Please !.. Don’t Tell Them.. We’re Here! the Little Girl Begged.. Then the Cowboy Saw the Riders

PART 2:

 He’d fetch a good arrangement on a ranch. Nettie was seven and could learn housework. Otis was five, old enough to be useful in a year or two, not yet. And Winnie, not yet three, was the kind of small that made grown men uncomfortable, the kind that got left with whoever would take her for the least trouble. Etta had not decided to run in one clean moment.

 It built the way water builds behind a dam that’s cracking. First a trickle of understanding, and then all at once at once. On the night she heard Voss tell Krell that the Odessa rancher wanted to look the boy over before the week’s out. She did not have a plan beyond west and away and together. She woke her brothers and sisters in the dark two nights later, told them they were going to play a very quiet game, and led them out through the wagon yard’s back gate with a flour sack of hardtack and dried beef she’d been saving out of their meals for 4 days,

not knowing exactly what she was saving it for until she knew. They had been walking and hiding and walking again for 6 days. The cowboy did not dismount right away. He sat his horse and looked at her, really looked, the way the man in Pecos had looked at Vern, except different, though Etta could not yet say how.

“Don’t aim to tell anybody anything,” he said. “Wasn’t aware there was anybody to tell about.” “There is,” Etta said. “There’s men looking, three of them, maybe more by now.” “Looking for you?” She didn’t answer that directly. Her father had taught her before the fever that you didn’t hand a stranger everything you had all at once.

 You gave him a little and watched what he did with it. “We’re not doing anything wrong,” she said instead. “We’re just resting here a spell.” The man’s eyes went past her to the tent and to the four faces peering out from behind the hide flap. Vern’s, wary and protective, standing half in front of the younger three the way Etta stood in front of all of them.

The cowboy’s gaze moved over each face, unhurried, and something in his jaw shifted just slightly, the way stone shifts when water’s been working at it a long time. He swung down off the horse, slow, both hands where she could see them. “Name’s Boone Hartley,” he said. “Got a spread about 9 miles north of here.

 Was riding the fence line and saw smoke I didn’t recognize.” He tipped his head toward the thin curl rising off their morning fire, mostly burned down now to embers. Figured I ought to know who was building fires on land I run cattle across. We didn’t know it was your land. It’s open range, mostly.

 Wasn’t accusing you. He crouched down, bringing himself to something closer to her height, which Etta noticed and did not entirely trust. Men who wanted something from you sometimes made themselves smaller to get it. How long you been out here? Two days. This spot. Six days total. Water? There’s a spring quarter mile off.

 I found it the second day. Food? Etta didn’t answer that one. The flour sack behind her she knew held less than a day’s worth left, divided five ways, and she had been giving Winny and Otis the larger shares and telling herself she wasn’t hungry. Boon Hartley looked at her a moment longer, and then he stood and went back to his horse, and came back with a burlap sack that he set down on the ground between them without ceremony.

Dried meat, a paper twist of coffee, a tin of something that turned out, when Etta looked inside later, to be peaches. Wasn’t planning to eat all this myself anyhow, he said. We’re not charity, Etta said, because it was the thing her mother would have said, and it felt important to say it even with her stomach twisting at the sight of the peaches.

Didn’t call you charity. He looked toward the ridge he’d come over, and something crossed his face, a calculation, maybe, or a memory. Called you smoke I didn’t recognize. Difference is, I’m the one decided to ride toward it instead of away. He didn’t push further. He didn’t ask again who was looking for them or why.

He said he’d be back tomorrow to check the spring hadn’t gone foul, and he rode off north the way he’d come, and Etta stood watching him go with the burlap sack heavy in her hands, and no clearer idea than before whether she’d just been helped or measured. He came the next morning and the one after that. The second visit, he brought a blanket, worn but clean, and didn’t ask where they’d sleep that night, just left it.

The third visit, he sat down cross-legged in the dirt like he had all the time in creation and let Otis examine his gun belt, empty. The pistol left holstered, but the cylinder shown open and harmless while he talked with Vern about the country, what grew where, which plants a person could eat and which would make a person sicker than not eating at all.

It was on the fourth visit that Nettie, who had said almost nothing since they’d left Pecos, asked him if he had children of his own. Boone Hartley went quiet in a way that told Etta more than an answer would have. “Had a boy,” he said finally, “about your brother’s age.” He nodded toward Vern without looking at him directly.

“Diphtheria took him three winters back. His mother left after, couldn’t stay in the house where he’d been, she said, and I understood that even though I couldn’t do the same, I stayed. Man’s got to stay somewhere.” Nettie considered this with the seriousness of a 7-year-old weighing a hard truth.

