Old Man Jenkins came that afternoon. Peeler trailed behind him in his jodhpurs and lace-up boots, offering no more than a quiet “Howdy” so long as his employer was there.
Jenkins sat beside Hewey’s bed. “By rights I ought not to pay none of your expenses. You got yourself hurt doin’ exactly what I told you not to. But I’ve always had a generous heart. I’ll go halves with you.”
“I hate to put you to all that expense.”
“I’ve arranged for you to be moved to a boardin’house soon as you’re able. It’ll be some cheaper. This old quack charges like his place was the Menger Hotel in San Antone.”
“I figure to be back at the ranch pretty quick.”
Jenkins’s eyes showed strong doubt, but he made no direct comment. “By rights it’s Frank Gervin who ought to pay the bills, foistin’ off that bunch of snides on us. But I sicced the curandera woman on him. She claims she can give him a case of the itch, at least. Maybe even the piles.” Jenkins arose to leave. “The next place you work, I hope you follow orders better than you did for me.”
By that, Hewey assumed he was out of a job. Well, he had been out of a job many times but had never had much trouble finding someplace to work. There was always call for a good cowpuncher. Soon as he knitted a little he might take Biscuit up into the Guadalupes,
as pretty a country as he had ever seen. Tommy too, if the boy wanted to go. They would have their pick of places to work.
Peeler had been so quiet, Hewey had almost forgotten he was still there. The chauffeur moved nearer the bed and gazed down on Hewey with sympathy. “I wish there was somethin’ I could do for you.”
“There is. Next time you go to the ranch, tell Aparicio and the boys I’d be obliged if they’d look after Biscuit for a couple of weeks ’til I’m in shape to come and get him.”
Peeler looked at him askance. “A couple of weeks? Don’t you know how bad you’re hurt?”
“I’ve been hurt worse than this fallin’ off a wood-haulin’ wagon.”
Peeler carefully gathered his words. “You’re not goin’ to want to hear this, but I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t say it. While you’re layin’ here you’d best be thinkin’ about what you’ll do from now on. Your wild-ridin’ days are over. Even a gentle horse like Biscuit may be too much for you. But you’ve got to keep on livin’. You’d better start figurin’ on how you’re goin’ to do it.”
He did not wait to hear Hewey’s protests that this was just a temporary setback, that he would soon be making a hand again.
Hewey stared in frustration at the open door through which Peeler had gone. He made a fist with his right hand, for he could barely move the fingers on his left. He would have thought everybody knew him better than that, already giving up on him when it hadn’t even been twenty-four hours since his little accident. It would take more than a crazy black stud to set him permanently on the ground.
Tommy came into the room. “Need anything?”
“I need for everybody to quit tellin’ me what a hopeless wreck I am. I’ve had toothaches hurt me worse than this.” His left arm and his right leg both pulsed with pain, and each time he moved he felt
as if someone were running a sword through his lungs. He moved no more than he had to.
Tommy did not answer. Hewey changed the subject. “You’d better be findin’ a way to get back to the ranch. You ain’t been fired too, have you?”
“I’m stayin’ here to look after you.”
“The doctor’s supposed to be doin’ that, and at considerable expense, the way Old Man Jenkins tells it. If you’re goin’to be a cowboy, you’d better be out there cowboyin’.”
Tommy’s face was sad. “I had no idea it was goin’to be like this. First Skip, then you.”
“The cowboy life ain’t all roses. It sticks a thorn in you from time to time.”
“Home looks a lot better to me than it used to. But right now the main job I’ve got is takin’ care of you.”
“I always took care of myself.”
“Let’s see you walk to the toilet.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
“Then there’s no use in us talkin’ any more about it.” Tommy looked into a water pitcher on a small table beside Hewey’s bed. “I’ll go pump some fresh water for you.”
“A stiff drink of whiskey is what I need.”
He knew he would not get it, not until he was out of this place and away from the doctor’s close scrutiny. He had been looking at a pair of crutches leaning in a corner, propped between a medicine cabinet and the wall. He had never used any before, but it stood to reason that a man who could ride broncs should be able to master a pair of crutches. He imagined the surprise he would see on bystanders’ faces when he entered the saloon and bellied up to the bar with an arm and a leg wrapped like Christmas packages. They would know then that Hewey Calloway was made of sterner stuff than they had given him credit for.
He appraised the distance. He would be unable to put weight on his right leg, but he could hop on his left, holding on to the bed partway, then the table and finally the medicine cabinet.
