HEADING WEST

originally published in TALES OF THE WEIRD WEST  #5
by Rainfall Chapbooks 2017

Lester scratched himself and gazed out on the world with fresh eyes.  A distant sun rose from the east, casting its pale gold across the prairie grass.  He smelled the coffee and bacon his mother was cooking over the fire back near the wagons.  They had traveled over a thousand miles, riding in those two wagons.  Lester and his mother and father and two brothers.  His little sister, the baby of the family, had died shortly after setting out from Montgomery, casting a shadow over their long journey.

Lester had learned to cherish this brief time of day, when he could be alone, just to watch the sun rise and not have to think about anything.  Just breathe the air and feel the soft warmth of sleep slowly receding.

“Come on now,” his father called to him.  “Eat your breakfast and get the teams hitched.”

Lester turned back to the wagons.  His two brothers raced to be the first in line for breakfast. 

Lester walked back through the tall grass.  His father stood waiting.  He was a tall man, made from the country that raised him.  He carried a brass plated Henry rifle and Lester had not seen his father without the Henry since entering the wide-open territories west of Louisiana.  Neither of his brothers had mentioned it, nor had his mother, but a new line of worry had creased the old man’s eyes, as if he saw something in that far off horizon that no one else could.

“You see anything out there, son?”

“No, sir,” said Lester.  He was taller than his father, but he always felt he was looking up to the old man.  He stood beside his father for a moment, the two of them looking back east, where the lazy sun hovered like a bleeding egg yolk.  Tall grass rolled like a wave with the wind.

“You think there’s someone out there, pa?”

The old man hesitated, keeping his thoughts to himself.  “Oh, there’s somebody out there somewhere,” said the old man, with words that had little weight, as if he himself did not believe them.  “Reckon they’s folks just like us, though.  Just trying to get along.”

“You ain’t worried about Indians, pa?  We all heard there was Indians out this way.  They told us so back in Louisiana.”

The old man regarded his son.  The boy was sixteen, his oldest, and seemed to have grown a foot taller since leaving their home in Alabama.

“No, I ain’t worried about no Indians, son,” the old man said.  “I’m worried about you getting breakfast and getting them teams hitched.  Now, go on about it.”

“Yes, sir.”

They each took a plate and filed down the line where their mother appropriated them each a portion according to their size.  Lester watched as she loaded one plate after another with a helping of bacon and biscuits.  

“Morning, ma,” said Lester when it came his turn.

His mother’s eyes fell upon him as if seeing him for the first time. For a moment, he thought she did not recognize him.  His mother smiled, then, but she did not speak. She had been this way since the death of her daughter. Lester took his plate and went to sit on the ground beside the wagons with his brothers.

“Ma ain’t changed a lick,” said Davey when Lester sat down.  “She ain’t said two words since Mississippi.”

Davey was a year younger than Lester, but everyone took him for the oldest.  He had the build of a man people were prone to listen to, whereas Lester was content to sit back and listen and not be noticed.

“I reckon it’s been hard on her,” said Lester.

“It ain’t going to get no easier,” said Davey.  “Not where we’re going.  That’s for sure.”

“Where are we going, Davey,” asked Little Sam.  He was the youngest of the brothers, only six years old.

“Hell, we’re going plum to the end of the world, Little Sam,” said Davey, always quick to tease. 

“Don’t tell him that,” said Lester, chewing a mouthful of biscuit.

“Hell, it’s true, ain’t it?  Ain’t nothing out here but emptiness.  Not even a tree for miles around.”

“It ain’t true, and don’t talk like that around him.  We’re going to New Mexico,” said Lester, turning to his youngest brother.  “We’ll be there in about another month or so.  Now, eat your breakfast.”

The three brothers were quiet for a while, each concentrating on their breakfast. 

“What you reckon got pa so worried?” said Davey.

Lester shrugged.  “Strange country, maybe.  Same things always got him worried.  Us and ma.”

Davey stood up, finished with his meal.  He stood for a moment, watching his father.  The old man was a hundred yards out, keeping sentry while his family ate.  Their father was always the last to take his meal, and it was usually from the driving seat of the buckboard.

Davey walked away with the empty plate in his hand.  “Pa ain’t going to wait all day.”

The old man and their mother rode side by side in one wagon, with the youngest brother, Little Sam, sitting between them.  The old man kept reign with the Henry rifle tucked in the crook of his arm.

Lester and Davey drove the other wagon.  They rode beside one another on the buckboard, with Davey handling the reigns.  Lester had inherited the old man’s shotgun after their father purchased the Henry. He rested it next Davey’s muzzle loader on the bench between them.

The country rolled past, a strange, slow moving landscape that showed no promise of change.  Lester’s eyes ached from searching the vast expanse, his only relief watching the rear of his father’s wagon and the slow plodding of the horses hitched to his own.

“What do you reckon we’re going to do when we finally get some place, Les?”

Davey was leaned back against the buckboard with his hat pulled low to shield his face from the sun.  Lester had thought his brother asleep until he spoke.

“You know what we’re going to do, Davey,” said Lester.  “We’re going to farm the country.  Might even mine it for gold, too, pa says.”

Davey laughed.

“That strike you funny?” said Lester.

“A bit,” said Davey.  “Who we going to farm it for?  Ain’t no one to sell it to where we’re going.  And mining’s for fools, Les.  Anybody with any sense knows that’s the truth.”

“Pa knows what he’s doing, Davey,” said Lester.  He hated when Davey got like this.  Once he started in on something to complain about, it could last all day.

“I don’t know, Les,” said Davey.  “It’s like no one’s really thought all this through.  We just got in the wagons one day and set off.”

“Pa’s thought about it plenty.  I guarantee it.”

“I bet he never thought little Mary Belle would pass soon as we left Montgomery.”

“What’s that got to do with anything,” said Lester.  “Pa couldn’t help that.  And damn you for holding it against him.”

Davey shifted his weight against the buckboard’s bench, as if trying to balance the thoughts rolling around in his head. 

