Clay and Sarah were whispering when the lights went down, the big screen lit up, and the music began. They whispered through the opening credits when those words appeared across the screen, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. “Who do you think shot him?” Clay whispered. “Jimmy Stewart or John Wayne?”
“Shhhhh!” came Libby’s voice amid her giggles, from right behind them. Little Nora chimed in, “They’re on a date! They’re on a date!”
Clay glanced from the screen, where Jimmy Stewart was stepping off the train, to Sarah’s face. Her eyebrows were saying, “My sisters are pests, but there’s nothing we can do about it.”
He didn’t mind. He’d enjoyed treating them to popcorn and soda. He was thinking of them more as pets than pests.
Back to the screen. He didn’t want to miss a bit of it. What matter that her sisters were giggling behind them? It was dark, it was a movie house, and here was John Wayne bigger than life. This really was all happening to him, all in the town of Escalante, Utah, on a day he’d run wild horses out of the mountains with the girl sitting right beside him, a girl made of the stuff of his own heart.
Liberty Valance swaggered onto the screen, leering and vile, and his whip hand knocked Jimmy Stewart to the ground. “He’s awful,” Sarah whispered. “He’s scum,” Clay whispered back.
“Is he going to kiss her?” Nora asked Libby. Then the two were giggling again.
Clay pretended he didn’t hear that. The movie heated up. The girls were all caught up in it now too.
When the big moment in the movie came and Clay realized the sacrifice John Wayne was making, that he would give up the girl he loved to Jimmy Stewart, that he would let her and everyone believe that it was the tenderfoot with the law books who had shot Liberty Valance, Clay couldn’t keep the tears from his eyes and his hand from reaching for Sarah’s. The girls were too absorbed to notice and he watched the last minutes of the movie with her hand in his. He felt her gentle grip as the joy and the sadness of the day and the movie ran back and forth between them.
The music swelled and the lights went up, and Clay was blinking away the tears. John Wayne had lived out his life and gone to his grave lonely. Clay felt sure there was nothing as miraculous in life as love. “Great movie,” he said.
Sarah squeezed his hand and then their hands parted. Sarah’s eyes were misty too. The girls were giggling again. People were standing up and stretching, and moving up the aisles.
“That’s him,” Sarah said suddenly. “Staring at us. That’s Barlow, in the vest.”
Clay saw the man there, across the aisle and down to the right, still seated and staring at him. Yes, at him.
Why?
Now the big man raised himself slowly, fitted his hat to his head, staring all the while. Clay could feel the fear coming from the little girls—the man sent a chill through him too.
Barlow lumbered up the aisle, but as he reached their row, he stopped. They were only a few seats in and Barlow was leaning toward them. His face was hard like an anvil, and his eyes squinted with hatred.
“So you’re the kid,” Barlow said hoarsely. “I heard you were staying with the Darlings.”
His voice made everything sound like swearing.
“So you’re the big ex-rodeo star’s nephew.”
“That’s right,” Clay managed. It felt like there was no air in his lungs to talk with. I’m not going to let him bully me, he thought. “—And proud of it,” he added in a louder voice.
Libby and Nora were frozen to their seats. Sarah was tensed and waiting.
The man brought his face closer, and his voice began to rasp even before he spoke. “I bet you think this is all a game, don’t you kid? Your uncle stealing my horses, resting up a few days in jail. Just like in the movies, right? We’ll see what you think in a few days.”
Now Barlow stared at Sarah as well, and then back at Clay. “I’m not surprised you’re staying with the Darlings. Well, her father and his brother Sheriff Darling are going to find that things aren’t going to turn out quite the way they thought. I’m putting a stop to all this, once and for all.”
With that he was gone. The big man strode up the aisle and disappeared.
“Isn’t he awful,” Libby said. “He thinks he’s so big.”
“He was worse than Liberty Valance,” Nora declared.
Clay looked around. Barlow was gone. Everyone had left the theater but them.
Sarah hadn’t spoken but now she did. “Horsekiller,” she said between her teeth.