The first step was to get out of the bed. That, he reasoned, might be the hardest part, for he had lain here since last night, hardly changing position. His body would be stiff, resisting movement. He tried sitting up, but he immediately fell back on his pillow, stricken by an internal wrenching so intense that it left him in a cold sweat and breathing hard. He rested a bit until the pain subsided, then decided to try a different way. Carefully he slid his left leg to the edge of the bed and dragged the bound leg after it. He swung both legs off, twisting his body around to a ninety-degree angle without his back losing contact with the mattress. The left leg bent normally at the knee, but the bound right leg extended straight out, stiff as if splinted between boards. He gritted his teeth.
The really hard part would come now, raising his upper body off the mattress. He had little control over his left hand, but with his right he gripped the edge of the mattress and pulled himself to a sitting position so quickly that he was up before the pain had time to register. It came with such a blinding force that he bit his tongue to keep from crying out, and he almost fainted. The room seemed to swing back and forth like a pendulum. Nausea brought his breakfast up into his throat, burning hard, and he thought he would lose it.
Gradually the dizziness diminished, and with it much of the hurting. He felt sweat, cold and clammy, running down his face, tickling his chest. But he was still sitting up. He wished Old Man Jenkins could see him, and Peeler and Snort.
When he thought he was steady enough, he eased forward until his left foot touched the floor. He tested his weight on it and decided it would hold him. The right leg remained stiff and useless, but he could hold the edge of the bed with his right hand. He pushed
himself the final inches to clear the mattress and was standing on his left foot. Holding to the edge of the bed for balance, he made the first hop.
The internal pain came roaring back. This time he could not help crying out. Nausea came upon him again in a rush, and with it the dizziness. He could not hold on to the bed. He fell forward, unable to help himself. He struck the floor on his stomach, then his face. Most of the breath gusted from his lungs, and his nose smarted as if a fist had struck him. He felt he was still falling, far into some bottomless black hole.
Tommy hurried into the room. “Uncle Hewey!”
The doctor was only a few steps behind. “Come, son, help me lift him back onto the bed. Careful. He may have undone everything we did for him.”
Hewey had never felt agony more intense. All the bright suns he had seen yesterday came back, spinning as wildly as before. He had but a fingernail hold on consciousness.
The doctor’s voice was angry. “He thinks he’s a bronc rider, and he can’t even stay on a bed. We may have to tie him like a horse.”
Hewey tried to explain that he was trying to reach the crutches, but he was just mumbling. He could not even understand himself. The doctor felt over his leg and his arm, then his ribs and his chest. Hewey groaned at his touch.
Evans told Tommy, “These old cowboys get to thinking they’re made of rawhide. They’re more like eggshells, and nobody ever put Humpty Dumpty back together again.”
Hewey spent a miserable night, all of yesterday’s pain reawakened and intensified. Trying to get out of bed too early had been a mistake, a lesson learned the hard way like so many others in his life. But if he had not tried, he would not know.
The doctor took the precaution of removing the crutches to another
room. “I should have done this in the first place. You don’t leave candy in front of a child and expect him not to eat any.”
If Hewey had felt better he might have taken offense, but a few disparaging words carried no sting compared to the injuries imposed upon him by that black stud. He lay half awake, half dreaming much of the night, trying to conjure up appropriate measures of vengeance against Fat Gervin but finding none that seemed devilish enough to fit the crime. The one or two that came closest would probably result in his taking a trip to the Huntsville penitentiary, much too far from cow country.
At least Tommy did not spend a second night sitting up in a chair. The doctor admired the boy’s loyalty but had arranged for him to sleep and eat in a nearby boardinghouse. Nevertheless, Tommy was at his uncle’s side soon after sunup, asking how he felt.
“A whole lot better,” Hewey lied. “That medicine is doin’ me a world of good.” In fact, when the doctor was not looking he had poured much of it into a bottle provided for him to empty his bladder. If a medicine had to taste bad to do a man any good, this one ought to cure everything from warts to double pneumonia.
He still judged distances by the length of time it would take to travel them on horseback. Though he had ridden in automobiles several times, he never had gotten used to the notion that they could carry people as far in an hour as a good horse might go in the better part of a day. He was not surprised that Walter and Eve showed up, but he was amazed that they arrived so soon. He would have thought they would come in a wagon, the way they usually traveled.
Walter said, “Alvin Lawdermilk brought us in his automobile.”