“You seen what it did to ma,” said Davey once he was situated.

“I reckon she’d be like that no matter where we was, when Mary Belle passed.”

“Maybe.  But she’s only getting worse.  You see it.  I know you do.”

“Well, what are we supposed to do, Davey?  Go back to Alabama?  There ain’t nothing left to go back to.”

Davey spit out into the dry country rolling beside him.  “There’s people back there,” he said.  “Ma’s people.  Ain’t no one where we’re going.”

“There’s folks out there,” said Lester.  “Wouldn’t even be a territory if there wasn’t.”

“They ain’t our people,” said Davey.  “They ain’t ma’s people.”

Lester let his brother have the last word.  He had learned it was often the only way to end an argument with Davey.  Davey could talk around a subject a hundred different ways until a person forgot what they were arguing about in the first place.

“Pa’s stopping,” said Lester when he noticed the old man’s wagon slowing down.

Davey sat up and adjusted his hat.  They both knew it was early for a stop.

“Good,” said Davey.  “I could use a break from you.”

Lester and Davey watched the old man climb down from the wagon.  The mid-day sun glinted off the Henry rifle he held in his hand.  The old man raised an arm, calling for a halt, but he did not come towards them.

Lester and Davey said nothing.  Lester pulled the team to a stop and pushed down the wheel break lever with his foot.  The two brothers watched the old man scan the heat blurred edges of their world.

“What you reckon it is?” said Davey.

“Might be he sees something.”

“Or someone.”

“Thought you said there was no one out here.”

“No one but Indians.”

“Pa said there weren’t no Indians,” said Lester.

“Pa don’t know.  What you think he bought that Henry for?”

They sat and waited, watching for sign from the old man, but he gave them none.  The old man stood for a long while, watching something far out in front of his wagon.  He turned his attention loose from the country laid out before him and checked the other directions.  Finally, he acknowledged his two sons waiting in the wagon.

“What is it, pa?” asked Lester as the old man approached.

“Saw a dust cloud out there,” said the old man.

“Riders?” Davey asked.

“Might be nothing,” said the old man.  “You boys keep them rifles ready in case it is something.”

“All right, pa,” said Lester.

His father’s eyes hadn’t lost their line of worry, and now there was something else in those shaded crevasses that troubled Lester.  Davey must have felt the same, because the younger brother reached down and took up his muzzle loader.

“Keep close, now,” said the old man.  He looked from one son to another, nodded, and then went back to the lead wagon.  They watched wordlessly as the old man climbed onto the buckboard and disappeared from view.  They heard the small high-pitched voice of Little Sam, quickly cut off by that of the old man’s.  The old man slapped the reigns and the wagon slowly began its perpetual roll.  Lester released the brake lever and called his own team into motion, following behind the old man. 

“Ain’t enough wind out here to kick up no dust,” said Davey. 

The wagons rolled along in a country that refused to change. 

“What do you know?” said Lester.  “Reckon it don’t take much of a breeze to stir some dust up.”

Davey didn’t reply, but he did seem to settle a bit.  He leaned back against the buckboard again, but he didn’t set his rifle down.

There’s something haunting about a great emptiness.  Something no man or woman knows about, unless they have left all civilization a thousand miles behind them.  It’s no different from being lost at sea, with absolutely no hope, no sign of anything except the same monotonous drudgery of sailing towards the unknown.  Even the most vigilant watchers grow tired and blind as their expectations dim and they become subdued by melancholy and loneliness.

This is how they rode, for hours on end, with no sound other than that of the plodding horses and the slow dry creaking of the wagons.  Once the sun touched the flat horizon, the old man called a stop.  The old man jumped from the wagon and walked quickly to his sons.

“Keep the teams hitched, Lester,” the old man said.  “Just loosen the cinches and get them fed.”

“We staying here for the night, pa?” asked Lester.

“We’re staying,” said the old man, his eyes still busy taking in those far off reaches where Lester could not see.  “I want to be ready to move if need be.  Now, do what I tell you. Davey, you go help your ma and Little Sam get situated.  Get it all cleaned up when the cooking’s done.”

The old man stepped away, the Henry held tight in his hands, the brass shining like gold in the late day sun.

“Where you going, pa?” said Davey.

“Going to look around,” said the old man.  “Do what I tell you.”

The two brothers stood on the buckboard for a moment, watching the old man high step through the grass on his way to inspect whatever he thought might be out there.

“Maybe it’s a buffalo,” said Lester.  “Heard there’s buffalo out here.  I’d sure like to see one.”
            Davey jumped down from the buckboard and spoke to his brother from over his shoulder.

“Ain’t no buffalo that’s got the old man worried like that.”

Lester watched his brother walk towards the other wagon.  He heard Davey’s voice trail back to him and watched as his younger brother helped his mother and Little Sam down from the wagon.  Lester climbed down from the buckboard and started the task his father had left for him, recognizing the beat of his own heart and the heaviness of his own fear.

Davey started a fire with the dried buffalo chips they had been collecting along the trail.  He set the iron pot to hang from a tripod above the flames and left the rest to his mother, who went about the chore of cooking without a word.  With his task done, he stood beside Lester, who watched over Little Sam as the boy beat at the long grass with a stick he had found somewhere back along the trail.  Lester stood over him with the shotgun tucked in the crook of his arm.  Davey thought better of it and went back for his old muzzle loader. 

“He’s been gone a while,” said Davey as he stepped up beside Lester.

Lester shrugged.  He knew it was too early to worry.  Still, he kept his eyes trained on the direction the old man had gone, searching for him and watching for any sign of rising dust.

“You see anything?” Davey asked after a while.

“Not a thing,” said Lester.

His eyes fell again to his youngest brother.  Little Sam was on the trail of a grasshopper and beat after it with his stick.  The grasshopper would fly high and get lost in the long dry grass and Sam would search for a moment, then bring the stick crashing down again.

“Don’t go too far,” Lester said after the grasshopper led Little Sam a ways off.

