When morning came, Red woke with a start. The house was quiet and the sun’s rays were only starting to warm the old curtains hanging in the window beside him. He sat bolt upright, pulled those curtains back, and found only one horse tethered to the post outside. Before he could mutter the curse that sprang to his mind, he recalled Luke’s horse had been tied to the post on the other side of the house because the troughs on either side needed to be filled and there was just enough water in each of them to keep one horse happy. Red looked toward the door to his cramped room and found Luke curled in a ball on the floor between two blankets and a little square pillow.
When they were smaller, the two of them had fit much better inside that room. Now they seemed less like two peas in a pod and more like a pair of boulders stuffed into a marble bag. Red swung his feet over the side of his bed, which wasn’t much more than a sturdy cot, and rubbed both hands over the top of his head. By the time he’d pulled his fingers from the tangle of red hair, Luke had thrown off the blanket covering him.
“You ready to go?” Luke asked.
“Can’t we at least have breakfast first?”
“I said first light. It’s already past that. I thought this town would be miles behind me by now.”
“And I thought I would have gotten Becky Walsh alone in the loft of her barn by now, but we don’t always get what we want. I smell griddle cakes. If you can walk past those without stopping for a bite, then you don’t have a soul.”
Scratching his haunches as he shuffled from his room, Red pulled open his door and stepped into the short hallway leading to the front of the house. The floorboards were cool beneath his feet, and it wasn’t until he was a few steps away from the kitchen that he heard the sizzle of a frying pan.
Red’s father always looked as if he’d just tumbled out of bed. He looked over at his son and said, “About time you decided to wake up. Where’s Luke?”
“Right here,” Luke said as he entered the kitchen.
“Glad to have you, boy. Fix yourself a plate. You know where to find what you need.”
After having spent almost as many nights in that house as he did his own, Luke did know where everything was. He found a plate and fork and then helped himself to some hotcakes and butter. By the time Red was digging in to his own stack, his mother had arrived to fix them all coffee. From then on, Red’s parents engaged in a whole lot of small talk with Luke that flowed like so much rainwater through a gutter.
Yes, he felt better than he had the day before.
Yes, he missed his ma and Kyle.
Yes, he knew things would be better.
No, he didn’t think he was alone.
Actually Red thought that last answer was earnest enough. When Luke gave it, he’d looked over to him for silent confirmation that he truly wouldn’t be alone as the day wore on. Red nodded and piled some more griddle cakes onto his plate. Even his mother’s coffee, which usually smelled like hot glue and had the consistency of mud, was something to be savored that morning.
“Well, now,” Red’s father said as he slapped the table and stood up. “There’s work to be done. You’ll come along to lend a hand as soon as this mess is cleaned up, you hear?”
“Yes, sir,” Red replied.
“And you,” Mr. Connover said while turning toward Luke, “rest up and feel free to come and go as you please. You’re welcome to stay here as long as you like, but you’ll do your part just like everyone else. Ain’t no grief in the world couldn’t be cured by rollin’ up your sleeves and keeping yourself too occupied to fret about it.”
Luke nodded. “Thanks for your hospitality, sir. Ma’am.”
Accepting his gratitude with a warm smile, Red’s mother busied herself by collecting dirty dishes and scooping up knives and forks. She’d used to have a lot more to say, but that was before Red’s brother, Matt, went off to join the Union army last year. Since then, she’d become quiet as a sheep and twice as complacent.
After all he and Luke had been through together, Red never wanted him to know what a mean drunk his father was or how it made him sick to his stomach that his mother had given up on stepping in when things between him and the old man had gotten rough. Even before Matt had gone off to war, things had been strained in the Connover household. When Luke was around, everyone was on their best behavior. Red was often grateful for that. Other times, he resented the fact that an outsider was needed to buy him some peace inside his own home.
Red stepped outside to find his father pulling on the gloves he wore when chopping wood. A spot in the fence near the back of the property needed to be mended, and today was the day when that job would be finished. Like a cat responding to the slightest scrape of a mouse’s foot against a floor, the old man wheeled around to find his son.
“Git your lazy hide over here and help me carry these rails!”
