Chapter 26
A Bold Decision

I don’t know what Pa intended to do about the letter he had received, but I needed something to occupy my mind for a while, and I liked what Mr. Kemble had suggested. I started on the article right away.

I had no sooner begun when thoughts of Zack began to intrude into my mind. Maybe it was from seeing Pa wrestling with his decision, and knowing Zack was part of what he was thinking about in it all. There still had been no word from or about Zack, and even though we didn’t talk about it much, we were all worried.

I couldn’t help feeling personally involved. I didn’t feel responsible for his leaving, but I did feel that maybe I’d let Zack down too, that a lot of the things he’d said to Pa applied to me as well. I even felt that some of what I’d done, the opportunities I’d had and the attention I’d received, all went into making him feel less important. It wasn’t true, of course, but his outburst surely made it seem like that’s how he felt. I thought we were about as close as a brother and sister could be, and then I found out that he was hurting about all kinds of things no one knew about. It wasn’t right for him to suffer like that, and I began to feel that it was important for me to do something about it.

At first I thought of writing Zack a letter. What better way to get in touch with him? He’d have his hands on it in just a few days!

Then I realized what a stupid idea it was. He might have his hands on it, but a letter would just be stuck inside a mail pouch in his saddlebags, and he would never see it! We had no idea where he was staying, so there was no way to address a letter actually to him.

All the while I was working on my Lincoln article, Zack kept running through my mind. I’d see his face, first laughing, then serious. I’d see him riding on a horse like the wind. I recalled our first coming to California and how he’d tried so hard to act grown up. I remembered the pain I could see underneath the brave exterior. I remembered how he and Pa had a hard time at first, but how they had become friends—or so I’d thought. I remembered the first gun Pa gave him that Christmas and how proud Zack had been, and how much he’d loved working at the mine with the three men.

So many memories kept rising and falling into my thoughts, all now clouded over with the pain and hurt of his bitter words of anger the day he’d left.

One day a daring plan came into my mind—in its own way almost as daring, I suppose, as Zack’s going off as he had. I went to talk to Pa about it.

“What would you think,” I asked, “if I was to go find Zack?”

“Tarnation, girl!” he exclaimed. “How you figure on doing that?”

“I’ll follow the Express route east till I get to Zack’s leg.”

“You’re gonna ride along with the Pony Express! You’re a decent rider, Corrie. But you ain’t gonna keep up with them skinny young wild men!”

“I don’t have to keep up with them, Pa,” I said. “I only have to follow the route. I figure I’ll go from station to station, asking as I go about Zack. Somebody’s bound to know of him, and somewhere along the line I’ll run into him.”

Pa rubbed his chin and made like he was thinking. “It’s a foolhardy enough notion for my daughter to have thought of,” he said after a while, breaking into a grin.

“Is it all right, Pa?” I asked eagerly.

“‘Course it ain’t all right. This is crazier than any of your schemes four years ago!” Pa’s tone was lighthearted, but I could tell he meant it, too.

I laughed kind of sheepishly.

“What do you want me to say?” he went on. “That I like the idea? It’s dangerous out there.”

“We have to find out about Zack sometime, Pa,” I said.

“Yeah,” Pa sighed. “And I reckon by now you have proved yourself, and I trust you. But I don’t like the idea of you being out there alone. I don’t like it for a second, and I don’t see how I could do anything but try to keep you from it just like I did Zack.”

“But I’d only be gone for a short time, Pa. Not like what Zack wanted to do—not to take a job.”

Pa sighed. “I’m as anxious about Zack as you are. Why don’t you take the stage?”

“The stage doesn’t follow the same route till it gets to Wyoming.”

“The wagon trail?”

“There are no wagon trains going east this late in the year. I wouldn’t find anybody to hook up with that way, either. Besides, the California Trail goes north of the Express route. There’s no way I can see to find him except to go straight out to Placerville and Carson City and then straight across Nevada toward Salt Lake City.”