“Alvin’s got him an automobile?” Alvin had always been a horseman and had preached mightily against the motorcar. First Blue Hannigan and now Alvin Lawdermilk. “The world’s changin’ too fast.”
Walter said, “We came all this way and didn’t have to fix but four flats. That’s some travelin’.”
Eve hesitantly took Hewey’s right hand after seeing that it was not injured. “Tommy says you’re in this shape on account of him.”
“I’m in this shape on account of Fat Gervin.”
“When we asked you to look out for Tommy, we didn’t mean for it to come to this.”
“He was a little put out with me for not lettin’ him ride that bronc, but I was afraid he didn’t have a chance.”
Eve blinked away tears. “Damn you, Hewey Calloway, you’re the most aggravatin’man I ever knew.”
She took Hewey by surprise. “How do you figure that?”
“You do the most thoughtless things sometimes without givin’ any consideration to the consequences, and you make me mad enough to want to shoot you. Then you do somethin’ like this and make me want to hug your neck. I would, but I don’t know where all you’re busted.”
“I’d appreciate the hug. What I’d appreciate a lot more would be for you-all to take me away from here. I’m damned tired of this bed.”
Walter shook his head. “The doctor says you’ll be on your back for some time yet.”
“If I had Biscuit here, I’d saddle up and ride off right now.” He knew better, but he did not want them thinking of him as an invalid. They would want to start doing things for him, and he had always been most comfortable doing for himself.
Walter said, “Alvin’s waitin’ in the next room. He’s anxious to see you.”
Hewey warmed with pleasure at the thought of seeing his old friend and sometime employer. He had intended to stop by Alvin’s place for a visit when he and Tommy went to Upton City to receive the broncs from Fat, but his unexpected encounter with Spring
Renfro had gotten in the way. “Good old Alvin. I wonder if he’s ever got any better lookin’.”
“Judge for yourself,” Walter said, and went to fetch him.
Alvin grinned like a new cat in a barnful of mice, his false teeth a little too large, his pudgy face a little too red. He looked older than Hewey remembered him, though he lacked a lot being as old as Jenkins or C. C. Tarpley. People had said Alvin had to slow down, which was the reason he had employed a ranch foreman to help ease the burden of labor and responsibility. His longtime love for good whiskey probably bore much of the fault.
Hewey grasped Alvin’s hand. “Did you bring me a drink?”
Alvin winked at Eve. “Eve drank it all up on the way here.”
She made a fist as if to punch him.
Alvin said, “But soon’s you get out of that bed we’ll make up for lost time. About four years’ worth.”
“Four years is a lot of whiskey.”
“We won’t drink it all at once. We’ll spread it out over a couple of days.”
Eve said, “You know you’ve stopped drinkin’, Alvin. You’ve been quit for two years.”
Alvin looked about as if to see who might be listening. “What did you have to go and say that for? You’ll ruin my reputation.”
Hewey made a halfhearted grin, trying to play along with their joking, though he did not find it funny. He remembered when Alvin used to hide bottles from his wife, Cora, all over the ranch so he would never be without. If he really had quit after having loved whiskey so much, that was another indication he was slipping.
Damn it, why do my friends have to get old while I’ve got my back turned?
Alvin said, “Everybody back home is anxious about you … Cora, even her mother.”
Hewey believed what he said about Cora, but not his comment
about Cora’s mother. Old Lady Faversham never had liked Hewey, but then, she didn’t like her son-in-law either. Hewey waited for Alvin to mention someone else. When he did not, Hewey asked, “How’s Miss Renfro?”
Alvin said, “You can ask her yourself.” He turned and beckoned.
A shadow moved through the doorway, almost hidden behind Walter and Eve and Alvin. Spring Renfro stepped around them. She gave him only a thin and fleeting smile, but it was like someone had lit up all the lights in the house.
“I’m sorry to see you like this, Hewey.” -
He pulled up the sheet to cover his shoulders. “I feel fine. Just a bruise here and there.” He reached for her hand, but she was not close enough. Even so, the sight of the teacher was like a tonic to him. Some might regard her as a spinster and even say she was plain, but each man’s standard of “pretty” was a personal matter. She could probably still have her pick of Upton County bachelors, age forty and over, and there were a good many of them. Hadn’t somebody told him she and Alvin’s foreman—what was his name?—had been seeing one another?
“I sure didn’t expect you to come, Spring … Miss Renfro. But I’m glad you did. I can already feel the hurt fadin’ away.”
