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- Herausgeber: Al-Mashreq eBookstore
- Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
- Sprache: Englisch
In Tiger Eye, B.M. Bower presents the tale of a young Texan, nicknamed Tiger Eye for his distinctive gaze, who flees a family feud to seek a new life in Montana. Caught between a powerful cattle outfit and homesteaders, Tiger Eye must navigate complex loyalties, confront violence, and find his own path. Bower's narrative delves into themes of identity, morality, and the harsh realities of frontier conflicts.
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Seitenzahl: 294
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025
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Tiger Eye
Introduction
"Tiger Eye," Grosset & Dunlap Edition, 1930
Because "Killer" Reeves, down on the Brazos in Texas, had killed a man in self-defense, he had been drawn into a feud. His sons were brought up never to lie, to live straight and to be dead shots. One by one they fell victims of the feud until only the youngest, "Tiger Eye", was left. Rather than be drawn in and have to become a killer himself, he left home and went to Montana, looking for a job as a cowboy.
As a scout for the Poole outfit, who were waging war against the "nesters", the kid met Nellie Murray, a daughter of a "nester" who was shot down in cold blood in his own dooryard. When from her and from his friend Babe's delirious babblings he heard bitter and dreadful revelations about Poole, the kid saw himself caught in a terrible dilemma. How he works himself out at the risk of his life, still refusing to kill, gives B.M. Bower the theme and setting for another thrilling Western story.
I. — "DRAW, YOU COYOTE!"
THE kid was running away, but he was taking his time about it, and he was enjoying every foot of his flight. Sometimes when a curlew circled and gazed down curiously, with his yellow eyes peering, first one and then the other, the kid would stop dead still in the trail and with his own eyes turned upward to the bird, he would call "Kor-reck?" "Kor-reck?" in playful mimicry. Other times he would pull from his breast pocket a mouth organ worn through to the brass in places where his fingers clasped it, and would polish it gravely on his sleeve, set the tiny pigeonholed edge to his smooth young lips and ripple a few notes to match the meadow lark's song. From that he would slide into "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean," and "The Spanish Cavalier." But at this particular moment the mouth organ reposed in his pocket with his Bull Durham bag, and he was singing:
"A Spanish cavalier stood in his retreat
And on his guitar played a tune, dear.
The music so sweet he'd ofttimes repeat—
'The blessing of my coun-try and you-oo, dear!'"
But for all his leisurely and tuneful progress, the kid was running away, and he had been running for more than a month now. He was running away from several things that had begun to harry him, even at twenty: his father's enemies—such as had outlived straight-shooting old Killer Reeves; but he was not running from the enemies so much as from the impending necessity of shooting them. The kid had no ambition for carrying on the feud and getting the name of being a killer, like Pap. He did not want to kill; he had seen too much of that and it carried neither novelty nor the glamour of adventure. Then, too, he was running away from a girl who had called him Tiger Eye to his face. The kid felt a streak of fire shoot up his spine when he thought of the way she had pronounced the name men called him. Always before he had accepted it just as he would have accepted any other nickname suggested by something in his character or appearance, but she had made it a taunt.
He couldn't change the yellow stare of his right eye, any more than he could remember not to squint his blue left eye nearly shut when he really meant something. His mother always told him he got that tiger eye at a circus she had visited before he was born. The kid didn't know about that, but he knew he had it and that it was the eye that looked down a gun barrel when he practised shooting; the eye that stared back when somebody tried to give him some of their lip. They didn't, very often; they seemed to expect him to ride with his right glove off and his gun loose in its holster, the way Pap always did.
The kid left off gloves altogether, except when he was working with a rope, but that was so he could play his mouth organ. His gun never had stuck in its holster and never would—Pap's training had been too severe for such bungling. But the kid never wanted to shoot any one. That was the main reason why he had left home. He had expressed it all in one sentence to his mother when he told her good-by.