“I won’t,” Little Sam shouted back, clearly irritated.

“He probably won’t be back before sundown,” said Davey.

“Don’t look like it,” said Lester.  “Come on, Sam.  Let’s get back up to the wagons.”

Night came upon them, with the fire burning low, the cookware cleaned and put away by Davey.  It fell to Lester to see about the teams.  He left them hitched, as the old man had ordered, but hobbled the horses in case they were spooked.

They sat around the fire, covered in blankets against the night’s chill, waiting for the old man to return.  Lester’s eyes kept going to his mother, who looked frail and distant beside the dying light of the fire.  He thought she would show worry, with the old man being gone for so long, but she looked the same as she had since losing Mary Belle.  Little Sam sat next to her, huddled near her legs.  His mother did not reach out to hold him, as he seemed to want.  She only sat there, staring at the fire.

Davey caught Lester’s eyes.  He made a motion for him to follow.  They both rose together without a word and stepped away from the camp.

“Where yall going?” Little Sam called after them.

“We ain’t going nowhere,” said Lester.  “You stay there and watch after ma.”

They walked out into the bright darkness of a prairie lit by scattered stars.  When they were far enough out, where their whispered voices would not carry, Davey came to a stop.

“Well?” he said.

“Well, what?” said Lester.

“He ain’t back yet.  What are we going to do if he don’t come back?”

“He’ll come back,” said Lester.  “Lot of country out there.  He’s probably just scouting ahead some.  You seen how worried he was.”

“What if he lit out on us?”

Lester almost laughed but held it back.  “He wouldn’t do that.  You know he wouldn’t do that, Davey.”

Davey shrugged.  “Well, something might have happened to him then.  Maybe we should go looking for him.”

“No,” said Lester.  “We all need to stay with the wagons.  We’ll keep going like we would if he was here.  He’ll find us on down the trail.”

“What if he don’t?” asked Davey.

Lester looked out into that ink colored night.  “He will,” he said, unwilling to consider any other outcome.

Morning rose, a sheer blanket of pink and purples stretched across the morning sky.  Lester and Davey stood together, searching the morning haze for their father, but the old man was nowhere to be seen.

“Reckon we need to get started, Davey,” said Lester, looking at his brother’s face, trying to read his thoughts.

Davey stared out, finding it a hard thing to do, to give up on the old man.

“We can’t just leave him out there, Les.  Might be he’s hurt or killed.”

 “I don’t know what else to do, Davey.  We can’t go off and leave ma and Little Sam here by themselves.  Suppose someone did get him.  If they got him, they could get us too.  I think we should keep going the way pa would.”

“Suppose he’s hurt out here.  Laying up somewhere.  We just going to leave him to it?”

Lester sought the horizon, hoping every shadow or movement of the grass would prove to be his father.

“No,” said Lester.  “We can’t just leave them by themselves.”

“I’ll go then,” said Davey.  “I’ll go alone.  You stay here and watch after ma and Little Sam.”

“And what if you don’t come back?”

“If I ain’t back by morning, load everything you can into one wagon and ride on west.”

Lester shook his head.  “Ma ain’t going to like it.”

“Ma ain’t hardly noticed pa ain’t back yet.  Don’t reckon she’ll notice if one more of us go missing.”

“Why don’t you take a horse,” said Lester.  “Might need one out there.  We won’t need it none if you don’t come back, no way.”

Davey looked at his brother.  “You know if I don’t come back means there’s someone out there.”

“I know it, Davey.  Want me to go and you watch ma and Little Sam?”

Davey looked back to the wagons where his mother and Little Sam lay in a bundle of blankets on the ground.

“No, Les.  You watch after them.  I’ll return by morning.”

“Well, here” said Lester.  “You take the shotgun and give me the musket.”

“That’s alright, Les,” said Davey.  There was a resigned look on his face, but Lester could see the worry there, so much like the old man’s.  “I’d feel better if you had it, since you’ll be watching over ma and Little Sam.  I don’t come back, you might be needing it.”

“All right, then, Davey,” said Lester.  When you heading out?”

“Right after breakfast.”

Lester had his mother cook an extra side of bacon and saved his own biscuit for Davey.  They sat quietly and ate, Lester keeping his eyes trained, scanning the country for sign of the old man.  His appetite failed him and what he had left on his plate went into Davey’s satchel.

“Are you going to go find pa, Davey?” said Little Sam.  The youngest brother sat beside their mother, who still showed no concern for the whereabouts of the old man, nor did she seem to mind Davey’s intention to go out after him.  Little Sam looked nervous as Davey readied himself.

“What makes you think pa is missing?” said Davey.

Little Sam looked up to his brother, his young expressive eyes telling Davey everything he needed to know.

Lester brought the horse over.  He had unhitched the team from the second wagon and put their only saddle on the horse for Davey.  It was a workhorse, more accustomed to pulling a plow or wagon than wearing a saddle and rider on its back.

“You all start loading that gear up,” said Davey after Lester handed him the bridle reigns.  “If I ain’t back by morning, skip breakfast and move on down the trail.”

Lester nodded.  Davey handed Lester the muzzle loader and climbed into the saddle. 

“We’ll see you in a little while, ma,” Davey said.  She turned her head up to him with the same vacant stare on her face she had worn since Mary Belle passed.  “We’ll be seeing you, ma,” he said, trying again.  He thought she was about to speak, but the moment faded away with the golden morning light. 

“Be careful, Davey,” said Lester, knowing he was no substitute for his mother.  “First sign of trouble, ride on back.  Don’t go getting lost out there.”

“I’ll be fine,” said Davey, cutting the horse around to face in the direction they had last seen the old man.  “Watch after them.”

Davey kicked his heals against the horse’s flanks and the horse trotted away.  A pure, steady thing with a rhythm all its own.

“I want to go, Davey,” Little Sam called after his brother.  The child took off running after Davey, who did not look back.  “Davey,” Little Sam shouted.  From the sound of his voice, Lester knew the child was crying.