 “Is that why you keep coming back? Cause of him?” “Might be some of it,” Boone said. “Might be I just don’t like the notion of children sleeping under deer hide when there’s a house 9 miles off with four empty rooms in it.” Etta, listening from where she was mending a tear in Winnie’s dress, felt something in her chest that she did not have a name for and did not entirely trust herself to feel.

Hope, unguarded, had gotten her family into trouble before. Her father’s hope that the land would turn around. Her own hope briefly that Voss meant what he’d said about being family. But four empty rooms was a specific thing to say, not a kindness in general, a kindness with a shape to it. “We can’t stay in a house,” she said.

“Voss’s men are looking on the roads. A house is the first place they’d ask about.” “Not if nobody in three counties knows five children are staying there,” Boone said. “My spread’s small. One hired man, name of Delroy, who minds his business better than any man I’ve met. Nearest neighbor’s 11 miles.

 I don’t get visitors I don’t invite.” “And if they find us anyway?” Boone was quiet a moment. “Then they’ll find out I don’t take kindly to men who sell children like those cattle,” he said. And there was nothing hard or boastful in the way he said it, just a plain fact stated the way you’d state the weather. Etta looked at her brothers and sisters.

Otis had fallen asleep against Vern’s shoulder. Winny’s dress was more patch than fabric now. Nettie hadn’t laughed, not once, not truly, since the night they’d left Pecos. “One night,” Etta said, “we’ll come to your house for one night. Come morning, if it’s not right, we go.” “Fair enough,” Boone said. They stayed nine days before the riders found them.

Nine days was long enough for Etta to learn the shape of Boone Hartley’s kindness, that it did not come with strings she could find, though she kept looking for them the way you’d keep pressing a sore tooth to see if it still hurt. Long enough for Vern to stop watching the door every time it opened.

 Long enough for Otis to ask Boone to teach him to whistle through a blade of grass, and for Boone to sit on the porch step for the better part of an hour doing exactly that. Long enough even for Nettie to laugh. One real laugh, startled out of her by Delroy’s old dog chasing its own shadow across the yard, and the sound of it made Boone go still on the porch, and made Etta’s throat close up entirely.

It was not long enough for Etta to stop watching the road. She was the one who saw them first, on the ninth morning, three riders coming up from the south at a pace that had purpose in it. She was at the well with Vern and she set the bucket down without a word and went to find Boone. He was in the barn.

 He came out at a walk that did not match the urgency in her voice and she understood watching him check the yard and then look toward the house that he had been waiting for this. Not hoping against it, but ready for it. The way a man is ready for weather he’s watched building on the horizon. Get the children in the root cellar, he said.

All the way to the back behind the shelving. Del Royal show you. Don’t come out till I come for you myself. They’ll ask you straight out if you’ve seen us. They will. Voss will have told them I’m not a fool child that gets fooled easy. He’ll have told them to search the place. Boone looked at her, really looked the way he had that first day except there was nothing measuring in it now.

Etta, he said, I need you to trust me for about 20 minutes. I know that’s asking a great deal of a girl who’s had good reason not to trust much of anybody, but I’m asking. She thought of her father’s hands flat on the kitchen table. She thought of the burlap sack of peaches given with no strings she’d ever found.

 She thought of Nettie laughing at the dog. 20 minutes, she said and went to gather her brothers and sisters. From the root cellar through the gap between the floorboards, Etta could hear most of what happened in the yard though she could see almost nothing. Three horses, boots on hard packed dirt, a voice she recognized, Krell Voss’s man, the one who’d talked through the wall about ranchers and widows and prices.

Looking for five children, Krell said. Bowman children. Word is a rancher out this direction’s been seen buying supplies heavier than a bachelor spread ought to need. Buy plenty of things, Boone’s voice, unhurried. Feeding a hired man and myself. Man eats a fair amount in this heat. Mind if we look around? I do, actually.

 [clears throat] A pause long enough that Etta’s chest ached with the waiting. This is my land, Mr. Krell. I don’t recall inviting you onto it, and I don’t recall Texas law requiring me to open my home to strangers on a fishing trip. You got a warrant, a writ, anything with a judge’s name on it, you’re welcome to show me. Otherwise, you can turn those horses around.

There’s five children lost out here alone, Mr. Might be a Christian duty to help us find them. If there’s children lost, Mr. Krell, then a search party with the sheriff and the church and every rancher within 20 miles ought to be raised, and I’d be the first to saddle up. That’s not what this is, though, is it? This is a man collecting property he means to sell off to whoever will pay for a strong back or a spare pair of hands.