"I'll be killing, same as Pap, if I stay around heah." And his mother had nodded in somber agreement and let him go. His mother didn't know about the girl.
That was nearly six weeks ago. The kid had pointed his pony's nose to the north and never once had he spread his blankets twice in the same camp. He had followed the trail of the wild goose, winging high overhead to its nesting grounds. Rivers, deserts, mountains, plains,—he had crossed them all. He'd be in Canada if he didn't stop pretty soon, he thought. He didn't want anything of Canada; too cold up there. He'd stay down in Montana, where the chinook winds ate the snow right out from under your horse's feet in winter, according to what he had heard. Lots of the boys went up into Montana with the big trail herds and didn't come back; seemed to like the country fine.
It was nice country, all right, and the kid decided that he had about reached the end of his journey. From where the trail approached the edge of a high, wide plateau, which the kid called a mesa, after the fashion of the southern ranges, he had a splendid view of the country spread out below him. Evidently the trail was seeking easy descent to the valley. There were little rolling ridges down there, with grassy flats between and the shine of small streams glimpsed now and then in the open spaces among twisting threads of darker green which the kid knew would be trees and bushes. He did not see any houses, except within the wide arms of a coulee toward which the road seemed to lead. The kid could look right down into the wide mouth of that coulee and see corrals, the squatty stable and the small house backed up against the red sandstone wall. It looked kind of snug and friendly down there. Maybe he could get a job and stop right there, without looking any farther.
The kid swung his slim body around in the saddle to see if his pack horse was coming right along as he should, and as he did so his buckskin horse squatted and shied violently away from something white fluttering in the top of a soapweed alongside the road. The kid stopped singing, pulled the horse up with a lift of the reins and wheeled him about to make him ride at the thing. Nothing but a piece of white paper—nothing to stampede a horse as trailwise as old Pecos. Make him go right up and stick his nose against it and smell it; teach him not to be afraid of a little paper.
The kid spurred Pecos toward the white flutter, talking to him softly. Twice the horse whirled away. The third time the kid leaned and plucked the paper off the bush and examined the thing as he rode. It seemed to be a crude yet fairly accurate map of the country lying down below him, between the bench and the river. All the creeks were marked, and at certain points there were little penciled squares, plainly indicating the ranches. Beside each square was a man's name and a brand. And before nearly every name there was an X, made black and distinct with pencil.
The kid spread the paper flat on his saddle horn and got it lined up with the country. Yes, here was the place he was coming to. According to the paper, the ranch was owned by a man named Nate Wheeler and his brand was the Cross O. The kid grinned a little as he folded the paper and put it in his pocket. He was in luck. He could ride right up and call the man by name, just as if he'd heard all about him. It would make a difference, all right. Nate Wheeler wouldn't think he was just some fly-by-night stranger riding through. He'd probably give him work; he would, if he had any.
"'Oh-h, it's off to the war, to the war I must go—
To fight for my coun-try and you-oo, dear—'"
The kid had a nice voice, soft with that liquid softness which the South gives to its sons. He did not sing very loudly, having no desire to advertise himself to the country, for he was bashful and would blush if you spoke to him suddenly—that is, in a friendly tone. The other kind brought no flush; only that steady, disconcerting stare of his yellow right eye.
A man was riding toward him, coming out of the wide-armed coulee to the left—the one which the map had identified as Nate Wheeler's place. He could not have heard the kid singing and he did not see the kid at once. The man was riding at a jog trot, his body jerking sidewise at each step the horse took. The kid saw him the minute he came around the bold rock ledge that marked that end of the coulee and he wondered if this might not be Nate Wheeler himself. He'd ask him, anyway, as soon as they met. He'd rather do that than ride up to the house and bone the fellow for a job in front of his wife; there was one, he knew by the skirts and aprons ballooning on the clothesline alongside the cabin. A baby too, if the little pink dresses didn't lie.