“Come on,” said Lester, stepping up behind Little Sam and putting his hands on the boy’s shoulders.  “I need you here.  You got to help me with the chores.”

“I want to go with Davey and find pa,” Little Sam said between sobs.  He watched Davey as he faded away, out on the flat grassland, a cloud of dust slowly settling in his wake.

“Davey and pa will be all right,” said Lester.  “Me and ma need you right here.  Pa said you got to look after ma, remember?”

“Yes,” said Little Sam.  “I remember.”

“Alright, then.  Be a big man and do what pa told you.”

Lester and Little Sam walked back to where their mother rested beside the wagons.  They turned to watch Davey’s disappearance into that strange, desolate country.  Only when he could no longer be seen, did they turn away.  Their mother, too, was watching the evaporating trail Davey left behind.   

The day passed slower than the one before.  The old man was gone, and now so was Davey.  It left Lester with the full weight of responsibility, but with limited choices at his command.  He put Little Sam to a meaningless task of hunting up grasshoppers, in case they came upon a fishing hole, Lester told him, but really it was to keep the boy busy and out of the way while Lester went about unloading and rearranging the two wagons. 

Lester took his time doing this, knowing the day would be long with nothing but worries to occupy his mind.  He fretted about it for a long while, standing at the back of the covered buckboard and examining everything that had been packed inside.  If the old man came back, all the work would be for nothing.  He wiped the sweat from his face with a dirty handkerchief and decided that was the best scenario.  It had been a full day since the old man had left now.  If he did come back, Lester decided the old man would most likely be hurt and need a place to lay down when they started up again.  He looked to the sky and clocked the sun.  It was still early.  Lester forced himself to start sorting through the wagon load, if for nothing else than to take his mind off his worries.

Lester pulled everything out.  All the tools and farming equipment and bundles of clothes and furnishing.  Everything that had been packed so carefully at the start of his family’s journey west lay scattered like discarded rubbish out in the immensity of the plains.

Little Sam took up a spot in the grass, crouching low with his stick in hand, watching his brother go about this strange task.

“Is this where we’re living now, Lester?”

“No,” said Lester.  He lifted a large chest from the back of the wagon.  The chest was heavy and awkward. It took all of Lester’s strength to not drop it onto the ground.  He had no memory of what lay inside.  He only knew everything packed in the wagon held some importance for his family, or it would have never been packed in the first place.

“Is Davey going to bring pa back?” Little Sam asked.

Lester had the chest at the end of the buckboard when it slipped from his grasp.  The chest fell hard and toppled over onto the ground.

“Damn it,” Lester cursed.

He jumped down from the buckboard and rolled the chest right side up.  There was movement inside, though the sound gave no clue as to any damage done.  Lester looked at Little Sam, who had been struck silent at the sight of their mother.  She stood, a shadow of the woman they had once known, the wind ruffling the gown now too large for her wilted frame.  Her face had lost the mute expression Lester had grown accustomed to these past months.  Now, she looked to be on the verge of panic.

“What are you doing?”

“Sorry, ma,” said Lester.  He could think of nothing else to say.

“Get away from there,” she said.  “Get away.”

Her voice rose like a siren across the prairie, as if her own sons were strangers.  Little Sam ran like a frightened animal operating on instinct.  Lester watched his little brother rush off past the wagons.  He was about to call Little Sam back, but his mother rushed quickly to the chest, past the strewn about farm equipment and bundles of clothes and belongings.  She fell before the chest and wrapped her arms around the plain looking box, weeping hysterically.

Then Lester remembered what was in the chest.  It was his baby sister Mary Belle’s belongings, carried forth onto the plains, even as her little body had been lain to rest far back in that other country.

“I’m sorry, ma,” said Lester.

His mother gave no sign she heard him.  She pressed her face against the chest and wrapped her thin arms around it and wept with a quieting panic that scared Lester.  He stood and watched her weep, unable to do anything else.

Lester heard the rush of Little Sam running back through the grass.  The boy called Lester’s name, and he turned to look.

Little Sam stopped running.  The boy looked at Lester and raised a hand, pointing towards the direction he had come.  Lester followed Little Sam’s finger.  Three men approached.  Their bodies shrouded in darkness, they looked like charred, black fingers raking the prairie.  They came on, riding their horses at a slow canter.

Lester watched them and stepped slowly towards the shotgun leaned against the buckboard.  The horses nickered amongst each other at the approach of the wild country ponies the men rode.  Lester picked up the shotgun and held it in the crook of his arm, his mother still weeping behind him.

“Come on over here,” Lester said to Little Sam.  “You stay by me.”

Little Sam ran to Lester and stood behind him as the riders came into camp.  Their mother knelt beside the chest, oblivious to the approaching danger.

“Ma,” said Lester, quietly, hoping she would hush, but she did not.

The riders were close enough for Lester to study.  His first thought was they were Indians, but they did not look like Indians to Lester.  Two riders held back, and the third approached.  The rider stopped his horse ten feet from Lester and his family.  The rider did not look at them.  He seemed to look at everything but them.  His deep-set eyes went to one wagon then to the other.  The man looked at the stock animals for a moment, then raked his eyes across the items Lester had emptied from the wagon.  The two riders in the rear did nothing.  They sat their horses.  Lester heard one of them spit.  He did not look to see which one.  His eyes were on the rifle the nearest man had balanced across his saddle.  Sunlight glinted off the brass of a Henry rifle.

“You folks pilgrims?” asked the man when he finally set his eyes on Lester.

“No, sir,” said Lester.  “We’re just passing through.”

The man was calm, his movements were slow and sure.  He turned and looked back at his companions, their faces hidden from Lester by the shadows cast from the wide brims of their hats.  The man in front turned back to Lester.

“Just cause you’re passing through don’t mean you’re not pilgrims.”

“We ain’t pilgrims, mister,” said Lester.

The man considered Lester for a moment and then nodded, as if he doubted Lester’s assertion.  His eyes, hard and flat, went past Lester’s shoulder.

“What’s the matter with her?”