Spring’s lips tightened as she stared at him. “I … everybody’s been very concerned about you.”
“You don’t have to be. I’ll be up from here in a few days.” He looked at Alvin. “I’m out of a job. Reckon you’ve got one for me? I wouldn’t ask for full pay. I know it’ll be a month or two before I can do anything heavy.”
The fun went out of Alvin’s eyes. His gaze drifted to where the sheet covered the bound arm and leg. “Sure, Hewey. You’ll be as good as new in no time, and there’s always more work than we can get around to.”
His words were confident, but their tone said they were empty.
Alvin could not see the future as Hewey chose to see it. He saw only a crippled-up cowboy. He had seen a lot of them in his time.
But Hewey had no intention of remaining this way. He would be as good as he had ever been … better, even, because every year he lived made him a little smarter.
Hewey’s visitors stayed a couple of hours, the talk rambling around like a blind sheep over subjects of little or no interest to Hewey. He only half listened to most of it, putting in a word here and there. He concentrated his attention on Spring. He remembered with pleasure the summer they had come to know one another, and with regret the promises spoken, promises broken.
Four years. It seemed not half so long since they had talked of buying the Barcroft homestead and settling down together to a life of farming. But Hewey had been too restless to walk long behind a plow. Spring had released him, and he had ridden away to seek new country, hoping to find a place where life would remain as it had been in his youth, never changing, never making him feel like a stranger lost and passed up by time, trapped in a world he no longer understood.
Surely somewhere there must be such a place. Maybe he would find it in the Guadalupes, when he was well.
There was no question of the visitors returning home that evening, for the drive from Upton City had killed most of the day. They took rooms in the hotel. That was enough to tell Hewey his brother and sister-in-law were coming up in the world. In earlier times when they had to be in town overnight they carried their bedrolls and put up in a wagon yard.
They came again after breakfast. Hewey talked with everyone, but his gaze remained mostly on Spring.
Alvin took a watch from his pocket. “I hate to bust up a good party, but we’d better start if we’re to get home before dark. No tellin’how many flats we may have to stop and fix.”
Eve tried to talk Tommy into going home with them, but Tommy declined. “I need to stay and watch out for Uncle Hewey. Anyway, my horse is still at the Circle W”
Hewey said, “I can take care of myself. I’ll be up and out of here in a week or two, and I’ll get our horses.”
Tommy had a stubbornness in his eyes that Hewey had often seen in his mother’s. When Eve got that look, not even an earthquake could shake her. “I’m stayin’.”
Alvin, Walter and Eve said their good-byes and walked out with Tommy, leaving Spring alone for a private moment with Hewey. She gripped Hewey’s hand, as if on impulse, then quickly released it. “Please do whatever the doctor tells you.”
“Can’t do much else as long as I’m layin’ here. But I won’t be here long.” He wished she had held on to his hand, but she had moved back a step. He got an inkling of the hurt he had caused her, the hurt she must still be feeling. “How about you, Spring? Are you happy?”
“I’m making a living.”
“But are you happy?”
“It depends on what you consider happy. I guess I am. Are you?”
“I was. Thought I was, anyway, ’til this happened to me.” He struggled for the words. “Everybody tells me Farley Neal is a good man.”
She was a moment in answering. “He is.”
“You-all plannin’ on gettin’ married?”
The question took her by surprise. “Would it bother you?”
“I’ve got no right to be bothered. I went off and left you a long time ago.”
“It was a decision we made together. If you’d stayed you’d have had to change too much, and you weren’t ready for that.”
“I still ain’t changed. Not much, anyway.”
“If you did, you wouldn’t be Hewey Calloway.” She reached as
if to take his hand again but changed her mind. Before he could say anything more, she was gone.
He stared at the empty doorway, remembering the way she looked, the way she talked, her gentle fragrance, and he pondered the imponderable price of freedom.
He hated the crutch. Though it gave him limited mobility, it was unwieldy and kept threatening to throw him to the floor. Because of his broken arm, he could use only one. That kept him off balance. Each step aroused sharp protest somewhere inside, so he ventured out of the room only to take advantage of the doctor’s indoor plumbing at the end of the hall. Tommy was usually there to support him, but Hewey made him stop at the bathroom door. Some activities were meant to be private.
Peeler visited every day that he was not driving Old Man Jenkins somewhere. Blas Villegas and Aparicio Rodriguez dropped in once. Aparicio said little, but Hewey could read the thought in his eyes: This could have happened to me. It still might. Bias said, “Maybeso now you will learn to cook, like me.”