Pecos picked his way daintily down into a narrow wrinkle of the hill that swallowed the kid from sight for a good hundred yards, the gravelly road slanting steeply down to the valley. Barney, the pack horse, was a little tender-footed behind and came lagging along, favoring his feet where he could; and the kid, glancing back, let him take his time. Barney would catch up anyway, when the kid stopped to talk with this man Wheeler, or whoever he was.
So it was that the two solitary horsemen rode up into sight of each other quite suddenly, fifty yards apart and the slope dropping away on either side. The rancher jerked his horse up as if about to wheel and ride back whence he came. The kid kept straight on. Then the rancher did a most amazing thing. He yanked his gun from its holster, drove the spurs against his horse and came lunging straight at the kid.
"Draw, you coyote! I'm comin' a-shootin'!" he yelled as he rode.
The kid was caught completely off his guard, but he had been trained in a hard school that accepted no excuse for fumbling. The pow-w of his forty-five was not a split second slower than the other. He felt a vicious jerk at his hat as his finger tightened around the trigger of his gun. Then he was riding forward to where the man had toppled from his horse. The little pinto shied away and would have started running, but the kid caught it with one sweep of his long arm that gathered in the trailing reins.
He was sitting there on his horse, staring incredulously down at the dead man, when another horseman came galloping down a grassy ridge, no more than a stone's throw away. The kid turned and looked at him hardly along the barrel of his gun.
"Yo'all stop where yo're at," he commanded in his soft drawling voice, and the stranger stopped, throwing up both hands laughingly as he did so. The kid surveyed him critically with his peculiar, tigerish eye, the other squinted half-shut. It gave him a deadly look in spite of his boyishness, but he did not know that.
"That's all right—I'm a friend. Think I'd rode out in sight if I wasn't?" the stranger remarked easily. "I'm riding for the Poole."
II. — THE KID FINDS A FRIEND
WITHOUT moving his gaze, the kid tilted his head slightly toward the twisted figure on the ground.
"Yo'all heahd what he said?"
"Yeah, I heard 'im. He had it comin', Kid."
"I aimed to shoot his gun ahm down. I didn't aim to kill him."
"You'd been outa luck, Kid, if you hadn't. He'd'a' got you."
"Plumb crazy," said the kid. "Comin' at me that-a-way."
"Sure was. You from the South?"
"Brazos," the kid answered succinctly.
"Yeah. Well, it's lucky I happened along. My name's Garner. Babe Garner. How come you're ridin' to Wheeler's?"
The kid gave one further look at Garner, decided that he was all right and holstered his gun. He pulled the folded paper from his breast pocket, opened it and tilted it so that the other, riding closer, could see.
"This place over heah was the closest," he explained, pointing a finger at the name and the X. "This Wheelah?"
"Yeah." Babe Garner looked from the paper up into the kid's face. His own steely eyes were questioning, impressed. "You sure as hell don't waste any time. Mind tellin' me your name?"
"Bob Reeves." The kid looked full at Garner, a defiant expression around his mouth. "Folks call me Tiger Eye back home. They gotta be friends to do it, though."
Babe Garner glanced obliquely at the heap on the ground, nodded and looked away, up the road and down.
"Say, you better fog along to my camp with me," he said uneasily. "These damn nesters is shore mean. Let the pinto go. Anybody come along and catch you here, it's fare ye well. What kinda gun you got?"
"Colt forty-five."
"Good. That won't tell nothin' if the nesters get snoopy. Come on, Tiger Eye. I'll see yuh through this."
He wheeled his horse, and led the way back up the hill, and the kid followed without a word. Talking was never his habit and he certainly was not in the mood now for conversation. The damned, dirty luck of it! Having to shoot the first man he saw in the country, the one he was going to strike for a job! Of course, having Babe Garner show up as a friend was sure lucky, but it couldn't offset that other catastrophe. Another thing bothered him; how had he happened to miss, like that? He had aimed at Wheeler's gun arm. How had he shot so far wide that the bullet went through Wheeler's head? Killer Reeves' son shooting wide of the mark!