Lester turned to look at his mother.  Her moaning had ceased but she still cradled the chest in her arms.

Lester turned back to the man.  “She’s fine,” he said.

“She don’t look fine,” said the man.

The man urged his mount a little closer.  Lester shifted the shotgun in his grip.  He felt Little Sam’s hands at the back of his shirt.  The man leaned a bit lower in his saddle.

“Ain’t no need for that, son,” said the man.  He turned his head again to check the men behind him.  Lester looked past the man to the other riders.  They were calm, sitting their nervous mounts.  The man turned back to Lester.  He shifted the Henry easily in his hand, bringing the butt to rest on his thigh. 

“You all alone out here?”

“No, sir,” said Lester.  “My pa and my brother and my uncles.  They went out hunting this morning.  Expect them back shortly.”

The man’s eyes narrowed, and Lester thought he saw a smile pass over the man’s face like a shadow.

“Your pa, your brother, and your uncles,” said the man. 

“That’s right,” said Lester.  “They’ll be back shortly.”

The man grunted.  He looked back again at his men.  One of their horses brayed at Lester’s stock horses.

“Left you in charge, did they?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Of a babe and a simpleton.”

There was no smile on the man’s face now, Lester was sure.  One of the men in the rear laughed.  A high-pitched giggle that reminded Lester of an angry hen.  The man turned again, and the laughter stopped.

“That’s a lot of responsibility for a young one like yourself.”

Lester didn’t answer.  He forced himself to keep his eyes on the man’s dark, tanned face.  Strange scars pocked one side, as if he had been mauled by some animal long ago. 

“Took one of your horses on their hunting trip, did they?” said the man, motioning with a slight movement of the Henry to the wagon where Lester had unhitched the team.

“Yes, sir.”

“Just the one?”

Lester didn’t answer.

“Your pa, your brother, and your uncles.”

Lester didn’t answer.

“How many uncles did you say?”

“Three,” said Lester.

“Three,” said the man.  “Your pa, your brother, and your three uncles.”

The man spoke slow.  Lester felt each word was an accusation of his lies.

“With one horse between them,” said the man.

“They had other horses,” said Lester.  The weight of Little Sam’s hands pulling at his shirt was like an anchor holding him down.  The heat of the day seemed to rise with each passing moment.  “My pa and my uncles.  They had horses.  My brother cut one out of the team.  They’ll be back shortly.”

“They went hunting.”

“That’s right.”

The man seemed to consider this for a moment.  One of the men behind him spat again.  A lone sound on the quiet expanse of the prairie.  The man in front turned again to his men.  Lester watched, his sweating hands wet against the wooden stock of the old man’s shotgun.  He looked past the man in front, searching for a muzzle loading rifle amongst the accoutrements of the two riders in the rear, but he saw no sign of his brother’s rifle amidst the many other weapons brandied about their persons and horses.  The man in front turned back to Lester.  His eyes went again to the many items Lester had unloaded from the wagon before looking back to Lester.

“That ain’t what the tracks say,” said the man.

Lester didn’t answer.  His heart beat like a hammer in his chest.

“Tracks say one horse went out of here,” said the man.  “One horse.”  The man held up his gloved hand and raised two fingers.  “Two men.”

The man lowered his hand.  Sunlight shot off the brass breach of the Henry rifle.

“They’ll be back shortly,” said Lester.  He felt trapped in that wide-open country.  There was nowhere to run, not with Little Sam and his mother.  The shotgun sat heavy in his hands.

“Alright,” said the man.  He sat his horse for a long while, staring down at Lester.  Those flat, gray eyes going from Lester, then to his brother, then to his mother, and back again.

“You tell your pa and your brother, and your two uncles was it?”

“Three,” said Lester.

“Three uncles.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell your pa, and your brother, and your three uncles we stopped by.”

“I will,” said Lester.

“Good boy,” said the man.

The man cut his horse around, keeping his eyes trained on Lester, until he faced the other two men.

“We’ll see you on down the trail,” said the man.

The two men drew back on their horses and fell in behind the man.  They rode away slowly, off into the flat expanse of the rolling grasslands.  Lester watched them for a long time, as they grew smaller in the distance, until suddenly, in the blink of an eye, they were gone.

“Were they Indians?” asked Little Sam, still holding tight to his brother’s shirt.

“No,” said Lester.  “They weren’t Indians.”

“What were they?”

“They were just men,” said Lester, still searching the horizon where the three riders had vanished like ghosts.  The same horizon his brother had ridden out on just hours before.  The same horizon the old man had walked out towards only the day before.  “White men, like you and me.”

Lester let the weight of the shotgun drop.  He turned to look down at his little brother, who turned reluctantly loose from Lester’s shirt.

“Were you scared?” Lester asked.

“No,” Little Sam lied.  The boy was looking down at the ground, down at his own feet as he shuffled them in the grass.

Their mother still sat on the ground beside Mary Belle’s chest.  She wasn’t moaning or crying, and she no longer held the chest in her arms.  She only sat there, looking strange and distant and mute.

“Go sit by ma,” Lester said, his hand on Little Sam’s shoulder.  “Watch her for me while I work.”

Lester had to nudge Little Sam gently to make him go.  The boy walked over and sat in the grass next to his mother. 

Lester went to the lead wagon, the one driven by the old man, and stared into the back of it, trying to decide what could be taken out and left behind.  He climbed inside, keeping the shotgun with him, and began to sort through the essentials.

Lester finished late in the afternoon.  He sat perched on the driving bench of the buckboard, the shotgun cradled in his lap, scanning the heat blurred horizon with his eyes shielded beneath the brim of his floppy hat.

He watched over Little Sam and his mother. Little Same was pulling long blades of grass from the earth and releasing them to let the wind carry the blades of grass away.  Ma was quiet, retreating into her vacant place once Lester had loaded Mary Belle’s chest back onto the wagon.  Lester had the teams of horses ready to go, the spare horse tethered to the lead wagon, in case the riders returned.

