Grayfox (4 page)

This was one of the main home stations, so it was bigger than most of the smaller swing stations I'd come through.

The house itself had three rooms. The big room where I sat now had kind of a kitchen at one end with a big wood stove, utensils and pans and cooking stuff hanging from hooks on the wall, and a big rough wood table for eating, with benches on both sides. Then over on the side closer to me there was a big fireplace, some stacks of wood, and a couple chairs, but mostly a lot of supplies scattered around in boxes or crates or on shelves. Nothing was very tidy.

This station was so far away from everywhere that when a wagon came to outfit it they had to bring enough to last a long time. So there were big barrels of molasses and borax and turpentine and things like that, burlap bags stacked all over the place full of wheat and ground flour and sugar and cornmeal and lots and lots of beans. All the meat was dried, and the fruit, too, on account of the heat—nothing would keep for long out there in the desert. Some slabs of smoked bacon hung on the walls, I found out the next day they had a smokehouse out back and had butchered a hog a couple weeks before. And the shelves held bags of coffee, some tea, honey, and lots of tin containers lining the shelves with other cooking odds and ends, medicines, rubbing alcohol, soap, dishes and pots, and all kinds of things.

The other two rooms off the main one were bunkrooms. One was Hammerhead's for himself. The other was bigger, with four or five wooden bunks built against the walls for the riders and Mr. Smith to sleep. That's where I'd put my things.

When Mr. Smith and Billy Barnes came in for supper, Hammerhead called me over and introduced me, then we sat down around the rough wood table. Neither of them said hardly a word to me.

Mr. Smith was maybe five or ten years older than Hammerhead, almost bald and a little fat. His eyes were mean and he never smiled. The few times he spoke, his voice sounded surly.

And even though Hammerhead told Billy I had come to relieve him of half the riding, Billy didn't seem any too happy about it. He just looked me up and down with an angry glint in his eye, as if he'd rather I hadn't come at all.

Everybody around here seemed angry. Any friendliness there was between them wouldn't have been enough even to match half a smile from Franklin Royce back home—and that wasn't much! They grabbed at the food, everyone trying to be first and take the most and the best. As far as pleasant supper conversation goes . . . there wasn't any!

When I was done, I excused myself and went out to the stable to see how Gray Thunder was getting on and make sure he had enough feed and water, and to brush and settle him for the night.

The next morning, like Hammerhead had told me, Billy took me out on the first four miles of my run, showed me the trail up to the top of the ridge east of the station, and pointed out the rest of the way to me, showing me everything on a map I'd be carrying with me.

He hardly said a word to me all the way out. I'd still not seen him smile once. His eyes had a faraway gaze in them that never went away. I found out later that he was an orphan, like a lot of the riders were. But I didn't find it out from him. Billy never said a word about himself. Most fellows like him never did. They kept everything inside, and you never had a notion what they was thinking.

Billy was shorter than me by a couple of inches and probably not a day over eighteen. But one look in his face, and anyone could tell he was a tough customer, just like the stationman had said. I don't know what he'd done or where he'd come from before the Express opened, but I sure wasn't about to ask!

That afternoon, back at the station, Hammerhead went over the map again two or three times with me. Then he issued me my blue dungarees and bright red shirt and handed me a light rifle and Colt revolver. He had me shoot both of them to make sure I knew how to use them. He seemed satisfied.

Hammerhead handed me a Bible, too, and told me to keep it with me when I rode. I was more than a mite surprised. Hammerhead
didn't hardly seem the sort of man who had much religion to him, but I took it just the same.

Then we saddled up the pony I'd be riding and I took him out for a run so the two of us could get used to each other. He was smaller than Gray Thunder but just as fast, maybe even faster.

“They give you the oath when you signed on, Hollister?” Hammerhead asked me.

“No, I don't reckon so,” I answered. “The man in Sacramento just had me sign a paper, that's all.”

“All right, then you gotta take the oath before you can ride for Russell, Majors, and Waddell. Stick up your right hand.”

I obeyed.

“Now say what I say after me,” said Hammerhead. “You ready?”

I nodded.

“All right . . . I, Zack Hollister, do hereby swear before the Great and Living God—” He stopped. “Go on, say it,” he told me.

“I, Zack Hollister, do hereby swear before the Great
and Living God,”
I said.

“—that during my engagement, and while I am an employee of Russell, Majors, and Waddell—”

“—that during my engagement, and while—”
I stopped. I was a little nervous and had forgotten what he said.

“—while I am an employee of Russell, Majors, and Waddell—” repeated Hammerhead a little impatiently.

“Oh, yeah—
while I am an employee of Russell, Majors, and Waddell
.”

“—I will, under no circumstances—”

“I will, under no circumstances,”
I said, and then went on to repeat after him everything he said:
“use profane language, that I will drink no
intoxicating liquors, that I will not quarrel or fight with any other employee of the firm, and that in every
respect I will conduct myself honestly, be faithful to my duties, and so direct all my acts as to win
the confidence of my employers.”

“So help you God,” added Hammerhead.

“So help me God,”
I said.

“All right, Hollister, you can put your hand down. It's all official now. You'll be on the trail for the Express by tomorrow.”

I couldn't help but wonder, after seeing what was in Billy's eyes and hearing Hammerhead talk about boxing my ears, how serious the two of them were about the Pony Express oath.

When I laid down that night on the hard bunk to go to sleep, I was thinking and wondering if I'd done the right thing. Everything I'd said to Pa came back into my mind again, along with everyone's talk about the Paiutes. I only half slept and half dreamed the whole night, turning over a lot, and listening to every sound outside. As much as I wanted to think of myself as a man and grown-up and not needing nobody else, down inside there was part of me that was scared. 'Course that part of you that is trying to act more grown up than you really are won't let you admit you're scared, and I wouldn't either.