"Pap shoah would peel me foh that, if he knowed about it," the kid thought glumly, again and again. It never occurred to him that his father or any one else would disapprove of the shooting. That would be called a case of "have to." And as he meditated gravely on the necessity of defending himself, he remembered the jerk of his big hat and took it off to see just what had happened.
There it was—a smudged hole right in the middle of the crown. The kid passed one hand over his head and brought it away with a lock of hair the size of his forefinger; a curl, to be exact. Locks of hair were quite likely to stand out from the kid's scalp in half-moons and circles. He was regarding the reddish-yellow curl soberly, his lips pursed a little, when Babe Garner glanced his way.
"Damn close," Babe commented. "You want to keep your eye peeled hereafter. These nesters'll shoot a man on sight."
"What foh?"
"'Cause they're damn' cow thieves and the Poole has called the turn," Babe said savagely. "They hang together like sand burrs to a dog's tail. Us Poole riders is fair game to them. You heard what he hollered."
"Yeah, I heahd."
"That's the nester's war whoop, these days. The Poole has had four men fanned with bullets in the last month. We're needin' riders that can shoot. You come in time."
The kid rode for awhile in silence, his bullet-scarred hat pulled low over his eyes, his fingers absently toying with the reddish curl. Abruptly he turned his tiger stare on Babe.
"How many men has the nestahs lost?"
Babe hesitated, gave his head a shake, laughed one hard chuckle.
"You know of one, anyway," he said meaningly.
The kid questioned no further but followed silently in Babe's lead. Over a lava bed they went, where the horses must pick their way carefully but where they left no track. Down along the rim of the benchland, past the head of the coulee marked on the map as Wheeler's. Once, the kid looked down almost upon the roof of the cabin. A woman came out and began pulling the clothes off the line, her back to the bluff. A baby in a pink dress toddled out on the doorstep, sat down violently and began to squirm backward off the step. Wheeler's baby. Only there wasn't any Wheeler, any more. Just a heap of dressed-up bones and meat, back there in the trail.
They swung back from the rim, and the kid saw no more of the cabin and the woman taking clothes off the line, and the baby crawling backward down off the step. Cute little devil. Run to meet his pappy, most likely, and want a ride on the pinto horse.
What devil's luck was it that had made the kid shoot wide, like that? Used to shoot the pips out of cards somebody held out for him—sis would hold cards out for him to shoot, any time. Never had missed that-a-way before. The kid could not understand it. It worried him almost as much as the killing.
Babe Garner had a snug cabin, not to be approached save from one direction, up a bare, steep little ridge to a walled-in basin where two springs bubbled out from the rock wall and oozed away through ferns and tall grasses with little blue flowers tilting on the tops. Babe made him welcome, stabled the horses and cooked a good meal. He talked of many things, but not again of Nate Wheeler.
The kid did not talk at all, except to reply to direct questions, and never then with two words if one would carry his meaning. He washed the dishes while Babe wiped them, and swept the cabin, corners and all, and upended the broom behind the door as his mother had taught him to do. According to Killer Reeves' wife, boys must learn to cook and keep a house clean in a country where women were few, and the kid was well trained in more things than shooting. When all was done Babe took a paper-bound novel down off a high shelf where many more were piled. He glanced at the kid inquiringly.
"Lots to read if you want it," he offered, lying down on the bed with his folded coat under the pillow for greater height, and his loaded gun close to his right hand. "Make yourself to home, Bob."
"Reckon I'll take a ride," the kid said quietly, brushing off the stove top with a wild duck's wing. "Aim to get the lay of the land."
"Oh, sure." Babe studied the kid from beneath his lashes. "Want any help? We're pardners from now on—Tiger Eye."
"Don't need he'p right now, thanks," said the kid, flushing with shy gratitude. "Yo'all lay still and read yoah book, Babe. I'll come back."