The hours stretched out with nothing more to do but wait.  Lester unhitched the team again, figuring if the riders did return, there would be no outrunning them on a buckboard.  His mind returned frequently to his brother Davey, more so than to the old man.  He wasn’t responsible for his pa, but as the oldest, he was responsible for Davey.  He felt it a mistake now to have let Davey go off searching for the old man. 

Lester looked at his mother’s vacant, deranged face.  A fly buzzed around her head. Landing on her cheek and crawling across to her forehead.  Lester’s spirits sank even lower, seeing that his mother wasn’t bothered by the fly.

“Why did you lie, Les?” Little Sam asked.

“What?”

“You said we had uncles and they all went hunting.”

“Yeah.”

“That was a lie,” said Little Sam.  “Ma and Pa said it ain’t right to tell a lie.”

Lester looked again at his mother.  Some part of him hoped she would speak up, but her hollow eyes told him there would be no explanation from her.

“You just sit there and be quiet,” said Lester.

Lester watched the country, feeling both exhaustion and anxiousness.   He hoped to see Davey and the old man return before the riders came back.  He knew they would be back and he knew he was no match for them.  He also knew, though he tried to deny it to himself, that it was his father’s Henry the rider carried across his saddle.

All of this made it hard for Lester to sit still.  He would rise on top of the wagon and look around from the higher vantage point, but there was nothing to see.  He spied a bird hovering far up in the sky and watched the bird until it was gone from view.  When he looked back down to the earth again, there was still nothing to do but wait and watch.

Little Sam went about his game of chasing grasshoppers and Lester let him at it, telling him only once to stay near the wagons.  His mother sat watching nothing, as far as Lester could tell.  He imagined she had her own game and she was playing it endlessly behind her vacant eyes. 

As the sunlight began to soften, and the long day came dwindling to an end, his mother stood up.  Lester watched as she brushed the plucked blades of grass from her thread bare dress and set about preparing supper.  She moved like some mechanical thing, set to come alive at a certain time and perform her function.  She went about the camp methodically, first collecting buffalo chips from the sack and setting them in a pile for a fire.  Lester and Little Sam both watched as she struck the flame and tended to it, then went about readying a pan to begin the cooking.

Lester worried about the fire at first, thinking it would be a sign to those riders.  But he pushed the worry away.  The riders already knew where they were, and the fire might act as a signal to Davey and the old man, if they were lost out there in the flatness somewhere.

“Help ma, Sam,” Lester said, feeling the need to keep the boy busy while he kept up his vigil. 

Little Sam looked up to his brother, then back at his ma, watching her pull from the rations at the back of the wagon.  A shadow seemed cast over the boy, as he slowly went towards her, watching from behind her dress, waiting for a sign he would be let in to help.  He followed behind her, watching and waiting, yet finding no opening.

Lester returned to his vigil, finally resting his back against the buckboard as the sky took on a purple shroud and the rank smoke of burning buffalo chips filled his nostrils.  He wondered, as he watched the light in the sky fade out, how far away he would be able to hear a gunshot.  It seemed to him, in such an open country, the sound of a rifle would carry on for miles and miles before fading away into nothingness.  If the old man was dead, or if Davey had been ambushed, he would hear the shots.  He would hear the shots, but then what would he do?  Would he take the other horse and ride bareback out into that lonely country to find them?  Would he hitch the team and drive as fast as he could out of this place?  This place that never changed, no matter how many hours and miles you rode in the slow plodding wagon. 

Lester reached into his coat pocket.  He took out the handful of shells he had there and lined them up on the bench, counting them one by one.  He had eight shells, plus the two already in the shotgun’s breech.  Ten shells in all.  The riders had pistols and rifles.  More than Lester had had time to count.  He gathered the shells together again and put them back in his pocket.  Those men had his father’s rifle.  He knew it was the old man’s Henry the rider was brandishing.

He looked once more at the dark, receding horizon, hoping one last time to see Davey riding up and leading the old man back to the wagons.

“Supper’s ready.”

Lester looked down at Little Sam.  The boy stared up, his face dirty, almost as vacant as his mother’s.

“Alright,” said Lester.

He climbed down from the wagon.  Little Sam led him towards the cook fire.  Lester had to fight the impulse to turn, to watch over his shoulder, to continue the search for Davey.  He assuaged himself with the thought that Davey would turn up only when he quit searching for him.

Lester took three plates from the back of the wagon.  He gave one to Little Sam.  The boy went to the cook fire where their mother waited.  She fixed them both plates, in her quiet, automatic way.  Lester and Little Sam took seats in the grass, both quietly nibbling at the beans she had prepared.  Lester watched his mother.  She fixed a plate for herself, set it aside, and then stood at the cook fire, ladle in her hands.  It was some time before Lester figure out what she was doing.

“Go ahead and eat, ma,” he said.  “Might be morning before they get back here.”

His mother’s eyes flickered with some dim internal light, but still she stood, waiting.  Lester set his plate aside, having no appetite. 

“They’re coming back, ain’t they, Les?” asked Little Sam, a touch of fear in his voice.

“They’re coming back,” said Lester.  “Eat your supper.”

“What about them other men?  You think they’re coming back, too?”

Lester turned to look out on the plains.  He wouldn’t be able to see anyone approach with the coming darkness of night.  He laid a hand along the shotgun at his side.

“That man had a rifle looked like pa’s,” said Little Sam.

“Shut up and finish eating so you can help ma clean up.”

Little Sam turned and looked at their mother, who stood beside the smoldering fire.

“I think she’s waiting on pa and Davey,” said Little Sam.

Lester stood up, taking the shotgun with him.  “Just help her anyway.”

“Where are you going?”

“I ain’t going nowhere,” said Lester with his back turned.  “Just do what I tell you.”

Lester walked to the lead wagon and leaned against the front of it.  The horses nickered and stomped their feet, tired of being hitched.  Away from the light of the fire, Lester felt some of the weight he carried lift off his shoulders.  Still, the great expanse of darkness that surrounded them was almost too much to bear and he cried there, as alone as he could be, with what was left of his family not more than ten feet behind him.