Bright and early the next morning, everybody was up, and after breakfast they put me right to work. Mason Walker was due in about ten, and that's when I'd start my first ride east. Two or three hours after that, Billy'd be heading off west.

There was plenty to do to get ready, and Hammerhead wasn't one to let anyone be slack when there was work going on. He fixed me lunch to take with me, and we had to make sure my mount was good and fed. I had grain for him and water for us both in waterproof pouches slung across behind the saddle. There was a lot to getting ready, and Hammerhead had to show me everything that first time. Billy mostly did all his preparation by himself.

“Now, you got eighteen miles ahead of you this first stretch,” Hammerhead told me. “Ain't no water between here and Stephens' Canyon. That's why you're carrying it, and that's why you can't ride flat out, neither. Let your horse tell you the pace he's comfortable with. Some of the runs are ten or twelve miles, and then you can fly. Eighteen or twenty, then you gotta pace it back just a bit. You got that, Hollister?”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“Well, looks to me like Walker's headed this way,” he said, glancing off toward the west. There was no sound, but a tiny dust cloud on the horizon got gradually bigger as we watched it. “You know the route?”

“Think so,” I said.

“Got the map?”

I nodded.

“Your gun?”

“Yes.”

“Then I don't reckon there's more for it than for you to be off.”

We stood there waiting, and within five minutes Mason Walker's dust cloud was billowing right into the station, with him and his horse right in the middle of it.

Walker reined in the foaming horse, jumped off, grabbed the leather
mochila
that carried the mail, and ran with it to me.

The exchange wasn't as fast as usual because I was new at it, but Hammerhead helped me sling the mochila over my saddle, then I jumped up and took off.

“Good luck, Hollister!” he yelled after me.

The next minute I was out of the station, galloping east up the ridge Billy and I had climbed the day before and then down across the flatland of central Nevada, riding hard but not what I'd call real fast.

There ain't much to do while you're riding except stare ahead to make sure you're on the trail . . . and think. That's one thing you can't help, 'cause your mind's about the only part of you that's free to leave the trail and go off someplace else.

Well, that first day I found my mind doing a lot of thinking all of a sudden about things I'd rather not thought of just then. But I couldn't help it!

First off, I started thinking about everyone back home. I reckon the first person to come into my mind was my brother, Tad. Just seeing his face, smiling and maybe wanting to tell me something, sent such a stab of loneliness into my heart I couldn't stand it.

One day, not long before I'd left, when Pa wasn't home, he'd come to me all wet and muddy from up by the mine, with his face all lit up.

“Zack, Zack,” he said excitedly as he ran up to me. “Come up to the mine with me.”

“What for?” I said without much interest.

“I think I found a new vein of gold!”

“Aw, Tad, you didn't either.”

“Just come and look—please, Zack. We could surprise Pa as soon as he gets home.”

“Forget it, Tad,” I snapped. “Let him find his own gold.”

Tad's face had looked so disappointed I thought he was going to start crying. He walked off slowly, back toward the mine.

It was the last time I'd talked to him.

Remembering it made my eyes blurry, and I had to wipe them with my sleeve.

Then I thought of all the other times I hadn't been as helpful to him as I should have or hadn't had time for him when he'd wanted to play or show me something. Then pretty soon I was thinking the same way about Becky and Corrie and Emily.

That same day, I'd walked into the house after talking to Tad like that and had snapped rudely at Corrie too. That same look of hurt and confusion I'd seen on Tad's face came over hers too. And for the next couple of days I could tell she was avoiding me, probably afraid to talk to me, wondering if I'd get mad at her.

All kinds of little things came into my head, things I'd completely forgotten till right then. I couldn't get those two images of Tad and Corrie out of my mind—how they'd looked at me after I'd hurt them.

Seeing all their faces and remembering things we'd done together and hearing their voices in my head—it all made me realize how far away and alone I was.

There sure wasn't nothing I could do about it, though! There I was, riding in the middle of nowhere!

And I had to keep going!

Getting to Flat Bluff and getting started with my new job had kept me occupied, so I could mostly push my thoughts about my family and what I'd done to them down and away from me. The feelings were there, I reckon, because there was a kind of continual gnawing in the pit of my stomach. But I didn't open the door so my feelings could come up into my head and become actual thoughts that I'd have to look at.

I could already tell that the Pony Express was the kind of place where no one asked too many questions or got too personal. I always thought men and boys weren't supposed to get personal like women did, anyway, but it was even more like that in this kind of a place. Everyone out here was running away from something or someone, just like Hammerhead said, or else was trying to prove
something—mostly, I reckon, to themselves. I figured that everyone here, just like me, had a story to tell about people they'd left and pains they were suffering inside without telling no one about it. Except maybe the orphans, and I reckon they were looking for something to belong to more than something to get away from.

Once I was out there on that first ride, it all began to come into my mind, kind of like water that finally rises up so high it breaks over the dam, and I couldn't stop the thoughts from coming anymore.

Especially I thought about Pa and what I'd said to him the day I left.

It wasn't easy to think about, and I kept doing my best to shove the memory of that day out of my mind.

By the time I rode into Stephens' Canyon station a couple of hours later, I was glad to have something to distract me from my thinking.

I met a few new people there, took a short rest, had some water and ate part of my lunch, and was off again on a fresh horse in less than fifteen minutes.

The next two stretches were fourteen and then twenty-three miles, and there was nothing to see along the way. It was the most boring land I could imagine. I don't think there was a single thing living out there. I couldn't imagine how the Indians survived in such country.

When I bedded down that night in the middle of the Utah-Nevada territory, I was plumb tuckered out!