"Take care of yourself," Babe gave warning and farewell together, still covertly eyeing the kid.
"Shoah will, Babe," promised the kid, and let himself out into the warm, slanting sunlight. Babe got off his bunk and went to the doorway.
"Give this signal when you come up the trail, Tiger Eye," he directed, and whistled a strain like the cry of some night bird. "Us Poole boys hail each other that way at night. Safer. You hear that call, you know it's a friend."
"Thanks," said the kid, and repeated the signal accurately. "Shoah will remember it, Babe."
"Shore yuh don't want no help?"
"I'll make out, I reckon."
"Well—take care of yourself, Tiger Eye."
"Shoah will, Babe."
Babe waited in the doorway until the kid came riding by the cabin, his long legs swinging gently with the easy, pacing stride of Pecos. Babe waved his hand and the kid waved back, his mouth smiling in wistful friendliness, his glance not tigerish at all, though there was in it something vaguely disturbing. Babe went back to his bed and his book, but though he stared at the open page he did not read a line for five minutes. He was wondering about the kid.
The kid was wondering too, but not about Babe. He was wondering who would do Nate Wheeler's chores, and he was wondering who would take in the body and who would bury Wheeler. He kept wondering who would tell that woman down there in the coulee that her husband was dead, and who would meet that baby when it toddled out in its little pink dress, and give it a ride on a horse.
III. — "DADDY GO BYE?"
THE kid did not ride back the way Babe had brought him. He circled around another way, and so came into the trail from the north instead of the south. He hoped the body of Wheeler had been discovered before now, but it had not. The reddish light of the sun just setting behind a distant mountain range touched the huddled figure with a sanguine glow. The pinto pony, more faithful than most horses, stood there worriedly beside the body, just where the kid had dropped the reins at Babe Garner's suggestion.
As far as the kid could see in either direction, the trail was empty, and the wide valley lay steeped in mellow light, tranquilly aloof from Nate Wheeler's little tragedy. Shoah was an empty country, thought the kid. Nobody stirring around much. 'Peared like a body could lay out all night and coyotes find it before anybody happened along. And again he thought of the woman pulling skirts and aprons and little pink dresses off the whipping clothesline, while the baby cannily turned around and crawled backward off the doorstep. The kid whirled Pecos abruptly in the trail.
He rode at a sharp lope down the lower slope and around the point of rocks, across the wide mouth of the coulee and up to a gate not far from the house. Nate Wheeler had closed that gate behind him carefully, as a thrifty rancher should, giving thought to drifting stock. The kid also took time to close the gate before he rode on and dismounted to knock at the cabin door.
A woman's face at the window peered out at him. The kid felt that hot streak of shyness shoot up his spine as her steps came toward the door. But the chill of the message he carried steadied him as the door pulled open three inches—no more—and her thin, worried face showed there in the crack.
"Evenin', Ma'am. Theah's a man layin' back up there a piece in the road. I—is yoah husband—home?" The kid got the words out between gulps at his growing Adam's apple and his face was red to his hatband.
"No, Nate's gone." She opened the door another three inches and looked at him unafraid. He was so young and so shy, and his voice had the crooning melody of the South. "He ought to be back any time now. Is it—is the man—"
"Dead, I reckon." A bold statement, but the kid's voice robbed it of harshness.
"Oh!" The woman shrank back a little, but not from the kid. "Is he—do you know who it is?"
"No'm, nevah did see him befoah. A—he was ridin' a black pinto hawse." That would tell her, thought the kid, and looked away.
"Nate! They've got Nate! They said they would—they nailed a warning on the gate—they've killed him!" Then she pulled herself together and came out on the step, closing the door behind her to shut the baby in. The kid could hear the baby's inarticulate urging to be let out. His little fists began beating an indignant tattoo upon the door.
"Where is he? Is it far? I'll go with you. The murdering devils! How far is it?"