“One day of my cookin’ and the whole outfit would up and quit No, I’ll stick to punchin’ cows.”
Jenkins did not appear. Hewey asked the doctor about him.
The doctor said, “He inquires after you almost every day, but he won’t come by. I think you trouble his conscience.”
“But not enough for him to pay all my doctor bills.”
“The age of miracles is past.”
It bothered Hewey that Snort Yarnell had not visited him again. He assumed at first that Snort was in a distant camp on the Slash R and could not come to town. Then Tommy told him he had bumped into Snort on the street. Snort had asked about Hewey, then hurried away.
That he had not come by to visit hurt almost as much as the broken arm and the bum knee.
About a week after the accident Dr. Evans said Hewey was doing well enough to be moved to the boardinghouse where Tommy was staying. He brought a wheelchair. “It’s too far to walk on that crutch. Tommy can push you over there in five minutes.”
Hewey took an instant disliking to the chair. Among other things, it reminded him of Old Lady Faversham. She could walk when she wanted to, but she favored a wheelchair because it was a way of seeing to it that others waited upon her. “Can’t we hold off ’til dark so everybody won’t be lookin’at me? I don’t want them all thinkin’ I’m a cripple.”
“They might as well get used to seeing you as you are.”
“I don’t intend to stay this way. The healin’ is just takin’ a little more time than I expected.”
“You’d better get used to the idea, Hewey. I don’t know to what extent you will eventually recover, but I can tell you this: you’ll never be the same as you were.”
“Bet you.”
Getting out of bed and into the wheelchair involved considerable internal pain, but the embarrassment of being watched by strangers was almost as bad. Hewey kept his head down and his hat low as Tommy pushed him along. They had almost reached the boardinghouse when Hewey’s eye caught a familiar figure on the opposite side of the street. Tommy said, “There’s Snort Yarnell.”
Snort stopped to look, and for a moment he seemed about to hurry away. Instead, he reluctantly crossed the street, pausing to let a wagon go by.
“Howdy, Hewey.” His subdued voice sounded guilty as if he had been caught sipping whiskey in church.
“What you been doin’ that you couldn’t come to see me?”
“I wanted to, God knows I did. But I couldn’t bring myself to look at you in this shape.”
“I won’t be like this for long. Tommy says he saw you a couple of days ago. You must have an easy boss if he lets you hang around town.”
“Ain’t with the Slash R anymore. I quit.”
Hewey was not overly surprised. It had not been in Snort’s nature to stay with one job long enough to wear out a pair of pants, but Hewey had thought he might have found a home at the Slash R. Even someone restless as Snort needed to light in one place eventually.
“What’re you goin’to do now?”
“Got me a job here in town. Night watchman.”
Hewey could hardly believe. “Walkin’ around in the dark, jinglin’ keys and checkin’ doors? That don’t sound like a job for Snort Yarnell.”
“I hate to admit it, Hewey, but seein’ you the other day scared the hell out of me.”
“Why? That was nothin’ compared to the time you saw a horse stomp Old Grady Welch to death.”
“But that was years ago, and we’re older now. After seein’you I went back out to the ranch, took a look at them owl-headed broncs and got the shakes so bad I couldn’t hold a cup of coffee. I asked for my time.”
“You’ll get over it. Me and you’ll be ridin’ the rough string together before the snow flies.”
Snort’s voice cracked. “Ain’t you figured it out yet? You ain’t ever ridin’ the rough string again. Neither am I. It’s a fool’s game, and we sat at the table too long.”
Hewey stared at Snort’s back as the cowboy’s long legs carried him quickly away.
Tommy seemed shaken. “I never thought I’d see Snort Yarnell boogered over anything. You reckon he’s right?”
“You can’t pay attention to what Snort says. He changes his mind a lot oftener than he changes his socks.” But Hewey had a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach. He tried to dismiss it as foolishness, but it would not go away. His broken arm hurt, and his knee, and something inside. He tried to roll a cigarette, but his hands shook and he spilled his tobacco.
Damn that Snort! Whatever he’s got is contagious, and he’s given it to me.
The boardinghouse room he shared with Tommy was on the ground floor so he did not have to contend with the stairs, though getting up the two steps to the front porch was a challenge. Because of that, he did not try to venture beyond the porch the first three days. He gradually learned to manipulate the crutch with some dexterity.