Like a drum beating in the darkness, Lester heard the pounding of a racing horse.  He took up the shotgun and stepped away from the wagon, as the sound grew nearer. 

“Stay there,” he said to Little Sam, who had heard it too.  The boy stood close to their mother, a hand gripped tight to the ruffles of her dress.  Lester searched the night.  He saw the rider, nothing more than an indistinct shadow moving in from the prairie.  He raised the shotgun to his shoulder.  The shadow closed in fast.  The hope that it was Davey cast an illusion over the shadow figure until it was too late.  The rider was in the camp.

A pistol fired, illuminating the rider in a brief flash of light.  The team of horses behind Lester cried out.  The rider fired again as he raced through the camp.  Lester aimed the shotgun and fired, but the rider was gone, melted back into the darkness.  Lester trained the shotgun towards the sound of the descending hoof beats, but it was no use and he knew it.  Lester lowered the shotgun.

He turned to the cook fire where his mother stared vacantly down into the low burning flames.  Little Sam was gone.

“Sam!” Lester called out.  He sprinted towards his mother, searching the shadows for the boy.  “Sam!” he called, bending low to search beneath the black undercarriage of the wagons.  “Sam!” he called again, rising and spinning around, his heart pounding in his chest.  Lester turned to his mother.

“Where’s Sam, ma?”

She stared vacantly at the fire.  Steam rose from the pot of beans she had been keeping warm for Davey and the old man. 

“Ma,” Lester shouted.  “Ma, where’s Sam?”

Her small hands fiddled with the hem of her dress. Her eyes twitched like a mad woman’s, turning away from Lester.  Lester put a hand on her shoulder, tilting her backward, trying to force her to see him, but she would not.

He rose again, searching desperately, calling his brother’s name until his throat was hoarse.  “Sam!”

Lester searched everywhere around the camp.  He searched the back of the wagons.  He walked out into the darkness as far as he dared and searched, circling the camp and calling for his brother.

No answer came.  Little Sam was gone.  Lester went back and sat beside his mother.  He felt desperate and defeated.  He opened the shotgun’s breach and removed the spent shell, letting it drop to the ground.  He fished another one from his pocket with a shaking hand and slid it into the receiver and snapped the breach closed.  He looked at his mother.  Her face was oblivious, unknowing, uncaring, as tears welled up in her oldest son’s eyes.

“Did they take him, ma?” asked Lester.

Her eyes twitched and Lester thought she would look at him, but she did not.  She pulled loose threads from the hem of her dress and dropped them into the grass.

“Ma,” Lester tried again, feeling a new hate mix with the pity he felt for his mother and the weakness she suffered.  He turned his own eyes to the fire, unable to look at his mother any longer.  There was an empty space there where his little brother had been.

Time stood still in the darkness of night.  The flames of the cook fire smoldered, odorous smoke of the burned-out buffalo chips clung to Lester’s nostrils.  Nothing moved save for the occasional twitch of the horses and the constant, quiet breaking of fabric as his mother pulled one frayed thread after another from her dress.

Sitting next to her, with her mind so far gone, Lester hardly recognized her as the woman who had raised him.  He felt more alone in that darkness than he ever had before.  Thinking life was but a nightmare, he sat frozen, paralyzed. 

Lester thought about faces.  His mother’s face, strange to him now.  Old in a way he never thought she would be.  Broken inside.  He thought about the old man’s face.  Always strong but always worried.  Unreadable thoughts hidden behind his creased eyes.  His brother Davey’s face.  Always thinking, seeing things with eyes that never stopped searching for the wrongs of the world.  The face of Little Sam came to him more than anything.  The face of a terrified cherub lost to the darkness of the world.

“I’m sorry, ma,” said Lester, his voice a thing of weight in the empty, isolated country of the prairie night.  His mother made no move or sign she had heard her son speak, and he felt a little better for it.  “I’m sorry I let Davey go off and I’m sorry I let Little Sam get took.  I’m sorry Mary Belle got sick and died.  I’m sorry pa went off and never come back.  I’m sorry, ma.”

Lester looked at his mother, as oblivious as that dark strange country.  He let out a heavy sigh.  She was as far gone as he had seen her, and Lester felt a loneliness and worry too heavy to bear.

He shifted the shotgun in his lap.  He knew Davey should have taken it with him.  The shotgun had done Lester no good.  He sat beside his mother, and the darkness of the plains swallowed them up.

                                                *          *          *

Davey’s horse was played out.  He had ridden all day, searching across the open country for the old man.  He cut back and forth across the flat grasslands, reasoning the old man could not have gone far on foot, all the while worried the old man might have fallen in the long grass and he would pass over him and never know it.  The thought occurred to Davey to search the sky for carrion birds, knowing no matter the country, the buzzards were always the first to smell death and find the dead.  But he saw no birds circling in the sky.

By late afternoon the sun had grown hot and high, blazing the plains with a heat that blurred the edges of the world.  There was no water, and his horse slowed and grew stubborn, uncomfortable with a rider on its back.  Then he came to a place that gave him a flash of hope.  A place where the grass was matted, and he could see something had laid down amongst the dry blades for a time.

Davey climbed down from his horse, holding tight to the reigns with one hand, his musket in the other.  He bent down and inspected the ground, searching for anything; drops of blood, an imprint left by the heel of a boot.  He searched for anything and everything but found nothing.

Sweat dripped down the back of Davey’s neck.  He walked circles around the patch of laid down grass, leading the tired work horse behind him.  There was nothing to see.  No blood.  No tracks.  No boot heels.  The country was as empty and unforthcoming of its secrets.

Davey moved on, leading his horse by the bridle reigns.  Water was fast becoming an immediate concern.  He shared his canteen with the horse, pouting water into his cupped hand for the thirsty animal, and then he went on, hope of finding the old man slowly becoming a distant thing.  It was strange, in a country so flat and empty, that a man could just disappear without a trace.