Red nodded at his father’s words but didn’t take another step in his direction. “Luke needs help with some things,” he said. “We gotta ride over to his place and—”
“Do whatever you like,” his father said with an exasperated wave. “I stopped thinking you’d serve any purpose years ago. If your brother was here, this fence would’ve been done by now.”
That was normally the time when Red would fire back with a spiteful remark about how Matt would have been appreciated for his labor because he was the only one who was treated better than a stray dog in that family. He held his tongue, however. Knowing he was leaving town in a matter of minutes made such things easier to bear.
“Good-bye, Daddy,” Red said.
The old man grunted to himself without bothering to look over his shoulder.
Red went back inside, where his mother was fussing over Luke, headed to his room, and threw some clothes into his brother’s old saddlebags. No longer caring about leaving things the way they should be, he stripped his bed of sheets and pulled up the old, paper-thin mattress to find a gun belt wrapped in a dirty pillowcase. The holster had belonged to his father’s brother and had been a gift to Matt on his thirteenth birthday. It had been left behind so Red could learn to shoot and protect the house if trouble rode in when their father was passed out drunk in a saloon somewhere.
The pistol was a Smith & Wesson revolver with a polished barrel and cylinder. The wooden grip was smooth as silk and stained to a rich black. Red opened the cylinder and turned it to confirm that three of the seven chambers were filled with.22-caliber rounds. Compared to the old Colt Luke had been working on, Matt’s pistol felt more like a cork gun. It would get the job done well enough as long as it was used properly, and the holster fit comfortably around his waist. Before buckling it there, he reminded himself that he still had to walk past his parents and didn’t want to explain why he was doing so while heeled. After bundling the gun belt, pistol, and the spare ammunition he had inside an old shirt, Red held the package under his arm and left the room that had been wrapped around him for most of his childhood.
“You still want to tend to them matters you told me about?” Red asked as he turned toward the kitchen.
Luke was eager to get moving, but not so eager to leave the company of Red’s mother. He looked at her with a genuine smile and said, “Thanks for everything, ma’am. It really means a lot.”
She patted his cheek. “You’re part of this family, Luke. Don’t ever forget that.”
“I won’t.”
With that, Luke and Red walked out of the house, where they split up to saddle their horses. Before long, they were riding through town, heading in the general direction of Luke’s house.
“You sure you want to do this?” Red asked.
Without a pause or a lick of emotion in his voice, Luke replied, “Yes.”
Luke kept riding without casting an eye toward his old house. Red tugged back on his reins just enough to slow his horse a bit to see what his friend was missing. The front door of the Croft home was wide open and a fat man in a long black coat waddled from a long black wagon to step inside the house. Recognizing the fat man as the town’s undertaker, Red was glad Luke had the sense to keep his head turned away. He shuddered to think what was inside the home and, a few seconds later, wished he’d followed Luke’s example by not glancing over there at all.
Several neighbors and other familiar people waved at the young men as they rode by. None of them seemed surprised or offended when they barely got a response in kind. They simply looked to Red, gave him a sympathetic nod, and went about their business.
Plenty of things flowed through Red’s mind as Maconville thinned out into empty prairie and a wide trail leading south to Wichita. Foremost among them was a pang of regret that he hadn’t given proper farewells to anyone before leaving. For all he knew, he and Luke could be returning in no time at all and they would resume where they’d left off. Red couldn’t be absolutely certain about anything, but he felt the odds of that coming to pass were particularly slim.
He wondered if they should have taken more time to plan before saddling up their horses and riding away from most everything they knew. Of course, he’d heard plenty of stories of miners and homesteaders who set out to go a lot farther without being truly prepared for what they would find. Stocking up on provisions might serve its purpose, but they couldn’t prepare someone for the things that would truly put them to the test. Try as he might, Red couldn’t think of anything he might have done that would have genuinely prepared him for the ride he’d agreed to take with his friend.
When Red shifted to get comfortable in his saddle, he couldn’t really find a comfortable spot until he was seated with his back straight, his chin high, and his eyes pointed directly ahead.
Maconville was behind him.
Wichita lay a few days’ ride ahead.
Everything else would be decided when it came. There was a good amount of comfort to be taken from all of that.