“I tell you, it’s dangerous territory, Corrie. Your ma died out there from the heat. You know that better than I do. There’s Indians, desert, sometimes no water.”

“That was almost ten years ago, Pa. It’s more civilized now. There are horse-changing stations every twenty or twenty-five miles. There are people, food, water, a place to rest. If I just told them my brother was a rider, they’d be hospitable enough, and even let me sleep the night.”

Pa thought again. “Yeah, I reckon that’s so,” he said. “Still, I don’t much like the idea of you being that far from home alone.”

All of a sudden another wild idea struck me.

“Why don’t you come with me, Pa?” I said. “Let’s go find Zack together!”

Pa’s face remained blank, not twitching so much as a muscle. But his eyes betrayed that somewhere deep behind them, his mind was spinning fast to take in the words I had said and to figure out what to do about them.

“You know his being gone’s eating at you, Pa,” I said after a minute, “just like it is me. Let’s both go out there and find him and tell him we’re sorry for not letting him know how we felt, and tell him we love him.”

Still Pa was silent, thinking it all over. He stood there for a long time, looking out into the distance. Finally he turned to me.

“You think he’d listen to me?” he said softly, the pain and uncertainty all too clear in his voice.

“Of course he would, Pa,” I said. “What son’s going to turn his own pa away?”

“Seems like that’s just what he wanted to do.”

“Oh, Pa, no he didn’t. He was just feeling pain and confusion. He didn’t know what to do with it all. I think you got in the way, that’s all.”

“But I was the cause of it all.”

“No you weren’t, Pa. Kids blame their parents for all kinds of things that are really no one’s fault but their own. They just don’t want to look down inside themselves, so they blame the nearest person around.”

“Did you ever do that, Corrie?” asked Pa. He and I had lots of personal talks together. But when he said those words, there was an earnestness in his voice I’d never heard before. Never in my life had I seen a man so vulnerable as Pa was at that moment, so stripped of all the barriers men usually put up to shield themselves from other people. I felt I was looking all the way to the bottom of Pa’s very soul, where there was a tender human being just as capable of feelings and suffering and questions and pain and worry as any woman or any child. It’s not the kind of thing most kids ever get the chance to see in their parents, but I saw it right then in my pa, and it pulled me all the deeper into him and made me love him all the more.

He was looking at me intently, almost as if he were afraid of the answer I would give him.

“When we first got here,” I said, “there were a couple of times I felt hurt, Pa. But Ma had just died. I was so confused about everything, and I was only fifteen.”

“Did you blame me for what happened?” Pa asked, still with the earnest, transparent, questioning probing in his eyes.

Again, I thought hard. “I can’t say as there wasn’t any pain, Pa,” I said. “That was a hard time for all of us. But no, after we were together awhile, I never blamed you, Pa. I got to know you too well. I got to know what was inside that heart of yours. I found out how much you loved Ma, how much you loved all of us and missed us . . . and how much you loved me. How could I blame you for anything, Pa, once I really knew who you were . . . once I knew how full of love you were?”

Pa was still gazing straight at me with those manly, loving, almost pleading eyes of his. But as I was speaking they had slowly filled with tears. His lips remained unmoved, but in those sparkling eyes I could see his relief.

We just stood, holding each other’s gaze for a minute. Then finally Pa did smile, and as he did he took me in his arms, drew me to him, and embraced me with a strength that almost squeezed the breath out of me.

“Thank you, Corrie,” he said, his voice just the slightest bit quivery.

“Yes, Pa,” I whispered.

“I’m sorry for the pain you felt.”

“It’s long past now.”

“Not for Zack,” he said.

“For me it is, Pa. And you have to remember that I know you better than he does.”

“It means more to me than you can know, Corrie, that you believe in me, and don’t blame me. That means more to a man than his kin can ever realize.”

We stood for another minute or two in each other’s arms. “I love you, Pa,” I said finally.

Just a moment more we stood; then Pa withdrew his hands from around me, pulled back, and looked at me, his blinking eyes drying again. He smiled broadly.

“Then let’s you and me go find Zack!” he said.