Paxton and the Lone Star (6 page)

Solitary! True restrained Firetail, reined him in while his brothers raced ahead. He had never been gone so long, and the idea of returning home had taken on meanings beyond all proportion. Now, for the moment, he sat in stunned silence as the expected surge of emotion failed to materialize. He was glad to be there, of course, but in a quiet, contemplative way that left him feeling he'd been gone no longer than overnight.

Nothing had changed. The great, whitewashed two-story house sat on a flattened terrace and was surrounded by magnolias, catalpas, chestnuts, and the twin white oaks whose trunk-sized main branches together spanned almost two hundred feet of lawn. A circular drive led to the front entrance that was set under a pillared portico and flanked to either side by a deep, shadowed veranda that ran the width of the house. White board fences ran up either side of the main drive and delineated twin paddocks where mares grazed peacefully while their colts frisked about them. Behind the show paddocks, a large two-acre garden lay to the west of the house, and a wide lawn complete with a gazebo and tables and chairs lay to the east. To the rear, stretching north and west, True could picture the hay fields and fenced meadows and horse barns where the Paxton thoroughbreds were raised and trained. Further to the east, where the land sloped down again along the back creek, two full sections would be green with corn and cotton and tobacco.

True nudged Firetail with the heels of his boots and started the roan slowly up the drive toward the house. To his right, a mare looked up at him briefly. He could hear the dull thud of an axe at work behind the house, and from the edges of the fields where the black peoples' cabins lay, the muffled voice of John Preacher exhorting his charges in their Sunday morning service. True was halfway up the circular drive in front of the house when he caught a glimpse of Lavinia, the housekeeper, emerging from her cottage and going into the garden. Smiling secretly, he turned off the drive and quietly guided Firetail through the garden gate.

Lavinia had been brought to Solitary as a child and had lived all the rest of her nearly sixty years there without traveling more than ten miles from the front door. At one time, long ago, she had been slim and saucy and desirable. Now, her proportions were massive, and accentuated by a bright yellow blouse and skirt and an equally bright red embroidered apron and head kerchief. “Vestal!” she called, turning and raising a hand to shoo away the horse she heard coming up behind her. “You git that colt outa my gard … Oh, Lawd!” she exclaimed when she saw who it really was. “It's True! Mr. True come home!” Her face lit by a broad smile, Lavinia trampled radishes and greens and carrots and onions as she ran across the rows toward True and, barely allowing him to dismount, enveloped him in flesh and gingham and garden smells and the honest aroma of cornmeal.

He was home at last. Finally, once and for all, he was home. Grinning like an idiot and swallowing the hot lump in his throat, True extricated himself from the black woman's grasp and held her at arm's length. “Easy, Lavinia,” he laughed. “You're gonna squash me before I get a chance to say hello.”

“Lawd, Lawd.” Lavinia's head bobbed up and down and her eyes glistened with happy tears. “You a sight, boy. And if you wants to say hello, you'd best hurry, 'cause I'se sure gonna hug you a …” She stopped mid-word, and her smile turned to a mock glare. “Now, see here, Mr. True. You give a old lady a fearsome start riding up secret like that. Why just yesterday one of Vestal's colts got loose and trolleeploded my garden something awful.”

“Trolleeploded, huh?” True muttered, amused.

Lavinia indicated a staggered row of broken plants. “Something awful,” she repeated, already dismissing the subject and going on to another. She looked around and behind True. “Where's Mr. Joseph and young Andrew?”

“Probably with Father and Mother by now. And wondering what's become of me.”

The black woman tilted her head and inspected True from the feet up. “Well, I hope they're fitter lookin' than you. You boys have breakfast yet, or just ride straight in?”

“Just coffee.”

“Coffee ain't breakfast. What you been eatin' the past two months, anyhow?”

“Our own cooking, mostly.”

“It shows.” Lavinia clucked in disapproval and shoved True toward the horse. “Skinny as you has got, I'd best warm up some cornbread and gravy. And fry up a mess of them catfish Vestal brought in this morning, too.”

“You cook 'em, I'll eat 'em,” True said, grinning.

Lavinia was already on her way to the kitchen. “You git, and say hello to your mama and papa. I'll be along in three shakes.”