He could see an improvement in his right knee when the doctor unwrapped it. Most of the angry red was gone, the blue was fading, and the external damage was healing over. The knee remained stiff, however. He could not straighten the leg.
He said, “This will keep gettin’ better, won’t it?”
The doctor said, “That knee took a lot of punishment. It’s like a twisted hinge. You hammer it out the best you can, but it may bind and never work again quite the way it did when it was new.”
“You’re tellin’me I could have a gimpy leg from now on?”
“It’s a mark of your trade. How many old cowboys do you know that don’t limp or walk with a cane? The body can take only so much.”
“What about my arm?”
“It may never be strong again, but at least the elbow is intact.” Hewey resisted the doctor’s appraisal. “Maybe you just ain’t run onto a patient as determined as I am.”
“Keep that attitude. Determination may be better than any medicine I can give you.”
But determination and faith both began to flag. Each morning when he arose, Hewey sat on the edge of the bed and tried straightening the right leg. He attempted to convince himself that it was getting better every day, but after five or six days he realized that any improvement was marginal or perhaps even imaginary. At least the knee was giving him less pain day by day. He could put a little weight on it. The doctor said perhaps soon he could discard the crutch and get along on a cane.
The day came when he told Tommy, “I want to go to the wagon yard and take a look at Biscuit.” Aparicio had brought the brown and Tommy’s dun to town.
Tommy eyed the crutch with misgivings. “It’s a good ways down there.”
“Fine. I need to get as far away from this place as I can.”
He shrugged off Tommy’s attempt to help him down the porch steps. “Let’s see how good I can do on my own.”
The knee hurt less than he expected, though he felt a sharp pain inside. Whatever had shaken loose was still floating around. It was only a couple of blocks from the boardinghouse to the wagon yard, but it felt like a mile. Sweat ran down his face by the time he got there, and the breeze was cool blowing through the wet spots in his shirt.
Tommy said, “You better sit down awhile.”
“Been sittin’ too long already. The only place I want to sit down is in a saddle.”
He whistled, and Biscuit ambled up to the fence. Hewey rubbed the horse’s nose, then moved through the wooden gate. Biscuit watched suspiciously, for Hewey’s movements were strange to him, and he took the crutch as a potential threat. Hewey talked softly, whistling under his breath until the horse ventured up to nuzzle him,
hoping for some kind of handout. Hewey patted him and rubbed his good right hand up and down the brown neck. His eyes burned a little. Cooped up indoors so long, he was not used to this bright sunlight.
He told Tommy, “Saddle him for me.”
Tommy protested, “Uncle Hewey, you can’t.”
“Saddle him.”
Tommy fetched a bridle, then led Biscuit to where the saddle had been placed on a wooden rack. “You oughtn’t to do this.”
Hewey knew he could not mount from the ground. “There’s a hay bale on the ground yonder. Lead him over there.”
Hewey had some difficulty in stepping up onto the bale, but the crutch gave him leverage. Tommy led the horse up close. Hewey handed him the crutch. Gripping the horn with his right hand, he made a little hop, fitting his left foot into the stirrup and swinging the stiff right leg up and over the saddle. It extended awkwardly out to one side. He could not bring it in close enough to touch the stirrup. The effort set the knee to throbbing. But Hewey was in the saddle; that was the important thing.
“Come on, Biscuit, let’s mosey a little.”
He set Biscuit into a walk, then a trot out into the large corral. Almost immediately Hewey had to slow him back to a walk, for his knee felt as if it were afire, and the internal pain was like a sword thrust between his ribs. Nauseous, he leaned out to one side, expecting to vomit.
Tommy saw his distress. “I tried to tell you.” He came running, bringing the crutch. “Let me help you down.”
“I can make it by myself.” But Hewey quickly found that he could not. He had to lean heavily on Tommy for support to dismount.
He fitted the crutch under his right arm and felt cold sweat breaking on his face. The nausea was slow to pass.
Biscuit seemed confused. Hewey patted him on the neck. “It ain’t your fault, old friend.”
Tommy’s voice was quiet and sympathetic. “I’ll unsaddle him for you while you rest awhile. Then we’ll go back to the boardin’-house.”
Hewey dropped down on the bale of hay, his shoulders slumped. He watched while Tommy removed the saddle, blanket and bridle and fed Biscuit some oats out of a barrel.
All the discouraging words he had heard from Snort and Peeler and the doctor seemed to be shouting in his ears.
What if they were right? What if he never could ride again?
He bowed his head so Tommy could not see him drag a sleeve across his eyes.