 I’ve heard how you talk in the mercantile in Pecos. Man doesn’t whisper as quiet as he thinks he does. The silence that followed was the longest one yet. Etta pressed her hand flat against the cold dirt of the cellar wall. You’ll want to be careful, Mr. Krell said finally, making accusations. Wasn’t an accusation, was an observation, freely [clears throat] offered, same as you’re freely offering yourself onto land that isn’t yours.

Boone’s voice had not risen at all through the entire exchange. If anything, it had gotten quieter, which somehow made it carry further. Now, you can turn around, or I can walk you to the county line myself and we can discuss trespass with the sheriff present. Your choosing. There was a long pause, the creak of saddle leather, a horse stamping.

This isn’t finished, Krell said. Reckon that’s your business to decide, Boone said. Road’s that way. They stayed in the cellar another hour past the sound of the horses leaving on Boone’s instruction, in case it was a trick to see if anyone came running out. When Delroy finally came down to fetch them, Etta went up the ladder first, blinking in the daylight, and found Boone standing in the yard exactly where his voice had placed him, looking down the empty road south.

“They’ll come back,” she said, “with papers next time maybe, or more men.” “Might,” Boone agreed. He looked at her. “Which is why I sent Delroy for the sheriff the moment you told me who was coming. Man’s an hour out by now, with the circuit judge’s clerk riding with him.

 I sent for him 3 days back, soon as I understood the shape of things, in case Voss came calling before the paperwork was ready. Sheriff’s known me 11 years. He’ll hear it out fair.” “Papers for what?” “Guardianship,” Boone said. “Filed the application the second day you were here. Wasn’t going to say anything till it was closer to certain, on account of not wanting to hand you a hope that might not hold.

 But a man doesn’t get to sell five children like cordwood in this territory, not when there’s a rancher willing to stand up in front of a judge and take responsibility for every one of them himself.” Etta stood very still. “All five?” she said, “Together?” “Wouldn’t have it any other way,” Boone said.

 “Wasn’t going to be the second man in your life who split this family up to suit his own convenience.” She didn’t cry. She had promised herself somewhere on the second night in the desert that she would not cry in front of anyone until this was over, whatever over turned out to mean, and some stubborn piece of her held to that promise even now.

 But she reached out and took his hand, the first time she had touched him at all in 9 days, and held it, and that was answer enough for both of them. The sheriff arrived within the hour, as promised, with the judge’s clerk beside him, and papers that made official what had, in truth, already happened in every way that mattered.

 Garner Voss contested nothing in the end. A man in the freight business could not much afford a public airing of how he’d spoken of children as cargo, and word, as Boone had said, did not stay as quiet as men like to think. The guardianship was granted in October, formal and final. The children’s names entered in a county ledger that would outlast every one of them.

That winter Nettie learned to bake bread under Del Roys patient instruction and burned the first four loaves entirely, and laughed about it, really laughed, the kind that took over her whole small body. And Boone Hartley, watching from the doorway, had to step out onto the porch for a minute before he came back in.

Vern grew 2 in by spring and could rope a fence post from 20 ft by summer. Otis learned to whistle through grass so well he drove the dog half to distraction. Winnie, not yet three when they’d fled Pecos, would grow up with no clear memory of the wagon yard or the hide tent at all, only of a porch and a well, and a man who checked on her every night before he banked the fire, the way some fathers do.

And Etta, Etta, who had carried them all on her back through six days of desert and had promised herself she would not cry until it was over, cried at last on a spring evening a year later, sitting on the porch step beside Boone while the others slept, not from grief this time, but from the plain, overwhelming fact of having somewhere safe to finally set the weight down.

“I kept waiting for the trick of it,” she admitted, “the part where it turned out you wanted something.” “I know you did,” Boone said. “Reckon you had good reason to keep waiting.” “What did you want, then, truly?” He was quiet a while, looking out at the dark fields the way he’d looked that first morning at smoke he didn’t recognize.

“Four empty rooms,” he said finally. “Wasn’t much of a life, Filling a house with nothing but quiet. I I didn’t ride toward your smoke to get something, Etta. I rode toward it because I’d already lost the thing that made a house worth keeping. And I recognized, someway, what it looked like when somebody else was about to lose the same.

Etta leaned her head against his shoulder. And out past the porch rail, the fields lay dark and quiet, and entirely, finally, safe. Thank you for reading. If this one stayed with you, I’d love to hear which part did. And if you know someone who’d enjoy a story like this, feel free to pass it along.