Cornbread and gravy and fresh catfish. A man couldn't get any further home than that, True thought, mounting and riding to the front of the house in time to interrupt Vestal untying Joseph's and Andrew's geldings. “Welcome back, Mr. True,” the black man said, as unconcerned as if True had just returned from a night in town.

“Thank you, Vestal.” True jumped down, ducked under Firetail's head, and shook Vestal's hand in greeting. “It's good to
be
home. How's Temper? We heard he was ailing.”

“That horse! Drove a splinter into his right rear hoof by kicking the wall out of his stall. Your daddy had to cut it out, and the hoof got infected. I think we got it stopped, though. Durn fool animal.”

“Sounds like him. Joseph and Andrew inside?”

“Yes, sir.” Vestal's worn and troubled face broke into a smile. “Andrew ain't growed any. Not that I could see.”

“He's trying to,” True said. “You doing all right?”

“Fair as can be. I got me two colts to attend to. Bony little girls, but not near as ugly as ol' Firetail, here. He win anything?”

“Never beaten when it counted. Nobody even came close to him, unless I held him back.”

Vestal nodded. “I could tell he was the one for you, Mr. True, 'cause you was the onliest one who had the patience to work with him. Well—” He took the stallion's reins and patted him affectionately on the neck. “I'll give him some oats and a rubdown. How're things in town?”

“Not that you give a damn.”

“Not that I do,” Vestal chuckled, and sauntered off around the corner of the house.

True ran lightly up the steps and into the foyer.

“The last of my wayward sprigs!” Thomas called from the front parlor. “What kept you?”

“Hello, Father,” True said, stepping through the door. “I stopped to say hello to Lavinia.” Adriana, her forty years resting easily on her willowy frame, flew to her son and kissed him on the cheek. “Hello, Mother.”

Adriana could be in a roomfull of people and still make the one with whom she spoke feel as if he were the only one within hearing. “I missed you, my firstborn,” she said, touching his cheek.

“We've only been gone a few weeks.”

“Almost three months, you mean. You are too much like your father, with no concern for time.”

“Hah!” Joseph snorted. “You wouldn't have thought that, to see him this morning.”

“Don't listen to him,” True laughed. His left arm still around Adriana, he gripped Thomas's hand in greeting.

“You're home now, and that's all that matters. Joseph tells me you fared well.”

“Did he tell you how well?” True asked, unstrapping his money belt and handing it to his father.

Thomas was beaming. “Six thousand dollars,” he said, proud of his sons. “You know how old I was before I saw my first six thousand?”

“Five thousand, nine hundred and fifty-six, to be exact,” True corrected. “Won fair and square, too. Take back what you said?”

“He already has,” Andrew said, referring to Thomas's prediction when Firetail was a colt that he wouldn't amount to a hill of beans. “Don't make him say so twice.”

“Now there's a son a father can dote on,” Thomas laughed. “Eating crow once in a morning is enough for any man.”

“Eating,” Joseph broke in. “Now there's a subject I could talk about more. What about that pig we smelled?”

“Vestal started the fire a half hour after we heard you were in Brandborough,” Thomas said. “We put the pig on about sundown last night. It'll be ready by suppertime.”

Andrew groaned. “I hope we don't have to wait that long for something to eat.”

“You haven't had breakfast yet?” Adriana asked. She took Andrew by the hand, started to lead him out of the room. “Come with me. We'll see what there is. Lavinia ought to have—”

“I already talked to her,” True interrupted. “She's cooking right now, unless I miss my guess.”

“I'm game, whatever it is,” Joseph said, following his stepmother and Andrew out of the parlor.

Thomas and True were left alone. Neither spoke for a moment, just looked at the other. “It's good to see you, son,” Thomas said at last. “Good to have you home. We both missed you.”

“And I you,” True admitted, adding with a characteristic grin, “It was one hell of a time, though. That horse does love to run. He's every bit the animal his sire is. More, maybe. They may turn out ugly as sin, but his babies ought to be runners, father.”

“Yes. Well …” Thomas cleared his throat, moved to one of the front windows, and stared out. “We'll see, of course.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” True asked sharply.

