‘Sam, I’m worried.’
Sam stopped and set the head of the axe on the ground. He shook his head, sending a shower of sweat in all directions. He already had enough wood chopped to see Kate and Billy through the winter. Every day he told himself one more day and he’d gather his horses and leave the country. Every day he found himself less willing to do so. Deep down he knew the supply of wood for winter wasn’t what was keeping him here.
Kate stepped forward. Using her apron, she reached up and wiped the sweat from his face.
‘What’s the matter?’ Sam asked, surprised at all the feelings her closeness, the touch of her wiping the sweat from his face, aroused in him.
‘Those are pretty heavy clouds coming up,’ Kate fretted, nodding off toward the south-west.
Sam turned and looked where she indicated. Towering thunder-heads lifted above the distant mountains. Stark white at the tops, they grew increasingly dark as they neared the ground, forming a solid black wall that blocked out everything behind it. At the upper edges of the thunder-heads, tatters of cloud feathered away and reformed constantly. Beneath those clouds, another layer scudded at right angles to the movement of the larger and higher ones.
‘Pretty good storm comin’, looks like,’ he agreed.
‘I’m afraid it’s going to be really bad.’
‘Lot o’ wind in it,’ Sam observed. ‘Lot o’ lightnin’ too, most likely. Where’s Billy? I told him he didn’t need to watch the horses today.’
‘He talked me into letting him ride up to the high meadows to check on cows.’
Sam frowned. ‘That ain’t a good place to be in a thunder storm.’
Kate nodded her head with obvious agitation. ‘That’s what has me worried. I don’t know if he’ll watch the clouds closely enough to know to head for home before it actually starts storming. By that time, it’ll be too late to get away from it.’
Sam walked over and picked up his shirt. Pulling it on, he buttoned it as he said, ‘I’ll saddle up and find him. What end of the ridge will he most likely be at?’
Kate didn’t answer for several heartbeats. She fought down the arousal that inexplicably rose up in her as she watched him button his shirt over his muscled, sweating torso. She shook her head as if to force the thoughts from her mind. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘He’ll be looking for wherever the cows are.’
Sam swung his gun belt around him and fastened it. He tied the bottom of the holster around his thigh, just above the knee as he watched her face. Half a dozen emotions surged in him as well, as he studied the expressions that took turns crossing her beautiful face. He remembered the feel of her body against his when he had held her, after he had rescued her from Russell and his gun hands. He wanted with everything in him to offer her the haven of his arms now, but knew time was of the essence. He wasn’t at all sure what her reaction would be in any case.
His voice was more gruff than he intended when he spoke. ‘I’ll find him.’
He walked with long, hurried strides to retrieve his horse. In ten minutes he was in the saddle, loping through the long grass toward the high meadows.
As he rode, he continually glanced over his shoulder at the approaching clouds. He measured in his mind the speed with which the storm approached and the distance he had to cover. After the first half mile, he nudged his horse with his spurs, urging him to an all-out run instead of the easy canter he had started with.
Half an hour later gusts of cold wind swirled intermittently around him. Light dimmed as the dense clouds blanketed out the late summer sun. Lightning flashed in an almost constant display to his south-west; thunder rolled and rumbled.
Seeing a particularly bright flash of lightning, Sam counted in his head, measuring the time from the flash of lightning to the sound of its thunder.
Almost as if sensing his rider’s fear, the big gelding he rode perceptibly increased the speed at which he was running.
‘Hate to run you this way, fella,’ Sam muttered. ‘Especially uphill, but we gotta get to that boy. Kate ain’t gonna be able to take it, if anything happens to him.’
Not long after that the first huge drops of rain began spattering against the dry ground. In some part of his mind it amused Sam that drops of water would cause small dust clouds to explode from the ground when they struck.
The rest of his mind was wrapped in a thick mantle of fear. Lightning flashed in the air all around him. Once, a brilliant bolt of lightning struck a boulder standing high on a hill top. It formed a ball of fire that jumped to another boulder, then another, then another, in a series of explosions that threatened to deafen him. The thunder that followed instantly behind it did its best to finish the job on his hearing.
Watching the ridges ahead of him, he finally spotted Billy. Following a hog-back that led from the high ridge, he appeared to be trying to find a way to lower ground. Instead of bettering his position though, he was exposing himself as the highest thing around, almost guaranteeing that he would be the first thing to attract lightning.
Sam yelled his name against the wind that was now driving rain in sheets, but his voice was lost in the fury of the storm. The rain quickly obscured the boy, so he couldn’t even see him.
He reined his horse in a direction intended to intersect the path the boy was following. Muttered prayers escaped his lips without his even being aware. They were interspersed with curses at the boy’s callow inexperience, at his mother’s allowing him to be out here alone, at his own slowness in finding him.
He rode through the bottom of a gully, already starting to run with water, and urged his horse up the other slope. Almost at the top he nearly collided with the mare Billy was riding. Each saw the other at almost the same instant.
The stark fear stamped on Billy’s face gave way instantly to one of intense relief. That relief was felt just as strongly in Sam, but his face remained impassively stern. ‘Get down off this ridge!’ he yelled above the fury of the storm.
‘What?’
‘Get down!’
‘Off my horse?’
‘No! Get to lower ground.’
‘Where?’
‘Follow me.’
He turned his horse and headed back down into the gully. A fair sized stream, brown with mud, now flowed swiftly along the bottom. He turned his horse along it, following it downhill. He kept glancing over his shoulder, making sure the boy was following.