The flat country fell away, into a depression that could not be seen less a man walked right up to it.  Like a subtle wave, the ground swelled up to a crest, where Davey stood with the horse, before the earth fell away before him, like the shallow breaks of the ocean shore before a wave crashed. 

He could see for miles, as though he were atop some high mountain range, looking down on the country spread out before him.  Below, what he guessed in the measureless country to be about two miles, was a buffalo herd.  A brown moving stain spread out across the green grass.  The herd stretched out far into the horizon.  He felt the tremble of the earth.  He smelled the rank musky scent of their odor.  He heard the deep braying of the bulls, soft and distant on the wind.

An entire herd, hidden by the sudden roll of the country.  A herd that stretched for miles, unseen and unnoticed by him except by chance.  Davey stood watching as hope of finding the old man dissipated and became something else instead.  Something hard and solid in his stomach.  Something he could never put a name too but was as alive and as real as he was.

He turned his back on the buffalo herd, on that country that fell away to the west, and he started back to his family.  The old man was out there somewhere, but Davey knew he would not be found.  Not by him.  The birds would find him.  The snakes and the worms.  But not him.

He stopped for the night, tired and hungry and empty of hope, in a place that looked like every place else he had seen in this empty land.  Too dark to travel on, he rested himself and the horse beneath the pale cacophony of the millions of stars that glittered like dust in the sky.  He thought how different the sky was here.  So much bigger than the sky back home.  The world felt vast and empty to him.  He was alone and he felt everyone must truly be alone if the world was this big.

Davey started early in the morning, without much sleep.  He climbed atop the horse, who was too tired and played out to offer much resistance.  He rode across the plains, slow and steady, forcing himself to search for the old man, but knowing he would never be found.

The wagons showed from far off on the flat horizon.  He was at once irritated at Lester for not starting the drive, and at the same time relieved he would not have to search for their trail.  He was a failure at searching, and Davey wanted no more of that job.

He rode on towards the wagons, thinking to see the smoke of the cook fire, but there was trail of smoke rising in the distance.  He rode closer still, and thought to see the team of horses hitched to the wagon, ready to start the day’s drive, but there was no team.  Coming closer, he saw the wagons for what they were.  Empty burned out husks.  Receptacles of a people out of their place.  A family’s meager belongings stripped and scattered across the dry grass. 

Davey rode, still expecting Lester or Little Sam to come and greet him, but neither did. He approached slowly, towards the quiet solitude of the deserted camp, and climbed down from the horse, letting loose of the bridle reigns and holding tight to his handed-down musket.

He found Lester and his mother beside the extinguished cook fire, a sound emanating from beneath the blankets covering them.  A buzzing sound. Davey crept closer, like a nervous hunter, and discovered the buzzing sound was that of a thousand flies, swarming their dead bodies. His mother was curled against the ground, her blood splattered across the grass like drying paint.  Her face ruined by what could only have been the blast from a shotgun.  His brother Lester lay stretched out, bloated, the old man’s shotgun across his body, the barrel pointed towards his own ruined head. 

Davey stood, looking down at their bodies until revulsion and despair boiled out of his stomach and bile spewed forth, mixing with the blood of his family.

Davey buried his brother and mother the best he could, putting their bodies in shallow graves out on the monotonous prairie.  The only markers were the wagons he left behind as he rode away, not knowing and not caring where the pull of the world took him.  He searched for Little Sam but found no trace of his little brother.  Long days and long nights sapped his strength and hope and from then on Davey was but a wonderer of that country, going from place to place, with no interest or intent.

He didn’t bother to keep track of the days, for a man truly lost has no reason for a calendar.  The weather began its slow change into the cold season, but Davey hardly noticed.  He sat one day, thin and ragged, at the edge of a new country.  The grass here was sparse and the country that unfolded before him was a land of desert and high plateaus that cut the horizon like flat and broken teeth.

He looked down into the country, seeing the first town he had seen in months.  It was nothing but a settlement with a stockade and a couple of buildings with canvas tents spread out on the perimeter.  Cook fires and chimneys sent streamers of smoke up into a sky painted a faded pink.

Davey sat on a rock, holding tight to the bridle of his horse.  He had grown thin and haggard. His clothes were threadbare and in tatters.  He stared down at the first signs of civilization he had seen since he could remember.  The sight of it was such a shock to him, tears flooded his eyes. 

“It’s something, isn’t it?”

Davey stood, startled that he had not heard the man approach.  The man before him wore a dusty black suit and a wide hat that shaded his bearded face from the dying embers of the sun.  The man led a painted horse by the bridle.

“What’s that?” asked Davey

The man seemed oblivious to Davey’s question.  “To think, I come near two thousand miles to end up in a squat little hole like this,” said the man. 

He stood next to Davey and together they looked down on the town.  Davey smelled the scent of burning wood and of cooking meat and it caused his empty stomach to rumble. 

“Go west, young man, go west,” the man went on.  “That’s what the papers said.  Go west and make yourself a fortune.”

The man laughed.  He reached into his breast pocket and produced a cigar and a match.  He struck the match, raising the flame to the cigar, slowly lighting the tip. 

“So here we are.  The west.  Here we all are, in this god forsaken place, with god forsaken people, doing god forsaken things.  Scratching a living out of this god forsaken land.”

The man took a long pull on his cigar.  He exhaled a cloud of fragrant smoke.

“Yes, sir,” said the man.  “Here we all are, at the edge of the world.”  

He stared down at the town for a while longer, then gathered the reigns to his horse and climbed into the saddle.  He rode at a slow pace, down the hill, towards the town, without a look back towards Davey.

“Hey, mister,” Davey called, his voice strange and callused to his own ears.  “What is this place?”

The man stopped.  He took his time considering the question before answering.

“Hell, son.  I call this place Hell.”

The man turned and kneed his horse forward.  Davey watched the man descend towards the town.  The sun was fading from memory.  Davey started down the hill, leading his tired, played out horse behind him.

The End