“Mean?” Thomas asked a little too jovially. “Why, nothing, of course, except that you never can tell what a horse—Damn! I forgot all about our guest. Wait 'til you see who's cooking the pig. No,” he said, stopping True before he could ask, and taking him by the arm to lead him out the door. “No questions. It's a surprise.”

Something strange was going on, but what, True couldn't guess. Curious, he accompanied his father down the hall past the long, spacious dining room and through the central gallery/work room that separated the front of the house from the winter kitchen at the rear. The smell of roasting pork intensified as they hurried out the back door onto the rear veranda and started across the lawn toward the grove of mulberry bushes, where an entire hog was sizzling on a spit. Suddenly, from behind the thick trunk of the catalpa tree where True had played as a child, a massive form moved like lightning, swept him up in arms as hard as tree limbs, and tossed him into the air. He hit the ground tumbling, but before he could roll free, his attacker pinned him face to the ground with a foot on the back of his neck.

True tried to push himself up, but lay still when he felt fingers twine through his hair and saw fifteen inches of double-edged, razor-sharp steel pointed at his throat. “If I was a Comanche,” a rasping voice said, “you'd be a true dead man and this ol' Arkansas Toothpick'd be claimin' another scalp.”

“Hogjaw?” True asked in a choked voice.

The fingers loosed their grip, the knife disappeared. “Less'n you was made of the same stuff as me, of course,” the voice continued. “Git up, ya scamp. It ain't perlite to lay down when ya got company.”

True rolled onto his back and looked up with affection at the ugliest man he'd ever seen. “Hogjaw!” he said, incredulous. “God
damn!
Hogjaw!”

“Hogjaw? Is that any way to talk?” He looked more a monster than a man, for he had been scalped years before by Indians. Unfortunately, the homesteader who replaced the missing skin with a piece of tanned pig leather had badly miscalculated the lay of Hogjaw's face, which sagged hopelessly as a result. His brows hung low over two black gleaming eyes. His nose was a wadded lump of meat. His cheeks hung like wattles on either side of his jawbone, and wiggled as he spoke. “Mr. Leakey to you, younker,” he said, pronouncing the name “Lake-ee.” Whirling, he let out a howl and hurled the knife, which hit the cooking pig with a sickening
thwock,
and sank haft deep.

“When'd you get here?” True asked, grabbing the mountain man's offered hand and pulling himself to his feet.

Hogjaw didn't answer, merely stared out from under his sagging brow. “Ye've growed, boy,” he said. “Learn anything since I last saw you?”

True grinned, pulled his own Arkansas Toothpick from its sheath, and sent it whirring into the pig, barely an inch from Hogjaw's. “That, if nothing else,” he said.

Hogjaw nodded approvingly. “Knew I'd gave it to the right person,” he said gravely. “It ain't a weapon for just anyone, but I see it fits you, by God.”

“It's Leakey! Hogjaw Leakey!” Andrew shouted, running from the house.

“Another one!” Hogjaw roared, shoving True aside and planting his feet firmly. Andrew, as he had five years earlier when the mountain man had last appeared at Solitary ducked his shoulder, drove full force into Hogjaw's belly and bounced off, almost knocking himself unconscious in the process. Hogjaw roared with laughter. “You'll have to wait another five years before that'll work, lad.” He thumped his chest and belly with a fist the size of a small ham. At fifty-three he was still as hard and strong as a man twenty years his junior. “And be lucky if it does then. By God, Tom!” he exclaimed as Joseph crossed the lawn toward him. “Do the Paxtons never run out of sons?”

“Hello, Hogjaw,” Joseph said, extending his hand. “Long time.”

Hogjaw's yellowed teeth showed behind his lips as they curled back in what he thought was a grin. His and Joseph's hands met and their fingers interlocked in a test of strength. The blood drained from their knuckles, which turned a milky white. Their forearms bulged. Suddenly, Joseph howled and tried to pull away. Hogjaw gave his hand an extra squeeze, and let him loose. “Not yet, Joseph. Not yet.”

Joseph frowned, but even he couldn't keep a sour face for too long around the mountain man.

“Appears I should have waited another year or two,” Hogjaw said, looking at the three and sadly shaking his head. “I'm beginnin' to wonder if they can take the guff. What the hell you been feedin' them, Tom? They're pale as mother's milk and soft as corn mush.”