"No'm, yo'all bettah stay right heah. I'll go tote him in, Mis' Wheelah. I'll tote him on his hawse."
Inside, the baby was beating its fists still upon the door when the kid thrust toe in the stirrup and reined Pecos back up the trail. The mother stood upon the step and watched him go, her hand shielding her eyes from the last direct sunrays. Her face was white and her mouth was grim. The kid did not look back, but he knew she was standing there watching him go, and he knew there was murder in her heart; not for him who brought the message—for the man who had shot her husband.
A bleak sense of being somehow tricked by circumstance swept over the kid. It wasn't fair. He wasn't a killer, he hadn't wanted to kill, but a man lay dead because of the kid's bungling shot. He, who had shot the pips out of cards his own sister held out for him, how had he ever shot so wide that the bullet meant for a man's gun arm had gone through his head? A good six inches off to one side. Not even the amazing suddenness of Nate Wheeler's attack could excuse such shooting as that.
Draw and shoot—and snip the heart out of the ace of hearts six times out of six; or the diamond; or call the pips and pick them one by one, out of a six-spot tacked to a post, and drive in the head of the tack after he had reloaded. Draw and shoot—that was the way Killer Reeves had taught his son. No, sir, not even the surprise of Nate Wheeler coming at him full belt could ever excuse such shooting as that shot which had killed Nate Wheeler.
Shoah funny, Babe Garner being right there close where he could see and hear the whole thing. Never needed any explaining—just took it for granted the kid only did what he had to do. Never said a word, either, about that poor shooting. Six inches wide of the mark. Pap shoah would turn in his grave if he was to know Tiger Eye couldn't shoot any straighter than that. Shoah white of Babe Garner, though, taking him home with him before the nesters got wise to what he had done.
That little woman standing on the doorstep, shading her eyes with her hand! The baby inside, pounding the door with his fists, wanting to come out! The kid gave his head an impatient shake, trying to drive that picture out of his mind. Shoah hell, the way things happened sometimes.
Getting Wheeler on the pinto, tying him on with his own rope—like toting a deer out of the hills along the Brazos. Like toting Buck Thomas in from that fight Pap and Buck had with the Gonzales boys. The pinto was a little snorty over the dead smell, but gentle. The kid worked calmly enough, but he worked fast and he did not look straight at Nate Wheeler's face; not once. Damn' shame. Couldn't miss on a deer or a coyote or anything like that—had to go and miss on a man. Babe Garner called it lucky, but the kid couldn't see it that way. Shooting Wheeler's arm down would have done just as well. Better. A damn sight better for the woman and that baby.
She was down by the gate, waiting in the dusk, when the kid came riding up, leading the pinto with its grisly pack. Up in the cabin the baby was hollering its head off, wanting to get out. Mad, that little devil. Shoah had a temper. Bet it wasn't shedding a tear; just yelling at the shut door.
The little woman unfastened the gate, her fingers clinging to the weathered, strap-worn slick in her husband's hands. Hundreds of openings, hundreds of closings, in daylight and dark, in haste and at leisure, in fair weather and blinding blizzards. And now the buckle must loosen to let the pinto walk through with Wheeler's dead body tied across the saddle like a shot deer—bloody head hanging down on one side, feet in rider's boots with rundown heels dangling a bit stiffly on the other side. Rope crisscrossed over his back, holding him in place.
She did not speak as the grim burden went through. Just reached out and caught a swaying, inert hand and laid it swiftly against her cheek and let it go. The kid swallowed hard at his young Adam's apple and turned his tiger stare straight ahead, up the trail toward the darkened cabin. Baby in there, hollering like hell. Didn't want to stay alone. Scared of the dark, maybe. Kicking on the door—the kid could hear the thump, thump of the little scuffed shoes as he rode up. Spunky little devil. Few years bigger, he'd go gunning for the man that killed his pappy. Nothing to do now but try and kick the door down, wanting his mother.
