. I made the rounds the next morning. South wire below the rock spring cut clean through. Four strands. Fencing pliers. The cut was new.”
Wade said nothing at first. “I found a hole in mine on Sunday afternoon,” he answered at last, holding the grey eyes across the wire. “South pasture, by the willow at the creek bend.”
Dawson’s eyes held him a long count.
“I am sorry to hear about Sadie.”
A cold weight came down through Wade’s chest in a single drop.
Wade had said nothing about Sadie. Larkin had said nothing. The boy at the side door had said nothing. The valley had been quiet about the snake; Doc Reeves had been discreet, Ben had been discreet.
Wade looked at the man across the wire.
“Snake bites at her age are a hard thing,” Dawson went on, his voice gone softer at the back. “A leg can be lost. A child can be lost. The valley has been holding its breath for her this week.”
“She is mending,” Wade said, keeping his eyes on the wire between them.
“I am glad of it.” A small, thin smile came up at the corner of Dawson’s mouth.
“I shall call at the ranch one evening to inquire after her, if Miss Preston permits. She seems to me, on the strength of two minutes at the post office last Wednesday, a young woman of unusually steady temper. The kind who keeps her head in a household.”
“If you have business with me, Dawson, set it down.”
Dawson laid his hand back on the spool of five strand. The grey eyes had gone level.
“The southeast quarter section. The piece your grandfather filed in fifty-two. A small dry wash runs across it where my fence and yours come together. The wash has gone unwatched. The simpler arrangement would be to put it under one set of eyes.” He paused.
“I will buy the parcel at the price you set. Name one.”
Wade looked at Dawson across the wire. A long flat cold quiet sat at the back of his throat.
“My grandfather filed that parcel at the Gallatin land office in fifty-two with his own hand,” he answered at last, level and very low.
“My father held it through fifty-eight and sixty-two and the winter of sixty-four when there was little reason to hold anything at all. I will hold it after him. I will hold it for the niece in the upstairs room at my place. I will hold it for the brother at my left elbow. I will hold it for the children who may, with God’s patience, come to the house in their turn.
” He leaned forward. “There is no price, Dawson. There won’t be one. Take your wire and go.”
Dawson held his eyes a long count.
The smile that came to the corner of his mouth was the temperature of a creek stone in February.
“As you wish, Collins.”
He touched the brim of his hat with two fingers, stepped past them along the aisle of heavy goods, paid Larkin at the counter in coin counted out one piece at a time on the wooden top, and went out. The bell on the door rang twice as he went.
***
“He knew about Sadie.” George’s hand had stayed at the side of his coat where his belt knife rode.
“I know.”
Wade laid his gloved hand flat on the spool of five-strand where Dawson’s hand had rested a moment before. The cold came through the leather of the glove and settled at the back of his knuckle, and the cold gave him something to count against.
“Load the wire, George,” he said, his eyes coming up at last to his brother's face. “I will speak to Ben on Sunday morning. Until then, we keep our own counsel. Zoe will see the trouble on my face by suppertime. I will tell her the shape of it after Sadie is in bed.”
George held his eyes a long count.
“I’ll load the wire.” He turned toward the side door at last, then stopped at the second step and looked back. “Wade, he has been waiting for an opening at the southeast quarter since Pa was alive. Pa told him no. Then the south wire came down on Sunday at our place and at his. Then, the snake.”
“I know, George.”
“I am only saying it out loud so the saying is done.” George set his hat lower against the brim.
He went to find Old Larkin’s boy.
Wade stood at the spool a moment longer.
Lord, he said inside himself. The morning has given me a piece of information. Steady my hands from this hour to Sunday morning. I am asking You to keep all of us at the table at suppertime in the manner You have been keeping us since the night of the snake.
He pulled the glove back on.
He turned for the front of the store.
***
The road home ran north along the creek through the last of the gold cottonwoods. The pewter sky over the Bridgers had broken open by midday into a thin, clear blue. The wagon rode heavy with the spool of fence wire and the keg of staples and the post-driver head.
George kept his counsel for the better part of the eight miles.
Wade drove at a steady road pace and turned over the morning's accumulation of facts. The cold at the back of his throat had not eased.
The smoke from the kitchen chimney came in sight at the second bend.
Wade glanced sideways at George.
George tipped his hat brim up a quarter inch, squinted at the chimney smoke, and the corner of his mouth pulled against his will.
“Do you smell pie?” Wade asked.
“Apple,” George answered, drawing a long, slow sniff of the cold air.
“What have you done, George?”
“I have done nothing whatsoever, brother.” George’s face had gone studiously innocent.
“In the course of an entirely unrelated conversation with Alice over the wash trough on Tuesday, I mentioned that this Thursday would be your thirty-fourth birthday. A fact Alice received with great interest and immediately transmitted, on her own initiative, to Zoe.”
The reins went slack a quarter inch in Wade’s hands. He took them up again.
“You might have given a man some warning.”
“I might have,” George agreed cheerfully. “I considered it. I decided against it for the same reason a man fails to warn a deer before he tips his hat to it in the willows. The pleasure is in the looking up.”
***
Wade turned the bays into the long yard at the foot of the kitchen garden.
The smell of apple pie and warm cinnamon and the sweetness of brown sugar cooking down to caramel came up off the porch.
Through the kitchen window, framed in the late afternoon light, he saw the shape of Zoe at the pine table with her hair pinned up and her sleeves rolled to her elbows.
Sadie perched on a stool at her elbow with a wooden spoon held in both fists.
Patience came down off the porch at a slow trot. Job lifted his head from the rug inside the screen door.
Wade handed the reins to George without a word, swung down from the bench of the wagon, and walked up the path between the spent squash bed and the kitchen garden.
The screen door swung open before he reached it.
Sadie stood on the threshold with flour on her left cheek and the wooden spoon still in her fist. The expression on her face was of such concentrated joy that it had begun to leak out of the corners of her eyes.
“Happy birthday, Uncle Wade,” she announced, very carefully, in the manner of someone who had been rehearsing. “We made you a pie. Auntie Zoe says you may have a slice before supper because birthdays suspend the rule about pie before supper for one day only.”
Wade stood in the doorway of the kitchen and looked past his niece to the woman at the pine table.
Zoe had turned at the sound of his boot on the step.
She stood at the table with a dishcloth in her hand and a small unsteady smile at the corner of her mouth.
The late afternoon sun fell across the side of her face from the south window.
The apple pie sat cooling on the trivet between her and the brass lamp, and on the corner of the pine table lay a small parcel wrapped in brown paper and tied with a length of ordinary kitchen twine.
“Wade,” she said, the dry edge gone gentle at the back of her tongue.
“You are thirty-four years old today. Your niece has been holding the lid on the secret since Tuesday at considerable personal cost. Supper is at six. Ben and Alice are coming at five. The pie is for after. The parcel is from your household, and your household shall be obliged if you accept it with grace.”
Wade stood in the doorway.
Lord, I do not deserve this kitchen at the end of this morning. Thank You.
He took his hat off and then stepped through the screen door.
From the porch step behind him came the small contented voice of George, addressing the yard at large.
“I will see to the bays, brother. The wire will keep until morning. The pie might keep for the hour.”