Visibility reduced to a few feet on any side, as the rain dumped prodigious quantities of water, interspersed with occasional hailstones. Lightning flashed in a continual pyrotechnic display that made eyes and heads ache; thunder shook the ground.
Almost running into the first of the trees, Sam encountered a stand of timber, just where the gully they were following widened out into a broad swale. Entering the cover of the trees, they found their first respite from the storm’s fury.
Without pausing, Sam pushed into the timber, following it to his right where the ground rose toward another ridge. Half way up the side of the hill, beneath a dense stand of pines, he swung from the saddle.
Riding up beside him, Billy lunged from his own saddle into Sam’s arms. He was shaking so hard Sam thought for a moment he might be having some kind of fit for a moment. When he saw that wasn’t the case, he wondered whether it was fear or cold from the icy rain that prompted the violent trembling.
Not knowing what else to do, he simply wrapped his slicker around the boy, willing his strength and courage to reassure the lad. In moments, Billy’s trembling subsided. Embarrassed, he pushed away from Sam’s grip and stepped back.
‘Wow!’ he exclaimed. ‘That’s some storm!’
‘It ain’t over yet,’ Sam reminded him. ‘Let’s take cover under that pine tree. It’ll keep some o’ the rain off of us.’
Billy hesitated. ‘I thought we wasn’t s’posed to take cover under a tree in a lightnin’ storm.’
Sam nodded approvingly. ‘That’s exactly right, if it’s a tree standin’ out alone. That makes it the highest thing around, and that’s what lightnin’ always strikes. But when there’s a bunch o’ timber like this, it’s the higher trees that are most likely to get hit. Usually the ones close to the top, close to rocky outcropping or somethin’ like that.’
‘Oh,’ Billy responded, moving under the tree where Sam had already settled on to the ground, his back against the tree.
Billy sat down almost against him, leaning against the tree so their shoulders touched. ‘I’m glad you found me,’ he confessed, as if acknowledging some grave weakness.
‘Me too,’ Sam agreed. ‘I pertneart lost it when your ma said you was up here in the high country, with that storm a-comin’. By the way, you ridin’ along that ridge thataway was just beggin’ lightnin’ to strike you. When you first see clouds like that formin’, you best be beatin’ it to lower ground somewhere.’
‘I wasn’t payin’ attention till the thunder got loud,’ Billy admitted. ‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t worry about it. We got you down off o’ there in time.’
There was silence between them for several minutes. Tentatively, then, Billy said, ‘Did you ever know anyone that actually got struck by lightning?’
Sam glanced sideways at the boy, as if measuring him. Finally he said, ‘Yeah, I’ve known half a dozen men that did. Most of ’em couldn’t get to lower ground, or were out on the flats, tryin’ to keep a herd from stampedin’ in the storm.’
‘That’s awful! To get killed, just doin’ your job, I mean. It don’t seem fair.’
‘Life ain’t never fair, Billy.’
After another long pause, Billy said, ‘Did you ever know a kid that got struck?’
Sam shot him an oblique glance. He took a deep breath. His voice low and fraught with emotion, he said simply, ‘Two.’
‘Two kids?’
‘Yup. Brothers.’
‘What happened?’
‘Their pa sent one of ’em out after the milk cows, ’cause there was a storm comin’. When he didn’t get back when he thought he should have, he sent his brother after him. Lightnin’ hit ’em when they was almost home with the cows. Killed both boys, both o’ their horses, and one o’ the cows.’
‘Wow! That’s awful! Did you know them?’
‘Yup. They was neighbors to us.’
In a typical child’s way of fussing over irrelevant details, Billy asked, ‘Did they have both funerals together?’
Sam didn’t even smile at the irrelevance of the question. ‘Yeah, they did. That was the only funeral I was ever at where someone didn’t take off his hat.’
‘Who didn’t take off his hat?’
‘Their pa. He just sat there, staring, the whole way through the funeral. I don’t think he even knew he’d left his hat on. Someone had to tell him when the funeral was over. Someone took his arm and got him to stand up and walk out.’
‘I bet he felt like I did when my pa got kilt.’
‘Yeah, I ’spect he did. But you’re a stronger man than he was.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean you toughed it through. He couldn’t.’
‘He couldn’t? Why? What’d he do?’
It was again a long moment before Sam said, ‘The next morning his wife realized he hadn’t come to bed. She went out looking for him. She found him in the barn. He’d shot himself.’
‘He shot himself? Why?’
‘He blamed himself for getting his boys killed. He sent them after the cows, and he just couldn’t live with thinking he was responsible for their deaths.’
‘But it wasn’t his fault! He didn’t know they’d get struck by lightnin’.’
‘I know that. He just wasn’t able to think it through that well.’
Again there was a heavy silence. With, again, his boyish simplicity, Billy said, ‘I wish I’da been there. I coulda told him that it’d start hurtin’ less after a while. It don’t stop hurtin’, but it hurts some less after a while.’
Then more faintly, his voice fading as he said it, ‘I wish I coulda told ’im that.’
Fighting down his own emotions, Sam heaved himself to his feet. ‘I think the worst of the storm’s past. We’d best be headin’ back to the house. Your ma’s gotta be worried sick about you.’
‘About both of us,’ Billy corrected.
It was obvious to Sam that he was the one who was right. When they first came into sight of the house, Kate burst out of the door on a run. She ran to meet them, catching Billy as he lunged from the saddle into her arms. She stood there, holding her son, sobbing out the fear she had not allowed herself to surrender to until then. When Sam had gotten their horses unsaddled, they were just walking into the house, her arm still around his shoulders, he could not have explained the overwhelming rush of loneliness that swept over him at being excluded from that small celebration.