The Last Ride. Thomas Eidson

he said, grinning. ‘I’m glad you didn’t inherit any of that.’

      Maggie turned her head and looked at him and he realized he had said exactly the wrong thing.

      ‘Just joking.’ He waited for her to say something. When she didn’t, he said, ‘He’s sleeping out front. Come on back in.’

      ‘I can’t.’ Her voice was soft but firm sounding.

      ‘Why, when he’s not there?’

      ‘Because if I do, it’s like I’ve accepted him being here. And I won’t, Brake. I won’t let him have that victory over me.’

      He watched her from the side for a moment. ‘This isn’t a sporting contest.’ He paused. ‘Think of the children.’

      She tipped her head back to keep her tears from running and studied the shadows near the rafters of the barn. ‘I am. They don’t know about him. But I do. You wouldn’t want me to just forget what happened to my mother.’

      He studied her for a moment, then cleared his throat and said, ‘Yes, I would.’

      Through the thick adobe walls, they heard Jones begin his monotonous chanting. Maggie started to sob hard and Brake put his arms around her and held her tight against him.

      ‘I can’t,’ she cried. ‘It hurts as if it just happened.’

      ‘It’s just seeing him again after all those years – you’ll get over that.’

      She shook her head. ‘Not until he’s gone.’

      He examined her beautiful face in the soft light of the lantern, feeling the warm glow inside him again, and then stretched out on the blanket beside her. ‘You’ve got to.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘Because I’m too old to sleep on hard ground during cold nights.’

      She laughed and cried at the same time, then listened to Jones’ soft litany. It was an oddly soothing sound, mixed with the rhythmic shaking of the rattle. A sound that seemed as if it might drift forever in the darkness.

      Later that same night, Lily was in her downstairs bedroom brushing her hair and counting the strokes. She brushed 250 times, every night, stroking carefully from the roots to the ends of her brown locks to add luster. The house was still and quiet. Her family was asleep upstairs. All but her mother. Lily was proud of her opposing the old man. She felt the stirring of a slight breeze from the open window behind her, the fabric of the curtain ruffling softly.

      Unhappily, her thoughts drifted back to Samuel Jones. She wondered what her school friends would think if they knew he was her grandfather. They’d laugh. Pure and simple. She shuddered at the thought. The one good thing about the ranch, perhaps the only good thing, was that it was stuck so far out in this wilderness that her friends would never visit. Would never find out about him. The place was like a tiny dust mote in a vast dirty universe. At least that would keep her school mates from accidentally stumbling across Samuel Jones. And she certainly wasn’t going to tell them about him. Ever. The old man was an embarrassment.

      She studied her fine features in the dresser mirror and tried to figure what her mother would say if she knew about the bustle. She could guess what her father would say – or at least how he’d look at her. He would more than likely make a joke about it. And it wouldn’t be funny. She decided not to tell either one of them. She was grown now. Bustles were the vogue. She would wear it when she returned to school.

      Lily lowered her arms to rest them. She was still watching herself in the mirror when she first got the feeling. It was a tingling sensation on the back of her neck that someone was standing behind her. ‘Dot,’ she said. ‘Don’t start sneaking up on me. You know I don’t like that.’

      Lily turned and was surprised to see the room empty. The curtain fluttered slightly in the night breeze. She looked back to the dresser and resumed her strokes. Her eyes moved over the small marble bust of Lord Byron that her roommate had given her on the day they left school. She smiled. Sarah was such a sweet person. Lily stopped, the brush still to her hair, and listened. She could not shake the troubling feeling that someone was behind her. She turned again.

      The room was empty. But Lily’s eyes were on the window curtain. It was drawn but she had the gnawing sensation that someone was outside. Trembling, she walked over and stood shaking in front of it. She reached out a hand and yanked the curtain back. Nothing but the night and the scolding of a bird in the distance.

       THREE

      ‘He can find anything, just by dreaming about it. He conjures things,’ Dot said, exaggerating her talk with her grandfather, and pouring a line of peas out of a pod into the large bowl on the ground in front of her. ‘Even if it’s a tiny diamond buried in a mountain of sand, he can find it. Just like that,’ she said, snapping her fingers.

      ‘He’s a liar and a fool,’ Lily said.

      ‘You shouldn’t talk that way about him,’ James called back over his shoulder. ‘He’s our grandfather.’

      ‘Not mine.’

      It was late afternoon and the three of them were working in the big vegetable garden down near the creek. The long lines and trellises of dark green plants – hot weather beans, tomatoes, onions, squashes, Mexican peppers and chard – seemed to overflow the space of the garden, thriving in the heat and bright sunlight of this dry land. Dot wasn’t looking at the plants; her thoughts were focused on how Lily was dressed. That was one of the things Dot admired about her sister.

      Dot scrutinized her closely, trying not to let her notice. Lily was wearing a beautiful red mannish-tailored shirtwaist with padded shoulders and long gigot sleeves that puffed stylishly at the shoulders, and a long black skirt. Her shoes were the new high-buttoned black kidskins. She looked magnificent, Dot thought. Under her stylish hat, her soft brown hair was done in a Paris style: a chignon on top and the front hair carried back without parting. It was all the latest from New York and Europe, Lily had told her.

      Dot felt her sister was one of the prettiest girls in the world. She and Lily were sitting cross-legged on a blanket shelling peas for the evening meal. James was working nearby opening the irrigation ditches that watered the sprawling rows of plants.

      ‘You heard what pa said,’ James continued, shoveling mud out of the first trench and watching the little stream of water snaking its way down through the vegetables.

      ‘And you saw mother’s face,’ Lily returned. ‘She didn’t look too happy about it. She just wasn’t going to fight father.’

      ‘And you are?’ James challenged, wiping at a mud smudge on his sunburned cheek.

      ‘No. I’m just not going to accept that man as my grandfather.’

      ‘Just because you don’t like him, that doesn’t mean he isn’t our grandpa,’ Dot said firmly, spilling another line of plump green peas into the bowl sitting between them.

      ‘He can be your grandfather if you want him to be, Dotty Baldwin, but he is not going to be mine. I don’t want anything to do with that stinking old man and his Indian ways.’ She was positioning a lock of her hair as she spoke.

      ‘Better not let pa catch you talking like that,’ James warned, shoveling piles of mud into the ditch to cut off the flow of water from the creek.

      Lily ignored him and placed her bonnet back on her head, straightening the long satin bow. Dot was mad at her for talking badly about their grandfather. But she liked Lily. Not only was she pretty, she was smart and took chances: like going to Denver to school. Sure, she put on airs – but Lily was always good to her. Bought her things, books and pictures, and talked to her as though they were equals. She went back to shelling the peas. James was leaning on his shovel and watching Lily now.

      ‘Why