“I wonder what John Wayne would do to him,” Libby said. “He’d take care of him.”
Clay looked at Sarah. She was just as shaken as he was. “Sarah, what did he mean? What’s he going to do?”
Deeply troubled, Clay said good night to the Darlings and collected Curly, then walked over to the bunkhouse in the bright moonlight. He’d sit awhile out on the porch, where he could think. What did Barlow mean? What did he know?
It wasn’t but a few minutes until he saw Mr. Darling coming his way. He took a seat on the porch next to Clay.
Clay wondered if Mr. Darling had come over to talk about Barlow. Sarah had told her father all about what happened at the movies, that Barlow had made some kind of bad threat about Uncle Clay. But her father had said little about it, remaining strangely silent.
“We used to have a fair number of mountain lions around here,” the rancher began slowly, as if he were talking to the night.
“Once in a while a lion would take a few calves, not many. Now the lions are about gone. We’re making the world safe for cows, I guess … When I was a kid, younger than you are now, I saw the last wolf in these parts.”
“You saw a wolf, around here?”
“Lobo Arch is named after him, down in Coyote Canyon. That wolf was likely the last survivor of a pack in the Arizona Strip, and must’ve swum the Colorado over to the Escalante side.”
The man’s voice trailed away, as he seemed to have drifted out of the present. But then he picked up his story as he reached for a pine needle on the railing that he stuck in his teeth like a straw. “That wolf had a habit of nosing through piles of tin cans and garbage out around the line shacks. Finally he put his foot in a trap hidden in one of those piles. He dragged that trap ten miles before he was finally shot.”
“You were there?”
“Got there right after he was killed. That wolf was the most bedraggled canine I’ve seen in my life. Last wolf. It was my father that shot him. And you know, after that he wouldn’t even shoot a coyote. Never talked about it, but I could tell killing that wolf had changed him, and I guess it did me too.”
Clay didn’t know what to say, and wasn’t sure why Mr. Darling was telling him these things.
“Clay, we’re sure pleased you’ll be here to take in the county fair with us. It starts with the dance tomorrow evening out at Dance Hall Rock—it’s to commemorate the dances that the pioneers held there back in 1879. They were on their way to Hole-in-the-Rock, to cross the Colorado and start a mission up the San Juan. Anyway, I wanted to ask if you’d help me with the chuck wagon tomorrow afternoon. We’ll go out there in the old style and get the barbecue started with some other fellows, and Mrs. Darling and the girls will drive out a little later with the side dishes and all. Would you do that with me?”
Clay didn’t understand why Sarah’s father was being so formal. “Sure,” Clay said. “Happy to.”
Mr. Darling didn’t say anything for a while, then at last he said, “After that meeting we were at this evening, I had a chance to visit with my brother, the sheriff. I don’t know how else to tell you this, but you deserve to know, so I’m just going to have to come out and say it. There’s some news about your uncle that isn’t so good.”
How bad? Clay thought. How bad?
“Barlow has some connections in Salt Lake. He’s succeeded in having another court hear your uncle’s case rather than ours here, on the grounds that this is a small town and everyone’s too worked up on one side or the other. What that means is, your uncle’s going to be moved way up to Salt Lake.”
“How soon?” Clay asked desperately.
“Day after tomorrow … I know you’re disappointed, but I’m glad you got to visit him—”
“Can I see him in the morning?”
“I’d sure think so. My brother’s disappointed that it’s worked out like this…. Maybe your mom, as soon as she gets back, can find the best lawyer possible for him.”
“How bad is it? How much trouble is he in?”
Mr. Darling looked away, and thought awhile, and then he looked back. “No telling yet, but it doesn’t look good. There’s a chance he’ll have to serve time in the state prison. Make an example out of him, that kind of thing. To tell you the truth, I wish he’d managed to get away last week when they first caught him. If he could have made it back onto the reservation and across the Arizona border … This sort of offense they wouldn’t bother to extradite a man for. Likely wouldn’t be any more trouble if he just stayed out of the state.”