The Last Ride. Thomas Eidson
He began to chant and then broke into a rough coughing spell. When he finished he sat catching his breath and staring at the darkness. ‘Stay out of the hills for a while.’
‘Why?’
He didn’t say anything else. She thought he was mean looking but funny. She liked the sound of his chanting.
‘Will you teach me Indian medicine?’
He looked off across the shadows in a serious way, not angry or annoyed, just quiet and appraising, and was starting to answer, when Maggie’s voice cut him off, ‘No. He will not. He will keep his pagan ways to himself. Or he will leave this ranch.’
Jones didn’t move.
Dot turned to see her mother standing a few feet away, watching the old man. ‘Ma, I need to find Harriet.’
‘You won’t find her through Indian magic. You’ll just make your soul sick. If you want Harriet, pray to the Lord.’
The old giant turned now and stared into Maggie’s face, his strange features hard to read. He studied her until she grew more upset.
‘If you have something to say: just say it,’ Maggie challenged.
He shook his head slowly.
She continued to glare at him. ‘No, go ahead. Please,’ she said, sarcastically, ‘say whatever you’re thinking.’
Jones tipped his head down and appeared to be examining the material of his blanket.
‘Say it,’ Maggie said firmly. ‘Be honest for once.’
‘Ma?’ Dot was squirming.
Jones looked up at his daughter’s face, examining her fine features, and seeing something else, her stubbornness, and sensing she wasn’t going to stop until he told her what was on his mind. Finally he said, ‘I was just thinking about what you told the child.’
‘What about it?’
He hesitated for a moment, then continued. ‘That she should pray to the Christian god.’ He stopped talking and it was apparent he didn’t want to continue, felt he had gone too far already. But it was too late.
‘Go on,’ she demanded.
The old man weighed his response carefully, then said, ‘It won’t work, that’s all.’
‘How dare you!’ Maggie exploded. ‘Dot. Go to the house, please.’
The two of them watched the girl trotting away. When she was out of earshot, Maggie turned slowly and stared angrily down at him. ‘Listen. You ran off with some Indian woman. That was your choice and your business. Now you’re here. Here because my husband has a good heart. But if you start teaching Dot your heathen beliefs—’ Maggie stopped and watched his face for a moment. ‘I’ll kill you. I promise.’
The old man turned and stared into the night for a while before he looked back at her. ‘It still won’t work,’ he said quietly. ‘Your god won’t find the cat.’
‘I can reach my God any time I want,’ she snapped, her voice trembling with anger. She turned and walked off toward the barn.
He began to chant once more, his voice rising in the night air, his eyes following her. He continued the droning singsong long after she was gone, calling on his power to tell him what was causing him to feel this nagging sense of dread. Was it simply a premonition of his coming death? Or was it his inability to accept the fact that Maggie hated him? Somehow he didn’t believe it was either.
Jones stopped, convinced he would receive no answer this night. He was struggling to stand, his breath coming in pained gasps, when suddenly his body stiffened, his eyes locking hard on a fleeting vision: a man’s face – Indian – a face beyond time and place, floating in the night sky. Then it was gone. The tree sparrows chattered again, then settled back to their roost.
Samuel Jones was shaking.
A couple of hours later, Baldwin saw Jones looking like a lovesick cow, standing in the moonlight and staring in through the barn door at Maggie as she sat reading her Bible in the lantern’s glow. She was held in a sort of reverential awe by the old man. It was crazy, but Baldwin understood it better now. Then Mannito had come out of the barn and joined Jones. Neither spoke, two solemn sentries in the night. The mismatched pair stood mutely side by side, straight and stiff, for more than an hour. Then Jones began to chant. And a few minutes later, Mannito had joined the chanting. Two old men, one Indian-in-his-heart, and the other, Mexican; two old men standing shoulder to shoulder in the darkness, chanting together like half-mad savages. Baldwin couldn’t figure it.
Maggie sat in the barn straw trying to read a passage from the New Testament in the lantern light, and trying unsuccessfully to block out the sound of the shrill chanting of the old men, ignoring the anger building in her breast. What was Mannito getting involved with him for anyway? Both of them crying in the dark like lunatics. It wasn’t like the little Mexican. Maggie pressed her lips together in frustration and watched a mouse scurrying in the shadows by the barn wall. The man had the ability to infect people with his crazy beliefs. She had seen it before.
Maggie tried to ignore the smell of fresh pine drifting in the air. The bough was hanging from the barn’s rafters overhead. She shut her eyes. She knew he had done it. He used to do the same thing in their old barn on the farm, whenever she and her cousins were going to sleep outside. She was surprised he had remembered. It was pinon-juniper, which meant that he had ridden miles into the high country to find it. It didn’t matter. It didn’t change anything.
It certainly didn’t erase her knowledge of the Indian woman, or his sin against her mother. She imagined the woman with rotting teeth, dirty hair and body lice. Probably not far from the truth. He had left them for pagan vermin. She shook her head.
Maggie worked to shut out the monotonous incantations, but couldn’t. She clutched harder at her Bible, opening it to where her thumb marked a passage of Luke: ‘Ask and it will be given you.’ She had been reading the line over and over, remembering his insult about God not helping. She started to pray, then hesitated.
Maggie rarely asked God for anything. In fact she couldn’t recall ever having done it, except when the children were sick. If she had, she didn’t remember receiving anything that resembled a divine response. That last thought bothered her and she closed her eyes and her Bible and squeezed the little book hard. ‘Dear God. This may seem like a small thing. But I need Your help. I need to prove to Dot that You will help her if she needs You.’
Maggie felt silly, ungrateful, asking God for such a thing. She started to open her eyes but the shrill chanting had increased in volume and she clutched harder at the Bible, her resolve stiffening. ‘Lord. I need Your help to find Harriet the cat.’
The croaking of the grass frogs near the creek was loud in the summer night as Baldwin entered the barn. Mannito had retired to his room at the back of the cavernous structure. The three children were in the house getting ready for bed. Jones was asleep, or looked to be, wrapped in his Indian blankets on the ground in front of the barn, his faithful little band of animals dozing around him.
Maggie was still sitting on the blanket, still reading her Bible in the lantern’s pleasant light, the little lamp making a small hissing sound. The sound wasn’t loud enough to block the peaceful noises of the horses in their stalls, their animal warmth rising pleasantly in the cool air. Baldwin felt a slight chill across his shoulders. Something in the darkness beyond the barn door – something that seemed wrong or out of place – was still bothering him. He had tried to figure it, but couldn’t and shrugged off the uneasy feeling.
Though Maggie was aware that he was standing before her, she refused to look up from her book. He smiled to himself and settled down on the blanket with a playful groan. She continued reading.
‘Why don’t you come back to the house?’ he said quietly.
She shook her head.
‘I