Shoah plenty of spunk, though. Spunk like his pappy had, riding straight at a strange rider and yelling "Draw, you coyote!" That took spunk. Didn't know he was meeting up with Tiger Eye, old Killer Reeves' son. Didn't know Tiger Eye Reeves had the name of never missing a shot. Didn't know—didn't know that was the one time Tiger Eye Reeves was due to miss. Hell of a note, missing that one shot!
"I'll go fix the bed for him," the little woman announced dully, coming up as the kid halted at the doorstep and swung limberly down from the saddle. "I put my washing on the bed till I could get time to sprinkle down the clothes."
Sounded like the kid's mother, always planning her housework. Sprinkle down calico skirts and check aprons and little pink dresses. Roll them tight and cover them up till the irons got hot. Sprinkle the pink baby dresses with tears now, most likely. No need now to push the irons back and cook supper for her man when he got home. Home, all right—but he wouldn't want any supper. Hell of a note, shooting crooked like a damn' Mexican.
The kid was unfastening the rope where the last hitch had been taken in the middle of Nate Wheeler's back. The body had sagged to one side, and the kid lifted it by one arm,—the gun arm, the one he meant to "shoot down." The arm gave limply in his grasp, the bone shattered above the elbow; and the kid froze to an amazed immobility for ten seconds, his mind blank, his fingers groping and testing.
Arm shoah was plugged, all right. Not a doubt in the world about that. Funny the kid hadn't noticed it before. But, then, Wheeler had fallen on that side and his arm had been underneath, and the hole in his head was too plain to miss seeing. It never had occurred to the kid to look at that arm. Hadn't happened to get hold of it when he loaded him on the pinto, either. Hell, he hadn't missed, after all! Hit the arm right where he aimed, up above the elbow where there was only one bone to bust and no great harm done. Few weeks in a sling, arm good as ever. The kid knew. He'd had a bullet in the arm once, by mistake. Darn fool brother trying to do stunts with cards, the kid fool enough to hold the card.
The kid felt the little heat waves streaking up his spine at the woman's voice from the doorway, and the heat warmed and dissipated that cold lump he had been carrying in his chest. He hadn't bungled that shot, after all. Wheeler must have ducked his head right in line with the bullet. It was an accident—and that made a difference; a very great difference to the kid, justly proud of his skill.
He lifted Wheeler's body from the pinto to his own back, shouldering it as he had shouldered many a slain buck. He carried it in and laid it on the bed, now neatly spread with white marbled oilcloth from the table—careful housewife even in her grief, this little woman!—and composed the dead legs in their worn leather chaps, and the hands primly folded one upon the other across the blue chambray shirt with all the white buttons sewn neatly in place by his wife, who now stood staring down at him with the hot, dry eyes of hate. Hate for the man who had killed her husband. The kid knew, just as well as if she screamed aloud the curses seething within her mind and heart. Quiet kind, she was; the kind his mother always said would take things hard.
She stooped now and picked up the baby and set him astride one bony hip and wiped his nose and cheeks with a corner of her apron. Red-headed little tike, that baby. Red-headed like his pappy. Nate Wheeler had red hair, sandy mustache and yellow splotches of freckles on his cheekbones; his hands were freckled on their hairy backs and his wrists too. Baby had four teeth, two above and two below like a squirrel, only stubby and white. It pointed now to Wheeler and said, "Daddy go bye?" twice, waving its chubby arm toward the bed.
That did something to the woman, kinda. She grabbed the baby's arm down and turned away quick, and sat down on a rocking chair and started moaning and rocking, the baby's face pressed so close against her shoulder that its little stubby nose was flattened and it kicked like a calf at the branding fire, trying to get loose. Never cried, though. Shoah was a spunky little devil. Reckon he'd be ready to ride at a stranger when he got big enough—ride and shoot, like his pappy. The kid sighed. Pity a baby can't stay little and cute. Nate Wheeler was a little tike once; and now—there on the bed with his hands folded on his chest.
