Shortgrass Song (76 page)

Buster chuckled.

“What's so damn funny?”

He flashed his honest smile at the sky and laughed. “You've left your tracks on more land than the ten biggest speculators in Texas. Why, son, you've done and seen things won't never come again!”

Caleb let his mouth hang open long enough that his tongue felt dry. “I know it, but … I'm the
reason
they won't never come again. I've kilt buffalo till there weren't no more to kill. I've turned grass under and seen the dirt blow off in clouds. I've seen dead antelope hung in bob-wire fences I stretched.”

Buster waved it all away. “If it hadn't been you, it would have been somebody else. You just as well get west of it and go on. Now, let's play some more songs like the chief told us. You don't know if maybe he can't still hear us. Them Indians have got better ears than we do. Play that one you made up yourself. The one you call the ‘Shortgrass Song.'”

He turned back to the west and saw Long Fingers emerge as a distant speck on the switchback trail leading to Arapaho Pass. Left-handed, his fingers found their places on the guitar. He felt the chord under his callused fingertips, caught the rhythm that lived forever in his heart. He began strumming in a vacant way as the sun warmed the stone over his brother's grave.

His voice struck the first words, and he felt their familiarity on his tongue. He shed his thoughts of Holcomb Ranch, his dread of its monotony. And as he sang, he began to feel release. The words rang from the hill in clarion tenor rhymes. The song grew larger than his soul and escaped like a vent of steam.

Singing, he looked down on the peopled fringes of the shortgrass plains. He felt as if he had blinked and missed the time of the frontier, and had only heard of it in stories and sung of it in songs.

He turned from sorrow to beauty, and his gaze crossed the face of Buster Thompson, holding the fiddle against his shoulder. Caleb's neck craned as he methodically changed chords, and his desperate eyes groped for the mountains, hoping to catch a last glimpse of Long Fingers climbing the Arapaho Trail. But the old chief was gone.

… and he camps there each year,

To tell his wild stories for his brother to hear.

All at once he knew. Everything in life had drawn him out onto the meandering trails. It all became instantly clear, and he owned, suddenly and finally, his destiny.

He had lied to Amelia. He was not going to stay. He was needed more on the lonely ranches and line camps than he ever would be needed here. Little Pete had Ab and Buster to bring him up. Buster had his work. Caleb had only a song, a story, and the trail before him. They would call him shiftless, say he could not take on responsibility. But what he did was not so bad. He brought music to lonely places, told stories to voice-starved ears.

He was going back out there. But this time he was not running away. He was riding toward something. His reason. He had children to visit in New Mexico, friends to help in the Indian Territory. There were songs to learn in remote corners. People would smile when they saw him coming. He would lope in long strides, like a wild white wolf, making music where he went, then vanishing like dust blown into darkness.

And he sang clearer and louder, with newfound purpose. The song was his truth, and he would spread it far. He needed no ranch, no cattle. He needed no brood around him. He existed to serve, to go out and find the quiet places and fill them with ringing song and laughter, to charge the legs of weary men and women with dance they would long remember.

He was gone. He saw a vision of himself riding west, up to the Rockies, away from the plains. He would walk beside the vision, become the vision. And they would look up and see him, one night every spring, sitting between the fire and the stone, telling Pete a story. And they would smile, then laugh, then sing and dance, then sow the seeds of wildflowers.

He could never remain. It was his truth. Now he only had to find a way to tell them.

His voice echoed over the crags and chasms of the Rampart Range as he raked his strings with a trembling left hand. He touched the gravestone, looked up the Arapaho Trail, and turned to Buster.

His old friend was staring, smiling sadly. At least he wouldn't have to tell Buster. Buster already knew.

SHORTGRASS SONG. Copyright © 2012 by Mike Blakely.

All rights reserved.

For information, address Tom Doherty Associates, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

 

eISBN 9781466836105

First eBook edition: January 2013