Epilogue
A few months later
Clay found out about Everett Kane just after breakfast.
He was mending a split rail beside the corral when a deputy rode up the road.
“Mr. McCall?”
“That’s me.”
“Sheriff said you might want to know. Found a body in Dry Creek Wash. Name of Everett Kane.”
Clay rested both hands on the fence.
“He dead?”
“Shot. More than once, near as Doc Vale can tell. Two men came in yesterday. Said Kane’s crowd turned on itself over money. They left him behind.”
The deputy put his hat back on.
“Sheriff’s fixing to put him in the county ground.”
Clay looked toward the house. Sarah stood on the porch, watching.
“Don’t,” he said. “I’ll bury him.”
After the deputy left, Sarah came down the steps.
“You mean to do it yourself?”
“I reckon.”
“He tried to take me.”
“I know.”
“He poisoned people.”
“I know that too.”
“Then why?”
Clay looked toward Genoa, its roofs small beneath the late summer mountains.
“Because he’s dead. No man ought to be left in a ditch.”
“I don’t forgive him,” Sarah said.
“I ain’t asking you to.”
“Then I’ll come with you.”
By noon, Jesse and Malcolm had hitched the wagons. They brought shovels and a length of clean canvas.
They found Everett beneath a half-bare cottonwood. The sheriff’s men had covered him with a blanket.
Clay remembered that face red with anger, the cruel mouth, and the way he had looked at Sarah as a possession.
Now he was a dead man.
“The men said his crowd started shooting at each other after you humiliated him,” the deputy told Clay. “Arguments over stolen money. Kane tried to settle it. Didn’t go well.”
Clay looked down at him.
“Help us load him.”
They buried Everett on the rise above the wash.
The grave took most of the afternoon. Clay dug until his palms split. Malcolm and Jesse worked beside him.
When the grave was ready, Clay took off his hat.
“Want a prayer?” Jesse asked.
Clay nodded.
He stared down at the canvas-covered body.
Clay had prayed for food, for Jesse to come home, for children who were sick and frightened. He had never known how to pray for a man like Everett.
“Lord,” Jesse began. “Give him what mercy You see fit, and keep the living from doing the harm he did. Amen.”
“Amen,” Sarah said.
***
Three weeks later, Malcolm brought two men to the ranch.
Clay recognized them immediately. They had ridden with Everett.
“We heard you needed hands,” Mick said.
“You rode with Kane.”
“We did.”
Baxter looked at the ground.
“It was a bad road.”
Dean spoke quietly. “We didn’t kill him.”
“I didn’t say you did.”
They asked for work riding fence and breaking horses. Clay looked over the ranch. It was still small—two pastures, a sagging barn, and a few dozen head of cattle between himself, Jesse, and Malcolm. There was more work than money.
“You can work,” Clay said. “You answer to Malcolm. No stealing. No whiskey on the place. And you keep your hands to yourselves.”
They nodded.
“If I hear you’ve gone back to robbing travelers,” Clay added, “I’ll ride you into town myself.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t call me that. Start at dawn.”
***
That afternoon, Clay rode into Genoa for nails and lamp oil. He saw the blind man sitting outside the church.
“Rufus.”
The man smiled.
“Mr. McCall. You walk heavier than you used to.”
Clay sat beside him.
“You disappeared.”
“I had walking to do.”
Clay glanced at the worn leather satchel by Rufus’s boots.
“Jesse told me he knows you some. Funny thing.”
“Jesse has a loose tongue.”
“How did you meet Jesse?”
“I didn’t. I met Lieutenant Donovan.”
Rufus rested both hands on his cane.
“Fort Donelson. Winter of ’sixty-two. He was young and too brave. Went back into a field for two wounded boys. Took a piece of iron across the head for it.”
“That was you?”
“Near enough.”
“You saved him.”
“I pulled him into a ditch. Other men carried him.”
“And that’s how you lost your sight?”
“Not then. The injury took its time.”
Clay thought of Jesse’s scar.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Would it have changed what you did?” Rufus asked.
“No.”
“That’s why.”
Rufus reached into his coat and handed Clay a small wooden horse.
Clay knew it immediately.
“I carved this when I was a boy.”
“You gave it to me on the trail.”
“You kept it?”
“You told me a man ought to have something made with his hands.”
Clay closed his fingers around it.
“You built yourself a home, then?”
“I’m trying to.”
“That is the same thing, most days.”
***
When Clay returned to the ranch, Sarah was in the kitchen with flour on her cheek.
“What happened?”
“Nothing bad.”
“That answer usually means the opposite.”
He set the wooden horse on the table and told her about Rufus.
When he finished, she touched the little horse with one finger.
“God does have a strange way of putting people in front of you.”
“Rufus said something like that.”
“And Everett? How you feeling about it?”
“He’s buried and that’s that.” Clay looked down. “I keep thinking maybe I should’ve—”
“No.”
She came around the table and lifted his chin.
“You gave him a grave. That was enough.”
Her thumb brushed his jaw.
Clay caught her hand.
Sarah smiled faintly.
“I married you.”
“That wasn’t what I meant.”
“I know.”
He waited.
“I want you here,” she said.
The words settled deep inside him.
He lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles.
“I’m glad.”
She kissed him once, quick and sure.
“Come on,” she said. “Supper’s getting cold.”
After supper, they went upstairs.
The bedroom was quiet except for the wind against the window. They sat together on the edge of the bed, shoulders touching.
“I’m glad you buried him,” Sarah said.
Clay looked at her.
“I’m not glad he’s dead, but I’m glad he can’t hurt anyone anymore. I don’t want what he did to make us hard.”
Clay took her face in his hands.
“It won’t.”
She kissed him.
There was no crowd around them now, no fear pressing at their backs. Only Sarah’s hands on his shoulders and the quiet room.
When he drew her close, she rested her forehead against his.
“I love you,” she whispered.
Clay closed his eyes.
“I love you too.”
He kissed her again. The lamp went out beneath his hand, and the room gave itself up to darkness.
THE END?
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